The Mist: Director Frank Darabont
By: Kara Warner
The talented, engaging and exuberant director Frank Darabont, waxes poetic on the special themes in his “Mist” as opposed to those in his other films; why it took so long for “Mist” to hit the big screen and why Stephen King is the master of all storytellers.
BD: “The Mist” is almost a flip-side of “Shawshank Redemption” in that “Shawshank” was about what happens when you maintain hope and “Mist” is about the consequences of losing it. Could you talk about this broad idea of “hope” and what it means specifically in your work?
Darabont: It’s definitely been a thematic pivot-point in all my work, though I’m not feeling all that sanguine thus far this century. That definitely is expressed here. I don’t think the culture of fear is doing us any favors, and that’s what I found particularly interesting about this story. I mean, it was always in there but it seemed like a timely thing to bring out.
BD: What is this bond between you and Stephen King?
Darabont: I just love his work! I think the man is a master storyteller. He’s a fantastically muscular writer. He’s the reason horror went into the mainstream in the mid-to-late 70s. The stuff he’s done in the hands of lesser writers winds up just being ghoulies for the effect of ghoulies. He’s a very subversive writer in that sense, he always brings a very human component to what he’s doing. His characters are his enormous strength. What it boils down to is the stuff he writes is something I’m attracted to as a fan, as a reader, and on occasion it’s something that sparks my desire to get behind the camera again.
BD: What is it that lends his work to being adapted to films, often successfully?
Darabont: You’ll notice that the films that have not been particularly good adaptations are the ones that forgot what Steve’s greatest strength is. He’s really a character-driven writer. The films that have thought to ignore that, it never occurred to them that that’s really the point of the story. All they really wound up with is the trappings of the genre, those are the one’s that haven’t been all that successful. The really good ones, “Stand By Me”, “The Dead Zone”, “Misery”… these have really focused on that key element that makes his writing so good.
BD: And where does your love of horror come from?
Darabont: It’s been there from earliest memories. It’s like being born with green eyes, you love the literature of the fantastic, whether that’s on film or in books. That was the case with me. The thing that always got me the most excited were the old Universal horror movies. They were playing on television, during the Saturday matinees back then. I remember my mother taking me into a Thrifty once when I was five. She’d just gotten her paycheck and she wanted to buy me some toy. There were all these little inexpensive toys, plastic helicopters and stuff. The thing I wanted was the Aurora monster model of the Creature From the Black Lagoon! (laughs) I was too young to even build the darn thing, but for some reason that’s what always attracted me. I love the genre, it’s a subversive genre when people use it as an excuse to talk about things that are relevant to the human condition. Serling did that particularly well.
BD: You’ve been working on “The Mist” for years now. Do you think it’s more relevant now than when you first started working on it?
Darabont: I think it’s more relevant now than ever! I don’t think it was ever not relevant, ‘cause human nature is pretty consistent. This stuff goes back to Greek tragedy, but it has become very relevant because we are in a culture of fear and we are seeing people making, I think, mistakes as a result.
BD: There’s an undercurrent of anti-militarism in this story. The military is set up as kind of the villain of the piece.
Darabont: Not to be confused with not supporting the troops. But the people who run things I don’t trust them as far as I can spit canal water, man! Whether they’re military authorities, political authorities, religious authorities, I just don’t trust authority. I’m considerably an iconoclast in that sense. I don’t think they’re ever up to any good, the people running things.
BD: This film is shot very differently from your other films. Will you stick with this catch-it-on-the-fly multi-camera style, or will you go back to the more painterly approach?
Darabont: I’m sure I will go back to it, but I have to say I was really delighted to do this. I found this a pretty exhilarating approach, and it will probably to some degree inform the films I make in the future… if I’m lucky enough to keep making movies. I think the material will always dictate the style. The material has to inform the approach. I’ve long wanted to try a more ragged approach, a more immediate, in-the moment style to shoot something that infuses energy into it. I thought this material did cry out for that, so I did my homework and directed an episode of “The Shield” last year. Aside from the fact that I love the show and it’s one of my all-time favorite TV shows, it’s extraordinary stuff, it was also a great opportunity to bone up for this. It’s a very improvised approach, there’s nothing planned in advance by me in terms of where the camera’s going to be placed and how something’s going to be shot, which is the real classic approach and how I’ve worked in the past. I refer to that as “classical composition”, it’s like a symphony orchestra playing Beethoven, versus jumping on a stage with some guys and playing jazz! It’s very improvised and in-the-moment. So I would watch what they’re doing on the monitors, both cameras at all times, sometimes even three cameras.
