Jeffrey Combs – Sleepy Hollow Film Festival

By: Lisa Steinberg

Q) What are the recent projects that you are working on?

A) I just did a voice over thing, but I can’t say anything. I’ve got some things going on. I did an episode of “Creepshow,” which is a new series coming out on Shutter. I went off and did an episode of a TV show in Europe. Let’s just say I’m keeping busy and getting my licks in here. There is stuff I’ve already done and stuff being talked about.

Q) What can we expect to see from your upcoming performance at the Sleepy Hollow Film Festival?

A) I’ve done this show off and on for almost ten years now. It came out of “The Black Cat.” Stuart [Gordon] suggested when we were filming that that I should do a one-man show and I did not go with that. I thought that was too much work. But as time went on and his gentle urging, I realized maybe there might be a benefit in it and do a short run to see how that goes. Little did I know that would just explode and blossom into a really long run and touring around the country. It’s a lovely thing to revisit for me. The play is an imaginary recital that Poe gives. That is sort of how writers in that day augment their income because they didn’t get royalists. So, a personal appearance would make a little money and you could advertise yourself and your books. We take some license, of course. What I like about my show is it’s hard to say if you are going back in time or if Poe is visiting you. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a dream within a dream, as Poe liked to say. Hopefully, you feel like you’re in the presence of Poe for a little while in all of his glory and pathos. Having said that, there is a lot of humor in my show.

Q) What kind of balance of horror and humor do you put into your portrayal?

A) What you have to keep in mind is, first and foremost, Poe thought of himself as a poet. He didn’t much like (something I have in common with him) being labeled as, “Oh, you’re the guy who writes the scary stories.” It’s like, “Really? You want to look around here? Look at my other stuff here?” He was quite diverse and when it boils down to it, he really only wrote a dozen or so scary short stories. Many others are not of that style at all. But he just did them so well and what is even more remarkable is he did them very quickly. His day job was as an editor for magazines and he always needed to fill space. So, it fell to him to go, “Okay, I’ll write something.” They were real crowd pleasers so he’d write another one just to help sell papers. Little did he know they would still be resonating all these years later. Variety is probably how I would say I would keep it interesting. His romantic poetry. I do read one of his stories. Tidbits about his life and how he grew up and his trials and tribulations all in sort of this frame of, “Let me tell you a little bit about myself,” in a recital venue.

Q) Are you looking forward to performing at the Sleepy Hollow Film Festival?

A) I’m really excited about this theater. It’s a gorgeous theater! It really fits right in with the idea of a recital in the era of Poe, when he would have done such a thing. So, I’m really excited about that.

Q) Is your approach to Poe for this festival different than when you portrayed him in “Black Cat?”

A) I would say it’s fairly similar to that. Very much within that sort of vibe. One of the things that I early on chose to do was give Poe a sort of soft Virginia accent dialect because he was from Richmond. Everyone thinks he’s from Baltimore. No, he died in Baltimore. He was on his way from Richmond to go up north and he stopped in Baltimore and died under mysterious circumstances. He did have relatives in Baltimore at one point. But he wasn’t there visiting his relatives. He was on his way transiting on up coast and, of course, Baltimore adopted him after his death and even named their football team after one of his famous pieces of writing. I try to make that addition of people’s concept of who Poe was and where he was from. Being a Southerner (and this was some years before the Civil War) those tensions were still there between the north and the south. Not only because of slavery, but overall in literally terms most of the writers of the day were Eastern seaboard Bostonians. And Poe didn’t like that very much. They looked down their noses at him and he didn’t appreciate that very much at all. I think there was a sprinkling of regional animosity there. He was also a scathing literary critic so he didn’t much have very nice things to say about writers of his day.

Q) What are some of his personality traits did you try to infuse in your portrayal of him?

