18. RIP Alan Arkin in which the “R” stands for (Redacted).

Yes, this is a quickie post about how Arkin gets me barkin’.

Just wanted to take a lil mo to pour one out (of my W.A.P.) for one of the people who shows up in a random movie or show and I scream “DADDY!” at, involuntarily. (This list also includes the guy who plays Trent Crimm, The Independent, who Matt had to ask me to stop talking about after I said I would “melt his face like I was wielding the Ark of the Cuntvenant,” 1988-1994 John Goodman, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (and possibly Yahya Abdul-Mateen I, but I have not seen this man), and Brett Goldstein, which was the worst of them all because I actually literally gasped this out loud at the Alamo Drafthouse while attending a sold out screening of Thor: Love and Thunder. Not a great movie! Needed more naked Thor squaring off with Russell “Explain my Passions”¹ Crowe! Natalie Portman was great! I still haven’t seen Jackie yet! I digress! Are you surprised!)

I’m including two films of his that I love, and think you might not have yet seen.

I watched Wait Until Dark (1967) a few months ago before it left Max, and was riveted. I’m a Katharine over Audrey, a thousand percent. Pants, hatekissing Jimmy Stewart over the fact that he’s both deeply hot and a rat to the House Unamerican commish, frizzy hair, loud, annoying - yup, my ass. Alan Arkin plays a Weird Little Guy dressed as if your little brother wore a Keith Moon costume to give his Living Wax Museum² presentation on…Keith Moon, but boasts the smarmy confidence of the guy with the Nabokov tattoo who peed in front of you in an alley in St. Mark’s but you went home with him anyway and the sex (on a mattress on the floor) was, to your chagrin, entirely worth scaling a third-floor walkup.³

If I ever met Willem Dafoe and got to ask him only one question that WASN’T “Can we be best friends, because you seem nice?” I would ask if he has seen this movie and if it was foundational towards his choices as an actor, because Arkin oozes sinister magnetism with every line and every silent choice. It is the wiriest Kieran Culkin performance with the most Sarah Snookian silent choices and the “Hey dude, are you OKAY?” timbre of Jeremy Strong’s best work.

In less concerning but still flamboyantly horny fare, The In-Laws: Peter Falk and Alan Arkin playing future in-laws, one a conman, one a very frazzled dentist. Now, not one of you is surprised that Alan Arkin playing a Jewish dad with a pension plan is like a vaginal Hiroshima for yours truly, but that he’s also so stupidly funny in this?

Fuckin’ MADONN!

Me the entire production:

I will be watching more of Alan’s back catalog over the next few weeks. Leave any relevant titles in the comments. To end on a sweet, gentle note:

Love you bitches,

TG

1

I know nothing about this man except that his band was called 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, and that he wrote this tweet.

2. I was Judy Garland. I was adorable.

3. His name was David and he wrote Maude sketches for UCB.