by Gene Wilder
ME: I want to leave Jo.
Margie didn’t say anything; she just waited.
ME: Katie always came first with Jo. . . . Well, she was her daughter before I came along, so I can understand it. Jo marries a drunk and a liar who she kicks out after she finds out she’s pregnant with his child, and then she spends her whole life trying to make it up to Katie. I can understand that. I think it might ruin both of their lives—but I can understand it. I was always a very loved “number two” . . . but after what I went through with my first marriage, I want to be number one. It’s not noble, I know that—but I want to leave.
MARGIE: So leave.
ME: I won’t if it’s going to do damage to Katie. I don’t mean hurt—I mean damage.
MARGIE: You want to know if she’ll survive? She’ll survive! Living with someone who doesn’t want to be there would do more harm.
Telling Jo that I wanted to leave was the cruelest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I knew in my heart that I had to leave, but how do you explain such a thing in a way that won’t cause pain? What difference did it make how I explained it—I was sticking a knife into her, and she never saw it coming. “You tell Katie why you’re leaving us, and I want to be there when you tell her.”
The three of us sat in my little study. I stumbled my way through some kind of an explanation that I knew couldn’t change the fact that I was leaving. When I finished my tortured monologue, Katie ran upstairs to the nearest phone, filled with excitement. I could hear her telling her girlfriend the news, almost as if she were joining a club and was going on a great adventure. Her girlfriend’s parents were also divorced.
Sometime later I found out that Katie had gone to see Margie and told her that she knew I was going to leave. She thought it was because of Madeline Kahn. Where she got that notion from, I have no idea. Perhaps when Katie visited the set of Young Frankenstein, she saw us rehearsing one of our comic love scenes. . . .I still don’t know the answer. I loved Madeline, but I never looked twice at her romantically—except in the movies, where I adored her.
On June 6, 1974, I left my home and family.
MONSTER RIOT
Mel hired John Howard as editor for Young Frankenstein. John had edited Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Blazing Saddles. After seeing a film put together for the first time, a director usually wants to vomit (you may be thinking “ixnay on the omitvay,” but I assure you it’s true) because it doesn’t have any of the rhythms the director had in mind while filming.
When I arrived in Los Angeles, I got a hotel room and an office at 20th Century-Fox and then joined Mel each day in the editing room to look at whatever John Howard had put together. When we saw the ascension scene—where I rise with the Creature on an elevated platform and cry, “LIFE, DO YOU HEAR ME? GIVE MY CREATION LIFE!,” my heart sank. I thought this was going to be one of the highlights of the film, and instead it was a boring blob. I put my head down. Mel didn’t vomit. Instead, he got up and started banging his head against the wall. He hit it three times, hard. Then turned his face to the rest of us and said, “Let’s not get excited! You have just witnessed a 14-minute disaster. In one week you’re going to see a 12-minute fairly rotten scene. In two weeks you’re going to see a 10-minute fairly good scene. And in three weeks, you are going to see an 8-minute masterpiece.”
That’s a cute speech, I thought, but you’re kidding yourself, or just trying to make us feel better. How much can you change without reshooting? I saw the scene. I don’t believe in miracles.
The next three weeks were my second lesson in directing: thousands of little pieces of film can be arranged in thousands of different ways. Almost three weeks to the day after Mel’s speech, the lights went out in the screening room, and I witnessed an 8-minute miracle.
While we were still filming Young Frankenstein, I told Madeline and Marty that I had an idea for a romantic comedy, with music, about a brother of Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to write parts for both of them, but I didn’t want to start writing unless they both wanted to do it. When they said yes, I started writing The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother.
During the editing of Young Frankenstein, I worked on Sherlock in my office in the mornings, sat with Mel in the screening room in the afternoons, and in the evenings went to a little French restaurant, called La Chaumiere, where I continued writing Sherlock with a long yellow legal pad, a blue felt pen, and a glass of Sancerre.
