Contained explosions: the screen persona and refreshing honesty of Deceased Artiste Gene Wilder

There have been a flood of pieces written about Gene Wilder in the days since his passing. A handful of his film performances are so beloved (and rightly so) that the emotions unleashed by his death have been of the kind that usually accompany the passing of a pop star or an A-list movie star. Wilder hadn’t been in a box-office hit since the Eighties and yet viewers have a strong love for him, a love that was kindled by about a half-dozen truly great films and another half-dozen that are well remembered because of Wilder’s interaction with other great comic actors.

I would argue that anything Wilder was in from the late Sixties to the mid-Seventies is worth seeing — the Eighties much less so, and he gave up the ghost in the early Nineties, working in only a handful of TV movies and series before an unofficial “retirement” in 1999.

A quick commercial break…

The brilliance of his low-key performances, which often erupted into wonderful outbursts of hysteria, was showcased perfectly in the Seventies — that period in which so many performers and filmmakers made superb films and then it all disappeared in a Star Wars-fueled frenzy of crap.

Although most discussions of that era deal exclusively with dramas (or films that were both drama and comedy like The Long Goodbye), the “maverick” period was also exceptional for comedies. Three alumni of the Sid Caesar “school” of comedy writing — Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and (to a lesser extent) Neil Simon — crafted a number of truly excellent films that, in the case of Brooks and Allen, were as daringly original as the brilliant “revisionist” films of that period, and the best all-around comedies since the Golden Age of Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Fields & West.

Wilder was an integral part of this, as he costarred in one of the most perfect comedies ever, The Producers (1967), and starred in and coscripted another flawless picture, Young Frankenstein (1974). During the period of “maverick cinema” he made his debut in Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (a prologue to the flood of brilliance provoked by the success of Easy Rider), made the three classics with Mel, starred in an underrated romance (Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx, 1970), made a memorably downbeat comic TV movie (Thursday’s Game), reunited with Le Grand Zero in the ambitious mess Rhinoceros (1974), distinguished himself in Woody’s anthology Everything You Ever Wanted to Learn About Sex… (1972, seen at right), played a rabbi in the Old West in the Robert Aldrich much-loved comedy The Frisco Kid (1979), and gave an unforgettable performance as the infinitely cool, refined yet cruel, Willy Wonka.

Two of the lesser known items above: first a scene from Quackser Fortune…

and the entirety of Thursday's Game:

Like many, many others, after Jaws and Star Wars pushed Hollywood into the “blockbuster zone” from which is has never escaped, Wilder never got the same kind of roles after the mid-Seventies because those kind of comedies weren't being made any more. The two masters of American film comedy in the Seventies, Allen and Brooks, became, respectively, a fine filmmaker whose films were no longer overt comedies (and whose artsy ambitions were visible in every Bergman lift) and an unfortunately spotty, uneven director who eventually looked, sadly, like he was copying those (coughZuckerAbrahamsZuckercough) who had learned from him.

So the reason that Wilder's death was greeted with an outpouring of sadness was based on a handful of sublime performances he gave us in the span of a decade. He underplayed his roles beautifully during that period and thus, when the time came — as it so often did — for him to explode, the resulting hysteria was funnier. Willy Wonka might well have remained his best-remembered role because he is the one Wilder character who was utterly in control of his environment.

Wilder was a disciplined actor and, despite his repeated protests in interviews that he was not a funny person, he had perfect comic timing and was (let's be honest here) incredibly lovable. The maverick era saw Woody Allen and Elliot Gould at the two poles of Jewish masculinity in screen comedy — Woody as the uber-nebbish, Gould as the disaffected guy who was big enough to actually fight back if he wanted to.

Wilder was somewhere in between, since he was never as macho as Gould, but he was a more developed, well-adjusted, and more handsome nebbish than Woody. He could thus make Victor “Fron-kon-steen” both a convincingly debonair socialite and a raving madman.

It is a joy to explore Wilder through the Seventies, doing the occasional scene-stealing cameo (as in The Little Prince) while also starring in a string of features that range in quality from absolutely perfect to ambitious misfires like the American Film Theater version of Rhinoceros, which found him reuniting with Zero Mostel:

After the maverick Seventies turned into the blockbuster Eighties, Wilder's career did truly slow down. The films he directed in the style of Young Frankenstein didn't take off, and he was too "neurotic" to play in more conventional rom-coms. His films with Richard Pryor and The Woman in Red (1984) were the only box office successes in his later career (more on those below).

