Peter Falk

Peter Falk played Nick Longhetti in John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence, husband to Gena Rowlands' Mabel, a man hanging on for dear life to the memory of the carefree years before the children and forever pushing everyone to enjoy themselves and get along. Kent Jones, writing for the Criterion Collection, finds him emotionally exposed here and says Cassavetes used the capacity for shame he saw in him. The same piece quotes a line Falk wrote about the director: John had antennae like Proust. Two years on he was Mikey in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, opposite Cassavetes as Nicky, a project Falk had put to him at a basketball game. The shoot ran sixty days in Philadelphia before moving to Los Angeles around his Columbo commitments.