“Jimmy was my fictional brother and my lifelong friend. It’s hard to believe that he won’t be in the world anymore because he was so alive and daring. A great actor, a brilliant director and my dear friend. I loved him, gonna miss him,” said Al Pacino.
“I can’t believe Jimmy’s gone. Working with him on Misery was one of the most profound experiences of my career. When you watch his performance, his terror, it’s as though he’s watching a snake. Brilliant,” said Kathy Bates.
“Team Mates and friends till the end. RIP Jimmy,” said Billy Dee Williams.
Pacino, Bates and Williams starred with the late James Caan, who passed away on Wednesday, July 6 at the age of 82, in The Godfather, Misery and Brian’s Song, respectively. The bookends were early 1970s films that catapulted Caan from regularly working actor to punch-drunk movie stardom overnight.
Bronx-born and Sunnyside, Queens-raised, Caan later attended Hofstra University in Hempstead, where he was classmates with an equally pre-fame Francis Ford Coppola. The director cast Caan in his 1969 film The Rain People before each became instant legends upon the arrival of 1972’s first Godfather picture.
“Jimmy was someone who stretched through my life longer and closer than any motion picture figure I’ve ever known,” Coppola said in an exclusive statement to Deadline. “From those earlier times working together on The Rain People, and throughout all the milestones of my life, his films and the many great roles he played will never be forgotten. He will always be my old friend from Sunnyside, my collaborator and one of the funniest people I’ve ever known.”
It’s his funnyman sensibilities that helped an original screen badass with an intimidating bravado about him keep you hooked, and keep you laughing despite the gray morality of some of his most iconic characters. From his leading man days (The Gambler, Rollerball, Thief) to his character-acting second act (Bottle Rocket, Mickey Blue Eyes, Get Smart), he rewrote the script that said talent should “stay in their lanes.” As far as Caan’s decades-spanning body of work was concerned, he knew life – defined at its simplest – was tragicomedy, and constantly reminded us through the roles he’d choose.
“Loved him very much. Always wanted to be like him. So happy I got to know him. Never ever stopped laughing when I was around that man. His movies were best of the best,” Adam Sandler tweeted. The comedian forged enough camaraderie with a personal hero in Caan, the “big bad” heavy in his 1996 film Bulletproof, to later cast him as a short-tempered boxer-turned-priest in the 2012 raunchy comedy, That’s My Boy. By this point, Caan had proven to endear himself to the many generations that succeeded the one he broke in with – not because of Sandler film turns, but rather, one Will Ferrell holiday comedy that sings back into the conversation with each new Winter season.
“James Caan was a true delight. My favorite memory of him was shooting part of a montage for the end of Elf and he started playing piano — he played beautifully — I sang and he played and I was just astonished by his talent!” Caan’s Elf co-star, Zooey Deschanel, tweeted. In the film, Caan plays Walter Hobbs, a cynical children’s book publisher who reluctantly bonds with the adult kid (Ferrell) – raised as an Elf in the North Pole by Papa Elf, per the will of Santa Claus – he never knew he had.
Unintendedly, this brought a lengthily-lived Hollywood life poetically full-circle. As, in The Godfather, it’s understood Caan’s Santino “Sonny” Corleone – the brash heir to the throne who never came to be due to a Mitchell Field, Mineola-shot ambush – rescued future family lawyer, or “consigliere,” Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) from the streets when they were boys.
“We always had a lot of fun together … but at the base of it all, he wanted to be accepted as an actor,” Duvall told KUSI News. “That was his calling, and he was a very special talent as an actor and a terrific friend.”
“We don’t talk business at the table,” Caan quipped with hilarious deadpan as Sonny in Part I, right after doing very much of that. However, we at The Messenger and you reading at home sure can when it comes to relishing in the memories of your favorite Caan lines, performances and films. He may be gone, but his work will last forever. God bless the Movies and God bless James Caan’s daughter, Tara, and sons Scott (of Varsity Blues and Hawaii Five-0 fame), Alexander, James and Jacob while they grieve this great loss.
