One on One with Bill Oberst, Jr.

Hollywood’s Horror Genre Actor Dishes on Social Media, Faith, and Zombies
(Part 1 of 2)

 

 

 

Right about now, you might wonder who Bill Oberst, Jr. is. Odds are, you already know him, you just don't know it.  He has starred in two Hallmark movies and appeared in the popular 1000 Ways to Die on Spike TV. Perhaps you are one of over 100 million Facebook users who checked out the hugely popular mini-movie app called Take This Lollipop this year.  If so, then this amazing actor has alreaqdy scared the bejesus out of you.  You know he can creep out the hardiest of souls. What you don't know from his movies may surprise you.

 

Recently, I was blessed to catch him on a rare break between projects, and after a recording session he agreed to an interview for Attack of the Killer B's. I promised a brief few questions.

 

I lied.

 

Ever the good sport, Bill went along, and shared some thoughts on spirituality, surviving in Hollywood, and the dangers of balloon animals. Grab some popcorn and get comfortable as I go one on one with Emmy-winning actor Bill Oberst, Jr.

Dax Bradley: I see you’re a pretty “techy” guy, all over the place, with facebook, your web site, youtube…

Bill Oberst, Jr: Yeah that’s pretty much the only way. You gotta be, that’s the only way you get word out, and stay current.

DB: I checked out your web site, and promotional pictures. I have so much to go into, and I wasn’t going to go here, but…good lord your physique is amazing. You’re a workout freak, yeah? I guess your job sort of includes your physicality as a product…

Bill: Yeah, you hit it right when you say ‘product’, because, I was a stage actor by training. I was on stage for 14 years on the East Coast. And on stage, you can be anything. I did comedy; I did historical characters, musical theater. But then, I came out to LA to do film in the middle of my life. I found that here, you have to really strictly brand yourself as to what you are. So, the camera sees my face as being…creepy, so that is sort of the basis for my brand, if you will.  I guess if I was detergent, I’d be Creepy Tide.

Now in addition to that, if you ask yourself, if you view yourself as a product, you say what do I have that could be an asset to me.  In one of the very first horror films that I did, I was wearing a wife-beater shirt. And the guy said, “You have like this really freaky ribcage,” and I thought, “Hmm, I should play that up”. So I constantly do pushups and stuff to stay lean, ripped, and maybe weird-looking.

DB: You crack me up, because I was looking at some of your promotional pics you did on your site, and the set where you have on this gas mask has your comments. In one, you said something like, “I wish I had worked on my biceps before doing this” I had to laugh, because, I wish I had those kinds of bicep ‘problems’!

Bill: Yeah, I guess I have to be kind of picky. I don’t consider myself an attractive guy. I’m never going to be an attractive guy. And part of my screen presence is this sort of creepy-from-head-to-toe kind of thing. For some reason, when you play these sort of odd characters, being lean and ripped, it helps.

DB: Well, you’re in good company. I mean, there are lots of people like Michael Wincott, who is scary-looking and buff, and Jim Caveizel, who interestingly also played Jesus, and now he plays psychotic people.

Bill: Yeah, I also played Jesus at one time.

DB: It seems like a bit of a conundrum, doesn’t it? Why do people who play a religious figure like Jesus, make convincing villains in darker roles?

Bill:  I think it’s because we constantly are portraying the very worst of humanity, and so it begs the question, is this all there is? Are we just animals who are only constrained by societal rules and whatever limitations we put on ourselves? Is that all we are? Or are we actually spiritual beings who can be better than that?

When you constantly play bad people, you think about what makes people behave this way. You become more interested in love than hate, because you constantly portray hate. You sort of live in it.  You live in this dark world of dark characters. It makes you very sensitive to the other side of it, the opposite side of it.  If you play demons a lot, you are very interested in angels.

DB: That’s an interesting metaphor. Now, let’s switch gears a little bit. You mentioned stage acting. The technicality behind stage acting is vastly different from acting on camera, right? Can you talk about that?

Bill: It is two completely different things. Here’s the way I’ll put it, because for some reason, sexual metaphors tend to be easier to understand for me, because I’m a guy (laughs). The stage is like a blind date. You meet a group of people; that’s your date. You’ve never seen them before. You don’t know what they like; they don’t know what you like. Over the course of the performance you find out what buttons they like pushed. They find out how to relate to you. You start to get into a groove, and then just before you’ve consummated, just before you’ve gotten close to them, the curtain comes down. Boom.

 

If you do that right, that’s what gives you the nice applause and the curtain call, because they want more. But they’re kind of glad they didn’t get it, because they might be disappointed. So it’s a really nice blind date that ends at the door.

