Without even knowing who Gilda Radner was, it’s easy to understand her importance in the comedy world just by the people who talk about her in the new documentary, Love, Gilda. Melissa McCarthy, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and Bill Hader describe how she influenced them. Lorne Michaels, Chevy Chase and Martin Short describe what it was like to work with her and how easily she made everyone love her. Lisa D’Apolito, the director who assembled them, also clearly loves Radner, but lovely as her film is, it’s perhaps a bit too loving.
One of Love, Gilda’s biggest assets is its accessibility. It’s a film for fans, but also gives those who didn’t see Radner on Saturday Night Live an idea of why she was so beloved. Early in the film, in voice over, Radner describes what drove her comedy from a young age. After being made fun of for her weight in school, she realized comedy meant, “hittin’ on the truth before the other guy thinks of it,” by making a joke about herself.
That mantra carries into her SNL days as she makes herself ridiculous as Judy Miller, hurling herself against a set of a little girl’s bedroom. It’s also clear in a clip of her singing (a skill she admits she doesn’t really possess) in her one-woman show at Broadway’s Winter Garden about the awkward, childish necking of teenagers after prom. All of it is hilarious even now and it’s evident to anyone watching why Radner was such a comedy legend.
D’Apolito is smart not just about the clips she chooses, but the way she assembles them. She transitions seamlessly from one aspect of Radner’s life to another. When her family members look through an old album of pictures from her college days, their offhand comment about how many boyfriends appear therein sparks a section on how quickly Radner would move onto new men. Those relationships in turn usher in different phases of her life. Her relationship with Martin Short ends definitively when she joins Jim Belushi’s National Lampoon troupe. Her marriage to E. G. Smith bleeds into her marriage with Gene Wilder.
Though focusing on Radner’s romances as motivator could be read as criticism, D’Apolito is careful not to pass judgement there or elsewhere. She and her subjects clearly adore Radner and they paint her in the best light possible. That said, the film isn’t afraid to delve into the darker parts of Radner’s life—even if it’s often too brief.
The first is her issues with weight. Radner herself describes how early on her mother was so concerned with her weight that a doctor put her on diet pills at 10. The thread largely disappears after that, with only vague references to eating habits—like the “What Gilda Ate” segment Lorne Michaels would use whenever he needed to fill air time. It doesn’t come back until much later, when suddenly “someone” takes Radner to a hospital.
Despite access to Radner’s journals and friends, D’Apolito stays strangely vague not just on who acknowledged Radner’s, but even what that problem was. A friend explains that they didn’t even know what an eating disorder was then–let alone anorexia or bulimia–but the audience is left to take what we want from that statement, unsure if she suffered from both or either or something else entirely.
Perhaps D’Apolito was being overly respectful of Radner’s pain, but it comes off as a deliberate glossing over and the greater trauma of Radner’s life, the cancer diagnosis that eventually ended her life at age 42 feels similarly prettied up. We know that she went through a severe depression. We know that she was reenergized by her initial period of remission and that she seems as vibrant as ever on a return to television on It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. What we don’t hear is how that illness and eventual loss affected Wilder or how her old New York pals or paramours reacted. Instead, it all just ends.
Still, if Love, Gilda ends a little abruptly, it’s perhaps forgivable. After all, the comedienne’s own life ended well before it should have. By stopping where she does and the way she does, D’Apolito leaves us wondering what Radner would have done next. Having a child maybe, or starring on a sitcom, perhaps a series of hilarious memoirs like Carrie Fisher. The point is, we’ll never know and that’s the worst thing of all.
Rating: 7/10
