James Charles Grodin might not be the first name that arises when one asks for a list of Hollywood’s leading men. However, Grodin gets a welcome reappraisal in Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause. The documentary by James L. Freedman screens as the closing night selection of this year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival. (June 15 at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, including a virtual Q&A with Freedman and Grodin’s wife, Elissa.) It’s a touching tribute to the actor who passed in 2021 at age 86, but also a fitting reminder of the daily acts one can perform to be a mensch.
It’s an opportunity for audiences to share a collective laugh while revisiting the career of an under-sung comic great. Rebel with a Cause tours through Grodin’s filmography with memorable performances both big and small in films like The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Midnight Run (1988), Catch-22 (1970), Beethoven (1992), and dramas like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), as well as turns on Broadway like Same Time Next Year (1975) that further showed off his range both dramatic and comedic. Grodin’s esteem is evident as Freedman collects a Hollywood who’s who to reminisce about the late actor. Academy Award winners like Ellen Burstyn, who co-starred with Grodin in Same Time Next Year, his Midnight Run co-star Robert De Niro, and Catch-22 co-star Alan Arkin are among the notable interviewees. As are comedic titans like Elaine May, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, and Martin Short, just to name a few.
As Freedman explores the humble upbringing that instilled an underdog’s fight in Grodin, Rebel with a Cause playfully leads to perhaps the actor’s two greatest roles. On one hand, the film finds some of its biggest laughs as it revisits Grodin’s late night persona as a humorously antagonistic guest star on talk shows. An archival treasure trove offers laugh-a-minute clips of the act that convinced audiences he was the biggest jerk who graced a TV studio. Perhaps Grodin’s deadpan ability to persuade the audience and hosts like Johnny Carson offers the best proof of his acting chops. But for gravitas, the film finds his selfless choice to step away from Hollywood as his most significant role.
Freedman bookends the film by observing Grodin’s last act as an activist for wrongfully incarcerated Americans, particularly women who were put behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. His story comes full circle as his campaign for people let down by the system drew results far more rewarding that any Hollywood accolades could inspire. Freedman assembles voices of women who were finally exonerated thanks to Grodin’s friendship and tireless advocacy. The celebrity interviews might hook audiences in, but these stories offer the most illuminating insights into a life well-lived.
POV spoke with James L. Freedman via Zoom ahead of the closing night of TJFF.
POV: Pat Mullen
JF: James L. Freedman
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
POV: Why look at Charles Grodin’s life now? Was it the news of his passing or was there an event that inspired the documentary?
JF: I had always been a big Charles Grodin fan ever since I saw him in The Heartbreak Kid, which is just hilarious. Then I had the privilege when I was younger to see him and Ellen Burstyn on Broadway in Same Time Next Year. I remember my mother getting me his first book, and I was looking around for a new subject and he came up somehow. When I learned how he saved all these wrongly convicted women, mostly young mothers of colour with young children, I said, “Oh my God, this is incredible.” My previous films have similar themes. My last film was Carl Laemmle [2019], which played the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, and that was about a guy who founded Universal Studios and saved 300 Jewish families in Germany. So it’s someone who’s very accomplished in their chosen field and then beyond mensch-like in their private life.
POV: It was interesting seeing the parallels that Laemmle and Grodin had in their careers and lives. Are those themes at the forefront when you choose a story?
JF: I look for people who have both things. My first film, Glickman [2013], was about the sportscaster Marty Glickman. He was one of two Jewish runners not allowed to run in the ’36 Berlin Olympics because American Nazi sympathizing officials wanted to placate Hitler. That had a whole other element to it, and he was just great as a sports broadcaster. The other thing is that I started as a comedy writer and it [making a film on [Grodin] gave me a chance to do a lot of comedy in the film. To see it with an audience and see them laughing, and to also bring back all these great artists from his time, whether it’s [Mike] Nichols and [Elaine] May–a lot of people today don’t know who Nichols and May are, which is stunning to me. But unless you’re like The Beatles or Taylor Swift—and we won’t know for 40 or 50 years—you have your time and that’s kind of it, no matter how big you are. So, to bring these people who I have so much respect for and to bring their work to the public, maybe someone looks at an old Nichols and May clip and watches their films or whatever it films. That was an unexpected pleasure that I had making this film. I got to bring all these people I had the utmost respect for to the public, and Charles Grodin’s interaction with them,
POV: There’s quite the cast of interviewees. Was there someone who was a particular highlight to sit down and talk with?
JF: They were all great in their own way. The toughest one to get was Elaine May because she just doesn’t do these. She wouldn’t even do one on her own film for Mike Nichols that she directed. Her producer begged her to do it. She didn’t want to do that. That took a year, and she was just wonderful. We’ve become friends, and I see her when I go to New York. She’s just a genius. Many of them were wonderful. I don’t want to say any names. I’ll leave people out. They’re used to being on camera and they know how to articulate what they feel.
POV: When did you get a chance to speak with Alan Arkin? This film must be among his final interviews.
JF: It may be his final interview. In fact, I wanted to interview Alan and go down to San Diego to his home. But the tail end of COVID was going on and his doctors wouldn’t allow a film crew in, so we did a Zoom call. It was delight to talk to him. I’ve been a huge Alan Arkin fan my whole life, and if this is his last interview, I’m proud that this film has it.
After the interview was over, I had 10 more minutes with him and we’re speaking and he’s telling me about having met Groucho Marx and all these people, and it was terrific.
