
Gene Wilder Has Died - cpymchn
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37215553
======
simonsarris
Willy Wonka (screenplay by the genius Roald Dahl) has one of my favorite
scenes in film and I invite you all to watch it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM)

> In 1970, when originally offered the lead role in Willy Wonka & the
> Chocolate Factory by director Mel Stuart, the great Gene Wilder accepted on
> one condition. "When I make my first entrance,” he explained, “I'd like to
> come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a
> limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to
> themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane
> sinks into one of the cobblestones I'm walking on and stands straight up, by
> itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my
> cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a
> beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause." Asked
> why, Wilder said, "Because from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying
> or telling the truth."

Quote from: [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/part-of-this-world-
part...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/part-of-this-world-part-of-
another.html)

~~~
grovulent
I wonder if younger folk today watch that and think how quaint, old and dated
it seems... or if they see it and wonder if their current modern cinema fair
is really missing something these strange films had.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
It's a great sadness to me that many children have grown, and will grow, up
with the perception that the vastly inferior Tim Burton remake is the
definitive version. The film starring Wilder should be included on future
releases of the former as a public service.

~~~
dkonofalski
I never understood this. The Tim Burton version of the film isn't a remake of
this one. It's a direct adaptation of the book and is vastly more faithful to
the source material than the GW version of the movie. Why people continue to
compare them as if they're the same thing is weird to me. I enjoyed both
almost equally but for entirely different reasons. Why others can't is beyond
me...

~~~
simplexion
How is it more faithful to the book?

I also really like both of the films but I don't see how either is more or
less faithful to the book.

~~~
jmcgough
It shares the same name, and some scenes are more faithful - like the squirrel
room, which became a room full of geese in the original film.

~~~
memsom
But in the Burton film, ultimately, it's a story about Wonka reconnecting with
his estranged father, explaining all of his weirdness and childlike behaviour
as being somehow related to this event. Charlie is a second runner in that
respect from the moment Wonka enters the screen.

My other issue is that Depp is insufferable, irritating and took the "child-
like" description to an extreme. I dislike the Burton version more than I
dislike the Hitchhikers film... which is to say, a lot. Both took a well
trodden and loved story and changed it in a way that seems to add nothing to
the narrative. The Hitchhikers film[1] fell back on the "but Douglas Adams
never told the story the same twice in any medium" as an excuse. I don't
believe Burton had that one to fall back on. Especially as Dahl felt Willy
Wonka and the Chocolate Factory didn't capture his vision for the movie[2].

[1]
[http://www.therobotsvoice.com/2011/05/the_15_worst_things_ab...](http://www.therobotsvoice.com/2011/05/the_15_worst_things_about_the_hitchhikers_guide_to.php)
[2] [https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/why-roald-dahl-hated-willy-
wonka...](https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/why-roald-dahl-hated-willy-wonka-and-
the-chocolate-120115179.html)

~~~
WorldMaker
Regarding your footnote [1], it wasn't entirely an excuse. Most of the new
things people hated in the movie were from Douglas Adams himself (he did
almost all of the film's many, many drafts), because he never could tell the
story the same way twice. You can almost tell there was a telephone effect in
Douglas Adams writing, revising, rewriting his own drafts so many times for
the whims of Hollywood executives. The interesting bit of final irony being
that when Douglas Adams passed Hollywood passed it off to British directors
that didn't meddle much further with the final draft beyond what happens
naturally when you cast it and storyboard it.

------
fitzwatermellow
My favorite scene, and it's an absolute masterclass in comedic technique, is
from Woody Allen's _Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex_. The
moment his Greek patient confesses: "Doctor, I'm in love with a sheep!"
Without saying a single word, Wilder's expression goes from jesting to
confusion to amusement to fright to intrigue and back again through the entire
gamut of possible human response. He sputters and strains. It's all right
there on his face! We feel the tortured struggle occurring within his mind,
grasping for any semblance of assessing the situation and formulating the
appropriate thing to say. It's truth is it's genius!

~~~
pshc
Found it! [https://youtu.be/B94lP-fZyLk?t=40s](https://youtu.be/B94lP-
fZyLk?t=40s)

~~~
ourmandave
I sheepishly clicked the Up Next Video link:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbMa7BpPsNc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbMa7BpPsNc)

~~~
lberlin
"Sheepishly"!

------
rdtsc
Young Frankenstein is my all time favorite comedy

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072431/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072431/)

It just has the right mix situational and sarcastic humor. I usually re-watch
it every couple of years. Gene Wilder is just so good in that role.

