Film News & Trailers

An Interview With Peter Falk

December Lambeth / September 20, 2005 / Film News & Trailers

A few of us Kansas City film critics got the wonderful experience of sitting down with veteran actor Peter Falk. He gave us the low down on independent films from the 60’s and 70’s to how they are perceived now with the first weekend out bang. Peter sticks to the script and keeps us all in line.

Peter Falk
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Question: At what point did you become involve with the project?

Peter Falk: I guess I was the first actor he sent the script to; I don’t think the director had been hired yet.

Question: You were hired before the director was hired?

Peter Falk: Now wait a minute, I’m not certain about that. I’ll tell you what my memory is, I think I said yes and then he hired the director.

Question: Wasn’t the screenplay originally written with you in mind? How’d that feel?

Peter Falk: It was originally and that was great feeling. I’d never been hired on the basis of which I was hired on this picture. He didn’t tell me this until the picture was over. This is what he told me. He went to visit his father and his father was watching TV one of those Neil Simon pictures I was in “Murder By Death” or “Chief Detective” he wasn’t sure but his father started to chuckle whenever I came on the screen. And he said to himself, “my father laughs at this actor more than any other actor” and then it occurred to him that-that actor that my father’s laughing at-he should play my father! And when he told me that story after we shot the film I had never been so charmed. What a terrific thing to get hired because the writer of the picture has a fond memory of seeing his father watching me on TV and laughing and saying “that’s the guy who should play my father”. Usually I get hired because I’m tall.

Question: Did you draw on your upbringing and the people you’re acquainted with in real life to help you play the character Sam Kleinman?

Peter Falk: I go by the script. I read the script and I like the character, I like the lines and I like what he does and says, I don’t draw an awful lot on my personal experience as least to my knowledge I don’t consciously do it.

Question: There was some small stuff like when you guys were sitting at the table eating steak and Peter (Paul Reiser) was caring on an in depth conversation about your relationship with his mom, you kept insisting that he try your steak, cause it was so much better than his own. Was that all in the script or were you going with the moment?

Peter Falk: That was in the script, that was Paul’s writing and the point of it is, that you could be discussing something very important about the happiness of the relationship, but there’s nothing more particular important than the taste of that steak at that exact moment, and it was important that everybody should taste it to see how good his was and it would be better than what Peter (Paul Reiser) had. And I think that it’s typical in some families when something good comes up everybody’s got to taste it.

Question: Was there any improv in the film such as when you two guys are fishing together?

Peter Falk: Yes, that’s the one place where there’s improvisation and it was a funny scene. What happened before we shot the scene was we had these props and I’d never fished in my life, Paul hadn’t done much fishing either, so I was asking about the props, I said “what’s this pole for and where does that hook go and he said “you got to put where the worm goes” and I said “there’s no worm” and you’re talking to the director for God’s sake and there’s no worm. Raymond De Felitta, director, knew that was a great moment and told the crew just run with it.

Question: Paul Reiser is the writer and he’s the co-director. When you were filming did the direction come from Reiser as the director or did he leave that part to the director of the film?

Peter Falk: When the writing is this good and the other actor is this good the best thing the director does is stay out of the way. And that has nothing to do with the capabilities of the director, when it’s working its working.

Question: There’s a particular chemistry between you and Reiser that felt very genuine a lot of that is that you’re both very capable actors, but did you do a lot of preparation with Paul, discussing his father. Was he trying to get a performance out of you that was like his father or was he just trying to get you playing that role?

Peter Falk: We didn’t talk about it, we didn’t do much rehearsing and he only told me that story about his father after the movie was over. He didn’t dwell on the autobiographical aspect of this script. But there was no question in my mind from the little bit that he said that so much of this came from his life. From his relationship to his father, his mother’s relationship to his father and his sisters, it is about his family, but not literally. He’s writing a piece of fiction but it’s based on his real life.

Question: One of my favorite scenes is Paul talking to his kids and they says thank you for being my dad and you bring that in at the end. I thought that was one of the sweetest moments I’ve seen in film in a long time

Peter Falk: When the old man (me) walks into that darken room and you see him in the shadow and he hears this conversation, you don’t anticipate that it will come back up and it comes back up again later on at the end in a very moving way. Sam realizes, at that moment, that he may have missed out on a few things, but it doesn’t hit him until later on in the film.

