In the 1970s and 1980s Gene Wilder was a genuine box office force, particularly when teamed with Mel Brooks or Richard Pryor - though he could get on fine without either (Woman in Red). He was an odd sort of star Wilder, with a touch of madness about him - that pointy noises, those bulging eyes and frizzy hair, a voice that could shoot high very quickly, specialising in romantic nerds with a healthy sexy drive. It becomes apparent from this book that a lot of that came from Wilder himself.
The book is told in the form of a dialogue with a therapist, and certainly reads like someone who has spent a lot of time in therapy. He chats a lot about his sex life, when it worked, when it didn't; he also talks a lot about acting, and a little about show biz. He doesn't try to make him seem like a nice person - he walked out on two marriages (the second one had a daughter), writes about having sexual fantasies about the woman who became his fourth wife, while still married to his third who was dying (Gilda Radner, a comedian whose marriage seemed to make sense because she was funny looking too but she died not long after they were together), refuses to deify Radner.
The book is more about Wilder's life than his career - I wanted more about the films: there is some choice stuff about Richard Pryor, but I would have been interested to know a bit more about some of his directing efforts, and what he's been doing in the 1990s, and more of the films that he did. (The film that gets the longest spiels are The Producers and Young Frankenstein but I would have liked to heard more about the others.)
Still, what is there is pretty interesting - Wilder developed a compulsion to pray, had rough working experiences with Carol Channing, had an affair with Terri Garr, lost Radner to cancer then developed cancer himself. He seems to love his fourth wife very much - but is still weird.
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