A Quote by Terry Gross
When we spoke, Gene Wilder had just written a memoir called "Kiss Me Like A Stranger." The title was suggested by his late wife Gilda Radner three weeks before she died in 1989.
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My father died in 1989 before I knew what I was going to do with my life. I had just graduated from college. My mother died just before 'Sideways' came out. She knew I was an actor, but she never saw me become successful.
[Gilda Radner] died in '89, and I got non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2000. I've just passed the five-year mark and I'm now what you call - well, it's called complete remission, but I'm cured. I'm fine.
For me, the first thing I fell madly in love with when I was little, was, Gilda Radner had this live performance that she had done at the Met that was on tape, and I could rent it from Video Video in New Jersey where I lived, and so I literally would rent it every two weeks.
I met [Gilda Radner] on the first night of filming ... Hanky Panky that Sidney Poitier was directing. And it's funny, I was in costume and makeup - my tuxedo and makeup because I'd done a few shots before she arrived, and she told me later that she cried all the way in, in the car, because she knew that she was going to fall in love with me and want to get married.
I loved the late Gilda Radner. I love Carol Burnett and Lily Tomlin.
In my mid-twenties, I said to myself: 'I can't perform anymore!' I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't perform for a while, then ended up doing a one-woman show about Gilda Radner having cancer. It was called 'Gilda Defying Gravity,' and I did it on the Lower East Side. It was great; people really came out and supported me.
[Gilda Radner] was in the in vitro fertilization program, and it nearly, nearly drove us apart, too. She wanted that baby, so badly, and it didn't work. Oddly enough, when we were doing "Haunted Honeymoon" in London, she did become pregnant for about 10 days, but then she lost it. But, anyway, my odyssey with Gilda was wonderful, funny, torturous, painful and sad. It was - it went the full gamut.
I remember watching Gilda Radner when I was a kid and everyone thought she was so funny and no one ever said that she was a funny woman, she was just funny.
The wonderful thing about Gilda Radner was that she was not a person who disappointed.
In fact, [Gene Wilder] had made a hysteric seem considerably less funny in his film debut as a terrified undertaker in "Bonnie And Clyde." And neurotics soon became his stock-in-trade, whether he was playing the weird title character in "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory..."
There wasn't a funeral per se. I buried [Gilda Radner] 3 miles from her house that she had bought just shortly before we met. It was an old house, old colonial house, 1734. And there were just a few friends at the funeral, a nonsectarian cemetery. And an old friend of hers from junior high school or high school was the rabbi in town, and he performed the service.
It wasn't the sort of kiss I'd had with him before, hungry, wanting, desperate. It wasn't the sort of kiss I'd had with anyone before. This kiss was so soft that it was like a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it was like someone running his fingers along them.
I ended up gettin a little Gibson amp and a bass, because of Gene Simmons of Kiss. Myself and three other kids would pretend to be Kiss - I liked Gene the best.
I ended up gettin' a little Gibson amp and a bass, because of Gene Simmons of Kiss. Myself and three other kids would pretend to be Kiss - I liked Gene the best.
My wife and I had been to the genetic counselor; my wife is not Jewish - she's the shiksha goddess type - and was negative for everything. But I was positive. I carried the gene for three genetic disorders, which, if she had been positive for, we would have passed down to the child.
The first time I went to see a Second City show, I was in awe of everything. I just wanted to touch the same stage that Gilda Radner had walked on. It was sacred ground.
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