Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs may be best known for their work as the director and star of the cult horror film Re-Animator, but for two nights this weekend, they’re bringing to life a horror story of an entirely different sort. Nevermore: An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe offers up an intense, intermission-free dramatic thrill ride through one of Poe’s infamous, alcohol-fueled poetry readings, as brought to life by Combs in a riveting one-man stage show. Rover sat down with the two – and makeup artist Kayla – to get a glimpse into how the production came to be.
ROVER: From what I’ve heard, the idea to do a show about Poe stemmed from an earlier collaboration. Can you tell me a bit about that?
STUART GORDON: Well, we did an episode of the series called Masters of Horror on Showtime. We did The Black Cat and we decided to make Poe the protagonist of his own story. Jeffrey played Poe and it was such an amazing experience. Being on the set with him I kind of started believing that I was hanging out with Edgar Allan Poe, and I thought wouldn’t it be great, if we could do that for a whole audience.
JEFFREY COMBS: That was a couple of years ago and at the time Stu sort of suggested that and I didn’t really think it was something I wanted to do….
SG: He poo-pooed it! (laughs)
JC: Oh, I don’t know about that, but time went by and the seed was planted. And then there were a lot of happy accidents. I made a phone call to the make-up artist to see if the mold for the nose was still in existence, and they went: “Oh yeah, we got it right here.” Then I called the production company that did Masters of Horror, and I said: “Nick, is that costume still around?” He goes: “Boy you’re lucky, cuz we just sold all our costumes! We’re not coming back for another season, but they don’t pick them up for another week so we’ll pull your costume.” So there were these pieces coming together to sort of say “yes” to this idea that would have been a lot more difficult without those elements.
R: What’s your favourite bit of information about Poe that you’ve uncovered during the process of making the show…or were you guys such big fans that you knew everything going in?
JC: Honestly, I wasn’t a huge Poe fan, I certainly deeply appreciated him when I was introduced to him in school, but I wasn’t a fanatic about it. I was looking for a historical figure to play and came upon a biography of Poe. It’s just such a tragic story. He’s such a complex, not-easily-categorized man that sometimes you deeply admire him and sometimes you’re going: “Dude – what are you doing? What in the world are you doing? You fool! Get it together!”
R: How long did the nose take to make?
KAYLA: You have to mix silicone together for about half an hour, and then you have to let it cure for about forty-five minutes to two hours. Usually we let it go all night, to make sure that when we pull it open it doesn’t rip.
SG: There was one time when you used a different process…
K: Yes!
JC: Oh yes!
SG: …and then the nose started falling off his face in the middle of the show!
K: The sweat kind of got caught up under it and it wouldn’t stick…
S: So he spent the whole show like this! (pinches his nose)
JC: Please stay on! Please stay on! Don’t move!
R: You guys have worked together several times before in the past. What is it about your relationship that you think fosters this kind of collaboration year after year?
SG: I really love actors who are risk takers … and that’s the thing about Jeffrey that is so great. When you find someone like him, you want to hang onto him. The other thing is that Jeffrey Combs can be anyone. It doesn’t matter what the part reads like on paper – you hand it to Jeffrey and he becomes this person.
JC: And I would have to say for Stuart … he’s an actor’s director. So many directors are technically proficient. They know where to put the camera, they know what lens to put on it and they have absolutely no idea how to catapult an actor into a moment or a scene or a character. I also have a problem with directors who want me to look through the camera and see their composition and say: “this is an homage to Kubrick’s third movie, in the third reel where he did this…” It’s like, “Dude! It’s not about Kubrick’s third reel! It’s about this story and moving it forward.” Stuart’s never been interested in that.
R: Since you’ve been to Fantasia before, Stuart, what have you forewarned Jeffrey about our local crowds?
SG: I love this festival because I think the audiences are so enthusiastic, and also, they’ve seen everything! That’s the thing I think is amazing about them. They know all of the filmmakers, the genres, the actors…
JC: They love film too. We went last night to see a Mexican production and the place was packed. An unknown director, an unknown film…
SG: …on a Thursday night. And that’s amazing to us.
Nevermore runs tonight at the Rialto theatre at 8 pm. For more information, consult www.fantasiafestival.com
Photo by Phyllis Papoulias