BD: Can you talk about pulling performances out of so many cast members often acting against things that aren’t there?
Darabont: We had very few scenes in the movie that weren’t multiple cast members and a big crowd around them. Our extras in Shreveport, a special mention to them. Really providing a context for the lead actors who would have been acting their Asses off in a vacuum otherwise. Somebody once said that casting well is half the battle, sometimes I feel like it’s all the battle. If you get the right actors in there everybody is working towards the same goal, everybody gets the material, everyone is exceeding… the script is one thing, then there’s the layer of texture the actor is bringing to it. Even if they’re saying the exact words you wrote, it takes on a whole life of its own. Casting well is the thing, man, especially if you’re shooting in 37 days. That’s really important ‘cause these people have to really know what they’re doing and be really good at their jobs and have real chops, and everybody in this cast did. Very interesting thing took place, and it happened on “The Green Mile”, where everybody gets so dialed in and they’re so excited to be there. It’s not just about their work; they’re excited about what the other actors are doing. It’s one of those things where even if they’re not in the scene they’ll come to the set to see what so-and-so is going to do. When they’re that excited to see what the other actors are doing, that’s a tremendous confluence of positive energy on a set. It’s like watching a great team, they want the other people on the team to do well. Then as a director you wind up looking like a really good director. (Laughs)
BD: Has King seen this yet?
Darabont: He has! He loves it. He really loves it. He’s very excited about it. As a matter of fact he’s coming to New York to help publicize the movie which is sort of unheard of for a movie he didn’t have a direct hand in. My favorite memory of this entire experience was the very first preview screening we had with the public in Paramus, New Jersey. He flew in for that, and there’s one moment in the movie where Bill Sadler hits the door… Steve King jumped about 3 feet out of his seat, and as he landed he scrunched way down. (laughs) Scared the hell out of him! And I thought, “I rule.”
BD: This film is really a very Hobbes-ian take on human nature. For you is it more about scary monsters flying around or how human beings devolve under extreme stress?
Darabont: That’s the answer, that’s the reason to make the movie. I’ve been saying from the get-go it’s not really about the monsters outside, they’re just a context. They’re really just a trigger mechanism for the real story, which is, the people inside the market. How people react, how they act, how they conflict, try to pull together, turn against one another. The mistakes they make in this pressure-cooker of fear. That’s what’s really subversive about the story; that it’s not really about those trappings, as you would expect. It’s really about those people. I remember when I wrote the script I thought, “You know, even if there were no monsters in this at all, the story would still work.”
BD: It’s called “Lord of the Flies”
Darabont: Exactly! Or “Monsters are Due on Maple Street”, the great Rod Serling piece. I’ve always loved those studies of people under pressure. Hopefully this is an honorable entry into that lexicon.
BD: They may not have been necessary but you certainly have monsters in spades. Can you talk about the process of creating those creatures that become the mechanisms of fear?
Darabont: They’re a great symbol for the unknown, aren’t they? It’s a great thing to induce fear, the unknown always do. In truth you could do the film without the creatures, but that’s the fun part! That’s the frosting on the cake! If you’re gonna make a movie like this have the fun part too, why not? I’ve always wanted to make a good movie with creatures in it, always wanted to design monsters. First call I made was to Greg Nicotero at KNB Effects whose been a buddy of mine for years and years and we’ve talked about this a lot. I said, “hey, I think we’re on, let’s design some monsters!” So Greg spearheaded this effort, brought Bernie Wrightson in, who is a legendary artist in this vein, also a very good friend. Can’t make a movie like this without Bernie, in my opinion. Also Mike Broom, Arnie Simms. It became this brain-trust of trying to design these creatures over a period of months prior to prepping the movie so we had a good lead-in time. It was really tremendous, satisfying fun working in that somewhat Lovecraftian mold, trying to come up with something original that didn’t remind you of someone else’s movie, that didn’t look like someone else’s dragon or dinosaur or spider or whatever. Steve was a little vague, almost generic in his descriptions. They tended to be like, “it’s a spider, it’s a bug”, but how do you make that really unique to what we were doing? That was the challenge, and it was awesome.