The first time I had seen Teri Garr was when she came to read for the part of Inga, my laboratory assistant in Young Frankenstein. Mel called her “the long-legged beauty.” Teri’s father had been Eddy Garr—a semifamous comedian who had worked as a second banana to Phil Silvers for several years. In her audition, Teri’s Transylvania accent was so funny, and her acting was sensational. Although I had never seen her father, I used to think that Teri must have inherited his great comic timing. When all the auditions for Inga were over, Mel asked me who I wanted in the part. No contest: “The long-legged beauty.”
When I settled in Los Angeles and started my new life, I asked Teri to go out with me. She was not only beautiful on-screen, she was beautiful offscreen—always full of life and humor, and always very sensitive. Eventually we became lovers. One evening she played an album of songs for me by someone I had never heard of . . . Randy Newman. I was so taken with him that I wanted to buy the album the next day. I couldn’t understand how it could be that I had never heard the songs of this wonderful black singer.
“He’s not black,” Teri said.
“Oh, I’m sure he is. . . . Just listen to him.”
“No, he’s not black.”
I felt like a fool when I finally met him. My only defense is that he doesn’t talk the way he sings, and I wouldn’t want to change anything about the way he sings.
I went to see Teri perform on the Sonny and Cher show—where she appeared regularly—and found out that Teri was also a dancer. It was a sweet comfort to be with such a pure and gentle woman, who could laugh and love and remain unspoiled by the smog of show business that hung over Los Angeles.
Young Frankenstein opened in New York at the Sutton Movie Theater in December of 1974. I flew to New York for the opening and took Katie with me. It was a midnight screening on a Thursday so that the movie could qualify for the weekend grosses, and I was very nervous. The lights dimmed, and when the title YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN appeared onscreen, the audience started clapping before a word was spoken. I relaxed. The movie was a big hit and Mel and I received Academy Award nominations for writing.
chapter 21
SHERLOCK HOLMES HAS A JEWISH BROTHER.
When we were in the thick of editing Young Frankenstein, Mel had asked the editor to put in a close-up of Teri Garr as she watched me strangle Eyegore for stealing the wrong brain.
John said, “We don’t have a close-up of Teri in this scene, Mel.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You never shot one.”
I thought Mel was going to start banging his head against the wall again, but he just turned to me and said, “Don’t you ever make a mistake like this when you’re directing.”
“But I’m not directing.”
“YES, you’ll see, you’ll see. . . . If you keep writing, you’re going to want to direct, just so someone doesn’t screw up what you’ve written. If it makes a few bucks, they’ll let you do it again; if it bombs out, they won’t.”
John Howard solved the problem of “no close up” of Teri for the strangling scene by taking a close up of her from another scene—in which she was wearing the same white lab coat—and he put it in where Mel wanted. You would never know if you didn’t know.
Two weeks later Alan Ladd, Jr. (known as Laddie by almost everyone) asked me if I wanted to direct Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother.
Paul Mazursky’s office at Fox was around the corner from mine. I admired him as a director, and when I told him that I was going to London to direct my first film and I wanted his help, he ga
ve me one piece of advice: “Get to know your production designer!”
I went to London with my producer, Richard Roth, to start preproduction. I stayed at the famous Connaught Hotel again—just like old times, except that this time my room was a little larger. The representative of 20th Century-Fox in London said, “Gene, you can meet any production designer in England that you wish; all I ask is that you see Terry Marsh first. You two are twins.”
The next day, Terry Marsh walked into my hotel room. We talked about his work on Lawrence of Arabia (which had brought him an Academy Award nomination),Doctor Zhivago, and Oliver (he won Academy Awards for both), and after about twenty minutes I felt as if I had found my long-lost brother. I loved the English accent, of course, but the simple way he described complicated things and the humor with which he described them, won me over.
