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'I Like It Better When You're Funny' by Charles Grodin

Cranky Grodin calls ’em as he sees ’em

Sunday, June 23, 2002

By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor

	I Like It Better When You're Funny By Charles Grodin Random House $24.95

As a movie actor, the Pittsburgh native specialized in playing the nebbish who quietly but invariably stole the show from the star. As a talk-show guest, he donned a grumpy facade and threw snits. All but the most blockheaded hosts knew it was a put-on and played along.

Then he became host of his own talk show on CNBC, a cable network known more for news than for entertainment. There he was serious about his rants, and although he was hired and nurtured by Roger Ailes, former George Bush the Elder campaign adviser, he championed positions that sent the political right wing into a tailspin of sputtering indignation.

The title of Grodin’s latest chronicle of “working in television and other precarious adventures” is the kind of backhanded compliment he seems to relish. He can make someone else’s criticism of him make the other person sound ridiculous without raising his literary voice beyond a simple narrative sentence.

He dishes it out in the same pained manner, as if embarrassed for the person he is chiding because of his or her bad behavior. The lucky ones remain anonymous. He cites “the nice grandmotherly lady in charge” of the newly unionized summer theater who demanded a kickback from the neophyte Grodin that effectively negated his raise in salary. And then there’s the producer who pointed his finger at you like a gun if you disagreed with him.

For the big fish, he names names. Howard Stern is “a sexually retarded adult.” Rush Limbaugh “struggles for the words to express his vitriol.” Bill O’Reilly is “rude, aggressive and remarkably hostile” in his “No Spin Zone” segments.

To be as fair as O’Reilly claims to be, Grodin also gives it to his friends, who must be legion. He introduces what seems like half the people in the book as “my friend.”

One of them is Warren Beatty, with whom he appeared in “Heaven Can Wait.” Grodin showed a video of Beatty, the subject of speculation regarding a 2000 presidential campaign, telling students at Harvard that too much money was in the hands of too few people. Someone asked if Beatty himself didn’t fit in that category.

“He never answered it,” Grodin writes, “but instead ‘did a Warren.’ He smiled and pointed, and chuckled, and smiled, and nodded, and shrugged and chuckled some more and went to the next question. Word got back to me that Warren was also ‘surprised’ that his old friend Chuck showed that clip.”

The book, in its meandering fashion, traces Grodin’s second career as a TV host and commentator, giving credit where due and bashing the proper executives (but gently -- Grodin believes in positive criticism and decries the negative, hostile posturing that passes for political discourse nowadays). He turns a bemused but somewhat jaundiced eye upon the process.

Among the producers who come under the scalpel is Bob Reichblum, a fellow Pittsburgher who once produced “Good Morning America.” Grodin calls him “a hardworking and dedicated fella” but says Reichblum’s daily meetings with the staff of his show resulted in “a lot of micromanaging about this and that.”

Grodin acknowledges that he has killed more than one party through his insistence on saying what he thinks. He comes off as a bit of a scold and a crank. But it has served him well. When a later generation of CNBC bosses canned him, he hooked up with sister network MSNBC and now plays the Andy Rooney role on “60 Minutes II.”

Didja ever wonder, like a newly arrived CNBC executive quoted in the book, “How did that communist ever get his own talk show in the first place?” Grodin’ll tell ya.