THIS WEEK: ALAN ARKIN

Academy Award-Winning Actor, Director & Author

Jan. 14, 2021 – This week's guest on REPORT FROM SANTA FE is multi-award-winning actor, director, and author Alan Arkin, discussing his new book, “Out of My Mind (Not Quite A Memoir),” as well as his long career and his intriguing spiritual journey.

In this in-depth interview, discussing his new book, Arkin tells powerful stories of some of the “miracles” that he has encountered on his odyssey.

Arkin has accomplished a delightful balance between the every day and the cosmic, and his charming humanity is seen in this manifesto -- two truisms that sum up a possible meaning of life: I) Everything changes. 2) There is no such thing as too much garlic. This humorous juxtaposition shows Arkin’s rare balance of humanity and spirituality.

Alan Arkin has starred on Broadway, TV, over sixty films, and has won almost every acting award in North America. In this, his ninth published book, with his characteristic wry humor, he digs into his long-time search for meaning, past the seductive glamour of show business. By the time he was in his early thirties, his career was in full bloom and he had achieved everything he’d ever thought he wanted, only to find that it was not what he had hoped for.

In Out of My Mind, Arkin speaks openly about the existential crisis which brought him from analysis to the serious study of Eastern Philosophy, and several teachers who helped him revise his views on almost everything. In this sort-of memoir, the 86-year-old actor tells of the adventures, which, as a direct result of decades of meditation, shook his conception of reality and brought him to a new, exciting, and expanded view of what is “out there,” and the endless, mind-boggling adventure into what is possible – not just for himself but for all the rest of us.

With a film career spanning 7 decades, Alan Wolf Arkin is an actor, director, and screenwriter, known for his performances in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), Wait Until Dark (1967), The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), Popi (1969), Catch-22 (1970); The In-Laws (1979), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Get Smart (2008), Sunshine Cleaning (2008), and Argo (2012).

Arkin received an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Little Miss Sunshine (2006).

QUOTE:

“If you are meticulous to the moment, the future will take care of itself.”

-- Alan Arkin, in his book “An Improvised Life.”