A Quote by Terry Gross

Gene Wilder made his movie debut in "Bonnie And Clyde," starred in the Mel Brooks films "The Producers," "Young Frankenstein" and "Blazing Saddles," played opposite Richard Pryor in "Silver Streak" and "Stir Crazy" and portrayed the candy-maker in "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory."
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..."
I was immediately into all the great movie comedians - Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder. Everything those guys had anything to do with, from I don't know how young. Super young.
My parents screened 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory' for my 6th birthday, and I became fascinated by the idea of living in a candy land with chocolate rivers and lollipop trees.
The first movie that I ever said was my favorite movie - and I've said for the longest - is 'The Producers,' Mel Brooks' original 'Producers.' The two lead performances from Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder are both unstoppable performances and then supported by amazing supporting characters throughout.
My parents took me to that I think is just one of those near-perfect comedies is Young Frankenstein. Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, they're at the height of their game. The two of them working together was amazing. Yeah, just a terrific story. You get emotionally involved. Jokes all the time, jokes that come from story. Like, they don't have to go wildly out of their way to make the jokes. It's a parody of Frankenstein movies, but also it stands as one of the great ones, one of the great Frankenstein movies.
Willy Wonka had his chocolate factory; I have my Fear & Fancy Parlor.
For Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he came to me and said, "I want to do everything that's in the book, and as much more as you need, so that it all makes sense." I was like, "Okay!" And then, I would pitch back to him my love for Charlie Bucket's family and how lucky Charlie was, and that I felt so bad for Willy Wonka, shut up in his factory, all alone with these crazy Oompa Loompas.
I like Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory because some children deserve to be taken to a chocolate factory and tortured. I like Dawn of the dead because you don't normally get to kill all of the zombies hanging out at the mall.
I'm a big kid, I'm a kid at heart, so I still love the classic family films, such as the great Warner Bros film 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' - not the remake, but the original. It's still one of the best movies, hands down, ever made, and of course that goes back to the ingenuity of the characters and the storyline.
I look back at my childhood, and the films that I remember the most are things like 'Mary Poppins,' 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,' 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,' 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'
I always refer to 'Blazing Saddles' or 'Young Frankenstein' as very much the kind of humor that I like to do.
When I was 8, I thought I was Harrison Ford, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Elvis, and Chuck Norris all at once.
I'm not a chocolate man. I'm Skittles, anything made by Wonka. You know, I like candy, not chocolate.
I thought Willy Wonka was brilliant. He had all kinds of candy. Who doesn't like chocolate and candies? Everybody wanted a Gobstopper. I just think he's brilliant.
On screen, Gene Wilder could often be summed up as an accident waiting to happen, that frizzy, flyaway hair, the eyes darting this way and that and then something would set him off, Zero Mostel, say, in the movie that made Wilder a star, "The Producers."
Bonnie and Clyde, while one of the best movies ever made, was far more interested in portraying Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker as romantic anti-establishment Robin Hoods than what they really were: white-trash spree killers.
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