This week, we conclude our interview with the very talented Emmy-winning actor, Bill Oberst Jr. Today, he discusses a wide variety of topics, such as how he prepared for a role as a cult leader, playing his hero Abraham Lincoln, and the perils of balloon animals.
DB: When you started this whole adventure, was your
family supportive?
Bill: I’ve always been the
weird kid. When I was 13 years old, I
was doing the monster makeup. I turned a friend of mine into the hunchback of
Notre Dame. My dad walked in home for lunch, and I remember him looking and
saying, “You’re a weird kid, Billy,” and it’s still true. My family doesn’t
like so much me playing the dark roles, but they understand that it’s a
business. My mom was really happy when I
did those two Hallmark movies.
DB: Oh, that’s right. You did the Amish-themed movie (The
Shunning), right?
Bill: Yeah, she liked that.
And she actually liked Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies. I said, “Mom, just
ignore all the zombie stuff.” She liked the movie.
DB: I like that movie, too. It was a nice surprise.
Bill: About as good as you
can hope for with a title like Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies!
DB: Hey, I loved it…I am a fan of what you would call
‘B-movies’, which is not necessarily always bad movies. It’s just a fun genre.
Bill: You gotta approach it with that attitude. I
like ones that are…I mean, they are so bad that they are good. My buddy and I in high school used to get
together and rent these really bad old horror movies. And there’s a charm in it. You just go into it knowing that you’re going
to have fun. I’ll keep making them, too.
And eventually, I’ll make the one that I don’t have to apologize for at all!
DB: Well, I liked the Abraham Lincoln movie, because of
the way you and the creative team approached it. It could have had no zombies,
and it would still be a good period movie.
Bill: I just knew that a lot
of kids were never going to see Lincoln any other way. I wanted to deliver the Gettysburg Address,
and I still wanted Lincoln to have dignity.
I got both of those things, so I was happy.
DB: It thankfully didn’t go into parody territory.
Bill: Lincoln was a great
man; I couldn’t make fun of him! I love Lincoln.
DB: Awesome. People kind of give Asylum (the production
company that made Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies) a hard time, because of
their reputation as a “mock-buster” production company, but at the end of the
day, it’s just a business model, right?
Bill: It is a great business
model. They’re making something like 24 movies this year. And the Asylum has a sense of humor about
their own product. I really love that. You know they’ll say note on their site
something like, “We’re not making
art-we’re making movies”. And they’ll
include a compilation of scenes from their movies where lots of things bow up,
because all of their movies seem to end with an explosion. I love Asylum, and they’ve been really good
to me. They pay their actors, their
movies get out there, and they get out there really quickly. I’ve made a lot of
movies that are still sitting on people’s hard drives, so…the thing is, if you
can make a movie, and get it out to market, that is a huge achievement. I don’t think people realize how hard it is.
DB: I wouldn’t know, but that’s interesting. My only
experience in movies involved me doing auditions for like, a year and a half,
and got one job as an extra.
Bill: When I audition, it is
always a room with the same 25 creepy guys. It’s like, “Hey, did you get that
pedophile priest job last week?”…”No, I think Phil got that.” It’s a really
small town. For a while there, I was known for doing a movie called Nude
Nuns with Big Guns, and they would all rib me about it when they saw me.
DB: (laughing)…uh, what is that about?
Bill: What, Nude Nuns
with Big Guns? I thought the title was a good summary, actually.
DB: Ooookay, so the title is not sarcastic or metaphoric
for anything…
Bill: No, the title is
exactly what the movie is. The thing is, you take work, and get a lot of titles
and build up your IMDB, you know? I had just done that movie actually, in which
I am beaten to death with a baseball bat, after being pulled off of a nun
prostitute. I play a bad priest. And I had just done it, when Michael Landon,
Jr. hired me to do The Shunning, a Hallmark movie.
I talked to him on the
phone, and he said, “I’m going to have to sell you to the network,” and I said,
“You’re talking about Nude Nuns with Big Guns?” and he said, “Among
others.” He was really cool. He said he
understood an actor has to work, and in acting your ‘type’ is your ‘type’. And he did push for me, and I got the great
part, an Amish father. I was really
appreciative of him. People who are in the industry, they understand, work is
work. You get all types of roles.
