Interviews:

Clive Barker - mastermind !!

This December marks the coming of a much anticipated and much deserved new book from Clive Barker. The release of "Incarnations" (a book of Clive's plays containing "The History Of The Devil", "Frankenstein In Love", and Colususs") is sure to spark a cord in the hearts and mind of all the fans that have been asking, "when are they gong to publish Clive's plays". In the circle where fans and fanatics alike, are digging deeper in the well to scavenge some unread tidbit of Clive info that they have not read before, this is beyond welcoming news. We talked with with Clive concerning the release of the new book, his films and future plans.

When you wrote the plays for The Dog Company, how much involvement did the other players have with the writing?

"Not all three of these plays were written for The Dog Company. Colussus was written for a summer theatre school, In the case of History Of The Devil and Frankenstein In Love, it really depended on the project. Devil was written with quite a lot of involvement. It got changed a lot and developed in the rehearsal process. If memory serves, I think the material underwent quite a few changes as a consequence of the actors suggestions and contributions.
Did you write specific roles for the actors?

"Yes, Devil was certainly written for Doug Bradley in mind for the devil,other roles were written with other performers in mind. Obviously what you are constantly trying to do is play to peoples strengths. Frankenstein In Love was slightly different, in the sense that it wasn't a play that I directed, it was directed by a man named Malcolm A Woods, who is now dead, but he was very, very good and a very opinionated director. He was an obsessive and he had a very clear vision of what the play should be. We had quite a few arguments about it actually. One of the things that I've done in "Incarnations" is restored to it's complete form of the play as I originally intended it. He performed it with a number of cuts,some of which I thought were detrimental to the material. So I actually put all of it back in place.
"Colussus" is currently under production in Holland, are there any plans to produce any other plays here or abroad?
"There has been a lot of talk about other plans, and one of the reasons I am publishing these plays is to encourage people to do them. The plays are invitations in a way for people to come along and bring them life on the stage. It was very important to me that the plays were published and that they attract directors, producers, actors, and designers to come and make their own individual mark on them.
The Green Company in Chicago, adapted "In The Flesh" and "Son Of Celluloid" for the stage, are they planing to do any more of your work?

" Steve Pickling and his people. Yes, Steve has moved on to another theatre . I think it is absolutely their desire to do that. I saw "In The Flesh", I didn't see, regrettably, "Son Of Celluloid"."
What do you miss about having The Dog Company around?
"Huge amounts. I miss the on going arguments. Powerfully held debates about powerfully held opinions. One of the things that happens when you have that kind of group is that you are constantly embroiled in the sea of opinions, which can be very good sometimes and in other senses destructive. One of the things that I enjoy about writing the novels is that I am not involved in the debate about every word that I put down on the page. When you are writing for actors and your writing for a company that already existed, there are a lot of things that you have to factor in (what peoples strengths are, their weaknesses, what people prolifics are). Some of that is very good because it challenges you to find creative ways
through narrative. Some of it is not so good because it is destructive to the freedom of the flow of your imagination, so the things I miss are the things I don't miss. There's always the companionship that's wonderful to have, but it was a time in our lives which we've all moved from. Oliver Parker is now (he is directing Lawerence Fishburne in a film of "Othello"). Doug Bradley, of course, has gone on to his many fine wonderful things. A number of the other performers from the plays are very successful actors in England. So we have all gone our various ways."
How do you feel about "The Forbidden" and "Salome" films being released on video?

"I think it's wonderfully! these are home movies, they are movies that were made in people's cellars and people's front rooms, with a lot of passion and no money. I think they are interesting little films, almost a thing profetic about them in a sense, particularly in "The Forbidden" the atmosphere of dread and anxiety that hangs over the movie and obviously the erotic elements and the nails in the nail board. These definitely prefigure that what we see later in the "Hellraiser" movies. I think they are an interesting artifact, and I am glad they have found their way to video. Just for the average film go-er, they wouldn't mean a whole heap. For people who are really familiar with my whole mythology and my approach to things I think they are an interesting piece of insight as to how these images and ideas developed over the years."
Out of all your writing, how did you come about to adapting "The Last Illusion" as the feature film "Lord Of Illusions"?
"I was looking to do a D'Amour movie, and "The Last Illusion" seemed the most manageable of the fiction that dealt with D'Amour. It would be way beyond what would be plausible in cinema to really try and turn "Great And Secret Show" " into film. I just think that you would have to compromise the material horribly, my approach was that I wanted to do something about D'Amour, he is an interesting character, so why not just go for the story which seems manageable."
Do you feel that you had more control with this film than you had with "Nightbreed"?

