How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am by Charles Grodin Page B

Graduate
test I’ve never had a bumpy moment with him. Whenever I see him, I can’t help but be aware I’m looking at someone very special—so
     original in his wit and so smart—probably in a class of his own, at least in show business. The two of us once had lunch,
     and the subject of
The Graduate
never came up. Oddly, I don’t even remember thinking about it when I was with him.
    In 1997, thirty years after our awkward, failed encounter on
The Graduate
, Mike called to compliment me on something he’d seen on my cable show—a classy move. He’s a highly unusual dude. If our country
     ever becomes a monarchy, I could easily see him as king.
    A friend of mine recently called my attention to
Pictures at the Revolution
by Marc Harris (Penguin, 2008) in which
The Graduate
is discussed by Mike Nichols and Buck Henry:
    Charles Grodin, a thirty-one-year-old TV and theater performer with a growing list of credits, impressed them both with a
     very sharp reading. “Grodin got very close,” says Nichols. “His reading was hilarious, he’s brilliantly talented, and he understood
     the jokes. But he didn’t look like Benjamin to me.”
    “Chuck Grodin gave the best reading,” says Henry. “And maybe one of the best readings I’ve ever heard in my career, so funny
     and interesting. He thinks we offered him the part—I don’t think we did. I don’t remember his screen test, whereas Dustin’s
     was really memorable.”
    Dustin Hoffman is a brilliant actor. We were in Lee Strasberg’s class together. I have no doubt he gave a memorable screen
     test. I also have no doubt he had the script well ahead of the night before he did the test.
    Sometime in the early sixties, years before all of this, I saw Dustin standing on a street corner near where I lived. He said
     he was looking for me, because he was directing something in the basement of a church and he wanted me to be in it. There
     would be no pay, of course. I told him I couldn’t, because I had to work (driving a cab at that time). As I walked away, I
     looked back at him still standing on the corner. I remember thinking to myself,
God, I wonder what’s going to happen to him?
Obviously, he’s worked so hard and deeply deserves everything that’s happened to him. I think he’s a magnificent actor.
    Mike Nichols wrote me a note after
The Graduate
screen test saying he’d like me to do
Catch-22
with him. That helped, but what really kept
The Graduate
situation from getting to me was a telegram I received soon after the test from Renée Taylor, saying she wanted to meet with
     me. My friend now of over fifty years, Gene Wilder, got Renée and me together. Through Renée I met her friend Elaine May,
     which led me to doing
The Heartbreak Kid
, which really launched my movie career.

The French Girl
    R ight around this time in the late sixties, I was living in an apartment in New York. One day I answered the phone, and there
     was a French girl on the line. It was a wrong number, but we began to chat. She told me she was a young actress recently arrived
     from Paris to screen test for the role of a sexy young woman in a movie. She was charming and somewhat flirtatious. After
     a while, I asked for her number. I was, of course, single. She wouldn’t give it to me but took mine and said she’d call again.
    About a week later she did, and again we had a flirtatious conversation, and again she wouldn’t give me her number but said
     she’d call again. These weekly calls went on for about a month, until she finally gave me her number. That would prove to
     be an unconsciously self-destructive move on her part. She said she’d still prefer to call me. I didn’t ask why, but I chose
     to respect her wishes and didn’t call her.
    After about a half-dozen phone calls, she started to ask me about my dating life. I told her I was seeing a girl, and she
     began to ask about her. After the second call, when she continued to ask about my new girlfriend, I began to