INTERVIEW: BILL OBERST JR.

Bill Oberst Jr. is a multifaceted thespian with a unique physique and innate talent to take on roles that make our souls cringe. He starred in an interactive web-film called Take that Lollipop, for which he won a Daytime Emmy in 2012. (Click that link – it’s pretty cool). His resume of films, shorts, and projects is extensive. Visiting his IMDB page is like walking into the Library of Congress. It just keeps going and going and going. The man is an acting powerhouse.

My first experience with Bill was in reviewing a film short for a friend and her horror related site. The film short was called The Beast, and it starred an astounding actor by the name of Bill Oberst Jr. Of course, in the review I raved on and on about this actor and his solid performance. To my amazement, my friend invited me to call into her weekly radio show to chat about RockRevolt, and who should she have on the line?  None other than Bill Oberst Jr..  What an eloquent and well-spoken man! After chatting on-air about various topics, it came up that he had starred in several music videos.  It was if the stars had aligned!  What an amazing coincidence that this man, who I had never spoken to before, whom I praised under a pseudonym, was ever so perfect to venture over into our world of RockRevolt™Magazine.

Alice:  Thank you so much for entertaining an interview on a Saturday afternoon.

Bill:  Absolutely.  I was just looking over your site.  It’s pretty cool!  I love the interview you did with Styx!

Alice:  Thank you!  We have superb writers.  That one is one of my favorites as well.  How have you been?

Bill:  Good! I’m good every day because I get to do what I love for a living.  I know it sounds like a cliché.  If you are a writer, and you are able to make a living as a writer, it’s the same for an actor, or for any other artist.  There are so many people who want to follow a creative pursuit, and for whatever reason they don’t or are not able to make a living doing it.  I consider every single day to be a blessing.

Alice:  Wonderful.  Being that our site is about Rock n’ Roll, and our readers would probably recognize you from the Mastodon  video, and The Used  Video…

Bill:  And Disturbed  too.  I’ve done two for Cults, but they are in the pop-rock category.

Watch “Asylum” by Disturbed

[embedplusvideo height=”281″ width=”450″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/1K9jBL2syJ8?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=1K9jBL2syJ8&width=450&height=281&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep5516″ /]

Alice:  We’d cover them, hence our tagline:  “If it ROCKS, we ROLL with it”

Bill:  Cool.  One was called “You Know What I Mean?” and the other is called “Abducted.”  That was a fun one.  There is a really good actress, she’s in Insidious, named Kimberly Jindra.  She’s a friend of mine.  She was in Nude Nuns with Big Guns  with me.  We play a husband and wife in that and it starts with her downed, in a nightgown, laying in the middle of the road, in the middle of nowhere, with snow all around.  I come in and put her in the trunk.  Over the course of the video, you realize that it’s actually a game that they play.  At the end of the video she’s taking the ropes and she’s tying me.

Watch “Abducted” by Cults

[embedplusvideo height=”281″ width=”450″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/9i1MXHGB8g0?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=9i1MXHGB8g0&width=450&height=281&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep9741″ /]

Alice:  (laughs)

Bill: (laughs) It looks so creepy, because my face on camera instantly says, “something is wrong.”  For the whole song you are thinking, “what the hell is he doing to this woman?” and then it turns and it’s like, “ok, your turn honey.”

Alice:  (laughs) Some people have interesting fetishes…and we don’t judge.

Bill:  You know what?  It’s all good.  It’s okay.  We repress too much.  When you repress too much, that’s when you get really messed up.

Alice:  That is true.  I don’t judge.  Whatever keeps you happy and keeps you sane, doesn’t mean I have to get tied up, but if you like tying people up, you go right ahead. (laughs) I showed the Mastodon  “Curl Of The Burl” video to one of the staff members, and he actually had a question for you.  His question was, “How do you go about preparing to portray a smack-head?”

Watch “Curl Of The Burl” by Mastadon

[embedplusvideo height=”281″ width=”450″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/lAihDAJX8Ow?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=lAihDAJX8Ow&width=450&height=281&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep5800″ /]

Bill: (laughs) That is a good question.  I had to ask guys on the set how to do it.  I was supposed to be sniffing the sawdust, and I was asking them, “How do you do this?  What am I supposed to be making now?  Like, what’s meth?” (laughs) I’m SO completely clueless on this.  The director just said, “Act like you are high,” and I was, “what’s that like?”  Mr. Whitebread Man here!

