Jason Douglas – Crawling out of the Comics

Q.  Are there any current projects that you are working on?

A.  I’m currently voicing the title character for an upcoming animated series, “Yugo the Negotiator,” and just finished voice work for the final episodes of a crazy new show “Wandaba Style.”  I’m looking forward to the release later this year of a film I did with Richard Linklater called A Scanner Darkly, based on the Sci-Fi novella Phillip K. Dick.

Q.  Can you tell us a bit about the movie Sin City and your role as Hitman?

A.  Yeah, it’s co-directed by Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Desperado) and Frank Miller, who wrote the graphic novel on which Sin City is based.  The film is a pretty faithful adaptation of Miller’s novel, and it tells the stories of denizens of the noirish, despair-choked, urban hell-on-earth known as Sin City.  Robert and Frank actually used Frank’s book as the story-board, and most of the film was shot in front of a “green-screen” so that backgrounds and environmental textures evocative of the comic book come to life before your eyes– it’s just a stylistic feast.  The film contains three “episodes” with different story lines, and I play The Hitman in the episode called “Marv.”  My character has the assignment of trying to take out Marv (played by Mickey Rourke) out of commission, so to speak.

Q.  How did you get involved with this project and what made you want to be a part of it?

A.  I think the call went out all over Texas for authentic looking “lowlife” types, and I guess I fit the bill.  My agents called me to arrange an audition, and before I knew it, I was at Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas, meeting Robert Rodriguez and reading for a role in the film!  I really didn’t know much about the project before the audition, but to be honest, I’d leap tall buildings for a chance to work for Robert.  I’ve been a huge fan of his since El Mariachiabout twelve years or so ago, and the guy is just a class act.  As an artist, you always want to work with people you can learn from, and I honestly can say that I felt like a better screen actor after my short time on the Sin City set.

Q.  Do you have a most memorable moment from filming Sin City?

A.  Oh yeah…I was sitting in the make-up trailer on the morning I arrived on the set, and my big scene with Mickey Rourke was coming up.  I was looking over my lines, which of course I’d memorized.  Then someone comes in from the set, looking for me.  She’s got several pages in her hands, and it’s all new dialogue, like several additional pages worth.  Frank had basically doubled the size of my part.  “We need you to learn this new stuff before you come down to the set.”  And I had less than an hour to do it.  Hernan, the hair and make-up supervisor, just laughed.  “Welcome to the big time.”

Q.  What was it like getting to work with both directors Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez on the project?

A.  Well, these guys are like a dynamic duo.  They both are masters of their respective crafts, so it was really an education watching them collaborate.  Robert is great at setting up shots and giving you the freedom to just work until you get it right.  He rarely ever yells “cut,” because I guess he’d rather have you keep going with the same intensity, and also, I think he’s interested in what sometimes happens after the scene is supposed to be “over.”  Robert would consult with Frank pretty often, and Frank would offer direction, advice or even script changes on the fly as needed to suit the needs of the scene.  I got the impression that they were both very pleased to be working together, and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if these guys collaborate on another project in the future.

Q.  A lot of great movies have been spawned off of comic books lately, what’s your favorite movie that’s been spawned from a comic book and why?

A.  I know this may sound really old school, but I’m a huge fan of the original Superman movie with Christopher Reeve.  It’s got it all–a great screenplay by Mario Puzzo, a great John Williams score, a terrific cast–Brando, Beatty, Hackman, etc.–but most of all, it’s got something that director Richard Donner calls verisimilitude, which basically means “truthfulness.”  Instead of playing up the campy aspects of the comic, he took a very earnest approach to telling the story in a way that helps you believe, albeit in some alternative universe, that this could actually happen.  I think that Miller and Rodriguez have done this withSin City, and I get the feeling that Christopher Nolan has taken this approach with Batman Begins, which I am really looking forward to.

Q.  You’ve done a great deal of voice-over work, what makes that type of work so appealing to you?

A.  Basically it is fun and the work is steady.  The majority of the work I have done has been in the world of Anime, which has really exploded in popularity over the last several years.  I used to consider myself primarily a stage actor, but working with ADV Films, a big player in the Anime biz, has really created terrific opportunities for me.  Getting to voice such a wide range of characters over the years has helped to stretch my range in other areas, including stage and film, and the flexibility of voice-over work has enabled me to concentrate on my career as an actor in a way that I could not do if I had to rely on a non-acting “day job” to support me and my family.

Q.  Why did you originally want to become involved in acting?

A.  I had a really strange childhood.  My parents divorced when I was very young, and I kind of drifted through my school years with very little motivation to succeed.  In high school, during my senior year, I had one more elective to take, and I took a theatre arts class.  Before I knew it, I was on stage as Oberon in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”  I realized I was doing something that I was actually good at, or at least had the potential to be good at; and with the begrudging support of my family, I was majoring in theatre in college the following year.  I found a terrific camaraderie in the community of actors, and a great passion for the art of storytelling.  That’s the short take on how I got started.  Staying has been a lot harder, and there have been a number of times over the years that I almost gave up.

Q.  What has been your favorite project that you have worked on?

A.  You know, outside of the two films coming out this year that we’ve just discussed, that’s a really hard question to answer…I guess the most fun–and probably my toughest role–was on stage, playing Macbeth last year at the Houston Shakespeare Festival.

Q.  What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

A.  Pretty much all of my spare time is devoted to my family–my wife and I have two young kids, and they take priority over everything.  I love movies and music, especially live music.  And baseball. 

Q.  Is there anything that you’d like to say to your fans and supporters?

A.  Thank you.