George Segal had a special place in my heart, though, as a result of his two great supporting roles in comedies I cherish from exactly 25 years ago.
Segal was better known for other things, to be sure. He was nominated for an Oscar in Who's Afraid of Virigina Woolf? He was a regular in the sitcom Just Shoot Me. A show called The Goldbergs, which I am somehow not familiar with, was name-checked in the headline of the story that alerted me to his passing in Variety.
For me, though, George Segal was never better than in Flirting With Disaster and The Cable Guy, my #2 and #4 movies of 1996, the very first year I kept a ranked list of my favorite films of the year.
His was a significant supporting role in the David O. Russell film, as he played Ed Coplin, the neurotic adopted father of Ben Stiller's Mel, who spent the entire movie searching for his birth parents. His comic rapport with his wife, played by Mary Tyler Moore, is one of Flirting With Disaster's true highlights.
His character didn't actually get a name in The Cable Guy. On IMDB he is credited only as "Steven's father." But indeed, his appearance midway through as the father of that film's main character, played by Matthew Broderick, kicks the comedy memorably if briefly into a new gear.
Both films showcased what Segal did best, which was to play an affable but flustered everyman. And both films have a line or dialogue sequence that I love quoting, even to this day, which perfectly illustrates his ability to play clueless and confused with an abundance of charm.
There are actually two lines in The Cable Guy, which is impressive considering that he has maybe seven minutes of screen time in the movie. The first is when Steven gets arrested, and his father comes to bail him out. Concerned over an arrest he can't comprehend, his father asks Steven "Are you taking the pot?" It's an adorable moment, as it demonstrates both that he's too square to understand how to talk about drugs using the correct terminology, and also that he believes marijuana makes people do things that lead directly to their arrest.
Later, in a game of Porno Password instigated by the thorn in Steven's side (Jim Carrey's Chip Douglas), this uptight man and the rest of his family get unexpectedly caught up in the ribald moment, contrary to their apparent squareness. When Steven, seemingly playing the game at gunpoint, gives a winning clue that makes the whole room (except Steven) crack up in hysterics, his dad shouts out "I would have said schlong!"
Maybe you had to be there. Fortunately, I was.
He's got much more to do in Flirting With Disaster, where he appears in about three different parts of the movie and is knee deep in guilt-tripping his son over Mel's quest for his birth parents. These lead to a lot of little funny moments by Segal, but none funnier than this.
When he hears Mel is going to San Diego to find his parents, he tries to instill fear in Mel about the "dangers" of that comically sunny and safe city. His story concludes with "They have a big car-jacking problem in San Diego. They bump you, and when you pull over, they mutilate you and take your car. It's how they got Art Sackheim."
Patricia Arquette rejoins "Art Sackheim is dead?"
Segal: "Who said anything about dead? They stole his car."
Arquette: "You said 'mutilate.'"
Segal: "Please."
There's something great about that "please," in part as it is almost lost when his wife immediately tramples over it with another flow of insecure objections. I just love how well he sells this moment, as if he's already forgotten what word he just used 30 seconds earlier, and his daughter-in-law is absurd for suggesting such a thing.
These moments probably don't seem like an excuse to elevate Segal over other recent luminaries we have lost, at least in terms of this blog's "in memoriam" priorities. But the thing is, they were my moments. They are some of my favorite moments from two seminal comedies, each of which I have watched more than a half-dozen times. And these are the types of moments I will still remember when I'm an old man on my own death bed, lucky if I get as many as the 87 years Segal got.
Rest in peace, you loveable neurotic.
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