With a face like mine, I am
going to always, always lean toward doing the creepy guys, the bad guys, the
bizarre guys. So, I’m frequently going
to be half-naked, bloody, and mean-that’s just the way the business is.
DB: it sounds like you’ve come to terms with it pretty
well.
Bill: I know I’m not going
to be a ‘soccer dad’. It’s not going to
happen. Dark and conflicted are the
waters in which I swim. But hey…Take This Lollipop won an Emmy, so…
DB: How does that work? Emmy Awards are for television,
right?
Bill: Emmys now cover all of
daytime entertainment. Everybody in the business has recognized that the new
delivery method is going to be online for all content. There’s a whole
generation of kids growing up watching movies mostly on their iPhones. It’s not
like it used to be when I was a kid. So, yeah, the category was “New Approaches
in Daytime Entertainment”. Our competition was the Ellen Degenerous Show,
The Today Show, and The Bold and the Beautiful. It was great. Nobody ever expected us to win.
It was a shock, and made Jason Zada, who created it, and his team really happy.
DB: The concept was pretty amazing, and your performance
really sells it. It was the number one downloaded app, right?
Bill: For sure. It set
records as Facebook’s fastest growing app, it got over 100 million hits all
over the world.
DB: The short should be required viewing for anyone with
teens, or anyone who wonders if they have too much information on the internet.
Bill: I ask people, “Have
you ever Googled yourself?” I’m hyper, I’ve got a service that alerts me when
someone Googles my name, because it’s my business. I know every time there’s a mention online.
People should Google themselves, and see what information is out there. Even
Google your phone number, and see the references to your phone number online.
DB: Online information about you is a freaky concept.
Hey-maybe there’s a movie in that!
Bill: I’m sure there’s a
movie in that. There’s been talk about making a feature out of the Take This
Lollipop concept. Also, speaking of Facebook, there’s a movie, and I just
talked to the producer this morning, that I’m attached to called Evil’s Toy.
It’s about a demon that gets loose on Facebook. The idea is that kids are
playing with a Ouija board, and a demon is in the Ouija board. One of them gets
zapped on the board, and their hand flies back onto their computer. The demon transfers, and gets into the world
of social networking. He’s roaming
around Facebook pretending to be people, you know, causing all sorts of havoc,
and leading to people’s demise. So I
play the demon, whose name is Gadrielle, and he has big wings, and a horn-like
beak. It’s a really, really cool part (laughs).
You know, when you hear from
somebody on Facebook, you have no way of knowing for sure they’re who they say
they are. I can do it right now, I can
set up a fake Google email, set up a fake Facebook profile, and pretend to be
anybody I want. It’s funny, you know I have a Twitter account. People will send
me a message and say, “Are you really who you say you are?” And I’ll
write back, and say, “It’s Bill. It’s really me.” And they’re ok with it.
People just accept what’s online as the truth!
DB: That’s true. When I go to a page of an actor or
musician on Facebook, there are multiple entries. It can be confusing.
Bill: Sure. I know
well-known actors who have tried to set up a Facebook page just as an
experiment, you know, to interact with fans, and they find out their name is
already taken. They can’t get their
name. Same as on Twitter. Nobody wants my name yet though, so no problem here
(laughs).
I’m kind of known as the
Nice Guy of Horror. People who know me at all, which are few, just go, “Oh,
that’s just Bill. He says and does mean things on screen, but he’s really
nice.”
DB: I hear that about horror guys. People like say, Kane
Hodder…
Bill: Oh he’s sweet. Nicest
guy you would ever want to meet. It’s the same with Bill Mosely, and Michael
Berryman, both of those guys came to the first screening of Children of
Sorrow. I was just blown away to meet them.
I am such a huge fan, and I was like, “You guys are huge legends!”
DB: So when does Children of Sorrow get
distributed?
