Ron Perlman, the actor behind Hellboy, may never forget his first meeting with one of his idols. As he describes it in his new, juicy and F-bomb laden memoir, “Easy Street” — foreward by horrormeister Guillermo del Toro — Marlon Brando approached him on the set of a movie they were making, “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” and marveled at the terrific job Perlman had done with his makeup.
Perlman — who was wearing ram horns at the time — sheepishly responded that he hadn’t done his makeup: Stan Winston had. “Well, who the hell are you?” Brando demanded. “I’m just playing a character in the movie, sir,” Perlman replied.
Happily for us, the native New Yorker has played a lot of memorable characters.
Here’s what’s in Perlman’s library.
Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth
Roth’s brilliant. The description of the affair Sabbath’s having with a married woman in the Catskills — you could read 150 years of porn and not be as turned on as you are by reading these 30 pages, about people f—ing each other anywhere and everywhere. You’ve never had salaciousness described this deliciously.
The Unnameable by Samuel Beckett
You’ve never seen me in Beckett and you never will. But when I was at Lehman College in The Bronx, a professor turned me onto Beckett and showed me how to read him. This is one of [Beckett’s] few forays into prose. In my view, it’s his “Ulysses” — a very Irish fusion of this shanty kind of nothingness juxtaposed against the splendor of God’s gift to man: life itself.
The Mahabharata by Kamala Subramaniam
“The Mahabharata” is basically the story upon which Buddhism is built. The version I read was physically given to me by the director Peter Brook, who invited me to do a production of it in a dicey neighborhood in Paris. I’m not a religious guy, but this is like Shakespeare and the Bible and reads like “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”
The Name Above the Title by Frank Capra
Capra’s one of my favorite directors. This is an autobiography, and I loved reading how he developed a tough skin in Hollywood, the gangsters he had to work with and the collaborative love affairs he had with people like Jimmy Stewart. This is a primer on how to go all the way in the movie business.