If you’ve ever seen a Guillermo Del Toro film, then it’s likely you’ve experienced Doug Jones’ unique craft.  Jones is the actor and pantomime who has brought life to many of the characters and creatures that Del Toro has imagined.  After playing two roles in Pan’s Labyrinth and three in this summer’s Hellboy II, including that of Hellboy’s best buddy Abe Sapien, Jones is definitely an essential ingredient to some of the most fantastic films of the past five years.  Since he’s also played the classic comic book antihero the Silver Surfer on the big screen (in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer), Jones’ street cred with fan boys has rocketed through the roof and out of the atmosphere.  And quite frankly we think he may be the coolest character actor working in mainstream movies today.  That’s why we were stoked this weekend to go to Mid-Ohio Con (our favorite Midwest comic-book convention), sit down, and chat with Doug once more; and speak with him about some of his upcoming projects – specifically Del Toro’s The Hobbit and a possible turn as the Monster in the director’s upcoming adaptation of Frankenstein!  See what Doug had to say when we met up with him…

You’ve always got a number of projects in the pipeline.  What are you working on right now?  What’s next for you?

I have things coming out.  I did a few cameos this year.  I have a cameo in Quarantine which comes out next week.  The last three minutes of the film is my big appearance.  Ta-dah!

Can you say anything about your role or would you prefer not to spoil the film’s ending?

I’m wearing old-age make-up and I’ve got a disease.  So you’ll see this face.  Let’s see… Legion – I was in it with Dennis Quaid, Paul Bettany and Tyrese Gibson – another cameo in that, where I play the Ice Cream Man.  The Ice Cream Man is kind of a character that shows up and is the page turner that gets you to the last act of the film.  It’s a very freaky scene – I’m not gonna lie.  Then I do a cameo in a movie called Super Capers, a super hero spoof movie, where I play a knock-off of Agent Smith from The Matrix.  That one does not have distribution yet but it will get something.  The trailer’s very funny.  It’s a great family film – I think it’ll end up somewhere like ABC Family Channel, but y’know that seems to be where it would have a good home.  Other than that, since I saw you last, I finished my last movie, which is called My Name Is Jerry.  I might’ve mentioned that before – it’s a relationship dramedy about a middle-aged white guy going through that reinvention of mid-life crisis time.  Jerry kind of finds himself hooked up with a punk rock underworld culture of kids, and they kind of try to teach him how to be hip.  So there’s that funny little storyline.  There’s also this storyline of his daughter coming home and him trying to reconnect with her.  There’s a divorce, there’s work issues – he’s kind of reinventing himself professionally.  It’s just a great slice of life in Middle America.  We filmed it in Muncie, Indiana – back at my alma matter, Ball State University.  But we had Catherine Hicks, the mom on Seventh Heaven [and in Child’s Play] – she played my boss.  We had Don Stark, he plays Donna’s dad on That 70s Show – he plays my best friend and mentor.  And a great young cast from Chicago that came down to film, all the punk rocker scene, all the kids.  It was a great experience for me.  Great film, great writing, great cinematography, and the actors were all fantastic.  I just did an episode of Criminal Minds also.  I did that like, golly, two weeks ago.  So it hasn’t been on the air yet.  But the show airs CBS Wednesday Nights, sometime soon.  Then on Wednesday I start work on a new movie called Angel of Death.  Not the Angel of Death from Hellboy II, the Angel of Death played by [Grindhouse’s] Zoe Bell.  She’s kind of a mafia hit woman and I play a mafia doctor.  I’m the one who patches her up.  So I’ve got three pivotal scenes in the script with her.  I’m a doctor who does all of this under the table, off the record patching up of mafia folk, and I’m on heroine.  So we’ve got that going for me!  Also I’m currently in negotiations for a French film that will begin shooting in January in Paris, France.  That’s one I can’t really tell you the title of or anything, because it’s not a done deal yet.  It would be a biography on the life of a famous French singer-songwriter.  I play his alter ego in a fantasy sort of element to the movie.  It’s gonna be different because it’s going to have real biography-type storytelling to it but also what I do – with the fantasy and heavy make-up.

Will you be performing in French?

I will be speaking French.  Probably dubbed over because my French is gonna suck.  I just wanna put that out there right now.  And in a case like this I’m okay with dubbing.  This is the one case I’m okay with it.  Yeah, so that’s coming up.  And Universal’s rumors are afoot.  You’ve probably heard Guillermo Del Toro’s directing the Hobbit movies.

I can’t imagine you’re not gonna have an interesting role in that…

I have no idea what he’s got in mind for me.  I don’t know if he’s quite sure all the way yet.