A) I would say all colors. That’s the thing that drew me to him in the first place – the contradictions. A quote from a man who owned a newspaper called The Evening Mirror, “A quiet, patient, industrious and most gentlemanly person commanding the utmost respect and good feeling by his unvarying deportment and ability.” That’s one guy. Someone else wrote, “Edgar Allan Poe is the most tragic figure in our literary history and the figure that casts from our shores the longest shadow across the world. He was a great intellect and a sad heart.” He’s been known to be soft spoken and at the same time a raging drunk that was kind of in the gutter. No one is one thing ever. His contradictions are what make fascinating to him and make him a great writer. I would suspect there is some bipolar stuff going on here. I say in my show a quote from him, “What no one will understand, what no one cares to understand, is that the drink does not make me insane. It’s the insanity that I suffer that makes me drink.” What’s nature and what is nurture here? What came out wired that way and then what effected that? Regardless of all his struggles and all of his pain and all of his short life, he left a legacy beyond a hundred other men combined or more. Whose to say? Not me. Not you. I just kind of lay it out there. I remember reading his biography and being perturbed at him. “You idiot! Why are you doing that?! You stupid man! You just destroyed an opportunity for yourself!” I remember where he had a job opportunity to work for the government. A friend of his was in the administration and said, “Come on down and meet the president’s son. Then, we’ll get you a position where you’ll work part time and you’ll make federal payroll and you’ll still be free to write.” He showed up drunk to the point where they had to carry him and throw him on the train to get him back where he was going. Of course, he didn’t’ get that job. So, you go, “What are you doing?! You had a gift horse and you just played that all wrong! What are you doing?!” No one is perfect though.

Q) What can people expect from coming to see your performance?

A) People come away from my show feeling contradictory things – pity, impatience, a deeper understanding and, really, I think they are kind of examining their own reactions to things as opposed to how Poe is. He can touch nerves. So, he goes after everybody. No one is immune. Everybody gets an arrow. What no one is really kind of aware of how genius he was with puzzles and cryptograms and those sorts of things. He was a master at all of that! He could solve puzzles. He was the first guy who ever wrote about deductive reasoning like Sherlock Holmes. He had a character do that twenty years before Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote that series attributes that there would be none Holmes without Poe. Poe created a character who wouldn’t leave a room, but deduced from the clues how to solve a murder. Sound familiar? That all goes back to his puzzle loving. He knew the answer so he deconstructs and gives you clues that seem disparate, but by the end you go, “Aha! Of course!” He wrote Charles Dickens! Charles Dickens was writing a serial story with kind of a mystery about it and Poe wrote him and said, “I know how you’re going end this.” Dickens wrote back, “How did you know that?!”

Q) What have you personally taken away from portraying him?

A) I’m certainly not at the highs and lows that Poe had to contend with in his life. I don’t have the losses to the degree that he did and the severity. But we all understand losing someone. We all understand being frustrated at a system that doesn’t quite seem to appreciate merit. There is a whole sequence in my show about how unfair the publishing business is, how writers are deemed to be popular. That it is wealth and it is position that determine who gets published and who doesn’t. It’s not about who is best. I can relate to that as an actor. Any actor will turn on the TV and go, “Hey! How did that guy get the part?! How come I didn’t even get to go out on that?! Why am I missing out? Is this fixed? How many of these actors in this movie are with the same agency, I wonder.” Is that about talent or is that about power or the talent of power? I can really hook into all that. Anybody can who feels like they have been overlooked or ignored when they see mediocrity reigning supreme and they are sitting there thinking, “What does a guy have to do?! What do I have to do?!” I think one of the tragedies of Poe is he knew how good he was and when you are confident in your own skill set like that and then you see it not being acknowledged or put forth by other forces. I think that can kind of corrode you and you get into a grievance mentality and it kind of seeds on you. Then you act out. I think a lot of that with Poe was like that. He as looked down on as a Southerner. He wasn’t taken seriously, but at the same time he was his own worst enemy. His reactions weren’t always the healthiest. I can kind of relate to that as well as his beautiful language. Some of his poems are just soaringly gorgeous and no one gets to hear them as much as they should. So, to me, this is an opportunity…You know, I say in “The Black Cat” a quote that Poe said, “Poetry is music.” And so I love that I’m able to play some of that music a little bit through my instrument a little bit for people. I even do a rendition of one of his poems in a rapid manner and you want to talk about rap? Go ahead because it’s very rap. Rap before rap had a name! So, he was a wordsmith beyond everybody. I’m getting excited about doing this again.