The camera, on the other hand, is your lover. The camera is a hungry lover who knows exactly what she wants from you, and she will have it. If you don’t give it to her, she’ll look at somebody else. That’s the difference. I got the camera metaphor from Michael Caine. He wrote a book called Acting in Film and it’s genius. And he’s absolutely right, because camera acting is not really acting. It’s just being completely vulnerable and open. Whatever you’re acting like on film, you can’t really act it, you have to be it because the camera’s looking at your eyes. It’s like when we’re with our wives or whoever it is, you can tell by looking in their eyes whether they’re telling the truth. Same thing. The camera knows.

DB: So it’s two different skill sets. Hey, maybe that’s what happened to Shatner. He started out in theater also, where every move and annunciation is so dramatic and over-the-top. Then when he got to TV and movies, he didn’t tone it down, he’s still kind of…well, he’s Shatner.

Bill: Yeah, and he had the perfect role for it, with Captain Kirk. It is a perfect theatrical role. I’m a Star Trek geek, so I love Wrath of Kahn. Kahn seems like the perfect character. (Bill channels Richardo Montelbaun) “From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee, Kirk…”

 

For me, the only reason that I got started in film is because the first role that I got in film, which I didn’t even intend to get, it was Sherman’s March, a docudrama about General Sherman. And Sherman was a really big, theatrical character, which I’ve even done on stage. So I was able to fake it. But I knew absolutely nothing about being on film, so I was waay over-the-top, but Sherman was over-the-top. He’s the guy that said “War is cruelty; and the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over!”

So the role came off well, won awards and so forth. That’s when I thought, “Hmm. I should try film now if I’m ever going to try it.”  What I quickly learned was that if you’re not playing a really big character like that, you’ve got a lot to learn.  So I’ve been learning four and a half years now, doing film.

 

DB: You’ve probably spent a lot of time in the audition room, I take it.

Bill: There are probably tougher businesses in the world.  Maybe politics is tougher. I don’t know a tougher, more insecure business than acting.

DB: An actor told me once that you have to have a really thick skin, because if you go to a hundred auditions, maybe you’ll get one callback.

Bill: It’s like working as a marketer. You send a hundred flyers out in the mail. Maybe you’ll get a 2% response rate, so you know 98% are being thrown away. So you have to have that mindset. As long as you expect 2% to respond, then you’ll be OK.  Of union (Screen Actors Guild) actors, only 2% get to work consistently. There’s a 98% unemployment rate. And of the 2% who work, only 1% can actually make a living. So in the last four years, I’ve been lucky enough to be one of that 1% who is able to make a living acting on camera. So when I’m down, I count my blessings.

DB: So what’s next, can you talk about it?

Bill: My attitude is keep throwing stuff at the wall, and something will stick. I got a lot of projects coming up. Any actor out here who really hustles can find work. I’ve got four features coming up. I’ve just done three in a row.  I’m working on a fourth one now.  The best thing to do is go to my IMDb  (Internet Movie Database) page  and check it out: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2454994/

DB: I did that. Wow, you’re a busy guy. I think I counted 18 projects in 2012 for you. I was wondering…do you ever sleep?

Bill: (Laughs) Not much, no. Opportunity out here comes in weird ways. You met somebody on a set. They know somebody, who knows somebody…and you get a phone call. So the only way to work is to work. If you don’t take the jobs that you might not particularly want, you might not ever get to the jobs that you do want. If you have a reputation as a guy who works a lot, people might be more likely to hire you because you like to work.

Sometimes, it takes a year or two for the film you did to come out. There’s one I did called Children of Sorrow last year. I’m real excited about it. I play this cult leader in the desert. It’s really a hard-edge film. It’s sort of disturbing (see the trailer at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW_FRa5HhNE )   We’re starting to look for distribution, going to festivals. When that starts you realize that was… (Counts to himself)...one, two….seven, eight….nine films ago. So that’s a good thing about working a lot, you’re not sitting around waiting for this one film to come out.

DB: So, you don’t see your movies until they come out, the same time everyone else does? Do you sit in on the dailies?

Bill: The only time you get to see any bits are when you do the ADR, the dialog looping. Sometimes you have to re-record spots where the sound wasn’t right, but that’s all you’ll get is that little tiny piece where it didn’t sound right, that you have to fix.  Usually, you see it with an audience for the first time, at a preview or something. You sit in the back, and hopefully not cringe.

DB: Did you acquire your skills in professional training? The things you convey without uttering a word is pretty amazing. I showed my wife Take This Lollipop (the Facebook interactive short film), and it was tense! The emotions you conveyed, the anger, hurt, and everything…wow.

Bill: I appreciate you saying ‘hurt’, because I try to bring that to all of these bad people that I play. Because I don’t think that evil comes from a purpose of just saying, “Ha haaa! I want to do bad things!” I think a lot of times it does come from hurt that has never been healed. That’s what I was thinking of when I did this character, was that this guy is obviously bent on harm. But, he kind of feels like people don’t…like him. Maybe they deserve what they’re going to get because they don’t like him. It’s not true, it’s sort of twisted logic. But I appreciate you saying that.

