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ROUND-TRIP DETECTIVE

DEPT. OF HOOPLA

Half a dozen men and women were sitting around a table at Enjoy!!!, a tea room in Ossining, New York, the other day when a stretch limousine pulled up. Out stepped Peter Falk, in from the West Coast to promote a new movie and to spend an afternoon in Ossining, where he grew up, in celebration of a street’s being named after him. He’d arranged to meet up with some childhood friends before the ceremony: “My God, Pete!” “So good to see you, Pete.” “Peter, get a load of you.” One man said that for decades he’d been meaning to thank Falk for sending a TV set to his mother’s house so that his family could watch “Columbo.”

Falk had on zippered boots and an orange-and-pink flowered shirt. He grinned and made a V in the air with his arms.

It’s been a while since Falk has been seen in Ossining, which is about thirty miles upriver from Manhattan. “The last time I was here?” he said. “Let’s see, it’s a photo finish between my fiftieth high-school reunion in 1995, and the time I went to visit Alan Arkin, in Briarcliff.” He continued, “When I got there, Alan said, ‘Congratulations.’ I said, ‘For what?’ He said, ‘For the great reviews for the movie.’ I said, ‘For that piece of crap I just did?’ He said, ‘No, for “The In-Laws.” ’ I said, ‘Alan, we did “The In-Laws” a long time ago.’ He said, ‘Yeah, but they just did a remake with Michael Douglas and everybody’s saying it’s not as good as the original.’ I got better reviews for the second one than for the one I was in.”

A white-haired man said, “Pete, were you in the class when they put the artificial dog poop on the floor?”

“I don’t know,” Falk said. “Something tells me I must have been.”

Another man, a retired Avon executive, said he had a picture of Falk from his days in the merchant marine.  Falk said. “To join, there were eye tests. I once had an eye test, the guy told me to cover my right eye; I did twenty-twenty. Then he told me to cover the other eye; I said, ‘I can’t. I got a glass eye.’ He said, ‘Well, do the best you can.’ ”

After about half an hour, Falk got back into his limo and headed for 73 Prospect Avenue, the house that he grew up in. Two hundred people had assembled in the street in front of it. “I’ll be a *~#!,” he said. The mayor of Ossining read a letter from Hillary Rodham Clinton. Six other town officials said a few words, then directed Falk to look up at a signpost on the corner. The top of the post was covered with a tan trenchcoat, which, when Falk pulled it off, revealed a sign that read “Peter Falk Place.” Falk held the coat to his face for a long moment. “My real coat, they say it’s in the Smithsonian now,” he said. “I had it for thirty years. I took good care of it. I put out a saucer of milk for it every night.”

Finally, Falk got back into his car and asked his old friend Eileen O’Connor, a retired legal secretary, to give him a quick tour. They drove by the high school and the former site of the dry-goods store that belonged to Falk’s father. Falk asked the driver to pull over at the entrance to Sing Sing, the prison. “The school used to bring the ball team here to play the inmates,” he said. A guard came over and asked if the group was there to visit an inmate, then he recognized Falk.

“Columbo!” he said.

“You’re under arrest,” Falk said.

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Falk was relatively easy choice for role as father in 'Folks'

By Janice Page, Globe Correspondent  |

Of all the ways that Peter Falk has ever won a movie role, counting back even to his Oscar-nominated performances in 1960's ''Murder, Inc." and Frank Capra's 1961 comedy ''Pocketful of Miracles," he says he's proudest of how he got hired for ''The Thing About My Folks," now playing locally. He's also kind of amazed, because he can't think of any other jobs he landed almost 20 years before he reported to work.

As writer and costar Paul Reiser explains it, the semi-autobiographical ''Folks" began hatching one day back in the mid-1980s, when Reiser noticed his dad, a hardworking health foods wholesaler, guffawing over Falk's delicious Humphrey Bogart sendup in a TV broadcast of Neil Simon's ''The Cheap Detective." In that moment, the ''Mad About You" creator says something clicked, and he knew he wanted to write a script that poured Falk's distinctive voice and uniquely compatible rhythms into his own still-marinating father-son tale.

It then took a marriage (see Reiser's 1994 book, ''Couplehood"), two kids (see Reiser's 1997 book, ''Babyhood"), and the better part of two decades for the author to focus his thoughts into a road movie about headstrong men who only come to appreciate each other after the family matriarch walks out, leaving a cryptic note tacked to the refrigerator door. The story was fictional -- Reiser never bonded with his dad while cruising upstate New York in a classic car, trying to make sense of his parents' crumbling union -- but its characters and conversations sprang at least in part from the actor's own life. When Falk got the script on the same day it was finished, he said ''yes" after reading just the first few pages.

''I was instantly attached to my character," Falk recalls. ''I liked him because of the way he handled himself, despite the fact that the rest of the world knew he was wrong." But it was only after agreeing to do the film that the actor learned the role had been conceived with him in mind, and the writer's late father had presided over his audition.

''That's the nicest reason I've ever been hired for a part," remarks Falk after hearing Reiser recount the story for the umpteenth time over lunch at Jer-ne restaurant in the Ritz-Carlton, Boston Common. ''That's much better than 'He's the right height.' "

At 78, this talented veteran is among the most respected actors of his exemplary generation. Still, Falk seems sincere when he says he's uniquely flattered to have been an inspiration for Reiser's ''fresh, compelling" script, which he somewhat recklessly mentions in the same breath as works by Simon and legendary pal John Cassavetes (''Husbands").

''Those acting opportunities are becoming rarer and rarer," he concedes when pressed to evaluate contemporary cinema, adding that today's movies are too noisy.

''OK, but mention he didn't sound cranky when he said it," Reiser interjects playfully, for the record. ''You pushed him. Happy now?"

Actually, yes. So, while we're at it, here's Falk's take on multiplexes too:

''Well I am going to sound grumpy -- you know me, I sound grumpy anyway -- but the movie experience used to be better. I used to love to go to a neighborhood theater. Now, you get on an escalator with 60,000 other people and you feel like you're part of the herd. And then, to get there and watch ads . . ."

Falk, who by the way seems perfectly content when he's occupied by a Caesar salad and a tuna fish sandwich, has plenty of reasons to be feisty. He grew up in New York, lost an eye to cancer when he was 3, and is frequently assumed to be Italian when in fact he's a Russian-Hungarian-Czech-Polish mix -- Jewish, like his Sam Kleinman character in ''Folks." For some reason, his pool-hall education gets far more ink than his master's degree. And most important, he's part of a hardworking showbiz tradition that doesn't make films, it makes ''pictures."

''Peter is a very sociable fellow, but his work ethic is intense," says ''The Thing About My Folks" director Raymond De Felitta (''Two Family House"). ''What I saw was a man who was alone in his trailer working on his lines all the time, and when he got to the set, he really wanted to make sure he was squeezing all the juice out of it."

Consequently, De Felitta gave Falk plenty of room, and as many digital video takes as could fit into their five-week, low-budget-independent shoot. He didn't do what most of us would: Ask to be regaled with stories or classic movie quotes (what fan of ''The In-Laws" can forget ''serpentine!"?) from an impressive career that spans Nicholas Ray to Jon Favreau. He just applauded along with the rest of the crew when Falk nailed a key speech that may give the actor another shot at an Academy Award.

''Early on, Peter said: 'If you can, kind of shoot over the shoulder, but don't worry about it,' " the director recalls. ''And then I found myself thinking about it all the time, and I said, 'I can't do this; it doesn't make sense.' So we just shot the movie.

''Anyway, he sees more out of one good eye than most of us see out of two mediocre ones."

To the envy of his costar, the veteran actor is adept, if obvious, at dodging interview questions. Just ask him if the themes and family dynamics in ''Folks" have any personal resonance.

Falk: ''Whenever I try to reduce the emotion in this picture to words, all I'm aware of is how inadequate those words are, compared to the actual emotion that I experienced when I read it, when I acted it, and when I see it and see other people see it."

Reiser: ''That's a great answer. I've got to listen to him more. Listen to how smart and thoughtful his answer is. . . . But anyway, what words would you use if that weren't true, what you just said?"

The two actors often edit and rib one another (''Peter was just telling me he was in that 'Columbo' show.  Apparently he was one of the policemen."), to the point that a meal with them can resemble a scene out of their movie. They seem plausible as father and son, assuming you can get beyond regarding 48-year-old Reiser as some combination of his ''Mad About You" and ''My Two Dads" characters, the smart aleck from ''Diner," and the guy doing bright blue standup in ''The Aristocrats." Falk at least can shed his rumpled detective's trench coat, even though he might be locked in your mind as any of a hundred other things he's played, including a folk-hero thief (''The Brink's Job") and everybody's favorite grandpa from ''The Princess Bride."

