Tom Waits Has a Devilishly Good Time

From Dracula to Satan and back again... what's not to like?

By Fred Mills

It's always a good day when Tom Waits news gets slipped over the BLURT transom. Apparently the bard and his wife/collaborator Kathleen Brennan have been writing new material and planning some summer recording sessions - this would be for the official followup to the three-disc archival collection Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, which came out way back in 2006. (Read a review of the Orphans tour HERE.)

Meanwhile, though, the Waits camp informs us that he's currently filming The Book of Eli, directed by Albert and Allen Hughes (From Hell, Dead Presidents, Menace II Society). The flick's billed as "a post-apocalyptic Western, in which a lone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving mankind." Hey! We're back in Zachariah territory! (Inside joke for all you older readers there.) The film stars Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman; Waits has a small role as "Engineer," and film buffs will recall that Waits and Oldman previously worked together in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Dracula, respectively portraying Renfield and the good Count D.

Waits also has a role as Mr. Nick (the devil) opposite Christopher Plummer in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. That was Heath Ledger's final film role, and as he died prior to the completion of filming, Gilliam tapped Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to fill in (!). Billed as a "fantastical morality tale set in the present day" it also features Lily Cole and Verne Troyner and will premiere at Cannes.