DB: I read somewhere that the best villains have a sympathetic backstory. Maybe there’s some truth to that.

Bill: For me, someone who does bad things, but feels conflicted about it; that’s the gold standard. That’s what I really, really like to play. That’s more interesting. Maybe a person who whispers instead of shouts. Someone who says, “I’m really sorry I have to do this.” To me, that’s much more frightening.

That’s much more human. We actually hurt each other all the time. We may not kill each other. Humans are so dichotomous. We say, “We are good, and those people over there are bad,” but the truth is, dozens of times as day, we wound other people with our thoughts. It’s there in all of us.

DB: So you have to draw on pretty dark themes. Is it hard to ‘come out’ of it? Do you consider yourself a method actor?

Bill: Nah, I’m not trained as a method actor. I just make it up. I just try to feel things. I pray a lot before I do these roles. And I don’t mean that I say, “Oooooh Lord, I beseech thee! Wilt thou help me?” I just acknowledge to Him that I am weak, that I am a sinful man by nature. And that there is nothing good in me, outside of Him. And let me, if only on a subconscious level, show people what humanity is like, without God. And yeah, it is a really dark place, and you don’t really want to talk to people before or afterwards.

I’ve had people on sets see that I’m really focused and they say, “Well, he must be a method actor”, but I’m not, I just feel a real responsibility.  Maybe somebody who was thinking of doing something really horrible may watch this movie. They will see the futility of relying just on our own goodness as humans.  I don’t think that humans have inherent goodness. I don’t think that we’re naturally good. We’re naturally pretty cruel to each other.  Even though normally I don’t get to talk about this, and that’s why I appreciate this interview. I sure don’t get to talk about it onscreen, so I try to really put it into the eyes of the character.

DB: Is it difficult to be a witness in your industry? It seems a little taboo almost, in a liberal area. Do people think, “Oh boy, a Jesus Freak”?

Bill: You know, I used to have this ministry where I toured and played Jesus. I recreated His teachings. I did this for 12 years. I met hundreds and hundreds of people.  Frequently, I would go to an area where people would literally flock to church for it. These people would never have come, but they came for this, because it was the teachings of Jesus. Not a preacher.

I had an old man once; he waited around for everything to be over, for me to take off my costume. I came out and he was the only one left. I said, “How do you do, pleasure to meet you,” and he said, “I’m gonna tell you something: I don’t give a good damn about religion. But Jesus is alright.” That’s the way people out here are in the industry. I never meet anybody who dislikes the teachings of Jesus, or disagrees with what he said. What they have a problem with is the hypocrisy of Christianity. I completely understand.

By nature, people who work in this industry are sensitive, and they are emotional. They tend to be open-minded because they deal with a variety of subjects on film. And they are very sensitive to being judged. Of course, Christians are very sensitive to being judged too, so you’ve got these two groups who can’t talk to each other. So in my own way, I try to be a bridge, and hopefully somebody will notice. Maybe they’ll see the cross I wear, and maybe they’ll say they don’t believe in Jesus, but that there is some pretty interesting stuff in the Bible. So absolutely, yeah, I’ll get into a conversation, and it always strikes me, because you know Jesus, he always meets people right where they are at.

DB: It is interesting, isn’t it? People associate Jesus with words like ‘peace’, ‘love’, ‘prophet’; when asked about Christians, you know, followers of Jesus, the word association changes to ‘hypocrite’, or ‘judgmental’.

Bill: You know, I wish the word Jesuit weren’t already taken, because I prefer that to Christian. I’m a follower of Jesus, and I’m into Jesus. As for the word Christian, I don’t know. I’m not even sure what that means. I’m into Jesus, and I love Him. He is my light. He is my Jehova Jireh, the way, the truth, and the light to me. But to call myself a Christian puts me in a group of people that I frequently disagree with. If they follow Jesus, then that’s awesome. But if they say that if I’m part of their group, that I must also follow all of their opinions, no, I don’t.

The thing about Jesus is, it’s about surrender. He surrendered to the will of His father. That’s what it’s about; it’s saying, “I surrender to you. Whatever you have planned for my life, I want that, more than what I want planned.” You know, there are no actions or activities that we can do to earn Grace. You have to surrender in order to get it. You know what I mean?

DB: Yeah, absolutely.

Bill: That’s missed a lot of times. People think it’s about doing service for God, or ‘What can I offer’…you can’t offer anything! Like I can say, “Oh God, I give my talents to you,” but really, where do I think the talents came from? It’s already His! I can’t give Him anything that’s not already His.

DB: I hadn’t thought of it that way.