In real life, we know that Falk is married to actress Shera Danese (his costar in ''Checking Out," slated to play November's Boston Jewish Film Festival) and spends his spare time drawing. Reiser is a baseball fan, sentimental over talcum powder (less random-sounding when you've seen the new movie), and openly dedicated to his psychotherapist wife and two young sons, who continue to supply him with an act.

 But the thing about ''The Thing About My Folks" is it doesn't really matter how much fact intrudes on the fiction. You can buy these two guys as Sam and Ben Kleinman, or you can imagine the movie as a fantasy riff on what might happen if Reiser went to bed one night and woke up as Falk's son.

 ''I just wanted to make a movie where Peter gets to be my dad," Reiser admits.

Twenty years later, mission accomplished. 

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Falk, Reiser Make 'Folks' Family Affair Duo Tours Country To Give Fans Personal Look At Film Tim Lammers, Web Staff Editor 10:18 am EDT September 21, 2005 How's this for a surreal situation? You and your father watch a movie by one of your all-time favorite actors, which inspires you write a script for that actor to essentially play your father on the big screen. Celebrated actors Peter Falk and Paul Reiser are now living in that parallel universe, having teamed together for the new comedy-drama "The Thing About My Folks." Based on Reiser's experiences as a son, husband and father, the movie tells the story of father and son Sam (Falk) and Ben (Reiser) Kleinman, who embark on an impromptu road trip after they find out wife and mom Muriel (Olympia Dukakis) has bolted on Sam after 47 years of marriage. Making several stops on the road to upstate New York, Sam and Ben confront past issues and effectively get to know each other like they never have before. Reiser and Falk joined me for recent @ The Movies interviews to talk about the project, which in some ways was 20 years in the making. Also starring Elizabeth Perkins, the film opens nationwide Friday. "I got the idea 20 years ago, but have to clarify to people that I wasn't writing that slowly," cracked Reiser, the talented co-star and co-creator of the smash sitcom "Mad About You." "I didn't write it until 19 years later. I always had the idea that I wanted to do it, which was before I met Peter. "When I did, it was very casual, but I never told him about the project because at best I knew he'd say, 'Great, let me read it' and I'd have to say, 'It's not written yet.' So I didn't say anything," Reiser added. "When I finally did get done writing it, I called him the next morning to say, "I'm bringing this over to your office, if I may." The interesting thing is that Reiser didn't tell Falk that the script was written exclusively for him. "Paul never told me anything about why he wrote it -- he never mentioned his father and he never mentioned my father," Falk recalled about reading the script for the first time. "He never put me in a position in which I would feel a lot of external pressure other than wanting my reaction to the script. That's the way a real professional would do it. That's the proper way to do it." The great thing about talking with Falk is that you know from the get-go that you're going to get brutal honesty. And, in the case of Reiser's script, the veteran film and television star said that it wouldn't have mattered knowing that the character in the script was written for him -- even if it was personal for the writer. "It's not proper to give someone a script and say, 'Listen, I'm going to give you a script but this means an awful lot to me because it's about my father and mother" -- the person who reads the script, they don't give a s--- about that," Falk said. "What does he care? What does an actor care about when he reads a script? He cares about whether he can score or not. He cares about whether or not the audience is going to identify with him or whether they're going to laugh or be compelled by the story. The reason I said yes is because I enjoyed it." For Reiser, writing the script for Falk, whether he knew it or not, was no question a risk of putting all the eggs in one basket. After all, if Falk said no, what would he have done? Fortunately, Reiser never had to ask himself that question. In fact, he was so certain that Falk was going to love the script that the thought of rejection didn't even enter his mind. "Once in a while you get a moment of clarity -- an inspiration -- and they don't come that frequently," Reiser observed. "This was one of those situations where I didn't know whether it would work or not, but it certainly appealed to me to try it. "Over the years, there certainly have been plenty of ideas that I've had and given up on, but for this one, the only thing that was standing in its way was me doing it -- I just had to write it," Reiser continued. "And then if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. But I didn't want it to be for lack of effort on my part, so I had hunch that it would be a good story and that we would work well together. And it certainly worked out that way." Reiser told me that since he was a fan of Falk's, he had the rhythm of the legendary actor's delivery constantly swirling in his head. That no doubt explains why after 19 years of thinking about the script, Reiser was able to write it in about 2 weeks. But the connection between Reiser and Falk goes far beyond one performer adoring another's achievements. In this case, it was much more personal. "There's a certain similarity between me and him, and his generation and my father's generation, so to think of us together doing the film together wasn't such a big jump," Reiser said. "I could hear Peter say the kind of things my father said. He talks like my father a little bit anyway." Gaining Independence Shot on a shoestring budget by today's standards, the independently produced "The Thing About My Folks" is relying on good old-fashioned word-of-mouth publicity to get moviegoers in touch with the film. For the most part, it's involved Falk and Reiser traveling city to city to not only meet with the media, but hold screenings where everyday moviegoers can view the film and participate in a question and answer session with the duo afterwards. What Falk and Reiser are finding is that the film is connecting with audience members on a very personal level. "After these screenings, inevitably, there's some woman that picks up the microphone and says, 'I'm going to get my husband to see this picture' -- you hear that a lot," Falk said, laughing. "You also hear fathers say, 'I gotta get my kid to come see this thing' and kids say, 'I gotta get my father to see this.' Everybody believes they're right, but most times, really, everybody is only half-right. I don't know of any married couple that doesn't have issues. I don't know any parent and child, any father and son, or any mother and daughter, that don't have issues. And that's what this movie is about." Plus, it no doubt helps that Falk and Reiser are familiar faces to audiences who have spent countless nights in their living rooms thanks to "Columbo" and "Mad About You." But Reiser doesn't treat the tour like it's about him.  It's all about Falk, and he can't say enough about his inspiration.  In fact, Reiser is hoping that the film will earn Falk a long-overdue Oscar. "He is a treasure of American cinema," Reiser said. "What I'm finding as we're traveling around is that everybody loves this guy. I see it in people's faces.  He's been so good for so long.  Women want to hug him and guys want to give him a pat on the back. I think that's one of the reasons the movie starts off so well. As soon as you see his mug on the screen, people are at ease. They go, 'I know this guy. This is comfortable.'" Given the huge number of fans he's encountered on the road trip with Reiser to promote the film, it's inevitable that many of them bring up to Falk their love for his characters in such film classics as "Robin and the 7 Hoods," "The In-Laws" and, of course, "Columbo." And while some actors have issues with being constantly identified with a particular character, Falk couldn't be happier that people remember him for his past roles. "If people asked me whether I'm annoyed or tired or whatever adjective they use about being typecast, I look at them like they're crazy," said Falk, who just turned 78. "I'm just very grateful. "I've been able to play an interesting character for a long time. The only thing I could say is that I feel like I'm the luckiest guy on the face of the globe," Falk concluded.

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Fast Chat with Peter Falk

Freelance writer Lewis Beale
September 16, 2005

Peter Falk was working as an efficiency expert for the state of Connecticut when, at 29, he quit his job and moved to New York to be an actor.

Let us give thanks to the Connecticut State Budget Bureau for boring him to death. In his 50-year performing career - from "Murder, Inc." to "The In- Laws," "A Woman Under the Influence" to "Columbo" - Falk, 78, has proven to be a consummate actor.  Now, he's stealing yet another film, which opened Friday in limited release: "The Thing About My Folks," in which he plays a man whose wife leaves a Post-It note on their refrigerator saying she's leaving him.

Freelance writer Lewis Beale caught up with the garrulous Falk at a midtown hotel.

What attracted you to "The Thing About My Folks?"

"You read a barrel of scripts all the time, it doesn't take long to recognize 'This is a cliche, this is fake, I don't believe the character, I don't believe these scenes.' So when this came along, immediately I thought 'Oh, these are real people.' Then, 'It's an interesting film.' Why is it interesting? Well, I'm a sucker for a note on a refrigerator door. When the note says, 'Don't forget a dozen eggs and some orange juice,' it's not interesting. But when that note turns the whole family upside down, that captures my interest."

The film is about the relationship between your character, a driven businessman, and his son, played by writer Paul Reiser. What was your relationship with your own father?

