Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art by Gene Wilder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

""The two most important things I learned at The Actors Studio were: don't use any technique if the situation and the author's words are working for you, by themselves; and try to stay in the moment, which only means that every time you do the same scene [...] the scene will be different each time you do it, and it will be alive. "

I remember Gene Wilder mainly from the title role in the supremely funny Mel Brooks' movie Young Frankenstein for which he received the best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award nomination. His title role in the sweet fantasy family movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has also been universally acclaimed and Mr. Wilder was nominated to Golden Globe Best Actor Award. Kiss Me Like A Stranger. My Search for Love and Art is for the most part a charming memoir by Mr. Wilder. Its general mood resembles the sweet atmosphere of Wonka even if the text sometimes deals with adult, serious, even grim matters.

The memoir is interspersed with brief passages recounting Mr. Wilder's sessions with his psychotherapist. This literary device allows a modicum of freedom from the boring strict chronological flow of the autobiographical narrative. Not only do we read about the trajectory of Mr. Wilder's acting career, beginning from his time in college and his study at the Old Vic Theatre School in England, but we are also offered a frank and personal account of his psycho-emotional problems and compulsive behaviors.

Chapters about the technical aspects of acting are captivating: Mr. Wilder contrasts the "traditional", Stanislavski-influenced method with Lee Strasberg's approach ("be rather than act," in my complete layman's understanding) of The Actors Studio Theater. Mr. Wilder's meeting Mel Brooks becomes a seminal event in his professional career. He receives the nominations for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award in The Producers. Well-known movies like Willy Wonka, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein follow.

Between 1984 and 1989 Mr. Wilder was married to Gilda Radner, of Saturday Night Live fame, perhaps the finest female comedian of the generation. Again, the account of their marriage is deeply personal and frank. The passages about Ms. Radner's struggle with ovarian cancer and her death are devastating and deeply moving.

The reader will find quite a bit of more or less delicate humor in the memoir. I love the following passage:

"'I want to do a remake of Sister Carrie,' he said. 'I'm thinking of either you or Laurence Olivier in the man's part, but instead of a woman in Jennifer Jones's part, I want to use a sheep.'"

It's an actor's memoir so it is not possible to avoid name-dropping. Even so, to me it is excessive, and, for instance, the fragment about Orson Welles recognizing him could have been written in a less ostentatious way. The endearing sweetness of the earlier parts of the memoir eventually turns into a bit of cloying schmaltziness towards the end.

Mostly charming and very readable autobiography. The reader will find it very hard not to like Mr. Wilder.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.

View all my reviews