By Steve Newton
It was a beautiful summer day–June 27, 1990–when I ventured out to Vancouver’s sprawling Stanley Park to interview Tim Curry.
At the time the legendary British actor was filming a two-part TV “miniseries” based on Stephen King’s widely acclaimed 1986 horror novel, It.
I was on assignment for New York-based Fangoria magazine, and apparently it was the only publication given access to Curry, because no other journalist in the entire world got to meet him on the set and get the scoop.
Just me.
Yep, I’m bragging a bit.
Anyway, Curry was starring as an ancient cosmic evil that took the form of a child-killing clown called Pennywise. I got to sit down with him while he ate some lunch in full evil-clown mode, with makeup-FX artist Bart Mixon standing by to add comments here and there and dab at Curry’s face now and then.
I’ve previously posted audio excerpts from the interview, but here, for the first time ever, is the complete transcription of our conversation.
Hope you enjoy it.
First off, I was wondering if you could give me the rundown on what your character is in It. Obviously a clown. Pennywhistle? I haven’t finished the book yet…
Pennywise.
…it’s a long book.
Pennywise.
Pennywise, yeah.
Well. He’s the villain of the piece. The city or the town of Derry, in Maine, has been terrorized every 30 years by something that these kids have come to call It. And It mostly takes the form of a clown called Pennywise, which they first encounter…well they first understand who he is when they find an old, I guess, a Victorian, is it a Victorian postcard? (Makeup FX artist Bart Mixon: “1930”). 1930 postcard, of the circus coming to town or whatever. Is it earlier than that? Isn’t it 1890 or something? (Mixon: “Yeah, and then they see a photo from 1929.”). Yeah. And then they see a photo from the ’20s or the ’30s, which comes to life, in a sort of a circus parade. Comes right up to the surface of this postcard and tries to get out.
Basically I guess he’s just pure evil, really, and he can also metamorphose into various other forms—mostly into the image that whoever he’s appearing to fears most. Or he can also sort of seductively become other people. At one point he turns into somebody’s dead father, at another point he turns into the girl that the guy’s in love with. And he uh.. we won’t tell you what he turns into at the end. He’ll probably tell you [referring to Mixon]. But basically he’s completely irredeemable; he’s the kind of chap that’s entirely without charm.
And what’s fun about him is that a clown is traditionally a very cozy, comforting kind of cheery image, and Pennywise is none of these things. I think of him all the time as a smile gone bad—that’s my image for him.
And actually finding his look was very interesting, because I heard that in some acting classes–well certainly if you go to clown school, if you go to circus school or whatever–it takes a very long time to become a clown, and they won’t let you put on a clown face for something like two years. And finding your clown face is sort of part of the exercise of learning to become a clown. We had about a day to get through this procedure (laughs).
Who came up with your clown face there mostly? Was it Bart?
It’s been a mixture of all three of us, actually. I mean the head is a prosthetic partly because a special-effect needs to happen. And the nose instead of actually just being, you know, like a red ping-pong ball, it does appear to be part of one’s face. Kind of. Sort of. But the actual sort of detail of the face, we started with a very simple face, and then sort of started playing around with it really. Probably the first five days of shooting there wasn’t a day when the face was actually quite the same, because little tiny things evolved. Mostly the shape of the mouth. And the eyebrows are actually the hardest thing to really nail down.
Do you only appear as a clown in the movie?
Yup.
Is this your first time in makeup since Rocky Horror?
Um, what, in prosthetic makeup you mean? I didn’t have prosthetic makeup in that. Well no, I did Legend. Which was extremely prosthetic. Well and I also, in England I did a series on the life of William Shakespeare and I played him from like 19 to his middle-50s. I lost a great deal of my hair, they shaved my hair back gradually because he lost his. And then I had a great deal of latex old-age makeup done which was sort of nothing compared to this kind of stuff.
Do you mind being in that much makeup? Are you used to it after Legend?
I don’t think anybody likes it really. I mean it’s fun to evolve it. It’s great fun when you’re actually working it, making it part of yourself and finding out what it can do. And one of the nice things about a very broad, really feature-changing makeup is that you have no personal history with it, you know. I mean I don’t think there’s an actual actor or an actress in the world who actually likes his or her face, so to get rid of all that stuff in front of a camera is totally useful. Becuase if you’re looking like this you don’t have to worry about angles too much, you know. It’s not about looking good (laughs). It’s about being effective.
And both with this and Legend, the fun is that it’s very difficult to go too far. I mean these may be famous last words, but… And in a sense, to a certain extent you have to work much more broadly in order to register at all, and that’s interesting. I mean that’s sort of fun to do.
But the most fun, I have to say, is taking it off. The moment they say I’m wrapped, I pull off the nose. To Bart’s regret.
How long does it take to get that on, from start to finish?
They’ve got it down to about three hours now. (Mixon: “It took longer at first just cause we were figuring out the brows and the mouth,”). It always does. In the beginning it always takes a long time.
The makeup in Legend, that must have took…
That was six-and-a-half. And an hour-and-a-half to get it off. So it was an eight-hour day without actually working in front of the camera.
How many times in Legend did you have to get made-up totally?
An awful lot. I was on it for three months.
And what about with the clown? How many times so far have you had to…
(Mixon: “This is about our sixth or eighth.”) It must be at least that. And then the days of tests. I would say we’ve done it at least 10 times.
Figure maybe 10 more before it’s over?
Something like that.
Are you a horror or fantasy genre fan yourself? Obviously you got sort of pegged in Rocky Horror. And then you went on to Legend.
