Original-Cin Q&A: Charles Grodin Doc Director Locates the Humanitarian Within the Star
By Bonnie Laufer
The Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs June 5 to 15, features quite an extensive line-up.
The closing night film is the documentary Charles Grodin: Rebel With a Cause, an informative and touching look at the life of actor, comedian, and social activist.
While we all know Gordin for his acerbic humour, what many people will discover is that he was tireless when it came to social justice. Grodin spent a lot of his time freeing wrongly convicted people, most of whom were young women of colour.
Original-Cin caught up with the film’s director James L. Freedman.
The director with Martin Short.
ORIGNAL-CIN: When did you discover Charles Grodin?
JAMES L. FREEDMAN: When I saw The Heartbreak Kid (playing at the festival on June 14 at 6 pm, at Innis Town Hall). I had seen Rosemary's Baby, but it didn't register that Charles Grodin was in it. When I saw The Heartbreak Kid, I fell in love with that movie, and years later, I ended up being a writer and producer on Cybill (Cybill Sheppard’s TV series from 1995 to 1998).
Years later I saw him on Broadway with Ellen Burstyn in Same Time Next Year, which was one of the greatest nights I've ever had in the theater to this day. I had always been a fan. My mother gave me his first book, and I remember reading it and loving that here was a man who was an accomplished actor using his ‘fame’ for good, saving all these wrongly convicted people from prison.
O-C: What a great subject for a documentary, not just because of his acting career. Not many people know about his fight for social justice.
JF: I wanted people to know who he really was. My last film was on Carl Laemmle, the man who founded Universal Studios. He had also saved 300 Jewish refugee families from Nazi Germany. I like to make films about people who were extremely accomplished in their field, but they also had this almost ‘super mensch’ quality.
The more I started to dig, the more interesting I found Charles. He was always interested in social justice. He originally wanted to be a journalism major and fell into acting. He then spent the last 20 years of his life basically working for wrongly incarcerated people, giving voice to people who were voiceless.
O-C: The first word that came to mind when I watched the documentary was ‘mensch’ (Yiddish, for basically ‘good person’). There's nobody menchier than Charles Grodin. We all know what a great actor he was and how funny he was, but few know how hard he fought for social justice.
JF: I hope people ask me, ‘What do you want people to walk away from after seeing the film?’ I want them to be entertained, and I want them to laugh a lot but I hope they get a sense of what a selfless person he was. He's a real hero, not a superhero. He's a real human hero and this work had a real cost on his life but it didn't matter. He didn't want to be known for his movies. He wanted to be known for social justice work, which was ultimately the most important thing for him.
O-C: Clearly there's no shortage of footage to work with including all the interviews you conducted for the documentary. Where did you start sorting everything?
JF: I had 100 hours of material to go through. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. I have little folders on my computer, and I just start sorting through everything I have. For example, I had access to the Simon and Garfunkel special, which Charles was a huge part of, because Paul Simon gave it to me to use with his blessing. Then I went through each folder, whether it was one of Charles’ movies, or appearances, or interviews, and I transcribed what I thought would be best to use. It was a long process sifting through everything, but it gave me so much joy to look back at things I hadn’t seen in years.
It took some time to get a real feeling for what was important to tell in his story. Despite everything he did in the entertainment world, the theme of his incredible life certainly was his social justice work, getting those women out of prison. I almost looked at that as a political thriller, like, ‘What are the obstacles in his way? How did he use his celebrity to help these women get justice?’
O-C: What surprised you most about Charles Grodin once you started to dig through his life?
JF: Just how deeply his father's death — and the fact that they were sort of at odds when he died —affected him. He was deeply sad that when his father became sick, there was nothing he could do to help him. Also, Charles was a workaholic and honestly, he couldn’t sit still. He would go to dinner parties and after an hour, he would just get up and leave so that he could write, his mind was always churning. If he was out for dinner, he’d excuse himself to go outside.
He was really never comfortable in social settings, but he loved to perform. It was a joy to watch him and when he was on Carson or Letterman, my friends and I always made it a point to stay up late to watch him.
O-C: You were able to speak with many celebrities who knew or worked with Grodin including Robert De Niro, Martin Short, Steve Martin and Ellen Burstyn. But the interview that really stood out for me was with Elaine May. She essentially kicked off his career with The Heartbreak Kid.
JF: It took me a year to get her to agree to talk on camera. She was wonderful, but she does not do this. She wouldn't even do an interview for her own film on Mike Nichols that her producer asked her to do.
O-C: How did you convince her to talk on camera for this documentary?
JF: I had finished doing my interviews, and then producer Julian Schlossberg (who we hear from in the film) is a close friend of Elaine’s. He had told me that he had spoken to Elaine who told him that she regretted not doing an interview for the Mike Nichols documentary and had heard that I was doing this doc on Charles. Let’s face it: The Heartbreak Kid made him a star, and it was Elaine who was instrumental in casting him.
I was editing by that point but when Julian told me she would do it, I said, ‘What, are you nuts? Of course, I'll do another interview with Elaine.’ That’s honestly one of the other treats of doing this film, by the way. There are many people who I was able to speak with who have been forgotten by time. It happens to almost everybody, no matter how big you are. Kids today don't know Nichols and May. They barely know Alan Arkin or Ellen Burstyn.
These are people I just revered. I love all these people and their talent, and to be able to put them in the film was truly a gift. Even if it's a 10-second clip of Nichols and May, maybe someone will go on YouTube and watch that or watch their films, and to keep their work alive. I just think these were the top people in their field and it was an honour and a privilege sharing their memories of Charles Grodin. Making this documentary was pure pleasure.