Frank Darabont: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Frank Darabont.


FRANK DARABONT GOES THE DISTANCE
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the December 1999/January 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.

Frank Darabont was born January 28, 1959 in a French relocation camp, the son of Hungarian refugees. After moving to the U.S., the family lived in several different cities, before finally settling in Los Angeles in 1971, when Darabont was 12. A voracious reader from an early age, Darabont was especially drawn to fantasy and horror stories, as well as classics by such writers as Dickens. While a student at Hollywood High, Darabont was active in the theater department, and this soon blossomed into a love of film. Following graduation, Darabont skipped college and started at the bottom of the ladder on low budget film crews, learning the craft while working as a P.A., set dresser and gofer.

In 1983, Darabont directed his first film, a short based on a Stephen King short story entitled The Woman in the Room. The relationship with King, who granted the fledgling filmmaker the story rights for a dollar, would prove to be a fortuitous one for Darabont, who would keep struggling for another four years working on film crews, while continuing to hone his skills as a writer. The persistence paid off, with his first produced credit A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors in 1987. From there, Darabont penned two more horror pics, the remake of the classic The Blob (1988) and The Fly II (1989). Although he was now making a living as a screenwriter, Darabont longed to step back behind the camera and make a feature. After cutting his teeth directing two made-for-TV movies (Buried Alive and Til Death Us Do Part), Darabont made what many feel was the greatest feature film debut of the decade.

When The Shawshank Redemption hit screens in 1994, it took everyone by surprise, especially everyone in Hollywood. Based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, it told the story of a friendship between two convicts (Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins) in a maximum security prison over a period of 30 years. A straightforward drama with none of King's trademark supernatural or horror elements in sight, the film was nominated for a total of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor. Shawshank left audiences around the world spellbound, asking themselves "Who is this Darabont guy, and where did he come from?" There was no doubt that a major new filmmaker had arrived.

Darabont waited five more years before he stepped behind the camera again, however. His additional credits during this period include penning several episodes of the acclaimed Young Indiana Jones Chronicles for TV, co-authorship of the screenplay for Kenneth Branagh's unfortunate retelling of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), the cable TV film Black Cat Run in 1998 and uncredited re-writes on several high-profile films, most notably Steven Spielberg's masterpiece Saving Private Ryan (1998).

Darabont's venture back behind the camera proves the filmmaking genius that brought Shawshank to life was no flash in the pan. The Green Mile is quite simply the best film of 1999, and the one to beat at this year's Oscars. Many who feel that Darabont deserved a writing or directing statuette in '94, might well see their wishes come true with this modern day classic. The Green Mile is based on another Stephen King novel, this time a serialized group of books that told the story of one Paul Edgecomb (played in the film by Tom Hanks), a prison guard at Cold Mountain Penitentiary in 1935. Edgecomb is head guard on the pen's death row, nicknamed "the green mile" for the color of its floors. When a gigantic black man named John Coffey (played brilliantly by newcomer Michael Clarke Duncan) convicted of murdering twin girls arrives on the mile, his childlike demeanor doesn't strike Edgecomb as that of a killer. Edgecomb investigates the man's case on his own, and comes to discover not only might John Coffey not be guilty of murder, but that he carries a gift deep inside him, the likes of which humanity has never seen before. The Green Mile is world-class filmmaking straight down the line. The cinematography, editing, production design, writing, direction and acting from the fine ensemble cast which includes James Cromwell, Barry Pepper, Jeffrey de Munn, Bonnie Hunt, David Morse, Patricia Clarkson and Gary Sinise, are all seamless. The Warner Bros. release opens December 12. This is a film that will stay with you long after the final fade out.

Frank Darabont sat down recently in a Century City hotel suite after an exhausting three day press junket. In spite of his fatigue, Darabont offered up an easy smile and warm handshake, and became increasingly energized as he talked about his new film.

I haven't seen a film that has affected me this much since L.A. Confidential (1997).
Frank Darabont: It's interesting that you should mention that. It's one of my favorite films, and I actually watched it quite a bit before I started shooting The Green Mile. I loved the way Curtis Hanson shot those scenes. He's an old-fashioned filmmaker in the best sense of the word.

Both of those films, and Shawshank, were so wonderful because they took their time! They're all anti-MTV school of filmmaking, which is very refreshing to see. It was like pages turning in a book.
The filmmakers that I admire so much...most of them are dead: Buster Keaton, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra would be at the top of that heap. William Wellman, William Wyler...those guys.

What would you favorite films be from each of those guys?
Let's see...Capra: It's a Wonderful Life (1946), one of my all-time favorites. Buster Keaton: The General (1927), an awesome piece of filmmaking. Ford: My Darling Clementine (1946). Wellman: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Wyler: The Big Country (1958). Billy Wilder, Stalag 17 (1953), hands down.