~~~
kahirsch
Wilder also came up with the idea for the movie and wrote the first draft of
the screenplay:
[http://www.screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/youngfrankenstei...](http://www.screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/youngfrankenstein.pdf)

~~~
epimetheus
I did not know that, it's interesting to know. However, Mel Brooks did direct
it, and I wonder how genius it would have been without his direction.

------
dmd
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRb3u0PtEZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRb3u0PtEZE)
is how I always think of him.

~~~
dcherman
What did you expect? "Welcome, sonny?" "Make yourself at home?" "Marry my
daughter?" You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These
are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.

He'll always be the Waco Kid to me.

------
woodruffw
Very sad. Young Frankenstein was probably my favorite movie as a kid - the
Frau Blucher scene[1] always made me laugh. He'll be remembered (and watched)
for a very long time, which I suppose is the greatest honor an actor can
receive.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdIID_TGwhM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdIID_TGwhM)

~~~
ourmandave
Young Frankenstein is filled with so many wonderful moments. "Igor, help me
with the bags." "SED-A-GIVE?!"

I just wish they hadn't opened with a coffin jump scare. It sets the tone of
the movie as horror and it took 14-year-old me a while to realize it was a
comedy. Fast forward _many_ years and I couldn't get my young daughter to
watch it because that first scene scared her.

~~~
mjklin
"Damn your eyes!" "Too late!" I laugh every time.

And I can never meet a girl named Abby (including my niece) without murmuring
to myself "Abby...Normal..."

~~~
rdtsc
Just the setup and the props are hilarious, like the slot in the door with the
label "Brain Depository / After 5:00pm slip brains through slot in door"

The first few times I had missed that, and then kept finding little things
like that or bits of dialog I missed (English is not my first language it took
a while to catch some phrases in it).

------
greggman
As a Gene Wilder fan I was once digging for things to watch on Amazon and
stumbled on a documentary narrated by Gene Wilder. I wouldn't have even
noticed it but when I saw his name He'd been out of the limelight for so long
I thought "wow, what could have made him agree to do this?" So I watched it.

I can't recommend it enough. It's called "EXPO - Magic of the White City" and
is as about the 1893 Chicago Exposition. It takes about 10 minutes to really
get started and it's got some cheesy stuff but it was fascinating. I've shown
it to several people and they all got sucked in.

Not sure if this is a legit upload but it's on YouTube
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cpOQE5KJJds](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cpOQE5KJJds)
Or Amazon [https://www.amazon.com/Expo-Magic-White-Gene-
Wilder/dp/B004S...](https://www.amazon.com/Expo-Magic-White-Gene-
Wilder/dp/B004S77VGW)

If it weren't for Gene I'd never had known about such an amazing topic. Thanks
Gene!

~~~
citruspi
Last Spring I read Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic,
and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. It's about the same 1893 World's
Fair in Chicago.

It's non-fiction, but written in a novelistic style. I absolutely loved it, I
can't recommend it enough.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_White_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_White_City)

------
bitwize
Is the grisly Reaper mowing...? :(

Alternatively...

Do you know what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever
wanted? He lived happily ever after.

------
1024core
I'll always remember him from Blazing Saddles.

~~~
hakcermani
and See No Evil Hear No Evil with Richard Pryor.

~~~
caseysoftware
I watched that again recently on Netflix. It was fantastic and yet another
movie they could _never_ make today.

~~~
riffraff
I also love the movie, but why do you think they couldn't make it today?

~~~
angersock
Put simply, films like _Blazing Saddles_ made fun of racism without
necessarily making fun of racists. They showed the institution as silly and
absurd without having to look down and mock the people beyond an initial
"Well, yeah, they're bumpkins". A modern film would likely lampoon them
mercilessly and dehumanize them.

