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Transcript of the interview in the new Buffy magazine #28 - Dec/Jan 2007 .....
Marsters Class by Abbie Bernstein
Just because you haven't seen James Marsters on TV every week this year, it doesn't mean the man hasn't been busy. In fact, James says during our inbterview, "I'm now experiencing my third day off in 11 months."
So what has James been up to? Among other things, starring in the fact-based USA TV movie Cool Money as real-life thief Bobby Comfort, a recurring role on Smallville as the malevolent artificial intelligence Brainiac, starring in the feature horror film Shadow Puppets, lots of songwriting in preparation for a new album, and co-running a convention.
Shadow Puppets, says James, is about a group of people who wake up in an institution. "They're locked in, they don't know who they are, they don't remember how they got there, and they're being hunted. It was a low-budget movie, but when I read [the script] on the plane [from Los Angeles to Vancouver] to film Smallville, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up for the first 20 pages. I was just on the edge of my seat. It had this old Hollywood suspense about it - there's so much tension, you almost feel like you're floating above the floor - that's what they call suspense," he laughs.
State of the art digital cameras were used on Shadow Puppets, James explains. "The d.p. [director of photography[ Jonathan Hale was a genius - they didn't have enough money for a billion lights, so he only used five or six, but he crowded the playing space. So it was a lot less comfortable to shoot in, you always had to dodge around instruments and lights, but when you saw it on film, it's, 'My God! This is a medium-budget film [as opposed to low-budget]! How'd I get in this film?'
"Coming from theatre," James continues, "I was always taking a small amount of money and making the critics go, "Wow, that's just as good as the big boys who are doing it for a quarter-million; Marsters is doing it for $7,000 and it's just as good as they are.' I got more than proud of it; I started to realize there was something in that. There's an artistic benefit to not having a lot of money. Because I would go between my company and the big theatres in town, whether it's Chicago or Seattle, and I would watch the big threatres use a lot of money and wonder where it was going, wonder if it was going to be worth it."
Shadow Puppets director Michael Winnick turned out to be something of a kindred spirit, James says. "I had a great time with Michael - we kind of think the same. It got to be funny, because we'd stop a take, and the other actor would turn to me and say, 'How do you think that went?' and I would tell them what I thought, and Michael would come in and say exactly what I'd just said, or we'd start finishing each other's sentences real quick. In a funny way, the less you have to talk to your director, the better, because it means you can stay in character and not try to create anything and not try to force anything. If you and the director are good enough with your communication, he can give you a big adjustment [in what the character is doing], but it doesn't have to start with a huge converstion. That was my problem when I started directing [on stage] - I talked too much. And my actors would spend all of their time thinking about the scene and not actually being in it. It's even truer in film. Most directors know this - they try not to talk too much. It gets you up in your head and the camera will catch you acting, so you have to really not get up in your head. So if you can have a director who can get the adjustment through to you in five words or three words, it's just golden.'"
James can't say much about his Shadow Puppets character, Jack, without giving the game away, but reveals this much. "My character is smart, he has the ability to stay cool, but he's terrified. And then people start to discover their identities and it gets more complicated."
Another aspect of Shadow Puppets that delighted James was the opportunity to work opposite actor Tony Todd [Vyasa in Angel's "Shroud of Rahmon" episode, best known to horror fans as the title character in the Candyman films.]. James describes the experience as, "fabulous, Tony is kind of like I am, where he doesn't have to hold on to all the pain in order to give it on the day, but on the day, it's real. It's not like he's faking it, but he doesn't necessarily have to be all dark - because his character in the film is very dark and very angry and very dangerous. And I remember hoping that the guy playing it wasn't going to take it too seriously, or else the shoot was going to be pretty serious and..." James growls for emphasis. "Tony has that ability to be joking with you, talking about something very meaningful to you and being sensitive Tony, and then turning around and getting to set and just scaring the crap out of you. And he has a real anger - that man has some real things that happened to him that he has a good right to be angry about. But he's a consummate professional and saves all of that juice for the camera."
For his part, James has been channeling a lot of his own emotional energies into his songwriting and singing. "I have 17 [new] songs, about 13 of which are done, and I sat down with a friend of mine - a fabulous blues guitarist named Stephen Patt - and it was wonderful. I just gave him a guitar, and he laid in as he felt it, and my question to him was, 'How can I pull all of this into one album? I've got punk rock songs, I've got folk songs, I've got blues songs and it's a little bit all over the map.' And after sitting down with him - we took a couple of hours and played through everything - I was more convinced that I could do the rockier songs and punkier songs acoustic, and they still would have that dirt and they still would have that flavor, but they would come into the world with the other songs. Ang I was really excited about that. So it's kind of in the formative stages of the next album, actually."
Where touring is concerned, James says, "Because of my family commitments, I'll never be able to tour for months on end. It'll probably remain what it is, which is little spurts, either out to Europe or Australia or Canada or Detroit. If I go over to Europe, I could probably swing two to three weeks. That's why I'm still producing my own albums," he notes with a laugh. "Record companies want you to go out on the road. I don't blame them - that's how you sell the records. But I have other responsibilities."
