Monk is in the details

by Rebecca Caldwell

TORONTO -- Tony Shalhoub claims he isn't a Method man.

Conveniently, however, the character actor appears to have enough neuroses to satisfy a psych ward's admitting physician. But the quirks and tics serve Shalhoub well in his role as the brilliant but obsessive-compulsive detective (think Sherlock Holmes meets Niles Crane) in the hotly anticipated new television series Monk.

Critics had been raving about the American cable series that started airing in July on USA Networks. To boost summer ratings, ABC surprised North American viewers with a sneak peek of the hit by airing an episode Tuesday night, with three more to come. (In Canada, these same episodes appear on The New VR and New VI stations, where Monk starts its regular season Sept. 8.)

Adrian Monk's behaviour -- tidying up the homes of suspects, keeping his socks in Ziploc baggies -- and his pathological fear of germs, heights and milk was born of tragedy. His grief over the unsolved murder of his wife transformed his fine eye for case-closing minutiae into full-blown obsessive-compulsive disorder. His affliction got him suspended from his job as the top homicide investigator on the San Francisco police force.

Aided by his minder Sharona (Bitty Schram of A League of Their Own fame), the two consult for police captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine, who did a creepy turn as serial killer Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs). Monk's great hope, of course, is that one day he'll be reinstated.

The case for Shalhoub being Monkish in real-life is nearly airtight. As Shalhoub himself admits, "I spend more of my waking hours as Monk than as me now, so it's starting to take over."

Let's look at his behaviour, in the same way the detective himself would.

1) Admittedly shy in interviews ("I don't think they're my strong point," he says), Shalhoub is meditatively low-key during an on-set meeting last month. He delivers his answers to questions flatly, almost warily. But give him a minute and the intelligent actor starts passionately waving his hands, even his legs like a windmill gone berserk when speaking.

2) In a few minutes he gets up and starts jerkily jabbing at the air conditioner. (To be fair, he's trying to combat the brain-frying heat on the grounds of Thornhill, Ont.'s Shouldice Hospital, where filming for one episode was under way. Although set in San Francisco, the series is filmed in and around Toronto.)

At another point, he leaps off the couch in his trailer and races over to the cabinets on the other side. He presses his hand on a door, closing a nearly undetectable opening, then smiles with relief.

3) In between takes, Shalhoub makes a strange sight as his personal assistant shadows him with a parasol to protect him from the sun. (Oddly, it appears to be a quirk-filled crew, too. The on-set nurse asks, repeatedly, not to be photographed, mysteriously adding, "It can be a dangerous time to be a nurse.")

4) When asked about his own compulsions, Shalhoub waxes poetic about the right way to stack dishwashers, a skill he picked up as a teenager, while working in a restaurant in his hometown of Green Bay, Wis. Priceless, however, is his intense, lengthy harangue about the importance of order in the refrigerator.

"Why not just put things in the same place all the time?" he asks with exasperation. "What is the matter with that? Then you don't you have to go rooting around all the time. You open the door," he snaps his fingers, "that's where the yogurt goes," snap, "that's where the milk is. Then you don't have to guess, where is the thing? Just put it where it goes.

"It's so simple, but people don't do it. Life is too short to have to deal with these things on a daily basis. I don't want to spend 2 ½ minutes trying to find the f...ing milk. I have things to do!"

Case closed: The thought of Shalhoub arguing with his wife, actress Brooke Adams, or their two kids in their Los Angeles home, over which shelf the ketchup should go on, sounds like life imitating art.

When confronted with the similarities, Shalhoub confesses. "Acting is a strange job. You go through various cycles, long periods of time as an actor focused on different aspects of the work. As I get older, I tend to stay more on the smaller details . . . and that's why I think the convergence of me in this role at this time is coming together, because Monk is all about tiny details. He sees the world in a series of connected dots."

Charmingly revealing his own idiosyncrasies isn't just laying on a little shtick, however. The 48-year-old actor has spent a lifetime honing his craft. The second youngest of 10 kids born to Lebanese parents, acting wasn't an attempt to get attention in the family but a reaction to its size. "Being part of a big family, you kind of had a built-in audience," he says.

Older siblings set the stage by performing in plays as teens, and he credits being one of the youngest with giving him plenty of opportunity to observe human relationships at work. Shalhoub went on to study drama at university, earning a graduate degree from the Yale Drama School.

He started on the stage, but is probably best known for his role as cabbie Antonio Scarpacci on the 1990s TV comedy Wings. (His other TV series, the unfunny comedy Stark Raving Mad, was cancelled with merciful speed.)

His cult roles, however, include his intense, scene-stealing portraits in such films as Big Night,and two Coen brothers' movies: In Barton Fink, his megalomaniacal movie producer badgered John Turturro's character. In The Man Who Wasn't There, he played Billy Bob Thornton's hot-shot attorney, the loquacious and expensive Freddy Riedenschneider.

In addition to soaking up the kudos from Monk, where he is also one of the producers, the actor has recently had some success as a director. Shalhoub's debut behind the lens on Made-Up won the audience award as the best narrative first film at the 2002 South by Southwest film festival.

As for the overwhelmingly positive response from critics so far, Shalhoub is guarded but grateful. He thinks it's a matter of people being able to relate to his character.

"We're banking on that everyone will recognize something, either in themselves, or someone they love or hate or work with or are married to," he says.

"It's gratifying, you do these things and never know what to expect . . . you never know how they're going to embrace it, if it's too quirky for some people, if frankly, the character's just going to be too irritating. We just want to keep the ball rolling and hope the episodes have the same kind of impact."

Meanwhile, it looks like his own compulsions have the makings of some pretty compulsive television.