THE MAN WITH CLOSE TO 200 LIVES

He currently has 199 IMDb credits. He’s been involved with film since the early 60s. He recently turned 70 in May, but isn’t looking to slow down as he has 15 projects coming soon or in the stages of post and preproduction. He’s a three time Golden Globe nominee for a successful television show, he’s been apart of multiple successful film franchises, worked with the likes of James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Kathryn Bigelow, Stan Winston, John Woo, Sam Raimi, Victor Salva, Wes Craven and Paul Anderson. With his commanding, gravelly voice and his distinct face, he is instantly recognizable. Now if only people would remember his name.

Many indie fans know him as Ed Harley from the “Pumkinhead” films. Sci-fi horror fans know him as Bishop in the “Aliens” franchise. But to me, he is and will always be Frank Black, the FBI profiler with the ability to look inside the minds of killers on “Millennium.” Lance Henriksen doesn’t mind. He takes it all in stride and acknowledges his career has been filled with many great adventures via kisses in the dark.

PollyStaffle.com, possibly waking him from a slumber, recently caught up with the intense actor, who soon will be seen in Nicholas Gyeney’s sci-fi thriller “The Penitent Man.” In the film Henriksen plays the mysterious, but very wise Mr. Darnell, who one day walks into the office of a psychologist and during sessions paints a repentant tale of future economic and moral collapse. Read on to see what Henriksen makes of the project, as well as his thoughts on time travel, the future, why he wants to live a 1,000 lives, making mini boats and rubber fish with Cameron, and what goal he has yet to check off his list of accomplishments.

DEEP THOUGHTS WITH FRANK BLACK

LH: Hello?

CCF: Yeah, is this Lance.

LH: Hello?

CCF: Hi, this is Chad Freeman, calling for the interview.

(Long pause)

LH: Yeah? How you doing?

CCF: Pretty good. How are you?

LH: Good. Good. I’m good.

CCF: Good... I just watched “The Penitent Man,” actually, just last night and... Very interesting movie. Lots of things to think about. First off, I just wanted to ask you what drew you to the script of it?

LH: Well, mostly it was like a 45 page monologue. I was wondering how the hell we were going to pull this off because it was so dense and, you know what I mean, it was a real challenge.

CCF: Right.

LH: We had a week to rehearse it and we shot it in nine or ten days. That was a challenge I tell you. But I like challenges.

CCF: That’s the thing, when I watched the trailer, I’m just like “unnn... I don’t know” and when it first started, it took a little bit to get into, but then once your character shows up and you start to hear him and believe in him, it really hooks into you.

LH: Yeah. It’s a thriller.

CCF: Yeah, it’s like a sci-fi thriller done in almost a very drama kind of way.

LH: Yeah, it’s unusual. But when you read that material... The ironic part when you are doing science fiction or a film like this that could be close to reality...

CCF: Yeah?

LH: Not really, not at the moment... But there are things that are going on in the world today that are very similar to what that story is about. It’s done in a very “I’ve come to tell you about the future,” but really we can see it happening if we look around us now. There’s a lot of problems.

CCF: Right.

LH: Major problems. There’s a lot of distortions going on about, you know, genetically modified food that we are eating that we don’t know about... And also that computers are going to become self aware within the next 10 years and that’s going to change the world again.

CCF: Right.

LH: It’s just a phenomenon how quickly things are moving.

CCF: Exactly. That’s one of the reasons I think this film worked so perfectly with someone like you. I was actually going to bring up technology in film with you because you’ve been around the industry for so many decades and I imagine you have seen so many things change...

LH: Yeah.

CCF: And been right at the heart at many technological developments. So in many ways, I imagine it really hit close to home where you’re coming from and where your mind is

LH: Right. If we had done a movie... (Pauses) Is that your phone?

CCF: No. Not mine.

LH: Oh it’s probably a sun spot. There was a lot of fuzzing on the line for a second... Anyway, that’s all true. One of the things I always think about between films... I’ve done a lot of varieties of science fiction and if you think of them as beads on a string and you pull it tight, you suddenly have a necklace. What I mean by that, is it all adds up in a strange way. Inevitably every science fiction movie that comes along and has come along since I started has progressed all these ideas, phobias, worries, truths and adventures. You’re right, I’ve witnessed a lot of it.

CCF: That’s one of the cool things about genre movies is being able to explore things that are going on and also the fears of what might happen, and like you are saying, a lot of it, there’s a truth to it.

LH: Sure there is, sure there is, so to speak.

CCF: I think that’s why it connects with people.

LH: You’re right. Nobody would want to proceed if we had it all figured out. And in some ways movies point the way. You know when you hear on the news and they talk about the details of some kind of terrorist act? After they talk about the details, they talk about what could have happened and what the terrorist should have done to make it better.