"When I read the script, I said, 'This is my father.' It turned out it was Paul's father. They're very much the same. My father had a store which opened its doors at 9 in the morning, he was sweeping the sidewalk at 6:30. What the hell he did between 7 and 9, I don't know."

Do you use your personal experiences to help you with your roles?

"No. I don't do anything like that. I don't understand that type of thing. I go by the scene I'm reading. Does the scene interest me? Does the character interest me? If you're playing Napoleon, and you think you're Napoleon, they gotta take you away to the nuthouse."

So what exactly did you do when you worked as an efficiency expert?

"I was supposed to go around, go to places like the Motor Vehicle Department, see if we could make it more efficient. I don't know what the hell I did. I was faking it. My real day started at night. They had a great community theater there [in Hartford], the Mark Twain Maskers. I'd go over there and do one play after another."

When did you realize you could actually make a living as an actor?

"The first picture I made ("Murder, Inc.," 1960- not actually his first film, but the first that brought him major attention), I got nominated for an Academy Award. Then I made my next picture ["Pocketful of Miracles," 1961], and I got nominated again. That was about the time I thought to myself, 'Maybe I could make a living at this.' "

Despite all the movies you've made, there's little doubt that the role you'll most be remembered for is that of the rumpled and sly-like-a-fox Lt. Columbo. Does it bother you to be typecast in that way?

"Being typecast is not cancer. Get down on your knees, thank the Lord above; you're the luckiest * on the face of the globe. Who gives a * if you're typecast?  I don't think people wake up in the morning and say, 'Oh my God, we gotta do something about this problem?' I don't give it a second thought. I get courtside seats at the basketball game. I only have to look at the left-hand side of the menu [prices are on the right]. And the character of Columbo is a rich, wonderful character."

You're an artist in your spare time. What kind of work do you do?

"I like to draw naked women. I use charcoal and pencil. I'm a slow guy. I've been drawing for about 25 years, and I'm beginning to use color."

Of all the movies you've made, is there one in particular you'd take with you to a desert island?

"I think "The In-Laws" is a very funny picture."

What about parts these days? Now that you're older, what kinds of roles do you get offered?

"Roles for older men."

You and your friend John Cassavetes made some memorable films together, including the classic "A Woman Under the Influence." What was it about him as a director that made him special?

"His distrust of technique. His distrust of words, of analyzing, of intellectualizing. What he wanted was to clear your mind away from all that, hear the other actor, and you say the line and let's see what happens. It's liberating. You don't clutter your mind. You haven't predesigned the scene - it's gonna be fast here, loud here, I'm gonna do this then - none of that. It takes a while to get accustomed to a director who really means it when he says, 'Don't think about it. Do whatever the * you want.' "

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     September 14, 2005

Peter Falk Shares the Facts about the Folks

by Dan Lybarger and Uri Lessing

When you’ve been a prominent, multi-award winning actor for over forty years, plugging your current film can be a challenge, especially when each of the reporters at the table has a different pet film they want you to talk about.
 
Peter Falk finally gets a question he likes.

Fortunately, Peter Falk was more than ready to meet the challenge during a forty-five minute free-for-all in Kansas City on September 1, 2005. The actor was armed with a couple sheets of paper to help him plug The Thing about My Folks just in case any of the journalists at the table talked a little too much about his thirty-five year stint as Lieutenant Columbo (no, he won’t tell you the detective’s first name).

Even though Falk is best known for that role, it’s immediately obvious that he’d have to be a pretty good actor to pull off the disheveled detective. He turns 78 as of the day his new film opens (September 16), but Falk walks with an erect confident posture that his fictional counterpart would envy.

Therefore, it’s not hard to imagine him playing Paul Reiser’s rambunctious father in The Thing about My Folks. Despite the fact that Sam Kleinman (Falk) is dealing with his wife (Olympia Dukakis) leaving him abruptly after over four decades of marriage, Sam can line dance, shoot precision pool and even win bar fights.

Fishing and Farting

While Falk for the most part relied on Reiser’s script for humor and poignancy, there were some moments of unexpected hilarity while filming a scene where the father and son go fishing. Falk explained, “Whenever we screen the picture people just roar at that scene. And what actually happened was before we started to shoot the scene we had the props, and I had never fished in my life!

“Paul didn't look like he did much fishing. And I had nobody else to ask. So I was asking him about the props. I said, ‘This hook, where does that hook go?’ ...I said, ‘There's no worms.’ And the director, you talk about what a director, he was smart. He said, ‘Turn the camera on!’”

Fishing wasn’t the only area where Falk had to prepare. Falk sharpened his pool skills, grappled with stuntmen, wrestled with a fish and drove an antique car. There was one deed where whether Falk used a stand-in is in question, “…I did do my own stunts. This is something, at one of the question and answer periods after the picture, in regards to the passing of gas. The question came up, ‘Did you have a stunt double?’ The answer was no.”

My Father Laughs

Falk was not a random choice for the role. Reiser wrote the semi-autobiographical script with the veteran actor in mind. It was almost as if Reiser’s father had picked the man who would eventually play him.

“I’ve never been hired (before) on the basis that I was hired for this picture,” Falk recalled. “(Reiser) didn’t tell me this until after the picture was all over. But when the picture was over, he told me that this is what happened. He went to visit his father, and his father was watching TV. And his father was watching one of those Neil Simon pictures I was in, Murder by Death or The Cheap Detective.

“But whenever (I) came on the screen, his father started to chuckle. And he said to himself, my father laughs at this actor more than any other actor. And then it occurred to him, that actor that my father was laughing at, he should play my father.”

Falk then paused and quipped, “Usually, I get hired because I’m tall.”

Falk praises the script and working with the author. “It was a very quick picture (25 days of shooting). We shot it fast. It worked out. There was no time to rehearse but somehow or other it just clicked. The stuff with me and Paul just fell into place like magic.”

Delightful Dukakis

While Falk found working with Paul Reiser magical, he found working with Olympia Dukakis positively phenomenal. Falk reminisced, “It was like a miracle. I met her the day we shot the final scene. I never spoke to her before, and it was like ten minutes before we shot the scene and there she is.

“That was an amazing thing. It really was. I have never felt so comfortable so fast with anyone I ever met before. I mean in five or six minutes I felt like I knew her my whole life.”

Falk went on to add, “If you have that relationship with your wife, maybe that’s the answer.”

As Falk talked about working with Dukakis, his memories became more vivid, “… we shot the final scene at the world’s fair first. We knew each other ten minutes and we were into it. I don’t know. There was just something about her that put me so at ease. So comfortable. She’s one of a kind. She was wonderful.”

The One-Week Rule

Falk’s promotion schedule involves the type of traveling that would make any younger actor wince. Falk proclaimed, “We’ve been going pretty good. Oh boy! We’ve been in Boston. We’ve been in Philadelphia. We’ve been in Minneapolis. We’ve been in Chicago. We’re here in Kansas City. We’ll go to LA.

“We’re moving round pretty good. And we’re doing it because that first week is so crucial. That’s why I’m on my hands and knees, begging people, that if they’re interested in this picture, to go to… myfolksmovie.com”

Falk has plenty of reason to worry. He recognizes that studios will often ax a film after a week of dismal returns instead of giving it a chance to gain momentum. “It can’t slowly build and attract,” Falk complained, “You’ve got to do it in one week.

“Suppose that was with a book? The book comes out, and you’ve got five days to read it …suppose it was a painting, and you’ve got six days, and then it goes away. You can’t see it any more. …that’s the only thing that drove me crazy.

Falk does have faith in the intelligence of his audience. “in terms of barnstorming and in terms of this picture, it lives or dies after the first week. What I want to do is I want people to help us out. That’s why we’re going from city to city, and I think the average person out there can help us."

“Not a Lot of Maulings and Killings in this Picture”

There’s a lot of pride in Peter Falk’s voice when he compares The Thing About My Folks to the other films Hollywood has produced. Falk said, “First of all, people should know this film doesn’t have one explosion in it. Not one, so that’s one big contrast. And there’s not a lot of maulings and killings in this picture.…”

Peter Falk is obviously not the biggest fan of modern Hollywood films, and shared a moment of glee relating a story about the remake of one of his classics, “As far as the remake of The In-Laws, I was working on something; I don’t remember. And I got a call from Alan Arkin, and he congratulated me on the reviews. I didn’t even know what he was talking about.

“I said, ‘Alan, I don’t even have anything coming out.’

“He said, ‘You didn’t see the reviews?’

“I said, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

“He finally told me they were the reviews for the remake of The In-Laws. He said we got better reviews for the remake than when the first one came out.”

