10 ms·

Gene Wilder Has Died

379 points by cpymchn 10y ago

dmd 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRb3u0PtEZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRb3u0PtEZE is how I always think of him.
- dcherman 10y ago
  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.
1024core 10y ago
I'll always remember him from Blazing Saddles.
- hakcermani 10y ago
  and See No Evil Hear No Evil with Richard Pryor.
  - caseysoftware 10y ago
    I watched that again recently on Netflix. It was fantastic and yet another movie they could never make today.
    - riffraff 10y ago
      I also love the movie, but why do you think they couldn't make it today?
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - oldmanjay 10y ago
        For one, both stars are dead.
      - angersock 10y ago
        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.
  - anonbanker 10y ago
    Yes. There. Was. A. Wo. Man. Pre. Sent.
simonsarris 10y ago
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-of-another.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/part-of-this-world-part...
- donohoe 10y ago
  "Wonka's Grand Entrance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM
  - kornish 10y ago
    This is the exact link which was posted in the post you commented on. (great scene, though!)
    - btreesOfSpring 10y ago
      The Wonka Redundancy Department of Redundancy approves this approval.
    - smcl 10y ago
      Perhaps it wasn't present in the original comment when that reply was posted
    - 10y ago
bitwize 10y ago
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.
Imagenuity 10y ago
Good night, Herr Doktor.
- jv22222 10y ago
  This comment is perfect in every way. It made me laugh, then it made me cry. Thank you.
mikeryan 10y ago
dammit 2016.
milge 10y ago
"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." One of my favorite quotes from Willy Wonka.
woodruffw 10y ago
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
- DiabloD3 10y ago
  "That's Frahnken-steen!"
  - hinkley 10y ago
    Really? So you call yourself Frowdrick Frankensteen? No, it's Fredrick Frankensteen. And you must be Igor? No, it's Eyegore.
- hockeybias 10y ago
  Everyone was SO excellent in that film!
- ourmandave 10y ago
  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.
  - tbrake 10y ago
    > "SED-A-GIVE?!" I genuinely think those are the three funniest syllables I've ever heard. The breathless incredulity at Igor's suggestion has always made me smile.
  - mjklin 10y ago
    "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..."
btgeekboy 10y ago
He lived a long and accomplished life. I can only hope to be as as successful as him. Good day!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rdtsc 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Wilder also came up with the idea for the movie and wrote the first draft of the screenplay: http://www.screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/youngfrankenstein.pdf http://www.screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/youngfrankenstei...
  - epimetheus 10y ago
    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.
mdevere 10y ago
i enjoyed his portrayal of steve jobs
- anonbanker 10y ago
  Very dry humor. Upvoted amidst a storm of downvotes.
jv22222 10y ago
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
amyjess 10y ago
The Producers will always be one of my all-time favorite movies. Gene Wilder was a fantastic actor.
fitzwatermellow 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Found it! https://youtu.be/B94lP-fZyLk?t=40s https://youtu.be/B94lP-fZyLk?t=40s
  - ourmandave 10y ago
    I sheepishly clicked the Up Next Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbMa7BpPsNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbMa7BpPsNc
    - lberlin 10y ago
      "Sheepishly"!
- squidfood 10y ago
  On a similar vein, one of my favorite Wilder reactions, from Young Frankenstein: "that goes without saying." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuHw5ivCs1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuHw5ivCs1A
- gohrt 10y ago
  Greek? He says he is Armenian.
  - rantanplan 10y ago
    For some reason they created a character who's Armenian with a Greek name(Stavros). Some kind of bad research I guess.
mattezell 10y ago
"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.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rmason 10y ago
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 10y ago
  I do! I remember it well.
AncoraImparo 10y ago
How is this relatable to Technology?
- jat850 10y ago
  Certain people on HN might find themselves interested in various aspects of technology, business, or other things that frequent here - but we're all human, and I think Gene Wilder, in life and in death, is someone to note and celebrate, as a human.
- knicholes 10y ago
  Humans involved with technology also sometimes have favorite actors.
  - AncoraImparo 10y ago
    And for such topics, there are other sites. This place is a circle jerk these days.
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      From the Guidelines[0]: Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link. If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. (Not all users see flag links; there's a small karma threshold.) In short: Just flag it if you think it's OT. For the rest of us, this is a community. We have conversations with other human beings. And, sometimes, human topics, like this one, are of interest to us. A place to share in our collective grief or joy or amazement or amusement. These posts are relatively rare, and they don't gum up the works. And, there's this nice new feature that dang et al introduced a bit ago, you can hide articles. Do like I do when yet another article I don't care about (I'm not in a startup, I'm not starting a startup, I'm here for mostly the tech stuff, the business and VC and other stuffs have very little to interest me), hide it and see the article you do care about. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
gm-conspiracy 10y ago
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.
syngrog66 10y ago
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_betty_a_scene_from_book_2/ https://reddit.com/r/DSPR/comments/1m4zrl/when_heinrich_met_...
gm-conspiracy 10y ago
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
sverige 10y ago
Love his acting and the great romance he had with Gilda Radner.
madengr 10y ago
Wilder and Pryor were the dynamic duo. Loved those movies.
petergatsby 10y ago
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
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
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.
BatFastard 10y ago
May you rest peacefully in the land of your imagination.
greggman 10y ago
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/B004S77VGW https://www.amazon.com/Expo-Magic-White-Gene-Wilder/dp/B004S... If it weren't for Gene I'd never had known about such an amazing topic. Thanks Gene!
- citruspi 10y ago
  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
davesque 10y ago
Probably the nicest man who ever lived.
dredmorbius 10y ago
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_imzy_experience_well_that_escalated_quickly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imz... 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-rolf-dobelli https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro... 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 anyof 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-artificial-leaf-bsi-20160822-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-uic-artif... 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.
Salijerr 10y ago
Rest in Piece Gene Wilder This quote and other ones will never forgotten "You get nothing! You lose! Good day,sir!”

