Alan and Me

My pal Alan Arkin died the other day. Well, he wasn't really my pal, in fact, I had only met him once, but he looked so much like my father and felt so familiar in so many ways that I considered him an acquaintance if not a friend.

And it wasn't just that he looked like my dad, which he did (that bald Jew-monk saint head and those kind eyes that revealed their madness when you took a deeper dive). It was that he was going to play my dad in a more than semi-autobiographical film I had written about my father's Parkinson’s disease and specifically his Parkinson's dementia.

Arkin loved the script and told my brother, who was to make his directorial debut, that he was going to win the Oscar in the role (a pretty result-oriented comment for a Buddhist, but hey, actors are actors). They even had a reading in New York, which I missed due to an "only travel at gunpoint" policy dictated by my addiction. It was Alan Arkin, Ellen Burstyn, Debra Winger (a friend of my brother’s), Lili Taylor, Campbell Scott etc. This was the early 90s and Alan was probably around sixty. The reading went great except for my writing partner (who did make the trip) calling Debra Winger “Debbie” which she did not appreciate. It looked like the movie would happen but when the initial financing fell through that was the end of that. But as far as I was concerned Alan Arkin was now my colleague, and if he liked my writing that meant he liked me.

Now, several years earlier in 1985 I had actually met Alan. His son Adam and I had been in a play together, and Alan had come to see it. After the show Adam introduced me to him and said "Dad, Tommy reminds me of what you must have been like thirty years ago." At the time I wore a straw fedora with a red band and stingy brim. Alan measured me with a long look and said, "Maybe thirty years from now."

There's a lot to love about Alan Arkin, but one thing that really stands out for me is his voice. The tone and timbre. It almost seems hoarse, but it's not. It's a quality of calm hysteria. When I watch him in a film I always feel he could have a nervous breakdown at any moment, not because he's so crazy, but because he is so human. So vulnerable, and at the same time enraged about it. It is this combination of vulnerability and rage that I find most compelling about him. He is both lost and found at the same time, and gives confusion and weakness a nobility. He makes being overwhelmed by life a heroic act, which is why he was the only possible choice for Yossarian in Catch 22 (even though the movie fails him), and why to my brother and I the only choice to play my father.

He's pretty much great in everything he’s in but here are two moments that really stand out to me . One is the scene in Slums of Beverly Hills where he is sexually inappropriate with his adult niece played by Marisa Tomei. He comes onto her not (just) as a predator, but as a lost older man, and his understanding of the character's needs and shame and how they are intertwined is devastating. He takes something creepy and makes it creepy but human.

But my ultimate Alan Arkin moment is in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. He plays John Singer a deaf-mute, and since he can’t speak he does everything with his face, body and intent. The scene I love is near the end. He is at the grave of his dear friend Spiros (a playful bear-man of a mute played by Chuck McCann). When he finds the marker for the humble grave he doesn't cry, he just staggers about, touching his chest and playing with his tie, feeling not just his friend's loss but all loss and the confusion of grief. I just watched it on Youtube to make sure I remembered it right, and it tore me up again.

I'll finish with my two favorite Alan Arkin stories. One he told me the night I met him and one was told to me by Adam. The first one has to do with Alan and Art Carney (who are both on my acting Mount Rushmore). They are doing an episode of Shelly Duvall's Fairytale Theater, playing the tailors in The Emperor's New Clothes. So, the camera rolls and they are busy miming the sewing of the imaginary clothes for the king and Alan says Carney is doing the most brilliant physical comedy he has ever been anywhere near. He can barely keep a straight face and is so in awe of what he’s doing he feels embarrassed he's even in the shot. In the middle of the take the director yells "cut" and proceeds to tell Carney “good, just don’t do all that business you're doing." Alan is ready for Carney to go ballistic, but Carney, totally unfazed, just says “okay, whatever you want." Alan shook his head and said "If I was doing something that brilliant and the director told me to cut it out I would have killed him!"

The second story is what Alan had told Adam would be his speech if he ever won an Academy Award. It was one line: "I just want to say that I hate this award and everything it stands for and that this is the happiest day of my life." I think that is the perfect Oscar speech, conveying the love-hate relationship almost all of us have with this business we are in .

When he finally did win an Oscar (for Best Supporting Actor in Little Miss Sunshine) I was waiting for that speech. But he did something far more standard that included a joke about his mother. I don’t ever watch the Oscars but I did that year and I was disappointed. But in the end, I kind of love him for choosing to be a good boy and not a bad one. I think I just kind of love him no matter what. My good pal, Al.