Charles Grodin, dead at 86.

[MrCleveland]

I didn't see any posts about his death, so I'll post it here.

[Edison]

Always terrific, but especially in Midnight Run.

[opus]

He was a great faux grumpy guest on the late night talk show circuit back in the day.

[TMC]

Charles Grodin's bizarre 1977 SNL episode embodied his brand of meta-comedy

The October 1977 episode reportedly got Grodin banned from Saturday Night Live because he missed much of the week's rehearsal and blew his lines during the show, but Grodin later said he was invited back to host. "Many SNL episodes have versions of this routine, with the host chatting backstage with cast members early on about how the television magic comes together," says Zachary Pincus-Roth. "But Grodin, who died Tuesday at 86, keeps the conceit going throughout the show as he stops sketches in their tracks, trips over his lines and comments on the performances, the whole time hoping to perform a song 'to express how I feel about life.' The episode was emblematic of a looser, more experimental SNL era, but also demonstrated aspects of Grodin’s comedic persona: his confounding mix of boyish affability and faux-rudeness, or self-deprecation and self-obsession, sometimes in the service of questioning the institutions around him." ALSO: Watch Grodin's best moments as a "talk show genius."

Charles Grodin once got Sean Hannity to agree to get waterboarded

Grodin's death on Wednesday at age 86 prompted the resurfacing of his 2009 Fox News interview on Hannity, where he asked the host “How much mascara do you have on right now?” and "Would you consent to be waterboarded so we could get the truth out of you?" Hannity said sure he'd do it for charity, though he never did go through with getting waterboarded.

Charles Grodin dies: Actor, Emmy winner and curmudgeon of late-night TV was 86

Grodin, who died today of bone marrow cancer, is known for his many movie roles, from Midnight Run to The Heartbreak Kid. But he was also a staple of late-night TV, making 36 appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, 17 appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and 25 appearances on Late Show with David Letterman. In fact, Charles Grodin vs. David Letterman was the original Jimmy Kimmel vs. Matt Damon. "Starting in the late 1970s and lasting for well over three decades, Charles Grodin ... would regularly and hilariously bump heads with the likes of Johnny Carson and David Letterman during his own late night appearances," Yahoo! News' Gregory Wakeman recalled of their "feud" in 2017. "Charles Grodin’s deadpan passive-aggressive shtick was so hard to interpret that people even mistook it for genuine hostility. In the process he created one of the great late night characters. But while Charles Grodin’s run-ins with Carson were an uncomfortable yet hilarious delight, it was the irascible Letterman that really knew how to push his buttons. Arguably the finest example came in May, 1990, when Charles Grodin appeared on Late Night With David Letterman to promote his play The Price Of Fame, only for Letterman to mistakenly call it The Prince Of Fame, and immediately provoke the wrath of the actor...Things got so bad that in 1991 Charles Grodin even appeared on the show with an attorney after Letterman had said some rather libelous comments regarding the actor the week before." Grodin hosted a talk show himself: CNBC's The Charles Grodin Show from 1995 to 1998 -- which Dana Carvey parodied on The Dana Carvey Show. In 2000, he became a political commentator for CBS News' 60 Minutes II. Grodin was also reportedly one of the people banned from Saturday Night Live after looking unprepared and clumsy after missing rehearsal when he hosted in 1977. In the mid-2010s, Grodin recurred on Louie as Louis CK's doctor. In 2016, he recurred on ABC's Madoff miniseries as Carl Shapiro, one of Bernie Madoff's biggest investors. Grodin is also an Emmy winner for helping write the The Paul Simon Special in 1977.

[AB]

Rest in peace. I liked him in the movie Beethoven.

[OH Nuts!]

May he Rest In Peace.

[Svenfan1234]

Charles Grodin.

[Torgo]

Midnight Run is classic. The Lonely Guy with Grodin and Steve Martin is underrated. Also good in the Chevy Chase/Goldie Hawn comedy Seems Like Old Times, and the Lily Tomlin movie The Incredible Shrinking Woman.

Probably my favorite two films of his- Real Life and 11 Harrowhouse.