One of many current obsessions...
Apr. 18th, 2004 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaalaGene Wilder. It's an ongoing interest, but at a particularly high level right now that I've discovered The Producers. A nifty bit of trivia from the IMDb: Willy Wonka's somersault performed at the factory gates was Gene Wilder's idea[1]. Isn't that neat? This was the role with which I identified Mr. Wilder for a very long time (before I saw Young Frankenstein) and that has to be my favourite moment in the movie.
I loved Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as a kid; we must have worn out the library's tape from borrowing it so much. It creeped out my sister completely and she eventually refused to watch it. It creeped me out as well but in my case that was probably why it held such fascination. (However, the background images in the tunnel turned my stomach.) Thanks to exposure to many of his books (including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and discussions with my mum, I was already well aware of Roald Dahl's misogynism, so though I didn't like that fact, I suppose I was able to dismiss the movie's treatment of Violet, Veruca and Mrs. Teevee because I knew I couldn't expect Roald Dahl to be generous towards female characers.
[1] [Edited April 19] A new movie based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is in the works, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp. I hope it's good, and it might well be considering that those two are involved. While I respect Burton's wish to do his own distinctive version, I think he is too dismissive of the original movie. I agree it has its faults--it misses out on significant elements of the book and it is sappy in the wrong places--but it certainly has no lack of the "darkness", "foreboding" and "sinister things" he appears to find only in the book. And Gene Wilder was responsible for injecting a lot of that darkness (or is it creepiness?) into the movie.
NB: A lot of babbling about Mel Brooks follows below. I find the processes by which movies are made endlessly captivating. You may not.
Much as I love Mel Brooks (or at least his earlier movies), I'm discovering that one has to take much of what he says with a grain of salt. I don't think he means to lie, but he certainly exaggerates. In his (really great, by the way) audio commentary for Young Frankenstein, Mel makes it sound as if Gene Wilder's original screenplay provided only the barest skeleton of the final product. Yet if one reads Wilder's first draft (written without Brooks's influence) one discovers that it contains all the characters, most of the scenes, and many of the treasured jokes of the final movie. Sure, it's badly in need of a good editor and contains a lot of gags that don't work, but then again I've read that the movie itself suffered from the similar problems before an extended session in the cutting room. I'm not denying Mel Brooks credit here--I'm sure he improved it a great deal--but I think he overstated his case a tad.
Another interesting aspect of the Wilder-Brooks writing partnership: I've read some conjecture that Gene is responsible for the subtler elements of the movie while Mel is responsible for the cruder ones. Perhaps in some cases, but not always. The first draft contains quite a bit of sex, obscenity, and "eww!" jokes that didn't make it into the movie. And some of the jokes that did remain were later toned down or made less obvious. On the other hand, Mel can't foist every shameless joke on Gene's influence: "What knockers!" is not in the first draft, although it is true he might have added it later.
Now, for The Producers. Brooks claims (on the Producers DVD) that Gene Wilder broke down in grateful tears upon hearing that he was to play Bloom, saying, "Oh, I don't believe it, something good can actually happen in my life!" Mel also claims that Gene didn't understand why he was provoking laughter in Mother Courage, saying things like, "Why are they laughing at me? I'm not funny." to which Mel sagely responded, "God says you're funny." Yet even before Mother Courage, Gene had already won a Clarence Derwent Award for his Broadway debut in The Complaisant Lover--in a comic role!
Despite what appears to have been antagonism between them, it's a great pity Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder stopped working together.
On a non-Wilder-related note: it's interesting to see what was changed between this draft of The Producers and the finished movie. Though the Lincoln Center scene is no slouch, it's a pity the crew wasn't able to film the Coney Island scenes; they would have been cute. There's some pretty risque Little-Old-Lady-Land stuff in there, for instance, "SHOT WIDENS TO REVEAL 'HOLD ME, TOUCH ME' WIELDING THE WHIP. SHE IS DRESSED IN AN 'ARABIAN NIGHTS' COSTUME." I wonder if Zero Mostel refused to dress up as Atlas (wearing nothing but a loin cloth)...
