Word: falke
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...until 1970, when he played one of the restless family men out on a spree in the film Husbands, did things get going for Falk again. He did Husbands gratis in return for a part-ownership in the film, which turned out to be critically controversial but financially successful. "It was the best payday I've had," he smiles...
Paydays for Columbo are not that bad either. Falk gets some $100,000 for each of the seven or eight 90-minute episodes he makes each season. For the four months he now puts in, however, his involvement is total. He quietly calls almost all the shots, from the choice of directors to the approval of locations. His lunch hours are spent watching the rough footage from the previous day's shooting, and his nights are spent rewriting the scripts...
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...