YouSaid · the spoken record

Mandy Patinkin

lines on the record: 76
first: 2020-10-29
most recent: 2020-10-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yes, 2017 February 2017. And that stayed with me. And we walked and we talked about everything he said. But not seeing the weight of that office have an effect on that human being. Gave me pause.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I wasn't nervous in February, but now that I am here six months later, and I haven't seen that effect take place in this human being, I am terrified”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I really, you know, I love this guy. And I said to my friend, Let me ask you something. You remember in February we have Spy Camp, and we were asking these questions. You had a calm. And you made me calm. You made me not worry that this was going to be a dangerous time. And so that's what I got then. And then more and more horrible things have been happening. Do you still feel that way? And he took a pause and he said, I have to tell you something. I'd been in that office like I said, with all these different presidents a good part of my life. And I have never not seen the transition from the candidate to the man sitting in that office take place. The weight of not just the country, but the world setting on his shoulders or her shoulders. And the effect of that on that human being and the transformation of that human being.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm watching this guy. I'm watching him for three hours. We're asking him as we ask everybody, what keeps you up at night? What's your worst nightmares? That's what we're looking for to spend the season around. Here's the things we're thinking about. What can you say about it? And I'm looking at this guy and he's answering these questions. And he has a sense of calm about him. I can tell he's not anxiety ridden. I've been with this same guy at other moments when literally you would say someone's name like Snowden and he has to get up out of his chair and you have to calm down. He's got to walk around for a minute and they go nuts. I've been there. And so I'm watching him and he's not nervous. He's not hysterical. He's calm for three hours about the most intense questions we could and cop topics you could talk about. It's six months later now. We jump cut six months later. He comes to visit us on the set while we're shooting some scenes. And he's a friend of mine now. We've had dinners a number of times and we've gone on hikes.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beat guy. So I come into a room with you, or I'm playing a character. I'm only looking for your emotional state. I'm only asking you questions about what happens when you lose a life or somebody that you're taking care of. I want to know, do you pray? How do you walk? Where do you cry? Who do you cry with? What do you do? How do you live life like the rest of us live in? All the other stuff are just little, you know, that stuff for the writers to do and have come out of my mouth. I just need to know how your heart beats. And that's my job.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was really shook the earth under us, but it was Spy Camp early February 2016, right after the inauguration. And a lot of ugly things had already been signed, put into law, rhetoric spoken, etc., you know, banning Muslims, you know, just horrible, horrible things that were being done. And I was listening to someone and we met many of these people in this position, but this was a person who was in charge of all 17 intelligence agencies for a number of years, had sat in the Oval Office like yourself with a number of presidents and went through that exercise every day. And I watched, you see, I'm not the kind of person. I don't want to go on. I can't have a conversation with you and quote numbers and facts and statistics. That's not how I work. I'm a heart.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but I'll just say one day after Spy Camp, and these are 10, 12 hour days where we're doing three-hour meetings minimum with each person that comes through the door. We're having lunches for hours with them. It is so much intake, as I'm sure you know from Washington, that you're spinning at the end of a moment, let alone the day. And we're walking back to the hotel, Claire and myself. And she just looked at me almost like shell-shocked and said, that was more than I needed to know.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just done, you know, to say nothing about something like COVID-19 takes over 220,000 lives and we're still counting. It's over. If you think I can't handle the truth, I've been through that with my father. Don't ever do it to me again. And so I was at a briefing in end of January, no, that was January 21st when he was inaugurated 2016. So it was early February.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I totally did remind me to tell you the one story on the set if I get a little lost, but it broke my heart watching this president attack the intelligence community that was formed after World War II to bring information to the president, anywhere from anywhere in the world that the president could not receive by any other means. That's the purpose of the CIA. And to see him degrade the intelligence community the way he did for his own negative purposes and ego and self aggrandizement and literally his paranoia and he's a complicated, very disturbed individual. It's not just ego, it's a racist nature and tendency. First, let me just say one thing to just get it because it's. The parentheses around it all. He's a liar. And once you lied to me, we're done.