RIP Peter Boyle

Actor Peter Boyle has died at age 71.

Boyle had first come to the public's attention more than a quarter century before, in the critically acclaimed "Joe." He met his wife, Loraine Alterman, on the set of "Young Frankenstein" when she visited as a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine and Boyle, still in monster makeup, asked her for a date.

On television, he starred in "Joe Bash," an acclaimed but short-lived 1986 "dramedy" in which he played a lonely beat cop. He won an Emmy in 1996 for his guest-starring role in an episode of "The X Files," and he was nominated for "Everybody Loves Raymond" and for the 1977 TV film "Tail Gunner Joe," in which he played Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

In the 1976 film "Taxi Driver," he was the cabbie-philosopher Wizard, who counseled Robert DeNiro's violent Travis Bickle.

He did dozens of other films, including "T.R. Baskin," "F.I.S.T.," "Johnny Dangerously," "Conspiracy: Trial of the Chicago 8" (as activist David Dellinger), "The Dream Team," "Monster's Ball," "The Santa Claus," "The Santa Claus 2," "While You Were Sleeping" (in a charming turn as Sandra Bullock's future father-in-law) and "Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed."

I've loved a lot of Boyle's roles, but my absolute favorite was Carl Lazlo, Esq. in Where the Buffalo Roam, the best film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's work.


"You couldn't invent someone like Carl Lazlo. He was one of a kind. He was a mutant—a real heavyweight water buffalo type—who could chew his way through a concrete wall and spit out the other side covered with lime and chalk and look good in doing it."