How about modern-day directors?
Well, Spielberg, that's a no brainer. I'd have to pick Schindler's List (1994) as my favorite of his films. What a journey that was, and a theme that really sparked me, that I'm continually drawn to...issues of human potential. I love Scorsese. With Goodfellas (1994) alone, we should probably hand him the keys to the Ferrari and say "Here, you the man!" James Cameron, I think possesses a virtuosity that's rare, and is a much better writer than people give him credit for. This man knows how to tell a screen story like nobody's business. I'm leaving a lot of people out, I know. I hope I don't piss them off. (laughs) It's not intentional!

Really you've named recent directors whose style is very much a throwback to the older guys you just named.
That's true, probably because I'm a throwback. I'm a dinosaur. (laughs)

I heard you wanted to turn The Green Mile into a film after only reading the first book in the series.
Yeah. I actually flew to Colorado to see Steve King after I read it, that's how much I loved it. The genesis of it was, during an otherwise innocuous phone conversation Steve and I were having one day, he out of nowhere said "I've been thinking about this story, and I think you'd be great for it. I know you don't want to make another prison movie, but let me just tell you this idea." And he gave me a very brief thumbnail description of The Green Mile. I was so intrigued by this idea that I said 'If you ever sit down and write this thing, give me first crack at it.' Six months or so later, the first book arrives in the mail. I got a week or two sneak peek at it before it hit the stores. I read that first volume and thought 'Oh! Here I go! I'm back in the joint again!" (laughs) I've been a huge fan of Steve's since high school. I've read everything he's published and a few things he hasn't and I can sense it when he's speaking so to my heart. So I jumped on a plane to Colorado, to visit him on the set of The Shining (TV version), which he was executive producing and my friend Mick Garris was directing. It was being shot at the Stanley Hotel, which is where Steve stayed when he got the original idea for the book. So I drove up this mountain looking for a job, just like Jack Torrance in The Shining! (laughs) I get there, and there are ghosts everywhere! Hundreds of extras done up in ghoulish make-up, wearing period costumes, and I thought 'I have come home! This is where it all began!'

Because The Shining was the first book of King's that you ever read, right?
Right, I read it in high school. I just thought that this too much delightful synchronicity. I walk into the ballroom, and there's Steve King up on the stage in a white tux, leading the band in this great swing tune, shaking his ass like Cab Calloway. He turned around and saw me and said "Frank, what are you doing here?" I grabbed him and said 'I'm here for The Green Mile, and I'm not leaving without it!" (laughs) I'm also happy to say he gave me the rights for our usual fee of a dollar.

I've always felt that Stephen King has been our most underrated American writer.
He's the most Dickens-like of any living writer. He always deals with the themes of humanity. Like Dickens, he's been dismissed by the literary intelligencia of his day, as a populist and therefore not to be trusted and endorsed, because how dare he tell a really entertaining and involving story with a plot! Steve's work will outlive all the critical darlings of today, I can promise you, just like Dickens did. Some people also forget that Dickens was a great fan of the supernatural, and was renowned for his ghost stories.

This is the second film you've done with Castle Rock.
Castle Rock has been a blessing in my life, a boon to my career. It is one of the few places in this business, actually they might be singular in this business in how they view the films they want to make. They lead with their hearts. They're so supportive and afford filmmakers the most precious commodity in this town, which is creative trust, which leads to creative freedom, which leads to one hell of a satisfying experience if you're making a movie for them. You've got some smart people there making decisions based on gut, creative instinct. They're not depending on their marketing department to tell them which films they should make. And if they can't get one of the six movie stars everyone's trying to get, they're willing to make it with Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, bless their hearts.

Tell us about working with Tom Hanks.
I first met Tom at the Oscar nominees luncheon. He was there that year representing Forrest Gump, I was representing Shawshank. I had so admired his work for so many years, and he knocked me out with Gump, so I went up to him and told him so, and he was very complimentary in turn about Shawshank, and said if I ever had anything for him, he'd love for us to work together. So a few years later, after I'd finished the screenplay for The Green Mile, I sent it off to him and he committed to it within 48 hours...There's nothing I can say about Tom as an actor or a person that hasn't been said before. I've been trying to come up with some great smart-ass answer like 'He's a Satanist,' or something. (laughs) He's got so much integrity and so much inherent decency. And what a generous actor, my God. We always try to draw comparisons when someone great comes along, but I think Tom's a real original. He's the Tom Hanks of the 90's. (laughs) By the time all is said and done, people will be saying "He's the Tom Hanks of the 22nd century." Spielberg said to me "He's gonna spoil you," and he was right. Tom shows up for work every day like it's his first job. That might be a boring answer, but it's the truth. Having said that, I have to say that the whole cast down the line was the most generous group of actors I've ever seen. Everyone wanted the other person to look good, too, and wanted the movie to be something special. Which goes to show that the old theory of the more chaos and animosity on the set, the better the movie will be, is bullshit. I think it's just the opposite.

