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"Wait 5 more years, and a Disney subsuidiary will have Michael Caine playing this guy in a movie."

Good one. I haven't had the stomach to see his performance as a friendly abortionist in Cider House Rules (reading about it was bad enough). I used to like him as an actor, but that ruined it for me.

BTW, Paul Newman turned that role down:

One of the most peculiar choices made by director Hallstrom is his repeated focus upon the abortuary’s incinerator early in the film. Those who didn’t read Irving’s novel, or do not follow the film’s narration diligently, might not understand the significance of the curious structure — an outdoor oven with a brick chimney — until Homer bluntly refers to the fact that by being born he had been spared from the incinerator. Interestingly, it was the incinerator that caused veteran leftist agitator Paul Newman to balk when he was offered the role of Larch. "There are so many scenes at the incinerator," Newman told screenwriter Irving. "That incinerator really gets to me."