Saturday night I saw Inigo Montoya in person at the Crafton-Preyer Theatre on the KU campus. As it turns out, Mandy Patinkin—actor, singer, and all-around theater junkie—attended KU in the early 70s. He was invited back this weekend to speak about his life and work, in an event known as "A Conversation with Mandy Patinkin." It took place in a smaller theater, meaning that the discussion was more intimate and really did feel like a conversation. I was sitting on the mezzanine level, and I could see his nose hairs. They were quite well trimmed.

The evening began with some KU musical theater students performing a montage of songs from Patinkin's career. While they sang, they assembled two seats on the stage and a table with flowers between. (Think Inside the Actors Studio.) Then Monsieur Mandy came out and sat in one of the chairs, while Jack Wright, professor of theater & film at KU, sat in the other. Wright asked a variety of questions about the actor's life and motivation, what he looks forward to, what he would tell actors just starting out (basically, "don't do this unless you have to"), etc. There was a large screen behind them, and it was used to show clips from Patinkin's Broadway career, film roles, and television. Mandy's musical theater career included playing Seurat in Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, and (my favorite) Che Guevara in Evita. He starred in this one opposite Patti Lupone, who played a killer Eva Peron with an absolutely enormous mouth. (Seriously, have you seen her mouth?) Also, remember Alien Nation? I totally forgot he was in that. And we saw a snippet of his Showtime program, Dead Like Me, in which he plays a reaper who has to look after a novice reaper. Not much has captured my imagination lately when it comes to television (except for As the Galactica Turns and everything on Adult Swim, that is), but I may have to check this one out. If it's still on, that is. I don't even know.

On to The Princess Bride. Apparently, there was a contest on campus to make the best short-short film incorporating the theme of Inigo Montoya, and the winning piece was shown during the "conversation." It was a vignette about two college guys in a library. "Did you find that book on Trotsky you were looking for?" one of them asks. The other approaches slowly, with wide-eyed cartoony menace, and announces, "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." He then proceeds to slice the first guy's cheeks with a pink highlighter. It was awesome. And it really is funny that the Inigo Montoya character has attained such mythic popularity, saturating the culture so thoroughly that people still bandy about his signature phrase eighteen years later. (Yes, this film was made in 1987, in the height of bad bad hair, one year prior to Working Girl.) Mandy talked at length about the intensive training he and Cary Elwes had to undergo in order to learn to fence. We're talking ten hours a day with Olympic fencers for a period of six months, and by the end, the two of them had gotten so good they were able to improvise the choreographed routine for better camera play. I kind of expected him to sigh impatiently and flash a strained smile when people asked about Inigo Montoya, but he seemed delighted by everyone's enthusiasm. He said it's one of his proudest acting achievements.

Miscellaneous info about Mandy:

He came to KU because of a girl, who turned out to be dating someone else when he got here. Sigh.

He barely went to any class that didn't have to do with theater.

Harvard University once gave him a plaque to thank him for speaking at the school. It read, "thanks to Mandy Patinkin for her service..." His wife told him to send it back for correction. Instead, he framed it and put it up right inside the front door.

He is embarrassed by his receding hairline.

He seems like a really nice guy.