Lilja's Library (36 page)

Lilja:
Even though everyone is very good, I’m most impressed by the casting of Toby Jones as Ollie. He is perfect. Was he your first choice?  

Frank Darabont:
Toby was not my first choice, but that’s only because I wasn’t yet aware of him. He’s from England and wasn’t well known here at that time (but that’s changing). And I hadn’t yet seen his work in
Infamous
or
Painted Veil
when we started casting last year. But my casting director, Deb Aquila, told me to watch those films immediately because she was crazy for Toby and was convinced he should play Ollie. I watched both films and loved them,
Painted Veil
especially. Toby just shines in both. Of course, now he’d always be my first choice. He’s an extraordinary actor. His Ollie is perfection.  

By the way, are you aware Toby’s father is the great British character actor Freddie Jones? Look him up on IMDb, he’ll blow your mind—he played Mr. Bytes in
The Elephant Man
, among hundreds of other roles. When I first met Toby and realized who his dad is, I totally geeked out. Toby was surprised I knew who his dad is and that I’m such a big fan.  

Lilja:
Now I guess we just have to wait for the Oscar nominations to see how many
The Mist
gets? Both
The Shawshank Redemption
and
The Green Mile
have been nominated, and even though it’s harder for a horror movie to be nominated, there are a lot of actors in
The Mist
who ought to be.  

Frank Darabont:
I appreciate your kind thought, but there’s no way we’ll get any nominations. A low-budget horror movie like ours isn’t even on the Oscar radar screen. I do agree my actors would be deserving of recognition for the work they’ve done—perhaps they’d get that recognition if they’d been in another kind of movie—but not this one.  

Lilja:
Last time we spoke, you mentioned that you might do a limited book version of
The Mist
. Is that still the plan?  

Frank Darabont:
Yes. I’m working on it now and hoping to have it out in time for the DVD release. That would be excellent timing.  

Lilja:
What can you tell me about
The Mist
DVD? What can we expect to find on it, other than the movie?  

Frank Darabont:
We’re discussing those now, but no decisions have been made yet.  

Lilja:
How about a script book of
The Mist
? Like the ones we got for
The Shawshank Redemption
and
The Green Mile
? Any plans for such a book?  

Frank Darabont:
Here’s another Lilja exclusive: the limited will include both Stephen King’s original story and my screenplay. That’s not the way I originally planned it—I always figured I would just present Steve’s story by itself. But suddenly Steve had the idea to include my screenplay too. In fact, he insisted on it—he said he’d only agree to do the book if we included both. He didn’t have to try very hard to convince me. I told him I’d be very honored to be in the same book with him.  

Lilja:
Your next Stephen King movie is
The Long Walk
, right? Where are you with that one now? Is a script written?  

Frank Darabont:
There isn’t a script yet. I plan to write it this year.  

Lilja:
I guess that script will demand a lot if you’re going to succeed in making it into a feature film.
The Long Walk
is one of my favorite books, but you must admit that it’s not the first book you’re thinking of when you think of a Stephen King book being turned into a movie. What got you hooked on that particular book, and aren’t you worried that it’s not doable as a movie?  

Frank Darabont:
What makes
The Long Walk
a great story is how stripped-down and spare it is. Not much plot—just kids walking, talking and dying. It’s a very existential work, Stephen King meets Eugene Ionesco. And that’s what I love about it. It’s small and fascinating and weird, and I think the movie should be too. It’s more of an art house movie the way Steve wrote it. I don’t want to reinvent it or blow it out of proportion to justify it as a big commercial film, which is how they screwed up
The Running Man
. I’m not sure it’s even possible with material like
The Long Walk
. Of course, doing it faithfully means I’d have to do it cheaply—far more cheaply than
The Mist
—but at least I can stay true to what Steve wrote. Perhaps as a cool little film for HBO or Showtime?  

Lilja:
Last time you also mentioned
The Monkey
? Any news on that one?  

Frank Darabont:
I’m hoping to write that script this year too. We’ll see how it turns out. It might make a good theatrical feature. We’ll see.  

Lilja
: Any other King/Darabont collaborations that you can talk about?  

Frank Darabont:
We’re going to have a baby through in-vitro fertilization. No, that’s not true. I’m just messing around. I should know better, because that’s how rumors get started.  

Lilja:
What else are you up to? I guess you might be taking a well-deserved break now that
The Mist
is done.  

Frank Darabont:
Yes, I need it. I’ve never made a movie this quickly. We started prepping the film in January and we finished everything at the end of October—ten months of production from start to finish. (Plus, I did a few months prior to that casting actors with Deb and designing monsters with Nicotero, so maybe twelve months for me in all?) I’m glad I did it, I’m glad I proved I could do it, but I don’t want to do it that way often. It kills you. It’s intense and exhausting. What I learned making
The Mist
is that it’s just as hard making a seventeen million dollar movie as it is making a sixty-seven million dollar film like
Green Mile
. But with a bigger budget, you at least have the additional advantage of time.  

