Film Comment Selects Presents
An Evening with Charles Grodin
Screening of Midnight Run followed by an onstage conversation
Wed Dec 13: 6pm
Admission: $15 FSLC members, $20 general public
How dry do you like your humor? If the answer is "extra," then Charles Grodin is your man. Few comic actors have ever had as light a touch as Grodin, and he has managed to create quite a collection of memorable characters during his half-century-plus in show business: the honeymooner smitten with Cybill Shepherd’s shiksa goddess in Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid, Dyan Cannon’s adulterous partner in murder in Heaven Can Wait, the quietly agitated documentary subject in Albert Brooks's Real Life, the epically depressed neighbor in The Lonely Guy, the “smooth” CIA operative (who tempts Dustin Hoffman's inept singer/songwriter into a little fieldwork with the immortal line: “It’s only $150 a week, but then you can’t really put a price on democracy, can you...”) in May’s eternally underrated Ishtar and bounty hunter Robert De Niro's annoying, brilliantly slippery quarry in Martin Brest's uproarious Midnight Run. Few actors of Grodin’s generation can lay claim to such a gallery of modern comic archetypes, each rendered with the most exquisite timing and attention to physical detail, each integral to the surrounding film yet wonderful creations in their own right.
We’re thrilled to have Grodin, as fine a raconteur as he is an actor (not to mention one of our few real heroes), coming to the Walter Reade for a post-screening conversation.
Sponsored by Stella Artois®
Film Comment Selects presents films championed by the writers and editors of Film Comment magazine. Published bi-monthly, Film Comment magazine features the best writing around on new international and American cinema.