I have to admit, I was feeling a little nervous. I decided that I would play it cool, and at all costs, conceal the fact that I’m a super fan.
I was biking to the Nouvel Hotel in downtown Montreal to meet Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs, the director and star, respectively, of several of my favorite horror films, including their 1985 masterwork, Re-Animator.
You have to understand, that for a horror fan, getting to meet Jeffrey Combs is like getting to meet a modern-day Vincent Price or Bela Lugosi, and Stuart Gordon is simply one of the industry’s ultimate twisted geniuses. They’re in town for the Fantasia film festival, where they’re hosting a 25th anniversary screening of Re-Animator, as well as showing their masterful one-man play, Nevermore: An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe, with Jeffrey starring as Poe. I saw it. It was relentlessly entertaining, energetic, and moving.
The two men that I met that humid Friday morning weren’t what you might expect from sultans of splatter. Both were warm, welcoming, eager to talk to me. They finish each other’s sentences. Stuart, a bald, goateed teddy-bear in his early ’60s, seemed quite content to be a horror idol, while Jeffrey, 56, was decidedly more reluctant. Like Bela Lugosi before him, horror had found Jeffrey by accident—he was never much of a fan. At the beginning of his career, his iconic and singular performance as the creepy yet strangely infectious Dr. Herbert West in Re-Animator—a schlocky, fun, and utterly disgusting take on a beloved HP Lovecraft story—all but sealed his fate as an icon of horror.
A versatile character actor, Jeffrey is extremely grateful for this career-launching “happy accident,” as he calls it, as well as for all the love he receives from his devoted cult fan base. That said, he’s decidedly frustrated at the way he’s been consistently typecast throughout his career.
And I feel for him. Not to get too philosophical, but we all know how it feels to be typecast in life, and we don’t always like how the universe—or society, or our high-school classmates, or whatever—choose to pigeonhole us. But I think what makes Jeffrey so memorable in the horror milieu is that he stands out in those films as more than your average shallow B-grade leading man. He performs every role with unwavering commitment, and while chameleonic and often virtually unrecognizable, he always offers us a tiny glimpse of something uniquely Jeffrey Combsian to every character, including most recently, Edgar Allan Poe. Jeffrey’s a star. And Stuart Gordon was the first filmmaker to notice.
The first words that left my mouth as I met the two men in the hotel lobby were: “Jeffrey, Stuart, I’m a huge fan.” They took it well.
Where did the idea come from to do Nevermore? Did it arise while doing the Showtime Masters of Horror episode, “The Black Cat”?
Stuart Gordon: Yeah, it kind of came as a result of that. I was working with Jeffrey and he was playing Poe in that episode, and it was like hanging out with Edgar Allan Poe. That was the feeling I was getting. So I said, wouldn’t it be great if we could share this with an audience?
Jeffrey Combs: And I went, “Get out of here. That’s just not happening.” (laughs)
Gordon: What convinced him was that last year was Poe’s bicentennial, and I said, “Look, if we could do this show for Poe’s bicentennial, maybe we could tour the country with it.”
Was that at the burial site of Edgar Allan Poe?
Jeffrey Combs as Poe
Combs: We took it there at the beginning of this year for Poe’s birthday.
Wow.
Gordon: In order to get to the stage, Jeffrey had to literally walk past Poe’s grave, which was incredible.
Combs: You know, “Places!” (laughs) Stu had an idea, he said, “We can make a movie about a guy who does a one-man show of Poe…”
Gordon: Performing it in Baltimore at the cemetery, and he gets locked in his dressing room…
Combs: Mysteriously. And he can’t get out and somebody else goes on…
Gordon: That looks just like Poe and does something completely different than the show. And Jeffrey goes, “Great, and I could play both parts!” (laughs)
I’d like to see that! To date, how many collaborations have you done over the years?
Gordon: Nine, I think.
Is this the first time you’ve collaborated on a stage production?
Combs: Yeah, even though we both came from the theatre, we’ve kind of just been pursuing film and television. So this is kind of a return to the home ground, you know? Even though we’ve never worked together before in theatre.
Gordon: And neither of us has ever done a one-man show before.
The original Edgar Allan Poe
Combs: It’s not so much how I’ve been finding it. It’s how my neighbours have been finding it. You know, memorizing all of this material, an hour and a half non-stop, I’d have to take a lot of walks with the dog mumbling to myself. “Here he comes, the crazy guy!” (laughs)
Gordon: Jeffrey has said that it’s like climbing a mountain, doing this show. And I think that’s a really good way to describe it.