Having invested wisely and never a part of the Hollywood “industry” he stopped making films in the early Nineties, and subsequently appeared in only a handful of TV movies and sitcoms, like the rather bleak Something Wilder (1994-’95), which did have one interesting guest-star:

What interested me about the interviews with Wilder is that, while some of his anecdotes were indeed stories he'd told time and again —how cheering up his ill mother made him a comic performer (best discussed in the interview below), how he met Gilda Radner and his widow Karen — he was also incredibly honest about the relationships with the three individuals that interviewers and members of the public wanted to know about.

The first was, of course, Mel Brooks. Wilder often cited Mel as the one person who got his acting career going for real, after a few years of working in supporting roles in theater and TV. In the process of talking about The Producers Gene also spoke about how welcoming Zero Mostel was to him.

Even though Wilder was Brooks' first choice for Leo Bloom, he found out that he had to audition for Mostel, which made him incredibly nervous. Zero's way of calming him down was to kiss him on the mouth upon meeting him.

The other reminiscences of Zero that Wilder offered were pleasant memories of having lunch with him. When the rest of the cast and crew would be out, he and Zero would sit together eating their sandwiches, with Zero telling him about his past, including his years of being blacklisted as a “Red.”

An animated tangent: Zero and Gene worked together on two films (Producers and Rhinoceros) and the “Letterman” cartoon segments on The Electric Company (the narrator is none other than Joan Rivers).

Back to Mel: Wilder spoke affectionately of him in interviews, discussing the fact that (in spite of Brooks' reputation as an ad-libber), his films contain little to no improvisation; what he wanted performed was the script as written. In various interviews, particularly the Biography episode below, Gene discusses the scrapped project the two were to make after Silent Movie was completed — a comic take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that was dropped when Wilder read that John Cleese had announced a similar project.

Wilder was polite in his interviews in the 2000s (done to promote the five books he wrote), but he was also uncommonly honest (perhaps because he had nothing to lose, having essentially retired from performing). In interviews like this one from 2005 with WNYC's Leonard Lopate, Gene declared that Brooks' films became less interesting when Mel took the starring roles in them.

A bold pronouncement, though sadly true, because as funny as Brooks was and is, his two absolutely perfect films are ones he didn't appear in, while the films he starred in range from uneven but still fun (High Anxiety) to abysmal (Life Stinks). He didn't star in his last two films (the Robin Hood and Dracula spoofs), but by that point his films had indeed started to look like copies of the work of those who were inspired by, or simply imitating, him.

Wilder could be equally blunt about his own work. I was surprised to hear him say in the Biography program above that he wasn't a very good director, as he had spoiled his comedies with untold amounts of “schmaltz.” While I have affection for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975) and The World's Greatest Lover (1977), it is very true that they needed some of Brooks' over-the-top comic approach, while Mel's post-Young Frankenstein films could have used a dose of Wilder's restraint.

Wilder was also very honest in his statements about his four-time screen “partner” Richard Pryor. He maintained that he had fond feelings for Richard, but that they never really socialized. He was also quick to say that Richard was hard to take during the making of Stir Crazy (1980) because he was always arriving on-set late (that being the time when Pryor was heavily into cocaine).

I'm a major fan of both gentlemen but have felt for years that those movies in which they were paired as a team are unfortunately well below par for both of them. I confess I avoided the final film, Another You, but the other three are indeed meager fare for very talented screen comedians. 

Silver Streak (1976) is an action comedy into which they were shoehorned (pleasant to watch, but not very funny). Stir Crazy is a disappointment for all involved but was incredibly popular at the time it was released (by the point where a prison rodeo has taken over the picture, you tend to forget why you love Gene and Richard so much). 

See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) was the grimmest of the bunch. Wilder proudly noted that he rewrote the screenplay (which was significant to him because it was how he met his wife Karen), but the film is as sad as hell. The villains are interestingly cast (Kevin Spacey and Joan Severance, straight from their stint together in the TV series Wiseguy), but there's an air of tragedy hanging over the film. At the time it was shot, Gene was dealing with Gilda Radner's terminal cancer and Richard was starting to look ill (he was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis).

So both men look haunted throughout this light comedy and, to make matters worse, it's a farce about a blind man and a deaf man who stumble onto a criminal conspiracy. Like the other Pryor-Wilder films, it made a lot of money but was just another mediocre comedy vehicle picture.

Wilder's life was indeed filled with many triumphs, but as he got older, there was a vibe of tragedy that viewers associated with him. This was due in no small part to his “dream relationship” with Gilda Radner. Everyone was so smitten with both of them that their real-life romantic union seemed like a comedy dream come true — the love story of Leo Bloom and Roseanne Rosannadanna.