Question: And he cuddles with you just like he did with his child that completes the circle of having a father be like a child in some ways. How do you prepare for a moment like that? Is that a moment where you just memorizing the words then let the event playing itself out?

Peter Falk: Actually, yes, once again it was by the script. Paul had done such a wonderful job writing this story that everything just fell into place and worked out.

Question: It’s such an important theme. Almost everybody has probably grabbled with some mystery about their father and/or their parents.

Peter Falk: Relationships amongst child and parent is important, but I think what goes on between husbands and wives is another important subject that may not be as clear in The Thing About My Folks, but is there. I think in this particular picture, my character is more occupied with what’s going on between him and his wife then what’s going on between he and his son. The son, Paul, he “claims” he’s preoccupied with what’s going on between me and my wife, and he’s half telling the truth. But the other half that he’s not talking about is what went on between him and me and he doesn’t really get to that until very near the end of the picture.

Question: One of the things I really enjoy about this relationship if all of the tension, there’s anger and resentment and even though you find a way to get past that not all the issues are resolved. It’s not that everything is automatically made better, but reached the point that you decide “hey we’re family we just need to get past this” Was that intentional, that you can’t solve every problem or make them go away, but you can agree to disagree?

Peter Falk: They were looking at the stage in their lives in which this thing happened. It was much better than it was before and that’s something.

Question: Can I ask about the character Muriel (Olympia Dukakis), your wife in the film, it was very interesting that she’s found out to be sick at the end, that was her reason for leaving. She reluctant to explain her reasoning for leaving home she doesn’t really want to explain it.

Peter Falk: I think even in real life, some thing you just do it that way, but as time goes by she has seconded thoughts. But the circumstances were so different, he wasn’t there, nobody was there, and there was a part of her that did want to go and be by herself. She didn’t want to explain her position, maybe she felt that leaving him was no longer the reason and she just wanted to test the waters and see if she could actually do it.

Question: It’s a nice line when she says she’s giving you a chance to find out what it’s like to be on your own, she was testing you. But that is life. And Paul is trying to unburden himself from that letter he’s been carrying, and I’m trying to think about what it would be like to find a letter like that and carry it around into your adulthood. Do you think there really was a letter for Paul?

Peter Falk: I’m not speaking for Paul now, (yells across to Paul Reiser) “Paul I’m not speaking for you now.” But I have a feeling there was a letter and he did find it later on, but you’ll have to ask him.

Question: I think there are things about our parents that we really feel that we don’t want to know or don’t feel that we have a right to know. So there is a type of tension and unease about the whole thing. Do we really want to know everything about our parents?

Peter Falk: And does the parent really want to tell you, that’s the other thing. Because in this movie when the son says, “tell me about the first time you made love to your wife” my mother, tell me about it Pop. The old man handles it beautifully, he puts on a good show about a hotel room and some lingerie, but it’s all a hoax.

Question: What was it like working with Olympia Dukakis? Those scenes were beautiful.

Peter Falk: Wasn’t that extraordinary, it was like a miracle. I met her the day we shot the final scene, I never spoke to her before and it was about 10 minutes before shooting and there she is. I had never felt so comfortable so fast with anyone I’d ever met before. Within 5 minutes I felt like I’d known her my whole life.

Question: In a way your character is just now getting to know her, almost like you are meeting for the first time and seeing each other in a different light. Do you feel that just meeting her on set helped this tension and made it more reality?

Peter Falk: Yes, but we shot the final scene at the World’s Fair first, so we knew each other for 5 minutes and then we were into it. There’s something about her that made me so comfortable. She was wonderful; she’s one of a kind.

Question: What was your favorite moment in the film?

Peter Falk: It’s a photo finish between the first word I said after I finished reading the letter, which was a very emotional thing. That word was the springboard for a 3 to 5 page speech. It was a terrific speech and I did most of it in first take.

Question: What was the other one? You said there were two.

Peter Falk: Oh, the audience loved it, a big laugh the audience roared and I never saw it coming, when I hit the guy with the cue stick in the fight at the bar and I said “forget about the money, I don’t want your money, I just want you to apologize to the owner for causing this disturbance and he ad-libbed, I had never heard this phrase before, “eat shit and die”.

Question: My girlfriend after we saw it, said she was glad to see a 70’s something character who was not infirmed who can actually put up a fight, because she remembered her own grandfather who was a really strong guy right up until he died.

