Remembering Alan Arkin's Incredible Legacy as Well as My SUPER-Awkward Interview With Him
When I saw that Alan Arkin had died at the age of eighty-nine, my immediate reaction was sadness because he was a great character actor and fascinating human being who lived an extraordinary life and had an amazing career.
Then I thought about the time that I interviewed him for The A.V Club in 2006 for Little Miss Sunshine and how it did not go well. At all. Not in the least
I was always super-anxious about doing interviews when I worked for The A.V. Club. If an interview went well it was an incredible natural high. I loved getting off the phone and feeling like I had really connected with someone I had grown up admiring.
If an interview did not go well, however, I invariably took it personally. It felt awful. As a painfully shy introvert, I go through life terrified of awkward conversations and tense interactions. You can only imagine how stressful it is when the awkward conversation you’re scared of having happens with someone like Alan Arkin, Frank Oz or Robert Duvall.
I quickly ran out of questions with Duvall and had no idea how to proceed with a man who was pleasant enough but gave out a lot of one sentence answers. I remember at the end of the interview Duvall asked me if The Onion was a little newspaper me and my friends put out, because he’d never heard of it, and I did not know how to answer him.
With Oz I made the mistake of asking him about doing the voice of Yoda rather than the voice and the puppeteering. Of course there was no puppeteering involved in the prequels, just a lot of CGI but the damage was done.
With Arkin it felt like he got off the phone and thought, “Jesus, who was that idiot asking all those stupid questions?” and I got off the phone thinking, “Jesus. I am an idiot. Why did I ask all those stupid questions?”
You could never tell what was going on with an interview subject unless they specifically brought it up. Arkin may have had a long day or a hard day or might just have been in a bad mood. Maybe he was hungry. Maybe he didn’t want to do interviews in the first place but the studio forced him. Or maybe I just sucked as an interviewer that day.
I had a similarly frustrating interview with Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian back when he first started doing interviews but that was mainly because the phone connection was bad, his answers were short and also he’s Scottish so I had a very hard time understanding what he was saying.
These bad interviews bummed me out. They couldn’t help but affect the way I saw the folks I had interviewed poorly.
Thankfully that did not last. I grew the fuck up and realized that in the grand scheme of things it didn’t really matter that for twenty or thirty stressful minutes I had tried and failed to connect with someone I respect and look up to.
What mattered was that these men have incredible legacies and have contributed so much to the world. I was able to remove my ego from the equation and appreciate them for who they are and what they’ve done and not resent them because they clearly did not enjoy conversing with me.
Besides, I’d be screwing myself over if I denied myself the pleasure of watching these legends perform.
I wouldn’t want to live in a world where every time I saw Grover or Cookie Monster or Miss Piggy I thought, “Man, Frank Oz REALLY did not enjoying talking to me.” How dreary would that be?
The same is not true when I do a bad interview with someone I didn’t respect or like.
I did a Random Roles with T.J Miller, for example, relatively early in his career. He gave me next to nothing. I remember him saying that he got most of his roles by blowing casting agents away at auditions with his hilarious improvisation and ad-libbing and I thought that was strange, since he hadn’t said anything remotely funny or entertaining during the entire interview.
I similarly interviewed Will.I.Am early in his career, before the Black Eyed Peas had blown up and were still making good music. He wasn’t a big star then but he had the attitude and ego of one. He gave me one sentence answers and seemed in a terrible hurry to get off the phone.
My initial repose was, “Man fuck that guy. What an asshole.” I’ve grudgingly come to appreciate Will.I.Am as a purveyor of pure pop but my interview with him left a bad taste in my mouth.
One of the most stressful and amazing interviews I’ve ever done was with Ghostface Killah. If I remember correctly he didn’t call the first three or four times we were supposed to do our interview.
When he finally did call he didn’t just give me one sentence answers: he gave me one word answers or he gave me no answers at all. I had something like thirty or forty questions that I burned through in about fifteen minutes.
I got off the phone convinced that I’d just done one of the worst interviews of my career. But when I actually read the transcript it was hilarious. It was funny and entertaining reading me try desperately to get anything from him and having him give me nothing.
It was the opposite of RZA, who could not be a better or more giving interview subject because the man LOVES to talk. And is very good at it!
When you interview people it’s hard not to take it personally if they don’t seem to like you or your questions but in the grand scheme of things their art is what is important, not the fact that they spent twenty weird minutes giving not so snappy answers to my stupid questions.
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