Radner shines through in Love, Gilda
Lisa D'Apolito’s dazzling new documentary, “Love, Gilda” is a touching and heartfelt tribute to comedienne Gilda Radner, one of the first major icons to emerge from NBC’s long-running late night comedy institution, Saturday Night Live, and partly to whom the series owes its decades of tremendous success.
The film offers an intimate glimpse into Radner’s life and career, from her youth in Detroit, Michigan, through her discovery in the early 1970s alongside Martin Short and other comedy giants in a Toronto production of Godspell, and her work on the short-lived National Lampoon Radio Hour alongside John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and other future SNL alums. Highlighting a number of her iconic roles on SNL, including Roseanna Roseannadanna and Emily Litella, alongside countless others, as well as her massively successful one-woman show on Broadway in 1979, Radner’s enormous talent shines through as the film offers us a rare insight into Radner’s complex personal history and method, often expressed in her own words.
However, despite her loving and tactful approach, D’Apolito does not shy away from the grim and difficult details of Radner’s life – her tenuous relationship to her own fame, her sometimes challenging personal relationships, her struggles with bulimia, and her untimely death from ovarian cancer at age 42. And yet, these details are never engaged for spectacle, but ultimately paint Radner as resilient, vigorous, and strong-willed – a survivor, deeply human in the face of death. There is a tremendous feeling of solace which accompanies D’Apolito’s treatment of Radner’s later life as she privileges Radner’s post-rehabilitation return to equilibrium over the gritty details, focusing instead on her loving marriage to Gene Wilder and the inner peace that this relationship gifted
her, even at the expense of her professional career.
This project, as D’Apolito recalls, was a labour of love, but presented significant challenges in its early stages. In a recent interview, she spoke of the personal attachment that she felt to Radner after volunteering with the New York City chapter of Gilda’s Club, an organization formed
by Wilder and others after her death which seeks to provide support for people with cancer, their families, and friends. It was Radner’s towering presence within this space as well as the big, deep connection to Gilda felt by all who are involved would inspire her to make this film, she states.
While initially finding it difficult to
secure interviews with any of its breadth of participants, D’Apolito’s persistence eventually led her to Detroit where Radner’s brother and best friend, Judy would grant her access to the ‘holy grail’ – boxes of audio recordings, journals, and archival footage which comprise a large portion of the film’s source material. The film also contains numerous interviews with Radner’s contemporaries, including Short, Chase, Paul Schaeffer and Lorne Michaels, as well as the new school of SNL superstars who acknowledge their debt to Radner, among them – Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Cecily Strong, and Bill Hader.
It is the deep reverence that the latter have for Radner which make this film feel particularly special. Among the film’s most touching moments are those in which the young comedians express shock and awe at their being granted access to these archival materials, laughing and smiling contagiously as they read from Radner’s journals. One gets the sense that the torch is being passed, a lineage forged between past and present as they tread the terrain which was paved for them by Radner.
Framed through the eyes of those who loved and continue to love her, the mastery demonstrated by D’Apolito and company here make it next to impossible not to Love, Gilda.