Additionally, the comic talent those films drew from comes from a very
different lineage. Folks like Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and Mel Brooks
have a very different frame of reference for how to do comedy, how to pace it,
how to deliver it. I find that modern comedians, having come up with the
increasing HBOfication and Comedy-Central-style shows, tend towards very
similar schticks: generally progressive-leaning (though the non-progressive
stuff is awful redneck pandering as well!) inclusionistic near nihilist little
screeds on stage. These tend not to lend themselves to being cast as anything
other than a reflection of their own brand in a movie.

I won't really make the "Movies are all PC" argument, because that's silly and
overused, but I will say that from a pure marketing standpoint it's difficult
to sell a movie as thoroughly dirty as say _Sleeper_ or cleverly offensive as
_Blazing Saddles_ : audiences are not interested in that sort of comedy
anymore in a world of _Soul Plane_ and _Larry the Cable Guy_ and so forth.

------
milge
"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." One of my
favorite quotes from Willy Wonka.

------
jv22222
Young Frankenstien is one of the funniest movies of all time. Every scene a
classic. If you haven't watched it, I highly recomend it.

RIP Mr Wilder

------
mattezell
"From that fateful day when stinking bits of slime first crawled from the sea
and shouted to the cold stars, "I am man.", our greatest dread has always been
the knowledge of our mortality. But tonight, we shall hurl the gauntlet of
science into the frightful face of death itself. Tonight, we shall ascend into
the heavens. We shall mock the earthquake. We shall command the thunders, and
penetrate into the very womb of impervious nature herself." -Dr. Frederick
Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein.

------
amyjess
_The Producers_ will always be one of my all-time favorite movies. Gene Wilder
was a fantastic actor.