But has he mentioned that something is there?

Well he’s mentioned it to the press.  We were on the red carpet of the Saturn Awards, in the press line on the way in and Guillermo came up and joined in an interview that I was already doing on camera.  The journalist said, “Oh Guillermo, what do you have for Doug in The Hobbit?” and put a microphone in his face, and we hadn’t talked about it yet.  I said, “This ought to be interesting.”  [Laughs.]  And he said, “Well, I’m sure I’ll be putting Doug through some kind of pain and torture.”  We all chuckled and he said, “Listen, I have nothing official to report, but let me say this – if I direct a hemorrhoids commercial, Doug Jones will be in it.”  So that’s our answer I think.  I’m hoping to hear something about that.  But I’m not sure when or what or how many what’s – because after two roles in Pan’s Labyrinth and three roles in Hellboy II, I can only imagine what’s coming for an epic movie, or two movies as it were.

Are you a fan of the Tolkien book?  Do you have a certain character you’d like to play?

I’m familiar with the storyline of the book – but I need to reread this.  It’s been so long.  Yes, but I shouldn’t say.  Here’s the thing: the fans have been talking on Del Toro Films and other places a lot about what roles they think I would be good for.  They put out a couple that I love.  Guillermo listens to his fans and he does a lot of talk back there – he’s an online junkie himself.  So I think that between his vision for me and his fans’, he’ll come up with something good.

He’s also doing a sequel to the Hobbit – so I’m sure there’s a myriad of characters there that you could also play.

Yeah, who knows?  I think that was the plan.  He was talking about doing a Hobbit adaptation and then doing a segway movie that gets us from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings.  So it’s anybody’s guess as to what’s on the map.  And that’s not all in stone yet either.  Y’know, it’s been talked about but nothing’s been confirmed.  So yeah, it’s gonna be tough.  Other than that, another rumor… he has a five-picture deal, well, actually, a five-year commitment to Universal Pictures after he’s done the Hobbit.  So that’ll take him from 2012 to 2017.

And probably you as well…

[Laughs.]  Let us hope.  But one of those films is Frankenstein.  He’s always wanted to do an adaptation of Frankenstein himself – and this is another red-carpet moment I had with him, all of the news about Guillermo and my involvement with him by other people.  On the red carpet of the Hellboy II premiere, a journalist said, “Doug, we just talked to Guillermo a second ago and he said he wanted to do a remake of Frankenstein.”  I said “Oh my God, that’s a perfect project for him” – and it is.  The journalist said, “Oh that’s not the best part… I asked him who he’d want his monster to be and he said, ‘Of course Doug Jones.”  So I got weak in the knees and light-headed and I said, “You’re kidding me!”  It wouldn’t be like the Boris Karloff, big lumbering type.  It’s based on an artist that Guillermo loves, named Bernie Wrightson.  He did a rendering of the Frankenstein Monster that’s thinner built and more sympathetic.  Then some fans have been submitting art too.  On Del Toro Films there’s a fan with the username Riddick and he submitted a rendering of Doug Jones as Frankenstein.  I can so see myself in this drawing of the monster – it’s beautiful – and also the Bernie Wrightson stuff as well.  So if I could play that type of Frankenstein with Guillermo Del Toro directing – that would be a dream job for me.  This could be like…I don’t wanna talk too much because we’re years away from that happening.

It would be a perfect fit, because that’s what a lot of fans consider you – the 21st century Karloff, or Lon Chaney.

Oh that’s too sweet…  I have actually been getting a lot of questions about the Silver Surfer movie and what’s happening with that.  Will there be a spin-off?  I think that was the plan all along, that’s what they were positioning him for.  This is all my opinion, this is nothing official from Fox.  But I did hear the rumors along with everyone online that there is a script out there that had been written by J. Michael Straczynski.  What they’ve done with that script, I don’t know… It looks like they’ve been sitting on it for a year – over a year now – and the longer I wait the less hope I feel, but you know we can always hope can’t we?  I’ve always loved the Silver Surfer.  He’s beautiful, he’s brilliant, he’s heroic in every sense of the word, and I’d love to crawl into that skin again.

Rise of the Silver Surfer was one of the biggest movies of summer 2007 – I can’t imagine they wouldn’t want to revisit it…

Looking at box office receipts though, solely looking at the business end of it – which is what the studio will do more than I will – Rise of the Silver Surfer made a tad bit less at the box office than the first Fantastic Four film.  So that might make a business person a little leery about continuing.  But I don’t know.  That’s none of my business really.