“I never understood a word he said.”

Despite being adamant about staying on the topic of his latest film, we were able to gently steer Falk toward the subject of his most famous collaboration: with his long-time friend, John Cassavetes.“ John was totally original. Totally original,” Falk explained, “The main difference is there was an unpredictability. There was an informality. There was a spontaneity. There was what I would occasionally call a wackiness. Somewhere he knew what he was doing.

“What I always say, and it’s true. I never understood a word he said. And I think he did that deliberately.

“Deliberate in the sense that he said if you really understand something then your mind is at work, and if your mind is at work, we’re in danger of reproducing another cliché. And if we can keep our minds out of it and our thoughts out of it, maybe we’ll come up with something original. And if we just rely on our instincts, take a chance and don’t worry about it because I’m not going to print it. That’s probably what he was doing.”

“I’m just looking to get through the Day”

Filming The Thing About My Folks had a special appeal for Falk. It was shot a few miles from where he grew up in Ossining, New York. “I never realized that right across the river was so beautiful,” he said.

Peter Falk, ultimately, is a private man and a humble actor. He intentionally does not connect his work with his life experiences, and refuses to get caught up in attempts to sound profound. When asked how he saw himself as a performer, Falk replied, “I tell ya, I've had questions not exactly like that but similar. I always answer the same thing. I'm just looking to get through the day. I don't have any grand things. I never ask myself that question.”

As for future ambitions, Peter Falk’s wishes are pretty simple, “The only mountain that I would still like to climb: I’d like to break 85.

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Uri’s Peter Falk Pick

Mikey & Nicky: Elaine May directed this performance-driven masterpiece. Peter Falk and John Cassavetes are mesmerizing as two childhood friends who are both in the mafia.

Nicky (Cassavetes) has embezzled from his bosses and is hiding. Is Mikey (Falk) trying to help his old friend escape or play him straight into the hands of his bosses? The current DVD is an excellently restored print.

Dan’s Peter Falk Pick

The In-Laws: Don’t let the remake (Albert Brooks was more fun as the voice of a fish in Finding Nemo) scare you away from this cleverly imaginative comedy about a dentist (Alan Arkin) who finds himself tormented by his new brother-in-law (Falk). The mystery man might be a CIA agent, a criminal mastermind or a complete lunatic. I’m voting for all three. Check out some great supporting performances by Richard Libertini as a dictator gone horribly wrong and David Paymer as a cab drvier who makes Travis Bickle seem like a master of caution.  

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"The Thing About My Folks" Film Review - 9/13/2005

Touchingly fulfilling, and satisfyingly sentimental, THE THING ABOUT MY FOLKS provides down to earth home-style comedy, and a dramatic familiarity, that families everywhere are going to embrace. Peter Falk is a pure talent in his role as Sam Kleinman, and achieves a new perspective to the kind of pain in the ass father who you just can't help but fall in love with. The part was written especially for the "Columbo" star by Paul Reiser, who plays Falks anxious and unresolved issue plagued son, Ben Kleinman.

Keep an eye on Peter Falk in the coming months because his role as Sam will certainly be catching award nominations and I won't be suprised if he wins a few. Sam is so mutidimensional and charismatic that upon watching Ben treat him with contempt and embarrassment for an hour and a half I ended up calling my own father just to say, "thanks for everything and sorry for all the crumby things I've said and done to you over the years." And thanks to this film, my father is going to be getting away with belittling me a little more than usual for some time to come.

The film is a reflection upon the time Ben spends with his parents soon before they pass away, a time where he is given the opportunity to get to know them as people aside from just being his folks. One night, as he and his wife are putting their two little girls to bed, Ben's father shows up at the door unannounced and alone. Restless for an explanation for the visit, the couple finds out that several days earlier, Sam's wife Muriel left a note upon the refrigerator stating she has lost herself over the past 50 years and needed to get away. After telephone calls to his three wacky sisters turn up no news as to Muriel's whereabouts, it is determined that Sam will spend the night and accompany Ben on a trip to Upstate New York to look at a farmhouse the couple is considering to purchase while the girls investigate.

In the morning, Ben takes an old letter addressed to Sam out of a box hidden away and places it in his bag and they are on their way. The beginning of the trip is where we get to see what type of relationship these two guys really have. Sam is full of comfortable conversation, throwing out his opinions on just about anything his son brings up, while Ben responds in a defensive and irritated manner and remains short fused and nagging with his father. Just at the point where Ben has had enough, Sam lets out some serious flatulence and looks at his son and says "How'd you know it was me?" in a tone of voice that implies this is a running gag between them that Ben neither finds funny nor charming.

They get to the farmhouse, where the older man showing the place has lived most of his life. It is a dream scene, and Ben has immediately fallen in love with it. Dad, on the other hand, can only manage to bring up the fact that it is in a valley and that the pond will smell really bad during hot weather due to all the septic tanks draining into it from higher up the hill. Back on the road, Sam and Ben get into an argument about the mother. Ben thinks his father neglected his mother's emotions and took her for granted and becomes so angry and resentful that he decides to pull the trump card out and show his father the old letter in the back seat. His father yells, "Keep your eyes on the road" and just then, they crash into a tree. Uninjured, this accident ends up being one of the best things that could have happened to either of them.

After the accident, Ben shows his father the old letter that was written by his mother two weeks before he was born. It is a long flashback to a time where she was young and in love with Sam, how she felt when they met, what she has done for him, and how he has taken her for granted. It is a letter of frustration and desperation written by a woman who has given up on trying to change her husband and given up on trying to get him to make her feel special. Deeply heartfelt and thorough, this letter depicts all the emotions of a woman overcome by isolation and sadness who only wants her husband to notice her. This is also the big first moment in this film to capture Reiser's maturity and gift with writing. The author of two successful books "Couplehood" and "Babyhood", this film is only his first screenplay but shows the depth Reiser taps into the conditions of his characters, giving a level of humanity that is not commonly developed in cinema. Taking over 20 years to develop the screenplay, Reiser believes it took the experience of growing up, marriage, and having children to accurately approach the film as both a father and a son.

After reading the letter his wife had written almost 50 years earlier, Sam becomes angry, and says that he did everything he could for his family and his wife and during the whole time he was happy. He also says that his wife came from an unhappy home with parents who didn't nurture her, and that she has just always been an unhappy person. With all this talk, and their car being totaled on the side of the road, Sam yells at Ben to call a tow truck and then announces he has to pee and starts to urinate right were he stands.

Trapped in a small town, they spend the night in a small hotel room and share a bed where Sam farts in his sleep and Ben continues to be annoyed. The next day at the car repair shop they find out that it will take a long time to fix the car, and since there are no cars for rent nearby, they have to find some other arrangement. Just then, Sam sees a 1940 Ford Deluxe, which happens to be the same car he always wanted when he was younger. In an uncharacteristic movie, Sam decides to buy it and take his son on a road trip to make up for all the things they never got to do together in the past. The journey begins where father and son become reacquainted with each other, and learn a little more about them selves in the meantime.

In scenes that are almost uncomfortably familiar to real life father-son relationships, the two hang out, stop for fresh peaches, go fishing, catch a local baseball game, and have a great time making up for all the time they have lost. A night on the town of drinking and dancing ends in emotional outbursts on both ends, and ends with a rekindling of the bond that faded years ago. Sharing a few moments of comfortable companionship, they pass out contently on the ground in a forest under the stars and wake up the next morning to find the news that Muriel has been found.

While the film is pulling to an end, the story comes full circle by resolving all the emotions from the past and leaving us with some hard learned lessons. As Muriel (Olympia Dukakis) says when questioned by Ben about the old letter, "Don't believe everything you read. Maybe I meant it though. People change... people don't change, they change their expectations."

So take Muriel's advice and don't believe everything you read. Instead, call your dad and invite him to go see THE THING ABOUT MY FOLKS in a theater near you on October 16th, and while you're at it, pay for the tickets. You'll laugh, you'll cringe... it'll be good for you.

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Saturday, September 10, 2005
By Lisa Bernhard

"The Thing About My Folks"

Next Friday, look for the sweet and poignant film "The Thing About My Folks," written by and starring Paul Reiser, with Peter Falk.

It's a father/son road trip tale with Falk playing Reiser's dad.

I had both actors come into the studio recently — look for their full interview on-air and on the Web next week (with extra tidbits for FOXNews.com readers).  Until then, a morsel from our chat...

I had both actors come into the studio recently — look for their full interview on-air and on the Web next week (with extra tidbits for FOXNews.com readers). Until then, a morsel from our chat….

