FRID: Well, of course. That's entirely the reason of the film, I think. I'm
still confused about it too. It is a dream at the end of the picture - but
you know that was very arbitrary. I think the original ending of the script
was reality. But that's just a dramitalurgical device; they made the end into
a dream, which I think is much more effective. The character has a stroke
from dreaming his dream so often.
MOM: One watches the character wake up and thinks, okey, cool, it's a dream
and we're all back to square one. And then he walks into the bathroom and
they break the rules because there's his wife's suicide note - "I love you" -
scrawled on the mirror and the Kali figure is jumping out of the bed and
seems to destroy him literally. And that's something one hadn't really
expected.
FRID: It's still within the realm of possibility. I mean, I've done it
myself. That's my worst nightmare, actually, waking up from a nightmare and
finding that it's not, it's real within a nightmare.
MOM: At the end of the film, your character goes, "Ohhh, I've made it." One
gets the feeling that each night is a battle and here he's finally made it to
the finish line, one more night, and then he finds he hasn't and that's what
destroys him. In that, one assumes that in his dream he doesn't have to fear
destroying everyone he knows and loves and cares for as long as it's a dream.
That's what shattered him, I think; him thinking that as this is a dream,
everything's all right. And then to find out that it isn't.
FRID: Of course, he's dead in the bed at the end, so he hadn't gotten out of
bed to go to the bathroom at all in reality. Just a double twist.
I love the way that picture ends, and I love that shot the next morning -
you know, the peaceful morning.
MOM: I was sitting there, honestly thinking: "Oh man, is that milkman ever
going to get a surprise. He's going to find a body in the lake and
fifteen-odd bodies scattered around the house and grounds." And I was sitting
there waiting for his reaction.
FRID: That's not the way I ... of course, knowing the story, I just saw the
irony.
MOM: Yes, once one gets into the irony. But those minutes when the man is
coming up the drive, one is thinking, "Wow! This is going to be right out of
Hitchcock, or Roger Corman at his best. This man is going to go absolutely
bananas." but then to have those footsteps come down to the milk, one thinks,
"What does Kali want with milk?" And then to discover it's the wife! And the
"dead" dog is running around and the boy is still running around and one
thinks, "Aha! A double reverse twist!"
FRID: Then a double reverse twist after that.
MOM: When the son goes upstairs, one feels that Edmund - your character - is
dead. But then again, there is a feeling that maybe they'll do another
reverse. I don't know - you can loop it forever.
What did you think about the use of violence in the picture? A lot of it
was never actually shown - but I remember watching the scene where the giant
crushed Joseph Sirola's head, thinking as I heard the crack, "Oh, the giant's
breaking Sirola's neck." and then when I heard the pop and saw the giant
shaking his hands, one knew that he had crushed the man's skull and was
shaking off the man's brains.
FRID: Was it effective for you?
MOM: It was horrifying.
FRID: It was? Again, being part of it, I just thought it was funny. You know
... just between you and me, I didn't think the effects were that good; I
suppose because I was in it and saw how they were done. And if you're going
to have horror, why not?
Violence, oddly enough, violence bores me on the screen and on
television. It just bores me. It's so unreal to me. I can't stand someone
being tapped with a car and knocked down in the street; I'd practically have
a stroke just seeing that much violence in reality but anything on the
screen, ho-hum. That's why I never go to those things, those "horror" films.
I haven't been to see THE EXORCIST. I haven't been to see any of those things.
I like psychological - interior acting, interior stories. Exterior - all
that stuff - I guess, is all right if it's seen. I've talked to people who
were very affected by it, but I ...
It's as I was saying a little while ago, they're making two or three cuts
in SEIZURE and there's one cut that they're making that I've been trying to
get them not to make - the scene between my wife and myself in the bedroom
where she tells me just what I am and ...
MOM: They're going to cut that?
FRID: It seems to me that's the whole point of the picture.
MOM: Then what justification do you have for her committing suicide? Does she
just flip out?
FRID: Again, it's Edmund's dream. It's his conception of what he would do. I
think the scene's very vital - psychologically to the story. You know, I
laughed when they first told me. I said "Don't pat any attention to me;
that's my favorite scene. I'm just an actor; forget what I say." then I
started to think about it quite objectively, and I think it's stupid.
