Ron Perlman is The Sayer of the Law

by Benjamin Bond

"I'll tell you, there are not a whole lot of reasons I'll put the makeup on again," says Ron Perlman. "I've been there, done that. But for Marlon Brando, I'd have plastic surgery to become a part of his legend, or at least in some small way to have that brush with greatness."

Perlman certainly has been there, done that in terms of makeup. His first film, Quest for Fire, required him to wear prosthetics. His next major role was in The Name of the Rose, which again called for elaborate makeup. If he thought he was going to evade that in the future, he was wrong - because from 1987 through 1990, he was the soulful, majestic Vincent in the much-loved TV series Beauty and the Beast. And so, for several years, Perlman had to don Rick Baker's leonine appliances.

Most of Perlman's other roles haven't required him to alter his features; he used his own face in Sleep-walkers, Romeo Is Bleeding, Cronos, The Adventures of Huck Finn and The City of Lost Children, among many others. He does have a tendency to turn up in films with fantastic content, such as Fluke, Mr. Stitch and TV's The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space, even when he doesn't have to hide his face behind rubber.

Perlman grew up in New York City and got the acting bug early; he attended Lehman College of the University of New York, and took graduate training in acting at the University of Minnesota. He had already been a theatrical performer for seven years when he was cast in Quest for Fire in 1981; among the plays he appeared in were Woyzeck, The Resistible Rise of Arturo UI, Tartuffe and A Few Good Men, in the role Jack Nicholson played in the movie version.

The articulate, intelligent Perlman clearly thought deeply about his role as the Sayer of the Law, played before him by Bela Lugosi and Richard Basehart. "We have a society on the island that is sort of a fledgling, Swiftian concept," he explains. "The good doctor is intent on creating a new breed of mankind that's gentler, kinder and better. He plans to do this through his expertise in biogenetics and crossbreeding the DNA of man and animal.

"And he has succeeded in creating a race of results from these experiments," Perlman continues. "Part of the socialization, democratization and politicization of these creatures is to establish a code of ethics which will serve as a reminder of their humanness, and serve as a deterrent to the qualities in them that will detract from that - and since they're derived from animals, there are many of those qualities."

Perlman's Sayer of the Law is derived from a goat, and sometimes wears a mask modeled after Marlon Brando's Dr. Moreau. He is, Perlman explains, "a sort of high priest of this society, but rather than a religious message, he reminds them that they are men and that they must behave like men. There is a long, extensive litany of examples of how these men must not stray, what they must avoid at all costs. So when we meet him, he is in the process of delivering in an Elmer Gantry/Billy Graham way the dos and don'ts, and throughout the film he serves as a sort of officiator at various and sundry public meetings."

Aside from Brando's legendary status as an actor, Perlman had a more personal reason to want to work with him. "There are two seminal moments in shaping my decision to go into acting," he explains. "One was seeing On the Waterfront when I was much younger, and the other was, of course, seeing Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I've sort of gotten the chance to do everything in this business that I wanted to do, which was to become a transformational-type actor."

When he read Brando's autobiography, "Songs My Mother Taught Me," Perlman was delighted to discover that the actor shared his deep admiration for the late Laughton. "Brando was so facile at transforming himself - you never knew how he was going to talk, how he was going to walk, what he was going to look like, what kind of humanity he was going to portray," Perlman says."It seemed like great fun to me, so that's what I pursued. I succeeded in attaining the kind of roles that allowed me to do that. Not so much because of myself, but because the acting gods have some divine plan for me."

It wasn't the acting gods, but being cast in Island of Dr. Moreau that led to Perlman finally getting to act with one of his inspirations (who was playing a role originated by the other of his inspirations), and he made the most of it. "One scene that I thought would take two days to shoot," Perlman admits, "but to my elation, I had a lot more time to work with Marlon. It was one of the first things he did.

Ron's main scene with Marlon Brando

"I didn't have anything else to do with him in the film, so that was my one and only opportunity to work with him. I found him to be full of good humor, tremendously generous, a very regular ordinary guy, very accessible, very approachable, very concerned about making the scene as good as possible from all different angles.