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So a number of these people became my friends. And I'm in touch with them to this day. Their patriotism touched me in the deepest way. They literally have given their lives. They're the first people to say that when they go to schools, to teach, to recruit, that they admit the faults that aren't admitted publicly and the mistakes that were made over time in history with the CIA, the ones that they're allowed to talk about that have become public disgraces or shame, marks of shame. But I admire people that can Admit their mistakes in life, and I admire people that are patriots, that love this country to the point of literally giving their life.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We miss the first one, but then Claire and I were at all of them, all the subsequent ones every year. They were for five days, three to five days in Washington, D.C. with the who's who of the intelligence community. And I mean the who's who both present and past and the Pulitzer Prize writing community, those who keep and watch and keep everyone supposed to be in line and the voice of the public.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And so I saw that and I went, this is the same character that I'm in the middle of playing in the play, but without the insanity. So he's not crazy like the guy I am in the play. This guy is the exact same soul of wanting to protect and caretake her and preserve her because he believes she is a caretaker for humanity, but he's not nuts. And I just had it from the get-go that the minute I read it, I knew that my job, both as Saul and as Mandy Declare, was to make her feel comfortable and safe, and that there would be nothing that would come out of my being, that would have anything to do with anything negative and only to do with making sure she felt comfortable and safe with me always to the last second.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For this gifted soul named Anne Frank, and what her gifts offered us in terms of human condition and optimism toward that condition in light of the worst conditions surrounding her.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Alex wrote a very interesting part and I knew the minute I had read it, at the time while I was doing the pilot, actually, I was doing a play called Compulsion by Renagroph, directed by Oscar Eustace. We were doing it at the Yale Repertory Theater, Berkeley Rep, and then the public theater in New York. At this point, we'd done the other two and we were at the public. I was playing, I forget the writer's name now, but he wrote the book Compulsion, and this real person that attached himself to being the caretaker of Anne Frank's diary and wanted the rights to write the play and got in a huge fight with all the people and powerful people and just destroyed his life and everyone else's around him. But the core of that character's existence was he was the care he believed. He was the caretaker.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my buoyancy was left on the cutting room floor because I put it in a lot of seats and Alex Gonza and Leslie Linka Gladder, our head director, and our other wonderful directors, would always pull Mandy back, pull him back, pull him back. Or if I didn't, they'd put it in the garbage.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pardon me. And so you were certain it was too good for television. And then that day came out when we had about five or six in the can and they gave it to the press and it was like meeting that girl that you fall in love with and you bring her home to meet the family and they feel about her the way you did and then you're okay.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beginning because you're not. Yeah, that's right. In TV, the rule is I think it's seven years now, but no less than six. It was one of those experiences that we were drop jawed. We did the pilot. And I knew that was good. And then they picked it up. And then really when the nickel dropped is when we started getting the scripts. And you couldn't believe what was on each page as you turned it. You just couldn't believe what was happening. And then you were certain that it was too good for television. And it would tank because it was too good.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I could tell when I wrote it that I thought this had a real possibility in terms of that slow onion peel and in terms of the quality of the people. And the one thing I said to Alex Gonza, I said, listen, I've been in this game for a little bit. I won't do it if you're not going to be with it, meaning a lot of these TV guys, they start it and then they move on to the next project and they hand it over to somebody else. And you're related, it's like a marriage. You fall in love with that person and it's the osmosis that takes place between the two of you. And if you're going to take off, then I'm living with another woman. You know what I mean? And that doesn't work out too good. Yeah,”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I read it. And I certainly knew the pedigree of Claire Danes and the pedigree of the writers was at the highest level in the field. And I gave it to the two people I trust the most, my wife and my dear friend Vicki Traub. And I said, I need to know what you think of this because television is like an onion peel, a slow onion peel, meaning what you get in the pilot, you have no idea what will be in the next script and the next script in the next script. Everybody's searching, no matter how much they've walked around with it, the writers in the writer's room and mused about it. They're waiting for the accident. So you and I are the actors in the scene and there's a certain chemistry that's undeniable. So they're going to go with that and throw out this other 20 weeks of meetings that they've had because they just feel it.