Bill: So, when I first started doing these dark roles, I was kind of conflicted about it.  I thought about how I don’t want to lead people down dark paths. But, the doors kept opening.  And it’s like; ok…I’m going to play these people on screen.  And then off-screen, I’m going to talk about you (Jesus).  And so that’s what I do. And you know, I’m glad I play sort of the antagonist. You know, all the parables of Jesus have antagonists.

DB: Yes, that’s true. The Bible is replete with lots of scary stuff.

Bill: Yeah, I was just reading yesterday in the first chapter of Mark. I have a devotional I read every morning, Oswalt Chambers. It gives me a good excuse to read whatever chapter it is. Anyway, in the first chapter of Mark, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue.  This guy stands up, and he’s possessed. He says, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? We know who you are, the holy son of God!”

Well, Jesus comes over to him, and lays his hands on him, and the demon leaves the guy and cries out with a loud, piercing shriek - that’s scary stuff! That’s real scary stuff, the demoniac, rushing out of the tombs, naked and in chains, saying, “Our name is Legion-for we are many”.  Yeah, the Bible is absolutely replete with that stuff.

DB: You mentioned before that you’d like to do a spiritual movie. Is it your goal to do something along these lines, like a possession movie?

Bill: Yeah, I’m struck by the fact that when Jesus was baptized by John, He rose up out of the water and what happened? The Spirit of God comes down, and says, “This is my son, in whom I am well pleased.” Now, in the very next verse…the Holy Spirit immediately sends Him out into the wilderness with the wild beasts.  Satan then tempted Him, and the angels ministered to Him. And I’m like…Whoa! He’s saying like…”Here you are, you’re my blessed son. Now I’m sending you out into the freakin’ desert, with wild animals, and the prince of darkness!”

DB: Kind of goes right for the jugular, huh?

Bill: Yeah. I do not think there’s much in our culture that talks about how we have to wrestle with the darkness and demons ourselves.  And I definitely want to do a project about that.  There’s one I’m working on called Lord Bateman. It’s a demon sort of script, and the idea is it’s about a man who has really dark desires, and rather than fight them, he acts them out. He can’t deal with this, and so he comes to believe that he actually is a demon that has been put on the earth as punishment to live as a human.  He can’t deal with the fact that as a human being, he has these urges, and he has to fight the demons.

So I did a photo shoot in character as the demon that he imagines himself to be.  He’s all red and dripping with bile, horns, the way you traditionally imagine a devil in your dreams (some pics are at  http://www.morehorror.com/Horror-Movie-Lord-Bateman-in-Development-at-Dismal-Productions). We’re working out the script for that one right now. But yeah, the whole fact that we’re tempted by the devil and we’re tempted by demons, the fact that there’s spiritual warfare that’s going on all the time…that’s rarely hit on. I want to tell people that it’s natural; that we all have demons, we all fight them.  You can only do it day by day.

DB: Well, it sounds very interesting, like it has more layers than a typical possession horror movie. It sounds like you hope to sort of ‘humanize’ the theme, and make it not so black-and-white.

Bill: There are people interested in it, and they don’t share the faith necessarily that you and I do. All cultures and all religions have demons.  There’s a universal fascination with that. An old preacher told me one time…you know those older signs that you see on churches, the ones with the letters you change around? He said that if he put up that he’s preaching on the word of God, he’ll have 50 people show up. If he puts up that he’s preaching on hell-fire, he’ll have 500.

I believe in a literal devil and I believe in literal demons. I know that I have wrestled myself, with them.  People could say, “Oh, he’s crazy.  He’s played all these insane characters,” but I’m telling you…a man knows if he’s wrestled with Satan.  I know that if Satan is tempting you, he’ll come through the doors he thinks he can get through.  If you manage to close those, he’ll come around the other side, and see if there’s a window cracked. He wants to pound and pound on you, ESPECIALLY…if you are professing your faith in Christ. I believe that if you are publicly professing your faith in Christ, the devil does not want to just dissuade you.  I believe he wants you dead.

DB: That’s true. If you are in God’s army so to speak, and doing right, you’ll definitely have a target on you. If you are not facing Satan sometimes, you must not be a threat. Something’s wrong.

Bill: Jesus himself said, “If people speak ill of you because of me, rejoice and be happy. The time when you should worry is the time when people say good things about you,” so, yeah…now, I’ve officially crossed over into Religious Fanatic Territory. Thank you, Dax (laughing).

Author's note: Stay tuned for the 2nd part of our exclusive 2-part interview with Bill Oberst, Jr in the coming days as he delves deeper into faith, his horror film inspirations, and more!

For more information, check out Bill’s resume at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2454994/

Also, check out these cool links:

www.billoberstjr.com

www.billoberstjr.blogspot.com

www.twitter.com/billoberstjr