Ellen's Mandy Patinkin Page |
Starlog Yearbook Vol. 7 1990 |
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Mandy Patinkin “They Call Me Mr. Potato-head!” |
Having survived “AlienNation,” the acclaimed actor tickles the ivories in “Dick Tracy.” Mandy Patinkin is what they call in show business parlance a trouper. He's obviously uncomfortable in the heavy makeup that transforms him into "George" Francisco, the LAPD's first extraterrestrial to make detective, but he doesn't use the makeup as an excuse to hide in his trailer. Instead, he sits outside on a cold, damp night to watch the filming of a fight scene between his co-star and police partner James Caan (STARLOG #134) and Kevyn Major Howard as bad guy alien Rudyard Kipling. During the fight, George is unconscious-and out of camera range-but Patinkin offers to lie on the wet ground anyway if Caan thinks it will get him into the spirit of the scene. Caan says he'll be fine without the help of the knocked-out Newcomer and returns to the skirmish, thus freeing Patinkin to talk about his role in AlienNation (formerly Outer Heat, see STARLOG #130). Akin to the '60s racial thriller In the Heat of the Night which teamed a bigoted Southern sheriff with a black cop from the city, AlienNation pairs intolerant detective Matt Sykes (Caan) with alien partner Francisco for a dangerous murder investigation. Sykes not only hates Francisco, but all 300,000 alien Newcomers who have come to inhabit Los Angeles. George, like Sidney Poitier's Virgil Tibbs, tries to rise above the community's prejudices.
Curiously, Patinkin says he didn't have to research the Newcomer aspect of his role as much as the police part. "Well, I feel like an alien half the time anyway so I didn't prepare at all in that way;" he says. "I figure we're all from another planet so I didn't think there was anything to do in that vein. We made up a language [for the Newcomers), but that was the only effort. The whole idea is that we're not any more from another planet than any other immigrant group in this country." To investigate what it's like to be a police officer, Patinkin spent two weeks hanging out with the New York City Police Department. He took their training course, joined them on patrol and at the firing range, and just hung around the station house talking to cops. In Patinkin's view, George is very lucky to get hired by the police. "It's probably the best job he's able to get," the actor says. "George is a smart guy, he likes to read, he likes order and doing things the proper way. He likes things that have to do with procedure and certainly the police force is one of those things. ''It's one of the better jobs that people from his race have acquired. He feels very proud of the fact that he's able to be a cop." “Meet George Jetson” In the original version of the screenplay by Rockne S. (Twilight Zone) O'Bannon (STARLOG #106) titled Future Tense, Patinkin's character is named George Jetson after everyone's favorite cartoon dad of the future. (One conceit of the script is that many Newcomers acquired famous appellations after overworked immigration officials ran out of names for the 300,000 aliens.) When Hanna-Barbera wouldn't allow use of the Jetson handle, Patinkin's character had to be renamed-much to the actor's regret.
"I hated the fact that the name was changed," Patinkin states. "The news hit about three days before we started shooting. I wish that it had been cleared. I assumed it was cleared [with H-B] when I took the part. I assumed that the name of the character I agreed to play was George Jetson. And I was pretty pissed off that there was a screwup and that the name couldn't be used. "I thought it made a tremendous difference to the piece that the guy's name was George Jetson because it gave a cartoon feeling, an innocence that was important to the movie's whole idea. It's a great loss to the piece that we couldn't recover, a great misfortune that couldn't be solved. It would have helped a lot. But we loved the name 'George,' so we worked that into it." So, the former George Jetson was rechristened Samuel Francisco, but Sykes calls him "George" because he refuses to introduce his new partner as "Sam Francisco." The biggest loss to movie audiences (and Jetsons fans) is that they won't be treated to Patinkin's rendition of the ever-popular Jetsons theme-which George sings to show he's not ashamed of his Earth name. Substituted is a crooning of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Patinkin reports that the cast and crew tried to remain unfazed by the last-minute change. "[On the set,] we always call him George Jetson," he says. "Everything in the script is Jetson, everything on the makeup is labeled Jetson, we always refer to him as Jetson. Not even George, but Jetson. So in our minds, he's George Jetson. "And put that in the article," Patinkin emphasizes. "So as far as I'm concerned, anybody who sees the movie, they're watching George Jetson no matter what the hell they call him." The transformation into a Newcomer-known on the set as "spuds" or "potatoheads"-required a four-hour makeup application every day, which Patinkin describes as "a pain in the ass." But he claims he had no psychological reaction to watching his face change from human to alien. "It's no effect at all," he says. "To be perfectly honest, it's just physically uncomfortable. After awhile, I don't remember what I look like or what this guy looks like. "It's very odd to me when I look at it at the end of the day. I go, 'Why doesn't it look different to me?' I get confused. I don't understand why it doesn't look different to me because I don't look anything like I look, yet I'm so used to the way he looks. When, after an hour with my eyes