Bill: It’s going to make the
rounds at festivals, and pick up distribution if the response is positive. So
far, the reaction has been that people who have seen it have said it made them
feel uneasy. That is a really good sign. That is the whole point of a horror
movie, to leave an impression on you.
You hear a guy say they couldn’t sleep afterwards…one composer quit
because he found it too disturbing to write the music for.
DB: Oh, wow.
Bill: And there is not gore
in it, it’s just disturbing. The guy who made this, Jourdan McClure, has said
that he thinks we’ve seen so much gore that we are no longer affected by
it. So he said, “Disturbing is the new
gore.”
DB: He may be right. Gore for gore’s sake is not that
great. Would you agree?
Bill: Oh, I totally agree.
I’m not a huge fan of gore. I’m a huge fan of seeing humans do things on screen
that make my skin crawl. That can be as simple as lying, which is essentially
what I do in Children of Sorrow as a cult leader. I’m getting these
young people to get into my cult, and I’m interviewing them. On the screen, you
see their young trusting faces. You hear my voice saying, “You’re part of the
family now. Trust me. Trust me with
everything. I love you, and I won’t let
you down.” And you as the audience know that I’m lying. I’m going to do
bad things to them. But it makes your skin crawl. I think we all know that we can be liars.
It’s very, very disturbing to see someone else take it in. You want to scream
at the screen, “NO! NO!”
DB: In preparation for a role such as that, do you study
cult leaders, like David Koresh?
Bill: Yeah. I listened to
the Jim Jones tapes, which are so chilling, Dax. You know, those last moments when there’s a
mother who doesn’t want her child to drink the poison, and it’s like “Please,
mother don’t do this. Please, show some love to that child.” And I’m going,
“No, my God! Don’t tell him to drink poison!”
Another thing that helped me
when I was doing that film, because it was so dark, I just got off-line, got
off the cell phone, and off of the social media for the three weeks we were
filming. I just took a break from it; I just needed to be in my own head in
that time, living in that role. I think
it helps, not to be distracted.
DB: That must have been hard for you, because you’re a
pretty connected guy…
Bill: It was
hard. And it helped. I was continually
frustrated, because I was cut off from the outside world. It made me give a harder edge to the
character. He was isolated, out in the
desert with these young people that he was going to do horrible things to. It helps to completely dive into your role
like that. Then afterwards, you’re
really, really glad to let the guy go. You just can’t wait to get back
on Facebook and talk about something silly, you know? (Laughs)
DB: Well, I suppose that’s what a good horror movie
does, right? If it doesn’t affect you, it didn’t do its job.
Bill: Yeah, it’s like a
cathartic shower.
DB: What are some of your favorites?
Bill: The Exorcist is
probably my favorite horror movie of all time.
Both of the guys who played the priests were really incredible. Just incredible; I mean there’s that scene of
the old priest, and he’s saying, you know “The love of Christ compels you,” and
after he’s spit on, kissing the cross and putting it back around his neck. That
impacted me really strongly.
I’m also a fan of the old
Universal horror movies. I love what
Boris Karloff did on screen, I love what Vincent Price used to be able to do.
That creepiness of Dr. Phibes…any of those. I like dark and creepy more
than slasher-type gory horror movies. I
wasn’t really into any of the Halloween movies. But I love the Nightmare
on Elm Street films. Freddy was a character; and he had once been a human.
For me, it has to have a human element.
DB: Yeah, he brought so much personality to it. Robert
Eglund was a funny guy, and scary at the same time.
Bill: We haven’t really had
an iconic horror character like that in a while. You know, what Karloff was
able to do in the original Frankenstein, which you know, is not a great
movie, it’s filmed very cheaply, you can see the back-drops and stuff. But,
there are these moments. For example, there’s the scene when the monster sees
sunlight for the first time. He reaches
up, and it’s the first time we see him smile.
Then, they take the sunlight away.
This look crosses over his face. He looks like…where did it go? There’s this look of great sadness. It’s a beautiful, beautiful moment.