CCF: Right.

LH: (LOL)

CCF: (LOL)

LH: You know, they’re giving them a road map.

CCF: Yeah.

LH: In a way, movies do that. They point the way. Back in the H.G. Wells’ days when he wrote about time travel, going to the moon and all these things. It’s almost as if he was putting up road signs.

CCF: Exactly.

LH: He was just seeing down the road.

CCF: Yeah... Still on that subject, time travel, what are your personal thoughts on it? Not necessarily is it possible, but more of your take on it.

LH: Well, I’ve often thought... You know, seeing a motion out the corner of my eye... Sitting alone or wherever I am... I think to myself, I wonder if I am being witnessed. And the thing is, if there is time travel, it would be here now. They would be witnessing us. You kind of get a sense that maybe the spirituality that everyone is talking about is, us visiting us.

CCF: Ahh.

LH: Like (Ray) Bradbury said, we are the martians. Remember he was talking about finding life on Mars and if we got there, we’d be the martians. It’s almost like... We’re trapped in this generation. You know, I mean, you, I, everybody that we know... And one of the things I think about is we are very primitive compared to what is coming, unless there is annihilation and that would be a reset.

CCF: Right.

LH: But I really think that our imaginations... I’ll put it this way, I hear computers are growing exponentially, but they will reach the ceiling 20 years from now, they are thinking. If that’s true, I think the reason it would is because we will have imitated all of our body functions, including our synapse and everything else. We will have imitated it in a mechanical way with computers and that will be the ceiling. We will have reached the outer edge of our ability to duplicate our function in an external way. I don’t know what comes after that. I really don’t. My mind won’t get around it. I’m still stuck in this generation.

CCF: Yeah.

LH: I’m not a very educated guy. I didn’t go to college or anything like that. Never went to high school even. But I get a sense that there are good minds out there that have been educated and have taken leaps from that because I certainly get impressed very often.

CCF: Right.

LH: But in terms of being a subjective character, like I am, I really have the belief that we are pursuing the outer limits and the outer edges of who we are, and I don’t know how far that goes. I really don’t. I can’t imagine it.

CCF: Yeah. Like I said about the movie, it brings up a lot of things to think about. It hits on some really thought provoking, deep things that kind of just blows your mind once you really start to examine it.

LH: Yeah.

CCF: One of the questions that always come up with time travel films, and it is mentioned in “The Penitent Man” is the grandfather clause. But the thing that I always question is if you can actually go back in time, how is it possible that you can see yourself? For one person to be in two different bodies at the same time.

LH: Yeah. He’s sitting across the table from himself.

CCF: I know. Yeah. That’s just like, insane.

LH: It really is. But on another level, there’s another issue. In a sense, we see ourselves in others if we allow ourselves.

CCF: Right. LH: We all have spent so much time being afraid and being defensive that we don’t see ourselves in each other. And I think it’s almost like a metaphor of that. Like anybody can say I would love to be an actor if I could just get over the nervousness or the fear. But as an actor what you do is do it gradually. Anybody can do it, but it has to be done gradually and carefully so all the things you need as an actor are available to you. But people are very hesitant to make that first step and, likewise, that first step of seeing ourselves in everyone. It’s a gradual process. Nobody can do it right off the bat. Kids can do it. First time they get hurt, they shut that part off a little bit. And then a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. A therapist was telling me once that children are born with no tension, at all, in their bodies. None. As they grow older, as we grow older, we start adding to the tension, to the tightness in our bodies. Likewise, I think we do the same thing with our minds. The mind and body are separate, but we do that. So sitting across from yourself is really a metaphor, in my thinking, in an actable way, for seeing yourself in others. The way I acted it in that movie was literally seeing myself in others. We all have the same hopes, dreams, fears, longings, all of those things, the many layers of social situations that we live with. In order to act that... I don’t want get caught acting. I want to be doing something when I’m acting. What I was doing the whole time I was sitting there was the younger version of me in the story. I was trying to be myself in that person.

CCF: That’s definitely a great metaphor. And people like Hitler and some other great tragedies were hit upon in the movie... It all remind me of this song (“Living Is Suicide”). It’s a Dax Riggs song and he has a line in the song “Have mercy on the devil, he’s a friend of mine.” To me it’s like the most brilliant thing I have ever heard. It’s so simple. It goes along the same lines of seeing yourself no matter how evil somebody is or no matter what they do there is a piece of everyone in there and you can see yourself. Just like you’re saying, we all have the same hopes. They just get a little twisted or their version of reality its different. Everybody’s is different. But yeah, I didn’t even pick up on that watching the movie, but yeah.

LH: It was going on though. I think it was going on so it tied you in a little bit more. Those kind of things are not things you always realize, but they are things you feel.

(Continued - Click to read Part II)