I’m not particularly, actually. Richard O’Brien, who wrote Rocky, very much was, and is, but it’s his obsession, not mine. I mean, I’m fascinated by movie villains—I enjoyed Lon Chaney. But in some ways I think that horror movies have got a little too far away from the mind. I mean we had a much more prosthetic version of this makeup–which was very scary looking, and beautifully executed–but did too much work by itself. And I personally think that what is the most horrifying is the moment of decision behind somebody’s eyes when they decide to kill somebody, rather than a pint of blood and a pound-and-a-half of latex.
Which is not to say that all of this isn’t useful. I just think that it’s…I think myself to a certain degree that it’s kind of taken over, and that one sacrifices the human element at great risk. But this is obviously an actor’s viewpoint. (Mixon: “We’ll talk later.”) Well you know, there was a classic day in the trailer when I said “I’m not here to get you an Emmy.”
Did Fangoria interview you for Legend?
No, they didn’t. Well I was living in England then, so I wasn’t very accessible.
What do you have lined up as far as future movie projects Tim?
Oh, you tell me. Think of a script (laughs).
Things pretty quiet these days?
Nothing we need to talk about right now. (Mixon: “He was in [The Hunt For] Red October, he just had that out.”)
Red October, right. I haven’t seen it yet.
Well hurry while it still lasts (laughs).
How was working on that?
Um, fairly boring, because he was a very dull person. I tend to play very kind of over-the-top people. So it’s quite interesting to play somebody who has absolutely no sense of humour. But it was a very long, very long shoot. And, you know, it was all shot on a submarine on a set, so it was very peculiar because the sets weren’t very much larger than this (makeup tent), and people were crammed into them. And they were shot on gimbles, so the ship could dive and the floor would suddenly disappear.
What was the favourite movie that you worked on in your career, personally?
I don’t know because they were all these sort of different kinds of films. I think my favorite is a film called The Ploughman’s Lunch, but that’s because it’s the only time I played anybody really sort close to myself–which is what most film actors do all the time.
Do you think people still see you when they think of you…what was his name… Frankenfurter?
Well probably not if they can’t remember the character’s name (laughter). I don’t know. I really don’t know what they think. It’s a long time ago. So its difficult for me to know what they think, really.
Do they come up when they see you on the street and call you Frankenfurter or anything?
No, they tend to just draw your attention to whatever they’ve seen you in last. It’s funny—I get asked that an awful lot, and I really don’t know the answer. Because it’s played for 15 years, it’s very often the way that people get introduced to my work, so they’re either interested enough to watch other things or they’re not, you know. And if they are, I think they have a different attitude. Certainly, from the kinds of letters that I get, from people that write to me and write to me all the time, people are interested in the range of the work rather than just that character. But you can’t ignore the fact that it was an incredibly strong character, and one that’s pretty difficult to top.
It’s still playing midnight shows down on Hastings Street in Vancouver here, at the Lux Theatre every Friday.
Yeah, it’s playing in hundreds of theatres in America and Europe and all over.
Any chance of a sequel?
They’re apparently planning one, yes. They haven’t asked me to be in it, so I don’t suppose… They’ve registered the title. Rocky Horror Picture Show Twoooo.
Would you like to be in it?
Not really. Well, you know, I did die in the movie. I’m sure they could get around that, but no—I mean, I have nightmares about getting into that lot again. No, I think that was a kind of one-shot deal, myself.
Getting back to It for a moment: how do you like working with Tommy Lee Wallace?
It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s sort of a peculiar shoot for me, because the character turns up about every 10 minutes or so and does something vile and disappears, and the way that they’ve scheduled it means that I tend to sort of spend whatever it is, four hours in makeup and two hours in my trailer, and do one tiny sequence and go home. So there’s not really much sense of continuity about it. And quite often I work on Monday and I work on Friday, and it’s not like it’s an everyday deal, which most movies are. And from the beginning of it he’s pretty much left me alone. We sort of discuss what it is I’m gonna do, and he tells me if it’s too much.
Do you do most of the killing in the movie?
I do, pretty much. I off quite a few people here and there. One way or another.
Uh huh. What’s the most exciting way, for Fangoria fans out there with inquiring minds
I remove a child’s arm, so he bleeds to death–that’s up there. It tends not to be that kinda physical, actually. I don’t know–it’s been weeks since I read the script (laughter).
They were playing down the gore when I talked to the publicist before.
(Mixon: “A lot of what he does is taunting.”) It’s mostly mental cruelty, actually. There’s a great deal of mental cruelty involved.
I’ve been trying to read the book…
I know, it’s an endless book isn’t it? You’ll be on it for months. The series will be out and gone and forgotten by the time you’ve reached the end of that novel (laughter). (Mixon: “Stephen King will like that.”)
Did you read it yourself?
Yes I did. I read it when it came out, actually. Maybe Bart can get you a copy of the script. You can have the condensed version.
Are you a Stephen King fan?
Well I always get the books. Yeah. I mean, yes. I mean, he’s an extremely entertaining writer; I think he’s really good at that stuff.
Yeah. I liked The Dead Zone. That was probably my favourite that he’s done so far.
I liked The Shining a lot too. I would have liked to have done The Shining. I mean he certainly gives a lot of acting opportunities.
Yeah. I heard they’re gonna make Graveyard Shift, from one of his Night Shift stories. And of course The Stand‘s been in the works for ages, with Romero I think.
(Mixon: “Romero’s owned it for like ten years.”) Has he? Is he the guy who did The Night of the Living Dead? (Mixon: “Right. Creepshow. It’s just it’s so big. And now it’s even bigger.”) I just started that. I’m gonna be on that for months. Except I read pretty fast.
Thanks very much for the interview.
You bet.
To read more of my articles on horror movies made in Vancouver between 1988 and 2003 go here.