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I did and worked with wonderful gifted people, and it's probably one of the most extraordinary experiences of my professional life.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mother called him, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Joe came over for shopping's dinner on occasion. And I had recorded this song, Yussel, Yussel, with Don Byron, a great jazz. He actually played Klesmer on the clarinet like Mickey Katz used to. And I wanted him to hear the recording because I was going to put it on an album. And he looked at me after the recording. We were sitting on the kitchen wall. And he looked at me and he said, This is your job. You need to do this music and learn it and do it. That's your job. And I knew what he meant, that at this particular moment in time, after a language was almost destroyed by the Holocaust, and all the people working hard to keep it alive, I happened to be one of the people in line that could sing that had an interest, and it was my job to learn it and move it forward.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will Joe sign the Katubit our wedding? He was like my father. And our real connection wasn't even the theater as much as our Jewishness and what we came from. His name was Paparowski, which means his family sold cigarettes, you know, or tobacco. And he asked me to do benefit one day for the Evo Foundation at the Schubert Theater Warline was playing. I said, Joe, I don't know any Yiddish songs. He said, well, it's about time you learn one. And he sends one over to me. And Joe had a healthy ego. So what's the song called Yussel Yussel?”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so that heartbeat is there for you. The conductor may make it beat slower or faster, but it gives you the heartbeat. When you're just acting, you have to write that heartbeat yourself. When you're singing, you are given the heartbeat, no matter what you do, if you're on those notes, whether you do them faster or slower, a heartbeat has been given to you. And that's why it's easier.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be free. And so the other thing that I think is really fascinating is I enjoy singing so much more than acting because acting is 10 times harder. Why? When you sing, you are working with two other people. Three is the person, if it's just a piano player, one is playing the piano. But then you're working with the lyricist who gave you those words like the playwright for the play. So that's the same. But the difference is the composer. And if you know music or even if you don't, it's written in quarter notes, half notes, eighth notes, full notes, etc. And the composer creates a heartbeat.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And why I have the freedom. I actually think I've figured it out. We are not singing this interview to each other. We are on a pitch. Your voice is a pitch, and my voice has a pitch. But we're speaking. Now, when I play, when we sing, it's one step from reality. So it's like wearing a mask. So you're a bit safe. And if you're safe, you can be freer inside with your emotions. It's why I like playing parts with accents like an ego, because he doesn't talk the way I talk. So I have a bit of a mask in front and I'm safer. I'm safer to just”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love that you asked that question. There's a huge difference between singing and acting. My wife always says to me, I'll misquote her if she was here. She would say something once a long time ago that something when I sing she thinks I'm really gifted. And I went, and as an actor, just so, so. Huh? So she says, well, you're sort of misquoting me, but that's what I think. And what I think she's really saying is I have a freedom when I'm singing.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it was his freedom to just play and not to be in the script and to be horrible and not to worry about being great. He just was free, and I just went thank you thank you, thank you And that moment, I always wanted to do that. I did it at times, but what wasn't okay or I was worried that I'd get in trouble if I did it. And when I saw Al do it, I just went, oh, okay. That's good.