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• The Thing About My Folks
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Tavis: I am pleased to welcome Paul Reiser and Peter Falk to this program. Peter Falk, of course, starred on the classic primetime crime drama 'Columbo,' a role which earned him four Emmy awards. He also starred in a number of notable films, including 'The In-Laws.'

Paul Reiser, as you know, starred in one of my favorite sitcoms, the long-running NBC series, 'Mad About You,' and notable films like 'Diner.' The two have teamed up now for a new film called 'The Thing About My Folks.' The movie premieres this weekend in select cities. Paul Reiser, Peter Falk, nice to have you on the program.

Paul Reiser: Nice to be here, sir.

Peter Falk: Nice to, yeah. Good to be here. It sure is.

Tavis: Yeah. (laughs) Paul Reiser, you wanted this guy. I hear you actually wrote this for him.

Reiser: I wrote this for him, and I had no backup plan. If he said no, it was gonna be me and Walter Cronkite. I don't know what I would have done.

Tavis: And - why Peter Falk?

Reiser: I don't know. I just...

Falk: Go ahead. Tell him the story.

Reiser: I'll tell him the story.

Falk: Tell him the story. Then I can tell you my story.

Reiser: Do you have to yell at me on national television? Is that necessary? Here's the...

Tavis: Here's the story.

Reiser: My dad's a little cranky. We - I grew up, I loved Peter Falk. I just always zer...d in on him. Something about him sounded like my family, and then a couple of years ago, 20 years ago, I was back visiting my parents, and my dad had a Peter Falk movie on TV, and he was laughing. And I said, I never see him laugh at anybody the way he laughs at Peter Falk. So I said, I gotta do something. Peter Falk as my father. And I went off and I wrote the movie.

Falk: So that's the nicest way I ever got a job. I never had a job where the writer had a fond memory of watching his father watching me on television, and his father laughing, and that's why I got hired. That's a nice way to get a job.

Tavis: That's a great story. So Peter Falk reminds you of your dad in some ways?

Reiser: Yeah, there's something about - he doesn't look like him, but there's something there that's...

Tavis: Your dad's not walking around in a trench coat asking, "And another thing," is he?

Reiser: No, he doesn't do that. But they're very much the same guy. You know, when my wife first met Peter, she goes, "Man, that is your dad.' I said, "Exactly. That's why we're not having dinner with J...y Bishop.' Because Peter was the guy. Store was closed. But it came out great. This movie, we're so excited about it.

We've been going from city to city, playing it, and everywhere we go, it's like people are loving it, people are relating to it, and I tell them that this movie has the lovely distinction of being turned down by every studio imaginable. People who don't even have studios would just call up...

Tavis: Just call up and say, "No!'

Reiser: Straight, yeah. "No. Don't think about it!' So we said, 'All right, we'll show you.' And we went out and we raised the money, and we went off and did it independently, and now it's just really catching fire.

Tavis: What's your sense of why you kept hearing 'no' so much? What's Hollywood not ready for?

Falk: Well, because I'll tell you, in one sentence, I'll tell you what it is. Not enough explosions. If you have a lot of explosions, you got a chance, you understand?

Reiser: There's no exploding in this movie.

Falk: There's no explosions here.

Reiser: But I'll tell you what it does have, and I hope I don't embarrass you, it has Peter Falk's - the movie opens with Peter Falk's first ever nude scene. And I will tell you something.

Falk: I look pretty good.

Reiser: Yes. And it is something, you'll say, 'I'm glad I waited all these years.'

Tavis: Yeah? (laughs) Just to see this. Yeah.

Falk: You gotta tune in for that.

Reiser: And I - don't think there'll be another one, but, so all the more reason to race and see the movie.

Falk: I'm not totally nude. Wait a minute. I'm not totally nude.

Reiser: No, it's - tastefully. It's done tastefully.

Falk: No, I got talcum powder. That covers me up a little bit.

Reiser: Yeah, there's a little powder, so it's a nice veil of subtlety.

Tavis: Why - first of all, happy early birthday. September 16th.

Falk: Oh, thank you very much. Thank you very, very much.

Reiser: We open on his birthday. Isn't that a sign from above?

Tavis: Isn't that a good sign?

Reiser: There it is.

Tavis: Why wait - to 78 to do a nude scene?

Falk: Well, that's - that's a good question.

Reiser: There is some film of him, other film, but we're not legally allowed to show that.

Tavis: You're not legally allowed to show that, yeah.

Reiser: We cut it out of the show. But this is, I'm gonna say, this is his long overdue Oscar will be for this role. It is such a performance that America...

Falk: All right, this is what I would like to do. I would like to change the subject and talk about me.

Reiser: I'm sorry.

Tavis: Please, let's talk about you. How - I promised you...

Falk: No. No. No more.

Reiser: No more.

Tavis: So, now he's really reminding you of your dad.

Reiser: Talk about me. Yeah, yeah.

Tavis: So now he's getting more like your dad.

Reiser: I'll tell you what it is. He drives like my dad. My dad and Peter drive very similarly. My dad, he would say, "Hey, I've never gotten in an accident," which is true. But everybody around him would get in an accident. I'd say, 'Dad, you notice the pattern behind you?' Drive with Peter Falk, it's very similar.

Tavis: Let's talk about you for a second. I want to get back to what the story line is here, which we haven't talked about yet. But let me ask you - I promised Peter Falk when he walked in that I would do my best to avoid telling him a 'Columbo' story, and I'm gonna keep my promise.

Reiser: Good for you.

Tavis: 'Cause I know you've heard this story a thousand times from people all around the world, but - do you ever get tired of hearing these 'Columbo' stories?

Falk: Never.

Tavis: You never get tired of that?

Falk: Never. Never.

Tavis: Because it allows you to talk about you.

Falk: Yes, that's right.

Tavis: Is that what it is?

Reiser: There's not enough of that, really.

Tavis: (laughs) So - you're proud of the work, obviously, and never get bothered by people saying, "I loved you on 'Columbo'!'

Falk: No, no. I mean - to have a terrific character and to get paid a lot of dough, and to have seats at the basketball game right on the court, and you get them for nothing, I mean.

Tavis: What a life, yeah.

Falk: It's not cancer.

Tavis: Yeah. (laughs) Is that, where's that trench coat? Is it in the Smithsonian? Where is that trench coat?

Falk: Well, I'm gonna tell you about the trench coat, well, you know, the Smithsonian. If my closet on the second story next to the bedroom, if that's the Smithsonian, that's where the trench coat is.

Tavis: Wow. Paul, tell me the story line. What's - I know it's about father and son. What's it about?

Reiser: It's a story about a father and a son. Peter plays my dad, believe it or not. And top of the movie, he shows up at my house to announce that mom has left him. They were fine yesterday, 47 years happily married. She's gone. He doesn't know where, and we set out looking for her. And over the course of our trip, things happen, secrets come out, and, a lot of family stuff. But it's - actually more about husbands and wives, and - men and women, you know? I always wondered about my parents and how did they get to be these people?

They must have been 20 at one time. You must have gone out. You must have kissed. What happened? And in the story, I sort of get to find out the real, the truth about them. So it's really, it's about family, and people have responded to this. Everybody sees it and they go, "Oh, man, that's my family. That's my mother and father.' So as much as I thought it was just my family, it seems to be - we all have the same family.

Falk: But you know, every husband, every wife, they have issues. Every parent and every kid have issues. And what I love, when we screened this picture, there's always a woman that gets up and says, "I only wanna say one thing. I want my husband to see this picture!' And then you have the parents saying the same thing about...

Reiser: Yeah, and the parents go, "I gotta bring my kids." And the kids go, "I gotta bring my mother and father.' So we're getting that, that lovely repeat, the mandatory repeat business. They go, "Oh, no, you're gonna see it.' But it's really been really exciting and uplifting to see the responses. 'Cause it's a comedy. It's a big, funny comedy, but they're leaving feeling something deeper and better.

Falk: I want to say something about it being a comedy. It is very funny. But when I read this script, I was not prepared for the emotional wallop at the end of that picture. This is a powerful picture at the end. You're laughing all the way through, but you don't see it comin'. We whack ya.

Reiser: Oh, there's a whack, yeah.

Falk: We whack ya.

Tavis: You both, to that point, you both are experts of sorts on the issue of family and relationships. Paul, you've written two books about family, and Peter Falk, you've been married how many years now?

Falk: 28.