------
Imagenuity
Good night, Herr Doktor.

~~~
jv22222
This comment is perfect in every way. It made me laugh, then it made me cry.
Thank you.

------
rmason
How many people remember that Gene Wilder was in Bonnie and Clyde?

Or maybe I should ask how many people here have even seen that movie with
Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway?

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061418/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061418/)

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I do! I remember it well.

------
gm-conspiracy
Also, a great buddy comedy w/ Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor:

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098282/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098282/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

------
gm-conspiracy
Also a good comedy, Haunted Honeymoon:

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091178/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_11](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091178/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_11)

...with Dom DeLuise in drag.

------
petergatsby
Still my all-time favorite song in a musical: Pure Imagination
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-
uV72pQKI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-uV72pQKI)

------
btgeekboy
He lived a long and accomplished life. I can only hope to be as as successful
as him.

Good day!

------
ArkyBeagle
Wilder combined with Mel Brooks... that's a high-water mark.

It's nearly criminal that he wouldn't make any more movies after Gilda died,
but I admire the gesture.

------
syngrog66
huge fan of him and especially Young Frankenstein. so much so that I created a
character in a comedy story named Heinrich von Hexenhammer as a homage to
Gene's definitive mad scientist:

[https://reddit.com/r/DSPR/comments/1m4zrl/when_heinrich_met_...](https://reddit.com/r/DSPR/comments/1m4zrl/when_heinrich_met_betty_a_scene_from_book_2/)

------
Salijerr
Rest in Piece Gene Wilder This quote and other ones will never forgotten "You
get nothing! You lose! Good day,sir!”

------
mikeryan
dammit 2016.

------
sverige
Love his acting and the great romance he had with Gilda Radner.

------
madengr
Wilder and Pryor were the dynamic duo. Loved those movies.

------
BatFastard
May you rest peacefully in the land of your imagination.

------
davesque
Probably the nicest man who ever lived.

------
dredmorbius
Metacomment: As I've gradually shifted from reading, listening, or watching
news, which I increasingly find almost wholly irrelevant, if not downright
insulting, to expose myself to, I'm relying on curated sources, and HN in
particular, to a larger degree.

So this is the first I'd heard the news, some 13 hours after posting as I
write.

One thought that occurs is that HN has something rather good going on, in its
incentives, audience, financing (HN isn't a revenue center, but does feed
awareness of YC), and resulting informational production. Developing it
further might be of interest, or finding a way to tap into it to produce a
higher-quality "what's happening of significance in the world" product (feeds
and filters off of HN already exist, e.g., the HN subreddit, basRSS).

And a substantial part of that is the culture that's been specifically
cultivated. Researching the issue of trolling online, I happened across a post
from nearly two weeks ago (which I'd missed in first appearance) on _Time_
magazine's "how trolls are ruining the Internet" article. HN admin and mod
dang offered a rebuke to an uncharitably rude comment, in this thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322114)

The context for _that_ was my experiences in the past week in a new community
which turns out to be quite centrally founded on the principle of pervasive
anonymity. An interesting premise, but difficult to get right. My venture
there didn't go well:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imz...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imzy_experience_well_that_escalated_quickly/)

There's also the premise that news itself is often simply unproductive and
unhealthy, and its different formats, particularly television/video, but also
radio and print, have some fairly deep psychological influences, despite the
fact that individual stories often have little personal impact -- we can
neither do much about them, nor they to us. This isn't _always_ the case, but
the factors that _do_ make news matter, relevance, context, background, and an
exposing of the powers and reasons behind events, is rarely part of the modern
product, which emphasises shock, reaction, outrage, and distraction. Not only
mainstream commercial television, but the "better" sources -- BBC, CBC, NPR,
PBS, _The New York Times_ , _Telegraph_ , and _Guardian_.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-
ro...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli)

I receive a local paper. I'll listen briefly to headlines. I occasionally read
news sites directly online. But whether it's me or the media, something seems
changed, and relevance is largely missing.

Just to give an example, the local paper where I'm visiting carried a story
this morning about an "artificial leaf" development by a university research
team. The story ran a half page, from a news service billing itself as
ecological news -- one of the many wire-service pieces that fills what's left
of the business section of the paper on Mondays. Hoping for an explanation of
the design, mechansim, or product, in that half page, there was one sentence
revealing _any_ of this, and I quote:

 _Here’s how it works: The energy of the sun rearranges the chemical bonds of
the carbon dioxide._

Read it for yourself: [http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-uic-
artif...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-uic-artificial-
leaf-bsi-20160822-story.html)

Literally the entire remainder of the article was noninformational filler. A
paragraph or two of which on why synfuels-based energy storage is useful, I
can understand. But ... this isn't even _pretending_ to inform.

(There's a _Science_ article which reveals slightly more:
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/467](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/467))

The remainder of the paper is similarly loaded with anti-information. A brief
news roundup buried in the back of the first section contains what little
actual news is present, again largely wire articles. There's perhaps a well-
written article every week or two. Op-eds are occasionally, though rarely,
considered. A friend characterises the columnists as largely writing about
themselves or to each other. And yes, this is the same Tronc product John
Oliver lampooned, with absolute justification, consummate skill, and
delightful effect, on HBO a few weeks back.

Oliver's right: the media business environment stinks. But Tronc have stopped
even trying.

So: HN, an intelligent audience, a diversity of views, a fostering of
civility, even in disagreement, principled readership, and quite frankly a
really boring design asthetic, are all soft-power influences shaping a quite
useful information stream.

Thoughts kicked up by seeing this headline in the story list.

And yes, beyond that, I'll miss Wilder, a gentle but brave comic genius of our
age.

~~~
dang
Thanks for the thoughtful reflections. I'm glad I saw this.

~~~
dredmorbius
You're welcome.

I'll add, you've spanked me at least once for an off-flavour comment (on the
Slashdot aquisition story). Interesting thing there was that your guidance
prompted me to go beyond my first impressions (I was, and remain suspicious of
the company which bought Slashdot), and turned up a fairly messy past. Might
still not excuse the tone, but that ended up strengthening the basis for the
sentiment considerably.

------
AncoraImparo
How is this relatable to Technology?

~~~
knicholes
Humans involved with technology also sometimes have favorite actors.

------
mdevere
i enjoyed his portrayal of steve jobs

~~~
anonbanker
Very dry humor. Upvoted amidst a storm of downvotes.

