Catching Up With... Frank Darabont

Paste: Not to put Stephen King down, but you seem to get him better than he gets himself when it comes to screenwriting from his own stories.
Frank Darabont: (laughing) Well, thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment. I do get Stephen. I love his voice as an author. He’s a master storyteller. I think what people sometimes do forget when trying to adapt his work is how very character driven his stuff is. No matter how potentially wacky the premise of any given story is, at the core of it is a character or a group of characters you can really take believably and seriously. So when I go after one of his stories to adapt it for the screen that’s what I’m responding to. The Mist, for example, yes, there are some crazy creatures in it, but that’s the icing on the cake. The cake itself, the meat and marrow of it, are those characters. He’s telling a very compelling, human story. It’s not about the monsters so much. It’s about how people react and how they either rise to an occasion or turn against one another when the rules are taken away. As our lead character says, when the machines no longer work and you can’t dial 911 and you throw people in the dark and you scare the hell out of them, how do they react? When that veneer of civilization is taken away? It’s this Lord of the Flies kind of aspect to the story that I always find compelling. If you forget the characters—Stephen’s great strength as a storyteller are his characters—all you’re left with are the trappings then, aren’t you? The fur and the fangs. The horror stuff that surrounds what he’s really doing. And if his films have failed in the past creatively, I think it’s for that reason.

P: In The Mist, there’s a big fog surrounding a supermarket where most of the film takes place. What’s interesting is how some of the scariest stuff is going on inside the supermarket away from the creatures. Tell me about that.
Darabont: That was the thing I was most excited about. I think my favorite horror films have had this subversive intention of telling not exactly the story that is on the surface. It has another agenda. And what I loved about Steve’s stories and this particular movie is it’s not about the monsters outside, it’s about the monsters inside. People are put into a pressure cooker of fear. How do they react? Do they turn against one another? That’s why I love the genre. The films that I’ve long embraced, as a fan, are the ones that always have something under the surface like that. Night of the Living Dead is a particular favorite of mine, the original black and white by George Romero.

P: I was reading about how you would shoot the scenes all in one shot, with more of a reality feel to it.
Darabont: I wanted to jump out of my comfort zone and try a whole different approach to what I do. I felt that more immediate process would translate to that same kind of sense on screen.

P: What is it about horror? Is it something you want to do more of?
Darabont: It’s always the human journey in the story I’m attracted to. Shawshank and The Green Mile provided that. I would love to dabble in a lot of genres, as long as the tale is worth telling. Yes, I’ve always loved horror. I can’t even explain why. From earliest memory the things that really turned me on even as a five-year-old kid were those old Universal monster movies on the Saturday matinee on the TV. It’s what I call the literature of the cinema of the fantastic. Where the imagination is stretched, whether it’s Rod Serling or whether it’s the old Universal monsters. That’s always been a special love of mine.

There’s another Stephen King piece I’m thinking of doing that’s called The Long Walk. He wrote it under the Richard Bachman pen name. It’s about this bizarre event where once a year they take all these young boys, around high school age, and they start walking. It’s a televised event, and they have to keep walking. And if you slow down beyond a certain point or if you collapse they leave you. The winner is the survivor. It’s a very weird, very character-driven, ultimately compelling and revealing piece. There’s a lot of metaphor wrapped up in that particular story.

The thing I’m really hoping that moves ahead is my adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451. It’s looking good. But you never really know until you’re on the set saying action and cut. And right now the [writer’s] strike is, unfortunately, throwing a lot of things into question. ‘Cause you can’t really plan things.

P: And we should tell the people that have read the story [The Mist] they may be a bit surprised by the ending.
Darabont: I hope so! And I hope they’ll be pleased by it. Steve King was. Even he himself has said, “You know you’re going to have to figure out an ending to the story because I never did.” I had this ending in mind for about 10 years. He wrote me an e-mail which I saved. (laughing) And I will never erase. He said, “Wow, I love your ending. If I had thought of it I would have used it.” Which was a tremendous endorsement because he’s Stephen King. He’s the master. He’s the din. He’s the dude.