"The most wonderful aspect of having a legend become human was that if he sensed any discomfort on your part, he'd do everything he could to ease that." When it's mentioned that the way Brando eased the initial tension on the set of The Godfather, when another group of young actors found themselves faced with their idol, was to drop his pants and moon them, Perlman chuckles. "He likes to do that. I tried to cut him off at the pass; we mooned him a couple of times."

Still, bare bottoms or not, Perlman says, "There's something at work there that makes him think like no other actor I've ever met. In terms of his approach to the craft, he's very human. He doesn't mind doing a bad take; he doesn't mind falling on his face if he's in pursuit of something profound, which he usually finds. For me to have been able to watch the man who is arguably the most important event in the history of cinema - aside from the history of cinema - was a great treat." And a reason to put on prosthetics again.

There was another reason, too. In discussing the movie overall, Perlman's opinion is that Moreau is "definitely not a horror movie, it's more socio-political. The reason why it's important to do The Island of Dr. Moreau in 1996 is because we're close to having the technology in place to make this science-fiction fantasy into reality. There is a scientist in England who is very close to being Dr. Moreau. He's been working for some 40 years, and is as close as it gets right now to being a living, breathing, full-fledged Dr. Moreau. When I learned that, it sent a chill up my spine.

"The film effectively deals with the shadings, the light and cloud shadows, of having the intelligence and brilliance to conceive of something like that, and the nightmare it might unleash," Perlman continues. "I think that every generation does need its own version of H.G. Wells' novel. He was so far ahead of his time, he's definitely one of those authors you never get tired of revisiting. As he suggested, we might want to stop to examine the ramifications of science for science's sake, of doing something just because you can. We're grappling with the implications of unleashing that kind of technology in other ways every day of our lives, and this is just another example of it.

"So when you asked me what made me put the makeup on again, that's the second reason. It was when I began to really look at the script, and began to see that this could be a pretty cool movie to be involved in, that I realized it could be a rather important look at this particular issue.

That positive feeling carried over to working with the film's director. "When I arrived, Frankenheimer was already on the scene. We took an immediate liking to one another; there was a lot of mutual respect, a lot of freedom to interpret as I wanted, with a tremendous amount of encouragement on his part."

One of the common threads among Moreau's participants was the respect they ended up feeling for Frankenheimer, and Perlman is no exception. "I've never, ever seen a man place the camera as well as John Frankenheimer does," the actor marvels. "He does love actors; he loves them enough to totally leave them alone. He might remind you of something you did in an earlier take that you lost, but it's a sort of gentle reminder, not dogmatic or dictatorial in any way, shape or form. The way he views being a director is as sophisticated as it gets. One of my favorite directors I've worked with was Guillermo del Toro, from Cronos. I told him that I want to start directing; give me 25 words or less what you think the key is. And he said that the key is to put the audience in the best seat in the house. John is the epitome of that concept."

Indeed, the professionalism of all involved with the production has Perlman excited about the outcome. "I know that John Frankenheimer knows how to shoot film, I know that Billy Fraker is as great a cinematographer as is alive today and I know that the talent pool on this film is quite deep. We've got the stars of Once Were Warriors and Europa Europa, we've got Batman, we've got David Thewlis, who's got to be one of the great actors on the planet right now. And we've got The Man himself. So I'm rather optimistic; I can't wait to see it."

In all, working on The Island of Dr Moreau was a major event in the career -and life - of Perlman. "When I was making decisions as a very young man about what would be the coolest thing to do as an actor, I decided it would be to just get lost in parts, to never, ever be pinned down as to the kind of parts I can play. That's been a blessing for me, and also a curse. Casting directors still don't know what to do with me, but I wouldn't trade places with anyone. The parts I've gotten to play, the directors I've worked with, the other actors I've gotten to meet, are far beyond anything I could have possibly dreamed. And then of course to have stood alongside The Man, even for a couple of days - I can die satisfied now."

* * * *

From the Official Starlog Movie Magazine "The Island of Dr Moreau" 1996.