MOM: It changes the whole tenor of the character and the film.
FRID: There are parts they could cut - a lot of that racing around is
cinematically bad.
There are scenes I think are irrelevant. There's too much emphasis given
to the dining room scene between Serge and Charlie - Roger de Koven and Joe
Sirola - I mean, they're both marvelous actors, no doubt about that -
incidently, that's one thing I liked about the picture; there's a lot of good
actors.
MOM: I know. It's surprising; usually, one doesn't see that many good actors
in a horror film.
FRID: Right. The scenes are played beautifully, but I don't see what
relevance it has to my dream - to my nightmare. Perhaps in the sense that
they're just friends and they're peculiar - but I still don't understand ...
MOM: Perhaps they justify ... give the audience a reason for why Sirola's
character dies the way he does. It's a pretty horrible way for a man to die.
FRID: But it's pretty well established that he's not going to survive anyway
so ...
You can go on Monday morning quarterbacking forever. But on the whole I
was quite staggered by the picture . I thought - I just thought it was going
to be a mess. Because when you're making it under the pressures of time -
five weeks.
MOM: You shot the entire film in five weeks?
FRID: Either five weeks or a little less than five weeks.
MOM: It was all shot in Canada, right? It was a beautiful setting.
FRID: Lovely, lovely place. I thought the opening of the film was one of the
best openings I've ever seen on screen. Through the credits, when they have
that black - it's just ... the first time I saw it, I saw this black
background and at the end of the credits, my God, there was this beautiful
lake. And so I watched it, this last time, it was just imperceptibly to the
black - you know the technique - you see the lake and you don't see it. You
think you're seeing something, like in a dream. You think you're seeing
something and the progression is so slow, it comes on so slowly, it's
fascinating to watch and then ... my God! It's a beautiful statement about
the whole story, the whole picture in a way - just that one technical thing,
the opening shot. Whoever's idea that was, was a genius.
MOM: That opening kind of throws you in a way because one expects that,
because this is a horror film, it'll reek of horror and menace from the word
Go. People cut up, things like that to establish the right mood. But this
idyllic opening took its time establishing what was going on, moving thru the
events of the imagined Saturday morning. Really nothing ominous until the
woman, Eunice - Anne Meacham - was swimming in the lake and one saw this
shadowed hand among the trees on the shoreline.
FRID: You would characterize this picture as a horror picture?
MOM: Yes. I think more in a sense of something like Brain de Palma's SISTERS
is a horror film. Everything resolves itself rationally at the end as to who
these figures were or why they were at your house - Kali, the Spider, Jackal
the Giant - especially when the voice-over identifies your character as the
Edgar Allan Poe of modern fiction. Actually, if there was a confusing element
in the film, that was it. Who you were. All one knows about your character is
that you say you're writing a children's book and one really doesn't know
what kind of books you've written before. But the fact that you are a Poe
character or a Poe-like character helps clarify a lot of things. It just
seems very strange to have to wait until the end of the film for everything
to just bounce neatly into place as to why this is all happening.
FRID: I like to have hints as we go along, a little information now and then
... I felt for the first half-hour you don't know how to make sense of
anything.
But I find that with so many pictures nowadays. You're left at sea for
the longest time and you almost have to wait till the picture's over to find
out anything. I've seen two pictures lately that have fascinated me when I
saw them, although I was quite ready to walk out on both of them about
threequarters of a hour into each - LOVE AND ANARCHY, which I saw the other
night; and GOING PLACES, which I saw a week or two ago.
MOM: GOING PLACES got butchered by most of the critics.
FRID: Well, it's a pretty wild picture, you know. But there're some beautiful
things in it and it's beautifully shot. One of the most gorgeous pictures
I've ever seen. Of course, it's France, in beautiful wood settings; and
Jeanne Moreau. She was fascinating, of course. I now know what a star really
is; a star is someone whom the director loves, is fascinated with. Because
everything she does is just worshipped by the camera. I mean, she just eats
and it's beautiful.
