ICON:
Goodbye Gene Wilder
RIP 1933–2016
“I don’t mean to sound — I don’t want it to come out funny, but I don’t like show business. I love — I love acting in films. I love it.”
“For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius!”
“The big catalyst was seeing my sister, when I was 11, doing a dramatic recital. When I saw her on the stage and everyone listening to her so patiently, quietly, that’s all I wanted: for someone to look at me and listen to me, but in some beautiful and artistic way.”
Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder Agreed To Play Willy Wonka Under One Condition:
“When I make my first entrance. I’d like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I’m walking on and stands straight up, by itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.”
When asked why he wanted to do this, Wilder simply said, “Because from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.”
