| Stephen King and Frank Darabont Step Out of "The Mist" |
| Written by Brad Balfour | |||||||
 "Stephen King's The Mist" stars Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden  The cast of" Stephen King's The Mist" wonders if there is any life beyond the mist  Legendary writer Stephen King and Talented director Frank Darabont colabrate to make King's book into reality Born in Portland, Maine, King started out publishing his first story in a fanzine but quickly graduated to the professional publishing world. While he cranked out his many novels, Hollywood discovered his work and the rest, as they say, is history. He has made more than $40 million a year, has been nominated for numerous awards, owns his own radio stations, has played in rock bands, has three kids and keeps writing even when he threatened to retire and was injured in an auto accident. As for Frank Darabont, he's been one director who has achieved incredible success turning King's books into films. This three-time Oscar nominee was born in a refugee camp in 1959, the son of Hungarians who fled Budapest during the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution. Darabont is one of only six filmmakers with the unique distinction of having had his first two features receive nominations for the Best Picture Oscars—1994's "The Shawshank Redemption" (with a total of seven nominations) and 1999's "The Green Mile" (four nominations), both based on King's stories. In cinematically adapting "The Mist," a King short story from the early '80s, Darabont has defied expectations, improving on the story with a powerful unexpected ending. Recently the two sat at a press conference and expressed their love for all things weird, including each other. Q: Stephen, you originally wrote this novella during the Vietnam War and yet it seems as much a story for today. What were the origins of the story, and why do you see it as appropriate for 2007? SK: It wasn't during the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was over by the time that I wrote it. Kirby McCauley [King's friend and agent at the time] was putting together an anthology called "Dark Forces," and he wanted all these original stories from people who wrote in the genre. I said, "You know, Kirby, I don't think I can do that because I'm blocked, I'm not writing anything," and I hadn't. I had just finished three books. There was "Carrie,"Salem's Lot, "Night Shift," and I was kind of stuck really. I happened to be in the local market one time and a lot of people were shopping. I looked at the front windows and thought, if something bad happened those windows would all blow in—because that's the way I think. It's not necessarily a good thing, but it's been a profitable thing over the years. As I mulled it over, this story came out of it. I've always been grateful to "The Mist" because it broke me out of a place where I couldn't seem to do anything. This story just came very naturally, and in terms of Vietnam or any other conflict, if you're writing seriously—by which I mean trying as hard as you can—the issues that are in your mind and the things you've been through are all going to play a part. Q: The movie attacks [religious] fundamentalism. Is this an issue that was relevant back then, and if so, does it apply even today? SK: Well, Mrs. Carmody [played by Marcia Gay Harden] was there back then, and Mrs. Carmody in Frank's [Darabont] movie is very much the Mrs. Carmody that was in the story. I don't want to go out and make political statements. I'm a storyteller and Frank's a storyteller, that's what we do. But I've said this before, and I'll say again, that if you're trying to do your best work, these things are going to come up. They're going to become part of the story and people are going to ask questions about it. Is "The Mist" a political story? Is "The Mist" a story that has to do with the dangers of entrenched religion, fundamentalist religion? Is "The Mist" a story about red vs. blue? I'm not going to answer any of those questions. You go see the movie. Those questions will come up and maybe you'll discuss them. If it serves as a springboard, that's great. Q: Fear has played such a major role in your work. How has the notion of "fear" evolved in your mind, and how do you apply it in your work? SK: Fear is a survival function. If you're afraid of certain things—walking down the center line of a highway at night, going out in hunting season in Maine not dressed in something that's red, or orange, you're afraid that you might get shot. So I think of fear as a survival function, and in the stories that I write, the only thing that I've tried to do is provide people with nightmares, which are really safe places to put those fears for a while. You can say afterwards, "Well, it was all just make-believe anyway, so I just took my emotions for a walk." This is a negative emotion, it's a kind of a "pit bull" in the human mind. It needs to have a place to walk, and it needs to be petted every now and then and that's what these stories try to do. In "The Mist," you know that these people are trapped in a supermarket and things happen to them that are inexplicable, or not normal. But sooner or later every one of us faces those things in our own life. You might call it "cancer" instead of "things in the mist," but we're all afraid of those things, and it seems valid to me to explore them. But if I have any more ideas about fear, I'm glad I do what I do because it's allowed me to vent a lot of this stuff and get paid for it, whereas people, who go to shrinks, pay them. This is a "win-win" for me. Q: This movie straddles between the science fiction and supernatural genres. How did you view this project? SK: I was writing the book. That's the short answer to that. In terms of the science fiction, I've written a lot of stories that I think of as sort of science fiction. For me it always has to be "sort of" science fiction, because I was a "C" chemistry student and a "B-" physics student. I was never a geek and I never had a lot of those skills, or that knowledge base. But on the other hand, I saw a lot of movies in the '50s like "The Thing," and "Them," and I know that radiation causes monsters. And most important of all, I know that if we mess around too much with the unknown, something awful will happen. FD: The first law of physics: