The thing was that everyone in Hollywood knew how funny he was – he just lifts a movie up with his intelligence and dry humour, James Freedman says of Charles Grodin.Grodin Family Archives
Every generation gets, if not the Charles Grodin that it deserves, then the Charles Grodin that it needs.
My first exposure to the droll comic genius was through the Beethoven movies in the early 1990s – you know, the ones featuring a giant, slobbering St. Bernard – which were far from great but at least acted as a gateway to Grodin’s more discerning work in everything from The Heartbreak Kid to Midnight Run. Which then led me to dig through the archives of Grodin’s many talk-show appearances throughout the 1970s. Your starting point might have been 1981’s The Great Muppet Caper. Or perhaps 1994’s deeply underrated Clifford.
Whatever your entry point to Grodin’s onscreen work, there is a good chance that you might not know about the late actor’s devotion to social justice, especially on behalf of wrongfully convicted women, often single mothers of colour. To more fully illustrate Grodin’s life and legacy, director James Freedman is bringing his new documentary Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause to this year’s edition of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, where the movie will be featured as the closing-night screening June 15.
Ahead of the screening, Freedman – a veteran sitcom writer who has also made docs on sportscaster Marty Glickman and Universal Pictures co-founder Carl Laemmle – spoke with The Globe and Mail about the man he calls Chuck.
What was your earliest exposure to Grodin’s work?
It was two experiences that stood out: his work in 1972’s The Heartbreak Kid, and I got to see him on Broadway with Ellen Burstyn in a play called Same Time, Next Year. The Heartbreak Kid, it’s such an uncompromising comedy. And Grodin, unlike many actors who would take that role and kind of wink at the audience – you know, to say that I’m not really the kind of guy who would dump his wife on their honeymoon – he instead didn’t shy away from that. Today, you can’t see the movie unless it’s a bad copy on YouTube, it’s been caught in 10 years’ worth of legal battles.
It’s funny, or maybe sad, that you can so easily watch the Ben Stiller remake instead.
Yeah, and they inverted the premise there. They really didn’t want to make the character look as bad. [Screenwriter] Elaine May, when she went to do a Q&A after a screening of the original film with Grodin, the audience booed him, because so many women saw him as that guy, he was so believable in the role.
As you were making this film, did you discover just how Grodin approached his career? Was he someone who very deliberately took on different roles, aimed at different audiences, or was he someone who just wanted to work?
He was not a big career-planning guy, no. His first three films, he played characters who were not lovable characters. He wanted to make 11 Harrowhouse, playing a character who was a good guy, and it was a bomb, so he kind of lost his shot at movie stardom there. But then along came Midnight Run, and he got to be the lead again. The thing was that everyone in Hollywood knew how funny he was – he just lifts a movie up with his intelligence and dry humour.
You gained access to all of his archives through his widow, Elissa. Was contacting her your first step?
She was everything. When I approached her, she said she wanted to watch my other movies first. But then she felt comfortable with me, and my wife and her have become really good friends since. But Chuck also had his own videographer, someone who was following him around for the last 15 years of his life after he had basically quit acting. To have all this stuff, it was just fantastic.
Was getting Elissa’s permission the key to unlocking the rest of the talent you secured interviews with? Robert De Niro, Steve Martin, Martin Short …
With Elissa behind this, it made it easier. But there are some people, like Martin Short, who are just such big fans of Chuck that they wanted to participate. And not everyone knew about his social-justice work, either.
Charles Grodin, left, and CNBC president Roger Ailes during a news conference announcing Grodin as host of the primetime show ‘Charles Grodin,’ November, 1994.Marty Lederhandler/The Associated Press
When did you learn about that side of him?
I wasn’t making the documentary yet. I was just researching online, looking for interesting subjects who were successful in their chosen careers but also did this super mensch-y thing. My last film was on Carl Laemmle, who founded Universal Pictures, but also saved 300 Jewish refugee families from Nazi Germany. Chuck was top of his field as a comedic actor, but he also helped get all these women out of prison, he helped change drug laws which were putting people in prison to begin with. We call it tikkun olam, Hebrew for “repairing the world.” We just showed the film in Washington, D.C., and one of the women, June Benson Lambert, who Chuck got out of prison, came to the screening. It was such an emotional evening.
Do you think you could have made this movie as personal and as revealing while Grodin was still alive?
The idea only came to me after he had passed in 2021. But he also had dementia the last few years of his life, so I wouldn’t have been able to interview him. That’s not fair to a person.
Watching the film trace his career, it made me wonder where the next Charles Grodin might come from. That kind of path, from talk shows to theatre to movies and back again, it’s all been upended for comedic performers.
I do see a lot of people coming from YouTube, they create something, and it hits and the main streamers put on something that came from that. But one of the things I’m so appreciative of Jewish film festivals like Toronto’s, is that they prioritize moviegoing. To see something like this with an audience – to laugh along, and then to watch the more poignant stuff – it’s wonderful.
Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause screens June 15 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema as part of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival (tjff.com).