There’s the Wolf-Man,
even. You know, with him struggling…knowing
that Larry Talbot is going to turn into a wolf. You see the moon and the look on Lon Chaney,
Jr.’s face. It’s that human
element. It’s the same with Phantom
of the Opera. All he wanted…was,
“Don’t make me show you my face. I’ll give you anything, I’ll train you. I’ll
make you a star. Just don’t make me show you my face.” And that was the
one thing she couldn’t do. She rips off
the mask, and he looks, and there’s that great moment. Even though it’s silent,
when Lon Chaney’s face is filled with both hurt and rage…and then the title
card comes on. It says, Feast your eyes! Glut your soul on my accursed
ugliness!
That’s so poetic. Today, we
would just say, “This what you wanted to see? Well look at it bitch!” so there’s something else
that can be said for the old movies, too.
They actually use language well.
I think it’s much more effective then. Today, language is sort of dumbed
down.
I do a tour every Christmas,
a one-man Christmas Carol. When I
get to the part about Marley’s ghost, I use this language that Dickens used. It
helps it be really scary. He has this beautiful soliloquy that he gives
Scrooge. It’s so sad and haunting. It’s
about how he got to be the way he is, and how Scrooge is headed down the same
path. It’s frightening, and it wouldn’t be frightening if we spoke the way we
speak today.
DB: So do you still do that every Christmas season?
Bill: Yeah. I’m also putting together a performance based
on the works of Ray Bradbury. There’s a Ray Bradbury storytelling festival, and
from there I’m going to do a one-man Ray Bradbury show. For young people, before
we completely lose the power of language, I want them to understand how
wonderful and eloquent English can be. I love reading things to kids, speaking
these words and seeing their eyes light up. They’ve never heard anybody speak real
English before! You can’t really text this stuff!
DB: It’s interesting you bring that up, because I was
going to ask about the dialog in Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies. It is very
much in the spirit of 19th century vernacular, yeah? Did it take a
lot of preparation?
Bill: It did. The director, Richard
Schenkman, got everybody together and said, “I don’t want you to sound like
modern people using colloquialisms, I want you to sound like you’re from the 19th
century.” He worked it into everybody.
And I was glad. He worked in a lot of actual Lincoln quotes, and I
wanted Lincoln to sound like Lincoln, or at least what you might imagine
he would sound like.
Actually, what I imagine
Lincoln sounded like is the Lincoln at Disney world in the Hall of
Presidents. To me, since I was a kid,
that’s always been Lincoln. I guess
that’s who I sounded like a little bit. I figured Lincoln was a poor boy, and
he had a lot of disappointment in his life.
He was in a hellish marriage, and he was very ugly, so he probably had a
lot of humility. Someone told him he was two-faced. He said, “If I were two-faced, I wouldn’t be
wearing this one,” and I could relate to that, looking like I do (laughs). When you work on camera, you have to come to
terms with who you are, who you’re not. People called him Ugly Abe, but…he took
it.
DB: You are in a business where looks are
everything-especially in the United States.
Bill: Do you think Lincoln
would have been elected if he ran today? Even without his beard, he’s
ugly. My god, if Chris Christie can’t
even eat a Krispy Kreme donut without having his picture splashed across
Facebook with captions saying he’s a fat pig, we’d never elect six-foot,
bony ass Lincoln! He had huge deformed hands and feet. We’re too looks-conscious, that’s for sure.
Who was that fat president?
DB: Well, Roosevelt was a large guy, I think…
Bill: It might have been
Taft. Anyway, one of the presidents
would go skinny-dipping in the Potomac River. If the press wanted to talk to
him, that’s where they would find him. We’ve come a long way (laughs).
DB: One thing I’ve noticed while watching BBC is that in
Britain, they don’t expect you to be beautiful to be on TV; you just need to be
a good actor. In the U.S. it’s kind of the opposite.
Bill: That’s very true.
That’s why I’m glad I have kind of a distinct look. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be working. I’d just be a middle-age actor with bad
skin. But because I have such an unusual
look on camera, it helps a lot. I don’t like the way I look, and I never have
since I was a kid. But since I work a lot in film now, I get up and I look in
the mirror. I say, “Hello, money-maker”.