Tavis: Your wife's watching, so I hope you got that right.

Falk: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tavis: (laughs) Hope you got that right.

Falk: Good point.

Tavis: Yeah.

Reiser: So we are considered the experts. That's right. If you have any questions, please call in, folks. Operators are standing by. Peter and Paul will answer your marital discord questions. But it's a nice thing to see the way families are. There've been a lot, like, women, mothers and daughters who will sit there and go, "You know, this is the first movie that we've ever both agreed on.'

And it's wild, because the movie was 98% these two guys. So it's a guy film, 'cause they're wanting to see their father and feel that. And the women are responding because it's about women. So it's - it's working. And it's kind of fun.

Falk: There's - those girls that n picked us up.

Reiser: Oh, there's some good-looking girls in there. There's a couple of...

Falk: And there's the other - the sisters.

Reiser: Oh, there's other people. Oh, it's not just us. Yes, yes.

Falk: What are you talking - what's the matter with him?

Reiser: In fact, we're hardly in it.

Tavis: It sounds like, though, Paul, it sounds like it has the ingredients, though, of a film that can, in fact, be interesting and entertaining and appealing for everybody in a family. And yet you were talking earlier about the difficulty you had in getting it made. So what's wrong with Hollywood these days?

Reiser: Well, you know what? I think it's just always easier to say no. You know, you bring something, they're gonna go, "Well, we don't know how to do this.'

Tavis: But when - when everybody says no, what am I to take out of the fact that everybody says no to a film about a father and a son? We all have familial relationships. What's there not to get about this?

Reiser: I don't know. You go see the film and tell me. I don't know, you know? It's - offbeat, it's different, but it's powerful and it's funny. So it seems - we're happy that we're proving them wrong. 'Cause everywhere we go, they're liking it. We were in - somebody said, "Well, maybe it's just gonna play in the big cities.'

We were in Kansas City, and a guy came up to me, and he had a foreign accent, and he said, "I love this movie. I love this movie. I will take my son to this movie.' I said, "Thank you. May I ask where you're from?' He said, "I'm Palestinian.' I said, okay, so a Palestinian guy in Kansas, that's as far from the target demographic. I said, 'I think we're in good shape here. This is reaching everybody.'

Tavis: So, Peter Falk, another 'Columbo' movie maybe before I let you get out of here?

Falk: Yeah, we got two scripts. Unfortunately, I like one, and the network likes the other. But it'll all come out in the wash. We'll make them.

Tavis: So just combine the two.

Falk: Yeah, that's a good idea. What are you doing tonight?

Tavis: (laughs) Paul Reiser, Peter Falk.

Reiser: And tell these people to go see this movie and...

Tavis: You tell them. 'The Thing About My Folks.' Tell them. Go ahead.

Reiser: Yes. But here's the thing. See, now they tell us that if they don't see it in the opening weekend, we might not be there the second weekend, 'cause there's another exploding movie coming in. So we're saying, go and help us out and see this movie, because you will like it, and see it with somebody you love, or somebody you want to love. Or somebody you once knew. See it with a stranger. It doesn't matter.

Tavis: Just see it with anybody.

Reiser: Just see it.

Tavis: Yeah, there you go. Paul Reiser, Peter Falk. 'The Thing About my Folks.' Nice to have you both here.

Falk: Well, aren't you gonna ask the question about advice?

Tavis: Oh, yeah, actually when we get off the air.

Falk: Oh, you do that after.

Tavis: That's after, yeah.

Reiser: He's so eager.

Tavis: That's okay.

Falk: 'Cause I got a good answer.

Tavis: You got a good answer? What Peter Falk is talking about is that we ask our guests when they're off the air, because we like to catalogue these things, I'm always fascinated to what our guests, the best advice they've ever received. So every guest that comes on the show, as a matter of fact, we've got a book coming out at some point that features some of this best advice that these guests have ever received. So, Peter Falk wasn't supposed to say that on the air, but since he said it, I thought I might explain that there is a book coming at some point. Speaking of books, Mr. Reiser, talking about the best advice these folks have ever received. So, you got your answer ready?

Falk: Yes, sir.

Tavis: Let me say - goodbye to these folk, and then we'll ask that question.

Falk: Okay, all right.

Tavis: All right.