It’s egotistical to write, direct, and act in your own film, but it’s also necessary. If you aren’t any good and the picture bombs, you won’t be doing that egomaniacal job again. But, as Mel said while editing Young Frank, “If it makes a few bucks, they’ll let you do it again.” I was now doing what Leo Bloom said he wanted: “Everything I’ve ever seen in the movies.”
I had a comedy scene at the beginning of filming “Sherlock” that was one of my favorites. I thought it would be a cinch. This was the setup: I’m waiting to see Lord Redcliff in his study. There is a tempting box of chocolates, sitting open on his desk and melting in the sun. I take one piece of chocolate, and it’s delicious, so I decide to steal just one more tiny piece. But I accidentally knock the whole box onto the floor. I kneel down to pick up the candies and, just as I’ve grabbed most of them in my hand, I hear footsteps approaching. I cram all of the gooey chocolates into my mouth and stand up to shake hands with Lord Redcliff. My face and hands are covered with chocolate, and when I try to talk, my speech is muffled, because my mouth is stuffed full of chocolate.
Now, you’d think that this scene would be fairly easy for me—just give me some good chocolate, which the prop department did. But every time I tried to speak after stuffing the chocolates into my mouth, nothing intelligible came out. I tried putting less and less chocolate in my mouth, but that made it impossible not to swallow most of it as soon as I started talking, and the comic essence of the whole scene was that I was trying to talk normally. I finally came up with the strangest solution: I asked for a bottle of Perrier, took a small swig, and held the water in my mouth without swallowing. Then I nodded to the assistant director to call, “Action.” My speech sounded a little bizarre, but you could understand everything I was saying, and I was able to hold the water in my mouth without swallowing it. The crew was holding back laughter, but all I was trying to do as an actor was to speak as normally as I possibly could. It was the same lesson I had learned from Chaplin, when I saw The Circus: If the physical thing you’re doing is funny, you don’t have to act funny while doing it. . . . Just be real, and it will be funnier.
During three months of rehearsals and prerecording our songs, Dom DeLuise kept us laughing. When the actual filming started, he kept the whole crew laughing, not just with his acting but also between takes. He is the funniest man, in person, that I’ve ever known.
I had never met Albert Finney, but he did me the great favor of acting a tiny part in one scene. He sat as a member of the film audience that was watching a slapstick Italian opera. Albert had one line to say: “Is this wonderfully brave, or just rotten?” After his scene was over, we made plans to see each other again. During that summer I became good friends with Albert and his wife, Anouk Aimée. They were very loving with each other, but Albert is a big talker and Anouk had to fight with him for equal time.
Katie came to visit me for a week during filming. She was sixteen now and had matured a great deal. It was probably the happiest week we had ever spent together. She came to work with me each morning—early as it was. She got to know the crew, watched the filming, laughed at Dom DeLuise . . . and loved the attention that the handsome young men on the crew were paying her. In the evenings Katie and I went to little restaurants near Berkley Square, which were a few streets away from where I lived. No arguments, no temperamental bursts . . . just fun. By the end of the week, I thought we had crossed the Rubicon.
When the filming of Sherlock was over, my editor—Jim Clark—told me to go away for a few weeks while he put the rough cut together. “Then it’ll be all ready for you to vomit when you see it for the first time.”
My New York agent, Lily Veidt, had sent me a postcard from a beautiful chateau in the Provençal hills. The postcard had a photo of the chateau, and she circled a little balcony on the photo and wrote, “If you ever need a good rest, come here.” Albert Finney had told me about a wonderful hotel restaurant in the same area, called La Columbe d’Or, where Simone Signoret and Yves Montand usually stayed during the summer months. So I went to Chateau St. Martin for two weeks.