Peter Falk: We were trying to get across, that a lot times the kid, the guy, he sees his father as an older man and sometimes it important for him to see that older man, what he was like at 30-40-50 years old and that was one of the points of this developing relationship that Paul saw his father-what’s that dancing that they do?

Question: Line dancing

Peter Falk: Yeah, line dancing, they go line dancing, they play pool they fish, those sort of things. I guess another scene could be between the father and son after they both had too much to drink and they’re laying in the woods and the father is trying to figure out where’s the big dipper because the stars seem to be moving back and forth.

Question: In real life how good are you at pool?

Peter Falk: I can play pretty good.

Question: Because it looked like they shot cut away to a professional shot.

Peter Falk: No, no there were a couple of shots they could have used where there was no cut away. I made a couple of pretty tough shots.

Question: You did your own stunts as well?

Peter Falk: I did. In regard to the passing of gas scene, an audience question came up; did you have a stunt double for that?

Question: Why didn’t we think of that? And the answer was?

Peter Falk: And the answer was NO!

Question: This was like a quick picture, just a 22-day shoot.

Peter Falk: Yeah, it was a very quick picture. It worked out because there was no time for rehearsal and we just did it, it just clicked.

Question: When you signed on to this picture was it a given that you’d be traveling around the country promoting the film?

Peter Falk: No, they kind of sprung that on me at the last minute.

Question: You’ve worked with John Cassavetes who is the king of American Independent filming, on several independent films, how have independent films changed over the years?

Peter Falk: One of the things that changed is that a picture lives or dies within the first week. You can’t build on the film slowly you’ve got it do it within the first week. There’s this wonderful writer Nancy Myers, she’s a terrific writer, and she’s written a wonderful script, which I’ve forgotten the name of right now, but when it comes out there’s a character in that script that you will hear say, “you know this business about you’ve only got one week?” Suppose that was with a book, you’ve only got 5 days to read it and the public doesn’t like it in 5 days, or suppose that was a painting, you’ve got 6 days and then it goes away. There is nonsense in this movie industry with these executives, that’s the only thing that drives me crazy.

Question: In promoting The Thing About My Folks, how many cities are you going to? Are you going to visit quite a few?

Peter Falk: Exactly, we’ve been going pretty good, we’ve been in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Kansas City, we’ll go to LA, and we’re moving around to many cities. That first week is pretty crucial, I’m on my hands and knees begging people to come out and support this picture, see the film, if you’re interested in this picture go to Myfolksmovie.com.

Question: You talk about the contrast that this film makes with so many other theatrical films out there, the contrast are obvious, but could you explain more about them?

Peter Falk: Yes it is a welcome contrast, first of all people should know that this film doesn’t have one explosion in it. So that’s one big contrast. There’s not a lot of action in this picture.
So I guess what Paul says and I agree with, there are people out there who would really like to see pictures that really deal with what people are dealing with in real life, every husband and wife, every parent and every son. That’s what this issue deals with. There is not one screening that we’ve had where a lady hasn’t got up and said, “I want my husband to see this picture”. And the same thing, husbands says it about wives and kids say it about parents, “I want my father to see this picture”. The Thing About My Folks does touch people. It touches their lives and that’s great, if you have that combination that’s what makes this picture different.

Question: We live in a time where sentimental films are more daring than action films. We’ve become desensitized to sentimental films and unfortunately the more sentimental and caring a film is the less it’s received as a well-done film or a box office hit.

Peter Falk: Well the concern is that, but according to the response people are really affected by this picture and we’ve screened it I don’t know how many times. By the end of this picture there are people sniffing, some in tears, and many are laughing, it’s a very powerful moment.

Question: At the end of the film you come back to live with your son, I was just wondering if you thought there was an up side to grandparents and grandchildren living in the same house together?

Peter Falk: I do come back at the end and live with him and we’re very comfortable with each other for the first time, we enjoy each other’s company and become closer for it. I kind of feel that families living together could be a good thing. If we had that that would be a good thing, where the generations stay together instead of everybody running off doing his or her own thing, separate. If I had to bet on it I’d take that one.

Question: What are you hoping for the future of this film and your efforts in promoting it?

Peter Falk: I want people to help us out, that’s why I’m going from city to city. The average person out there can help us, if they can log on to Myfolksmovie.com and once they get there there’s a postcard that tells people about free screenings that’s going on and get free passes and such. Please support this picture.

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