Laurie Holden as Amanda Dunfrey, the women helps David Drayton keep his son safe form the monsters in the mist

David Drayton trying to find ways to reach the outside world in "Stephen King's The Mist"

Mrs. Carmody and Jim Grondin feel that death is only the beginning in Stephen King's The Mist"

{mos_ri}

SK: I'm not dissatisfied with the "splat pack." I mean, I can't wait to go see "P2." I'm excited to see "P2." I was excited to see the remake of "Halloween." "Hostel II," I was there the first day that baby opened. There's some I like and some of them I don't. But in a lot of cases, it feels to me like I'm not dealing with reality. I'm dealing with some sub-genre where everybody knows—it's almost like a Japanese Noh play—I feel like I know what's going to happen.

Q: How much do you reference the Bible for the stuff spouted by the Marcia Gay Harden character and how much did you utilize in explaining her character?

SK: I just drew on my childhood, man, just drew on my childhood.

Q: Was she someone you had met before or knew?

SK: No, she really wasn't anybody that I met or knew. But I had church on Sunday, Bible school every Thursday night, and heard all the stories about what was going to happen if you told lies, or masturbated, or this or that, and the awful things were going to happen. They all had scripture from the Bible to back it up. Around the same time, my childhood friend Chris and I fell in love with this guy Jack Vedimpe, who is this televangelist. 

He's one of the early televangelists. He knew all about the international conspiracy, and according to him, the apocalypse was coming so you had to be ready, and all this other stuff. I just loved his delivery and I mocked it. It's comedy, but the mystery comedies of the world are out there.

FD: Yeah, hell yes, and it's not necessarily a religious thing, it's political. It's what I'm finding wonderful and fascinating about watching this movie with an audience, that people really get to hate her.  I'm thinking, does this even supersede what the story provides? and I think maybe it does. I think what's happening is, people are sick to death of extremists, they're sick of the manipulation of extremists, of whatever path, whatever weapon they use, whether its religion or politics, or hijackings, or whatever. I think most of us want to be reasonable. Extremists are screwing it up for the rest of us. That's why we are getting such a strong reaction to this movie.

SK: I have nothing against religion, in spite of my upbringing. But what happens is, religion cross-pollinates with politics. If you've seen "The Mist," you know that in some ways there are political parties that develop in the course of this thing. These political parties will spontaneously develop, which is what happens any time there is a crisis situation. The one thing that "The Mist" adds— it adds religion to an already volatile mix. If that causes you to think about the current world situation, well, then it does. But I'm not prepared to say one way or another.

Q: Frank, do you get the "creeps" when you start reading some of Stephen's work?

FD: I get the "creeps" every time I read his work. But the "creeps" is only part of the journey he takes me on. I find his storytelling so satisfying because it has enormous depth as well as the surfacetexture of the creepy stuff, which I certainly dig. But I love him for that.

Q: When you started writing, Stephen, did you think you would get sosuccessful to have Oscar-winning actors such as Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman, performing in your movies?

SK: No, I could have never imagined it and I never did. The only thing that I wanted was to support myself and my family without teaching school, by doing what I love and what I know how to do, which is telling stories. The rest of this is the bonus round.