Alan Arkin, in Catch-22. Hey, what? I get to choose the photos around here.
Having to drive to work alone over these dark winter mornings I decided to keep myself company with the audiobook version of Alan Arkin's 2011 autobiography, An Improvised Life. How can anyone stay glum listening to Alan Arkin's voice? Not me. Driving over bumpy ice patches I listened to him speak about his life, focusing on how he has developed as an actor, and how acting came to also shape him. I'm sorry to say that I haven't even seen many of the films that brought Arkin professional recognition such as The Russians are Coming The Russians Are Coming (1966), Catch-22 (1970) or Little Murders (1971). You can put me in the category a generation of people that only came to know his name through more recent works like Slums of Beverly Hills (1998) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Basically I only knew him as someone's onscreen dad which is fitting, because he says that fatherhood has been one of the real-life roles he has found most fulfilling.
An Improvised Life doesn't let us get too close to Arkin. There's not a lot of personal details here which seems fitting for a guy who says he's still mystified by the "love"his fans have for him ("Love is a precious thing, and I'd rather discussions of it for people I've at least met," he writes). But he's unreserved in describing his psychic journey through life starting with analysis and moving through Eastern thought and meditation, all of which informed his approach towards both acting and just simply being himself. His worldview, which I think I glimpsed in the following passage, is one I can appreciate. It's about the transcendence we achieve through art, which is so magic it seems to tap into some kind of universal love. Describing his experience at a Carnegie Hall performance of Beethoven, he writes:
And then by the third movement even Beethoven's agenda was gone, and we were swept up by what he had been swept up by, what lived through him, and all of Carnegie Hall became one living organism, one thing with a couple thousand moving parts. We had let go, and we lived inside that majestic vision of brotherhood and unity and heroism written over two hundred years ago. We had become the music.
Arkin joined Chicago's Second City when it was just newly invented. At the time, he was convinced that moving to Chicago would be a career killer. Instead, Second City exploded. It was somehow perfectly timed to meet the public's needs for irreverence with a touch of intellectualism and politics.
An Improvised Life drifts from autobiography to actor's manual in the final pages, as Arkin described workshop techniques and the joys of teaching improv. Again, instead of telling anecdotes about himself and the people he knows, he keeps it all very businesslike. As a cubicle creature, I am envious that Arkin's profession (as he sees it) demands continuous self-development and offers the opportunity to continually explore human nature. For those of us not in the arts, it seems we are often forced to do these necessary things on our own time, outside of company hours. He makes very amusing observations about the overlap of acting and life, of the acting that even non-actors do in everyday situations. So hope you don't mind me saying, Mr Arkin, but I love your work and I'm glad you were so happy making The In-Laws.
And then by the third movement even Beethoven's agenda was gone, and we were swept up by what he had been swept up by, what lived through him, and all of Carnegie Hall became one living organism, one thing with a couple thousand moving parts. We had let go, and we lived inside that majestic vision of brotherhood and unity and heroism written over two hundred years ago. We had become the music.
Arkin joined Chicago's Second City when it was just newly invented. At the time, he was convinced that moving to Chicago would be a career killer. Instead, Second City exploded. It was somehow perfectly timed to meet the public's needs for irreverence with a touch of intellectualism and politics.
An Improvised Life drifts from autobiography to actor's manual in the final pages, as Arkin described workshop techniques and the joys of teaching improv. Again, instead of telling anecdotes about himself and the people he knows, he keeps it all very businesslike. As a cubicle creature, I am envious that Arkin's profession (as he sees it) demands continuous self-development and offers the opportunity to continually explore human nature. For those of us not in the arts, it seems we are often forced to do these necessary things on our own time, outside of company hours. He makes very amusing observations about the overlap of acting and life, of the acting that even non-actors do in everyday situations. So hope you don't mind me saying, Mr Arkin, but I love your work and I'm glad you were so happy making The In-Laws.
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