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Affected me. I've always thought Charles Lawton was my favorite, but it was Al Pacino that I just got to do a little part because Warren Beatty's a dear friend and I was having a rough time and I said Warren, let me I just need to pay the bills because I've been doing my music for no money and I'll serve a drink or anything just so I can get my health insurance and pay my bills and he gives me the part of 88 keys and Dick Tracy and I end up having a scene with Al Pacino, several scenes actually I was with him and I got to watch Al be free and by that freedom I mean he just sat there and before he just started talking to himself and saying, listen to me. And the camera hasn't even starting this whole thing and acting like a crazy man. And then he says,”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was extraordinary being in Trelawney of the Wells with Merrill and John and Michael Tucker and the whole rest of the company. Ironically, my wife was offered a part in that play and didn't do it and someone else did it. And then luckily I met my wife later on. It was the first time my wife saw me. She was in the audience when she saw me make this speech in that play. And so I got lucky that fate brought me back to that because I didn't meet her in the play. But Marilyn and I, that was our Broadway debut together, and we had a great time. We all sang together and ate together all the time. So the parts that I really remember aren't the play so much as the dinners and the singing and just kids having fun. In terms of actors that really...”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eat it away, you have sex it away, you run it away, you and nation states kill it away, learn to stay with your discomfort, with your neighbors who may not eat the way you eat or dress the way you dress or cook the way or walk the way you want or pray the way you like. It's okay. And eventually your brain just gets tired of being uncomfortable because your brain knows better than you that life is short and it needs to move on so that you don't waste the next second.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess the key lesson of life for me that my teacher taught me, which is if, and this is universal all over the world, if we were taught from the time we could walk to be uncomfortable, to be with what makes us tolerate a major part of life, at least half of life, which is discomfort. And the classic example I give is if a baby falls and scrapes their knee, mommy and daddy says, let me kiss it and make it go away. Well, kiss it is fine, but don't say it should go away. Learn to be uncomfortable. It's not the worst thing in the world. And what do people? They try to fix everything. And what do people literally do? The word fix to shoot up is called a fix.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, you're lonely, whatever. And you might have a bad or depressing evening, and then you learn over 30 some years. You go to sleep, you take a nap, you have something to eat, you read a book, you take a walk, you do whatever you do, and you get over it. And then Robin one day obviously has, you know, series of difficult moments. And I know that alcohol was a problem of it, and it compromises your ability to use your brain. And he probably did as well as he did because his brain was just unlimited. But still. And then he gets to that rough spot and he takes the time to arrange a situation where he can take his own life. And I say to myself constantly, how could there not have been enough seconds to tick by that you could have caught yourself in those moments that you've relived over and over again for 30-some years like so many of us have? How did you miss it? How'd you miss that window? And it leads me to...”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, we ended up having similar lights, different in many ways. I did not have the gifts that Robin had in terms of his lightning mind and his incredible way of comedy. But, you know, we both were actors at times and we both be on the concert stage. He doing comedy and me doing music. And so we'd be on the road for 30 plus years and we would, you know, go out to take a bow at the end. And the audience very thankfully would leap to their feet and scream Bravo and the lights go down and you go offstage right and before the lights even come totally out the sound of the applauses over you're alone. You go back to the hotel. You get into your suite, which is usually the presidential suite. This massive palatial suite, you're all alone. There's no one there. And you're starting to criticize yourself. You feel you did okay. You didn't do it.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dropped his jaw because Isaac learned and Isaac, I think, was like 10 years old at the time. And he learned But Robin just was a good, wonderful, gifted spirit. And you never forget that. You know, when someone's kind to you in this world, you just don't forget it. And the other thing. May I say something about Robin if you have time? I have all the time in the world.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kids at a drama school can be very cutthroat and competitive. The one that stood out to me is the kindest, most generous one of all that I'd ever met was Robin. We were in different classes, yet he would make it his business to come to different classes and see your project being presented, and he would come up to me and be a cheerleader for every effort that I made in ways that I never forgot, and I would go to the park with him and watch him do his pantomime like he did from San Francisco and Central Park near 72nd Street. Pardon me. And we would see each other at the Japanese restaurant and sit at the bar together. And he just was a kind, kind solely. He reminded me of my dad. We all went to dinner once with my kids in San Francisco when I was doing a concert there. And he just talked about video games and stuff. He just loved it. And then my son, Isaac, absolutely.