A
lan Alda prob-
ably expected
that, after playing
Bert, a sensitive,
world-weary di-
vorce attorney in
Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage
Story,” he would be asked what
makes a good marriage. After all,
he and his photographer-writer
wife, Arlene Weiss, have been
married for 62 years — practically
a miracle in an industry in which
relationships rarely last a presi-
dential term. So when the subject
comes up, the 83-year-old actor
has a patented response.
“My wife says the secret to a
long marriage is a short memory,”
quips Alda, relaxing at the Annex
at the Landmark. But after deliv-
ering his pithy punchline, he con-
siders the question a little more
deeply. “Just respect for the other
person,” he says. “That’s kind of a
boring answer — I like hers be-
cause it’s funny. Somebody asked
me yesterday, ‘You’re in this mov-
ie about divorce, have you ever
considered divorce?’ I said, ‘No,
but my wife has considered mur-
der.’ ”
That combination of serious-
ness and wry humor is at the heart
of “Marriage Story,” which
watches theater director Charlie
(Adam Driver) and actress Nicole
(Scarlett Johansson) end their
marriage. Alda is the seen-it-all
lawyer representing Charlie —
Bert’s gone through a few di-
vorces himself — but if you ask
this multitasking actor, author, ac-
tivist and podcast host what drew
him to the material, he doesn’t
have profound insights to offer.
That’s not the way he works.
“I loved the writing, and that’s
what always attracts me,” Alda
says. “Some actors think about the
character, but I don’t spend much
time thinking about that. I don’t
like to intellectualize so much.
I’m not good talking about a char-
acter in that way, because what Ihope is something that can’t be
put into words is communicated.”
Indeed, Alda’s performance in
“Marriage Story” is all about feel.
Just the look on Bert’s sad, half-
smiling face is enough to clue
Charlie to just how bruising the
divorce process, including squab-
bling over child custody, is going
to be. “It was all in the script,”
Alda says. “I just had to get under-
neath what Noah had in mind
when he wrote it. That was the
process of discovery, even while
we were shooting.”
Born Alphonso Joseph
D’Abruzzo, Alda grew up in a per-
forming family. His father, Robert
Alda, started in burlesque, work-
ing his way up to Broadway and
movies. Alda’s roots were in im-
provisation — “I really value
spontaneity,” he says, “not just in
my own work, but when I see
other people’s work” — and he’salways trusted his intuition on
how to play a part. Not that there
weren’t anxieties along the way:
When Alda signed up for the role
that launched his career, Hawk-
eye Pierce in “MASH,” he initially
couldn’t get a bead on the sar-
donic wartime surgeon.
“Even after 10 days’ rehearsal, I
wondered how I was going to be
the guy,” Alda says. “[When] I
walked out of the tin shed of the
compound for the first shot, I just
jumped in. There was an extra
passing by playing a nurse, and I
just grabbed her and gave her a
hug. ‘Oh, wait, I’m Hawkeye.’ ”
Alda laughs at the memory. “It
was the kind of thing that he
would do. If he did it today, he’d
get #MeToo-ed.”
That apologetic tone seems
very much in keeping with Alda’s
public persona of being the belov-
ed nice guy. But since 1989’s“Crimes and Misdemeanors,” in
which he portrayed a soulless
television producer, Alda has
tweaked that image, becoming a
figure of effortless retro-hip ap-
peal. He earned his only Oscar
nomination as a cutthroat senator
in “The Aviator,” and he’s been
embraced by new generations of
comedians, landing a plum guest
role on “30 Rock” and being the
object of affection for the clueless
geriatrics in Nick Kroll and John
Mulaney’s Broadway smash, “Oh,
Hello.” And his podcast “Clear
+Vivid” has garnered impressive
guests: scientists, musicians,
economists. And Conan O’Brien.
Nothing has slowed Alda —
not even his announcement last
year that he has Parkinson’s. In
“Marriage Story,” Bert’s defeated
air has a little more poignancy
simply because of the slight trem-
or occasionally noticeable in Al-
da’s hand. “I wanted Noah to
know that I had a tremor and he
could cut around it if he wanted
to,” says Alda, who has been vocal
about removing the stigma sur-
rounding the condition. He has
no desire to retire from acting.
“Sometimes I think of Lionel Bar-
rymore, who acted for 10, 15 years
toward the end of his career in a
wheelchair. He played a variety of
people — they all sat in a wheel-
chair, and everybody accepted it.”
Alda’s seemingly boundless
energy partly stems from a wake-
up call he received 16 years ago —
a cosmic reminder to appreciate
life. While in Chile for a segment
for the PBS program he hosted,
“Scientific American Frontiers,”
he became frighteningly ill, re-
quiring emergency surgery for an
intestinal blockage. “I was about
two hours from dying,” he says.
“One of the great gifts I got from
that was to realize I might not
wake up from the operation — and
to realize I wasn’t scared about
that. Before that I had not liked
the idea of dying. And now I
know I’m going to die.” Still, he
says, with a chuckle, “waking up
alive is a really nice thing.”
He sounds untroubled, enjoy-
ing this extended golden age dur-
ing his golden years. “Every once
in a while, I get to do something
that’s really, really fine work, like
this movie or Scorsese’s movie,”
he says. “My whole life is like an
improvisation — I don’t know
what’s going to come in front of
me next. If I just keep at it, prob-
ably more good things will come.
[After Chile] all of this is a bonus
for me. I don’t know how much
more of a bonus I’ve got left. But
I’m really looking forward to it.” 8Jay L. ClendeninLos Angeles TimesTHE CONTENDERS
Retire?
You must
be joking
A near-death
experience didn’t
slow Alan Alda
and neither has
Parkinson’s. He is
in high spirits and
has a new career
highlight playing
a divorce lawyer
in ‘Marriage Story.’
BY TIM
GRIERSON
S40
THE ENVELOPE LOS ANGELES TIMES TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2019