The role that made Gene Wilder fall out of love with Hollywood: “I didn’t have the guts”
The business of Hollywood is littered with snakes and people who will stab you in the back for no reason. Decades of competition and ruthless processes have led to an industry over-saturated with people who will do anything possible to rise to the top and earn a quick buck. You start to feel paranoid about who has your best intentions at heart and who wants to exploit you to the fullest, with countless producers and studio executives with genuine blood on their hands after having pushed child stars and performers to their limits for the sake of making profits off their psychologically affecting labour.
There’s a reason why people say it isn’t a profession for the faint-hearted, with many stories pointing towards the simple fact that the industry never really changes and remains as brutal as it ever was. But this is a sentiment that still applies to those even at the top, with Gene Wilder having his own uncomfortable brushings with Hollywood evil, despite being at the height of his career.
Wilder was a member of comedic royalty in Hollywood, playing iconic characters like Willy Wonka and Eugene Grizzard and being known for his eccentric choices. Perhaps in the same way Judd Apatow defined the comedies of the 2000s, the same applied to Wilder through his collaborations with director Mel Brooks and his wife Gilda Radner, creating films like The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.
However, despite being a king of comedy and a pioneer of a larger-than-life performance style, the actor faced his own struggles in finding creative freedom and being used by studios who wanted to capitalise on his image.
Wilder starred in a sitcom called Something Wilder in 1994, with the show revolving around an older husband and his much younger wife as they try to raise unruly twin boys. Despite being the star, playing a character based on himself, and being the sole selling point of the series, he did not have much autonomy in the making of the show.
When discussing this, Wilder explained how his experience led him to lose all faith in Hollywood, saying, “I did one television [series] that I didn’t think was good. They asked me to do Something Wilder, and the agent I had didn’t put down that I would be responsible for what they did. So when they told me, ‘No, you can’t come to listen to what [we’re] talking about with NBC’, I said, ‘What do you mean, I can’t come? You said this is Something Wilder.’ ‘[They said], Yeah, but you can’t come and tell them how you think it should be’. Well, if I’d known that, I would have said, ‘Well, I’ll go home and when you’re ready for me, call me and I’ll come back’. But I didn’t know enough to say it. I didn’t have the guts enough.”
The fact that Wilder was coerced into the production through the idea that he would have creative control, only to be told that this was not the case at all and his voice didn’t matter, is an extremely startling and frustrating experience to go through when your image is attached to the project. The show lasted no longer than one season, and while it was short, it had a long impact on Wilder’s mindset in leading him to lose faith in show business almost entirely.
