- Westchaster News
- Charles and Elissa Grodin
As mob-accountant-on-the-lam Jon Mardukas in Midnight Run, we see Charles Grodin at his most Charles Grodin. On the surface, he's a sneaky, neurotic, self-serving fugitive. "The Duke" irks and gives chase to Jack, his bounty-hunter captor, Jack (Robert De Niro), but eventually endears himself to him, subtly revealing that he's a stoic survivor with old-fashioned gentility and a therapist's knack for healing wounds from the past.
Grodin revealed in a recent CL interview that in many of those key scenes — where the chemistry between him and Bobby D nearly sizzles off the screen — that the two actors completely improvised their dialogue. It's no wonder. Though he will downplay it, Grodin is the master of the mysteriously sideways smirk, answering a question with a question, reacting with a deadpan stare and outsmarting everyone in the room. When asked how he came up with those trademark quirks, Grodin was, for once, at a loss for words. He just laughed and said he was just "kinda like that."
In addition to the classic DeNiro/Farina/Pantoliano caper, Grodin gave us memorable turns in Heaven Can Wait, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Seems Like Old Times and Dave, and long before he romanced Miss Piggy in 1981's The Great Muppet Caper, Grodin got his start on TV (in The Virginian) and in bit parts in movies. He started making a name for himself in the late '60s in Rosemary’s Baby and Catch-22. In the '80s, he was the hapless dad in Ivan Reitman's Beethoven franchise, which he will praise as brilliant and has hopes for a sequel.
From 1995 to 1998, Grodin made the switch from entertainment to news, when he hosted his own issues-oriented talk show, The Charles Grodin Show, on CNBC and, starting in 2000, became a political commentator for 60 Minutes II. In 2004, Grodin penned the off-Broadway play The Right Kind of People, about the snobbery of co-op boards in certain buildings in Manhattan, a scenario he experienced firsthand and describes as non-fiction. Grodin's commentaries continue to be heard on New York City radio station WCBS and other affiliates of the CBS Radio Network, as well as on the "CBS Radio Network's Weekend Roundup."
Grodin's books include It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here, Spilled Milk and Other Clichés, How I Get Through Life The 2007 anthology If I Only Knew Then ... Learning from Our Mistakes is a collection of essays from his famous friends (and friends of friends), with all author proceeds going to the Help USA charity. His latest, How I Got To Be Whoever It Is I Am , came out in April 2009.
