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| Interview: Frank Darabont On "The Mist" |
by Peter Sobczynski
The director of "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile" talks about his latest Stephen King adaptation, the monster movie extravaganza "The Mist."
Ever since he first read “The Mist,” Stephen King’s 1980 novella about a group of people trapped in a supermarket by a mysterious cloud that appears to contain any number of grotesque, limb-ripping monsters, Frank Darabont has yearned to bring it to the screen. After proving his filmmaking chops with two other King adaptations, 1994's “The Shawshank Redemption” and 1999's “The Green Mile,” he has finally gotten the chance to bring the story to life in a feature film starring Thomas Jane as heroic everyman David Drayton, Marcia Gay Harden as the increasingly unhinged religious zealot Mrs. Carmody and a wide variety of bizarre beasts hiding in the aforementioned mist. Although the film makes a stab at an important statement about how man’s innate nature can crumble when put under the kind of extreme pressure that comes from an unthinkable disaster, it succeeds best as a nicely done modern take on the monster movie, a genre that has mysteriously fallen by the wayside in recent years. For fans of the genre, “The Mist” is a funny and scary blast that pays homage to the creature features of old while still coming up with a few surprises of its own–chiefly a jolting final scene (one far different from King’s original and more oblique finale) that is sure to have horror fans talking for weeks to come.
While on tour to promote “The Mist,” Darabont got on the phone to discuss the film and its long gestation period, his first exposure to King’s work and something even more terrifying than the mist–the ongoing writers strike.
What is it about filmmaking that interests you? I know that you have worked your way up the ladder from being a lowly production assistant [on the 1981 Linda Blair horror film “Hell Night”]to an in-demand screenwriter to an acclaimed director–what is it about this particular art form that keeps you going and keep you coming back for more?
The privilege of being able to tell stories for a living–there is nothing better. I was always one of those kids who loved being told a story more than anything–they are my favorite things in life. One of my earliest memories is seeing “Frankenstein” on TV when I was five years old and thinking that I would love to do that–not knowing for sure what “that” was at that age but I knew that I wanted to be a part of it. That notion is, of course, reinforced when you see things over the years that have a huge impact on you and help define your thinking and your character.
With such films as “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Green Mile” and “The Mist,” you are now known as one of the premier cinematic adaptors of the works of Stephen King. Do you recall the first time that you encountered his work and what kind of impact, if any, that it had one you?
Vividly. I remember that it was when I was in high school in 1975 or 1976–whatever year “The Shining” was published. I was a member of one of those book clubs when I was in high school–I usually couldn’t afford to buy any of the books but I was a voracious reader. I was a member of the Literary Guild and they would send you this thing in the mail every month–if you wanted the book, you wouldn’t do anything but if you didn’t, you needed to send the card back telling them to not send me the book. That was what I would do because I usually couldn’t afford the book but there was this one month when I completely spaced out and forgot to send the card back and they sent me “The Shining” in the mail. I remember pulling it out of the box and thinking “This looks cool” and I opened it at random and my eyes fell on the paragraph where the dead woman sat up in the bathtub and scares Danny in the room. That paragraph was my first exposure to Stephen King. I found the money to buy the book, by the way.
Over the years, many people have attempted to bring King’s books to the big and small screen but for every commercially and artistically successful attempt like “Carrie,” “The Shining” and “The Dead Zone,” there have been many others have fallen far short of the mark. As someone who has had success in bringing King’s words to cinematic life, what is the secret to properly adapting his work?
I think that it is the stuff that attracts me to his work in the first place–the incredible facility that he has with characters. He was a guy who came along and elevated the genre because he brought real storytelling and writing chops to it via the characters. I think that is what his readership is hooked into–he has an amazing ability for taking you on these journeys with his characters. It exceeds the trappings of the genre and takes it into brilliant mainstream classic storytelling. I always said that before Stephen King, you never saw people’s grandmothers reading horror novels in airport lounges and after Stephen King, it was everywhere. I think he single-handedly expanded the perception of the genre into the mainstream. He was very revolutionary in his day when he came along. He is still a terrific and muscular writer today but back in the day, he came on the scene and redefined the genre for people.
It seems as though there has been talk of you doing a screen version of “The Mist” for a long time now. When did you first become interested in the notion of doing it as a film?
Back in 1980, before I even had a film career, it was published in “Dark Forces” and I read the story and I remember thinking even then that I would love to make it as a movie some day. It kind of kicked my butt, this story. When I actually had a dialogue going with Steve, it was right after “Shawshank” and he was very pleased with the results of that and he asked if there were any other stories that I wanted. I told him that I would love to try “The Mist” and he gave me the rights back in 1994. Since then, it has been on the back burner–it has always been important to me but other things came along like “The Green Mile” and a lot of work as a writer, which had always been my primary focus up until now, and “The Majestic.” Suddenly, 12-13 years goes by and you think “Okay, this has been on the back burner long enough.” The timing finally just felt right.
Over that period of time, did your idea of what you wanted to do with the film change or evolve in any significant manner?
Not particularly. I always wanted to approach it with a different hat on as a filmmaker and get out of my comfort zone of a more painstaking kind of filmmaking. I really wanted to go from the more classic style to a more ragged documentary style. I completely embraced the idea of trying a new kind of thing–for me, anyway. As far as the story is concerned, my view of it has always stayed pretty constant but I think that some of the things that it deals with are pretty timeless–I didn’t feel it needed to be moderned-up at all because it didn’t seem lacking in relevance to the human condition.
“The Mist” is, of course, closer to the straightforward horror that most people usually think of when they hear the name “Stephen King” than “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” which were both essentially straightforward dramas. In terms of the adaptation process, how much of a challenge, if any, was this for you?
I had a pretty good comfort zone writing this thing. It was a pretty fast eight weeks–when I have really solid material like that, I tend to sit down and just do it rather quickly. In terms of taking Steve’s ideas and characters and putting them on the page, it wasn’t a huge challenge in that sense. Certainly my familiarity with the story and with his work is a pretty comfortable place for me to be.
Although it has admittedly been a while since I have read the story, it does appear that there are a couple of points in which you expand or diverge on what King wrote. For starters, I think you go a little more into a possible explanation for the mist and the monsters than King did in the story–I could be wrong on this, though.
I think, unless I am misremembering it, that Steve did offer an oblique notion of what the source of it was and I think he hinted at the same thing that I hint at in the movie. It is never fully explained in the film–it is just one theory and if that is what you want to believe, fantastic, but I also wanted to convey the idea that maybe Mrs. Carmody was right and that maybe this really is Biblical prophecy as well. Ultimately, the practical reasoning behind where the mist comes from and why it is here wasn’t nearly as interesting to me as the story of these people in a pressure cooker of fear and how they are acting and reacting. That was really the point for me–otherwise, I felt that I would take something that Steve had written that was very muscular and run the risk of turning it into a plot-oriented thing by justifying why it is out there even though it ultimately wasn’t very important.
Speaking of Mrs. Carmody, you have also developed that character a little more fully instead of just having her be that kind of shrill and annoying person.
I know that she is kind of an extreme character–she is in Steve’s story and she certainly is in the movie. The advantage that a writer has on the page is that the reader will fill in the blanks of that character in a way that I think that a filmmaker has to do for them. I really wanted to try to humanize that character as much as possible and give a sense of what her motivations are. I told Marcia very early in the process that we couldn’t make the mistake of playing her for the villainy–let’s play her as if she thinks that she is the hero of the movie. That gives you and the actor someplace to go. It would have been very easy with an extreme character like that to tip into caricature in the script and, consequently, on the screen. I wanted very much to feel like, extreme as she is, that she is a real person.
[Although the following question and answer doesn’t go into specifics regarding the ending of “The Mist,” it does touch on enough information regarding the climax to suggest that if you haven’t seen the film yet, you skip over this next part until you do see it.]
Of course, the most noticeable change that you have given to “The Mist” comes with the ending. In the original novella, King gave it an open ending that deliberately didn’t resolve anything, you have given the film a resolution that may come as a shock to many viewers–it almost reminded me of a Lucio Fulci finale, sans the hope and whimsy.
[Laughs] I take that as a compliment, whether it was meant that way or not.
As this is sure to be the most talked-about aspect of the film, I was wondering how you came up with this particular method of concluding the story. After all, films of this nature tend to conclude in an ultimately hopeful matter and the ending of “The Mist” that you have offered up is anything but.
As you say, the ending where everything turns out okay is the expected ending and it is part of what Hollywood shovels at us on an ongoing basis. You know what–things don’t always turn out the way that we wish they could. Particularly in the horror genre, I think it is worth it to go for the gut-punch on occasion. It is a story of people operating in a climate of fear in a pressure cooker where they make bad choices. I think that is a pretty worthwhile thing to say. Honestly, the ending came from a line in Stephen’s story that suggested this ending to me and the people who really know the story will spot that line and know where it came from. In a way, whether he took it in that direction or not, Steve did have the thought in his head at some point. When I sent him the script, I really wanted to know what he thought–you never want Stephen King to feel ill-treated in terms of his material–and his reaction was awesome. He said, “If I’d thought of this ending, I’d have done it.” I said “You did think of this ending, you just didn’t think to take it to that conclusion.”
You mentioned Fulci but one of my favorite movies in the genre is “Night of the Living Dead.” One of the things that I think makes that movie so great, aside from the fact that it is a great movie, is the ending that George Romero whipped on us at the last minute. I couldn’t believe when I first saw that movie what this man had put on screen. It was really muscular stuff and shocking and disturbing and I dig that. I dig it when a horror film can be subversive and not just provide the obvious by-the-numbers storytelling where everything is fine in the end.
How have the audiences been reacting to the ending at the screenings that you have had for the film?
Some people–a lot of people–really love it because I think they have been waiting for a horror movie that doesn’t pull its punches or doesn’t just do some formulaic torture thing. Some people are really thrown by it, which is telling me that the ending is working. What I love is that no one is walking out of the theater feeling neutral about it. That makes me feel great because I think that horror should be dangerous and you should take that kind of chance on occasion.
END POSSIBLE SPOILERS
One of the things that I liked most about the film is that it is a perfect contemporary representation of a film genre that has kind of fallen by the wayside in recent years–the old-fashioned monster movie. You keep the monsters off the screen for quite a while, the cast is filled with recognizable faces but no big-name stars that might serve as a distraction–the only thing missing is the fact that it isn’t in black-and-white.
It totally works on that level–all this other pretentious filmmaker talk aside, I’ve always wanted to make a good, scary and tense monster movie and it certainly operates on that level if that is all that people want from it. I was like a dog rolling around in clover with this stuff because I’ve always loved them. There are little tips of the hat to Harryhausen in it and other influences that I have loved since childhood. We made this movie for less than the salary for a $20-million-dollar star. I went in with the thought that we were just going to go in and cast the best actors for the roles and really put together a superb ensemble. It was extremely gratifying to have the people who raised their hands and showed up for this because it is a powerhouse cast.
It is funny that you mentioned the black-and-white thing because Steve’s story always suggested one of those old black-and-white movies that we all loved while growing up. I’m thinking of doing a black-and-white version of the film since we have the technology to do that now. I did shoot on film but we took it into a digital post process and it is pretty easy to pull the color out. I’m thinking of doing a black-and-white version for a special edition DVD. I think that would be really cool and I don’t think it has really been done before. I know that the Coen Brothers did “The Man Who Wasn’t There” by shooting it in color and took it through that digital intermediate process when they decided to release it in black-and-white. I know that it can look really good that way, so I have my color timer back in L.A. doing a reel in black-and-white to see how it looks. If it looks, that DVD idea really appeals to me.
As you are going around to promote “The Mist,” there is, of course, a writers strike going on. Speaking both as a writer and as a director, I wanted to know your thoughts on promoting the film during this strike action and your feelings regarding the strike in general.
My promoting the film is a responsibility to the company that financed it. I’m certainly not out here as a writer–I am out here talking about the film as a director and since the DGA isn’t on strike, I think that is fair. I certainly wouldn’t write anything or hand anything in right now because the Writers Guild is on strike. I support the strike because I think that the issues are very important that we are dealing with and the directors and actors are going to be facing those same issues before long. Strikes are never fun for anybody–they throw everything into uncertainty. My official stance is that I support it but I hope both sides come to the table and figure this shit out soon because it will be better for everybody to have some sort of closure.
One project that you were announced for in the days before the strike was a new version of “Fahrenheit 451."
Yes, that is a project that I am very much hoping to do in the coming year. Again, it is part of that uncertainty that I was talking about. It is very hard to plan or schedule or get people to commit to something when no one knows when we will be able to proceed. It looks like it is on track and I am crossing my fingers and knocking wood because I really want to do that. I’ve wanted to make that movie since I was nine and I read Ray Bradbury’s book.
Another project that you were working on at one point, though no longer, was the screenplay for the next Indiana Jones movie. The story goes that you turned in a script and while Steven Spielberg loved it, it was rejected by George Lucas. Can you talk at all about your brief experience on that particular project?
There is nothing controversial there. I did work with Steven and I gave him two drafts–he loved them and George didn’t and they reset the project to zero and proceeded from there. I have tremendous faith in Steven making a terrific movie. To the extent that they have used or not used any of the material that I turned in, I can’t speak to that because I haven’t read the script that they just finished shooting. I just know that I have a lot of faith in Steven and I think it will be terrific. Yes, it was disappointing but there is no bitterness or blood feud going on.
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=2302
originally posted: 11/20/07 23:56:00
last updated: 11/21/07 00:14:32
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