Will James play live on his home turf of Los Angeles again? "I want to, very much," he admits. "I don't want to just do it solo, though. Even Neil Young doesn't stand out and just play a whole set of one guitar acoustic, and he's Neil Young. So I need to get some instruments behind me. When Ghost of the Robot was together, we played in L.A. all the time and it was fabulous. We had a big sound and we could just rock your bones. Before the band formed, I'd gone out solo, and really noticed that within L.A., people expect more than just one guitar. Going out on tour with just me, solo, worked. It even worked in London, which I was very surprised about. I think that maybe that was just because it was a lot of good will, or that it was the end of the tour and the set was pretty tight. But my philosophy is, if you're going to go into the bigger markets, bring a band. I feel like I'm on a progression and I think that I'm going to be able to get [more of] the sound that I want."
James will not be returning to Smallville this year, but had fun playing the determined Brainiac. "Smallville was a good experience and the cast was fabulous - they were all wonderful to work with and I enjoyed my time with them," he says.
In fact, James scheduled Smallville creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar and casting director DeeDee Bradley to appear at his "James Marsters and Friends' convention, held Sept. 8-10 on the Queen Mary. Also invited were Shadow Puppets director Michael and fellow actor Tony, Andromedia's Kevin Sorbo (James did a guest appearance in the 2001 episode "Into the Labyrinth" and Buffy/Angel writers/producers Jane Espenson, David Fury and Steve DeKnight (Steve is now on the Smallville staff), along with Juliet Landau (Drusilla) and Mercedes McNab (Harmony). At the time of the interview, the convention was just about to take place, and James was especially looking forward to being reunited ith his former Buffy and Angel co-stars. "She's just fabulous," James enthuses of Mercedes. "She always has a good energy. She's like magic. I've never had a bad day shooting with Mercedes. Even when she was sad, she does it in such an adorable way that she doesn't bring anybody down. I can't wait to see her with an audience."
So why are James and manager Steve Himber running a convention as opposed to simply having James appear at someone else's? "I'm not cutting out participation in conventions [run by other people] at all," James clarifies, "but why would I also want to produce on top of that? My manager and I started [producing] events together when [the live act] was a rock band, and later on, when I was a single act, we did musical events together and that morphed into a play [the two-actor version of Macbeth]. With the convention, we're just going to do it again. Frankly, I make more money [on self-produced events]," he laughs. "If I'm going to be honest about it, the risk is more mine. If nobody showed up, I'd still have to pay for the venue and I'd be out of a lot of money. The reason that the people who run conventions get most of the money is, they take the risk in those situations."
This is also a kind of return to James' years in the '90s as a producer of stage plays. "If I was just an actor, it would seem like, 'Well, this [producing/appearing at a convention] isn't really acting.' I remember when I wrote the Spike comic book - I did that because I thought I would have control, not realizing that I'd actually have almost no control at all. But then I also got into music, because I realized that I could produce - I didn't have the money nor could I raise the money for film, but I had the money to produce audio."
While it may puzzle onlookers, James sees no contradiction in pursuing both acting and music careers. "If you don't like the music and you like the acting, just check out the acting. If you don't like the acting, check the music out. I'm a performer and I will continue to do everything. I'm a trained mime. If I thought that'd sell, I'd give you a mime show - but it's not popular, so you probably won't see that side," he laughs.
With so many projects now under his belt, what does James want to do next? He points out that desire and opportunity are sometimes at odds. "Oh, well, what do you want and what is real," he laughs. That said, "I've been excited about a project where I'm playing a good guy. I like playing bad guys, but they can be a little limiting. At the end of the day, the audience is not supposed to really identify with them so much as want to be away from them. There have been a few projects that may happen; I've been swimming in this hot pool of villainy and now I'm dipping my toes into the cooler pool of being the normal guy. When you're the lead, you're supposed to be the audience, so it's all about, can you get the audience to ride with you? That has been something that I've been able to do. That's been great, and I've used that to success with villains, because I try to do the same thing, where you play a villain but you also try to get the audience in your corner, and then you have a better-rounded villain. [Playing a good guy] will be a lot of fun because it will be different from what I've been doing, but it will also be fun because just acting is being private in public. And it's kind of fun to reveal myself and not have to turn evil."
Among the many actors James admires are Robert DeNiro and John Billingsley (once of Star Trek: Enterprise, now on ABC's The Nine, who woked with James as werewolf expert Dr. Royce in Angel's "Unleashed" ; James and John frequently crossed paths in their Seattle theatre days. "[John] has a level of reality that I think that other people don't have the strength to give. He can just sweat and be nervous and be a human being and not try to be cool. And that's just so cool. That's the revolution of DeNiro - stop trying to look cool and do it."
Spike is an exception to this, James allows. "The thing was, when I was playing Spike, I was supposed to look cool. Part of the expectation is that he'll be cool in some way. And it becomes a real problem when you're walking in gravel or some uneven ground or some real graveyard when the graves have sunken in, and you're supposed to walk proud and tall, and you're really just stumbling. Then you wish that your character was Xander that night - 'I wish I could trip, or even bob, but I've got to look straight cool.' So it all depends on the character. But when you're playing a lead, I think it really behooves you not to try to look cool all the time. I don't think the audience, at the end of the day, want to see something cooler than them, I think they want to see something real that they're allowed to stare at."
Even though it's been over three years since Buffy ended, James has an enduring sense that he was part of something special. "To some extent, a good series is like a rock band. It's a science but also an alchemy. And Buffy just hit on its theme so well, like a band that stayed on their sound. I'm going to get off of that [comparison] - it's hard to compare something to Buffy, because Buffy was just so fortuitous, just all the people that were brought together at that time, that magic happened."
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