While visiting Jimmy Fallon last night, Brooks told the stories of his old friend, lamenting that he could no longer pick up the phone and call Gene.
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Monday brought the bad news that Gene Wilder had passed away, and since then, tributes to the legendary comedic actor have been pouring in on social media and television. And when Brooks was in desperate need of an actor to replace real-life alcoholic Gig Young as fictional drunk The Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles, Wilder came to his rescue. He was not in good health at the end and it was not unexpected by any means, but when it happens it hits you like, ‘Gene is gone and there will never be anyone like him again’.
Gene Wilder made more than enough iconic films to cement his legacy. “I hugged him. It was a wonderful moment”.
A central part of those performances, as wonderfully idiosyncratic as they are, is definitely in his timing.
Regarded by many as Wilder and Mel Brook’s finest comedy collaboration, it is an absolute classic.
Mel Brooks is still in “shock” after Gene Wilder’s death.
It was during the filming of Blazing Saddles that Wilder proposed the concept for Young Frankenstein to Brooks. “I met him when my late wife Anne Bancroft was doing ‘Mother Courage, ‘ a Bertolt Brecht play, and Gene was in it”, he said.
In an obituary August 29 about Gene Wilder, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Wilder lent his voice to a film called “The Yo Gabba Gabba!” ‘They’re always laughing, ‘ he said. “We’re gonna make the movie, you are Leo Bloom'”. ‘He blessed every film we did with his magic & he blessed me with his friendship’.
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Playwright David Henry Hwang, who worked with Wilder briefly in the Early Stages of his play M. Butterfly, just wrote a tribute to the stage and screen legend.