The camera sees what it sees.
DB: Any advice for anybody starting out in the
entertainment industry?
Bill: Don’t.
DB: (Laughing) don’t? Ok…
Bill: What I mean is, it’s
like when I asked an old preacher when I was little, I asked him, “Why do you
preach?” He said, “Preaching ran after
me. I ran away. But it caught me, so I
preach,” or something to that effect. He
went on to say that unless you can’t live without preaching, unless you feel
the call, don’t do it.
I’ve come to believe that
acting and entertainment is the same way.
Unless you really feel in your soul this is what you’re born to
do, and you’re just going to burst if you don’t do it, don’t mess with it. If
you don’t feel that, you’ll never make it.
The business will eat you alive. It’s such a tough business. The only
people that last are those that feel they are just born to do it. They can’t do anything else.
DB: There are horror stories about actors struggling to
make ends meet while trying to get noticed; people working as a taxi driver, or
waiter or whatever, going to auditions, getting back to work…did you do any of
that?
Bill: I had made a living
already as a stage actor on the East Coast touring for 14 years. I had bought a house with that money. I did really well on the East Coast. So then
I got out here (L.A.) to do film. I started to starve the first year. I said
‘I’ve got to have a job in the entertainment industry’.
The only day job I ever had,
it lasted for a week, it was with a company that did kid’s parties. I did characters for these kids’
parties. I was supposed to make balloons
and entertain the kids. I was supposed to make wiener dogs, but I could never
make it right. One ear’s bigger than the
other! So the first party I was at, the
little girl said, “Why is one ear bigger than the other?”
I said, “I think he has an
ear infection. Take him to the vet,
he’ll be ok.” I thought it was cute, but she told her mother, and I got fired.
And I decided that, well now, I’ve had the humiliation of being fired from a
job making balloon animals. Bill, you
are either going to make it as an actor in L.A. or you are leaving. I’m not going to do the thing where you are a
bar tender some time and an actor some time. Hoping I can get off to make it to
an audition…no. I’ll either make it or I won’t. So I went on a starvation diet,
and I decided I’ll either make it or I won’t. Somehow I ended up making
it…enough to eat, anyway.
DB: Awesome. Well, Bill I told you it would be brief; I
lied. I’ve kept you for over an hour. I’ve enjoyed it.
Bill: I’ve really enjoyed
it. It’s been terrific. It’s one of the
best interviews I’ve had. It’s kind of
nice to be able to talk about all types of things. And to even get to talk about faith a little
bit, it’s important to me. I don’t get to talk about it much.
DB: I appreciate your honesty and candor in that. It’s refreshing to see someone in your line
of work connect with that.
Bill: I’m comfortable with people of faith, really with
people of any faith. The only ones who
scare me are the ones who don’t believe in anything. There are people who say we are animals. We
live, and we die, and we rot. That’s not enough for me! If that were the truth, I’d don’t know that
I’d want to keep on living.
DB: We’re out of time, but I look forward to Children
of Sorrow. It sounds compelling and can’t wait. I didn’t mean to take this
much time, but thanks for playing along!
Bill: Dude, I enjoyed it.
Thank you.
Also, check out these cool links:
Today's entry marks the first of its kind in this blog. I've always been a die-hard fan of martial arts films, but not all martial arts movies fit the B-Movie category. There are sub-genres of martial arts films, including sports/tournament movies, ninja flicks, and standard Shaw Brothers kung-fu films. To better explain which ones fit the bill, I'll give a small history lesson for the uninitiated.
The movie is called The Dragon Lives Again, aka Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. The basic plot is as follows: Bruce Lee dies, goes to Hell, and has to fight a series of bad guys from popular culture. They include Dracula, zombies, The Godfather (I'm not kidding), James Bond (still not kidding), and Clint Eastwood, whose appearance is inexplicable given he is not dead. I should mention here that the actors playing these parts are all Chinese except Bond. This was made 20 years before British rule ended in Hong Kong, so anti-Brit feelings were still in full effect. Bond pretty much had to be a bad guy, and played by an Englishman.
