Featured Author - June 2011
Alan Arkin
At 76, Alan Arkin has acted in more than 90 film productions and is legendary for his comic timing and improvisational skills—the latter being the subject of workshops he’s led all over the country. He first came to New Mexico as a teen, to work on a dude ranch near Taos, and 10 years ago moved to the outskirts of Santa Fe. His new memoir, An Improvised Life (Da Capo Press, 2011), has its roots in New Mexico, as he tells Wolf Schneider.
Q: What made you write An Improvised Life?
I did a workshop at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe that was so moving and potent that I felt that I had to write it down. Then other things happened at other potent workshops, and the book started spiraling around those events.
The chapter on the IAIA improvisational workshop was my favorite.
There was a reticence among the kids there that I never saw anywhere else. I didn’t understand it. As I started learning about the Native American culture, I realized it’s part of the culture not to stand out or volunteer; it’s a shyness they have about not wanting to put themselves forward.
Both of us are originally from New York, so we don’t have that reticence!
Yeah, it’s part of our culture to put yourself forward and get ahead.
Yet there are some standout Native filmmakers, like Chris Eyre and Sherman Alexie.
Yeah, I’m crazy about some of the Native films. Powwow Highway [a 1989 film starring New Mexicans Gary Farmer and Wes Studi—Ed.], I love that film. Smoke Signals, too.
You write that everybody has a capacity for creativity.
Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, “It’s better this way.” But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.
What do you see as your book’s key message?
Play! That life, at its best, is about improvisation.
You moved to Santa Fe because . . .
We were driving home to Connecticut from Los Angeles, and we stopped here and I fell in love with it all over again. We rented places for three years, and then we bought. I like the sky. The energy. The land.
What’s your Santa Fe life like?
Very quiet. We live outside Santa Fe. We see mountains everywhere. We love the power of the land. At night, we see endless stars.
Got any favorite haunts?
Oh yeah. Chocolate Maven Bakery & Cafe. Andiamo! Real Food Nation.
You won an Oscar in 2007 for your role as the sex-crazed, dirty-mouthed, heroin-snorting grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine. Was any of that performance improvised?
It was a brilliant, brilliant script that didn’t need much help. I did a little improvising.
Do you usually bring improv to your roles?
Depends on how good the script is. Look, I don’t spring this on anybody. I tell the director, “I like the script, I like the character, I like the idea, but I feel like it needs help here, here, and there, and if you’re comfortable with my doing that, this is the way I would like to do the part.”
Are the offers still rolling in?
I don’t know if they’re rolling, but they’re kind of creeping in!
Wolf Schneider has been editor in chief of the Santa Fean, editor of Living West, and consulting editor of Southwest Art.
Discover more Southwest authors in our archives.