379 points by cpymchn 10y ago

dmd 10y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRb3u0PtEZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRb3u0PtEZE is how I always think of him.

dcherman 10y ago
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.

1024core 10y ago

I'll always remember him from Blazing Saddles.

hakcermani 10y ago
and See No Evil Hear No Evil with Richard Pryor.
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  I watched that again recently on Netflix. It was fantastic and yet another movie they could never make today.
  - riffraff 10y ago
    I also love the movie, but why do you think they couldn't make it today?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      For one, both stars are dead.
    - angersock 10y ago
      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.
- anonbanker 10y ago
  Yes. There. Was. A. Wo. Man. Pre. Sent.

simonsarris 10y ago

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-of-another.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/part-of-this-world-part...

donohoe 10y ago
"Wonka's Grand Entrance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM
- kornish 10y ago
  This is the exact link which was posted in the post you commented on. (great scene, though!)
  - btreesOfSpring 10y ago
    The Wonka Redundancy Department of Redundancy approves this approval.
  - smcl 10y ago
    Perhaps it wasn't present in the original comment when that reply was posted
  - 10y ago

bitwize 10y ago

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.

Imagenuity 10y ago

Good night, Herr Doktor.

jv22222 10y ago
This comment is perfect in every way. It made me laugh, then it made me cry. Thank you.

mikeryan 10y ago

dammit 2016.

milge 10y ago

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

woodruffw 10y ago

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

DiabloD3 10y ago
"That's Frahnken-steen!"
- hinkley 10y ago
  Really? So you call yourself Frowdrick Frankensteen? No, it's Fredrick Frankensteen. And you must be Igor? No, it's Eyegore.
hockeybias 10y ago
Everyone was SO excellent in that film!
ourmandave 10y ago
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.
- tbrake 10y ago
  > "SED-A-GIVE?!" I genuinely think those are the three funniest syllables I've ever heard. The breathless incredulity at Igor's suggestion has always made me smile.
- mjklin 10y ago
  "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..."

btgeekboy 10y ago

He lived a long and accomplished life. I can only hope to be as as successful as him. Good day!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

rdtsc 10y ago

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 10y ago
Wilder also came up with the idea for the movie and wrote the first draft of the screenplay: http://www.screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/youngfrankenstein.pdf http://www.screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/youngfrankenstei...
- epimetheus 10y ago
  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.

mdevere 10y ago

i enjoyed his portrayal of steve jobs

anonbanker 10y ago
Very dry humor. Upvoted amidst a storm of downvotes.

jv22222 10y ago

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

amyjess 10y ago

The Producers will always be one of my all-time favorite movies. Gene Wilder was a fantastic actor.

fitzwatermellow 10y ago

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 10y ago
Found it! https://youtu.be/B94lP-fZyLk?t=40s https://youtu.be/B94lP-fZyLk?t=40s
- ourmandave 10y ago
  I sheepishly clicked the Up Next Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbMa7BpPsNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbMa7BpPsNc
  - lberlin 10y ago
    "Sheepishly"!
squidfood 10y ago
On a similar vein, one of my favorite Wilder reactions, from Young Frankenstein: "that goes without saying." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuHw5ivCs1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuHw5ivCs1A
gohrt 10y ago
Greek? He says he is Armenian.
- rantanplan 10y ago
  For some reason they created a character who's Armenian with a Greek name(Stavros). Some kind of bad research I guess.

mattezell 10y ago

"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.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

rmason 10y ago

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 10y ago
I do! I remember it well.

AncoraImparo 10y ago

How is this relatable to Technology?

jat850 10y ago
Certain people on HN might find themselves interested in various aspects of technology, business, or other things that frequent here - but we're all human, and I think Gene Wilder, in life and in death, is someone to note and celebrate, as a human.
knicholes 10y ago
Humans involved with technology also sometimes have favorite actors.
- AncoraImparo 10y ago
  And for such topics, there are other sites. This place is a circle jerk these days.
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    From the Guidelines[0]: Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link. If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. (Not all users see flag links; there's a small karma threshold.) In short: Just flag it if you think it's OT. For the rest of us, this is a community. We have conversations with other human beings. And, sometimes, human topics, like this one, are of interest to us. A place to share in our collective grief or joy or amazement or amusement. These posts are relatively rare, and they don't gum up the works. And, there's this nice new feature that dang et al introduced a bit ago, you can hide articles. Do like I do when yet another article I don't care about (I'm not in a startup, I'm not starting a startup, I'm here for mostly the tech stuff, the business and VC and other stuffs have very little to interest me), hide it and see the article you do care about. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

gm-conspiracy 10y ago

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.

syngrog66 10y ago

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_betty_a_scene_from_book_2/ https://reddit.com/r/DSPR/comments/1m4zrl/when_heinrich_met_...

gm-conspiracy 10y ago

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

sverige 10y ago

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

madengr 10y ago

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

petergatsby 10y ago

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

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

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.

BatFastard 10y ago

May you rest peacefully in the land of your imagination.

greggman 10y ago

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/B004S77VGW https://www.amazon.com/Expo-Magic-White-Gene-Wilder/dp/B004S... If it weren't for Gene I'd never had known about such an amazing topic. Thanks Gene!

citruspi 10y ago
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

davesque 10y ago

Probably the nicest man who ever lived.

dredmorbius 10y ago

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_imzy_experience_well_that_escalated_quickly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imz... 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-rolf-dobelli https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro... 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 anyof 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-artificial-leaf-bsi-20160822-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-uic-artif... 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.

Salijerr 10y ago

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