radiation makes monsters [laughs]. I love this stuff too. We have a common genetic predisposition towards loving these sorts of things. This is what brought me to this master's work in the first place, because I love this stuff. But to me, it's the fun part, it's the trappings. Is it a little science fiction? Yeah. Is it a little horror? Hopefully, it's a lot horror. But ultimately what makes him such a muscular, master storyteller is the fact that he never dissolves just into the trappings. It's about the human core of the storytelling. It's always about that journey of the human condition. That's what makes it particularly valid, particularly relevant. It's an examination of fear. It's an examination of people operating in a pressure cooker of fear where fear replaces reason. That's why I've always loved this story. It wasn't so much about the "mist" outside the windows with the groovy critters in it. It's about what the people are going through inside the market. It winds up being pretty real, and pretty disturbing because there's nothing scarier than human nature and human behaviors. That's why I thought the thing had some muscle. It's about fearing fear itself. What does it do to people, how does it wig them out? How does it compel us? Does it bring us together? Does it tear us apart? Do we make mistakes? This is pretty meaty stuff for a filmmaker, and I, I can't thank you enough for letting me make the movie. SK: Aw gee. FD: [laughs] So there. Q: A lot of writers get disenfranchised when Hollywood comes in and tries to turn one of their books into a movie. What makes you feel so comfortable in turning over your projects to Frank? FD: Tell them about your big "wang." SK: Yeah, I used to have a big "wang," but of course I was younger then. It was a "Wang Word Processor." Get your minds out of the gutter. [laughs] I love to work with Frank. I've worked with Frank and I don't work with Frank. I basically stand aside and let Frank do his thing and Frank still has a child's imagination coupled with an adult's ability to see the core of the material and then execute his vision. So you've got a couple of things going on there that hook up together that you don't see in a lot of filmmakers. You do see it in some, and they do good work. Frank has always done good work. I feel very comfortable that I'm going to get something from Frank that's gonna be usually extraordinary. In my case, he's done "The Woman in the Room," "Shawshank," "The Green Mile" and he's done "The Mist." And it isn't just me. I hear from other people all the time. They'll say, "I just loved those movies, you know." I gotta tell this story. So I'm there in the supermarket one day and I've got my little cart. I come around the corner and there's this woman, I'm going to say she was about 95, and she said, "I know who you are. You write those stories, those awful horror stories. I don't respect that. I don't like that. I like uplifting movies like that 'Shawshank Redemption." And I said, "I wrote that." And she said, "No you didn't." And that was it [laughs].  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 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.  Laurie Holden, Sam Witwer, Frances Sternhagen and Thomas Jane in "Stephen King's The Mist"  Andre Braugher plays as Brent Norton, the voice of reason to seekout help and see how far this mist really is  Thomas Jane as David Drayton plays a torn father trying to protect his son from unknown terror in "Stephen King's The Mist" Q: I know that Frank wrote the ending for you. How was your reaction when you first read that ending? SK: I loved it. I loved it. It puts a button on it. I thought about this when I wrote the story. If you guys have got it, you'll see that Frank has been very faithful to the story. But when Frank and I talked about "The Mist," he would always say to me, you know, it's gotta have a strong ending. FD: And you would say the same thing to me from time to time. SK: That's right. What we were too kind to say to each other was that the story has—I won't say it's a weak ending exactly, but it was the kind of ending that my late mother didn't respect. She called them "Alfred Hitchcock" endings—you were kind of left to make up your own mind. She had nothing but contempt for that. Frank came up with an ending to the movie that I thought was terrific on the page, and the only time that I ever wavered even slightly was when I actually saw it. I said to myself, "This is so shocking that there ought to be ads in the newspaper that say if you reveal the last five minutes of this movie you'll be hung by the neck until death." That's the one thing that I hate about the Internet age: all that stuff goes out. FD: Me too, me too. Q: How do you feel about this adaptation compared to Frank's other three? SK: I love it. Frank does good work, and this thing has a different look. It's a wonderful sort of documentary feel. It's separated from the other field of horror suspense movies of the last couple of years because of that documentary feel. It has a sense of "The Twilight Zones" that I loved when I was a kid, "The Outer Limits" episodes that I loved as a kid. But also, here's a movie that was made by an adult. It's not—I'm not going to name any names, but it isn't part of this pack young guys who haven't quite come to a realization yet that this is as serious as any other genre. So you've got a picture that asks some serious questions if people want to ask them, or if they just want to have a good time, it's there too. But it has a wonderful realistic look that I was just crazy about. Frank also has a number of different actors that he's worked with over the years. Some of them are in the movie. Jeffrey DeMunn, who's always been a favorite of mine, to the point where he's recorded some of my books on tape. I love Thomas Jane, always have. FD: Bill Sadler, who played the Thomas Jane role in the audio book of "The Mist," god knows how many years ago. SK: It's amazing. And Marcia Gay Harden. So what's not to like… for me? Q: You talked about the sort of limited budget that you worked with here. Do you have an affection for films that are based on economy, and getting as much as you can out of that? FD: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I was anxious to embrace that aesthetic. Some of my all–time favorite movies in the