I loved Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as a kid; we must have worn out the library's tape from borrowing it so much. It creeped out my sister completely and she eventually refused to watch it. It creeped me out as well but in my case that was probably why it held such fascination. (However, the background images in the tunnel turned my stomach.) Thanks to exposure to many of his books (including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and discussions with my mum, I was already well aware of Roald Dahl's misogynism, so though I didn't like that fact, I suppose I was able to dismiss the movie's treatment of Violet, Veruca and Mrs. Teevee because I knew I couldn't expect Roald Dahl to be generous towards female characers.
[1] [Edited April 19] A new movie based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is in the works, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp. I hope it's good, and it might well be considering that those two are involved. While I respect Burton's wish to do his own distinctive version, I think he is too dismissive of the original movie. I agree it has its faults--it misses out on significant elements of the book and it is sappy in the wrong places--but it certainly has no lack of the "darkness", "foreboding" and "sinister things" he appears to find only in the book. And Gene Wilder was responsible for injecting a lot of that darkness (or is it creepiness?) into the movie.
NB: A lot of babbling about Mel Brooks follows below. I find the processes by which movies are made endlessly captivating. You may not.
Much as I love Mel Brooks (or at least his earlier movies), I'm discovering that one has to take much of what he says with a grain of salt. I don't think he means to lie, but he certainly exaggerates. In his (really great, by the way) audio commentary for Young Frankenstein, Mel makes it sound as if Gene Wilder's original screenplay provided only the barest skeleton of the final product. Yet if one reads Wilder's first draft (written without Brooks's influence) one discovers that it contains all the characters, most of the scenes, and many of the treasured jokes of the final movie. Sure, it's badly in need of a good editor and contains a lot of gags that don't work, but then again I've read that the movie itself suffered from the similar problems before an extended session in the cutting room. I'm not denying Mel Brooks credit here--I'm sure he improved it a great deal--but I think he overstated his case a tad.
Another interesting aspect of the Wilder-Brooks writing partnership: I've read some conjecture that Gene is responsible for the subtler elements of the movie while Mel is responsible for the cruder ones. Perhaps in some cases, but not always. The first draft contains quite a bit of sex, obscenity, and "eww!" jokes that didn't make it into the movie. And some of the jokes that did remain were later toned down or made less obvious. On the other hand, Mel can't foist every shameless joke on Gene's influence: "What knockers!" is not in the first draft, although it is true he might have added it later.
Now, for The Producers. Brooks claims (on the Producers DVD) that Gene Wilder broke down in grateful tears upon hearing that he was to play Bloom, saying, "Oh, I don't believe it, something good can actually happen in my life!" Mel also claims that Gene didn't understand why he was provoking laughter in Mother Courage, saying things like, "Why are they laughing at me? I'm not funny." to which Mel sagely responded, "God says you're funny." Yet even before Mother Courage, Gene had already won a Clarence Derwent Award for his Broadway debut in The Complaisant Lover--in a comic role!
Despite what appears to have been antagonism between them, it's a great pity Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder stopped working together.
On a non-Wilder-related note: it's interesting to see what was changed between this draft of The Producers and the finished movie. Though the Lincoln Center scene is no slouch, it's a pity the crew wasn't able to film the Coney Island scenes; they would have been cute. There's some pretty risque Little-Old-Lady-Land stuff in there, for instance, "SHOT WIDENS TO REVEAL 'HOLD ME, TOUCH ME' WIELDING THE WHIP. SHE IS DRESSED IN AN 'ARABIAN NIGHTS' COSTUME." I wonder if Zero Mostel refused to dress up as Atlas (wearing nothing but a loin cloth)...
At last! :-)
Date: 2004-04-19 02:02 pm (UTC)Though I criticize him, I really do enjoy much of Mel's work. I quite honestly think that The Producers and Young Frankenstein will turn out to be among my favourite movies of all time (comedy or otherwise). I loved seeing The Producers live too. I grew to be rather fond of The Twelve Chairs back when it was available at the library. And of course, as my first Mel Brooks movie, Robin Hood: Men in Tight will always hold a special place in my heart cheesy though it may be. As for that great classic, Blazing Saddles... my dad ruined it for me by telling me all the jokes before I was old enough to see the movie. *sigh*
Feel free to disagree with my commentary, of course.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 02:09 pm (UTC)