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"Life of the Party"CBS Sunday Morning segment
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Videotape of Mandy in Wild Party rehearsals with cast:
Mandy Patinkin as Burrs: Hello kids. Blackout. Let's get this party going. [Song: "Gin"] I n eed my party to begin. My party! Blame it on the gin! Give me gin, give me gin.
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Reporter: Mandy Patinkin is back on Broadway. He's working on The Wild Party, opening this week. Mandy plays a drunk. I read one write up that, sort of, described your role as that of a loser. Do you see him that way?
MP: No. Not at all. But see, my job, when I play anybody, even if he is a loser to the viewer, is that I will win. Even if he was the world's most famous loser, I would always play him to win.
In recording booth working on "Kidults":
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MP: I need it much quicker. It's much too slow in the beginning.
Reporter: And that is how Mandy plays his own life.
MP: (singing) I'm singing in the bathtub, happy once again.
Reporter: Pushing himself to be more, to do more.
MP: (MP in booth listening to playback) And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man on the moon.
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Reporter: He has recorded five albums and is working on a new one.
MP: (singing) But I could show my prowess. Be a lion, not a mouse.
Onstage in Scottsdale, Arizona performing:
MP: (singing) If the wizard is a wizard who will serve...
Reporter: His concerts sell out all across the country.
MP: (singing and dancing) I walk down the lane, with a happy refrain. I'm laughing and singing in ... You can yodel opera.
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Reporter: And even while his Broadway show is running, you will see him on television.
Director: Action
Patinkin on the set of "Chicago Hope" with directer/producer Rob Corn and the actress who plays his daughter on the series:
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Reporter: Playing Dr. Jeffrey Geiger on the CBS program, "Chicago Hope".
MP: You're not acting like you want to be a turkey. You've got to say "I'm a turkey."
Reporter: He came back to the show after taking off five years to spend more time with his family. Some of your musical fans actually complain because you do take non-singing roles.
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MP: Sorry. (laughter) I'd be bored if I didn't. I go out of my mind when I just do singing because I need the other--I need to be with other people. I need to be with other ideas, other thoughts. I need to be away from the music.
Scene from Chicago Hope playing:
Reporter: In fact, sometimes Dr. Geiger sings.
MP: I would love it if he could sing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" in Yiddish.
Reporter: How would he sing it?
MP: Oh, he would just sing it ... (Yiddish)
Reporter: He got his wish.
Geiger singing in scene from "Chicago Hope":
Reporter: A lot of actors who are Jewish don't ever want to play anything this Jewish because they're worried about being type cast. Does this bother you?
MP: It did when I was a younger actor. I was very concerned about being type cast, them as I got a little older, I realized that the soul of who I am, and what I was taught, and how I define myself, is as a Jew.
Reporter: Mandy's cultural heritage is so important to him he's recorded a whole album in Yiddish. Not bad for the son of a junkyard owner, a middle-class Chicago kid who was a Hebrew school cut-up. But it was the Hebrew school choir that first got him interested in music, and then, theater. He played Shakespearean characters and avante-guard roles at Joseph Papp's Public Theater in New York. His first big break was the role of Che in "Evita." He won a Tony Award for that.
Avidgor in scene from "Yentl": We are like brothers. If one dies, it is the other's obligation to marry his widow.
Reporter: He was in Barbra Streisand's "Yentl". But his career almost came to a crashing halt when director Mike Nichols fired him and replaced him with Jack Nicholson in the film "Heartburn." Did you go through depression?
MP: Oh, deep depression, and not just that...
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Reporter: And worse, he couldn't get work for a year. Then he went to a reading with actor Robert DeNiro.
MP: We read in this meeting and I fell apart. The director left the room and Bobby just sat there with me, and he held me, and he hugged me, and then he put me away and he said "He fired me too." I said, "What?" "He fired me too."
Reporter: So, that made a difference.
MP: Well, it helped me, it helped me. And a year after, to the day, Rob Reiner called me up and ask me if I would meet with him and Bill Goldman, and talk about this movie "The Princess Bride."
Reporter: It was a comeback role.
Scene from Princess Bride: My name is Ignigo Montoya... You killed my father! Prepare to die.
Reporter: And today, Mandy seems so relaxed, he even let us watch this: What are we doing here?
In makeup trailer at Chicago Hope as Patinkin's bald spot is being "reduced":
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MP: Marion's in charge of the hair, and this is how we start every day: She fills in my bald spot. See my bald spot?
Reporter: Why are you so proud of this that you invite us to see it?
MP: I love my bald spot.
Reporter: Shows a certain level of maturity, that other things don't?
MP: I would hope so.
Reporter: He has matured, but questions about his behavior persist. Here is a list of adjectives I read about you: "intense, highly emotional, perfectionistic, high-strung".
MP: Those were very much things that were true in my past.
Reporter: Are you easier to get along with now?
MP: I'm much easier for myself to get along with myself.
Reporter: Proof of that, Mandy said, can be seen in the tape we made of his recent concert in Scottsdale, Arizona.
More footage of Patinkin in Scottsdale singing:
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MP: (singing) "If I loved you..." (speaking) I was sick that night. And normally, the old me would go, oh, I'd go crazy, I'd have you on the phone, I'd call a publicist to have you on the phone, I'd try to get a lawyer; could I stop the tape; can I have the tape?. How could any of it be out there? Put it out, I don't care. It's out of my hands. You know, I've just had it with worrying about...
Reporter: We will.
MP: So I really.. That's a huge thing for me. (singing onstage) "I'll be seeing you..."
Reporter: And if his voice wasn't quite as strong as it usually is, his fans were still delighted. And one reason that Mandy may be able to take so much in stride now is that he sees things differently, really.
MP:(singing on hospital gurney): We're off to see the wizard.
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Reporter: He has had two cornia transplants due to a disease call caraconis.
MP: Eventually that tissue gets so thin that it can burst if you don't keep track of it and have doctors check it. You can lose your eye. So in my right now I am the grateful recipient of a 14- year-old little girl's eye in my right eye. And in my left eye I have a 13-year-old little boy's eye. I say a prayer for these kids everyday. I see through their eyes.
Reporter: And also through the eyes of his own two son, Gideon and Isaac.
Observing Mandy's Lionel train layout:
Reporter: Look at this little town -- it's so fantastic.
MP: Yes, yes, I know.
Reporter: They have helped him design this amazing layout for the trains he started collecting as a child.
MP: Then we called Isaac's Inn -- my son Isaac over there - - you see where it says Isaac's Inn.
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Reporter: Absolutely.
MP: My son, Gideon, my younger son -- he said, "Dad let's have an amusement park."
Reporter: Oh, my gosh look at this.
MP: This is the -- as far as I'm concerned -- the piece de resistance of the whole layout. These are all the rides. They are made to scale. And for music we put in a sound system so that -- there you have the carousel going -- and I can control all the sound right here.
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Reporter: So this is all about control.
MP: It's all about control. It's a world that I can control -- exactly.
Reporter: The other key component of Mandy's world is his wife of almost 20 years, Kathryn Grody, and actress and playwright.
MP: She's the kindest, most generous, most patient human being I've ever met. Look, she -- she put up with me. (laughter)
Kathryn: There's times he's been a very challenging person to live with. But the balance side is that you get so much back. It makes it worth -- you know the effort.
Reporter: Making coffee is one of the...
Kathryn: Making coffee -- actually I've never seen him make coffee in my life. (laughter) This is a first.
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MP: I'm doing it for America!
Kathryn: Yeah, honey.
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