genre, the most muscular things, "Night of the Living Dead," for example— SK: "Night of the Living Dead" FD: —came out of very limited resources. There's some muscularity to that sometimes that you can capture. SK: Like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." FD: Yes, absolutely. SK: Like Joe Bob Briggs used to say, "The Texas critic ain't nothing better than 'Saw'." FD: Joe Bob. SK: Joe Bob, yeah. FD: I haven't seen him in years. No, I really wanted to embrace that aesthetic because I felt that this had a real ballsy muscularity. I would have to say, to categorize "Shawshank" as a different kind of story for you, I would dispute that because the commonality here is Stephen King never lets you down in terms of writing a muscular, human story. Whatever the trappings, whatever the settings are, whatever the specifics of the story are, it comes from that storytelling muscle, which is why I think this guy single-handedly took horror out of the ghetto of literature and put it into the mainstream. I have said, you never saw grandmas in an airport lounge reading a horror novel until Stephen King came along and brought the story telling values of a real writer to the genre and elevated it. And we have him to thank for that. SK: I try to put real people in stories. I would like to be able to do that, to put real people who are not clichés. I'd like some texture in my stuff, you know, and Frank has always respected that. This is a movie you could categorize as a horror movie. I never tell anybody what to do about that. Call it whatever you want to, but please, they're real people in that supermarket, and you get a real sense of human people. And it's not "Friday the 13th part 6." It's got a more texture than that. Q: I'm curious about the role of the military in "The Mist." FD: The role of the military is incidental. The role of the creatures, honestly, is incidental. To me it's all context for the story that's being told which is that super heated character ensemble of people who are getting the hell scared out of them and colliding like pinballs. I mean, that's the physics of the story that Steve set in motion, and that's what really attracted me to it. It's that what happens when the thin veneer of civilization is laid aside, and people are scared, and they lose their reason, and their ability to have a rational conversation. It makes it pretty timely, it makes it pretty relevant. It also makes for just damn good storytelling. That's why I always loved the story. SK: When I was writing the story, it certainly crossed my mind. It isn't even a conscious thought. It's almost like something that's gone through and been absorbed into your imagination and your subconscious, is the idea that we're all sort of puppets. There are a lot of people fooling around with a lot of things, and we don't have any say in a lot of cases. Apparently, AT&T and some of these other companies were listening in people's phone calls long before it started to be a political issue. They have that technology, and they can do it. We couldn't very well call it the collateral damage market, but in a sense you know, there's something going on, and these people are not responsible for it. They're, would you say, caught in the middle. FD: Yeah, well, the reasonable people are always caught in the middle, caught in the middle of a lot of machinations, and a lot of which I'm sure we don't know about. That makes me paranoid, and who was it that says sometimes we're not paranoid enough. I think that's probably true. SK: You're not paranoid if they really are after you. FD: And they are, Steve, they're after you. SK: But I have my tin foil hat, Frank. Takes care of a lot of things. FD: I'm wearing my tin foil underwear right now. It's a lacy little number, and you're receiving signals from somewhere. Sorry [laughs]. Q: How would you say your writing has evolved over the years? Has your writing gotten more angry or softer over the years? SK: First thing that crossed my mind when you said how's my writing evolved, I say probably I know two or three thousand more words than I did when I was 24, so my vocabulary's improved a little bit. No, I'm not as angry as I used to be, because I'm not 25 anymore, I'm sixty. That'll kick your ass every time. There's an Elvis Costello song that says "I used to be angry now I'm just amused," or something like that. And I'm not amused, but there's a little more despair in some of the works than there used to be. In that sense, "The Mist" is actually a fairly mature work in that it's darker than some of the other stuff. I'm still just trying to tell good stories, and find a way to do that and not repeat myself, and not fall into a rut and furnish it, and find new ways to do things. And I guess that's it. FD: Well, he's getting less angry as he gets older. I'm getting more and more pissed off. I always had this sunny optimist in me. He's just getting a little beat up lately. You know, when I was younger I always had this notion that we can pretty much work anything out. But I've realized as I get older that that takes some goodwill on the part of the people who are doing the talking, or not doing the talking, as the case may be. And it's just making me kind of angrier. SK: If you get his emails… FD: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I'll rant. I'll rant on occasion. I don't think there's anything we can't work out, but we seem to be determined not to. And in a way that kind of feeds back into "The Mist" as a story. I'm clinging to hope, but it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. I'm stuck in the middle of that argument that Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman had at the mess hall table: is hope a good thing or is it just stupid?  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" Q: What was the weirdest story Mr. King has written? 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. 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? 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.  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" Q: You had mentioned your dissatisfaction with the "splat pack." I was curious how you feel about horror film making in general these days? 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. SK: I just drew on my childhood, man, just drew on my childhood. |