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, no matter what someone in the community did. But you know what? Look, there's a point I do not blame my parents. I believe once you're old enough to walk and chew gum at the same time, your life is your business and it's in your hands. And you fix it or you learn to deal with it. I don't believe you can fix it. I just learned to tolerate it and manage it or shut up, you know.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Forgiven for whatever else went down. But my mom, as Catherine has an expression in our family, my mom's father was a womanizer and an alcoholic. And he left his wife, my grandma, and my mother left to raise her siblings while my grandma went to work. And my wife says, I don't know if she made it up or heard it somewhere, but this phrase, which is part of our family, hurt people, hurt people. And so my mother was unbearably critical. And I don't know why she was so angry so often. I could never, no matter what I did, it wasn't good enough. No matter what my father did, it wasn't good enough. That'll turn you in.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very tough, yeah. She had great strength. My father was the kindest, sweetest person in the world, but she was a challenge. I loved her. I'm going to say some critical things about my mom. So my wife taught me to say the good stuff first and the good stuff is Bernie Colby, who was a powerful lawyer at the synagogue, wrote a series of letters to my parents, all of which I have, begging them not to be irresponsible and allow Mandy to go into show business. This was not good parenting, not a way to lead your child's life for the future. And my parents had the courage to stand up to one of the powerful people in the religious community and say, we're going to let him do what he wants to do. And for that alone, they...”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And at that moment I said to myself, wow, if this thing called theater has that kind of stuff in it, I'm going to hang out. Check it out. And I did, and I never walked away”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back to Earth for one more time in the sandbox where I played as a little kid. And he put us all in a semicircle one day, Bob, and all of us from 13 to 17, 18-year-old high school students. He said, what's this play about? And everybody raised their hand. They said, it's about a guy who makes a mistake, about a guy who gets a second chance about a guy who goes to heaven and comes. And like a good teacher, he says, I think that's right. I think you're all right. He said, but I also think it's about something else. He said, I think it's about if you love someone, tell them. Well, I'd been in the synagogue since I could remember and I heard the rabbi give a lot of great sermons. My parents were good people, I heard a lot of good stuff around the dinner table, but I never heard something that accessible to me”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hated school. My sister was very good at it. It bored me. It had nothing that spoke to me other than the choir. And so I'd get A in choir and D's in everything else. It's amazing that I even was able to graduate high school. And then my mother said to me, go over to the Young Men's Jewish Council Youth Center on the south side of Chicago. They're doing some plays. And I said, that's not for me. You don't know me at all. Then a guy in fifth period lunch, he says to me, you know, we're doing these big football player. And he says, we're doing these plays. We're short some guys. I said, yeah, it sounds cool. I go over there and I fall in love with it. A man named Bob Condor ran the drama program. It was after school. And it happened to be we were rehearsing a play called Carousel by Rogers and Hammerstein in the same room that I went to nursery school in. So we'd set up the ladder when he talks to God in heaven, you know, about going down.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Remind me if I get lost, but I just remembered something I was saying earlier when my dad got hurt. He would sit with his head in his hands and he would say to me, I don't know how you learned those lines. How do you learn those lines? Well, he had a brain injury, you know, and that's what happened when he was. And then after he died, I was sent these letters that he wrote before the operation when he was at San Antonio. He was the caretaker of the family. And then it became clear to me he was in AZA, an American Jewish youth organization, and he was an orator, an award-winning orator who won many awards. And so this injury sort of robbed him of that, huh?”