{"id":1548189,"date":"2022-07-11T07:50:38","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T11:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1548189"},"modified":"2022-07-11T07:50:48","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T11:50:48","slug":"godfather-actor-james-caan-was-tough-on-and-off-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/godfather-actor-james-caan-was-tough-on-and-off-screen\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Godfather\u2019 Actor James Caan Was Tough On And Off-Screen"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgodfather-actor-james-caan-was-tough-on-and-off-screen%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1548189&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Screen-Shot-2022-07-10-at-9.08.38-PM-1024x580-1.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Actor James Caan, who died last week at 82, was not director Rob Reiner\u2019s first choice for the brutalized writer\/hostage Paul Sheldon in the film adaptation of Stephen King\u2019s \u201cMisery.\u201d But once cast, Reiner had to depart from the groveling victim of the novel to make room for the inner toughness Caan projected. With Caan now on board, the odds didn\u2019t look quite so bad for Sheldon, even though he was confined to a wheelchair in a locked room in a house occupied by a psychopathic killer.<\/p>\n<p>They say that actors have \u201cmoments\u201d that demonstrate why they are stars. Caan\u2019s was when, mere hours after his captor Anne Wilkes had rebroken his legs, he showed that Sheldon still had enough fight left in him to give her the finger. And Caan made you believe he did, even though he was pale and rail-thin and sitting stiff-legged in a wheelchair.<\/p>\n<p>Caan projected toughness no matter the genre. He fit the description of what hardboiled detective writer Raymond Chandler once said of Humphrey Bogart: that Bogart could be \u201ctough without a gun.\u201d Caan demonstrated this perfectly in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, \u201cEraser.\u201d The takeaway scene isn\u2019t Schwarzenegger\u2019s inevitable torn shirt moment or his one-liners. It is when an unarmed Caan immobilizes an armed opponent while still allowing the victim to hold his gun.<\/p>\n<p>Offscreen, Caan was the real deal. He was born in the Bronx to working-class Jews and through pluck and luck netted a Hollywood contract. He even impressed John Wayne, who Caan starred in a Western with. A black belt in martial arts, which he <a href=\"https:\/\/budodragon.com\/did-you-know-that-james-caan-is-a-soke-dai-in-gosoku-ryu-karate\/\">practiced<\/a> for 30 years, Caan had the distinction of being an actor \u2014 maybe the only one \u2014 who <a href=\"https:\/\/qns.com\/2015\/03\/actor-james-caan-grew-up-in-sunnyside\/\">trained the police<\/a> in self-defense.<\/p>\n<p>Politically, Caan was a \u201ctake no prisoners\u201d conservative; clearly unafraid of politically correct Hollywood and the horses they came in on, he dared to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/entertainment\/james-caan-refuses-to-be-the-typical-hollywood-liberal\">call himself<\/a> an \u201cultra-conservative\u201d the year he broke liberal ranks and voted for Trump in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n<p>But unlike his liberal peers, Caan wasn\u2019t preachy about his politics and was charming and self-deprecating. Regarding same-sex marriage, Caan <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/entertainment\/james-caan-refuses-to-be-the-typical-hollywood-liberal\">refused to comment<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want to comment on that. I\u2019ll let those other geniuses do that \u2014 all those actors who like to find a stage to push their agendas. They don\u2019t have political science degrees. \u2026 I certainly don\u2019t,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p>During the 2016 election, Caan was unapologetically hawkish, stating that the \u201cterrorists\u201d were worse than the Mafia and that a Hillary Clinton administration would be disastrous in terms of national security.<\/p>\n<p>Caan\u2019s finest moments may have been off-screen. Those not in liberal Hollywood but on the front lines of the War on Terror detected his toughness.<\/p>\n<p>On a visit to his beloved Israel, Caan said that he and a rabbi bonded even though neither spoke the same language. The link was, of course, their courage. Caan gave the rabbi the highest compliment a Brooklynite could; the rabbi was a \u201cstand-up guy.\u201d And the rabbi gave him the highest compliment an embattled Israelite could, calling Caan a \u201choly warrior.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Ron Capshaw is a writer based in Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Actor James Caan, who died last week at 82, was not director Rob Reiner\u2019s first choice for the brutalized writer\/hostage Paul Sheldon in the film adaptation of Stephen King\u2019s \u201cMisery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":611,"featured_media":1897750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1548189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_finder_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/07\/11\/godfather-actor-james-caan-was-tough-on-and-off-screen\/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=godfather-actor-james-caan-was-tough-on-and-off-screen","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/611"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1548189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1897750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1548189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1548189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1548189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}