Falk, who turns 79 on Sept. 16, the movie’s opening day, said he’s gearing up for yet another turn in the trenchcoat as Columbo.

Falk: We got two "Columbo" scripts. Small problem: I like one better than the other one. And the other one, the network likes better than the one I like.

Reiser: (Smiling) I have money on which one I think is gonna get made. [To Falk] So this guy never retires, Columbo? There's always something, huh?  He’s 142, "Ehhh ... one more thing ..."

Peter: (Laughing) That's right. They’ll be two guys pushing him up the stairs.

Folks came out of the woodwork here at FOX News to meet Falk and ask him about Columbo.  Said Reiser, “It’s like being with the Pope, although Peter curses more — at least I hope he does.”

 

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Peter Falk and ABC disagree over future 'Columbo' scripts UPI News Service, 09/01/2005   It's been three years since ABC TV last aired a fresh "Columbo" adventure and star Peter Falk says the wait is not yet over. "There's a bit of a problem," the actor told TVGuide.com. "The script that I like, the network doesn't like. The script that they like, I don't like." Viewers haven't seen the rumpled detective solve a mystery since "Columbo Likes the Nightlife" in 2003. Falk did not reveal what his preferred follow-up would be, but said ABC wants Columbo's next case to involve lingerie models, TVGuide.com reported. The actor hasn't been sitting at home waiting for ABC, however.  In his latest theatrical film, Falk plays Paul Reiser's dad in "The Thing About My Folks," which opens in U.S. theaters Sept. 16.

One-of-a-kind Falk Frets Over One-of-a-Kind Actress

Liz Smith - September 7, 2005

"SHE'S A one-of-a-kind person. And I'm always nervous around one-of-a-kind people. I always feel I won't make a good impression." That's Peter Falk talking about Olympia Dukakis, with whom he shares poignant scenes in the film The Thing About My Folks, opening Sept. 16.

I met with the fabled Columbo star in the dining room of the Regency Hotel.  Peter made a fine impression with his deep tan, a thick thatch of salt and pepper hair. He wore a beautiful, very California-ish floral linen shirt. He accepted my compliment but said, "It's the wife. She has the taste. She dresses me." ("The wife" is Shera Danese, his spouse of more than 20 years.)

Falk was here promoting his new film, written by and co-starring Paul Reiser. It's a father-son bonding tale.  After 47 years of marriage, Falk's wife (Dukakis) puts a note on the refrigerator saying she's leaving him to "find" herself. Her son (Reiser) also discovers a note his mother wrote 40 years previously in which she expresses a terrible dissatisfaction with her life. The notes trigger a journey -- trying to track the wandering wife, and a much needed, at least for Reiser's character -- discussion with his dad.

What prompted Falk's participation? "Well, it was a great script. Paul is a wonderful writer. ... But, to be honest, it wasn't the script, really. Paul told me a story about visiting his own father and how his father was watching me in something, and obviously enjoying it, and he remembered his father's pleasure in that moment, and that was the reason he wanted me! Come on, that is the most delightful reason I've ever been offered a role."

Peter Falk is a big charmer and very similar to his famous character.  He's very sharp but seems in a bit of a jumble, he starts and stops sentences, jumps from one thing to another and then back again with a new clarity.  It would take a better writer than I to convey his very appealing speech pattern.

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Actor Peter Falk Returns To Ossining For Street Naming

OSSINING. N.Y. - 11:15 am EDT August 31, 2005

Actor Peter Falk returned to his boyhood town of Ossining for a ceremony to rename a street after him.

Prospect Avenue in Ossining was officially designated Peter Falk Place in honor of the actor who grew up on the quiet residential street more than 60 years ago.

Falk told the crowd of well-wishers at the street-naming ceremony Tuesday that he carries Ossining in his memory decades after he left the town where his parents ran a dry-goods store on Main Street.

Falk unveiled the street sign by pulling off an old raincoat. He then signed and dated the raincoat for display at the Ossining Historical Society. The coat is part of the disheveled look Falk adopted when he became "Columbo", the police lieutenant who always catches the bad guy.

Residents who knew Falk when he was an irreverent young prankster and member of the Ossining High School class of 1945 called it a typical performance.

The house where Falk spent his childhood still stands. His mother, Madeline Falk, held card parties there. His father, Michael Falk, rose before dawn to open his store at 5 a.m.
 

THE JOURNAL NEWS
"Columbo" Comes Home Again

By KATHY MOORE
August 30, 2005

Ossining N.Y. — Actor Peter Falk is expected to return to his hometown this afternoon to have the street where he grew up — Prospect Avenue — renamed in his honor.

Falk, who made the the rumbled raincoat, strung-out questions and investigative genius of Lt. Columbo part of TV legend, spent his childhood and teen-age years in Ossining. He graduated in 1945 from Ossining High School where he was an avid athlete and president of his senior class. His parents operated a mom-and-pop clothing store on Main Street.

Falk, 76, is about to release his latest film "The Thing About My Folks" which co-stars Paul Reiser, and follows a father and son on an impromptu road trip through upstate New York. Reiser, who wrote the screenplay, created the part of the father specifically for Falk, according to the movie's Web site.

The street renaming is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at the corner of Prospect and Clinton Street.

Columbo's Grandfatherly Tale Is a Grabber  

By KEN BECK
Staff Writer

Peter Falk reaches out and grabs you.  At 76, the actor is going strong with no sign of slowing down.

In TNT's adventurous drama "Wilder Days," he stars as a colorful storyteller and grandfather, and it's a great ride for the whole family.

''I'm like everybody else; I'm a sucker for a good story,'' Falk says of the script's appeal. ''I play a grandfather, 'Pop Up,' one of history's great storytellers. His stories grab you early. You sit there, your mouth is open, and at the end, you're either laughing or gasping. For an actor, they're terrific stories because I'm not worried if the people are going to go have a sandwich or fall asleep or turn me off, because the story is doing the work for me.''

Falk's character, Pop Up Morse, wasn't much of a father to his own son, played by Tim Daly (Wings), as he chased his dreams of publishing hand-made children's pop-up books. His son became a workaholic who had no time to listen to his father's fanciful tales, but his grandson is especially enchanted by the tale of a circus boat that wrecked years ago.   After heart problems land Pop Up in a retirement home, he and his 11-year-old grandson break out of the joint and hit the open road in a 1959 baby blue Cadillac Eldorado, and Daly tries to chase them down.

Falk munched French fries during our recent phone interview from Los Angeles. He talks with gusto and his conversation takes random jumps to various subjects without warning. The man famous as a movie star and TV's Lt. Columbo said he had been lucky with child actors.

''I did three things with kids. I did "A Storm in Summer," which maybe was written by Rod Serling. I did "Princess Bride," which I think is a picture without a blemish; in that I tell a story to a kid. . . . That kid (Fred Savage), he was a fantastic kid, just like the kid in this (Josh Hutcherson).

''This kid had a skateboard on the set. As soon as the shoot was over, he'd run to his skateboard. He can imitate everybody. He could imitate the director, and when I wasn't looking, he was imitating me. I love this kid.''

Falk really enjoyed driving the classy Caddy ragtop in Wilder Days.  ''Isn't that car something? That car is like another character. When I saw it, my mouth opened. I don't remember seeing one like that.''

And he gets a few seconds in the movie to do the tango. ''Talk about why do you like a part. When I got to that scene where grandfather says to the kid, 'I got to go outside in the parking lot for a little while. If you can find a waitress in this diner that can tango, I'll buy you any dessert on the menu.' ''

Falk talks about the scene with relish, but when asked if he is a good dancer, he replies with a laugh, ''The worst.''

What made him go with a goatee in his grandfatherly role?  ''I think because . . . in my eyes I'm so young and vigorous and healthy. I guess I wanted to look a little older and I wanted to look a little bit more eccentric.''

Falk, who has two daughters, is a grandfather in real life; they're 3 and 1½ years old.

He says dozens of scripts come his way every year, but he's looking for two things: ''One, is it believable? And two, does it grab you? It can be believable but boring, so it's got to grab you. The part has got to grab me, and I've got to feel it's going to grab the audience.''

Falk, who is also an artist, draws every Sunday. It's a passion he began around 1970. He tells about it in a book he just wrote.  ''It's not an autobiography. The title will either be When You're Smiling or Just One More Thing. This book is going to be like short chapters that you can read in five minutes. In this book, I talk about how I became an artist.''

