Look Out Laughton,
Patinkin Takes On Quasimoto

The ghost of Charles Laughton may be stirring in anticipation of March 16, when TNT airs ``The Hunchback,'' starring Tony-winner Mandy Patinkin, Richard Harris and Salma Hayek. Laughton's 1939 version of ``Hunchback'' served as a bible for the director and the star of this live-action adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel. William Dieterle, who helmed the 1939 film, defined his responsibility to an actor as follows: ``The director must achieve a proper creative state, which will help the actor to the birth of inspiration. To create success, one first has to create the spirit of enthusiasm; this works miracles.''

``The Hunchback'' director Peter Medak found no need to perform such miracles with Mandy Patinkin (``Chicago Hope''). Indeed, he defines the actor who portrays Quasimodo as a whirling dervish of enthusiasm. ``What Mandy has is this incredible energy, concentration and commitment. There is a relentlessness about it. You only get it with great serious actors.''

It is by no means a stretch to believe Medak when he contends that the actor's passion never waned during the course of the grueling eight-week shoot. In fact, Patinkin tackles an interview with a similar brand of zeal.

Fresh from his successful U.S. concert tour, he calls 20 minutes ahead of schedule brimming with an intellectual intensity that inspired one reporter to accurately describe his mind as ``frenetically alive.'' The actor/singer's mental acuity is matched tit-for-tat by an emotional honesty that seriously invites the appellation ``mensch.''

Though he does not sing in ``Hunchback,'' it comes as no surprise that music analogies color Patinkin's conversation like a flurry of notes on a song sheet. The Broadway star (``Evita,'' ``Sunday in the Park With George'') uses one now to describe how Laughton's performance became his blueprint for Quasimodo. ``I felt I can't do any better than Laughton, so I watched it (the 1939 film) almost every day when we were shooting. I followed it wherever I could; it just bled into me. ``My feeling was that it was like Mozart or Sondheim,'' he continues. ``They write music. Different people sing it, a different conductor conducts it, and it sounds different. I sung the notes that Laughton wrote. I'm a different person, I have a different voice, it will be different.''

Patinkin did, in fact, fashion a Quasimodo that is his own. ``He doesn't just sing songs, he embodies them,'' the New Yorker wrote of Patinkin. The same may be said of his acting. He incarnates the epic agony of the bell-ringer, invoking epic compassion in the process. The actor took to this part as a bird does to flight.

``God, I love this role,'' he repeats like a mantra throughout the interview. Not since he played the brilliant heart surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Geiger on ``Chicago Hope'' has his sensibility been so ``cosmically in tune'' with a part.

``Do you want me to tell you my favorite?'' he offers, in a discussion about the film's classic themes.

``There is a line when he has Esmeralda in sanctuary up in the tower, `If you don't leave here, they can't catch you. No one can get in here, I wouldn't let them. If you're afraid, pull the rope, I can hear the bell.'

The actor asked that the lines be included; he felt they were the essence of the film. His interpretation of these lines echoes Hamlet's ``This above all: to thine own self be true.''

``If you don't leave here -- who you are, your heart, who you are inside -- they -- whoever they are -- can't get you. No one can get in here to who you are. I wouldn't let them. If you're afraid, pull the rope, pick up the phone, call a friend, use the Internet.''

This is a characteristic Patinkinism: integrating classic ideas with contemporary society, analyzing them as only one who has successfully completed a full run of therapy can do, and focusing on a concept close to his heart.

The necessity of truth-telling -- to oneself or to others -- is a lesson he drew from the death of his father, who succumbed to cancer at 52. Patinkin was only 19. It was an era when families chose not to tell people they had cancer. Instead they reported a diagnosis of hepatitis.

As a consequence, Patinkin never got to have that important ``truthful talk'' that we have with the dying. The actor draws a deep breath. His normally boisterous voice softens considerably as he reaches the apex of his thought. ``What it informed in me was the truth. I find not telling the truth excruciating. It just destroys me.

``At one point when I was working on this piece, I was driving to work, and I wrote on my gym shoe, `Tell the truth.' It's what I whisper into Frollo's ear when he's hanging over the ledge.''

To find Quasimodo's raw emotional pain, Patinkin drew on memories of his father and an incident with his son Issac. ``One of the thoughts that went through my mind was of my oldest son's feeling of injustice when I disciplined him in a way that he felt unfair. His pain and rage of not being treated fairly was enslaved in my bones.'' The physical pain of the role equaled the emotional. ``Utter physical torture'' is Patinkin's description. Medak confirms the torment. ``He had to report to makeup at 2 a.m. It took eight hours to put on his back makeup. Then he'd shoot for 12 hours. He was in agony, always hunched. This went on for 46 days.'' Despite several months of physical training with a doctor to prepare for the experience, Patinkin needed chiropractic help for two months to correct the damage. His jaw still hasn't fully recovered. ``I think difficult things are worth it,'' he concludes.

Patinkin chooses stories and roles because they illuminate ideas that matter to him. Each of the unique parts he's taken on share common themes: the struggle to make a better world and the difficult process of learning that allows humanity to move toward that goal.

The performer is considered the foremost interpreter of lyricist Stephen Sondheim. When Patinkin discusses the composer's perception of the human condition, it sounds like an outline for the passion and breadth of feeling that he pours into plumbing the depths of Quasimodo's soul.

``His songs are laced with struggle, but it is a struggle reaching desperately for hope and for a positive outcome. His point of view is not at all negative. It is the deepest and most positive mining of truth and hope that I've ever heard expressed.''