"JEFFREY COMBS -
ACTING ON THE EDGE"
as told to The Phantom, Debbie Rochon, Peter Schmideg & Tom Weaver. This interview was done in 1997 on WBAI's late-night radio show Lurid Details, done by Debbie Rochon and Peter Schmideg, scribe Tom Weaver and The Phantom.
(Boy, I sure hope I didn't forget to mention anybody ...)
A Fox Mulder on bad drugs.
More recently, Combs played Lovecraft himself in Brian Yuzna's Necronomicon and scored a major role as a paranoid FBI paranormal investigator in Peter Jackson's high-profile horror comedy The Frighteners.
Jeffrey Combs
JEFFREY COMBS: Yes, absolutely. The meatier parts in anything, either a movie or a play, are usually the ones who are out of the orm, who are not your everyday run-of-the-mill persons. You have a coat rack with a lot of hooks on it; you have a lot of things to play with.
PS: Well, of coruse, you play a mad scientist in one of the classic horror/science-fiction films of all time, Re-Animator, and in Doctor Mordrid.
JC One of the first things, at least for me, and I think for a lot of actors, we don't go at it saying "OK, I'm going to play a mad scientist." That's not anything that's even in the equation. I don't think of Herbert West as being crazy or insane; he's merely brilliant and gifted and egocentric and arrogant and ambitious and lets nothing get in the way of his goal, and it's everybody else's labeling that he is mad.
JC: Yes. At least for me, with Herbert West, and the way that it was written, the vision is paramount. Even when you see the old Frankenstein movies - nothing is going to get in the way of the goal tht the mad scientist is trying to achieve. And the whole dramatic content of the story is here's someone with a strong purpose and conflicts come his way and what is he going to do? How is he going to react to it and how is he going to solve the problems of achieving his experiments? I think the scientists in films can know that they're brilliant, they can know that they're gifted, they can know they're egocentric, they can even know they're arrogant. But I don't think that they ever say that they're mad. It's everyone else who just doesn't understand. That's the way I sort of approach it.
TOM WEAVER: What mad scientist movies did you grow up with? Did you take any tips from the performances you saw in those pictures?
JC: Very sort of pristine, almost.
PH: Very young.
JC: That's sort right out of the H.P. Lovecraft story; however, in the Lovecraft story, he's very blond and blue-eyed, and I'm certainly not that.
TW: Did yo actually read the story for leads on how to play your characters?
JC: Yeah, I did. It didn't help me too, much, except the all-pervasive nothing's-going-to-et-in-the-way-of-his-work; that sort of spirit does come through. If you've read the stories and you've seen the movie, there's really not too terribly much similarity.
JC: No. In fact, an actor, if he has a straight-ahead villain role, he cannot look at it as a villain. In order to be successful, you have to look at it as a human being with a certain set of perceptions about the world, a certain goal that they have in mind, and everything's totally and perfectly justified, given that. Things can get terribly melodramatic if someone says, "Okay, I'm playing a bad person." Well, then all they're doing is playing a bad person and not a human being. So even if I do come across as maybe scaring you, that's good, but I didn't go at it saying, "I'm going to scare you."
PS: Herbert West is obsessed.
JC: He's obsessed. He's gonna be the sperm that's gonna fertilize the egg and nothing is going to get in his way.
JC: And that makes them human, doesn't it. And that's their downfall. In some ways, that's sort of a tired, tried-and-true kidn of motif that continues to be repeated in movies. It's almost like a cliche. But I think there's something in the human psyche tht we're titilated by the person who flies too close to the candle and their wings get singed. We're compelled and repelled by them. It's almost like we are having lessons in how far as humans we can go in the pursuit of whatever it is we want to pursue. Yes, it's good to e brilliant and gifted and yet if you indulge yourself too much, it's going to come around and destroy you. That seems to e one of the basic themes behind every mad scientist that seems to come along.
JC: See, I had a problem with that movie.
TW: I did, too.
JC: - and that humor. It was like this is a movie about torture.
TW: - and religious fanatics.
JC: - and religious fanatics. And really a lot of the humor that's in that movie sort of fell to me and the other actor, Steve Lee, who played the gravedigger. But the problem that I had was I have to be funny and yet if you note at the end of that movie, I take over the kingdom. So I was always talking to Stuart that I can't be too stupid and too silly here because I have to have some credibility when it comes to the end of this thing. So it was a fine line for me and I don't know if I particularly suceeded because that movie is quite disturbing. I don't know if it ultimately succeeds in what it wants to say.
PH: I recently caught Love and a .45 which I enjoyed.
JC: Good. Not many people saw that because it didn't get a wide release.
PH: I think what happened was some of the critics compared it to Natural Born Killers because of the timing.
JC: Yeah, some of the critics said, "Here they come. Here come all the Tarantino wannabes" - when in reality that movie was made before Reservoir Dogs ever really hit it. So it can't be blamed - that's a gifted writer, and he's very unique, and he certainly in no way, shape or form set out to be a clone of Tarantino. But for critics, sometimes they can kind of be cynical. In fact, they delayed the release of that movie because of Natural Born Killers. It was due to come out just about the time Natural Born Killers did and they backed off because they didn't want that comparison, which I think ultimatively couldn't be avoided. Even here, the L.A. Times said that Love and a .45 wasn't as pretentious as Natural Born Killers. I just thought it was a big, violent MTV video.
most times - art loses ...""
Jeffrey Combs
JC: I did a Moliere play a couple of years ago but I must say film was always my first love and theater came along simply because that was where you learned your craft. But once film required more and more of my time, I can't help but be enveloped in it, and I love it. I'm very excited to be doing the films that I'm doing and I really don't have much time for theater anymore.
DR: Was there a great difference working on Bride of Re-Animator as opposed to working with Stuart Gordon?
JC: Bride of Re-Animator was directed by Brian Yuzna, who produced the original Re-Animator. And Brian and Stuart are totally different directors. But above and beyond that, there really wasn't a whole lot of time allowed to get the script for the second one in any really fit shape.
JC: If I knew the answer to that question, I would be a wiser person. Quite frankly, I try not to think about it too much. I always try to make my characters people, and yet I always want to entertain. One thing that I see a lot on television and even in film is people tend to sit back with their roles and even in their direction. There's no leaning forward. Tonight, for instance, I was watching - and I'll probably get in trouble for this - the new Star Trek. And I was sitting there and I was going: "What is wrong? Why am I not engaged? Why do I feel so cool and detached?" Yet, when you go back and see the original Star Trek, what is it about this, even though the sets are so cheesy, that I really like. Shatner was leaning forward. Whatever it is, he embraced it totally and fully. He didn't care if he made a fool out of himself, it ws the material and it's like someone gave him a costume - "Make this live." I think that therein lies the essence of what I try to do also. I try to lean forward. I look at this material and go, "What can I do to make this breathe? What can I do that makes this not just me standing on a mark and saying lines and collecting a paycheck?" I'm really not interested in that. I'm interested in bringing it alive. And entertaining. I mean, we can't take ourselves too seriously and we can't sit back. That's why I do what I do, ultimatively - to entertain, hopefully enlighten and make people feel things in the dark. That's really all it is. It's just stories around the campfire.
And I was sitting there and I was going:
What's wrong? Why am I not engaged?
Why do I feel so cool and detached?"
Jeffrey Combs