That’s when Mel offered the part of Leo Bloom to Gene Wilder for a movie he was working on which of course turned out to be “The Producers”.
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Mel Brooks paid tribute to his old friend and longtime collaborator Gene Wilder on Tuesday’s Tonight Show.
“There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination RIP”, Zumbo captioned the snap.
There was plenty for Brooks to talk about regarding Wilder, including the story of how he came up with the idea for Young Frankenstein. “I met him when my late wife Anne Bancroft was doing ‘Mother Courage, ‘ a Bertolt Brecht play, and Gene was in it”, Brooks began.
Also: Brooks discusses pissing out of his childhood apartment window in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and letting his brother take the fall for it. The actor starred in several acclaimed movies, including “Young Frankenstein” and “Blazing Saddles”, but his most beloved role was certainly the whimsical lead character of 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”.
In the aftermath of Wilder’s death, Brooks wrote on Twitter, “One of the truly great talents of our time”.
“He blessed every film we did with his magic and he blessed me with his friendship”, he said.
Wilder had scoffed at the notion that the 1967 film “The Producers” would ever get made. “The director asked, ‘What do you want to do that for?’ I said from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth”. Brooks said that he replied, “Look in the mirror. It was a wonderful moment”, the Oscar victor recalled. What if the grandson of Victor Frankenstein was a serious, brilliant surgeon and wanted nothing to do with the people that were responsible for making the monster and animating, reanimating dead tissue? “And he’s fighting it, but it’s in his blood”.
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It came just a day after Gene Wilder’s death on Monday at the age of 83.