You know, I was just reading a script the other day that she was supposed
to be doing late in September. It's produced by Bob Davis and it's a sort of
"Ape" picture. It's called HOUSE OF THE KILLER APES.
MOM: Nothing relating to Twentieth Century-Fox's Apes are they?
FRID: No. I haven't seen any of those pictures, actually. I said to Bob,
"Haven't we had the Ape pictures?" But he's riding the wave; I don't know if
it's too late or not. But I don't really think it's any relation to the Fox
pictures.
It's about a Hollywood director who has been pissed off by the treatment
he's had - and the treatment of his father who'd been one of the giants of
the industry sort of thing - a couple of years ago. He gets up at the Oscar
ceremony, collects his Academy Award and says "Screw all of you!" and goes
off to Ireland to make a picture about apes with this professor who's found a
special breed of apes in Africa that can be trained to do things.
But anyway, to make a long story short, it's about this director luring
all these people from Hollywood over to make this marvelous picture. He has a
cinematographer who is his right arm, so to speak, and is involved in this
whole mess. And the two of them sic all these trained apes on the people he's
lured over. His way of getting his revenge against all these people. He's
lured them over to do this picture and he photographs them and he's trained
the apes with dummies and fake knives. Then he gives the apes real knives and
the real people arrive and he films the ensuing carnage. It's gory.
I read the script about a year ago and now Bob wants to go ahead with it.
I was re-reading it the other day and I'd like to get, again, more of a
psychological thing into the picture. I mean go and have your fun with all
your blood and gore and everything - I don't know how he's going to do it,
because there's a lot of technical things and stunt work and all that sort of
thing; because it's grim; it's just about as grim, if not grimmer than
SEIZURE.
But I'm interested in the character. I don't think Bob's properly
motivated the character at this point; at this point the man's just petulant.
You know what I mean, that old saw, Hollywood mistreating me and all that and
now I'm going to get even. It's got to have more interest for me. And it's
that close; it's just these two or three scenes to motivate him more
strongly. The structure of the story's marvelous. The suspense is kind of
interesting. You know how the director tries to get away with it and he makes
all kinds of mistakes; and you wonder how can he get away with it? But the
only way to play it now is a madman, but he plays it so fast and recklessly
that before people have time to realize what's happening, it's too late. And
he gets his comeuppance at the end. But it works - it's a very workable
story. But from my point of view, the main character has got to be more
motivated.
MOM: It'd be kind of an ironic twist if the film he was making with all these
actors getting wiped out was finished and released and the man ended up
getting a posthumous Oscar as Best Picture, Best Director.
FRID: That's an idea
MOM: Your concern for the characters you play - how did that relate to the
four years you spent playing Barnabas? Did you feel there was enough
motivation when you were playing that role to sustain it?
FRID: Yes. I thought at times the character was very interesting. Depending
on how it was written from day to day there would be stretches where there'd
be tripe and every once in a while - I always figured that every two weeks or
so we'd put out a marvelous show. Nine out of ten would be just so-so and
some would be downright dreadful, but there would come a day where it would
production-wise come together, acting-wise come together, and writing-wise
come together. That's the fun about soap operas; that's the reality of soap
operas. There's something about soap operas that's much more close to life,
in spite of the put-downs - and they are very trite very often - but they do
have that relation to life, in that there's no end, there's no beginning. It
will not end. As one trouble starts to get solved, there's another one coming
in there. It's like politics - you know, politicians are always saying, "Oh,
we're doing this for future generations." And everything ends up in a status
quo - static. We all work for the perfect government, the perfect life for
everybody and there's no such thing. Never will be. There'll be troubles
multiplying as one gets cleared up; there's something else coming in so it
makes a farce of what the politicians say sometimes. The way they talk ...
Utopia will come and it'll be there and nothing else will happen. This is
silly!
And the soap opera understands this. Not conventionally, maybe, but just
by the nature of it. It just keeps on going on and on. Dark Shadows was that
way, just like life. Sometimes it was interesting; sometimes it was bloody
boring ... you see, as long as in one episode I got to two or three emotions
to play, that's all I need as an actor; as an actor in a play, I mean. If I
get three or four good scenes in a play, the rest can coast; as long as I
have something to play. Even in the worst scripts there's a moment each day.
