{"id":8655,"date":"2016-08-31T16:56:10","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T16:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8655"},"modified":"2017-06-20T13:36:14","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T13:36:14","slug":"why-wilder-and-brooks-stopped-making-films-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8655","title":{"rendered":"Why Wilder and Brooks stopped making films together"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"young<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks made three films together and each one is regarded as a comedy classic. Neither man achieved the same degree of success on his own but Wilder, who died Monday aged 83, was quite clear about why they stopped.<\/p>\n

It was because Mel Brooks decided he wanted to be a movie star. At the New York junket for \u201cThe Woman in Red\u201d (pictured below with Gilda Radner and Kelly Le Brock) in 1984, Wilder was asked if he planned to work with Brooks again and he said, \u201cYes. I will. I want to. But not when\u2019s acting in the movie. When he\u2019s willing to just direct and we both write, that\u2019s when I\u2019ll do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"woman<\/a><\/p>\n

I asked him to explain why and he said, \u201cBecause I was always his fantasy hero. I played the parts that he couldn\u2019t play. He couldn\u2019t be Dr. Frankenstein. He could have tried to play Marty Feldman\u2019s part, Igor, in \u2018Young Frankenstein\u2019. He couldn\u2019t play Leo Bloom in \u2018The Producers\u2019. He couldn\u2019t play the Waco Kid in \u2018Blazing Saddles\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not my task to make judgments but he says, honestly, that he\u2019s not an actor, he\u2019s a performer. Correct. But he wants to look as good as possible, to do what he does best so the scripts are written for what he can do. So long as the scripts are written for what Mel Brooks can do as a performer, he\u2019s taking my part away. He\u2019s going to play it. What he did before was say \u2018No holds barred. I\u2019ll write anything I can dream up because Gene will play it.\u2019 But now he\u2019s going to play it, there\u2019s no room for me. There\u2019s no need for me. It\u2019s not as if, \u2018Well, why don\u2019t you both be in it?\u2019 because I\u2019m usually the protagonist and now he\u2019s the protagonist in his movies. The scripts wouldn\u2019t be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilder, who always spoke thoughtfully and articulately, agreed that it was Brooks who had seen in him the ability to hold in emotions and then suddenly explode, as he did in \u201cThe Producers\u201d (pictured with Zero Mostel below). It was a trait that began in his childhood, Wilder said\u201d \u201cWhen I was young, my mother had a heart condition. The doctor told my father, sister and me, \u2018Don\u2019t get angry with her because you could kill her. So I didn\u2019t get angry. I kept it all in. There are certain times when a boy should know that he can yell and scream and it isn\u2019t going to kill his mother. But twice a year, like clockwork, I would have an explosion where all six months of poison would come out. When I explode in those moments, as in \u2018The Producers\u2019, it was never that it was squeezed out but finally the flood gates would open. I had the right to explode on stage or in film as big as I want. I could use all those old feelings, old restrictions. I didn\u2019t write it out or plan it that way but because of \u2018The Producers\u2019, really, when Mel said, this is a perfect part for you, I realised that was part of my makeup. It\u2019s still there but not the same way. I\u2019m not such a frightened little sheep that Mel still thinks I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"producers-1<\/a><\/p>\n

Asked if he was still in analysis, Wilder said no but he had been at a critical time in his life from around 26 to 32: \u201cBut I wouldn\u2019t hesitate, nor have I, when I have a problem that I\u2019m noodling with too much. If it\u2019s a very serious thing and I don\u2019t want to do something destructive, I think I need to talk this out with someone. Not with someone who\u2019s smarter than me but someone who could see where I might be not emotionally clear of what my motives were. So I call up someone whom I trust, a psychiatrist, I call up my old analyst and talk on the phone. I wouldn\u2019t hesitate to do that. If you have a broken arm, to say, \u2018Well, I\u2019ll heal it myself, it\u2019s silly, I don\u2019t want to go to a doctor\u2019 everyone would laugh and say why don\u2019t you go to a doctor and get it set? If it\u2019s emotional, people think [and he whispers] \u2018He\u2019s seeing a therapist\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

He agreed that there is often a connection between actors and emotional difficulties: \u201cWhen we performing artists are very little, we\u2019re just like everyone else but in my opinion there\u2019s a crack somewhere. It\u2019s like when a grain of sand gets into an oyster. It irritates. There\u2019s a crack somewhere that we feel inadequate, we try to make up for some terrible pain, we\u2019re not accepted. So we turn to different things. The performing artist turns to performing. If we\u2019re not getting love, not getting acceptance by our peer groups, we do something funny and people say, \u2018Hey, you want to come to the house tonight?\u2019 All of a sudden, we\u2019re accepted. Then starts this terrible paradox where we\u2019re doing the comedy as a secondary route to what we couldn\u2019t get from our original personalities. Alice Miller wrote a book called \u2018The Problems of the Gifted Child\u2019. The whole point of her book was that the gifted child originally just wanted to be accepted as a human being before they even knew what that meant but something went wrong so they turned to their art, fortunately for the world. Sometimes, when it\u2019s not an artistic inclination, they turn to trying to rule the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s an original fissure, a crack somewhere, and we do something and someone hugs us and we say that feels good and we want more. We just want more of it. Later on, with a little luck it turns into something healthy and it becomes your profession. I don\u2019t think you\u2019d find many actors who would disagree, especially comics, with the premise that some sadness, some pain in their early life caused them to turn to comedy to gain acceptance so they wouldn\u2019t be looked upon as a freak. If you\u2019re going to be a freak, then let it be a freak that people laugh at rather than be shocked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pictured top: Teri Garr, Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman and Mel Brooks on the set of ‘Young Frankenstein’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks made three films together and each one is regarded as a comedy classic. Neither man achieved the same degree of success on his own but Wilder, who died Monday aged … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263],"tags":[4387,4385,4386,4383,4384],"class_list":["post-8655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","tag-blazing-saddles","tag-the-producers","tag-young-frankenstein","tag-gene-wilder","tag-mel-brooks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8655"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9116,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655\/revisions\/9116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}