The details of their relationship were chronicled in countless interviews, Gilda's memoir It's Always Something, and Gene's autobio Kiss Me Like a Stranger. It did seem like a perfect romantic comedy partnership — although the three movies they made together were as meager as the Pryor-Wilder comedies. Their love story was doomed to a tragic end because of the return of Gilda's cancer (which she celebrated beating in her memoir), which lead to her death in May 1989 (a week after See No Evil... was released).

The amount of affection the public had for both of them, and still has (those of us who remember and love 'em both), ensured that Wilder was to be forever thought of as “the tragic widower of Gilda Radner” long after her death. His involvement in founding the charity Gilda's Club further identified him with her.

Thus, it's fascinating to hear him say in the very informal and informative interview below (which isn't dated by the 92nd St Y on YouTube, but which took place in 2007) that Gilda was definitely “not the love of my life.”

He clearly had loved her, but the chronological truth of the situation is that he began dating his widow Karen less than six months after Gilda's death, and he and she remained married until his death from Alzheimer's last week (their union having lasted 27 years; he and Gilda were a couple for seven years).

The honesty that Wilder exhibited in these interviews is not just endearing, it's rare to find in chats with movie stars, who spend most of their time walking on eggshells when asked about their feelings for a collaborator or a loved one.

Wilder's most notable characteristics as a performer were his lovable-nebbish quality and his tendency toward hysterical explosions. The fact that he was uncommonly blunt in conversation makes him even more lovable in my estimation.

"I want everything I've ever seen in the movies!"

The ‘confessional’ cinema of Curt McDowell

There are only a few functioning repertory theaters in NYC, but each one serves a specific purpose in terms of its programming and the audience it attracts. The forte of the programmers at the Anthology Film Archives is presenting retrospectives of filmmakers who have “fallen through the cracks” of film history and whose work won’t likely be slated for DVD release any time soon.

Some of these retrospectives receive press attention, others do not — for example, the Marcel Hanoun festival is now a distant memory. A recent five-program festival of the work of filmmaker Curt McDowell (18 out of his 27 films) did receive press coverage. It was linked to a gallery exhibit at Participant Inc on Houston Street called “THINGS: a queer legacy of graphic art and play” (which included several paintings by McDowell) and was co-presented by MIX NYC and the Academy Film Archive. 

A blogger at Strublog has already done a great job of placing McDowell’s films in their context in the gay press, but I wanted to directly discuss the films themselves — McDowell’s style, his experiments in genre, the best (and not-so-best) films, and his particular niche in the underground film world. Two of the special subgenres he pioneered are incredibly absorbing and transformative — the first is his “diary” films about his sex life; the other is his brilliantly funny "mini-musicals," which were, for this reviewer, the best part of the AFA retrospective.

"Beaver Fever" (1974)

I’m going to omit from this account any discussion of McDowell’s best-known film and one of the most unique and memorable cult movies in history, Thundercrack! (1975). That picture deserves its own blog entry and has been on the repertory circuit since it was first released (it is now even on DVD in an authorized edition). It is a savagely funny and lewd combination of an “old dark house” spoof, high melodrama, and hardcore pornography. It was scripted by George Kuchar (Curt’s close friend, mentor, and lover) and qualifies as both McDowell’s and Kuchar’s best-ever full-length feature. More to come on that title.

The reason the Anthology series was so invaluable to those of us who love Thundercrack! is that McDowell’s films have been so difficult to see for so long. Curiously, the institution we can thank for nearly all of the restorations in the festival is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the Oscars may consistently reward the work of tediously conventional moviemakers, but the Academy’s restoration efforts are clearly a lot more open-minded.

"Loads" (1980)

The “confessional”/diary films are entirely unique creations that are as personal as cinema can get. The most famous title, “Loads” (1980, shot earlier), finds McDowell narrating, telling us about the men he brought back to the loft space he used as his studio for sex. His objects of obsession were effortlessly macho straight men, who were fine with showing their bodies to Curt’s camera.

The film is definitely art, but it also contains hardcore porn imagery. McDowell gives blow jobs to his subjects and is left at points with jizz in his mustache (this is not a filmmaker who chose to hide behind his camera). In “Loads” and “Ronnie” (1972), a short that seems to be an outtake from the former film, it is spelled out that he paid the men for their time and is quite unabashed about wanting to keep the memories of their encounters fresh by chronicling the sex they had.

