Influential performers: Doug Jones
Doug Jones in someone with an obscenely-long filmography, so I’m definitely not going to look at everything he’s ever done. He is well-known for creature acting, and reinventing his movement with every role.
Doug Jones was born in Indiana in 1960. He attended Ball State University, where he studied telecommunications and theatre. He apparently managed to use his background in mime in the portrayal of the school mascot.
He got his start in advertising as McDonald’s character, Mac Tonight. Of contortionism, he said “You’d be surprised how many times that comes into play in commercials. They’ll want somebody to hold a box of Tide funny or something. I once squished into a box for a commercial for relaxed fit jeans.” I also just found out he was one of the Gentlemen in Buffy who terrified me as a child.
The first role of Doug’s that I’ll discuss is the Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water, as I saw this quite recently. It’s also on my essential movies list.
For this role Doug wore a very tight suit that apparently required the help of four people to get him in it. The neck make-up included mechanical gills. In an interview with The Backstage Experience, he said “it takes a village to make a fish man.”
Although the eye movements were enhanced with CGI in post-production, the Amphibian Man exhibits a lot of inquisitive, expressive facial movements. While there are moments where he tries to appear threatening in his own defence, he is clearly a soft and gentle creature.
Although the Amphibian Man was only actually underwater for one scene, and the rest was achieved with wires and smoke, there is a consistency in the slow and gentle movement.
Next, let’s have a look at Pan’s Labyrinth, in which Doug actually had two roles. The Pale Man is probably the one that first comes to mind, a terrifying creature that sees by inserting eyeballs into its palms, reminiscent of the tenome.
Here, we see very different movement, that of an inhuman creature, long dormant. He staggers and lunges, not just because he has been sleeping, but because of a fundamental struggle with the way he interacts with his environment. It didn’t help (or perhaps did help, the performance) that Doug could not actually see out of the suit very much at all. He got a pinhole view from one eye at a time, when the creature’s head was turned.
The bottom of the suit had green legs, so that the Pale Man’s unnatural, skeletal yet saggy legs could be enhanced in post-production.
Doug was also the faun himself, Pan. For this role he actually memorised a lot of archaic Spanish, but in the end he was dubbed-over by voice actor Pablo Adan. Despite this, it was helpful that Doug had learned the lines, because it made it easier for the other actor to speak over him.
The faun’s movements are somewhat jagged, lopsided, and uneven. He is old and made of vines, if he exists at all. The faun’s suit had legs that bend the wrong way, so it was impossible for Doug’s own legs to go inside them. Instead, his own legs were once again covered in green, and he stood slightly on stilts, with the faun’s legs behind.
Doug Jones simply has too many roles to discuss, and I wonder how many cumulative hours of his life he’s spent in the make-up chair. Each character is unique, and alive underneath the suit.
However, I will give a shout-out to Billy Butcherson, who genuinely unsettled me.
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