Hellboy (2004)
Interview with Ron Perlman
Ron Perlman just got back from lunch to do the interview with OutNow.CH. So the first thing he did was ordering a chocolate dessert, which was prepared for him instantly. He then made some jokes on all the different recording devices (i. e. a dictating machine and a video camera) OutNow.CH had brought along to conduct the interview and declared that he only drinks Evian mineral water whenever he is in Switzerland - showing a minor lack of geographical knowledge similar to Selma Blair's placement of Prague in Serbia in the other Hellboy Interview that day.
OutNow.CH: Hi, It's great to have a true New Yorker here in Zurich today.
Ron Perlman: Thank you very much.
ON: Can you tell our readers what kind of guy Hellboy is?
RP: [he reflects for some time]. What kind of guy is Hellboy? Let's see. He is an aries with a scorpio rising. No I'm kidding. He's an interesting character. He is a demon, who is raised in a very human way. So he has got this personality, that is amazingly recognizable. A very blue collar kind of beer-drinking, fast-food-eating, cigar-chewing dude, who is basically a member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, which is like being an FBI guy. So he is just a hang-around guy, being very kind of guyish. But he has theses abilities that separate him from the pack, as well as this incredibly unique physicality. He is red. He has a tail. He has horns, which he shaves, because he really doesn't want to stand out of the crowd. And his job in life is to pound demons into submission.
ON: Was the character of Hellboy like you wanted it to be or was the director's perception of Hellboy a different one?
RP: The director told us all, how it needs to be. In the way he wrote it. He wrote it in very much the same way you see it on screen. He has this acerbic, cynical wit, which he is not afraid to use for his own self-edification and entertainment. Hellboy is determent to entertain himself in every situation, no matter what he is doing, and very often at the cost of the people he is with. He is not concerned about political correctness. But that's all in the script. The characterisation was actually realized by Guillermo Del Toro in fashioning the personality of the guy. All I was doing, was just doing exactly what I thought it said in the script.
ON: You often play these special, extraordinary characters, that mostly look different than normal people. How do you prepare for such a role?
RP: Every job has its own unique parameter. With Hellboy the challenge was to not prepare. The challenge was to have the courage to not rehearse, to not think even about, what it was, that I wanted to do with the character, but to just walk on the set and give a spontaneous and an as primal performance as I could. Because the guy was so close to my own wire in terms of how he chooses to move through life, that I thought, that if I had spent to much time preparing for it, I would have screwed it up. So it was almost close to an unrehearsed, unprepared performance. Where as with other characters, like for instance a caveman, that lived 80'000 years ago, that requires a great deal of research. A great deal of observation, of refining kind of rehearsal before you arrive at the proper kind of behaviour which is similar to the rest of the characters. Every character has its own unique demands. Some of them are amazingly well researched. A lot of reading, a lot of thinking, a lot of chatting and discussing. And some are like Hellboy, where you play it from the heart and don't utilize anything external.
ON: You see a lot of comicbook characters taking the step to the big screen now. Do you see Hellboy as a competition to the likes of Spider-Man, The Hulk and Daredevil?
RP: Obviously not. Hellboy made his little modest 60 million at the box office as opposed to the 370 and counting for Spider-Man 2. But with Hellboy we are dealing with a comic book character that no one knew. The readership of the comic book is tiny. It is in the thousands, rather than hundreds of thousands. So we had to introduce the character to the world with a non-movie-star like myself. Someone who is relatively unrecognisable and unknown. I never really carried a studio movie before. I thought we did rather well, considering what we were up against. The Hulk is like iconic. Spiderman, Batman, Superman are all characters that you've grown up knowing. So there is an instant recognition built in the audience, which we didn't have.
ON: Did you read the Hellboy comic prior to the shooting of the film?
RP: I only began to read them after the six year quest that Guillermo del Toro was on, to get me the role. I refused to read to read them at any juncture during the journey. Because I did not want to fall in love with the guy and become emotionally invested in the character that I probably was not going to end up playing. So I knew about Hellboy. Guillermo introduced me to him in a comic store eight years ago, when he first started on this walk path. But I deliberately prevented myself from becoming familiar with it.
ON: Rumour has it, that both Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and director Guillermo del Toro instantly thought of you when deciding for the lead and they had to convince the studio. Is that true?
RP: It took almost seven years. Is was at one studio for five years and they would have made the movie fifteen times, if Guillermo had just agreed to their choices for who would be the lead. But he stuck by his vision and made it clear, that he would rather not do the movie than do it in a way that was not his own.
