Mandy Patinkin - Maxie Press Kit Information

MANDY PATINKIN: CLOSE COMFORT FOR "MAXIE"
Charmed when Maxie Malone materializes in the hush of the night in his quaint Victorian living room, San Francisco librarian Nick Cheyney fails to notice one pivotal point: Maxie is a dead ringer for his wife Jan.
It dawns on him quickly enough, however, when he slips into bed later and is astonished at his wife's wild lovemaking. Knowing full well that Jan -- has never made love like that in her life, Nick has to face the tantalizing truth...
Maxie Malone, a flamboyant 1920s actress who died in a car crash 60 years ago, has taken possession of his wife's body. In fact, she can pop in and out with elegant ease -- and inelegant timing.
At first distressed, then intrigued and finally enchanted, Nick Cheyney finds himself in love with both women...and thoroughly confused about what does or does not add up to adultery.
Mandy Patinkin stars as the bewildered lothario in "Maxie," Orion Pictures' romantic fantasy which also stars Glenn Close in the dual role of Maxie/Jan.

As his first comedic contemporary character, the role also marks the move Patinkin has been waiting for -- away from ethnic radicals which have become his trademark, including Barbra Streisand's secret love in "Yentl" and his Tony-winning Che in the Broadway hit, "Evita."
"I was looking for something light and really different," admits the Chicago-born New York-trained actor. "What I like about 'Maxie' is not only its innocence, but also its unpredictability. For much of the film the audience sees the movie through my eyes. They're on the same ride I am...half the time I don't know who I'm talking to, my wife or this other woman, this 'jazz baby' who has somehow entered our lives.
Even though the subject may be comedy, Patinkin talks with such intensity that film and stage director Sidney Lumet still refers to him as "the lightning bolt".
Patinkin's career confirms it. After attending the University of Kansas and performing in community theatres on Chicago's South Side, he finally achieved his dream goal -- acceptance into New York's Juilliard School of Drama, and in particular, John Houseman's famed Acting Company.
Once there, however, he was so impatient to move from the academic arena to the professional stage that he dropped out prematurely and joined a regional theatre in Baltimore.
There Patinkin appeared in "My Father's Failing" and "The Doctor in Spite of Himself," then returned to New York to challenge off-Broadway. He appeared in the New York Shakespeare Company's productions of "Hamlet," "Rebel Woman," "Trelawney of the Wells," "Leave It To Beaver Is Dead" and "Henry I," before making his broadway bow in Michael Cristofer's Pulitzer Prize winning play, "The Shadow Box."
His first co-starring role -- in the smash hit "Evita" -- promptly won him a coveted Tony.
He took on Hollywood with the same intensity. After playing minor roles as a Puerto Rican cabbie in "Night of the Juggler," a pool maintenance man in "The Big Fix," and a Wall Street Journal reporter in "The Last Embrace," he was hellbent to land a bigger part in "Ragtime."
"I hounded director Milos Forman," he recalls with a grin. "It went on for six months. Then, the day before my wedding (to actress Kathryn Grody), I was called to screen-test for the role of Tateh, a Russian immigrant who starts out as a silhouette artist and winds up as a movie director."
Forman apologized for interrupting the wedding plans; but, running true to form, Patinkin figured it was no inconvenience if he got the part. He did, and it proved his breakthrough to larger, more pivotal roles in films.
Each became a subject of painstaking preparation.
For Tateh in "Ragtime," he arranged an introduction to three recent Russian immigrants, "one of whom was crazy, which was pretty much the way I saw the character." Through an interpreter, Patinkin read him the movie's dialogue, and taped the immigrant's broken-English response.
Using the tapes as a guide, he developed an accent -- and a character -- which delighted director Forman.
When "Ragtime" led to "Yentl," Patinkin studied in two yeshivas -- "one in New York and one in Jerusalem because Barbra Streisand and I both wanted authenticity.
His next role -- the impassioned activist in Sidney Lumet's "Daniel" -- led him to explore the controversial Rosenberg spy trial of the 1950s.
The came what Patinkin describes as "my single most special experience in the theatre" -- the dual role of painter Georges Seurat and his grandson in Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George."
The show began as a workshop production, which slowly evolved into a Broadway triumph. "For 18 months I turned down everything else to be totally involved with 'Sunday,'" Patinkin recalls.
Included were return trips to his hometown of Chicago, to study Seurat's "Un Dimanche a la Grande Jatte," the pointillist painting which inspired the play. His final trip included a seven-hour visit, during which he simply sat staring at the artist's work. So immersed did he become that "when some people came by and criticized the painting, I took it personally," he recalls. "I felt I was his ghost."
The result was another Tony nomination.
For his next role as Nick Cheyney, Patinkin holed up for days in the New York Public Library. Studying his script in the Rare Books Room (the section supervised by his movie character), he also learned how the library functions as he soaked up its atmosphere.
"But that's only a sliver of the story," he points out. "When it came to making love to a long dead actress, I had to rely on my own imagination.
"There are some things you just won't find in books..."
"Maxie" is an Orion Pictures release of an Aurora Presentation of a Carter De Haven Production in association with Elsboy Entertainment. The film stars Glenn Close, Mandy Patinkin and Ruth Gordon. "Maxie" was directed by Paul Aaron, produced by Carter De Haven from a screenplay by Patricia Resnick and based on the novel "Marion's Wall" by Jack Finney. Rich Irvine and James L. Stewart served as executive producers. Music was composed by Georges Delerue.

