ENTOURAGE (TV series, 2004-): When “Harvey Weingard” first appeared on the show trying to parlay Vinnie Chase's film portrayal of druglord Pablo Escobar into a Cannes sensation, all my friends who’d watched had the same reaction.
We spent several minutes trying to decide whether it was the real Harvey Weinstein playing a caricature of his overblown self. When I finally realized it was Maury Chaykin, I was dumbfounded. All the petulance, the run-amok child id, the strategically-timed tantrums and threats of violence. It was an unbelievable performance that ran four episodes.
Ever since then, when I’ve seen interviews with Weinstein, it seems as if he’s doing an impression of Maury doing an impression of him.
ENTRAPMENT (movie, 1999): There’s no reason to ever see this middling Sean Connery/Catherine Zeta Jones caper movie except for one thing, Chaykin’s so-far-over-the-top-he’s-flying portrayal of Conrad Greene, an ex-pat in Malaysia who’s become a Buddha-like opium-smoking, makeup-wearing, boy-chasing drug kingpin. This is absolutely fearless scene-chewing, and proof that the actor gave no less than a high-wire performance in even the most undeserving films.
WHALE MUSIC (movie, 1994): Wags called it “Free Maury” for all the scenes of him floating underwater in his pool and calling out to his imaginary cetacean friends. But on further review, Chaykin really did give human dimension to the enigmatic rock-star-turned-hermit named Desmond Howl, transparently based on Brian Wilson. It was the character actor’s first lead role, and the late Paul Quarrington, author of the Governor-General Award-winning book on which it was based, was thrilled with the result. He played the character like a befuddled visiting alien, seeing the world through a child’s eyes.
LESS THAN KIND (TV series, 2008-): Maury’s last legacy was his portrayal of a human car wreck of a driving instructor in this, the closest Canadian TV has come to producing a mordant dysfunctional family on the level of Arrested Development. As family patriarch Sam Blecher, Chaykin provided a reverse role model that gave the HBO series its perverse and hilarious energy.
DANCES WITH WOLVES (movie, 1990): If you’re going to sit through three hours of Kevin Costner’s magnum opus, it helps to have a few moments of crazy to stir the blood. As Major Fambrough, a liquored-up, delirium-stricken self-proclaimed “king,” he is one of the first people Major Dunbar (Costner) meets en route to his posting out West. When Fambrough ultimately and blithely puts a bullet into his own head, it is an omen for what waits in the unknown frontier.
jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca
