![]() It’s great to see your extended success on the show. With my long, skinny neck, I’ve played a lot of aliens – right now, I’m playing Cochise on Falling Skies, and I just finished my second season on the show. They can create a lot but also take away – for, let’s say, a half-eaten zombie – with a small bone structure. I hope to bring that inspiration to someone else.įrom being so tall and skinny – I’m six foot three and 140 pounds – that’s a great template for the creature-effects/makeup people to build upon. These kind of roles told me that it was okay to be a tall, goofy guy – that there’s a place for me. And when I came out to Hollywood, I was inspired by sit-coms and early variety shows – Dick Van Dyke, The Carol Burnett Show, Mary Tyler Moore – to play goofy characters that made something of themselves, like Gomer Pyle, Gilligan, Barney Fife. That was early groundwork for what I became. My mime training helped teach me that half of the dialog you speak is non-verbal. Thanks goodness it got me into some early jobs that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I was never a trained circus contortionist – it was party trick I developed and a special skill on my resume that people have cashed in on several times. You started out doing contortion bits, with aspirations of starring in a sit-com, and now you’re central to this deep, mythical art. I know people are going to tell me so for years to come. It’s the longest lasting emotional piece I’ve ever done. As far as the artistic value of it, alone, the storytelling, the visuals, the music – and the aftereffect it’s had on the audience. It’s such an amazing, perfect film – I assume of all you’ve done, it must be your favorite. I caught up with Jones for a phone interview to discuss his curious career onscreen, his collaboration with del Toro, and his latest film.įirst of all, I have to thank you for helping to bring Pan’s Labyrinth into existence. Jones is a down-to-earth fan of what he does – among his inspirations he includes Sam Rockwell, an unassuming presence who can transform himself onscreen. Though he’s thrilled to appear in “non-suited” roles, like his new supporting part in Dust of War, a post-apocalyptic alien invasion film by writer-director Andrew Kightlinger, his feature debut. Today, Jones enjoys the success of a recurring role as Cochise, a benevolent alien, on TNT’s Falling Skies. That film lead to Jones’ role as Billy Butcherson in Hocus Pocus (1993) and then, relative obscurity until meeting del Toro. Seeing Jones at work, Burton hired him on the spot for the scripted role of the “Thin Clown” in Batman Returns, scheduled to film for three weeks but going three months. The stunt coordinator, impressed with his sample routine, left the room and came back with director Tim Burton. Then one day, on a referral, he found himself at an audition for such work in a big Hollywood film. His bodily flexibility brought him work in contortionist bits, like putting a leg over his head and fitting himself into boxes in commercials – though Jones clarifies that he never officially worked as one in a sideshow. Jones had arrived to Hollywood years earlier hoping to land a role in a sitcom, to follow his lifelong love of funny sidemen on Dick van Dyke, I Love Lucy, and Mary Tyler Moore. Designs for the character of Abe Sapien looked a lot like Jones, and soon enough he was playing the role opposite Ron Perlman’s title character –when images of the Faun and Pale man continued to blossom in del Toro’s mind. Having taken Jones’ card at their first meeting, del Toro pulled it out five years later during a design session for his film, Hellboy. ![]() Nearly a decade later, del Toro would tell Jones that he couldn’t have made the film without him – a kind tribute to a humble boy from the Midwest whose finest achievement ranks aside his greatest director’s. We can’t help but think that the Faun, lurking in the back of del Toro’s mind, awakened from his tree-like state once the artist met his inspiration. 666) – del Toro saw the man who would realize the Faun and Pale Man in his modern fairy tale-cum-historical epic, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Also a famed illustrator – well-documented in his 2013 book Cabinet of Curiosities and extras in Criterion’s recent release of his 2001 film, The Devil’s Backbone (spine no. And yet, the filmmaker probably needed an excuse to watch Jones and let his imagination catch fire. On the second day during lunch, the film’s director – the still little-known Guillermo del Toro – sat across from the actor, resting his head in his hands: “So tell me everything you’ve been in, every monster you played.” Jones has described del Toro as a jolly, beautiful man from that meeting on. Of all the tales of cinematic greats meeting, it ranks as one of the best: in 1997, actor Doug Jones arrived to a night re-shoot of a film called Mimic to do creature effects.
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