closed, I open 'em up again, it looks odd. It's just very confusing." The film's extensive location shooting resulted in varied reactions from onlookers. "The first week or so, when we were in a neighborhood, little children would come up to me. They just loved the makeup," Patinkin relates. "They would think I was like Santa Claus. They couldn't get over it. They wanted to touch me and talk to me. Little kids were like, 'Are you real? Where are you from?' One little girl said, 'I know where you're from-you're from Los Angeles.' I said, 'Yeah, well, have you ever seen anybody like me before?' She said, 'Yeah, all the time.' So I said, 'OK.' "That was a nice part of it, but other people at other locations see you and start screaming at you, calling you names, being assholes and treating you just like you would probably be treated if you really did look like this. Or just the way people do treat people who aren't familiar to them. So, the experience [of wearing the makeup in public] is, in that way, very much like what these people would go through. Children have an open mind and are kind, generous and accepting; and the older ones are sarcastic, prejudiced and angry." Patinkin also realizes that audiences will react to the movie on a variety of levels. "Some people will identify with the violence. Others with the racial message that's being put across. Some identify only with the action, intrigue and mystery, or with the relationship between the two guys. And some people identify with all of them. "It's my hope that people have a mixed bag of feelings for the picture. At this point, I don't know how people will react or how the picture will come together because we spend so much time on the violence-the car crashes and bullet things, the gunshots and explosions. And that's what I hate and that's what George hates. And I hope what seeps through all of this is somebody who cares more about people than car crashes, bullets and drugs. That's my goal, but that's left up to the gods of whatever." “Prepare to Die” The 37-year-old actor first got interested in acting as a kid who was bored by other high school activities. Raised by conservative Jewish parents on the south side of Chicago, Patinkin had been singing in the temple choir since age nine. When he finally got involved with a community' theater group as a teenager, he fell in love with the stage. He eventually studied acting at New York's Juilliard School of Drama but dropped out to pursue work. After several leading roles in Off-Broadway shows and some much smaller movie parts, Patinkin reluctantly auditioned for a new Broadway musical called Evita. Though friends and family admired Patinkin's singing, he did not consider himself a musical actor. But he won the part of Che Guevara and ultimately earned a Tony Award for his performance. Years later, after film appearances in Ragtime, Daniel, Yentl, The Princess Bride and The House on Carroll Street, and another Tony-nominated Broadway performance in Sunday in the Park with George, Patinkin admits he has a new set of priorities for balancing career and family. "My preference at this point is twofold," says the happily married father of two. "It's A) doing the projects that interest me the most, wherever they be. And B) trying to manipulate my schedule as possible so that I can be with my family, which is a real Catch-22. I don't know how the hell anybody does it. But that's really what I'm after. "Right now I'm failing at it," laughs Patinkin, 3,000 miles away from his New York home, "because I'm here and they're there. But that is my desire." In 1987, Patinkin made his first foray into the world of fantasy films in the screen adaptation of William Goldman's The Princess Bride (STARLOG #125). Patinkin's bravura performance as a swashbuckling Spaniard caused audiences to cheer when he delivered his climactic line: "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father: Prepare to die." "The Princess Bride was the singularly greatest time I ever had making a movie in my life," Patinkin enthuses. "I never had a better time. It was just thrilling-the people who were involved, the story, the part, the fencing every day for eight hours a day for six months. Working with [director] Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal, Chris Guest and Andre the Giant who's a great guy-it was absolutely wonderful."
Though the movie was a fantasy comedy, Patinkin felt he had to make people truly believe in Inigo Montoya's mission and not just laugh at his antics. "I did it following something Rob said right in the beginning, which was, 'We play it dead serious, but every now and then, we show a few of the cards in our hand to let the audience know we're having a good time, but put 'em back in our pocket so we don't give too much away.' "What Billy Crystal did [as off-the-wall wizard Miracle Max] was absolutely brilliant. I bruised a rib from laughing. I didn't think he was chewing up the scenery. I thought he was supposed to do exactly what he did. Basically, in the middle of the movie; there's this cartoon. And that's one of the amazing things about the film. "The Princess Bride is a great piece of writing. Bill Goldman is one of the geniuses behind that piece-and Rob and [producer] Andy Scheinman are the other half of it. They put together a great tale." Though Patinkin had done some stage fencing in a few Shakespeare productions, he found his training for The Princess Bride to be a very exciting experience. He trained for two months in New York with Yale Olympic fencing coach Henry Hartounian and then went to London to train with fight coordinator Peter Diamond and veteran swordmaster Bob Anderson, who served as Patinkin's main coach and trainer.