Michael Clarke Duncan is a revelation in this film. Tell us about him.
Finding him was so significant to this film, because if that part was even slightly less than optimal, it wouldn't have worked. I didn't know if there was a guy out there who fit that physical description who was that good. He came to us through a very surprising source: Bruce Willis. I have to credit Bruce and thank him for steering Michael toward this movie. Bruce was a big fan of the books, and was avidly reading them on the set of Armageddon (1998), which Michael was in. Bruce pulled Michael aside and said "Michael, you have to read these, and there's a part in here you have to play." Bruce called us up saying "I'm sending you John Coffey." Bruce as yenta! Bruce as matchmaker! (laughs) Michael not only rose to my hopes, he exceeded them.

The rest of the cast was amazing, too.
I was able to cast my first choice in every single role. I don't know that that's ever happened before. If you get one or two of your first choices in a movie, you're lucky. Getting your first choice in every role is like winning the lottery! I'm a lucky guy.

The other thing I liked is that there are no easy answers at the end.
As there isn't in life. I love the ambiguity of the ending, and I was pleased to be able to make a film where I wasn't made to force-feed the audience a conclusion to draw. At the end of the day, I call this movie "the world's longest Twilight Zone episode. It's got this wonderful sort of monkey's paw irony to it that is very tasty to me. I'm really looking forward to hearing people's interpretations of the film. That's part of what's exciting about making movies.

Let's talk about your background.
I was born in France in a refugee camp. My parents left Budapest in 1956 when the Russian tanks rolled in. They snuck over the border to Yugoslavia, where they met in a relocation center. I was born three years later. I have an older half-brother, and half-sister, both of whom I'm very close to. Talk about a cinematic sequence: my mother had all her possessions and this little child, my sister, that she's dragging on a little toy sled through the snow while there are squadrons of soldiers in the woods shooting at anything that moves! It was a really courageous thing she did. My first memories are when we were living in Chicago. Then the folks split, and both came west. Mom located here, and my old man located to the Bay area. I bounced back and forth through grade school, then settled her permanently once junior high started, so I feel like a native.

How did you first fall in love with film?
For me it was a continual and cumulative process of being transported to other places by great storytellers. Not just in the movies, but in literature as well. Let me list some of my gods: Dickens, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, Mark Twain, Richard Matheson, and Harlan Ellison whose book I am Legend really redefined an entire genre, and Steve King credits as one of his biggest influences. The Universal monster films were big influences on me, as well. One moment in particular stands out to me. I saw George Lucas' first feature THX-1138 (1971). It's so underrated and overlooked. One of the glossy newsstand magazines did their "100 best sci-fi films of all time" things, another one of these pointless lists. When I see a list that Tron (1982) is on, and THX isn't, it makes me want to kill somebody! This movie is one of the most amazing, brilliant sociological statements I've ever seen. I was 12 years old when I went to see, not that, but The Brotherhood of Satan (1971), a cheesy horror movie with L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin, to just show you how badly THX was dumped by its studio. My mind was so blown when I saw THX-1138. It really spoke to me. I was so impressed with it, I sat through Brotherhood of Satan again, so I could watch THX again! I think my mother had the cops out looking for me by then! (laughs) But that's when I realized for the first time that movies don't just happen by magic, that there was a storyteller at work there. That there was somebody pulling the strings, whose perspective on life and whose world view was stamped on every frame of that film. I remember thinking 'If I could get up and walk up to the screen and stick my head into the world of that movie, I could look of to the side of the camera, and see whoever the hell that is!' I didn't know who George Lucas was, but I knew that I wanted to be that storyteller. So being able to work with George later on (on Young Indiana Jones) was full-circle, it was amazing.