Alice:  I feel you.  When I go to concerts, I look like a PTA member chaperoning a heavy metal concert.

Bill: (laughs)  That (Curl of Burl) was a really fun video to shoot.  The director is a young guy by the name of Robert Schober, who goes by RoboShobo.  He also did the Disturbed  video for “Release Me.”  His imagination is incredible.  I love working with him, and he likes unconventional appearances (which is a nice way of saying ugly).

Alice:  No!  You are not ugly!  You are unique!

Bill:  Unconventional.

Alice:  Yes.

Bill:  We have standards of beauty at every single age, and they change.  I’m glad I have this look.  Without it I wouldn’t work.  Without it I would just be this middle-aged character actor with bad skin.  There is nothing there. But because I have acne scars and this piercing gaze, I am able to work continuously.

Alice:  That’s not true.  I wrote that review about you, from that film short The Beast.  You were amazing.  If you hadn’t been in it, it wouldn’t have been worth watching.

[embedplusvideo height=”281″ width=”450″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/2dKecixJico?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=2dKecixJico&width=450&height=281&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep5450″ /]

Bill:  You are nice.  Thank you.

Alice: You are welcome.

Bill:  I really don’t even know what screen presence is.  I always ask.  My sister visited this weekend, and we went to see this movie called Eddie, the Sleepwalking Cannibal.  It was good, but I’m not a good judge of acting.  She was, “This person was great, but this person not so great.”  I had to ask her, “Why?  What is it that makes one actor on screen pop-out and another not?” and she couldn’t tell me.  I’ve always wondered about that, because at my best, I hope that I have some screen presence, but I really don’t even know what that is.  The camera is a weird thing.  It’s like a lover.  It either likes you, or it doesn’t.

Alice:  That’s true.  I’m simply amazing looking in person, but put me in front of a camera and I am a troll.

Bill:  Yeah?

Alice:  I’m hideous.*

Bill: (laughs) That’s because you are a girl!  All girls say that!  “Oh My God my nose like is huge!”  I have a friend who is a model.  She is a beautiful Asian girl, and she says, “I hate looking at myself – I fucking hate it!  All I see are eye bags and a pig nose!”  And I’m like, “You are beautiful, and you get PAID a lot of money to do this.”

Alice:  She gets paid for her eye bags, so apparently they are working for her.

Bill:  She hates them.  Everybody’s got something.

Alice:  True.  You were also an abusive father in The Used  video.

Watch “I Come Alive” by The Used

[embedplusvideo height=”281″ width=”450″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/9i8nj9NePKA?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=9i8nj9NePKA&width=450&height=281&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep3108″ /]

Bill:  I’m an abusive father a lot, but that one was set to music.

Alice: (laughs) I’m not even going to go there.  Knowing that you typically play a nefarious character, how did you go about preparing for that role?

Bill:  I have literally played these roles lots of times, and I always draw from the actor who is playing my child.  I draw from them, because they have to carry this fear, and I find that the friendlier we are and the more we know each other, the better it goes when we play the scene.  It would be the opposite with an adult.  If you get to know an adult too well, you can’t do a scary scene with them.  Kids have such an incredible imagination, that when they know you, and they feel comfortable with you, when you get on set with them, it’s like, “let’s play,” and they are able to completely let it go.  I loved it when that kid killed me.  I really deserved it.

Alice:  Um yeah, you were kind of an asshole.

Bill:  Yeah! He was an asshole!  So the kid came home with his sweater torn.  I didn’t even ask any questions, I just like grabbed him.

Alice:  Yeah, you dick.

Bill:  BUT, it goes with my face!  Here is my theory: Michael Cain said that the camera is a lover, and if you don’t look at it the way it wants to be looked at, it will look at somebody else.  So, if you think of the camera as a lover (a very promiscuous lover, because it’s always looking at people), but when it looks at you, it has a certain thing that it likes you to do.

 

Alice:  It likes you to be a dick.

