Ellen's Mandy Patinkin Page |
Australian TV Week May 4, 1996 |
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MANDY’S FAMILY MATTERS… but there’s still a little Hope for his fans |
MANDY PATINKIN leads the way into the sitting room of his Los Angeles house, apologizing that he has come to the door not wearing shoes. He disappears briefly, then, even while he is tying his laces, starts asking questions about Australia and, specifically, the duration of a Los Angeles-Sydney flight. He is hoping to make the trip in September, when Sydney and Melbourne are likely to get a chance to see the other side of the Mandy Patinkin they know as Dr Jeffrey Geiger on the Seven Network's Chicago Hope. This will be the Mandy Patinkin who has released four albums (the latest, Oscar And Steve, has been on Billboard magazine's Top 50 "heatseeker" albums chart for 20 weeks) and has another four in the pipeline. The album, featuring songs from two of the giants of the musical theatre, Oscar Hammerstein and Stephen Sondheim, has been the basis of Mandy’s sold-out one-man shows across the U.S. and in London, where he is to star in a BBC telecast of Arthur Miller's play Broken Glass. He has commitments back in the U.S. after that, then he is looking towards Australia. "We've been talking about September, but I don't know," he says. "We're trying to make it around the kids' vacation time. If we're going to make a trip that far, our desire is that we all go, because I hear it's more than a 10-minute ride." Concern for his family is typical of Mandy. His determination to spend more time with his wife, actress-writer Kathryn Grody, and their pre-teen sons, Isaac and Gideon, was what led to him risking his career to leave Chicago Hope one year into a five-year contract.
Dr Geiger now is a recurring character on the series rather than the lead, and a reflective Mandy thanks everyone from God to Chicago Hope creator David E. Kelley to the president of CBS Entertainment, Les Moonves, for allowing that to happen. "I was in a legal predicament where I was committed to five years, but it was clear after the first year, when I gave it everything I had, that it was not going to work out for my lifestyle and my family," Mandy says. "The amount of time I need to do the work and the amount of time my family needs ... I couldn't find a way to dot the two together on an ongoing, full-time basis. "It takes me four or five days to learn lines, and my character always has a tremendous amount to say, so it was this train that never stops and I would never have a moment free. "There'd never be a time when I was with the kids, playing soccer or doing anything, when I didn't have my pockets filled with words that I was trying to press into my head for Monday morning. And the anxiety level of that was just inhuman for me." Mandy weighed up the risks of putting his family before Chicago Hope, and recognized they were overwhelming. The worst-case scenario, as he puts it, was being sued and left in professional and financial ruin. "But they couldn't take away my children and my wife," he says. "And I could have gone and worked in a repertory theatre somewhere in the country and been absolutely fine, because what I wanted the most was not a single penny. I wanted my wife and my kids. "So I had nothing to negotiate. I wasn't asking for any money or power. I was just asking for time with my family." Figuring that Kelley, Moonves and others controlling his fate had families themselves, Mandy started talking. "I didn't have agents or lawyers make these phone calls. I called everybody - the heads of studios and networks - myself, because I wanted them to understand from my mouth that I wasn't playing some power game. I was trying to save my family. "And they responded with their hearts and they made it work for me, and I am so incredibly grateful to these guys and I will be there for them in any way, whenever they ask me."
Mandy also is quick to recognize the affect the power of television has had on the other sides of his career. "It's truly been a present," he says. "We always had good audiences at the concerts, but I think it was a particular audience that was familiar with the theatre world. "All I can say is that we went from playing 1000-to-1500-seat venues to 3000-to-5000-seat venues. And they're sold out. I don't consider that all due to my abilities. I consider a great deal of it to be because of the power of that television set and how it brings people to an event." Mandy still cannot, however, come to terms with television turning him into a sex symbol at 43. "This is hilarious," he says, with genuine amusement. "I have no idea (how it happened). I haven't a clue why I'm a sex symbol, because I have side fat, and I'm on my little treadmill trying to lose it. "I don't know what it is or how it comes about, but I will say that if it makes work come easier - if it gives me more work and makes people come to my concerts and hear these great songs that other people wrote and I get to sing - then, great. I'll do whatever it takes to continue." Chicago Hope, and the pressure it placed on him, also removed Mandy's "control freak, over-precious attitude towards everything". When his New York DJ friend, Jonathan Schwartz ("sort of my mentor and musicologist"), record producer Robert Hurwitz, conductor Eric Stern and piano accompanist Paul Ford wanted him in on discussions about their next collaboration, Mandy was so immersed in Chicago Hope that he left it up to them. "I said, 'Why don't you guys put it together, feed it to me, and when I get on hiatus I'll do if," he says. "It was the fastest record I've ever made," Mandy says. "Usually I take four years." From Lawrie Masterson in Los Angeles |
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