At the recently concluded Fango Weekend of Horrors convention in New York City, writer Dennis Paoli (pictured), a longtime collaborator with director Stuart Gordon, briefly discussed NEVERMORE, an upcoming Los Angeles stage project based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe that the two have collaborated on, starring their favorite actor Jeffrey Combs. Fango chatted with Paoli afterward to get more details on the impending production, as well as a couple of his and Gordon’s feature projects.

“After playing Poe in our version of THE BLACK CAT for the second season of MASTERS OF HORROR,” Paoli tells us, “Jeffrey couldn’t get out of the character. So Stuart and I decided to help him live out his fantasy of actually being the author by developing with him a evening in the theater with Edgar Allan Poe—or is it the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe?—doing a reading, as indeed Poe did many times in his life, of his most famous works, including ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and ‘The Raven.’ He also goes slowly mad, as Poe indeed did over the last year of his life. It’s a great and respectful homage as well as a torturous look into one of the greatest American writers.”

NEVERMORE will play at LA’s Steve Allen Theater at the Center for Inquiry—West (4773 Hollywood Boulevard), with previews Friday, July 10 and Saturday, July 11, and official performances Sunday, July 12 and Fridays-Sundays thereafter through August 2. Combs’ performance will involve both Poe’s famous short stories and his poetry—though not necessarily the same lineup in every show. “We’re not actually certain what the spirit might lead him to read on any given night,” Paoli says. “But because it’s Edgar Allan Poe, everything that he presents to his audience will be entertaining and frightening.” He further notes that the actor will don minimal makeup to transform into the famous writer. “Jeffrey actually looks like Poe, and his craft is so great that we need very little to put Poe on stage. And much of the play is taken from the author’s actual life. It’s as if he’s doing a reading during his final year, and props and effects will be minimal. They will be provided by the genius of Jeffrey Combs.”

Should NEVERMORE become the success it promises to be, Paoli hopes there will be encores elsewhere. “This year being the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth, which will be recognized in celebrations—mostly around the Northeast—we hope Jeffrey will get a chance to perform the piece in a number of them later this year,” he says. “Most of them start around October. We hope he’ll be doing it for the next 20 years, because he’s great at it—and because America should have one of its greatest writers reading to them and living among them again.” For ticketing and other info on the LA run, click here.

A Gordon/Paoli/Combs collaboration that sadly never came to pass was, of course, HOUSE OF RE-ANIMATOR, in which Herbert West and Dan Cain would have tangled with a George W. Bush-esque Presidential administration. The financing never came together, and the time for a Bush-era cinema satire may have passed—but what about resurrecting the project in the less expensive comics medium? “We’re not interested in the cost,” Paoli says, “and we’re not interested in the medium as much anymore as we are in the story itself. It was a great one, and we were very happy with the way it was working itself out, and how it developed the characters of Herbert and Dan. We don’t have any major plans to move it to any medium, but it’s a story that needs to be told, and hopefully told well, in the near future.”

Instead, Gordon and Paoli are moving forward with their latest H.P. Lovecraft screen adaptation, THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP. “That’s in the hands of some producers now,” the writer says. “I don’t think Jeffrey will be doing that and I don’t know when it will be done, but I’m hopeful it’ll start shooting within the next year.” Combs previously told Fango that he had opted out of this particular project due to its heavy sexual content—yes, even more than RE-ANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND. “If you’ve read Lovecraft’s story, you can only imagine who the sex must be with, and how awful that must be,” Paoli says. “Look, it’s Stuart and I. There’s no way for us to make it without being sexual, and yeah, I would say it’s even more [than their previous films]. That’s a fair description, but the sex serves the story.”

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