Paul Reiser on Choosing a Director for "The Thing About My Folks:" “It was somebody who would have the skill and the sensibility to do this kind of work, but also for him to be aware that this was not something that I was going to hand over completely. I’m not going to just disappear.
On ‘Mad About You’ I was a producer and I was certainly around. And after you’ve done the acting, there’s a lot of places you can put your input – in the editing, in the production of it, in the rewriting of it and so on. So I met with a bunch of directors and Raymond [De Felitta] was terrific. I loved his work. I’d seen a movie that he did that was very similar to this, and I knew he wrote it.
He read the script and really responded and really adored Peter Falk the way that I had. And he was very upfront. He said, ‘Listen. I get this is your movie. This is your story. It’s your family, it’s your baby. I would just love to help bring it to life.’ It was a really good collaboration.”
On Making Changes Once Filming Began: “The script rarely changed. I think that when Raymond and I got together he made a couple of suggestions that were good and that were just simply finessing the script. ‘Move this scene later and maybe put that piece earlier. What happens if you cut this and put in a little page about this?’ They were tiny little things that really kept the flow going.
Once we set out to make it, there really wasn’t much – or there was no rewriting. We didn’t have the luxury. It was a fast shoot. It was a low budget shoot. We went off and found the beautiful stretch of country and the beautiful time [of year]. Upstate New York in the middle of October. You can’t get more beautiful than that. It was very straightforward. Even in editing. It’s not like some movies where you’re following a bunch of different stories you can cut around. There was nowhere to cut to. It’s these guys. We’re not cutting back to anybody else. ‘Let’s see where the guy who caught the drug bust is at,’ you know? There was nobody there.”
Paul Reiser on Directing “The Thing About My Folks:” Reiser said that although he knew he was going to star in the film, he never considered directing it. “I wanted fresh eyes. I’d never directed before and this movie’s too important to me to put in the hands of some guy who has never directed. Even if it’s me. I didn’t want to learn on this movie’s expense. I put so much of my guts into the script I wanted to go away now. ‘Let me just be the actor. Let me go play with Peter Falk.’ That’s the gravy. That’s the icing on the cake,” explained Reiser.
Paul Reiser on Working with Peter Falk: “There are a couple of scenes where we’re driving and I have a smile on my face, and I know that I’m not that good an actor. That was actually me smiling. It was great fun. Any apprehensions I had... I thought, ‘Gee, some of the dialogue is fast and is he going to be different? Is he going to be slower?’ It was like playing tennis with somebody who is better than you and you just have to raise your game because he’s wiping you all over the court. ‘Oh man, this guy is fast and good.’
He was fast when it needed to be fast, when the dialogue was that machine gun stuff, which I love. It’s always the fun stuff to write and the fun stuff to perform. When you’re just talking over each other and you’re both going at each other. He’s just such a real actor. You never see him look bad. You never see him trying too hard.”
On What Sets Peter Falk Apart: “He’s a ‘one of’. …There’s nobody else around like that. And it was somebody who I had such affection for and subconsciously it was this father thing. My father loved Peter. And the whole basis of this film was my father watching a Peter Falk movie and I walked in and caught my father watching it. I said, ‘I never saw him laugh like this. What is it about Peter Falk and my father?’ It just seemed like, ‘My God, there’s something similar.’ And they don’t look alike. When my wife first met Peter Falk she said, ‘My God, that’s your father. He is so your father.’ I said, ‘You’re right.’
He’s like a great old pair of pants. You find them and they’re comfortable and then you go, ‘Oh look, there’s money in the pocket. I didn’t know about that.’ There are a few surprises. You meet him and you think about ‘Columbo,’ for which he’s famous. The guy is unassuming and he seems a bit disheveled and not with it, and then turns out to be the shrewdest guy in the room. And Peter is like that. He’s funny and he’s amiable and you can’t but hug him, and then there’s this fire in his belly. He’s passionate and brilliantly smart and powerful. He’s 78 and can knock anybody around the room. This guy is a force of nature.”
