The cast of "Stephen King's The Mist" wait to meet their fates

Toby Jones as Ollie Weeks, the despairing employee who works at the supermarket the day the mist arrives to town

Thomas Jane and Nathan Gamble who plays Jane's son Billy Drayton in "Stephen King's The Mist"

{mos_ri}

FD: Probably the weirdest story Steve ever wrote is "The Long Walk."

SK: Oh, yeah.

FD: And I've been meaning to ask you, didn't you start writing that when you were in high school?

SK: I was in college. I was a freshman.

FD: This is amazingly mature work for a kid who was in college. That, I do believe, was in the shadow of Vietnam, wasn't it?

SK: Oh yeah, very much. That was started in uh, '67 so it was right.

FD: Yeah. It's pretty amazing stuff. And that influence is there for sure.

SK: The one that got started in high school is not in print anymore. It's called "Rage."

FD: "Rage," yes. I know, I've read it.

Q:  You just referenced Elvis Costello. You are an enormous rock'n'roll fan. Do you have much faith left in the genre, and are you finding new things to listen to?

SK: Yeah, I always find new things to listen to. I'm crazy about a live album of a Raspberries reunion concert in Beverly Hills. The Raspberries were a power pop group in the 70's, and they're all looking their age and they sound great. But the new Steve Earl record is great. That's an album by The Thrills that's really great.

So… there you are. But yeah, rock's okay. I listen to a lot more sort of all country now, because it's sort of like the rock that I remember, but it's new—Ray Wiley Hubbard, and Cross Canadian Ragweed, people like that.

Q: Stephen, having splitting your time between Florida and Maine, how does that change the location for you in terms of your stories since location has often played so much a part?

SK: Well, the new book has a Florida setting. But we've been going back and forth to Florida 10 years and I still feel tentative about it. It takes awhile to get the texture of a place. So I've kind of got my mental blast shield down about that.

Q: You guys mentioned Richard Matheson. He's a great choice. But what are some of the other writers in science fiction/horror that you consider people you're still excited about, or new people that you're excited about?

SK: Richard Matheson was the first one who really influenced me. Robert Bloch was another one. Today Jack Ketchum, Bentley Little…I read across a wide spectrum. I don't just read horror, that would be kind of boring. But there are a lot of different people that I really like. Kelly Link is great, I really like Kelly Link. She doesn't work that field specifically, but I like her stuff a lot.

FD: Well, he's been hugely influential to me as well as others. I love his work. I revisit his books every few years. I'll pull another one off the shelf and revisit it. I just reread "Eyes of the Dragon," which was awesome.

SK: Yeah. It's going to be a French cartoon.

FD: Is it really? Yeah. That's awesome. Matheson is hugely iconic to me.

SK: Remember Charles Beaumont?

FD: Charles Beaumont. Amazing short story writer. He did a lot of "Twilight Zone" work with Rod Serling. Rod Serling, amazingly influential writer.

SK: Jack Finney.

FD: Jack Finney.

SK: "The Body Snatchers," baby.

FD: Paddy Chayefsky, a dramatist. He's tattooed in my brain because he was so inspiring to me. And Ray Bradbury, [who is] a god and a marvelous human being. I've gotten to know him in the last seven years or so. Weird thing, to get to know your icons. It's awesome.

SK: How about David Mamet? He writes the best dialogue.

FD: Mamet's pretty muscular. There's David J. Schow [He wrote the screenplay for such  films as "The Crow" and apparently invented the term, if not the horror sub-genre, of "splatterpunk"]. Not that many people know his work, but boy he's a muscular writer.

SK: We can go on and on all day.

FD: We can go on and on all day.  Absolutely one of my all time favorite science fiction works  is "Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller.

SK: Walter Miller, right.

FD: He didn't write that many things, but boy he floors me with this—I am trying to think of my favorite books and dredging the authors out of my head.