Game 8: Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner - A Wilder Marinade of Fish
The first 30 minutes of Hanky Panky, a “comedy”-thriller starring Gene Wilder, are a slog. A man hangs himself in a barn. Another man is poisoned by olives in a luxury Manhattan hotel. Neither is played for laughs but at least we know Wilder will soon make an appearance. He’ll save us from this cinematic torture, right? Wilder will make a bug eyed intro, setting up his persnickety character with a rambling rant about, I don’t know, the route his cab driver is taking. But even he can’t save us from the monotonous script about a Chicago architect named Michael Jordon being framed for murder. 30 minutes in and director Sidney Poitier’s humorless tone has reduced In His Prime Gene Wilder to a performer mugging for a pity laugh.
But then Gilda Radner enters the picture.
Gene seems lighter. Looser. Like he wants to be there. The movie is still terrible but maybe the camera will run out of film and they can flirt while picking over the craft services table. It’s such a relief to see Gilda. For the viewer, yeah, but especially for Gene. That’s one of the underrated feelings of love: relief. They enter the room and your worries gently leave your body. Even if it’s just for a moment, your concerns evaporate to rain on you some other day. “This movie’s going to flop and I have child support and alimony to pay but she’s doing that high-pitched voice that she did at lunch yesterday and I love it.”
At the time of filming in 1981, Gene was twice divorced and 13 years older than the ex-SNLer Gilda, who was married to future Saturday Night Live Band guitarist G.E. Smith. That would soon end and the two comedy legends married two years after the release of the quickly forgotten Hanky Panky. They moved to Westwood. They played tennis together. They became Lakers fans. They tried to have kids the old fashioned way, IVF treatments at UCLA Medical Center. They also made a couple of movies together directed by Gene. During the filming of Haunted Honeymoon, the same year they contributed their wilder marinade of fish to the cookbook, Gilda had a miscarriage. She thought she had trouble carrying pregnancies due to an illegal abortion she had at 19. But the real reason was stage IV ovarian cancer, finally diagnosed after a year of doctors dismissing her qualms as depression, anxiety, or Epstein-Barr. She died three years later at the age of 42.
Gilda exited the picture. A lifetime’s worth of love condensed into a five year marriage. I don’t know how Gene stopped himself from turning it off right there and then.
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A Wilder Marinade of Fish
1 cup golden brown sugar
1 cup soy sauce
½ teaspoon dry mustard
¾ cup Cream Sherry or Marsala
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Mix together all ingredients. Leave fish in marinade for 6 or 8 hours overnight. Tastes best if fish barbecued.
“Delicious with tuna, swordfish, or wahoo. This recipe was given to us by Susan and Bill of Westwood Sporting Goods.”
Thanks to cheap Trader Joe's prices on frozen fish, I’ve gotten pretty good at cooking ahi tuna steaks this year. I even bought a jumbo bag of sesame seeds at the Thai market to give it that restaurant-quality sear. But unlike the steaks or poke bowls I’ve been preparing in 2019, this recipe calls for no seeds or sauce to go along with it. Just a marinade that tasted as good as it smelled. After 6 hours in the marinade, the tuna steaks had changed from a bright red to a nice caramel brown. A couple of minutes at high heat on both sides gave it a nice brown-black sear and a perfect pink middle. This marinade is for six people, so I recommend cutting it in half if you’re just serving two like I was.
My compliments to Susan and Bill of Westwood Sporting Goods, still in business after all these years! Just look at that amazing storefront. It’s 1970s Westside Los Angeles crystallized in amber. Speaking of amber, I gotta go scrape the marinade gunk off my cast iron skillet.
