Alan Arkin, who passed away today at the grand old age of 89, was one of the great comic actors of his generation and a couple of generations that followed.

He was one of my all-time favorites, and if he wasn’t one of yours, maybe you need to see a few more of his movies.

An Oscar winner for “Little Miss Sunshine,” he shone even more brightly in his debut film, the comedy classic “The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming.”

He provided old school Hollywood chutzpah in “Argo,” was the long-suffering shrink John Cusack’s hitman worries to death in “Grosse Point Blank,” held down his half of one of the funniest films of all time, “The In-Laws,” and dignified many a big screen and small screen production — “Escape from Sobibor” comes immediately to mind.

He was as good as funnymen get, and scary enough to make “Wait Until Dark” work. Really, actors don’t come with more in their tool kit than Arkin had.

I was hunting down an interview I did with him 11 years ago when he was slated to come to the Florida Film Festival. He became ill and didn’t make it there to a planned showing of “Russians are Coming,” so I had to eat the interview and not publish it. Dammit. We talked about “Russians” and his family born facility with the language and how that movie put him on the map in the biggest possible way.

He’ll be missed, especially by people who know good screen comedy and the comics who make it.

RIP.

Pluto TV will be running a string of Arkin’s hits today under their Pluto’s Staff Picks” channel — “Russians,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Sunshine Cleaning,” etc.