{"id":30536,"date":"2018-10-19T03:52:39","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T10:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=30536"},"modified":"2018-10-22T17:07:53","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T00:07:53","slug":"radner-tells-her-own-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/10\/19\/radner-tells-her-own-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Radner tells her own stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gilda Radner scrapbooking in Love, Gilda<\/em>, a Magnolia Pictures release. (photo from Magnolia Pictures)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The late, great sketch comedian Gilda Radner is a Jewish icon. Offstage and out of character, however, she wasn\u2019t especially Jewish.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you would have to ask Gilda if she considered herself a Jewish comedienne,\u201d mused Laraine Newman, her friend and fellow Jewish cast mate for the first five seasons of Saturday Night Live<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d love to hear the answer,\u201d replied Lisa D\u2019Apolito, director of the deeply affectionate and painfully revealing documentary, Love, Gilda<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonest to God, I don\u2019t know,\u201d Newman said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t characterize her one way or the other. I would think that would have to come from her.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Love, Gilda<\/em>, D\u2019Apolito does the next best thing: she wisely channels her subject\u2019s voice through a trove of clips, personal audiotapes and diary entries (read by contemporary comics Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy and others).<\/p>\n

Love, Gilda<\/em>, which has screened at numerous Jewish film festivals to rousing applause, is part of this year\u2019s Vancouver Jewish Film Festival lineup.<\/p>\n

Radner grew up in a well-off Jewish family in Detroit. But her beloved father was diagnosed with a brain tumour when she was 12 and died two years later. Her mother delegated many of the child-raising duties, and the film hints that she was not the most supportive parent.<\/p>\n

\u201cGilda was also raised by her nanny, who happened to be Christian,\u201d D\u2019Apolito related hours before Love, Gilda<\/em> opened the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in July. \u201cSo Gilda observed all kinds of different religions and what she identified with, I wasn\u2019t really sure. I wanted to cover where I thought some of her insecurities came from. Losing her father was really important \u2013 and her mother putting her on diet pills.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nanny, Dibby, was the inspiration for one of Radner\u2019s most popular SNL<\/em> characters, Emily Litella. As for the diet pills, Gilda\u2019s body image issues as an adolescent led to eating disorders that plagued her into adulthood.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I found the audiotapes, it was so different to hear her talking than to see her on an interview or hear people talking about her,\u201d D\u2019Apolito said. \u201cIt was just mesmerizing, because you get a real sense of Gilda. She\u2019s sitting in a caf\u00e9 talking to somebody, she\u2019s ordering things, she\u2019s telling stories and she\u2019s extremely intelligent and extremely funny. That was really important to me, that an audience have the same experience I had.\u201d<\/p>\n

D\u2019Apolito was guided in her interview choices \u2013 musician Paul Shaffer, actor Martin Short and writer Alan Zweibel, among others \u2013 by whom Gilda spoke about on the tapes. Alas, Gene Wilder, the love of Radner\u2019s life according to D\u2019Apolito, and her husband from 1984 until she died in 1989, was too ill to participate. (He died in August 2016.)<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner and Sparkle in Love, Gilda, a Magnolia Pictures release. (photo from Magnolia Pictures)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cGene was everything she was looking for, because he was a Jewish guy from the Midwest,\u201d D\u2019Apolito said of the Milwaukee native, born Jerome Silberman. \u201cThat\u2019s what she always wanted, I\u2019ve been told.\u201d<\/p>\n

Radner and Wilder met on the set of the 1980s film Hanky Panky<\/em>, which originally was going to co-star Richard Pryor and was rewritten for a female lead. Wilder then directed Radner (and himself) in the equally disappointing comedies The Woman in Red<\/em> and Haunted Honeymoon<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The brashness and vitality of Radner\u2019s TV and stage work showed \u201cthat she never doubted that she was equal to any man,\u201d D\u2019Apolito said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I take away from Gilda\u2019s performances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newman lamented that Radner\u2019s movie career suffered because casting directors and producers lacked the imagination to cast her correctly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe specific nature of her talent was she did characters, and she would probably have been better served if she had taken part in writing the things that she did. But I don\u2019t think it occurred to her,\u201d Newman said. \u201cIf she and Alan Zweibel had collaborated on a feature, it might have been a whole different thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

D\u2019Apolito\u2019s connection to Radner goes back to the first videos she directed eight years ago for Gilda\u2019s Club, a cancer support group founded by Wilder in New York after Radner died from ovarian cancer at age 42.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Apolito didn\u2019t meet Wilder, however, until he invited the filmmaker to his house the year before he died. They spent a memorable day talking, and hanging out with his dogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomehow, at the end of the day, Gene and I just sat in the garden together,\u201d D\u2019Apolito recalled. \u201cI could see why Gilda loved him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Love, Gilda <\/em>(86 minutes, unrated) screens Nov. 8, 1 p.m., at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. For the full schedule of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, which runs Nov. 7-Dec. 2, visit vjff.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michael Fox<\/strong> is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gilda Radner scrapbooking in Love, Gilda, a Magnolia Pictures release. (photo from Magnolia Pictures) The late, great sketch comedian Gilda Radner is a Jewish icon. Offstage and out of character, however, she wasn\u2019t especially Jewish. \u201cI think you would have to ask Gilda if she considered herself a Jewish comedienne,\u201d mused Laraine Newman, her friend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[8428,2280,2281],"class_list":["post-30536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-gilda-radner","tag-vancouver-jewish-film-festival","tag-vjff"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}