Lilja:
When can we expect a new book from you? I enjoyed
Walpuski’s Typewriter
a lot and would really like another book.  

Frank Darabont:
Thanks! I remember that great review you wrote, it really made my day. Did you also happen to see my short story in the book
Odder Jobs
, the
Hellboy
anthology edited by Chris Golden? My story’s sort of a Twilight Zone-style western called
Brotherhood of the Gun
. I’m proud of that little story, it was tremendously satisfying and fun to do.  

I am working on a few book or short story projects like those right now, but nothing worth mentioning because I don’t know if they’ll ever be finished. Writing prose fiction is a very part-time thing for me, something I do just for enjoyment on the rare occasion that I have spare time from my real job. It’s great writing just for the pleasure of it, with no financial or career objectives attached, or the pressure of a film production involved. But, of course, those pressures tend to get things done. When you’re writing solely for pleasure, things have a way of never getting completed.  

Lilja:
OK, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I enjoyed it! 

**** 

Frank Darabont 

Posted: March 25, 2008  

Lilja:
Hello Frank! I hope everything is well with you.  

Frank Darabont:
Everything is great, thanks for asking.  

Lilja:
So, you know I’m a big fan of
The Mist
.  

Frank Darabont:
Yeah, thank you very much.  

Lilja:
And I’m very happy to see that it’s out on DVD soon. I watched it this weekend, and I have to say…well, I actually watched the black-and-white version…  

Frank Darabont:
Oh, you did, what did you think? Be honest, which one do you like better?  

Lilja:
I actually liked the black-and-white best.  

Frank Darabont:
Ah, excellent.  

Lilja:
It makes the movie a bit darker and more chilling.  

Frank Darabont:
Yes, oh good, I’m glad.  

Lilja:
What kind of reactions have you gotten on the movie? Actually, the DVD isn’t out yet so…  

Frank Darabont:
The DVD is coming out here on the 25th, but for some reason a lot of people have seen it. I handed it out to some friends of mine, like Tarantino and guys like that, and I think the reaction to the black-and-white is bigger than I realized that it was going to be. Everyone is kind of silly excited about it. And the people who have seen it in black-and-white have gotten back to me and their reaction is fantastic. It just tells me it was a pretty good idea to do it that way…for people who enjoy that kind of approach.  

Lilja:
Did you actually plan to release it in black-and-white when you shot it or was it just a bonus that the studio was willing to release it on the DVD?  

Frank Darabont:
Well, I was always…even when we were shooting, even before we were shooting, I knew I was going to shoot it in color obviously, but I was hoping that a black-and-white conversion might be good for the movie. You can never really tell until you’re doing it. I was very pleasantly surprised at how well it did adapt, retimed as a black-and-white film. It was the Coen brothers who gave me the idea, really, because they shot
The Man Who Wasn’t There
in color, but they released it as a black-and-white film. They had retimed it for a black-and-white release and I thought that that looked so good; I thought the same thing might apply to my film. But I think this is the first time anyone has released both versions, both the color and black-and-white versions.  

Lilja:
I hope you’re setting a trend because it was quite a different experience to see it in black-and-white. It was also very nice to have both on the DVD.  

Frank Darabont:
Yeah, it’s a totally different viewing experience, I think, and maybe it’ll be a trend, who knows? We’ll see how this goes over, but my fellow filmmakers are very intrigued by it.  

Lilja:
But I also think it has to be a very special type of movie that can do the transition from color to black-and-white and still be as good or even better.  

Frank Darabont:
Yeah, it totally depends on the movie, I think. It totally depends on the material and the photography.  

Lilja:
When you read reactions to the movie it seems that most fans really like the movie, but it also seems like the ending has divided the fans into two camps: one who really loves it and one who doesn’t like it at all.  

Frank Darabont:
Who hates it. Let’s use the proper word. [laugh] You know, I always knew that it was going to be a very divisive and polarizing ending in that way. I knew that some people would absolutely love it and that some people wouldn’t, but it always felt like the correct ending to me.  

Lilja:
Yes, I agree.  

Frank Darabont:
And there is a part of me that takes great pleasure in the fact that it does divide the audience in that way because it indicates that the movie took the right chances.  

Lilja:
Yeah, because you were actually offered to do it as a big-budget movie if you changed the ending, right?  

Frank Darabont:
Yes, I had someone offering me thirty million dollars to make the movie on that basis, and I remember asking this guy, “What do you think the ending should be?” and he said, “I don’t know.” [laugh]  

Lilja:
[laugh]  

Frank Darabont:
And I said, “I don’t know either.” This is what makes sense to me. I suppose I could come up with some bullshit ending just to honor that desire, but on the other hand I think I’m a little too old to sell out that way. I see the movie in my head and I feel I have to pursue that, so I went and made it for Bob Weinstein for almost half the budget.