Hollywood Funerals, a courtesy of Brooklyn
In a dramatic scene in the memorable 1996 movie "City Hall," Al Pacino, who plays a fierce New York City Mayor, stands in front of a mourning crowd and says, "They warned me. Don't stand behind a coffin when a heart beat is silent and a child lays dead." The immaculate white casket he is pointing to, the beautiful floral arrangements on top of the casket and behind Al Pacino, were meticulously prepared by a real-life Brooklyn funeral director, Alex Marchak.
Since setting up a funeral for "City Hall," he's been preparing fictional funerals for movies and television, while also preparing real ones and supporting people on the hardest days of their lives.
"People used to think it was spooky," he said on the funeral business. "Now, they want to know more about it because they see it on television."
Marchak provided props for countless shows. He worked for the Sopranos for five years and he has done work for numerous other shows. Among them are "Cop Land," he also built an embalming room for "Law and Order," and even supplied them with a funeral home that they used for a special episode entitled "Death." He has helped set up funerals for the soap opera "Guiding Light," and he built a casket for "The Whoopi Goldberg Show."
This Brooklyn native owns the flourishing Herbst Trzaska Waldeck Chapels & Bay Ridge Funeral Home in Dyker Heights, one of the largest funeral homes in southern Brooklyn. He expanded a few years ago by buying three other ones.
Marchak, 52, is a third generation funeral director. His grandfather started the business in 1924. After his grandfather died in 1930, his grandmother and then his mother ran the business until he became a funeral director himself at the age of 22 in 1978.
Marchak had an unusual childhood. While visiting his grandmother who lived above the funeral home, it was completely normal for him to walk in on dead bodies being prepared for viewings. He does not even remember the first time he saw a corpse because it was part of his life at a very early age. As a teenager, he helped move and embalm bodies, and prepared the viewings. He even met his wife at a funeral, her uncle's.
"The most important thing when you grow up in a funeral home is that you have to be quiet," he said.
While Marchak is a very happy man, most of his life story has a funeral theme. He and his wife Holly had their first date during the viewing of her recently deceased uncle.
"It sends shivers down my spine how he handles funerals. With a special warm touch he always knows how to comfort people who have lost their loved ones," Marchak's wife said. "He makes sure there is a very human touch to everything he does."
Marchak admits that his job becomes hard when he deals with the death of a young person. His saddest memory is when a teenager, died on a school trip after one parent had tried to keep him home and the other overruled the decision. "It's a tragedy that I will remember my whole life," he said.
Reports have accused the death business of making bereaved customers spend a great deal more than what was needed but Marchak said that this was one of many misconceptions of the funeral business. "In the past, people lived to die, now people live to live," he said. "When people come in, they know exactly how much they want to spend. We are here to give them what they want."
Marchak has changed his business to adjust to the demographic changes of the neighborhood. With a fast-growing Chinese population in southern Brooklyn, he hired a Chinese funeral director and he even built a Chinese room in his funeral home, where bodies are displayed with foods and objects that belonged to the dead person are burned in a fireplace during the viewings.
Marchak has had the Hollywood bug for decades. In the 1970's, he met in a disco in Bay Ridge a writer who was doing research for a movie on the disco scene. That movie later became "Saturday Night Fever." Marchak got to be extra on the set, and he even appears on the famous movie poster just behind John Travolta.
In 1997, he helped produce a comedy "Dearly Beloved," set in a funeral home starring Eric Stoltz. This experience gave him a taste for film production, and he is still waiting for a bigger break. He wished he had thought of the HBO hit "Six Feet Under."
Marchak said he often notices details in funerals on television that are wrong. "They get a few things wrong. The body is usually badly positioned, it's too low most of the time, they set up the caskets the wrong way, and there is often a piece of cloth missing," he said.
With a busy schedule, and many activities, Marchak, who is also the Chairman of a bank, does not dedicate as much time to the funeral home as he used to. "If I know the people, I will take care of the viewing," he said.
Many people close to Marchak describe him as someone who is very warm, which is the main reason he is such a prominent funeral director. His wife Holly thinks he has a very special place in people's life because of his amazing capacity to comfort people around him. With emotion in her voice, she talks about how her husband handles funerals for babies. "He never charges the families who make arrangements for a baby. That is the hardest part of this job."
His Secretary, Lynne McMahon, said that many people in the community trusted Marchak to take care of their loved ones in their sorrow after they pass. "He's really a character, we'll keep him around for a while," she said jokingly.
McMahon explained that there were many reasons everyone in the funeral home enjoyed working for Marchak. "He's a nice guy, with a good heart, he's very generous, and he always buys lunch for everybody. Sometimes people take advantage of him, because he's too nice," McMahon said.
Although he has been thinking about funerals for most of his life, Marchak has not made prearrangements for his own. He said he hasn't decided yet what he wants. He said that many people want one thing their whole life and then change their minds at the last moment. "I never thought about what funeral I want for myself," he said. "I don't want to think about my own death."