FRANK DARABONT THRILLED BY HORROR

Director Frank Darabont directs in the genre he’s always loved for The Mist.

Frank Darabont and Stephen King began their long association in 1994 when he directed King’s novel The Shawshank Redemption, the story of two prisoners bonding and then The Green Mile about the lives of two guards on death row leading up to possibly an innocent man’s execution.

The Mist was a long time coming for Darabont who is a fan first and foremost of King’s writing. He read the novel at 20 years old and dreamed of making the movie one day. He talks about how his words spoke to him.

“It’s subversive in the best sense. It’s subversive in a way that the best horror is. You think you’re getting a story about monsters but you’re not really. You’re getting a story about the human condition and what I love is King’s examination of people under pressure, and people in a pressure cooker of fear and what that does to us when the veneer of civilization is stripped aside. Do people turn against one another. Do they pull together? What mistakes do they make well intentioned or otherwise. How does fear give rise to extremism, etc. I mean there’s some pretty potent stuff.”

Frank says he was always thrilled by horror movies ever since he was a little boy and the passion for being scared hasn’t gone away.

“I still do. I have a monster under my bed. Doesn’t everybody? I got monsters in my reading room too. I got a cabinet full of them, all my childhood pals are in there, all these monster figures. I’ll go in there and listen to some old jazz and have a glass of wine and hang out with my childhood buddies. I’ve got vintage posters all over the house of all the movies I grew up loving. This is a genre I’ve loved since my earliest memory. I remember at the age of four, the thing I got most excited about was when a movie like Frankenstein would come on TV on a Saturday matinee. That’s what I was always drawn too.”

When the writer’s strike ends, Frank will begin working on the screenplay for another famous novel Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, as well as direct. It is rumored he will reunite with Green Mile star Tom Hanks in the role of Guy Montag, the book burning fireman.