Combs: It’s just one step at a time. And Stu was really great about it. He said, “Before we get all the sinews and muscles that connect these poems, and the story, just concentrate on one poem a week. Try to get a poem. Or if it’s a long one, two weeks. Just try to get that under your belt.” So it really was very much like that, one foot in front of the other.
Gordon: And in a sense, the poems really help shape the character, too. You really get a sense of who Poe is through his poetry.
Combs: That’s one of the first things we did was, “What do we want to do? What poems do I want to do? What story should we recite?”
Gordon: And we did some research and found that Poe did some recitals in the last couple of years of his life.
I heard that. Is this a recreation of one of those performances in a way?
Combs: An imagining.
Gordon: To some degree it is. And there are some really crazy stories we’ve read. His first wife had died, and he was engaged to a wealthy widow, and she came to one of his recitals and he did the entire recital right to her, and she was sitting in the first row.
Combs: We sort of took that device. And another idea we took on was, there was another story where he was booked for a recital in Boston I believe, where he was going to recite a new poem. A brand new poem. So everybody was really excited about that. So he came out and started reciting something and quickly they realized that this was one of his long, early, teenage poems. (laughs)
Gordon: Not a particularly great one. (laughs)
Combs: And everyone’s going, “This is not new!” He thought he could, like, you know… And people walked out on it.
Gordon: It was a scandal.
That’s amazing. I’m a musician and I’ve totally done that. “Oh, I have to play something else. How about this piece of crap I wrote when I was 15? That’ll work!” And hope that nobody notices that it’s bad teenage bedroom poetry.
Combs: Exactly. I mean, he was in a tight spot. He had writer’s block, he didn’t have the time…
Gordon: But I mean, it’s Poe, so how bad can it be?
True enough. And I understand that Nevermore has been very well received. What have the audiences been like? I know you both have a loyal cult following, but…
Gordon: That’s been interesting because we’ve been getting a kind of mixed bag.
Combs: It’s been a real mix. There’s people of all ages who love Poe. So you got literary-Grandma next to goth-rocker-pierced-monstrosity, so you’ve got it all there. It really is a universal sort of audience.
Combs: In America, in high-school, Poe is part of the curriculum. And it’s part of the curriculum where the kids say, “Oh, okay, I get this. I’m into this.” So in America, he comes into people’s lives at a very pivotal sort of impression point for people. He certainly did for me.
Gordon: People love him. He is very misunderstood. His life is sort of tragic, but in a sense that makes you love him even more.
Exactly.
Combs: So it’ll be interesting to do it here in Canada where maybe where you’re certainly aware of him, but I don’t know if he’s…
I think here, although I never learned him in school that I can remember, he’s still everywhere in popular culture. From, you know, The Simpsons to… He’s part of the cultural fabric here as well.
Combs: That’s right. He’s unavoidable. And there wouldn’t be all of the motifs and genres without him. Everyone has been impacted by his work. So many things are derivative.
So, this is an extremely interesting project. But I’d like to ask, what does the future hold for Jeffrey? I know you’ve made a lot of your career in horror and sci-fi, but you’ve proven to be very versatile, bringing something different to every role. I’d say you’re somewhat of a chameleon.
Gordon: Absolutely.
Combs: Well, there’s a good question. Well, I mean, there’s what I want and there’s what comes along, you know. As an actor you’re always battling that preconceived notion that people have of you. And I’m grateful to horror and I’m grateful to sci-fi and the success that I’ve had. And as far as horror, it came early and sort of blossomed into more work in that area.
Gordon: There’s a project I’m working on now that I’m hoping that Jeffrey will be a part of as well. The plan is to shoot this fall.
Can you tell me more about that project?
Gordon: I don’t want to say too much yet, but it’s based on a true story. It’s not really a horror film at all, but it is horrifying.
Amazing. I’m very intrigued. Now, I have a couple of nerdy questions that you’re probably sick of hearing. I heard something about a musical.
Gordon: Yeah, I’m working on a Re-Animator musical, and the plan is to do that this fall also.
I can’t wait. And the new Re-Animator sequel, House of Re-Animator, has that been squashed? I heard something about William H. Macy’s involvement.
Gordon: William H. Macy was going to do it, but was very disappointed that we didn’t get financing for it. I think it was also, the script was about the Bush administration, and that was a topic that people… They were afraid of Bush, and they were afraid of getting on his shit-list. I think it’s gotten more press than any movie that I have done!
People are just really excited about the idea.
Combs: And yet that doesn’t translate to the people who write the cheque.
by Adam Waito / Fantasia festival rages on ’til July 28th