"Ronnie" (1972)

“Loads” and “Ronnie” are indeed eye-openers, but the most moving diary piece on an emotional level is “Confessions” (1971), a short in which McDowell confesses his many indiscretions to the camera as if we, the viewers, are his parents. He provides a laundry list of the things he’s done since his childhood which involve sex and drugs. He then shows us his friends, whom he clearly asked to talk about him. The result is a rather touching self-portrait, since the very un-guilty McDowell seems fine with airing his dirty laundry. (This would be the place to note that Curt sadly died at the young age of 42 from AIDS in 1987.)

While some of the lengthier films have shifts in tone that are jarring, McDowell’s shorts (30 minutes and under) are mostly sublime. One particularly odd format he forged with a friend is represented by two shorts ("A Visit to Indiana," 1970; "Truth for Ruth," 1972) that present 8mm footage with an “audio commentary” of a sort. This commentary consists of Curt discussing what is in the footage (his relatives in Indiana, a woman walking on a beach), while Ted Davis, an eager fellow with a deeper voice and a cavalier, all-American, attitude keeps commenting on what Curt has just said. The juxtaposition is smart and very funny, since it was seemingly meant to put the filmmaker on the defensive and make the interrogator the "auteur" of the project.

"Confessions" (1971)

Poster for "Peed Into
the Wind" (1972)

One of the funnier, longer shorts — with a plot that runs aground, but with some individual sequences that are great — is “Peed Into the Wind” (1972). The film features one of McDowell’s best roles in his own films (he was otherwise used very well by George Kuchar), as “Mick Terrific,” a pompadoured rock star who drives women insane but is actually gay — or is he? One of the film’s funniest scenes finds Mick’s friend challenging him, telling him that he’s “a latent heterosexual.” Mick’s verbal response and subsequent “fight” with the other gent are wonderful, and drive home the silliness of people who try to hide their real orientation.

Mick regrets his decision to “play” queer when he finds out that the girl he loved (sorta) has died. She in fact left him one of her legs as a memento (McDowell’s sense of humor is very much in line with the Kuchars and John Waters).

His last few films, all of them longer, are his most ambitious (for one he even got a grant from the NEA). Thundercrack! is by all measures the best and most audience-pleasing (again, if the audience has a very open mind), but the other two films are equally “epic” for an undergrounder. Chronologically, Sparkle’s Tavern comes after Thundercrack! because it was shot in 1976; McDowell ran out of money to complete it, so it remained unedited and unreleased until the mid-Eighties. The rarest of the films in the Anthology festival (since it exists in only one circulating 16mm print), it is also the biggest mixed bag — comedy and drama, good performances and terrible ones, fantasy scenes taking place in dreamlike spaces and location-shot sequences that are time capsules.

Poster for Sparkle's Tavern

It occurs in its own time and place that resembles, by turns, Busby Berkeley’s “Gold Diggers” films (albeit with no budget and soft-porn content), a Fifties teen-angst melodrama, and a proudly polysexual Seventies underground camp comedy. The film’s plot is characteristically crazy: Beth Sue (Melinda McDowell, Curt’s winsomely cute sister) and Buster (Jerry Terranova) are siblings who run a nightclub/brothel. They keep this a secret from their scarily wholesome mom (Marion Eaton) and are both threatened with blackmail by people who know about their wild sex lives. Into this picture steps a magical figure, Mr. Pupik (George Kuchar), who “liberates” the characters by having them participate in a ritual that opens their minds (and their loins) to the joys of sex. 

Sparkle’s Tavern is incredibly ambitious for a micro-budgeted feature. The character of Beth Sue/Sparkle has two suitors (one of whom has his own plot strand, while another is a nerdy Greek chorus who serves very little purpose in the film but takes up a lot of screen time). There is also a “mystery” cowboy figure who delivers a dramatic monologue near the center of the film — it’s a jarring inclusion, since McDowell’s most effective moments of drama in his other films are his own “confessions.”

Also jarring is the fact that the film starts out on a very funny lurid level and then its sexual content tapers off, in favor of metaphorically sexual moments. For example, one of the best “inventions” in the early nightclub/brothel sequences are sleazy little cubicles called “suck stalls” in which the hostesses give blow jobs to men they never see through glory holes — allowing Buster to substitute for one of them on occasion.