"I learned fencing from the ground up," Patinkin says. "I had done stuff before but I always just learned what I had to do [for a particular show]. I never learned how to ride the bike, so to speak. I feel now that I've learned how to ride the bike and I'll never forget it." AlienNation proves to be an equally unforgettable experience for the actor, but not necessarily for the same reasons. And although sequel speculation is inevitable regarding any movie that features aliens, action and a good sense of humor, Patinkin balks at the idea.' "Wait a minute," he says from beneath his pounds of makeup. "Do I look like I got plans for an [AlienNation II]? At this point, I can't imagine sitting still for a minute once this picture's over. I never want to see this makeup again. But one never knows. You never say never. "Jimmy Caan and I talked about doing a series of road pictures-[AlienNation] III, IV and V," Patinkin laughs. "Yeah, the next one will be a musical that takes place in Morocco. We'll play the piano, we'll wear tuxedos through the whole thing and travel European countries looking for other alien forms. And that will lead us back to Los Angeles where..." By CARR D’ANGELO |
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Murder Is Music to His Ears Signing on to play 88 Keys in Dick Tracy was a leap of faith on the part of Mandy Patinkin. He committed himself to the Dick Tracy project knowing "nothing about it at all. I just figured, well, I needed a job, and I couldn't go wrong working with Warren Beatty. So, when he said, 'Do you want to be in this?', I said, 'Sure.' "I knew nothing about the plotline or what my character did. I knew that he was a piano player, and I knew that he sang this song," the performer remarks, referring to Stephen Sondheim's composition "What Can You Lose," "and I knew he loved Madonna and she didn't love him."
A blank slate as far as comics were concerned, Patinkin had to bone up on Tracy lore before going in front of the camera. "I didn't read it as a kid-I never read comics as a kid. But I read them before I made the movie," notes Patinkin, diving into his sandwich in a convivial New York City eatery. "My dad was a freak for it, though. I had a Dick Tracy two-way wristwatch. I don't remember where I got it, but I had it." However, Patinkin's self-described "horrible" experience with the Newcomer prosthetics (see page 65) in AlienNation did provide him with the background and patience needed for one aspect of his Dick Tracy association: The frustrating, tedious and occasionally humorous process of designing 88 Keys' physical characteristics. "Warren said to me, 'There'll be some prosthetics, but you don't mind that because you did that other movie.' I said, 'Look, I'm not crazy about it, but I'll do it if I have to.' He said, 'This guy's an albino,' so I get [to California] and we do this whole makeup number where they make me an albino-white wig, pink eyes, and they change the color of my skin, they bleach it white," he recalls. "I looked like Adolph Hitler's henchman! I looked like this blond Aryan killer. And I'm supposed to be this lovable, sad, lost, forlorn guy who's in love with somebody who doesn't love him. I looked so horrible. And Warren just said, 'Get him out of here.' "Then, we went back to the drawing board. We started looking at the comics, and I looked at the actual panels of the original 88 Keys. I said, 'Where does it say the guy's an albino?' "When you look at the comic there are some streaks on his head-he's kind of bald-and they could be light hair, or dark hair, or black hair, or white hair. It's a comic, a pencil sketch," says Patinkin, polishing off a pickle. "So, the makeup guys [John Caglione & Doug Drexler] rigged me up to look just as much like the comic as possible." Deft, relatively minor alterations to Patinkin's natural appearance created the image they sought. Makeup artists shaved, dyed, and restyled Patinkin's own hair. "They put two little pieces on the sides of my nose, and we made up the eyes to look like 'hush puppy' sad eyes. It completely transforms me. I wear the least of anybody who wears prosthetics," says Patinkin with justifiable glee. "I literally wear two little pieces of rubber, about as big as your thumbnail, on the edge of my nose. That is it. "I looked in the mirror and I was thrilled because it just did it for me. It was so pathetic. All I wanted to do was sit at the piano and play."
The emotional impact of outward appearances was also a core element of AlienNation, a film that, in Patinkin's eyes, failed to live up to its original promise. "When we first saw the first cut, I thought it was a bit of a disaster. It was so violent, and so much of the story was gone," he remembers. "[Producer Gale Anne Hurd] said-and I was very upset-'Look, Mandy, it's not over 'tit it's over. Let's do everything we can to make the movie we intended to make in the first place.' "They brought in some new people to help edit it, and we changed it so much. You can't make it like a new toy, you can't make it perfect, but the satisfaction you get from just improving something is a lot," says Patinkin, appropriating a popover abandoned by his lunchmate. "I really wasn't interested in the final product. What really interested me was that we fixed it. There just simply wasn't enough of the humanitarian stuff shot. "From what I gather-I've seen the TV show once or twice-the TV show is embracing what we had originally hoped the movie was going to embrace-more of the humanitarian relationships." Patinkin believes Dick Tracy eschews the violence suffusing AlienNation. "I hope that it's good for children to see. My favorite thing, movie-wise, that I've ever been a part of was The Princess Bride, and the reason is kids love it. So, if I'm in something else that kids end up liking, it would be thrilling. "When I look back at the shows I saw as a kid and [the ones] I show my kids now [Patinkin has two young sons] the movie that lives in my memory most is It's a Wonderful Life. But other ones are Mary Poppins-you see that a hundred times with your kids-and The Wizard of Oz. Those are two movies that I know my kids will show their kids." "If I had one wish, it would be to be in a classic children's movie," Patinkin adds. Should youngsters regard Dick Tracy as fondly as they do The Princess Bride,' Mandy Patinkin may well be reaching that goal. -Lynne Stephens |
