Adam Arkin first appeared in an Oscar-nominated short directed by his father called “People Soup.” It is deeply weird; the younger Arkin was pretty much playing himself, along with his brother Matthew. So, yeah, we are looking at another example of Hollywood nepotism, I suppose. On the other hand, since Alan Arkin isn’t the biggest name in the industry, it seems unlikely that any child of his would be able to skate on the family influence without possessing talent and ability as well. Even leaving that aside, all you have to do in order to recognize said talent and ability is just watch his performances. Which, admittedly, are often as strange as that first one.
When I was a child, he was probably most familiar to me as Adam, the wild man of Northern Exposure. Adam was a former chef who now lives in the Alaskan wilderness with his wife—yes, Eve, and what’s funny about that? I didn’t see the show often; it was on after my bedtime. However, he made an impression. To be fair, so did practically everyone who did a couple of episodes of that show; you could write about minor Northern Exposure characters pretty much as its own column and have a wealth of material. But Adam was particularly memorable. He was, after all, the only person who could interact with Dr. Fleischman on his own wavelength and get the best of him.
He’s a lot of fun as Ted Earley on Life, a forgotten show from 2007. Arkin plays an ex-con, the best friend of lead Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis). Unlike Charlie, Ted was guilty; he was an embezzler. Naturally, upon their release, Charlie puts Ted in charge of his money. It’s not as ludicrous a decision as it seems. But it’s clear that Ted was extremely lucky to survive prison. He constantly seems out of his depth. The show goes back and forth between the ridiculous and the extremely serious, and Ted is happily on the ridiculous end of the spectrum.
Likewise in A Serious Man, a movie that takes itself seriously while letting the actual events be as ridiculous as possible. (Is that you, Coen brothers?) In fact, the whole thing kind of makes me wish anyone anywhere was making good parody movies these days, because Arkin could have a Leslie Nielsen-style career. He also seems like he’d be a lot of fun in a good screwball, if anyone were making good screwballs these days. He could be a Cary Grant-style straight man, or the Edward Everett Horton-style older man who is bewildered by the goings-on.
And, of course, he and George Clooney could play brothers. This is not an original observation; they look remarkably similar. Still, both men have a Coen heritage and a sense of comedic timing, so why haven’t they been cast as brothers in a comedy? I’d watch that, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Probably it’s because the kind of comedy where they’d excel is not the kind of comedy that’s getting made these days. It’s kind of a shame. Adam Arkin and George Clooney in some sort of screwball romantic comedy? Oh, I’d watch the heck out of that.
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