Maron Eaton, Sparkle's Tavern

The film’s golden moments all involve two characters — the mother and Mr. Pupik (which is Yiddish for “belly button”). Marion Eaton proved herself a fearless performer in Thundercrack! playing a sexually greedy voyeur who has a way with a cucumber. Here she is nearly as amazing, albeit as a very inhibited housewife whose sexual awakening as a result of Pupik’s odd ritual is one of the film’s highlights.

George Kuchar in Sparkle's Tavern

Eaton certainly is a camp performer to be reckoned with, but George Kuchar also rates as an “MVP” for his stunningly upbeat and unabashedly manic turn as the jaunty Pupik. I’ve rhapsodized about George before on this blog, but was stunned by how incredibly funny he is in McDowell’s films. He is literally buoyant, stealing every scene he’s in. The only person who matches his energy is Eaton, who serves as his foil in Sparkle as he explains his philosophy of life in a series of rhyming dialogues that are often sung (he accompanies himself with a saxophone and a tambourine!).

George played romantic leads in his own films and in those of his brother Mike, but McDowell gave him the “hero” roles he always wanted. He was always a compulsively watchable performer (the reason his meandering “weather diaries” are so entertaining). Camp is balanced with sincerity every time George is onscreen, and he truly was the standout performer in all of the McDowell films shown in the retro (Eaton and the very attractive and intense Ainslie Pryor were close seconds).

Melinda McDowell Milks spoke after the screening of Sparkle, discussing the ways in which the plot points that involved parental acceptance of sexual behavior were indeed a sort of wish fulfillment on Curt’s part — his parents knew he was gay and accepted his lifestyle, but did not want to talk to people in their Indiana hometown about Curt's sexuality.

She also discussed the making of the film, revealing that all the sets — which included the nightclub, some very detailed and realistic bedrooms, and a kitchen — were constructed by Curt and friends in the nine months in which Curt and Melinda lived in the bathroom/kitchen-less space in which the film was shot (the same space in which “Loads” was filmed).

The other longer work, Taboo (the Single and the LP) (1981), is the most feverish of McDowell’s films. He juggles several “strands,” all of them centered around sentences of graffiti on a wall. The film is rife with flashcuts and quick swerves, between characters, situations, and a real-life portrait of one of Curt’s friends (who recounts his sex life with his girlfriend, at the filmmaker’s request).

*****

McDowell had a penchant for being involved in every aspect of his filmmaking, from scripting, camerawork, and editing to set design, costumes, animation, and the musical score. He started out as a painter — his disturbing and haunting portrait of the Beatles is to the right.

It’s no surprise then that the most entertaining films included in the retro were his “mini-musical” shorts. The films are actually operettas, with the characters singing their dialogue or speaking rhyming text. The “handmade” aspect of these films comes across in the fact that Curt’s friends couldn’t really carry a tune (except for Ainslie Pryor, who is seen here singing on TV several years later). The singing was also done live on-set, accompanied by what sounds like a piano being played out of frame.

Ainslie Pryor in "Boggy Depot" (1973)

Short “trailers” in which McDowell’s actresses sang their welcomes to patrons of San Francisco’s Roxy Theater and hyped the weekend midnight shows were placed at the beginning of each Anthology program. “Boggy Depot” (1973) and “The Mean Brothers Get Stood Up” (also ‘73) found Curt and his costar (and frequent collaborator) Mark Ellinger tormenting other characters (the former) or singing about how they’d like to kill people (the latter).

"A Night with Gilda Peck” (also ’73) is a deranged meller in which a criminal (George Kuchar) breaks into the house of a haughty (and extremely tacky) woman (the actress billed as “Mrs. Kathleen Hohalek”) in an attempt to rape and rob her, with musical merriment ensuing when all the characters enter her bedroom and feud among themselves while singing.

The poster for "Weiners and Buns Musical"

“Weiners and Buns Musical” (1972) was the piece de resistance of the musicals in the retrospective (which will, according to the Anthology programmers, conclude later in the year). Absolute camp perfection, the film finds a housewife (a very prim Ainslie Pryor) and her businessman husband (a quite debonair, made-up George Kuchar), singing about the death of their young son and cheating on each other with the same man, a sailor (Curt, in his swabby finest).

Over a dinner of the titular comestibles the three leads decide to continue their affairs as a threesome — while Curt apologizes for having murdered their little boy (who no one cared about, anyway). Sheer bliss, and another reason one hopes that more of McDowell’s work — and some of George Kuchar’s (237 films and videos, and not a one available legally!) — is released on DVD soon. 

Note: Some of the images above are from online postings by Melinda McDowell Milks; their copyright is owned by the Curt McDowell estate.