Celebrating Alan Arkin

Alan Wolf Arkin was born on March 26, 1934, in Brooklyn, into a family of Ukrainian and German Jewish immigrants. He began acting at age 10—”Every film I saw, every play, every piece of music fed an unquenchable need to turn myself into something other than what I was,” he says—and he hasn’t stopped yet.

Arkin has been an actor, producer, and director, working on stage and screen for over seven decades. He made his film debut with the Cold War comedy in The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!, winning a Golden Globe right off the bat. Arkin has been nominated for several Academy Awards for Best Actor and won Best Supporting Actor in 2006 for his nimble comedic performance in Little Miss Sunshine.

We’ll pay tribute to this famously versatile actor through a sampling of his roles: as the terrifying killer in the unnerving thriller Wait Until Dark, a sincere but clueless dentist in the madcap classic The In-Laws, the paranoid salesman in the haunting Glengarry Glen Ross, and the outrageous, foulmouthed grandpa Edwin Hoover in Little Miss Sunshine—and we’ll also show his darkly comedic directorial debut, Little Murders. We’re thrilled that Arkin himself—who’s in the middle of production on his latest project—will take time away from his busy shooting schedule to join us by Skype for this celebration.

Little Murders

“Arkin has been careful to keep the satire within very tight and self-consistent boundaries. This isn’t the kind of satire that lets up occasionally, that opens a window to the merely ridiculous…so that we can laugh and relax and brace ourselves for the next stretch of painfulness. No, Little Murders is entirely self-contained, and once you get inside it, you’ve got to stay.” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)

Jules Feiffer’s delicious, satiric screenplay—based on his original play—tells the story of the unexpected courtship of a devoutly apathetic New Yorker (brilliantly played by Elliot Gould) and the optimistic materialist who can’t live without him (deftly acted by Marcia Rodd). Throughout this 1970s New York summer, we witness the unlikely couple coping with obscene phone calls, rusty water pipes, blackouts, paranoia, and ethnic-racial conflict. Alan Arkin’s directorial debut will unnerve and keep you laughing, sometimes uneasily, until the final credits roll.

Presented in 35mm