My problem is just trying to get it under my belt, you know, to absorb
the script and play it. I was never too critical of the thing; I was over
critical of myself before I very often damned the script. A lot of actors
used to damn the scripts because they learned the parts quickly and they were
ready to do it, so let's have a good script. I was just so busy trying to
remember the Goddamned stuff and absorb it that I never had much time to be
too critical
MOM: Was Dark Shadows done live?
FRID: No, it was taped. But it is virtually live. It's almost the same thing,
although we used to do a lot more stop and go than most soap operas because
of the special effects.
MOM: I was speaking to some people who worked on Edge of Night and they were
talking about how they would like to get back on live schedule because of the
Watergate hearings. They were about three weeks behind and they were taping
three weeks ahead - that is, they were taping shows to be telecast three
weeks later, instead of live - and they were saying how they wished the
political situation would settle down so they could be guaranteed their
half-hour a day time slot so they could go back to doing the show live.
FRID: They wanted to be live?
MOM: Yes. The crew had the production down to a science. They used a three
camera set-up and as one scene was bowing out, they'd pull one camera away
and shift it to the next set - they had the day's sets grouped in a circle
around the central cameras - and as the first scene ended, they'd key in the
first camera and shift the second camera over to the second set. Meanwhile,
the third camera would move on to a third set - or an interim set, whichever
was needed next - and so on and so forth.
FRID: That's the way we did Dark Shadows.
MOM: Done just like that?
FRID: It has to be. Ninety percent of the time, we shot the show at one time,
twenty minutes or so excluding commercials. In a sense, it was virtually
live, even though we had to stop occasionally because of effects.
I enjoyed those four years. But I got bored with it eventually -
everybody did. The writers got bored; we got repetitious. That was the reason
the thing closed - I was amazed it ran as long as it did - for a soap opera
it had a very short run, but for a special horror thing it ran for a hell of
a long time. Because it was kind of a special show and our material was
limited - you see, with most soap operas the stories are about this thing and
that thing that happen in real life, and they go on and on. But our show was
very special material and you repeat the vampire story once too often and you
keep the werewolf story just once too often and it's much more difficult to
keep that kind of material ...
MOM: Especially with the long succession of ingenues ...
FRID: Yes. Because it's so special. I thought it had a very healthy run for
something as unusual as Dark Shadows. But there were many times ... when I
was first getting the character of Barnabas shaped, I used my Shakespeare
background - I used Macbeth, I used Richard, I used Cant - I used things
I've
played, using emotions that I played in those roles - quiet feelings,
loneliness - missing, wanting - to the point where you move from passive to
active, your hates and so forth. I mean Barnabas was everything; he was a
gentleman and then suddenly, he was a monster. He'd been motivated, you see
and a good actor can motivate these switches and be understood. I mean
Barnabas was a law into himself. I took him very seriously. And even though it was high camp to millions-college kids and all - and it would have been awful played on the stage - I don't know how it would have worked; I mean you would have had laughter half the time - but in the silence of the studio you could take it very seriously. And the over-acting - which I was accused of doing an awful lot - I could well believe it. I knew I was over-acting because of just nervousness - of
trying to get the damn thing going again. It was all ... the slow, heavy weight of the speech was just ... I couldn't get going, be light. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise.
MOM: It's funny, there've been a number of revivals of the original 1921 play DRACULA - you know, the Hamilton Dean things - and a lot of actors have tried it. And they can't deal with it - playing the play for real - because it's such a 1920's piece. They almost have to go back to the classical
vampire/high camp kind of thing. We've interviewed Barry Atwater, who played the vampire in Dan Curtis' NIGHT STALKER, and he said that his conception of the vampire was that he
was very much like a heroin addict. He had this addiction and nothing was going
to stand between him and what he needed. It wasn't a question of morality or
immorality; it was just essential to his life. Bela Lugosi and Christopher
Lee, on the other hand, are generally assumed to embody a more classic evil.
