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58 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buy the Audio CD Version, June 11, 2005
About a month ago, I heard Gene Wilder being interviewed about this book on NPR from a theater in Berkeley, and was fascinated. He had a pleasant way of speaking, said intelligent things, and much to my delight, every time the audience would titter politely in the wrong places to show how hip they were, would ask in a perplexed voice, "What's funny about that?" (Are you listening Garrison Keillor?)
I remembered Wilder from "Young Frankenstein," but other than that, knew little about him, including his marriage to Gilda Radner. This was an advantage, since I approached the book without preconceived expectations.
Having enjoyed the interview, I bought the audio CD version, and listened to it in the evening over several weeks while nursing a bad back. Audio books read by the author are usually a good buy, because the author adds meaning through pronunciation, timing, and inflection. Moreover, Wilder as an actor knows how to deliver his lines.
He has spent his life as an intelligent misfit, and most of the book is taken up with his efforts to adjust to an outside world that proved both friendly and hostile. Thus his use of the psychiatrist Margie as a foil. One reader review suggests that Margie is merely a "hackneyed and lame device." I disagree; it's clear to me that Wilder has undergone psychoanalysis throughout his adult life, and because he prefers women to men, I suspect that the model for Margie actually exists.
The best parts of the book are his descriptions of various movies he worked in and people he has known. He makes a good case for at least some of the people in that world being decent, while excoriating others. I found his descriptions of dealing with racial issues to be particularly thoughtful and moving.
As for other readers' criticisms:
1. The book is not sufficiently serious: Wilder's previous literary experience was writing screenplays, which tend to focus on visual and auditory images, and be lean on intellectual content. So it is with this book, which is why I recommend buying the audio CD version. Anyone who has read novels by Terry Southern (also a screen writer) will recognize this phenomenon.
2. He does not sugarcoat his relationship with Gilda Radner: Sorry folks, but successful actors make their livings pretending to be someone other than the person they really are, and so it appears to have been with Gilda.
Henry James once observed that the only test for a novel is whether the author achieves what he set out to do. Applying that test to this book, I think Wilder meets it. Perhaps most importantly, he at least tried to be honest, and to a large extent, succeeds.
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47 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A WARM, CANDID, VERY PERSONAL REMINISCENCE, March 11, 2005
"Be a clown! Be a clown" Comedian Gene Wilder did just that in such hit movies as "The Producers," "Young Frankenstein," "Blazing Saddles," and "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." We learn from his touchingly candid autobiography, "Kiss Me Like A Stranger," that there was not always a great deal of laughter in his private life.
As read by the author in the unmistakable Wilder voice, listeners learn of his third marriage to the sometimes volatile, always needy Gilda Radner, his time in psychoanalysis, the joys and pitfalls of working with the incomparable Mel Brooks, and more. His has been an extraordinary life, and he emerges as an extremely likable extraordinary man.
The title is a puzzlement not only to listeners but to Mr. Wilder himself as it came from Gilda Radner - he says he has no idea what it means. However, he does know what life experiences mean.
Leaving Wisconsin Mr. Wilder enrolled at the Actor's Studio where he met and appeared in a play with Anne Bancroft. But, it was her boyfriend, Mel Brooks, who was to have a marked effect upon his career by giving him that landmark role in "The Producers." Together they wrote "Young Frankenstein" - hollering at each other all the way.
In addition to the estimable Mr. Brooks listeners hear about movies made with the likes of Richard Pryor, Woody Allen, and Harrison Ford. And, of course, there is the illness and death of Gilda Radner due to ovarian cancer.
Through it all Mr. Wilder learned, lived, wept, and laughed. Treat yourself and listen to the story of this sweet, wise comic genius.
- Gail Cooke
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Autobiography...but only just., March 12, 2005
If someone asked me to sum - up this book in one word, I'd say 'succinct'.
If a friend had given it to me as their autobiography and asked me for an opinion I'd tell them that it needed 'fleshing out'.
That's not to say it's a bad book - it really, really isn't! It's warm, funny, sad and an enjoyable read...but there are gaps: if you weren't a Gene Wilder fan, you'd have thought he'd made no films after 'Hear No Evil' as it's the last movie he mentions. Okay, as GW says, this isn't so much a biog as events in his life which have made an impact on his life (Serendipity?), but a better sense of 'history' would have been appreciated.
Now maybe I'm being a bit picky as I've been a fan of GW's since Young Frankenstein and would have preferred reading a 'proper' sutobiography with all his movies and recent TV work chronicled. I also have no sense of his family during this time: yes, we know how his marriage is failing, his adopted daughter angry...but they almost appear to be 'bit players' in the overall scheme of things. What did they think of his fame? How did they cope with that? What were THEY doing whilst GW made movies, etc.?
This work really ends with him getting over cancer and enjoying life with his current wife, Karen (nice Review Karen, BTW) and that's nice and warm and fuzzy...but it almost comes across as if his life has stopped somehow. And that's not true; even if you didn't know he'd recently worked in Theatre, you'd have seen Gene in Will & Grace, or his TV Movies, all of which garnered praise.
The writing style is easy to read and bounces along nicely, but there seems to me an underlying anger which was never really expressed in the words on the page, and oddly enough that sums up a lot of GW's life.
I only wish he'd told us more...
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