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She's a reverend now. At the time, she was just a teacher, the head of the choir at Kenwood High School. Her name was Lena McLinn. And I was like the only white kid, maybe one or two others in this huge black chorus of gospel singing, you know, heaven that I was in. And one day she said to me to sing something, and I sang and I didn't sing it very loud, you know, I just sang kind of quiet voice. And I said, I'm sorry, Ms. McClint. I know that wasn't very good. She said, child. Child, Anybody tells you not to use that voice. You come tell them, come see Lena. And so she literally gave me the courage to use”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a private school in the Southside as well. I didn't like it. And then I ended up being in the first graduating class of Kenwood High School, which was fed by the University of Chicago in the local neighborhood. It was predominantly African American. I was one of few white kids in the school. And my dad was in the scrap metal business, which we called the junk business. Now it's called recycling. And most of the neighborhood, because African Americans were coming in and whites and Jews and Poles and everybody were fleeing for the suburbs. And my dad didn't leave. Now, the excuse that he had that he didn't leave was because he didn't want to travel so far from the business. I don't care what the excuse was. I'm thrilled he didn't leave because I grew up in an African-American community. My whole singing career, I really give the credit.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was in a riot there. It was a Blackstone Rangers, was a big organization. And it was South Shore High School. It was fifth period lunch. I'll never forget it. And a pop bottle flew across the lunchroom and it whistled. And it hit the wall. And that was a signal. And I remember looking up from the floor and the air was completely filled with plates and utensils and trays and forks and knives. And then this girl walked by and she had a fork sticking out of her cheek. And I went down the street and I was brought and I got hit and then I was brought over to the principal's office and I made it out. And then I never forget looking at the street in front of South Shore High School. It was a C. It actually was beautiful to look at, but a horror in itself. It was a sea of broken glass from pop bottles. My parents then took me out of South Shore High School and put me into Harvard St. George.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About this election, because I am asking, some time ago I started saying Hashem instead of GOD, and I'm asking for help and sometimes I ask for help. And then other times I go, I don't know, Catherine. You know, when you see some of the inhumanities that mankind creates and does upon itself, I look at her. I just did it the other day. I don't know if there's anything out there helping us. If the energy of our existence lives on, as Einstein would have said, I'm not sure that that collective energy is actually working to help repair the world that's burning and on fire. I hope it is. I'm not going to stop asking for the help, but I'm not certain that it's there, which then makes me say, then you better do all you can. Right here, right now, to get it as good as you can get it.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you're supposed to say the names of all your loved ones. Well, I do this every day. Everyone who I knew, some well, some loved, and some just acquaintances that I knew that were connected to my life. I say their names. Sometimes two or three times a day, certainly in front of before I go out into an audience or before I walk in front of a camera. Why do I do it? It connects me. It connects me to the unknown. And what religion is to me is everything that isn't known. And it's a comfort. I just said to Catherine.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Since the beginning of time an extraordinary Alan Arkin once said to me, he thought God invented man, I think is what he said. I thought man invented religion and God. And then he corrected me. He thought it was the other way around. I think it's an incredible thing to have come up with, to answer the question of existence, the stars, the universe, and how come you're not here forever and a tree and a mountain is. I'm so grateful for loved ones and people I've never met from the beginning of time that it guides them through the universe. For me, it is fun. It is a comfort. The prayers that I heard when I was a kid, the prayers that I make up as an adult, you know, just a simple thing. Like in Judaism, there's one day a year where there's a Yisker service.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“However, you want to label this act, I give my dog her food in the morning, two cups of her kibble. And I put it down and she sits there and waits for me to say, okay. And before she do it, I'm moving my lips and I'm saying the Misha Bayrock, which is the healing prayer because she has an illness that we're treating her for and hopefully she'll get rid of it. I say to Misha Bayach, and then I say the Brukha to break the bread and begin eating. And she now knows that when my lips start moving, the okay is coming. And I say, okay. So I find it hilarious that I'm doing this, but I realize, but Mandy, you know, I find religion.”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not only I'm very faithful. I don't keep kosher. I don't need to follow the rules that are dictated. I make up my own rules. I say prayers in a meditation every day. They include Hebrew prayers, Hebrew prayers, Shakespeare's words, words of friends, family, and hopes and dreams of my own that I've made up. But I can give you a perfect example of how”
2020-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 416 — Mandy Patinkin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source