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Page 2 of 5  Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Carmody in the "Stephen King's The Mist"  Jeffrey DeMunn, Laurie Holden, Frances Sternhagen, Thomas Jane and Nathan Gamble in "Stephen King's The Mist"  Marcia Gay Harden plays Mrs. Carmody, a church-going women who beleives that this mist is a way of god punishing man for his lies and deceptions {mos_ri}
Q: What satisfies you in working with Frank? What about the other movies that have been made from your work? Has there been frustration for you?
SK: No, there's never been any frustration. Either they're good or they're bad, and if they're bad I just kind of laugh.
There's a story about the college newspaper reporter who came to see [crime novelist] James M. Cain toward the end of his life, and the young reporter was bemoaning what Hollywood had done to his books. Cain whipped right around in his chair, pointed at the shelf and said, "They haven't done a damn thing son. They're all right up there." And that's the case.
I'm always interested to see what's going to happen when you beat the piñata. It's always a little bit different. It's good sometimes, and you know, sometimes it's… "Children of the Corn." You just can't tell what's going to happen. But I'm always interested to see.
Q: What was the book you were doing that you couldn't do this movie with Frank?
SK: It's called "Dew McKee." It's going to be out in January... And they make wonderful presents.
Q: When you write a story like this or make a film, how much are you influenced by other literature, films, or theater? One of the scenes in this film seemed similar to Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros."
SK: I haven't read "Rhinoceros," but I'm flattered by the comparison to Ionesco, even if it's just coincidental. But I just get the idea and work on the story and I don't really worry a lot about influences. I'm sure that I am influenced. But I think the best way to deal with that is you forge ahead. FD: I think we're all influenced, as any storyteller is probably influenced, by the things that came before. Sometimes it's completely unconscious. But certainly he's been an influence on me. I think you've been an influence on a lot of people. A lot of people have tried to copy it through the years. Nobody's equaled it, though.
SK: Well I'm a child of everything that I've read. The biggest influence on my life is gonna be a movie in December—"I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson. I've read Poe and Lovecraft and all those guys. I thought that they were good, but I didn't have that kind of visceral connection where I thought, "Oh yeah, this guy is doing it on my block, I like that."
FD: That's one of my top five favorite books.
SK: I love that.
FD: It's high on the list.
SK: And it's on the best seller list again now, too.
FD: Is it really?
SK: Yeah.
FD: Oh good, they're reading the book. Does it really look like "I Am Legend" or does it look like kind of a remake of "The Omega Man?"
SK: I haven't seen the movie. They're reading the book.
FD: Yeah, that's great, that's awesome. I can't wait to see it, actually.
Q: What are your biggest fears?
FD: Oh, people. Check out the 21st century so far. I'm afraid it's going to make the 20th look like "Romper Room." And you know there's nothing that scares me more than what people are capable of. This is actually what this movie is about. To me it's a rather timeless thing to say. It goes back to Greek tragedy. What are people capable of when they are influenced by lack of reason and fear? That's what scares me.
The other stuff—you're taking out the "pit bull" and petting it, and taking it for a walk—it's the fun stuff. You exercise the terror mechanism. This gentleman has made a great, great career and a legendary name for himself doing that. That's the fun part, the controlled experiment in fear. What really scares me is the uncontrolled realities of it.
SK: I'm afraid of everything. It shows in my work—elevators, cars. The thing that started the new book was basically a combination of an accident that I had with a truck that was backing up and the beeper was broken. Somebody said, "Look out!" and a whole big long novel came out of that. But I'm with Frank on this, and that's one of the reasons why I love this movie, because it was a little bit like having somebody scratch a place on the middle of my back that I couldn't reach myself.
I mean, every night when I go to bed and nobody popped a rogue nuke somewhere in the world, I feel this sort of combination of "I don't believe we escaped for another day," and gratitude because we did escape for another day. There's so much of that stuff out there. I've written a lot of different things about that, from "The Stand" to "The Mist," where a lot of people out there are afraid, they're angry, because fear and anger go hand-in-hand. They're the original sin version of the "Bobbsey Twins," you know, fear and anger.
There's always somebody to say, "Well, we had the answer, we had the only answer"—because whatever the religion might happen to be, they're the ones who say "We have the only answer. So let's get down on our knees and pray about it, and then on your way out there's guns in the vestry."
FD: "And do as you're told or we'll kick your ass."
SK: That's right, or "we'll kick your ass because our god's bigger than your god." Now I'm not saying "The Mist" is about those things, because that's for you to decide. But I'm not saying that it's not. To a degree it's about big bugs too.
FD: Yeah baby. We love the big bugs.
SK: That's right.
Q: It's great to see your movie and books and stories back in theaters for the first time in awhile. How do you make the decision between making a movie or a TV miniseries for your stories?
SK: First of all, I think it's good to see my movies back again too. They were in rehab for a while, but they're better now. No, I mean… whenever anybody talks to me, whether it's a version of a musical version of "Carrie"—there have been two play versions of "Carrie," you know. One was great, and the other was so weirdly bad that it was great too. It sort of was.
So whenever anybody wants to try, I'm sort of up for that as long as they make a minimal amount of sense. If nobody else came along and wanted to make another movie, I could live with that. But I'm hoping that Frank and I can work together again at least four more times.
FD: Yeah. I'm waiting for the next prison story.
SK: I thought "The Mist" was sort of a prison story.
FD: Well it is, yeah. We need another one, man. It is. Of course, it winds up being kind of a prison story doesn't it?
SK: Sure, yeah.
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