After graduating Hollywood High, you skipped college and went to work as a P.A.?
It wasn't quite that clean a jump. I didn't realize that if you were willing to be a P.A., that there are ten people that will hire you today! (laughs) To me, Hollywood was this vast Olympus that was impenetrable. It took me three years to get a gig as a P.A. on a picture called Hell Night (1981), with Linda Blair. At the end of 1980, I remember this very clearly because John Lennon had just been killed, another big touchstone in my life. I got a call from a guy I went to high school with named Steve Ringel, who was going to University of Redlands. He said "They're shooting a movie out here and I hear they're hiring P.A.'s. I remember that you wanted to be in the movie business, so maybe they'll hire you if you drive out here." So as I sit here, at the end of the century, having directed The Green Mile, let me just point out that Steve Ringel is responsible for all this! If he hadn't been thoughtful enough to pick up the phone and call me, who knows what I'd be doing for a living! So Steve, if you're reading this, thank you! So I hopped in the car with a couple friends of mine, drove two hours to Redlands, finally found the set. We jump out of the car and say 'Hi! We're here to be P.A.s!' I didn't even know what "P.A." stood for at that point, although later I found out that it stood for "pissant." (laughs) "Production Assistant," for those that don't know...It was there that I first met Chuck Russell, who was line producing that film. The following year he hired me again on my second gig as a P.A., on The Seduction (1982). It was on that shoot where I became friendly with the costume designer and showed her this little spec script I had written for MASH, which obviously never went anywhere, but she liked it, and passed it on to Chuck, unbeknownst to me. Chuck read it, and called me after the film wrapped, and said "Let's talk. I'm looking for a writing partner." And we're great friends to this day. So Chuck and I started writing, and I moved out of the P.A. business into set design and construction, and that was my film school. I just tried to absorb the process through my skin. Then, in 1986, Chuck had the opportunity to direct Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and we rewrote the script that they had. I got paid scale, got to join the writer's guild. We did the rewrite in 11 days, and three weeks later Chuck was on the set calling "Action." And I've never really looked back from there.

Let's talk about The Old Woman in the Room, your first film.
I was 20 years old and wrote Steve King a letter. He said 'Okay kid, go ahead.' He gave me the option for a buck. He's been known to do this for young filmmakers. It's his way of giving back. So I spent the next three years making that film with my friends. Steve was very happy with the film. A few years later, in '86, I asked him for the rights to Shawshank, thinking that would be my first picture. So he gave me that option as well, for a buck. Then I waited until my ambitions as a writer caught up with my actual skill to adapt Shawshank. I did the script in two months, took it to Castle Rock, and we were off to the races. There was some conversation with my agent once I was done with the script, who felt that we could get a bidding was going with the studios. I didn't want to do that because I had a feeling about Castle Rock. I didn't know a soul there, but after I'd seen what Rob Reiner had done with Stand by Me (1986), I thought it was the most intelligent adaptation of the most unlikely Stephen King story, that was ever filmed. Its success also allowed Rob and his partners to form Castle Rock. I thought, if anybody gets this, it'll be them. I also knew that there were certain studios in town where, if I took it there, it would be totally re-written into some testosterone fest. You know, kickboxing behind bars or something. (laughs) Luckily my instinct about Castle Rock was right. They really are my home.

How was it working with Morgan Freeman?
Very no nonsense. No monkeying around. He showed up, and he was ready to work. He made it look so easy, the really good ones always do. I had the same experience with Tom. No muss, no fuss. Roll the cameras and let me break your heart. (laughs) Cool!

What happened with Frankenstein?
I think Ken Branagh will probably think I'm after him now (laughs). We've all heard stories about their work didn't turn out the way they wanted when it hit the screen. This is my prime example of a movie I wrote going down the shitter. In my opinion, I think Frankenstein was one of the best things I ever wrote. Easily equal to The Green Mile. And that wasn't the movie that Ken Branagh wanted to make. He wanted to make something else. What he made I thought was a dunderheaded, ham-fisted mess. But I wasn't the director on that, so...I felt like he tried to reinvent the wheel every step of the way. It's so dumbed down. It's so bombastic, that I was just flabbergasted. And let's describe Mary Shelley's novel: very understated, very smart, conceptually brilliant. I don't know what happened there. Had I known how it was going to turn out, I never would have done it. My all-time favorite book is Shelley's Frankenstein.

What about your favorite music?
Beethoven's ninth symphony is, I think, one of the great reasons we have for being alive. It is so sublime, so touched by God. I'm wild about Mozart. Bach has certainly woven his spell. Those are the big three, like G.M., Ford and Chevy. (laughs) Then there's the Beatles, of course. I'm also deeply steeped in 20's, 30's and 40's jazz. Everything in that era is wonderful. Fats Waller, Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong, the Mills Brothers, Cab Calloway, they're all great. Louis is the king! I got to use some of my favorite tunes in this picture, including "Stardust," one of my favorite songs.

Any advice for first-time directors?
I went to Steven Spielberg before I started shooting Green Mile, because it had been a while since I directed. I asked him his advice. So he looked at the ceiling for a minute, and you know what he said? "There's this pair of shoes you should buy, they're called Etonic Summits. Buy yourself a pair of those. You'll thank me!" (laughs) So I bought a pair, and they were great. They were my good luck charm. It was like crawling up the mountaintop to ask the wiseman the meaning of life and having him say "Don't forget to floss." (laughs) But in all seriousness, the toughest thing for me my first time out was knowing I could rely on my instincts, that they'd do right by me and carry me through. The self-doubt creature in you never goes away, so all you can ever do is trust your instincts. They're there for a reason, and usually your first instinct is the correct one, so don't second guess yourself to death.