Remembering Gene Wilder is a heart-warming, heimishe tribute to one of Hollywood’s great comedic Jewish actors of the 20th century.

In the documentary, veteran director Ron Frank weaves together archival footage from Wilder’s numerous talk show appearances, audio recordings made by the actor and fresh interviews with Mel Brooks, Carol Kane, Alan Alda and Wilder’s wife, Karen, among others. Through this collage, Frank creates a moving, nostalgia-tinged portrait of a multitalented funnyman who accomplished a great deal while remaining a mensch.

Before I watched the documentary, I thought I “knew” Wilder, who died eight years ago, but mainly as an actor in this film or that one. This documentary is a reminder of the totality of his work, which included comic masterpieces with Mel Brooks (The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein) and Richard Pryor (Silver Streak; Stir Crazy; See No Evil, Hear No Evil). And then there is the now-classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which was considered a box office failure when it premiered back in 1971. Frank’s film also points out that, beyond his film and stage acting, Wilder was a gifted writer and director.

He co-wrote, with Brooks, the screenplay for Young Frankenstein (for which they received an Oscar nomination) as well as several other films, and published three novels, a short-story collection and a memoir.

Born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee, he grew up in strongly identified though not especially Jewish home. The documentary quotes Wilder, via audio recorded in 2005, as saying that his was not a “particularly religious family in terms of prayer other than going to my grandparents for seders on Passover and synagogue on the High Holidays.”

While not religious—in his memoir he wrote that he didn’t even believe in God—he strongly identified as a Jew. In fact, in another voiceover in the documentary, he calls his role as Avram Belinski, a Polish rabbi guided through the Wild West by a bank robber (Harrison Ford) in The Frisco Kid, “closest to my life than any other role” he played.

Among the movie sequences included in the documentary is one of the funniest, laugh-out-loud-till-your-kishkas-hurt scenes from that film: Rabbi Belinski encountering several Mennonites dressed in conservative black garb and confusing them with fellow Hasidim.

Wilder became interested in acting at age 8, after his mother was diagnosed with rheumatic fever. In a voiceover in the documentary, he relates how a doctor “whispered in my ear…don’t argue with your mother. Try to make her laugh.” So, viewers hear him say, “I made her laugh.” To do so, he practiced Yiddish accents with her.

His interest in acting, if not humor, was further stimulated by an older sister who studied acting. He went on to pursue it in college and even attended the prestigious HB School in Manhattan, though that was not mentioned in the film.

The film begins with Wilder being cast on Broadway as the chaplain in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and the Children, opposite Anne Bancroft. In an interview, Mel Brooks explains how Bancroft, his then-girlfriend, later wife, “kept telling about this weird, strange character”—Wilder. Brooks, who was working on The Producers, attended the show and found his Leo Bloom. Though he almost lost him. 

Brooks’s producers wanted to cast someone more famous in The Producers, but Brooks ignored them. And the rest is history. Sort of. If you don’t read Wilder’s memoir. The film leaves out a lot of his personal story, and I asked Frank if there were any restrictions placed on him when creating the documentary.

“Not really,” he replied. “We weren’t looking to dig up dirt on Gene; this was not an exposé. We looked at Karen Wilder as our guiding force. We didn’t do anything without her approval. Gene had been married a few times before Karen and we were sensitive to that. We certainly needed to acknowledge his marriage to Gilda Radner, but we pretty much kept it at that.”

Wilder was married twice before his short-lived marriage to comedian and actor Radner, who died of ovarian cancer. I understand Frank’s reluctance to note the previous marriages, as Frank was working so closely with Wilder’s widow. The film was also originally going to spend more time focusing on Wilder’s diagnosis and death in 2016 from Alzheimer’s disease at age 83. 

But that isn’t all that was left out. According to his memoir, Wilder’s mom sent him to a private high school in California where he was subject to both antisemitic bullying and sexual assault.

“We had that in in one version, but then decided to drop it,” explained Frank. “It’s a complicated issue. Because you don’t want to just report about the sexual assault, you want to investigate how it influenced his life and career. I frankly don’t know the answer to that. So just reporting it in its own, along writer Glenn Kirschbaum, I didn’t feel that was enough.”

Remembering Gene Wilder is slowly opening in theaters around the country (check Kino Lorber for more information) and making the Jewish film festival circuit. It’s a really good look at a comedic genius—if you don’t mind watching a film through rose-colored glasses.