Word: falke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With Columbo-like self-effacement, Falk shrugs off his writing contribution. "I think I can write some of the dialogue and some of the touches, the mannerisms, but it's a far cry from writing a total script," he demurs, at the same time putting the finishing "touches" to an eleven-page scene he has just written into an upcoming show. Falk wrote Columbo's often-quoted shoe gambit. Smack in the middle of questioning his suspect, he stops suddenly to ask: "How much did you pay for those shoes?" After a pause, the nonplussed suspect answers: "Forty...
Although the false exit, followed by the innocently lethal "one last question," was dreamed up by Levinson and Link', Falk has so perfected the business that it has become a Columbo trademark, often occurring more than once in a single scene. Trademark No. 1, the magnificently grubby raincoat, was Falk's own stroke. The coat is his, bought in New York for a European trip years ago and stuffed away in a trunk until he fished it out to wear over the studio wardrobe's baggy brown suit. Falk worries like a mother hen over the coat...
Glass-Eye Tales. Falk's only concerns with the technical end of the show are the camera and lighting angles, because of his glass eye. "When I throw one of these," he says, dancing his left eye around until the pupil is nearly out of sight, "I ask for a retake." Otherwise Falk seems unconcerned about his disability and willingly regales listeners with suspiciously tall glass-eye tales. Examples: unfairly called out at third base during a high school baseball game, he handed the umpire the appurtenance, saying, "Here, you could use another eye"; at a girl friend...
...Falk tells these stories, or others about his adventures making Italian potboilers (an Italian producer once hired him by mistake to play a tall, blond soldier) with graphic glee, acting out all the parts as he goes. About his private life he is more reticent. He concedes that he is partly akin to Columbo. "I'm a worrier, I'm not the neatest guy in the world, I'm obstinate-but I'm not as clever as Columbo...
...Falks shun the cocktail-party circuit, but their small circle of friends includes his Husbands buddies, Director John Cassavetes and Actor Ben Gazzara, as well as Mike Nichols, Elaine May and M-A-S-H's Wayne Rogers. The circle is tightly knit. It was Nichols who directed Falk in Prisoner of Second Avenue on Broadway. Last summer Falk completed a film directed by May, Mikey and Nicky, in which he co-stars with Cassavetes. He has also helped to finance a new Cassavetes-directed film, Women Under the Influence, in which he co-stars with Cassavetes' wife...