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Zombies, vampires, Frankenstein's monster, robots, Wolfman - all of this stuff was really popular in the '50s. Robots are the only one of those make-believe monsters that have become real. They are really in our lives in a meaningful way. That's pretty fascinating to me.
On 'Oz' one day, I got a chunk of a camera embedded in my head, and I was passed out on the floor geysering blood while the set medic stood over me, freaking out. No help whatsoever. I ended up going to the ER and getting nine stitches in my head - real Frankenstein stitches.
I would compare my 'Frankenstein' to Cronenberg's remake of 'The Fly.' The monster in the original Fifties version of 'The Fly' was a crude, anatomical combination of man and insect, whereas Cronenberg's version exploited knowledge of DNA to depict him as a transgenic chimera.
'Star Wars' is life, but 'Star Wars' is also not very good, which is why 'Rogue One' - a Frankenstein's monster assembled from a butchered first cut and an excessively large space antenna that only exists to add another 30 minutes to the film - is one of the better 'Star Wars' movies.
'Frankenstein' was all about the idea that, through electricity and the destruction of night, man creating light and darkness, we took on god-like powers and then abused them like gods, and we are only men. That's a story about man making a man in his own image. The inversion of natural order.
We were having a sleepover when I was eight or nine, and we all got to stay up late and watch the original 'Frankenstein.' It was uncensored, so as a child, I saw the scene where he throws the little girl into the lake, and that freaked me out. Though not as much as when he hangs the hunchback.
According to Jewish legend, only the very wisest and very holiest rabbis had the power to make golems, animated servants of clay. Strictly speaking, the golem is not in the same class with Frankenstein's monster, because the golem is neither alive nor dead. He is, rather, the ancestor of all robots.
I guess that I'm primarily thought of as a rocker, largely because of 'Frankenstein' being such a heavy song - you know, it was really hard rock, almost a precursor of heavy metal and just the image of the synthesizer. I happened to be the first guy to get the idea of putting a strap on the keyboard.
It's very strange - several years ago, I was in the running for the 'Young Frankenstein' musical. Kristin Chenoweth was going to do it, but then she backed out because she got 'Pushing Daisies' on TV, and then, the next day, I went in for my final-final audition, and I saw Megan Mullally standing there.
I hadn't seen 'Bride of Frankenstein' until high school or maybe even later than that. It's really one of the great movie experiences where you think you know what it's going to be, but it's so much weirder and so much better than anything you could've imagined. It's so full of these striking, powerful images.
At 5 years old, I saw 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,' and I was so scared when Costello sat himself down in the lap of the monster, not realizing where he was. My friends teased me. They were older, 8 years old. And my goal was to become a mad scientist and get back at them. And here I am, mad as hell!
'Frankenstein' did not invent the fear of science; the novel found its audience because it dramatized anxieties that already existed. Although popular entertainment can, over the long run, shape public perceptions, it becomes popular in the first place only if it addresses preexisting hopes, fears, and fascinations.
When I did 'Frankenstein,' the record company said, 'Now you can do 'Dracula' and 'Wolf Man' and we'll call the whole thing Monster Rock!' and I said, 'No, that's not going to happen, I'm not going to do that.' I kind of enjoy defying categorization. I love music in and of itself. I love the beauty of harmony and rhythm.
The funny thing is, I was not a fan of horror when I was a kid. I was scared to watch scary movies. And then along came 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,' and 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.' And I like those films because they made scary funny, and it was kind of ironic that I ended up doing the 'Hotel' movies.
Back when the concept of organ transplants qualified as science fiction, novelist Maurice Renard wrote a thriller called 'Les Mains d'Orlac.' Call it a bastard offspring of 'Frankenstein;' its plot revolved around the old theme of Science Giving Us Stuff We Shouldn't Have - in this particular case, restoring severed body parts.
I was a kid when I read Jane Eyre and fell in love with that universe. I didn't have the acumen to say the prose is old or the prose is too complex. I just fell in love with Jane's very lonely soul, much the same way I fell in love with Frankenstein's creature for the same reason. Those old souls exist in every decade in every century.