ON: It's your third collaboration with Del Toro. What makes you work so frequently with him?
RP: I think that is a question, that you have to ask him more than me. It seems as though we are like brothers. After knowing the guy for five minutes, it was one of these instances, where you felt, that you've known him for twenty-five years. This instantaneous friendship and recognition. Very very similar way of viewing the world. And then we found, that working with each other, there was a real simpatico. And I think you could even say, that we are alter egos for one another. Like if he was and actor he would be me and if I was a filmmaker I would be him. We seem to be trying to make the same statement in the world.
A waiter brings Ron Perlman a plate with some brownies.
RP: [towards the camera] I would like your audience to see that I am on a health food trip. I'm eating only food with no sugar, no starch, no carbohydrates, no fat.
ON: We CAN see that. But Part two of Hellboy seems to be settled already. Can you tell us something about it?
RP: They don't let any of their secrets out on me. I think that they really regard me as this 14-year old irresponsible adolescent, who the minute is told a secret to, is just going to be blabber all out on the internet. I'll probably find out about it, as we are shooting.
ON: You directed some episodes of the TV-Series "Beauty and the Beast". And Wooden Lake, your first feature as a director, is going into production soon. Can you tell us a little something about that?
RP: It's a small movie. It is a low-budget, independent movie, which is an arena that I really like to work in. It seems as if all my favourite films at the end of every year happen to be rather low budget, modest stories, that don't have any explosions or special effects - that are just smart, intelligent, witty stories about the human condition. And this is exactly the kind of movie, I would love to see. The minute I read it, I decided that this would be the perfect first movie for me to direct. And I'm going to do it right after I finished this interview.
ON: You probably...
RP: [shouting] Roll Camera!
ON: You probably heard that...
RP: [shouting again] Hold the roll! Sorry. Go ahead.
ON: TV-Series are becoming extremely popular on DVD at the moment. I was wondering, if there are any plans of releasing the "Beauty and the Beast"-Series on DVD.
RP: I haven't heard but a lot of people ask me that. So as soon as I am finished directing the movie and done with eating the brownie I'm going home to find out. So by the next time you and me talk I'll let you know if the DVD is coming along.
ON: Speaking of DVDs, there was recently a signing event in Berlin, where you took part as well. The managing director of Columbia Tristar Germany confiscated some US-DVDs from fans at this event, because he thought they were bootlegs. Did you notice anything from this incident and what's your opinion about it?
RP: I think that Hellboy has been bootlegged to death. Somebody offered to sell me a copy of it in April in New York City. You can't go anywhere without somebody offering to buy or sell these kind of discs. Spider-Man 3 is probably available. They haven't made it yet and it is already been pirated.
ON: But we've been told they were legally bought RC1-DVDs since the DVD is already out in the US. But they were still confiscated since the manager probably didn't know, what he was holding in his hand.
RP: No no. There was something very different about this DVD, that somebody thrusted in front of Guillermo to sign. And Guillermo immediately recognized, that it was not the sanctioned copy. That it was probably a pirated copy. The guy got his DVD back. But this is a major problem. This is theft. Stealing people's intellectual property is taking something for free, that costs hundreds of millions of dollars to make and was the blood, sweat and tears of a lot of people's lives over the course of time. This is criminal and undefendable. It is such a new problem that we haven't really begun to understand, how to deal with it yet. But ultimately, hopefully, we get this thing under control and it will not destroy the industry as it destroyed the record industry.
ON: To wrap this interview up I have some keywords I would like to tell you and you just say, what pops in you mind first.
RP: Ok.
ON: Switzerland
RP: Brownie.
ON: The Internet
RP: Brownie.
ON: Golden Globes
RP: Chocolate Cake.
ON: The New York Yankees [Perlman's favorite baseball team]
RP: Brownie.
ON: Linda Hamilton
RP: Ice Cream.
ON: Golfing
RP: Mmmmmmmh. (In a happy kind of way)
ON: Basketball on a space ship
RP: Hard.
ON: OutNow.CH
RP: Beats me.
ON: Thank you very much.
He then - in spite of the brownie, that was waiting for him - took some time to sign our stuff and pose for pictures. All in all he came across as a man, who had done this kind of promotional stuff a million times most probably and made fun of it just like Hellboy would do. He was serious when promoting the movie and dead honest in the pop-up questions, though. I guess we should ask those again some other time, when he has other stuff on his mind than dessert. But his voice is in real life as cool as in the movies. On tape it is so low, that you start thinking the tapes runs slower than it should be running.