FRID: Well, that's no comparison. I mean, even playing in a classic style, you still have to motivate your character. I suppose my style came across probably more strongly than my motivation
because I was just trying to keep my service acting going, keep the lines going, keep the movement going. It's funny, though, I've been up for so many commercials that I cannot get because they all want me to "do my thing." They call me in to do monster things. And they say, "Well, Mr. Frid, this should be easy for you, you know," and so I read the damn thing and they say, "No,
no, no; do your thing!" And I'll say "Well, I'm sorry, I don't have a "thing'." "Oh, but you do; you have this monster thing you do." I don't know, like I'm supposed to have tricks to do or something.
I just play a man, the writing took care of the vampire. The only thing I ever did which I hate were those scenes - I felt so damn foolish - where I'd bite the neck of someone. But I did that only about twenty times in the four years I was playing the role. And I always felt so silly when I did it
because they always wanted to show off the god-damned teeth. I just always was embarrassed with those scenes, just get them over with. But the rest of the time, I played a man with an addiction and I knew I had to, you know, be seriously motivated. I had to eat. But my guilt was
that I was living in a world of humans who had other values and I was trying - I did - relate to people, and I knew this affliction of mine was up against a whole way of living among normal people that I loved. And so that conflicts what I played those four years. The lie, hiding what I was - which is always a fearful looking thing when a person is hiding something. They always look .. frightened. They're hiding behind a mask; that's what made that a factor. But in my own inner planning, it was hiding, trying to keep my secret, and at the same time trying to deal with that problem in my affairs with other people. Which made it an interesting thing to play, all the colors involved ..
MOM: You said that you'd been up for commercials and you've had problems with being type- cast. I'm curious about that because the only thing I'd seen you in prior to SEIZURE was a TV- movie on ABC, THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER. Your role in that was fun, in a way, because it was silent, no dialogue; it was kind of nice ...
FRID: I was kind of disappointed with the part. They said they were going to make me much more of a character and they really didn't. It just sort of ended; you know, it didn't really go anywhere. But the idea of the character I'd like to see again. I think my horror things, my playing if it's well
motivated and so forth ... I just don't want the narrow typing of being a vampire person and, pardon me, being seen as a monster That's why I like this picture, SEIZURE, because I am ... Well, my favorite role is Richard III and there isn't a bigger monster in literature than Shakespeare's Richard III; but the playing values of it are so magnificent that they over-power any horrible image of him, of what he would look like facially, for example ...
MOM: In a sense - say, at the end of Laurence Olivier's film of RICHARD III, you think, "What a bastard!' And at the same time you have this sneaking admiration for him as you watch him move from one step to the other; he's always pulling something new and you end up saying "oh man, he's a son-of-a-bitch but he's so smooth ..."
FRID: I always try to humanize things as much as possible, but the environment of the story, the writing, whatever all the - what I call the peripheral things from my point-of-view - will set up the horror. I play values and the horror is taken care of, takes care of itself. I always go out of character just playing ... I mean some things I do in life are horrible to other people, but they're not horrible to me; I love doing them. But they may be distasteful. We all do things other people think are distasteful, but you don't think they are - you do them. So, anything I do in a horror story is
something I like to do. I'm guilty about it because other people think it's horrible but I love to do this. We do what we want to do.
MOM: It's like setting out to play something - to play the element 'horror' instead of the realities of the character and situation; you end up defeating yourself.
FRID: Incidentally, one thing I learned on Dark Shadows is that the audience does half to three- quarters of the acting for you. You just say your lines, go where you're supposed to go and pluck the line - so forth and so on (and this was proven time and time again by personal appearances). People would all ask me about so and so; what's going to happen? And I've even forgotten
- I couldn't even remember. There was one time - we were all sitting around the studio one day and
there was one point in the plot we couldn't ... we had to be very careful because it related to something that had happened about six months before. And we sat around reading the script one day and we couldn't remember what that thing was. We asked everybody in the building - everybody in the studio- and no one knew. The writers couldn't remember - they all happen to be
there that day - they couldn't remember themselves. And I said, "For God's sake, go out on the street; there's always a mob of kids outside every day. Go ask them." And they came right up with the answer They remembered everything. They imbue the story with all of its colors and everything. They act - they do the acting - and I'm always quite convinced that the audience does. It's passive, but it's filling your imagination. Where you leave off; they take over.