Bill:   Yeah! That’s exactly what it likes me to be.  It doesn’t like me to do other things.  I’ve done other things and people are like, “Meh!”  That is what it super-likes.  I think that is the difference between being a character actor and a movie star.  What I want to be is on the way to being a movie star: a person that when you see they are going to be in a role you go, “Oh! I’m going to go see them do the thing I like to see them do.”  People get down on it, because they are like, “Oh Jennifer Anniston is the same in every movie.”  Well, yeah. So is Clark Gable, and so is Jimmy Cagney.  They are doing their thing that they do on camera.  It’s like a musician, like Journey or Styx.  Those lead singers have this incredibly distinctive voice, and if I go to see them in concert, that is what I want to hear, because that is what I like them doing.  I don’t want them to be suddenly changing it and start singing in a falsetto because they think they want to show me diversity.

Alice:  See, I kind of like diversity.

Bill: You do?  You are broader minded than me.  I’m like, “Do what you did on that song I listened to!”

Alice:  Well, it’s true.  When you hear the song that you are listening to, and then you see it played in person, it can sometimes be underwhelming.  People have these crazy expectations, and what is done in the studio is produced, and practically artificial, depending on the band.  Some bands have the ability to do it in one take, and it’s perfect.

Bill:  It’s the same way with acting I think.  There is a grocery store here in Hollywood name Gelson’s.  You will see famous people in there from time to time.  When people see a famous person, who is known for television, they are like, “Do that thing that you do on TV.”  You can see the person cringe because it’s not going to look the same in the produce aisle, and people are disappointed.

Alice:  That is true.

Bill:  What is done in a movie is much like what is done in a recording studio.  It’s completely dependent on the technology, the lighting, the sound, the moment; everything has to come together to make it magical.  You can’t reproduce that.  Then you can just stand on the red carpet, and not really do anything, and let your work speak for itself.

Alice:  There you go.  I make it a point to not meet celebrities that I particularly like.

Bill:  How so?

Alice:  Because if I’m watching a celebrity in a particular role, for example The Walking Dead, and the actors are at a convention where they are overwhelmed with throngs of fans, meeting them is going to be artificial, at best.  Plus, I don’t want my bubble burst.  I want to keep thinking about them in that role.  If I meet them, and they are not that person, it makes it awkward, and I won’t view the role in the same way.  I avoid them, purposefully, because ignorance is bliss!  I don’t want to know! (laughs)

Bill:  You know, you are right.  I’ve known guys who have dated very hot and very famous women, and have been told that they are very boring, because they do sensuality and sexuality for a living.  If you are a sex symbol, that is your job – to be continuously oozing sexuality and eroticism.  So, in their private life they have no interest in it. They just want to sit around in something really frumpy, and eat popcorn.

Alice:  That’s the mystique of dating the librarians.

Bill:  Nurse, librarian, but not movie star or model, because they just want to sit around in sweats and eat popcorn.

Alice:  Well, there is something comforting about that: you take off the mask and let it all hang out (laughs). However, we digress.

Bill:  Totally.  It’s a good thing.

Alice:  Besides your appearance, why do you feel your cast in so many wicked roles?  Is there something that attracts you to these?

Bill:  Yes.  And I say “Yes” really quickly now, because if you had asked me that three years ago, when I started, I would have said, “No, of course not. I’m the nicest guy in the world.”  But, I’ve done enough of them now to know that it’s in me, and I keep it really buried.  I don’t want to mess with it at all.  Yes, I’m happy when I have these roles, and I really enjoy doing them.  I don’t want to live them in real life, but they are cathartic and I do like them.  

I guess everybody has darkness inside them somewhere. Everybody has demons and conflict.  It’s a pretty healthy way in performance to let all of that stuff out.  I’ve really come to like/love these roles.  People like me in them, and I think that’s because I put passion in them, and the reason I put passion in them is because in my regular life I’m very very buttoned-down, very quiet, almost a hermit.  When I get to go out in a role, and do these wild things, it’s very cathartic for me.  It lets me know what it would feel like to be a completely amoral person which I do not want to be, but I think every human wonders at some point, “what if I didn’t follow the rules? What would that be like?”  So, I get to know what that’s like, and usually there are consequences for my characters.  They usually get what they deserve in the end.  So, you go through that cycle, and you do these roles, and you are like, “Yes!  That is why I should not be amoral: because there are consequences,” and then you go back to your quiet life.