The five-time Emmy winner for his detective says the next Columbo TV movie is in the planning stage.  ''It's coming, we're trying to write the script. They're hard. They're not so hard if you're cheap.''

 

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Talk with Falk Versatile Actor Peter Falk Returns to His Role as the Legendary Cigar Smoking Sleuth, Columbo By Arthur Marx There are people who'd sell their mother down the river for a box of genuine Cuban cigars (or maybe even a half a box), and then there is Peter Falk, the self-effacing, soft-spoken, cigar smoking star of the ever-popular TV detective series "Columbo," who confides, "I'll smoke anything anybody gives me. I'm not particular. On 'Columbo' I smoke the cheapest cigars you can buy. They come six to a pack.  "I love the smell of cigar smoke," continues Falk, who finally quit smoking cigarettes a couple years ago. "I remember Joe Mantegna inviting me to a party at this restaurant on Beverly Boulevard that Jack Nicholson owned. I think it was called the Monkey Bar, and it was also part cigar club. Well, when I walked in there, there was such a thick cloud of cigar smoke that you could hardly see across the room. I got hit by that great smoke. Oh, it was heaven. It reminded me of the old Madison Square Square Garden or my days in the pool room when I was a kid growing up in Ossining, New York. You just don't find many public places today where you can go and fill your lungs and nostrils with delicious second hand smoke. "Once I went to a party Dabney Coleman was throwing for his daughter, who had just got married. Well, a guy there took out a Cuban cigar and handed it to me. I thanked him and eagerly lit it up. I was so eager I didn't even bother to get out my cigarette lighter. I just grabbed the candle on the table where my wife and I were sitting and used that. Well, the first couple of puffs were heaven. And then suddenly the whole 25-buck cigar went up in flames that got bigger and bigger. I said, 'What is this--Halloween?' I thought it was a trick someone was playing on me. I nearly burnt the joint down before I could put it out. At that point I couldn't see what was so great about a Cuban cigar. And then it dawned on me what had happened. I'd gotten wax from the candle all over the cigar when I was lighting it. That's what turned it into an incendiary missile from Havana." Falk laughs and, cocking his head to one side in his inimitable Columbo fashion, adds, "I guess the point of all this is that as much as I like to smoke them, the affection and the care that real cigar smokers heap upon their stogies is something that is absent with me." Falk enjoys smoking cigars so much that the plot of "Columbo: A Trace of Murder," was built around cigar smokers. "The fellow who gets killed doesn't smoke cigars; the fellow that they're framing does smoke cigars. Who's framing him? The wife, or the man she's having an affair with? Now Columbo goes to the murder scene. So does the man who's having an affair with the wife; he's the forensic expert on the case. So the forensic guy is the one involved in framing her husband, who he and the wife are trying to get rid of so they can live happily ever after. Or should it be 'whom'? Well, who the hell cares about good grammar in such a suspenseful situation?" He interrupts himself with a laugh. "One of the ways they frame him is to leave a piece of the kind of cigar that he smokes at the scene of the murder. This cigar is an expensive one. It's made of a very distinctive kind of Havana tobacco leaf, and it becomes an important piece of evidence." Peter Falk was born in Manhattan on Sept. 16, 1927, to Michael and Madeline Falk. Later the family moved to the Bronx, and when Falk was around 6, they settled in Ossining, on the Hudson River, a hamlet better known for the presence of Sing Sing Penitentiary than for being the childhood home of the future Lieutenant Columbo. Falk's mother is Russian and his father was Polish, with a mix of Hungarian and Czech further back in their ancestry. So, contrary to Falk's public image, he is not an Italian but a mixture of very hardy Eastern European stock. In Ossining, Michael and Madeline made a fairly good living running a dry goods store. Because of its proximity to Sing Sing, Ossining benefited from the traffic going to and from the penitentiary and therefore was more prosperous than many small towns during the Great Depression years. But the Falks had more serious problems than trying to make a living in those days. "When I was three years old, I was attending a pre-kindergarten school, in the Bronx," Falk recalls. "Because my mom was working in my father's store, there was no one at home to take care of me, so I attended one of those day-care places. One day my teacher called my mother in and told her that I ought to have my eyes examined, because I was always cocking my head to one side when I was attempting to look at something. So my mom took me to a doctor, who examined me and found a malignancy in my right eye. He took her aside and told her that I'd have to have the eye taken out right away. So like in a day or two, they checked me into the hospital. I remember standing in front of an open elevator door with my mother and the doctor in the hospital. I wasn't quite sure what was happening to me. Suddenly Mom said to me, 'You just get in the elevator, son. I have to go back to your room and get my purse.' Then the doctor took my hand and walked me into the elevator. I remember telling him, 'Just hold on a minute. My mother went to get her purse. She'll be right here.' "The next thing I knew I was asleep, and it was all over." Pretty traumatic for a three-year-old to wake up and find he had only one eye. "Another memory I have of that period is of me and my mother standing in front of a store window, looking at eye patches. I wore one in the beginning, but after I was a little older they gave me a glass eye. Glass eyes aren't as practical as the plastic ones that came in a little later. In hot weather the glass eye used to stick. I remember being told to take it out every night and put it in a glass of water. Sometimes I did, and sometimes I got careless and just put it on the table next to my bed. After a while the glass eye starts getting scratched, and it has to be replaced if you don't want to look like you have a terrible hangover. But the plastic eye is much lighter, and more comfortable." Falk admits that in the beginning he was terribly self-conscious about having a glass eye, and dreaded the moment when someone would ask him about it. "But then there's that time when you finally realize that no one gives a shit whether you have one eye or two. What helped me was knocking around doing sports with the guys." Falk participated in most of the team sports in school, baseball and basketball in particular. He was good at both games in spite of his handicap, once he got over his self-consciousness. "I remember once in high school the umpire called me out at third base when I was sure I was safe. 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." In spite of his size, the five-foot-nine Falk also made the town basketball team, which during the season went up against the Sing Sing team, inside the prison. "Because of my eye I wasn't a very good shooter, but because of my size I was fast as hell and that's why they used me. But the inmates were too tough for us. We got our ass beaten by them. I remember one inmate who was a terrific player. His name was Piggy Sands. He was in for life. But he sure could play basketball." During his senior year, Falk received his first taste of acting (except for an appearance in a summer camp play several years before) when he filled in for a fellow student who had fallen sick two days before the performance. Ironically, he played a detective, taking the stage in the third act. Although he was a good student, Falk had no idea of what he wanted to do when he got out of high school in 1945. The one way of making a living that never crossed his mind was becoming an actor. "In Ossining when I was growing up, I put my time in on the street corner, or in the pool room, and I liked sports but of course could never play any of them professionally because of my one eye. But I would have been embarrassed to tell any of my friends that I had any idea of being an actor. My conception of being an actor was very naive and very romantic. I thought actors were some rare species. I thought they were artists, and I thought artists were Europeans. I thought they were from Europe, because I never saw any actors where I came from." In the summer of 1945, Falk enrolled in Hamilton College in upstate New York. "I thought college was going to be like high school, where I never worked too hard to get by. I loved everything about high school and I thought college would be the same. But when I got up there, I was in for a shock. No women. Small population because of the war. And half of the guys were veterans who had been in the war and were up there studying. They were very serious, so it was no fun there. And as I said, no girls. I only stayed about a month. So I thought I'd see if I could get in one of the [armed] services. The war was on its last legs, but it wasn't quite over." Falk laughs as he remembers trying to join the Marines. A pharmacist's mate was giving the eye test, but according to Falk, he wasn't very sharp. "He never noticed that I covered my false eye twice and read the chart 20/20 both times with my good eye. I thought I was in, but suddenly the doctor in the next cubicle looked over and said to the pharmacist, 'You dumb cluck, can't you see he's tricking you?' " With that, the doctor took over the examination and, of course, discovered Falk's glass eye. Three months later, having been rejected by the armed services, he joined the Merchant Marine. "There they don't care if you're blind or not," says Falk. "The only one on a ship who has to see is the captain. And in the case of the Titanic, he couldn't see very well, either." After he was assigned to a ship, Falk walked into the sleeping quarters, which were empty, "except for a big fat guy named Joe, who was sitting in the upper bunk across from mine. I don't know what got into me, but for some reason I decided to play a joke on him. So when he asked me how come a young kid like myself was in the Merchant Marine, I told