Nick Mancuso: Feeding Caviar to the Masses - actor - Interview

TAKE ONE, Dec, 2001 by Harvey F. Chartrand

Nick Mancuso admits to being "dead bored with acting" in a string of straight-to-video features, so he is stretching himself creatively by writing and performing in one-man shows he calls "psychologues." Between steady film and TV appearances, Mancuso is rehearsing for OS, a multimedia presentation of his epic poems In the Domain of the Ordinary. "I hope to do a one- to three-week, out-of-town tryout in Toronto before taking it to New York City," Mancuso says. "I'm trying to raise money to go in October 2002, depending on whether my current TV series, Call of the Wild, gets picked up next April.

"These 'psychologues' are in the bardic tradition of the ode. They're poems, written in verse in the first person, elegiac in format. I gave eight performances of my first psychologue, Hotel Praha, at Theatre Passe Muraille back in 1999. People who saw it dug it, which was great, because I expected them not to. They really got into it, but of couse it got shitty reviews, because you always get shitty reviews in Canada, unless you do something completely middle-of-the-road or you do it in New York and London and the critics liked it there first." Mancuso calls his psychologues "a kind of Bromo-Seltzer for the soul"; projects that keep him fresh creatively, to counteract the steady stream of formula pictures he has to make to pay the bills.

Fellow Toronto actor Saul Rubinek, Mancuso's close friend for 30 years, says that, "Nick is a very intense and interesting person, who is always searching and exploring, and that intensity has got him into as much trouble as it hasn't, It's his blessing and his curse. But I would also say that Nick is an unsung national treasure." Legendary Hollywood producer Roger Corman, who produced Dark Prince in 1996 with Mancuso playing the lead as the notorious Marquis de Sade, says, "Nick is a very versatile actor on whom I feel I can depend on throughout the production. He knows the character, he understands the film, and he delivers. In other words, he's smart, talented and professional."

If you wanted to do theatre in Canada in the early 1960s, it helped if you had a British accent. For an Italian kid who grew up in Toronto after his family emigrated to Canada in 1956 - he was born Nicodemo Antonio Massimo Mancuso in Calabria - it was tough getting noticed in the clubby, Anglo world of Canadian theatre. Mancuso was told that he was a diamond in the rough, that he could never do Shakespeare or Shaw. "What they meant by that was I could never do Shaw like these third-rate alcoholic Brits we'd bring over to put on the boards," says Mancuso.

By the late 1960s, Mancuso had joined a group of luminaries such as actors Rubinek, R. H. Thomson, Maury Chaykin, Jackie Burroughs, and producer/directors such as Ken Gass, Paul Thompson, Martin Kinch and Bill Glassco. They ushered in Toronto's underground theatre movement, leaving in their wake Theatre Passe Muraille, Tarragon, Toronto Free Theatre and Factory Theatre Lab, showcasing contemporary Canadian plays in which actors forsook the grand manner to give nuanced and realistic performances. Out of this counter-cultural ferment came such playwrights as Jim Garrard, George Walker, Carol Bolt, Michael Hollingsworth and Michael Ondaatje, who wrote The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, in which Mancuso appeared as Billy in the original Toronto version in 1973 directed by Kinch. "It was a Canadian explosion, an extraordinary group of amazingly talented people, all of whom went on to international prominence of one kind or another," Mancuso reflects.

In 1975, Mancuso moved on to Stratford, where his performance as Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice opposite Maggie Smith drew excellent notices from Walter Kerr, the legendary drama critic of The New York Times. "Kerr said I managed to lay to rest the curse that had been put on this role for over 250 years, that I had cracked the code of a monologue that was said to be incomprehensible." Because of Kerr's review, Eleanor Kilgallen, then head of casting at Universal, flew up to Stratford to meet Mancuso. "The Americans just opened the doors and said 'come on in.' The next thing I know, ABC is offering me $10,000 not to sign with NBC or CBS. I had become, without my being aware of it, a hot commodity, in Hollywood parlance. Come pilot season, they'd fly me to L.A. to meet some producers at ABC."

Mancuso worked with producer Stephen J. Cannell on Dr. Scorpion (1976), a failed series pilot recycled as a movie-of-the-week. Mancuso played a master-of-disguise private eye, a fore-runner of his Stingray character a decade later. Nightwing (1979) was Mancuso's first big Hollywood picture, produced by Martin Ransohoff, directed by fellow Canadian Arthur Hiller, with a script by Steve Shagan, still hot from Save the Tiger, and adapted from the Martin Cruz Smith novel. Nightwing co-starred David Warner, Kathryn Harrold and Strother Martin. Music was by Henry Mancini. Because he thought the script "sucked" and feared being miscast, Mancuso only reluctantly accepted the lead role of an Indian sheriff in this horror tale of killer bats in New Mexico. "Nightwing was supposed to have been a blockbuster hit - Jaws on wings, Marty called it before it opened. What it was instead was a giant straw pancake, running about a week-and-a-half before they pulled it. Guess who got the blame? It wasn't Henry Moon River Mancini !" Nightwing opened to dismal reviews. "I saw it in a Canadian screening room," Mancuso remembers. "After the movie was over, somebody from the back of the cinema shouted: 'When's the movie start?"'