It's that time of year again – time to throw your popcorn into the air, let out a shriek of terror, and peek through the cracks between your fingers. No one could be happier watching those reactions than writer/director Mick Garris, whose partnership with terror monger Stephen King spans twelve years and six horror movies. If you're peeing your pants, he's doing his job.
Garris returns this weekend with Riding the Bullet, an independent production of a King short story. In an exclusive interview with IGN, Garris talked about his friendship with King, his appreciation of David Arquette's dramatic talents, and the kiss that terrified more people than all his films combined.
'The book isn't set in the Sixties,' Garris says, wanting to start by pointing out how different his adaptation is from the master's story. 'That was something I must take credit or blame for.'
What remains is the basic blueprint: a roller coaster-hating teenager named Alan Parker (Jonathan Jackson in the film) finds out that his mother is in the hospital and sets off on a mission to hitch hike to her. When a mysterious stranger picks him up and the two make small talk, Alan realizes that there really is no such thing as a free ride. The stranger offers him a choice: either Alan or his mother must die. Which will he choose?
'The book had been set on the road,' Garris continues, 'and in the middle of nowhere. So that helped as far as the period goes. It also made it difficult to find a location that had a period amusement park, so we had to go to a city that had a pretty deep production base and would also lend itself to portraying Maine in the 1960s. Things were changed because the hitch hiking felt a little bit anachronistic. More than that, it seemed like an era that has not been well served in film, and in this case it was about a character who had a life and death choice to make. It seemed like 1969 was a time when the entire world was faced with that kind of choice. I wanted it to be set in a time where human life was valued more than human possessions and Game Boys and PlayStations and G5s and all of that stuff.'
Garris may not be a huge fan of technology, but he does know what he likes. As an aspiring writer in his youth, he devoured Stephen King's early novels, and even made a pilgrimage to see the author. 'The first time I met him was when I was very young, in line at a science fiction bookstore when he was doing a signing there in the early Eighties,' he laughs. 'But we didn't meet more than just for me to say, 'Thank you Mr. King.'
'Then we met over the telephone during the pre-production of Sleepwalkers,' he continues. 'We had spoken over the phone and he had seen Psycho 4 and had director approval over the film. And so, we didn't meet face-to-face until he came out to shoot his cameo in Sleepwalkers. We had spoken so much over the phone and gotten along well, so when we met it was as if we had known each other. It was a nerve-wracking day because we had Tobe Hooper and Clive Barker and Steve all shooting on that day, and that morning I broke my tooth on some granola. I had to get rushed from the set to my dentist and get a temporary crown, right before I'm supposed to meet Stephen King and shoot his scene.'
Dentistry difficulties aside, Garris' friendship with King has led to their collaboration on that film, The Stand, the television remake of The Shining, Quicksilver Highway, Riding the Bullet and the upcoming Desperation. After all those years, the men trust each other implicitly; so much so that Garris has been able to make such daring casting choices as Rob Lowe playing the mute in The Stand, and the typically goofy Arquette as the wicked driver in Bullet.
'Most people think of him as Dewey from the Scream movies,' Garris says, 'but I had seen some of his more dramatic roles. When I met David I was surprised to find that he's a really shy, really soft-spoken guy, not at all the guy you see on talk shows. He's really serious about his work. He really seemed to get it, and it's so far removed from anything we'd seen him in before that I thought it was a great choice. He thought it was a good opportunity to flex his wings in directions that people hadn't seen before, and I always like casting people against expectations. I think he did a great job.'
Most people would never expect Arquette to be scary, and Garris insists that quality makes him perfect for the role. Surprise people, he says, and the battle is half won. This gets the director on the topic of why he does what he does: to watch people squirm in their seats. When asked which moment made them squirm the most, this veteran of more than fifteen horror projects has a surprising answer.
'The biggest reaction that I've ever seen for anything I've done with an audience was in Sleepwalkers when we find out it's mother and son, they're having a little dance, and then they kiss deeply,' he smiles. 'It was so great to see that, because we went to see it at the Chinese Theatre, which was packed on opening night, and when that happened, to see five hundred people all at the same time go 'Ewww!' It was one of the great experiences of my life as a filmmaker. Not that it's the favorite movie I've ever made; it's probably way down the list. But it was just great, and that's the great thing about a theatrical film. You reach more viewers on television, but you get to have that shared experience in a movie theater.'
Garris loves sharing that experience, and is still inundated with questions about his most beloved pet project, an adaptation of King's epic fantasy tale The Talisman. In 1985, the book was published bearing the words 'Soon to be a major Motion Picture' on the cover; soon after, Garris' name was first linked with the long-in-development project. But even with the success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy displaying the power of the fantasy market, and names like King and Spielberg behind it, he doubts it will ever be made.
'My participation with The Talisman was that Spielberg and (producers) Kennedy/Marshall were going to do it as a feature for years and years and years,' he recalls. 'Finally, Stephen said 'We haven't been able to do it, let's do it for television' and he had a TV script written. They asked me because I had worked with them and King in the past. They wanted me to direct it and re-write it, so I went from scratch with a page one re-write, wrote the four-hour teleplay, and it is still one of my favorite things that I've ever written.
'Everybody really reacted great to it, and then I never heard from the network,' he continues. 'Stephen said, 'Take it to ABC, just one network, and see what happens'. They'd read the script and said they'd get back to me, for weeks I didn't hear a word, and then Kathy Kennedy called and said, 'ABC says they love it but they can't afford it.' Because before you even get to the budget you have Spielberg, Kathy Kennedy, Frank Marshall, Stephen King, (co-author) Peter Straub and me. Plus all the costs of developing the script over the years. And so, on top of that, even without doing the budget on the script, it's a very complicated and difficult screenplay.
'ABC said they couldn't afford it and Spielberg said, 'Well, we'll try to do it as a feature,' he says, shaking his head, 'and I was attached to do that, then Stephen was working with Ehren Kruger on The Ring and wanted to give him a crack at it, then they went to I think three other directors to do it as a feature. I haven't been involved with it since. I would love to see it happen, it's a great book and a great project. There's a perception by people outside the industry that anyone can make whatever they want whenever they want to make it, but opportunities rear their heads and then often get shot down.'
There's been talk of a Talisman curse, but genre fans know better than to count the film out just yet. Perhaps it will be made, perhaps it won't, but one thing appears certain: Mick Garris and Stephen King will be scaring movie audiences with one project or another for many Octobers to come.
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