him I had a slight physical problem. With that, I sat down in my bunk and took out my two front teeth--at that time I had a bridge on my upper front teeth. Anyway, I took it out and laid it on the bench in front of my bunk. Then I reached in and took out my eye and dropped it on the bench next to my teeth. It made a nice sound effect. As Joe was doing a double take, I then bent over and with both of my hands pretended to be twisting my leg, as if I had a false leg, which I was unscrewing to take off. Suddenly Joe's face went white, and he leaped off his bunk and said, 'I'm going out on deck for a while.' " Harking back to his formative years, Falk says, "There's a time when you're young when you're very sensitive about things like a false eye. But once you get older you realize you can get a laugh with it. Now it's second nature to me. I mean, if somebody asks me which eye is the bad one, I have to stop and think about it." After a year and a half in the Merchant Marine, Falk returned to Hamilton College, where he stayed for two years, except for the summer in between at the University of Wisconsin. He then transferred to the New School for Social Research in New York City, after which he fell in love with a girl and followed her to Paris. The two bummed around Europe for a few months and wound up, after the border opened, behind the Iron Curtain in Yugoslavia, where Falk stayed for six months, supporting himself by working on a railroad for the Tito government, and, finally, succeeded in getting himself arrested over a minor incident involving currency that a restaurant wouldn't accept. After he was released, Falk returned to New York, thinking, "Jesus Christ. I'm 26 years old. I'd better do something about earning a living." Whereupon he enrolled in Syracuse University. It was at Syracuse where Falk met his first wife, Alyce Mayo. He married her five years later, in 1958. The couple eventually adopted and raised two daughters, Jackie and Catherine. Alyce and Peter were divorced in 1976 but remain friendly. Prior to enrolling at Syracuse, Falk received a bachelor's degree in literature and political science from the New School around 1950. He then earned a master's degree in public administration from Syracuse, which enabled him to land a job as an efficiency expert in Hartford for the state of Connecticut. "I was such an efficiency expert that the first morning on the job, I couldn't find the building where I was to report for work," he recalls. "Naturally, I was late, which I always was in those days, but ironically it was my tendency never to be on time that got me started as a professional actor." While he was working in Hartford, Falk got a hankering to start acting again. He'd had some experience fooling around in amateur productions, starting in high school and into his college days. So he joined a community theater group in Hartford called the Mark Twain Masquers, where he was paid nothing but acquired a lot of experience. "I did one play after another--The Caine Mutiny, The Crucible, The Country Girl...in fact, you name it, I did it. "While I was with the Masquers, I learned that France's first lady of the theater, Eva La Gallienne, was giving an acting class for professionals at the White Barn Theater in Westport, Connecticut. La Gallienne was internationally famous, with a reputation as an actress that was right up there with Helen Hayes, Judith Anderson and the other important ladies of the theater. "Westport was about two hours from Hartford, but I decided I'd like to see what it would be like to be working with professionals, so I drove down, and somehow lied my way into the group, which met every Wednesday. But I was always late because of the long drive down from Hartford. So I went to my boss--I had a vacation coming--and told him I didn't want a vacation. I just wanted him to let me off every Wednesday afternoon early. He said OK, but I was still always late because of the traffic. And my car, which was always breaking down. "Now Eva La Gallienne was a very formidable woman, in keeping with her worldwide reputation, and she had very little patience with excuses. One evening when I arrived late, she looked at me and asked, 'Young man, why are you always late?' and I said, 'I have to drive down from Hartford.'" She looked down her nose and said, "What do you do in Hartford? There's no theater there. How do you make a living acting?" Falk then had to confess that he wasn't a professional actor at all. Whereupon she looked at him sternly and said, "Well, you should be." That was all the aspiring actor needed to hear. He drove back to Hartford, and the next morning told his boss he was quitting. Falk stayed with the La Gallienne group for a few months--just long enough to get a letter of recommendation from the renowned actress to a theatrical agent at the William Morris Talent Agency in New York. "I don't remember his name," recalls Falk. "But I do remember that about three minutes into our meeting he told me, 'You know, son, you could never do television or the movies.' Now, I didn't know what he was talking about. It never occurred to me that he was talking about my eye, because it had become so natural with me to only have one eye. But aside from that, I didn't know what he meant. Whoever expected to be in the movies and go to Hollywood, anyway? I just wanted to be a stage actor. My goal was just to get into The Actors' Studio. That would have made me happy. And if my expectations went beyond that, I would have said, 'If I could just once be on Broadway, if I could walk into a bar and there were other actors there, and they would know that I was also an actor, and that I was making a living as an actor, that would be all I asked of life.' And television at the time--it was around 1952--was just starting, and who expected to get into that? So when this agent said that to me, I said, 'I just want to be on the stage.'" The agent was sufficiently impressed with La Gallienne's letter that he managed to get Falk a small Off-Broadway role in the American premiere of Moliere's Don Juan. "They weren't paying anything. So lots of time you'd go to rehearsal and people wouldn't show up. So the director would say to me, 'You take that part.' So I got a bigger part. They kept firing the Don Juans. And they also kept firing the directors. But there was one person who showed up every week. That was me. So by the time we were about two weeks from opening night, I had the second lead. I remember that George Segal had a small part in that production, too. I remember his costume. He wore blue satin knickers and black shoes with silver buckles. And I wore the same. I said to George, 'What the hell are we doing in these ridiculous outfits?' "The last director they brought in was a Method director, from The Actors' Studio. He said to the cast, 'The trouble with this play is that everybody's posturing. You have to stop acting and just say the lines straight. No accent. If I catch you acting, I'll fire you.' "So that's how it was done opening night, which also was closing night." Falk will never forget the review he got from The New York Times critic Walter Kerr, who was considered the dean of Broadway critics. Kerr's opening line read: "Peter Falk got the evening off to a wonderfully paralyzed start, with 10 minutes of totally unaccented exposition." Falk claims he wasn't particularly upset by Kerr's review, because "I can be completely objective about things I'm in. I knew from the start it was a bomb." Despite this unpromising start, Falk, with the help of the William Morris agency, continued to pick up minor roles in Broadway and Off-Broadway productions until he finally made a name for himself as the bartender in the 1956 Off-Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. Falk has to chuckle as he recalls an interview in the mid-1950s that he and an agent had at Columbia Pictures with movie mogul Harry Cohn. Though Falk had come highly recommended by a Columbia scout ("the next John Garfield"), Cohn wasn't sold. "Then he said something I didn't understand," Falks recalls. "[He said,] 'Young man, I'm concerned about your deficiency.' I had no idea what he was referring to. After a couple of passes, he put it into words: 'Your eye, young man, your eye. I'm concerned about your eye.' " Falk replied that it was nothing to be concerned about, but Cohn wanted a screen test, which Falk felt was unnecessary. "Cohn ended the conversation: 'Mr. Falk, for the same price, I'll get an actor with two eyes.' P.S.: I took the screen test and flunked." After that minor setback, Falk cemented his reputation by appearing in a number of Broadway productions in the late 1950s--Saint Joan, Diary of a Scoundrel, The Lady's Not for Burning, Bonds of Interest and The Passion of Josef D. In 1960, Falk was offered the role of a vicious killer in a low-budget gangster film, Murder, Inc., with May Britt and Stuart Whitman. He was hired out of New York, where the picture was filmed, because the producers were too cheap to transport actors from Hollywood, and they wanted to take advantage of the New York background. Falk's appearance as Abe Reles, the syndicate's top killer (who, not incidentally, was a cigar smoker) turned out to be one of the major turning points in his life, for it led to his nomination for an Oscar for best supporting actor at the 1961 Academy Awards. "It all began on a rainy afternoon in a bar in Greenwich Village," Falk recalls. "I was sitting with Ben Gazzara and Sal Mineo. I had been knocking around Off-Broadway but [Murder, Inc.] had just come out and I got splashy reviews. Sal said, 'You should campaign for an Academy Award.' What's that? I didn't know there was such a thing. Sal said it was true--you take out ads; it had been going on for years. Sal had been a kid actor in Hollywood, so I believed him, but it sounded far-fetched. Hollywood, Academy Awards, Ingrid Bergman--that was another world. Sal was just being nice, but I couldn't take it seriously. "That same year, 1960, I got a gig on 'The Untouchables.' My first trip to Hollywood. Abe Lastfogel, a legendary agent and head of William Morris, called me into his office and said, 'You should campaign for an Academy Award.' I said, 'That's what Sal Mineo said.' He said, 'Well, do it!' [I said,] 'What do I do?' [He replied,] 'Take out ads, hire a press agent, spend money.' That's what I did, and what do you know--I got nominated. "Now we're in our Volkswagen [Falk and his wife, Alyce] and we're headed to the Academy Awards. 