Peter Boyle, RIP

Most of all, I’ll remember him in Taxi Driver.

Watch him in the “your work becomes you, you become your work” scene with DeNiro.

And, in the same movie, the best moment of Boyle's acting career: the cafeteria scene, when a half-dozen half-awake moonlighting hacks sit around a table. The subject of homosexuality comes up. Some Southern cabbie says, “You know, out in California, when two fags break up, the one fag has to pay the other alimony.”

A pause, as the group considers this. Finally, (the expression on his face is priceless) Boyle holds forth:

“Not bad!”

Southern guy: “Yeah, they’re way ahead out there.”

Oh, and one other memory: “Dueling Brandos” with John Belushi on SNL.

I would buy that entire season on DVD just to hear Belushi say, “Get the butter.” And Boyle, in a comic sketch with one of the kings, more than holds his own.