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I certainly didn't have New York Jewish humor. But I was in three Mel Brooks films so people thought I was a connoisseur of New York Jewish humor.

Gene Wilder

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Gene Wilder
Age: 83 †
Born: 1933
Born: June 11
Died: 2016
Died: August 29
Actor
Comedian
Diarist
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Writer
Milwaukee City
Wisconsin
Jerome Silberman
Thought
Jewish
People
York
Films
Certainly
Humor
Three
Didn
Connoisseur
Film
Brooks

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A lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.
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In fact, [Gene Wilder] had made a hysteric seem considerably less funny in his film debut as a terrified undertaker in Bonnie And Clyde. And neurotics soon became his stock-in-trade, whether he was playing the weird title character in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory...
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I like - it's not that I want to be someone different from me, but I suppose it partly is that. I love creating a character in a fantastical situation, like Dr. Frankenstein, like Leo Bloom, a little caterpillar who blossoms into a butterfly. I love that.
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I met Mel [Brooks] backstage in Anne's [Bancroft] dressing room. He was wearing one of those pea coats, pea jackets that were made famous by the Merchant Marines, and I admired it and he said, You know, they used to call this a urine jacket, but it didn't sell.
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On stage or in the movies I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
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I had improvised a lot in classes and at the Actors Studio, but I never did it in front of the camera.
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Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!
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Gene Wilder often said that his job as an actor wasn't to make something funny but to make it real.
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Which one of us, anywhere in the world, doesn't yearn to be believed when the audience is watching?
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I write funny. If I can make my wife laugh, I know I'm on the right track. But yes, I don't like to get Maudlin. And I have a tendency towards it.
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I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
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On screen, Gene Wilder could often be summed up as an accident waiting to happen, that frizzy, flyaway hair, the eyes darting this way and that and then something would set him off, Zero Mostel, say, in the movie that made Wilder a star, The Producers.
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When you please your mother by doing something, it gives you confidence that you can please other people.
Gene Wilder
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If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?
Gene Wilder
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I was so afraid to feel free to enjoy my own life if my mother was sick and suffering everyday of her's. I didn't think I had the right.
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I never thought of it as God. I didn't know what to call it. I don't believe in devils, but demons I do because everyone at one time or another has some kind of a demon, even if you call it by another name, that drives them.
Gene Wilder
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I'm in complete remission. I'm alive and well.
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To match the shoes with the jacket is fey. To match the shoes with the hat is taste.
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My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.
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I met Richard Pryor for the first time in Calgary, in Canada. A very quiet, modest meeting.
Gene Wilder