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Dennis Paoli writes plays and films. His oeuvre includes adaptations of the works of Poe and Lovecraft. Re-Animator (1985), Dreams of the Witch House (2005), The Black Cat (2007) and Nevermore: An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe, a one-man play starring Jeffrey Combs that has been winning and astonishing audiences around the country since its premiere at The Steve Allen Theatre in Los Angeles in 2009.

When Paoli is not writing for the stage or screen or collaborating with long-time collaborators Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs, he teaches writing and Gothic Literature at Hunter College, City University of New York. He is also Donor/Advisor of the Heidi Paoli Fund for cancer patients.

I talked with Dennis about his approach to adaptation and screen and play writing, and getting under the skin of the man Edgar Allan Poe.

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THE JEFFREY COMBS INTERVIEW

By Mark Redfield

PART ONE of two

Jeffrey Combs is Edgar Allan Poe in the play NEVERMORE. Photo by Ward Boult

During production week of the Boston premiere of “Nevermore: An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe” in late October, 2014, after a busy day of texting, emailing, phoning and generally doing the never-ending  business of opening a play,  Jeffrey Combs (the star) and me (the producer), having dealt with dozens of details and questions and answers regarding the production as it loomed closer (Halloween) including a full day of staging the show to “work” in the Somerville Theatre and solving the lighting and sound issues with the technicians, we had a conversation about acting and playing Poe.

Jeffrey had been doing the one-man show and playing Poe in “Nevermore” since 2009. The play, in fact, was born out of his portrayal of Poe in the HBO Masters of Horror television episode “The Black Cat”. I had produced the Baltimore premiere of “Nevermore” in 2010. One person shows are as old as theater, as old as storytelling, itself. It is, in a sense, a very pure theater---just an actor and an audience.

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With two plays performing on opposite ends of the country in October of 2014, the director of “Nevermore: An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe” (East Coast) and “Re-Animator: The Musical” (West coast) talked with Mark Redfield (who was asked by Jeffrey Combs to come aboard and serve as Associate Producer to help launch “Nevermore” in Boston) about the making-of both plays. And very different plays, they are, too.

“Nevermore”, starring Combs as Poe, will play in Boston at The Somerville Theatre Halloween night, and is a searing tight-rope walk by Combs, creating a portrayal of Poe that is both wildly funny and harrowingly tragic and sad.

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PART ONE

Poe belongs to the city of Boston in 2014, and the unveiling on October 5th of Stefanie Rocknak’s powerful and dynamic statue of the poet, called Poe Returning to Boston, leads the way.
I was lucky to catch the busy and hectic sculptor during a particularly hectic and busy time---the ground had just been broken by the construction crews in Boston’s Edgar Allan Poe Square, and Rocknak was taking a brief break from running between The Hub, the foundry where the life-sized statue is being cast in bronze, and Hartwick College in New York, where she is an associate professor of philosophy…
-Mark Redfield

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Filmmaker Mike Flanagan’s new film OCULUS opened in theaters in the US on April 11, 2014.

Critics have universally praised the film, and the opening weekend box office numbers were impressive.

In 2011, I asked my friend and film editor, Sean Paul Murphy (who is also a successful screenwriter) to interview Flanagan for my magazine Monsterpalooza, marking the occasion of the release of his first horror film, ABSENTSIA. Two filmmaking friends and colleagues talking film. Here is that interview.
-Mark Redfield

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