"Absolutely.Orders of magnitude more controlled. There were some minor disagreements between myself and the studio, but they were very minor. The movie that you see on the screen, for better or worse, is the movie that I wanted to make. By the way did you see the review in Fangoria?"
Yes, of course.
"It was really nice. She really responds to the fact that the movie makes references to a lot of other movies. She's right. She points out the places of reference neatly .That's part of the fun of the movie I think."
What are some of the references?
"Maybe it's best that you look at the film. I don't want to spoil your viewing of the picture. If I go into it in too much detail I am afraid that I will take the edge off the fun of seeing It. But It is certainly a picture where I try to make reference to a lot of film noire traditions and a lot of horror movie traditions as well.I tried to mingle the two."
Anything specific?
"The obvious thing, and it's something that's in the books as well, that Harry is from that classic mold of a troubled detective. A guy that is not very happy with his life, with his personal life, or with anything. He wants to live a more normal life but he cannot. Obviously in a Chandler book or Hammet book this would be what sort of Marlowe or Sam Spade would be drawn to, would be a much more secular and not supernatural darkness. Harry is drawn to something much more out of the ordinary, but the process is still the same. These are men that are trying to live relatively normal lives but just cannot."
Would you ever consider old characters, such as Cha' Chat or Father Hess, for sequels?
"Not inconceivable. I think it would be very cool to do that at some point. Again, I don't want to kind of curse the notion of the sequel. Let's move actively where the picture is going well and then lets see. Three months from now, we might want to have this conversation again, when we can see how the movie has done. It cost so little it doesn't have to do a lot of business to get into profit, but it still does have to do business. So we have to see if it works or not.
How about the character Tesla Bombeck?
"If I were to take any story out of "Everville" or "Great And Secret Show" and follow it through in movie form, I would say
that it would be Tesla's story. The fact is that you can't tell that breadth of a story in a movie. You might want to take one strand of it, and if you had any strand of it I think it would be Tesla's story. I think Tesla is a really interesting character. Having said that, my immediate follow up is I still think that it is pretty unlikely just because it is, very ,very difficult to turn a book of that scale, books of that scale, and remember we haven't finished telling that story yet, into the space of
a regular movie, you certainly don't want to do a t.v. series because what we are seeing in the mini-series problem, and "Weaveworld" is slightly easier because it's a single book, but you couldn't turn three books the length of "Great And Secret Show" into a mini-series."
Given that this is the largest scale movie that you've made, how much bigger would you like to go?
"Oh, I'm always willing to spend someone else's money. I'm up for it. When you actually see the amounts of money that I've put on the screen these days, and my imagination is able to conceive of some very large things. I would love to be able to get some of the funds that are available to the film-makers who make the big action movies. I have great ambitions where that is concerned, but obviously there's a trade off and that's the problem. Making a movie that costs a lot, your going to have a lot of people looking over your shoulders saying "Oh, I don't think I want you to do that". So that's the trade off you need to look at. I'm very interested, passionately interested ,in making a science fiction movie, making an epic for the screen. I very much want to do that!"
We really enjoyed the film.
"That's great to hear, I certainly feel that this is closer to the experience of reading a Clive Barker book than anything that has been made before. A couple of people have said that it's the most successful adaption so far, and I feel that's essentially true. One of the changes that you have to make is that it's a thirty page short story going to be turned into an almost two hour movie, there has got to be expansion. So the things that you can't use because of special effects, now you find that you can expand that character and situations. I'll give you an example, a clear example. Swann is killed and the book is about Harry watching over the body, I wanted to kill Swann in front of a full audience of people. I wanted to have the body shown in front of all these people and that was going to be a big deal, just because he died and also in terms of the way it would strike an audience wathing it. It became very important that this become a high point in the rhythm of the story. One of the things that happens for horror movie audiences, the story has a rhythm based upon thrill and scares. So what you can do is structure things, like this huge set I built that was going to be Swann's death. One of the things that drives the changes that you have in movies, you tell the stories with a different rhythm, to the way that you would tell them if you were writing. One of the things that writing allows you to do is to get inside people's skulls and get inside characters to tell what their feeling from the inside out . Movies work from the outside in, and so you are dealing primarily with the way that people appear, with their superficies. You have to structure the story a different way that way, because you can't have one period of introspectual characters talking about their thoughts. You can do that in Scandinavian movies, or anything sub titled, but you can't do that with a popular movie that is designed to be played to a broad audience."

©
Stephen Dressler c/o
Bent-Dress Production
P.O. Box 128
Jenison, MI 49428
USA

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