Alice:  Who has been the most jarring character you feel you’ve portrayed, what did you contribute to that character, and what did you learn about yourself after it was over?

Bill:  Those are probably three of the best questions I’ve ever been asked.  Wow!  The role was “Father Simon.”  It was the lead role in a movie called Children of Sorrow.  The trailer is out now, and I think it’s going to be released this Halloween, thereabouts.  There is a distribution deal announcement coming shortly.  I play a cult leader in the desert.  He’s charismatic, and he’s charming, and he’s also deadly. I had just done a role before that one, where I played a hero sheriff with a beautiful family.  So, I was trying to be very very normal, and not let any of my quirkiness come through, so it was a very, very bad performance.  I knew it was bad, and I was really depressed about it.  So, I got this role, which was father Simon.  We were going to film in the desert.  I said, “Fuck it. I’m going off the grid, and I’m going to live in this darkness,” because I was depressed anyway.  I turned off the cellphone; turned off the computer, and lived in this character’s head for the three weeks that we shot in the desert.  I was really, really ready to leave him behind afterwards. (laughs) He was a disturbing character to play because his whole mantra to his followers was “Trust me.  You are safe now.  Trust me.  You are safe now.  Other people don’t understand you, and they are nothing but shadows.  Let those shadows go.  Trust me.  We are family now.”  To tell someone that, and then do bad things to them, I think there is a special place in hell, because everybody wants to be accepted so much, and to have somebody say, “Alice, I accept you just the way you are, and I love you like nobody has ever loved.  Just please, have a little trust in me,” to DO that and then turn on you, is Satanic.  That is what this guy did.  

What I learned about myself with this role, was that my own faith was strengthened.  I am a follower of Jesus, and I try to live that way.  I realized for the very first time that one of the reasons I like doing these roles is because I do believe that there is such a thing as evil, and I think it’s real:  probable; not a joke.  When I play evil, I don’t want it to be a joke, I want it to be real.  I want it to be so real that people’s skin will crawl, and that they will say, “That’s not just acting.  There is something evil in the world.  I need to be careful, and I need to be aware of it.”  Because, it seems to me that the most dangerous place to be at is to think that there is no such thing as evil, everybody is good, and everything is good.  I don’t believe that, and I think it’s dangerous.  So, when I was playing Father Simon, and I was going deeper, deeper and deeper still into him, I would pray in between takes.  The director told me that he left the sound running, and we talked about it once, was that the prayers that I was making were, “God, please let me go deeper into the darkness of this person’s soul, so that I can show what a person with no values or an amoral person is like.  I want to reflect that so that people and that something in their spirit will say, “I don’t want to be that way.” It’s like a cautionary tale.  Since then, every single role I’ve done, big or small;  I try to do the same thing.  I turn off the cellphone.  I don’t contact the outside world.  I’m working.  I’m shooting.  Does that sound weird?

Watch the 1st Trailer for Children of Sorrow

[embedplusvideo height=”281″ width=”450″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/CW_FRa5HhNE?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=CW_FRa5HhNE&width=450&height=281&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep2933″ /]

Alice:  No, it doesn’t.

Bill: I worry that it sounds weird and that people will think, “Oh, he takes himself too seriously. He’s just acting.”  But we have to have some responsibility.  We are putting this stuff out there, and it’s going to be out there forever. Kids watch it, and people who are indecisive in their lives and at bad points in their lives, they watch this stuff that we do, and this music we produce.  I think we have a responsibility to think through what we doing and why we are doing it…says the man who slaps nuns around and licks women’s faces.

Alice:  That’s right.  Whatever works for you!  Kind of like that fetish conversation we had earlier!

Bill: (laughs) They are the roles that people like to see me the most in.  What can I say? 

By:  Alice Roques

Connect with Bill Oberst Jr. Online on the links above or below!

FACEBOOK | TWITTER | WEBSITE | IMBd

 *Alice is not hideous.