'What do you think of my chances?' I asked. She answers, 'You'll be lucky if they don't take back the nomination.' "Now we're in our seats; the press agent, Judd Bernard, is seated on my right. It's my category and I heard a voice say, 'And the winner is Peter...' I'm rising out of my seat. '...Ustinov.' I'm heading back down. When I hit the seat, I turn to the press agent: 'You're fired.' I didn't want him charging me for another day." Nevertheless, the nomination was a coup for Falk. He repeated the feat the following year, when he was nominated for best supporting actor in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles, which starred Bette Davis and Glenn Ford. Again he didn't win, but it was the start of a long and illustrious Hollywood career in films and television. In 1961 he won an Emmy for his portrayal of a truck driver in the TV play The Price of Tomatoes. With two Oscar nominations and an Emmy in two years, the previously little-known New York stage actor asked all his friends, "How long has this been going on?" But in 1962, Falk made what was to many a strange choice for his third film--a movie shot in the Soviet Union. "It wasn't the script, that's for sure. And it wasn't, I should add, that I was a Communist. The truth is, I was curious." The filming got off to a shaky start; the Italian director refused to use Falk in the role. "They hired me off an 8x10 glossy. They thought they were getting Sal Mineo. That's the God's truth. The director got what he wanted--a 'bambino' "--and Falk got another role. Since then, Falk's film credits have ranged from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and the Neil Simon comedies Murder by Death (1976) and The Cheap Detective (1978) to Husbands (1970) and A Woman Under the Influence (1976), a pair of low-budget but powerful films done with his longtime friend, the late actor-director John Cassavetes, and many other films, but it was his appearance as Lieutenant Columbo in a 1968 TV movie of the week, Prescription: Murder, however, that led to Falk's biggest success and worldwide fame as the cigar smoking, raincoat-clad detective. "Columbo" was never intended to be a series. Falk was just a character in a movie of the week that happened to garner a big rating. "When the network people came to me and said they thought we should make a weekly series of the character, I said no way," says Falk. "It's too difficult to come up with a good story week after week. It can't be done. So they went away, and the next year they came back to me with the same idea. And again I nixed it, and for the same reason. "But the third year they came to me with a way they believed it could be done. It would be a Sunday night detective series in which I would do eight a season, Rock Hudson would do eight [as a police commissioner on "McMillan and Wife"] and a third actor [Dennis Weaver, who played a deputy marshal on "McCloud"] would do another eight. That way the strain wouldn't be too hard on anybody, but especially the writers. So I said OK and they scheduled it for the 1971 season." While now it seems almost inconceivable that anyone but Falk could have portrayed Lieutenant Columbo, the role was initially offered to Bing Crosby, who reportedly declined because the series would interfere with his golf game. Lee J. Cobb was also considered for the part. Between 1968 and 1971, when the first show of the "Columbo" series was aired on NBC, Falk stayed busy. After Prescription: Murder, he appeared in the films Anzio, Castle Keep, Machine Gun McCain, A Step Out of Line, Husbands and Operation Snafu. None was terribly memorable, except for Husbands, which was directed by Cassavetes and costarred Falk and Ben Gazzara. Falk did, however, score a major success on Broadway in 1970, when he garnered excellent reviews as the lead in Neil Simon's Prisoner of Second Avenue. "Working with Doc Simon was such a joy," recalls Falk. "You can always count on those laughs when you show up on the stage. I'm thinking of putting Doc in my will." Falk had to step out of Prisoner after a season, for he had already committed to the "Columbo" series, which debuted in the fall of 1971. The first episode was called "Ransom for a Dead Man," and it was an immediate hit. The series ran until the 1977-78 season and earned Falk five Emmy Awards for best actor in a dramatic series. "People often ask me why the series was such a success," Falk says. "Was it me or the concept? Personally, I think it was the character of Columbo. But I don't think you could separate it out. I mean, point to any one thing. The character or the story or the fact that it was a mystery. But I think the hub of it starts with the character. That's the heart of it, the soul of it. "People like somebody they can identify with. A man or person not above them. So I think they identify with the common aspects of Columbo. I mean, he's like everybody--one of us. But at the same time people have always been attracted to heroes, people who are bigger than life, exceptional. In some ways, Columbo is both." Falk recalls actress and screenwriter Elaine May saying that his character was an "ass-backwards" Sherlock Holmes. "Holmes was smart, but he was an aristocrat. Columbo was just like everyone who walks the streets. Dirty raincoat, a dog, a wife. Not much money. On the other hand, there's something exceptional about the way his mind works. Also, he's human. He's interested in what ordinary people are interested in. The price of clothes, for example. 'What did you pay for that handbag?' he asks a rich suspect. 'I'd like to buy one of those for my wife. Her birthday's coming up, but I don't think I can afford it. You wouldn't know where I could buy something like that for about half the price?' And for a cop he's very offbeat. He hates noise, the sound of gun shots; he hates violence, unlike today's 'action heroes' in films, who thrive on one huge explosion after another." Finally, says Falk, the clues were good, the murders were clever and the twists at the end were delicious. And then there were the cigars. "I don't remember at this late date whose idea it was for me to smoke a cigar on the series. It was probably mine, since I enjoyed smoking so much and cigars looked like a much more macho smoke for a detective than cigarettes. I do know I came up with my outfit--the beat-up raincoat and worn-out brown shoes," he says. He also remembers who was responsible for the dog on the series. "Second season of 'Columbo,' Nick Cavasanto, the director, comes to me and says, 'I think you ought to have a dog on the series.' I said, 'Nick, there's not going to be any dogs. I've got the raincoat, I've got the cigar and I've got the car. That's enough. We're reaching.' He says, 'OK.' "Next day I come in, I'm wandering around, looking at the sets when I bump into Nick. He says to me, 'Come in and look at the doctor set.' I go in, and lying on the table is this dachshund. It's a huge lump. It's just laying there. It's about a thousand years old. It could hardly walk. Now, I thought, if they were gonna use a dog, they were going to pick some frisky, cute little thing. So I said, 'That's the dog you want?' He nodded, and I said, 'You got it.' "The problem with having a dog is they don't live long enough. The first dog we used was in '71, and he was very old. He passed away in '73 and his replacement was much younger. "I never took much time in makeup; a glance in the mirror on the way to the john--that's it. If you're playing Columbo, who cares what you look like, as long as you look bad. So I'm ready fast, but we couldn't shoot. We had to wait for the dog. He was in makeup--sitting in a chair, munching dog bones while they applied the clown white to make him look older. Thirty minutes shot to hell." In real life, Falk and his wife Shera Danese, have several dogs-- all rescued from an animal shelter-- and all of whom sleep in the bedroom with them in their eight-room Beverly Hills home. Danese, an actress, played the female lead in "A Trace of Murder." Vivacious and full of life, Danese "loves to dress up, and go dancing," according to Falk. "She's great at parties. Me, I hate parties and dressing up. When I was young, I thought the only reason to go to a party was to pick up a girl. But after you're married, I just never knew what a party was for. "Personally, I'd rather stay home and practice my hobby. I draw naked women," he confides with a sly smile. "I work in charcoal. I draw them with their hair up, sometimes with their hair down. I have a number of models who pose naked for me whenever I ask. How'd I get into such an exotic hobby? Well, I'll tell you. One day I wandered into the Art Students League of New York, and there was a naked woman on a platform with a light on her. That was good enough for me. I said I'd be there every day, and I was. I appreciate the female form. The human body is a fantastic thing. I can't draw landscapes or boats." Falk has set up an art studio in his garage. "I get obsessed and can go on drawing for 12 or 13 hours at a time. Shera has a great sense of humor about it. I don't know how she feels about my models, but about my work she says, 'You're not going to bring that crap into the house, are you?' " Today, Falk is famous around the globe--way beyond his headiest expectations--but he believes that fame is "overrated. The best part about it is the money--you don't have to worry about it, like when you're first starting out." He sighs and settles back on his comfortable couch. "I'm lucky. I don't like to boast, but today I've got a lot of dough." Falk tries to keep in shape by playing golf whenever he has the chance. He has a 14 handicap and finds that having one eye is not much of a hindrance in the group with whom he plays. "The way most people play golf," he says, "it doesn't make much of a difference whether they have one eye or two." Asked how he feels about getting old, Falk responds with the same laid-back attitude you'd expect to come from Lieutenant Columbo: "No, I'm not surprised. What did you think was going to happen? The way I look at it, it's the best of two alternatives."  Arthur Marx is the author of three books and two plays about his father, Groucho.

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