He was on the list, yes. I mean, the man was 83 and had been treated for cancer; that’s someone who ends up on the list. But honestly, the main reason I hadn’t gotten to him for Celebrating the Living was that I’ve only ever liked one of his movies that I’ve seen. I mean, I didn’t dislike him in those movies, for the most part, but it’s hard to pay tribute to someone when mostly what you have to say is “I really like The Producers.”

But of course, here we are. And I do, after all, really like The Producers. Beyond that, though, there’s the fact that I liked Gene Wilder even when I didn’t like the movie that was happening around him. From what I can tell, after making enough money so that he could live comfortably the rest of his life, he dropped out of show business, because he didn’t like show business. He liked acting fine, but he didn’t seem to like all the stuff that happens around acting.

He didn’t consider himself a comedian. While he is essentially only known for his comedic roles, he just didn’t think he was terribly funny. His fourth wife, Gilda Radner—who died of the same illness that had in 1957 killed his mother—was funny, as he would be the first to tell you. However, despite his Adapted Screenplay nomination for Young Frankenstein, he still didn’t think he himself was all that funny. Who knows; maybe most of the humour came from Mel Brooks?

He was born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While his mother was suffering from rheumatic fever, the doctor told eight-year-old Jerome to “try and make her laugh.” (Which frankly seems like a ridiculous amount of pressure to put on a kid, but what do I know?) That sparked the acting bug, and from then on, he knew what he wanted to do. But he couldn’t see “Jerome Silberman in Macbeth,” so he took a stage name. Gene, for a character from Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel, and Wilder, from Thornton Wilder. Of course, he later admitted, he couldn’t see Gene Wilder playing Macbeth, either.

He only made twenty-two movies in his life, starting with a minor role in Bonnie and Clyde and ending with Another You, in 1991. Though he worked in television after that, including his own poorly reviewed TV show, Something Wilder, the only acting he’d done in a decade was a voice role on Yo Gabba Gabba! (I don’t know why; he had no children and therefore no grandchildren, and if the nephew he was close to had kids, it’s not on the Wikipedia page.) Whatever drove Gene Wilder, it wasn’t a love of the spotlight. He was still being offered “fifty-two movies a year,” and he accepted none of them, even the three he said he’d get a year that were actually good.