Cinematic powerful guys typically subvert their picture by showing in comedies. (Consider Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop or Clint Eastwood hanging out with an orangutan.) Their onscreen persona is so intimidating that sometimes going for the humorous is usually a profitable technique: For a change, we see their badass characters made the butt of the joke. It’s a shocking but in addition shrewd pivot, permitting these seemingly bulletproof actors to immediately really feel extra relatable.

The late, nice James Caan was a grasp at portraying hard-edged, ultra-masculine characters in the whole lot from The Godfather to Thief. In actual life, he didn’t endure fools, was married 4 instances and battled drug dependancy. He hails from a bygone period of man’s guys actors who you wouldn’t need to cross. This, after all, made him a pure for comedy.

Most of the appreciations out at the moment mourning his passing are, deservedly, specializing in his dramatic work, but it surely’s value spending a second admiring the funnier movies he tackled later in his profession. Particularly, Distress, Bottle Rocket and Elf, which showcased Caan’s comedic strengths. He might not have at all times been on the identical wavelength as his administrators, however the outcomes (and the laughs) converse for themselves.

Launched in 1990, Distress was tailored from a Stephen King novel, telling the story of a novelist, Paul (Caan), who will get right into a horrible automotive accident, is rescued by his largest fan, Annie (Kathy Bates, who gained an Oscar for the function), and should then write a brand new e-book that makes her comfortable — or else. Though a horror/thriller, the movie was additionally darkly comedian, with Bates and Caan deftly enjoying off one another, poor bedridden Paul at her mercy. 

“I generally questioned if this was a sadistic joke on [director Rob Reiner’s] half,” Caan mentioned on the time. “You realize, ‘Let’s get essentially the most hyper man in Hollywood to remain in mattress for 15 weeks.’” Distress discovered the absurdity within the scenario, riffing on poisonous fandom lengthy earlier than #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, however what was additionally humorous was that it was Caan within the function. For an actor who lengthy flaunted his machismo, portraying a personality who’s trapped by a feminine fan who had whole management over him was additionally a sly flip of gender energy dynamics. The extra unstable Annie obtained, the extra terrified and indignant Paul obtained — on this blackhearted comedy, Caan was the straight man, but in addition the flat-on-his-back man, a dude stripped of his masculinity by a lady who simply desires him to put in writing extra tacky romance novels.

Distress helped kickstart a comeback for an actor who’d been Oscar-nominated for The Godfather and gone on to do robust work all through the 1970s and early 1980s, earlier than watching his profession stall. After Distress, he alternated between roles as criminals and cops, often in dramas and thrillers but in addition generally in comedies. Too typically, these humorous movies weren’t so humorous — Mickey Blue Eyes is finest forgotten — however in 1996’s Bottle Rocket, he discovered simply the proper slant on Mr. Henry, a small-time criminal who intimidates the even-smaller-time crooks who’re the movie’s lovable antiheroes (Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Robert Musgrave). Reportedly, Caan had lately gotten out of rehab when he signed up for Wes Anderson’s function debut, not fully understanding the filmmaker’s peculiar sensibility. 

“One factor I started to comprehend after we began doing that film is that Owen and Luke and Bob Musgrave and I, we had our personal means of working collectively,” Anderson mentioned in 2008. “We’d been doing our personal experiments, and I’d been making my very own shorts, and as we began making Bottle Rocket with different individuals, I started to comprehend, ‘I feel the best way we’re doing issues just isn’t fairly proper, as a result of a few of our methods appear to be getting kind of a puzzled response.’” The truth is, Anderson recalled that, at one level throughout filming, Caan turned to him and mentioned, “This isn’t purported to be a comedy, is it?” 

Nonetheless, the director insisted, “I feel he was amused by it. He wasn’t there for lengthy, and we had enjoyable with him, and he appeared to be getting fun out of all of it.” And you’ll see Caan enjoyable into his place because the seasoned professional on a set full of hungry, inexperienced younger filmmakers and actors. Not in contrast to how Anderson would give veteran actors Invoice Murray and Gene Hackman robust, autumnal roles in his subsequent movies, Bottle Rocket was against the law caper that had an enormous quantity of reverence for its august star, and in flip Caan lent the movie a relaxed gracefulness that grounded the film. He felt like an actual particular person, albeit a barely weird one — severely, what’s up together with his fascination with martial arts? — in a gently quirky, off-kilter actuality. Caan was humorous by not even attempting.

Within the early 2000s, Caan landed certainly one of his steadiest gigs, that because the lead within the long-running NBC sequence Las Vegas, easily transitioning to elder-statesman standing. However he was way more memorable in a movie that got here out the identical time, Elf, enjoying Walter, a grouch who runs a kids’s e-book publishing firm, unaware that he has a son named Buddy who’s been residing as an elf on the North Pole for many years. This was the film that made director Jon Favreau and comedian Will Ferrell massive photographs in Hollywood, and Caan’s slowburn annoyance was an ideal counterpoint to Buddy’s wide-eyed optimism and unhinged glee. The extra flummoxed Walter obtained about Buddy, the extra hilarious the scenes obtained, whereas additionally setting the stage for Caan to ship what’s finally certainly one of his warmest performances as an unwitting dad who turns into a greater particular person.

“Will and I had been type of starstruck by him,” Favreau would say later. “However Will would bust his balls loads, which was enjoyable, too. Will gave him, as a wrap present — he wrote a notice that mentioned, ‘Nice working with you. The primary one is a bit bit gradual, however the second two are actually good.’ And it was The Godfather trilogy.”

Learn concerning the making of Caan’s comedies, and what comes via clearest is that he might not have been essentially the most naturally gifted comic. Which isn’t to say he’s not humorous in one thing like The Godfather, however he didn’t essentially gravitate to creating lighthearted movies, a incontrovertible fact that labored to these films’ benefit, using his characters’ discomfort for laughs. 

“The factor with Caan is, he’s obtained an amazing humorousness,” Favreau went on to say. “So in the event you may make him snicker, all the stress disappears. We saved him laughing, and he saved us laughing. It took him some time to get with the programming. I surrounded him with quite a lot of improvisers, like Andy Richter and Kyle Gass and Amy Sedaris. Once I’m working with improv individuals, I give them the inexperienced mild to only deliver it and check out issues. So each take was totally different. Finally, one thing simply clicked in Jimmy and he simply went with it. He was quite a lot of enjoyable.”

Even so, James Caan knew what movie could be his legacy. In that very same interview, Favreau recalled going out with the veteran actor to dinner. “Each time we’d go into an Italian restaurant, they’d placed on The Godfather soundtrack,” mentioned Favreau. “All over the place he goes, The Godfather theme.” Contemplating that Caan was Jewish, not Italian, hopefully he discovered that humorous. In spite of everything, in his finest comedies, he at all times mined the humor of being put in awkward conditions.

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Tim Grierson

Tim Grierson is a contributing editor at MEL. He writes about movie and popular culture for Display screen Worldwide, Rolling Stone and Vulture.