MOM: That's one of the things, I think, that's so rich about live theatre,as opposed to cinema or TV acting; there's audience feedback to play off of ...
FRID: My acting on television or screen is just as live as on the stage, because I play it with the technicians. As a matter of fact it gives me a great thrill to know you can play even off guys who are working while you're doing it. Actually, a lot of them aren't active while you're acting. They do
work before and after but they're mostly standing around while the scene is being played. You can sense them. I sense when they're caught up by it and, you know, I sense when they're not.
So, you play to anybody in the studio. You're playing to the director - you're playing to someone; you're not just playing blind just because you're not in a theatre. Your co-workers are your audience. I get great pleasure out of doing that sort of work. The only thing I miss in the theatre is a long run, where you can really develop a character and be comfortable with it, that's what I miss. But I'm
afraid that's my curse - is that I think my acting is as good as it ever will be under duress ... It's an awful realization I have come to, and that is that you're better when you're a little out of control than when you're in control of all your faculties. I tend to slack - no matter how hard I try; I don't consciously slack, and I consciously work harder. But there's just that something that's magic that works when you're under duress and it irritates me, because I love to be in control of everything and I know exactly what I'm going to do. I want to be the complete, the consummate artist. I don't think that'll ever happen - I don't think that's my temperament. My temperament works best
under duress.
MOM: It's very strange, thinking back again, your desire to be in control of everything. Shifting back to Edmund, your character in SEIZURE, he was in a way in control of the dream situation and yet he was out of control. But you could almost say he was in control when he died. You got the feeling that he probably sensed where this was leading him. To have this nightmare occur over and over again, each time a little more terrible ... because in the original memory sequence where he's running and being chased by the dwarf, it's night. And yet, when it actually happens in the film, it's dawn - which is weird in and of itself, because Kali had said whoever survives until dawn will be allowed to live. And then it seems that she's been faked out; you think, Ģoh, the sun's up; he'll be all right now.'
But she wasn't and he wasn't and it wasn't and that was that. To turn to another problem you said you were having; how many problems - if any - have you had going for roles with this image you have of being the consummate vampire?
FRID: Yeah, Yeah. I never gained anything as an actor, you know. Since that show, it's been very difficult for me. I've been offered a number of things -- all in the monster - um - vein. At first I wouldn't touch anything in the horror thing; you know, anything. But I had to compromise there, and I'm glad I have and I've got myself together, that I mustn't be so stubborn that I
wouldn't play in horror stories. Because I know I'm going to get work that way, as long as the character is interesting. Certainly I'm not - if I play this role, and it seems likely that I will
be, in HOUSE OF THE KILLER APES - certainly I'm not going to build an endearing following to that one. This man I don't know - depends on how I, how things might shape up in some strange way. Certainly, at first, Barnabas was not terribly interesting. I think I brought the human thing to that.
And even on this picture, SEIZURE ... Edmund's a despicable man but yet, he has a conscience. Oh well, I mean, he wouldn't be having a nightmare if he didn't have a conscience. But this character in HOUSE OF THE KILLER APES just has no conscience at all. He's out there and he photographs - he films scenes of people being mangled by these apes. And that's going to be a pretty tough
pill to swallow for anybody who follows that career of - I don't know - the 'charming' Jonathan Frid ...
***
Chris Claremont adds: I suppose that's one way of looking at the situation. On the other hand, one might look at HOUSE OF THE KILLER APES - horror cliche as the title sounds - as just another facet in the multi-talented career of one of the more celebrated horror film actors of
the last two decades. And hope that it heralds a day when Jonathan Frid is seen by the viewing public considerably more often than once or twice every couple of years.
Until then, all one can do, is watch. And wait. And think back to those glorious days of yesteryear, when the organ ticked off its eerie theme, and those titles spiraled out of the surf and we returned once more to the slightly scary, slightly zany, slightly amusing never dull world of Collinwood Mansion and Barnabas Collins. The world of Dark Shadows. - Chris
------------------------
Frid has recently more about his views on being Barnabas and perceptions of his work on his website at
http://www.jonathanfrid.comNancy