On my second night in France, I drove to the village of St. Paul de Vence and walked into La Columbe d’Or. It was an outdoor restaurant, jam-packed with people, mostly tourists, who were sitting under the fig trees that surrounded the terrace. I had made a reservation and was looking for a waiter or maître d’ to tell me where to sit, when suddenly I was enveloped by a mass of purple. I couldn’t see anything but purple and didn’t know what was happening . . . until I heard the words, “Monsieur Bloom! Monsieur Bloom!” When the purple receded, there was Simone Signoret, embarrassed for what she thought was the spectacle she had made of herself. She apologized and explained that she had shown The Producers to her nieces and nephews so many times and suddenly—in walks Monsieur Bloom.
She led me over to her table—where she sat each evening—and introduced me to her guest, James Baldwin, with whom she was having dinner. She said that Mr. Baldwin was guiding her while she wrote her first book. She asked me to join them for a drink after I had eaten.
I sat, eating my baby chicken with chipolata, thinking of how funny my “purple meeting” must have looked to all the people watching, and how thrilled I was to have been enveloped by one of the greatest actors of our time.
After I had my drink with them and said good night to James Baldwin and was kissed by Simone Signoret on both cheeks, I went outside, walked close to my car, and threw up on the street. It wasn’t about the food. I may act brave and sometimes outrageous—on screen—but in real life I get terribly nervous when I meet the great talents whom I’ve admired for years from afar.
I was in Paris on a Friday when I received a phone call from Laddie telling me about a script he wanted me to do. It was called Super Chief. But he needed to know my response immediately, because another actor wanted to do it and had given Fox until Tuesday to decide. Laddie had someone fly to Paris that night in order to hand me the script the next morning. When I was halfway through reading it, I called Laddie and said yes. The title was later changed to Silver Streak because the Santa Fe Railroad—which owned the actual Super Chief—thought the movie would give train travel a bad name. (Au contraire, mon cher.)
Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother opened at Christmas week in 1975 and was a big hit.
chapter 22
CRISIS IN BLACK AND WHITE
There was one scene in Silver Streak that I thought might be its Achilles heel—when I’m in the men’s room putting on shoe polish, trying to pass as black. Before casting started, I told Laddie that I thought there was only one person who could play that scene with me and keep it from being offensive, and that was Richard Pryor. Laddie said, “That’s who we want.”
I met Richard in Calgary, Canada, the night before our first scene together. We were both checking in at the Holiday Inn reception desk when we saw each other. No high jinks, no trying to be funny—just a very warm handshake and an expression of admiration for each other’s work.
IMPROVISATION
The next morning we did our first short scene. There were police cars and helicopters and guns all around us. I jumped into a ditch next to him
—as I was directed to do—and Richard said his first line, and I answered. Then he said some line that wasn’t in the script, and I answered with a line that wasn’t in the script. No thinking—just spontaneous reaction. That was the start of our improvisatory relationship on film.
I had never improvised onstage in front of a paying audience—only in class—but in 1968 I worked with Elaine May and Renee Taylor to raise funds for Eugene McCarthy in his quest for the presidency. Renee and I would meet in Elaine’s apartment and, after Elaine set the situation—that we were all at a cocktail party talking about the upcoming election—Elaine turned on her tape recorder and we improvised for ten or fifteen minutes. The next night we met again. Elaine had typed up the best bits from the previous night’s work, showed them to us, turned on her tape recorder, and we improvised again, using those best bits from the night before as signposts. After working this way only three times, we were ready to tour the country, improvising each night at whichever college or home we performed in.
So many beginning actors who want to improvise usually aren’t improvising at all—they’re just trying to think up clever lines, and then the competition sets in with the other actors to see who’s going to come up with the funnier line.
During Silver Streak words kept coming out of my mouth in response to things that Richard was saying—things that weren’t in the script. Of course, Richard was used to working this way from all the jobs he had done in clubs and concerts. I don’t say that Richard’s way is without any thought—but his method always has an emotional, rather than intellectual, base. In this regard, Richard was my teacher: no thinking—just immediate, instinctive response. If it’s no good, the director will cut it out—assuming you have a director who wants you to improvise.