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Fangoria Horror Spectacular #10.

1995

The Crow's Heart of Darkness : Brandon Lee sought to add more than the usual dimensions to his vigilante from beyond the grave

By Randy Palmer

The stuff of nightmares abounds at Halloween. It's a time of magic and mystery, malice…and murder.

Eric Draven knows this. He has tastes midnight madness . He knows what it feels like to see a soul corrupted beyond redemption by the night's darkest agents, the allies of All Hallows'.

"Eric is a person who has been pushed to the edge…and gone over," observed Brandon Lee just days before the on-set accident that took his young life during the filming of The Crow. The lean and lissome actor was in the midst of refining the parameters of that celluloid staple, the walking dead, when Fangoria got a chance to talk to him about his contributions to the MIRAMAX/DIMENSION hit, which recently premiered on video. Decked out in his otherworldly death-metal garb as the "vigilante zombie from hell," it was easy to wonder if Lee might have slipped a little too comfortably into the persona of his onscreen alter ego. One thing's for sure: Lee had nothing but respect for the supernatural avenger created by comic book writer/artist James O'Barr.

"Eric really is a distillation of feelings born out of actual events in O'Barr's life," Lee explained matter-of-factly. "Sometimes a personal tragedy provides the impetus we need to move on in life. It's easy to become stuck. We get lazy and we don't want to change. Change can be such a hassle. That's not to say that everyone requires a tragedy in their lives in order to get their ass moving, to take some kind of action or make some kind of decision: but if it happens, it can be definitely open your eyes. It can make you look at life differently, it can change your whole world, 'Why did this have to happen? What have I done? Why couldn't it have been somebody else?' Sometimes it can make you a better person, Or a different person."

The Crow provides Eric with a couple of tragic encounters that most definitely turn him into a "different person." Once a struggling rock musician, Eric becomes something else entirely when death opens its monstrous maw and sucks him in. Whether the experience makes him more or less human is purely a matter of conjecture.

"Eric is not a monster," Lee insisted, "even though he has the kind of supernatural qualities you usually associate with monstrous characters in the movies, especially older movies in this genre. After he is murdered, Eric is no longer a citizen of the land of the living; but just because he comes back from the grave doesn't make him a zombie, or at least not the kind of being most people think of when they hear the term 'zombie'. " In other words, Eric does not turn into a flesheater in the George Romero style. He becomes a collector of souls - lost souls.

"He becomes an avenge, " He countered. "He returns to life to avenge the deaths of his girlfriend and himself. And although there is that element of retribution which you find in every other movie that touches on this theme, The Crow goes a step beyond, because your dealing with a character who doesn't play by the rules. And that's why I love this role. The power of Eric's love and the force of his own mind bring him back, and if he is able to do that, if he can beat death at its own game, then obviously he isn't restricted by normal character confines. That gives me a much greater stage to use as an actor. Not to take it beyond what James or Alex think should be the boundaries, but the nature of the story and the events open up more possibilities."

David Patrick Kelly, who plays streetwise henchman T-bird, backed up Lee's feelings concerning this characterization. " There's no way around it, it's the violence that provides the link between The Crow and real life," he points out. "That's the key to the character, but Brandon is reaching beyond the violence. He's working hard to keep true to the spirit of the original comic. There's a sense of a kind of thin veil that separates this life from the next: that's the most important thing, and Brandon knows it. That way he is playing the part makes it seem as if Eric knows something that others don't, because he's been there. He's been to the grave and beyond, and so he knows what lies on the other side. Whether that's good or bad doesn't matter, because Eric's love and pain are great enough to transcend the universe of the dead."

The power of the mind to escape entrapment, whether by human, unhuman, evil or other forces, has provided grist for the mill of many Hollywood productions. And while this element figures in the plot of The Crow, the film remains unconcerned with what lies beyond the realm of death. It concentrates instead on the maintenance of human values during times of crisis.

"There's a big different between the film's evil characters, the guys like Top Dollar [Michael Wincott] and Brandon's character, who is not evil despite the fact that he has returned from the grave and now has this power," Kelly observes. "In most of these kinds of movies, a guy comes back from the dead and there's no room at all for any discussion - he's just EVIL! Night of the Living Dead, Pet Sematary, that kind of thing. It's all very black and white. The Crow is different. There are a lot of gray areas. Eric knows there's another life that dwarfs what we think as existence on this plane, because he's been there. The way Brandon is playing it, you feel that so much more is there, because he's done such an excellent job."

The opportunity to turn the violence inward and wire his characterization with the kind of subtly suggestive extra indicated by Kelly is partly what attracted Lee to the role in the first place. He had already read and enjoyed O'Barr's comic, and his familiarity with it gave him an edge when it came to portraying the character on film.

"When you take the time to learn about where your character comes from and why he does what he does it becomes much more believable," Lee said. "The pain that James O'Barr lived through was what brought his character  to life, so to speak. I can use that: I can use the things James felt when he was writing about Eric Draven to color my own characterization.

"There is one other very important consideration," Lee continued, "and that is choreography. You can spend all the time in the world thinking about and tweaking your character, but if things aren't properly deployed on the set and moved about somewhat intelligently, they lose their impact. You've got to take the time to work out the look, the movement, all the motions and all the action. Taking the time to choreograph a simple movement from one side of the frame to the other can help immeasurably. You can do so much with it. You're still able to give everything the script says you're supposed to, but you do it in a way that writer may not have originally envisioned. Not to take anything away from James O'Barr, because what he did was beautiful. "

"Of course, you don't get to do this kind of thing with every film you work on," Lee confided, "but we are doing it with The Crow, the comic art is especially useful in the current situation, because I can use some of the poses or gestures that James developed, and add to them or take things a step or two farther."

Individual panels from The Crow comic provided a unique set of reference materials for Lee and director Proyas, who often consulted them when working out set dressings and camera setups that utilized different degrees of light and shade. Certain scenes in the finished feature capture the look of O'Barr's work remarkably well. " It's a very stylised piece," Lee offered, echoing the sentiments of many of his co-stars. " It has a certain amount of violence because it has to - the subject matter demands it - but it's not the kind of violence you see in most of the other films in this genre."

Although many of Lee's performances were rooted solidly in the action department, the actor never felt threatened by the possibility of typecasting. "Getting pigeonholed into one type of film is certainly not the worst fate in the world," Lee noted. Like Boris Karloff, who frequently called the Frankenstein Monster "the best friend I ever had, " Lee recognized that action-oriented roles not only paid the bills, but allowed him to do things that many other actors could not. " I wouldn't complain too much about typecasting, although it is something I want to try and resist, so I can do different types of work. Person, as a moviegoer, I like all different kinds of films, including action films, but I would like to able to swing back and forth between different genres."

Sadly, audiences won't have the chance to see the promise of The Crow fulfilled.

Transcribed by Samantha/BLM