June 24, 2011

Years ago, I had a screenplay based on the career of former Boston Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee in development at Paramount Pictures, with Woody Harrelson set to produce and star, although I never got to hear Woody utter any of my dialogue because, over the course of about 18 months, he never got around to doing any actual producing. I did, however, get to spend weeks on end trying to catch him on the telephone, and I once saw him rollerblade into a fancy restaurant in Santa Monica while wearing a t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts.

Woody, as you may know, is an irrepressible free spirit. Either that or he’s rich and famous and people let him get away with murder. So he goes for it.

Anyway, it says a lot about my fondness for Peter Falk, who passed away on Thursday at the age 0f 83, that the only casting suggestion I had for my own script while I was out in Hollywood was for Falk to play Tom Yawkey, the legendary owner of the Red Sox. To this day, I have no earthly idea what Yawkey sounded like, or even what kind of person he was. Not really. But I do know that, when I was writing the character, I imagined only Peter Falk.

During that blissful period when it seemed like the movie might actually get made, the thing I looked forward to the most was the possibility of hanging out with Falk. If ever there was a star who seemed like he’d have a beer with you, this was the guy. A grizzled, working class warmth emanated from him, like he just got home from the mill and had a funny story to tell, and he quite literally had a gleam in his eye— both because he was that type of person, and because he had only one actual eye with which to gleam (the other had to be removed due to disease when he was a toddler).

Falk made wisecracks about his glass eye constantly, and it never seemed to hinder him in the least, not even as a kid. "I remember once in high school the umpire called me out at third base when I was sure I was safe,” he once said. “I got so mad I took out my glass eye, handed it to him and said, 'Try this.' I got such a laugh you wouldn't believe."

But Falk’s tilted-head squint always added sly personality to his screen work, which covered a far broader range of roles than people gave him credit for once he was firmly cemented in the American consciousness via his Emmy-winning performance on NBC’s surprisingly well-written mystery series, “Columbo” (an upstart kid named Steven Spielberg directed the very first episode.)

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Falk received an Academy Award nomination in 1960, for his turn as an hilariously belligerent gangster in the otherwise forgettable crime drama, “Murder Inc.” He called his unexpectedly being cast in the role “the miracle that made my career.”

From there, Falk shifted back and forth between comedies and dramas, and even appeared in a couple of war movies. But he rightfully received his greatest non-“Columbo” accolades as the tortured husband in “A Woman Under the Influence,” the only John Cassavetes-directed movie I’ve ever forced myself to watch from beginning to end, solely because of several devastating, almost unbearably intimate scenes between Falk and Gena Rowlands.

The movie, in which Falk’s character (Nick) watches helplessly while his eccentric wife (Mable) tumbles into the depths of mental illness, is brimming with Cassavetes’ usual over-indulgent mannerisms, but Falk and Rowlands are remarkable. You can feel the years of commitment that have been shared by this couple before the narrative we’re witnessing even started, and the despair of seeing it fall apart for reasons they can barely understand is absolutely searing.

In the following scene, Mable has been jabbering and joking incoherently at a family gathering, and Nick pleads with her to return to earth, to once again be the light-hearted woman he’s shared his life with.

Not exactly Columbo, is he?

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Let’s close things on a much lighter note, though…and, in the process, show just how much range Peter Falk had as an actor. What follows is one of the funniest scenes I’ve ever watched, bar none, from Arthur Hiller’s 1978 cult comedy, “The In-Laws.” Alan Arkin - keep an eye on him here; he’s also terrific - plays Sheldon, a successful New York City dentist whose daughter is marrying an agreeable enough young man, and now it’s time for the respective parents to meet over a special, home-cooked meal.

The groom’s father, Vince (Falk), purports to be a mere government “consultant,” but is actually a highly-trained C.I.A. operative who’s trying to foil a South American dictator’s counterfeiting scheme. Even Vince’s family doesn’t know what he really does for a living, though, and, during the dinner, Sheldon quickly comes to realize the guy is a pathological bullshitter and-or completely off his rocker. He also has wilder mood swings than an exceptionally pregnant woman.

Honest to God, you could show this to me 30 times and I’d still laugh.

Peter Falk, man. How could you not love him? He’ll be missed.

Paul Tatara