1594
« on: June 09, 2002, 05:28:29 AM »
I was recently sent this interview with Jonathan Frid from Film Threat, a magazine that primarily covers independent and underground films. In it, he speaks very candidly about the original and revival series.
FILM THREAT
Spring 1991
Barnabas Collins: Back From the Dead
Low ratings can scare off a television vampire quicker than garlic. But you can't keep a good bat down. Two decades after the demise of the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, that suave 175-year-old fangster Barnabas Collins and his clan have swooped back to TV.
Perhaps best remembered for its eerie music, creepy (if somewhat cheap) sets and blood-tinged suds, the ground-breaking 1960s soap was already enjoying a cult afterlife prior to NBC's primetime remake-- thanks to a 20,000 member fan club and the release of all 1,225 episodes by MPI Home Video. More recently, the old shows began airing on the new SciFi cable channel. Executive Producer Dan Curtis, who created the original in 1966 and saw it through five seasons, has clearly had his fill of Dark Shadows-- just ask him why the saga was resurrected. "Well, a lot of people (namely, NBC chieftain Brandon Tartikoff) wanted it," he says impatiently. "I'm in the television business, so that's why it's back on."
Good enough. What then, killed it the first time around? "Oh, you mean twenty years ago or whenever the hell it was? Um, yeah. We just ran out of steam. We couldn't think of another story. So, with a bad story, so go the ratings."
Curtis, who went on to better things like the highly acclaimed miniseries The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, should have known history has a way of repeating itself. Although the new hour-long Dark Shadows benefits from a bigger budget and an infusion of big names including Ben Cross (Chariots of Fire) and two-time Oscar winner Jean Simmons (Guys and Dolls, Spartacus) as matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the story is cornier than ever and the ratings have, well, sucked. What's worse, the character that was introduced to bolster the old soap's sagging viewership near the end of its first year has been with the new show since the outset: Barnabas Collins. Though admirably played by Cross, the lovelorn neck-ripper just doesn't have the same mixture of pathos, dread and dark appeal that Jonathan Frid brought to the role twenty-five years ago.
Frid, now 66, wasn't even asked to be a part of the new show, which is too bad since his career hit a weak vein after the old show's cancellation in 1971. The Yale Drama School grad did a couple of big screen features (House of Dark Shadows and Oliver Stone's 1974 shocker debut Seizure) and some work off and on Broadway (most notably in "Arsenic and Old Lace") before forming his own production company in 1986.
These days the gravelly-voiced Canadian actor, who makes his home in Manhattan, haunts college campuses and community theaters around the country in a one-man show that includes readings from works as diverse as Shakespeare and Stephen King. Herewith he sinks his teeth into the Dark Shadows phenomenon, past and present.
FT: Were you disappointed that you weren't asked to appear in the new series?
JF: It was rumored that they wanted me to play Barnabas' father, but I was never approached. I've attended Dark Shadows fan festivals for the last eight or nine years, and people would always ask me if I would reprise the role if the series were revived. I doubted it would ever happen, so I would say that I'd want at least a million dollars or two to do it. And that's my answer now. I'd start with two million dollars, and I might come down to a million for a cameo. I mean, I'd want big money. I'm not going to do it for sentimental reasons. So I'm not surprised they didn't ask me to return.
FT: Did you like the original show?
JF: It was absurd. I thought it was perfectly dreadful. But I'm knocking myself more than the show. Some of my performances were so appallingly bad. I'd forget lines, I'd forget names. I had done television previously, but not too much, and the fact that there was a lot of money involved in the production intimidated me to an extent. I was nervous and it showed. The irony of it all is that they're making videos out of those very shows where I didn't even know what I was talking about!
FT: So you felt your neck was on the line, so to speak?
JF: I was afraid I'd get canned, that I'd get kicked out of the unions. In a sense, Barnabas and I went through hell together. Imagine yourself coming out of a coffin a hundred and thirty-five years from now. You're in a kind of predicament, and you're a little nervous about how you're going to pull this one off. And, of course, that's what I did for four years. I played a vampire. I don't know what that is really. I played the lie. So Barnabas' predicament on television and my own kind of meshed-- one sort of helped the other. I mean, I was just a scared, dumb actor. If I had had to play some cock of the walk, debonair Clark Gable, I would have been canned in two days.
FT: Dark Shadows itself was almost canned before Barnabas Collins was introduced ten months after its debut. How did your character save the show?
JF: True, the show wasn't working until they brought this creep on. I wouldn't know why, because I don't watch soap operas. The silly things are so full of shit.
FT: Certainly, there was something about the character that audiences responded to.
JF: With Barnabas, I played against the obvious as much as I could. It was difficult under this problem I had with nerves. I didn't try to make Barnabas a lovable vampire, but I tried to play common sense; I tried to humanize him.
FT: Barnabas was a hit with young female viewers. How did it feel to be featured on the cover of Tiger Beat?
JF: I had no intention to do that. I was just playing a man with common sense. Of course, mind you, he was pining for his lost love, and I was certainly going through unrequited love at the same time. But I think the fact that Barnabas was always a threat, if you took all the show's shenanigans seriously, was one of his appeals. He was in love and wanted to be cured. He was like a drunk-- belligerent and unpredictable.
FT: The quality of the show was unpredictable, too. You could sometimes see the microphone dangling and the wires holding the bats. I remember one scene where you had this pesky fly buzzing around your head...
JF: Oh, yes. [Laughs] I just tried to pretend it wasn't there. I guess I gave it a couple of swats, but all I can remember about that is thinking, "Keep going.. Keep going... Don't let it make you lose your concentration." It was a little awkward, but it didn't bother me. In fact, I rather enjoyed the challenge of it.
FT: Did you find it tough going after Dark Shadows?
JF: I didn't try to make Barnabas a lovable vampire. In a sense, Barnabas and I went through hell together. Yes. I went with an agency that promised to rebuild my career. And they didn't do a damn thing. I just sat and waited and waited. I eventually took up Spanish so I wouldn't have to wait by the phone all day. But I think the reason was that I wasn't accommodating enough. I didn't want to be used as some sort of a commodity. I wanted to get away from all that. I thought it was perfectly dreadful. But I'm knocking myself more than the show. They wanted to exploit it. So I didn't do an awful lot. But now I'm in control of my own destiny.
FT: Your one-man show incorporates readings from Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King. Do you enjoy horror stories?
JF: I'm not a great fan, no. There's enough horror in our everyday life without having to conjure up these strange images. Subtlety is what I don't find in today's horror stuff-- it's all so obvious. It gets more and more violent. It's so boring. But I know what side my bread is buttered on, and I still appear at Dark Shadows festivals because it stirs interest in my current work.
FT: How much longer will you continue with the Reader's Theater tour?
JF: Til I drop dead, I guess. I'm as happy as a lark doing this. I get to play all the parts.
FT: Do you hope the new Dark Shadows flops?
JF: No, because I'm still basking in reflected glory. I'm calling myself the Johnny Weismuller of Dark Shadows instead of a retired sage who's passed the curse on to Ben Cross. If it lays an egg, then I'm pretty well washed up too as far as any reputation is concerned.
Dean LaManna
Show Posts
![[beer]](http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/Smileys/classic/beer.gif "Beer")
![[flmthrw]](http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/Smileys/classic/flmthrw.gif "Flame Thrower")
![[okb]](http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/Smileys/classic/okb.gif "OK(Blue)")
)