MAXIE: PRODUCTION INFORMATION

...By the same token, Patinkin plays a rare contemporary role after such ethnic portraits as the romantic yeshiva brucha of Barbra Streisand's "Yentl" and the rebel, Che, in the stage hit, "Evita."...

...Director Paul Aaron's certainty that Glenn Close and Mandy Patinkin were the "right people" was based largely on their Broadway appearances....
...Like Close, Mandy Patinkin was ready to set off in a new direction... preferably one which required no accent.
Having won his Tony as a Latin revolutionary in "Evita," he'd played a Puerto Rican ("The Night of the Juggler"), and Italian ("The Big Fix") and two Russians ("Yentl" and "Ragtime") on film.
"I wanted to do a light, contemporary, funny role next...something in which the character spoke English...and maybe made love to Glenn Close," he says.
Such whimsy aside, Patinkin admits that his friendship with the actress -- which began when they were both Broadway neophytes -- added to the project's appeal.
"Over the years, we saw a lot of each other's work, and frequently talked about doing a show together, but the pieces never fell in place...till now."
A compulsive researcher, Patinkin prepares meticulously for each role. To play a nineteenth century French painter in the Stephen Sondheim musical, "Sunday in the Park With George," he took art lessons -- and still enjoys sketching as a hobby. For "Yentl," he traveled to Jerusalem to visit a rabbinical seminary. Prior to "Ragtime," he spent several days with three newly arrived Russian immigrants. "One of them was crazy," Patinkin recalls. "He became my role model."
"Maxie," however, challenged his thoroughness. While his character's career -- as a rare book expert -- took Patinkin to the New York Public Library, "that's only a sliver of the plot," he points out. "To make love to a ghost, I had to wing it."
...With a cast composed largely of Broadway actors, Aaron began production of "Maxie" with a month of rehearsals in New York City.
Much of the time was spent in Central Park. "We'd gather on some grassy knoll," recalls Patinkin. "And Paul would set the scene. A tree would be the door to the apartment, a clump of bushes Maxie's wall. People would stop, stare, walk away shaking their heads; the crazies were loose in the park again.
The troupe then headed to San Francisco...
..Only one important San Francisco setting required a change of place. As the Nob Hill mansion, where Maxie makes her first public appearance, the producers leased Greystone, the Hollywood estate which once was the headquarters of the American Film Institute.
It is here that Jan shocks an audience of stuffed shirts by breaking into "Bye Bye Blackbird," with a shimmy that could start a Model T on a cold winter morning.
When the scene was over, recalls Aaron, "everyone on the set...extras, grips, gaffers, all of us...broke into spontaneous applause."
While Close is a trained lyric soprano, who has appeared in musicals, including Richard Rogers' "Rex," and sang the National Anthem at a recent New York Mets game, ever her friend, Patinkin, was impressed.
"I never knew you could perform like that," he told her.
"Neither did I," she confessed. "Maybe it's Maxie..."
...During all the years he has been husband to the ladylike Jan and a librarian in charge of the Rare Books Room, Nick Cheyney's only hint of lighter, wilder tastes came from his car -- a classic Packard convertible, which he drives dressed in gloves, scarf, and English touring cap.
Then the uninhibited Maxie enters his wife's body...and as her bewildered but increasingly bewitched lover, the real Nick Cheyney finally flies from the shelf where he has perched, like a vintage volume, most of his adult life.
That his confusion is as refreshing as it is unsettling is a tribute to Mandy Patinkin, who plays Nick Cheyney. He has plumbed the libido of off-beat romantic renegades ever since his Tony-winning Che in the smash Broadway musical, "Evita" -- the role which brought him international renown.
A product of Juilliard and John Houseman's Acting Company, Patinkin is a native Chicagoan who attended the University of Kansas before coming to New York.
After some seasoning in regional theatre -- "My Father's Falling" and "The Doctor in Spite of Himself" in Baltimore -- he returned to New York to appear off-Broadway in "Hamlet," "Rebel Woman," "Trelawney of the Wells," "Leave it to Beaver Is Dead" and "Henry IV," then made his Broadway bow in Michael Cristofer's Pulitzer Prize winning play, "The Shadow Box."
A series of small roles marked his entry into films -- a Puerto Rican cabbie in "Night of the Juggler"; an Italian swimming pool cleaner in "The Big Fix"; a Wall Street writer in "The Last Embrace."
With his silhouette-artist-turned-movie-director in "Ragtime," Patinkin's roles became increasingly more pivotal. He co-starred as Barbra Streisand's intellectual and romantic idol in "Yentl" and as an impassioned activist in Sidney Lumet's "Daniel."
Patinkin's most recent stage triumph was as the French artist Georges Seurat in Stephen Sondheim's brilliant musical, "Sunday in the Park With George."