POV: You mentioned earlier that you saw Grodin on stage in Same Time Next Year. How was it revisiting that performance? Do you recall that night when you saw it?
JF: Pat, I saw that in 1975 and, to this day, that’s one of the greatest nights in the theatre I’ve ever had in my life. Those two were magical together. Ellen Burstyn told me this story when Grodin would go on these talk shows—he was always doing this act—and it was a guest host for Johnny Carson, David Steinberg. In the pre-interview, Grodin says to have David ask him about not having been cast in the movie version of Same Time Next Year, which had Ellen Burstyn, but it also had Grodin’s friend, Alan Alda. So David Steinberg innocently asked him the question on the air, and Ellen Burstyn told me that Charles Grodin pretended that he didn’t know this news. He just on the air was saying, “What do you mean I’m not being cast in this movie? I was in the play. I was great in the play. Who’d they pick?” And then, “Alan Alda,” and David Steinberg was squirming in this chair. Ellen Burstyn was watching this on TV laughing so hard. Here was Grodin again, doing what he did best when he went on the talk shows.
POV: We get a sense in the film that Grodin’s peers really respected him, and he had a lot of versatility as both a dramatic and comedic actor, but he didn’t hit the same level of leading man status as Robert De Niro or Steve Martin or Martin Short. What did making this story teach you about the Hollywood star system?
JF: I think it had to do with the quirkiness of his character. I would say the same thing about Albert Brooks as well. Albert Brooks in his own films was a leading man, but in the other films, was really not quite a leading man. He was comic relief. Grodin was so brilliant in that role that maybe after The Heartbreak Kid made him a star, then he did 11 Harrowhouse [1974], which failed. He said he stopped getting offers for leading man roles. But I don’t know how much screen time he has in Heaven Can Wait. [Grodin points to the DVD of Heaven Can Wait strategically placed on my shelf behind me.] I spoke to Warren Beatty about the movie, and he just said Grodin and Dyan Cannon as well brought so much comedy to their scenes that it just lifted the whole movie up. I bet he’s not even in 25% of the movie, but it’s just amazing how funny he is. You never really know what the studios are thinking, but that’s my guess.
POV: His signature role may have been the cantankerous talk show guest, as you referenced earlier. How did you decide which of all those appearances to include?
JF: That was a pleasure. Here’s the problem with that stuff. There’s so many funny bits that he did on Letterman and Carson, but you need time to set them up. You don’t have that time in a documentary. If you have 90 minutes for your whole film, you can’t take 15 to 20 seconds to set up the clip and then show it. You really need the whole clip to be over by then. So that cut a lot of really great stuff out. I had seen a lot of these things on my own. Forget making the movie! Before I even thought of making the movie, I’d watch when Grodin was on Carson or Letterman. I always tuned in and so did all my friends. You just find stuff that made you laugh and it’s like a jigsaw puzzle when you say, “This doesn’t really work here. Oh, that’s a short thing. That would work right in the trailer. Oh, this is a longer piece I can have as the heart and the middle of the talk show section chapter of the film.”
POV: We see later in the film how Grodin lost his own show in the 1990s when he didn’t want to jump on the O.J. bandwagon and instead focus on more important issues that were getting lost in the news. What do you think that says about Grodin that he put social issues and principles ahead of the demands of his career in such a cutthroat field?
JF: I look for a thread that goes through all my films. So my first film, Glickman was really about what happens when an 18-year-old’s dreams are crushed by racism and prejudice. Do they overcome it or does it just bury them for the rest of their lives? In Marty Glickman’s case, he rose above it. Carl Laemmle had the constant theme of being a German-American and what happens when World War I hits and all of a sudden Germany’s the enemy. And for Grodin, you could see in high school before the civil rights movement even hit the United States in a big way in ’54 with Brown versus the Board of Education. You see that he is caring about the Black students in his class and getting elected president eight times. [Twice annually across all four years of school.]
Then you see with the Simon & Garfunkel special that he was concerned with social issues. He wanted to be a journalism major, and he got waylaid into an acting career. And then the last 20 years of his life, he didn’t work [in film and television] very much of at all. He was visiting these women in prison every weekend. Think about that. Most celebrities, they put their name to something and they see someone once or twice. He was seeing them every weekend. His wife said he hurt as if it was happening to him when he saw injustice. I don’t think he could help himself. I think he saw a wrong and felt the need to try and right it.
POV: If you’d had the chance to interview Grodin for this film, what might you have asked him?
JF: It was kind of answered by him and other people through his writing, but to him, he wanted to be known for social justice work much more [than acting]. If you think about it, you get a person out of prison, how much bigger is that than a movie? As many people may be touched by that movie, it’s not a human life. That’s what he wanted to be noted for, and that’s what I would’ve asked him: What are you most proud of having done in your life? I guess that would be it. And then if he would’ve invited me to one of his soirées when he was hanging out with all those people! I would’ve loved to have joined for that.
POV: That would’ve been fun. With this film being the closing night selection of TJFF, it gives audiences the last message of the festival. What’s something you hope people can take with them from Grodin’s story?
JF: I hope they’re thoroughly entertained and laugh a lot. I hope it makes them think that he was one person and he did a lot. It’s amazing what one person can do if they put their mind to it and that maybe it makes them think a little bit about helping someone else on the smallest level. You don’t have to work for 20 years to get someone out of prison. You can bring a neighbour some food if they’re an elderly woman or a man who needs help, or you can just do things to help your fellow man. Charles Grodin was a mensch.
