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Oct. 7, 2005
Giving parenthood a voice
Paul Reiser turns fascination with relationships into movie.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
It has been a dozen years since Paul Reiser first entered the public
consciousness, as Paul Buchman in the hit sitcom Mad About You.
Reiser and Helen Hunt starred as New York newlyweds fumbling their
way through married life. But long before that character ever emerged,
Reiser had a higher aim: to write a movie based on his relationship
with his father.
"I think that all of that stuff [the TV show and the successful
books he's since published on marriage and parenting] was really
trying to get to this," said Reiser, in a recent interview
with the Independent. "The reason I've been interested
in relationships and so on is because I've always wondered about
my parents' relationship: how do you become those people?
"It's hard for us to realize that parents aren't born as parents,
that before they were the couple that you see, before they were
70-year-olds falling asleep watching the news together, they used
to be 20. They didn't wake up magically and were old but, day by
day, you become those people, and what happens and what compromises
get made and what goes unspoken over those years."
It was the birth of his own children, said Reiser, that helped him
understand what he was trying to say in his screenplay. The resulting
production, The Thing About My Folks, is playing at this
year's Vancouver International Film Festival. Reiser's father in
the movie is played by Peter Falk of Columbo fame.
"I grew up loving his movies," said Reiser. "I carried
his voice around in my head. When I sat down to write it, it was
so fun to picture him saying things, because he has this great,
unique way of talking; things that aren't funny are funny when Peter
Falk says them.
"I had the idea of Peter Falk before I had the idea of the
movie. I was visiting my parents about 20 years ago and my father
had the TV on, and he happened to be watching a Peter Falk movie
and he was just really chuckling – it hit me that not many
people make him laugh the way Peter Falk did. So the idea was, I
gotta make a movie where Peter Falk plays my father."
Falk shines in the movie as a quirky curmudgeon who arrives on his
son's doorstep after his wife leaves him. Father and son take a
road trip together (one that includes fishing, classic cars and
girls in bars) and begin to learn about and appreciate each other.
It's a comedy with an underlying emotional edge. Really, said Reiser,
it's about the way men interact with and perceive women.
"I always knew guys would love this movie," he said, "because
it's a father-son ... it's sort of the fantasy that most of us don't
get to have, and women are loving it because they're getting to
see guys getting emotional and guys talk[ing] about women. It's
funny, people leave the theatre and they say, 'I want to come back
with my parents,' 'I want to come back with my wife.' But women,
there's an extra little intensity in their voice, they say, 'Oh,
my husband is going to see this movie.'"
Although it's been playing well to Jewish audiences in the United
States, Reiser insists that The Thing About My Folks is "not
a Jewish movie" – other than the fact it's about a Jewish
family. He will admit to certain Yiddish sentence structures –
for instance, when Peter Falk announces, "A new car, you can
always get."
"I realize now," Reiser deadpanned, "that's not a
Scottish man talking."
He grew up in a New York family that was largely culturally Jewish
and confesses to having limited Yiddish skills himself.
"I can actually nod in Yiddish," he said. "If somebody's
talking Yiddish, I can nod in the appropriate places and raise an
eyebrow – so it only works in an elevator. I couldn't do it
on the phone. But if I was in an elevator, you'd swear I was actually
speaking it."
Although the storyline of The Thing About My Folks is fictional,
Reiser based many of the situations – and in fact lifted dialogue
verbatim – from conversations he actually had with his parents.
And, like Falk's character, Reiser's father had a peculiar obsession
with talcum powder.
"My dad, I wouldn't say he was an addict, but he certainly
enjoyed the talcum products," said Reiser. "He was a regular-sized
guy, but there'd be an 18-foot arc of powder on the floor. He would
miss himself by six or seven feet."
Reiser describes the end product as a "PG 35" film –
one that will appeal to adults regardless of religion, gender, nationality
or geography. "Everywhere I go, people say, 'that's my family,'
" he said. "It's a funny road picture, but what people
end up leaving with is so much more. I love the fact that it's both
serious and emotional, and when people leave they want to go call
their parents and hug their kids."
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