Mick Garris - A Guy You Wanna Know

By: R. Burke

Sunday March 19, 2006

He's entertaining, he's genuine, and he makes you feel like you could be his best friend (or at least a distant relative). The man behind The Masters Of Horror talks.
Mick Garris is a blast to hangout with. It's true. He's exudes a wealth of talent that peppers conversations with nifty character voices, cool sound effects, and spontaneous rock and roll shouts all rapped inside droll observational quips.


I mean, this guy's sung rock and roll, performed voice-overs, created numerous documentaries, hosted his own TV show, has written and directed multiple film and small screen projects, and pals around with Steven King. C'mon. Not to mention he's assembled some of biggest bad-asses in the horror biz with his Masters of Horror series airing now on Showtime (DVD, Anchor Bay). With all this in his universe, it's amazing he still has time to interview. But then...that's what makes Mick Garris "Mick", a guy you wanna know.

You've been behind the camera and in front of it, what do you like best about wearing those two hats?

Well, I rarely wear the latter hat. Being in front of the camera is just for fun; it's nerve-wracking, but it's a good time, usually for filmmaker friends. It gives me a good idea of what the actors go through in the process, but nowhere near as demanding as what they go through. I'm much more comfortable behind the camera, in the planning of a film, and the various techniques in bringing it to fruition.

Thanks to DVDs we get to see your behind-the-scenes documentaries for Cronenbergs' Videodrome, Carpenter's The Fog and Joe Dantes' The Howling, how did that all come about?

I actually started out doing specialized publicity and the like for genre films, way back in 1980 at the late, probably unlamented Avco Embassy Pictures. It was a great place: I was doing stuff for Scanners, The Fog, The Howling, Escape From New York. It was a heady time for the genre, and I've been a life-long fan. I started doing the "Behind the Scenes" stuff because I could do them for virtually nothing, and then send them out to genre conventions and local news outlets and the like. They used that kind of stuff much more on local channels in those days, and they weren't shooting EPK and DVD material then.

Now, in the days of DVD, everybody is clamoring for material that no one has seen before, and I was lucky enough to provide some of that stuff. It really was a way to learn how to tell a story visually, cutting together unrelated material to give a certain narrative train of thought. It was a great experience, and I was lucky enough to have worked on a bunch of great movies.

You're the prince of the Steven King adapted mini-series, so what's it really like to be one on one with the horror king?

Well, there's also Craig Baxley, who directed Storm Of The Century and Rose Red and Kingdom Hospital. Steve and I met briefly on the set of Sleepwalkers, when he came out to shoot his cameo. But we got to be good friends on the set of The Stand, where we spent months together. Stephen King is an incredibly fun-loving, generous, brilliant guy who likes to have fun with the toy trains you use to make a movie.

You couldn't ask for a better partner in the process. He always has lots of great ideas, and never, ever steps on the toes of the filmmaker's process. I've never had him tell me how he thought I should shoot something, but I've gone to him many, many times for ideas. He's just a terrific guy, as well as a great artist.

When do we get to see your long-anticipated film version of "The Talisman?"

God only knows. Well, you'll probably NEVER see MY version. I wrote a four-hour miniseries script for Spielberg and Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall. Everybody was very enthusiastic about the script, which was for ABC, but at that time, ABC didn't have the money to make it. Spielberg pulled it, then deciding to go after it as a feature film again. I'm afraid that maybe he perceived me as the "TV guy", since I had worked for him on "Amazing Stories," and most of my success has been on television (which is weird, because I never watch it).

Spielberg's had the rights to "Talisman" for many, many years, and they've had nothing but trouble trying to make it. Since it was going to be a miniseries, it has gone through two or three other writers and directors, and so far as I know, it's dead again.

Riding the Bullet was a very personal film for you, would you tell us about that?

Well, it was a story that really resonated with me, when I read it online. I had lost a brother a few years before, and my father just before, and my mother-in-law had just been diagnosed with a fatal illness. Death was very much on my mind. So King's story might have had a bit more resonance with me that with the casual reader.

It all fell into place as a script very quickly. King allowed me to write an adaptation on spec, and I made it even more personal, setting it in 1969, when I was a child, really, in my most formative years. The whole hitchhiking motif of the story seemed more at home to me in 1969 than in 1999 when it was written, and it all just took off from there.

I wrote the first draft in a two-week blast, and it was all very stream of consciousness. That said, it took a long time to get the financing, as it's a kind of unusual horror film. We didn't have much money or time, but I was able to make it pretty much the way I wanted to.

You're deeply involved with King's latest offering "Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From The Stories of Steven King," what's the buzz, tell us what's a happening?

Well, not THAT involved. I was the first one they asked to write a script for the show, based on King's story "Home Delivery". It's a complicated episode, and was going to be the last of the eight that they were going to make. The films are made in Australia, and as Masters Of Horror was picked up for a second season, it would have been shooting right at the time we were developing scripts and signing directors for MOH. So, I had to beg off, at least for now.

If they do another batch, which seems likely, I'll direct my script for them. I wasn't really a part of the production; I'm strictly a hired hand on "Nightmares & Dreamscapes."

Your Masters of Horror series on Showtime has assembled some of the best minds in horror; a genre director's anthology that will no doubt stand the test of time, how does it feel to be responsible for that?

I still can't believe we made it happen, and that we're about to start shooting another batch. It's incredibly gratifying, because it was a real experiment. No one has ever made a show for television that was so director-oriented, and was intentionally as different from week to week as this one.

And nobody's ever said to the filmmakers: just go out and make a movie the way you want, no interference, no "look of show", so long as you can do it on time and within the parameters of our admittedly tight little budget. Even better, they've really made some terrific movies. I'm very, very happy with the show, and really pleased that they have been so successful.

You're one of the few directors to stay true to the L.Frank Baum literary with "Lost in Oz," what was it like to walk the yellow brick road?

I'm not so sure how true to Baum we were, and nobody will every get the chance to say. LOST IN OZ was a pilot that I shot a few years ago in Australia. It was a great experience in many ways, and unpleasant in other ways. The writer/creator did not have the best relationship, but working in a fantasy genre that was far a field from the horror stuff I'd been doing was great.

It was all about what happened all these years later in Oz, and it was quite magical. The Australian experience was great, as was the cast and all. It's a shame it didn't get picked up. The WB bought Birds Of Prey instead, which didn't last long.

Tom Skerritt, Charles Durning, and Ron Perlman are just a few of the fine actors in your soon to be a aired mini-series "Desperation," can you tell us a bit about your return to the Kingdom of Steve?

We'd tried to make "Desperation" as a feature for years. New Line was going to do it back in 1998, but changed their minds. That was the time of Scream, and all the horror films had to be teen-oriented, filled with self-reflexive nudge-nudge-wink-wink humor. "Desperation" was not that.

King wrote the script, as well as producing with me, though he was not able to come to the set this time. It was a very difficult shoot, under very trying circumstances, but it's very faithful to the book.

It's incredibly powerful for network TV, and, amazingly, they didn't make me change a frame of my cut. The movie is pretty much the way it was intended when it was a feature, much to all of our surprise.

In fact, we shot the script King had written as a feature, with some minor changes in format, adapting for television.

Rock N' Roll has always played an important role in your work as a filmmaker, who are your biggest influences and why?

MG: Nobody in particular, just the anti-establishment spirit, and spit-in-the-eye attitude. I was a singer in a rock and roll band in the 70s, so the music of the 60s and 70s were the most influential in my life. But my favorites were always the guys who were doing something different, something experimental in music, and therefore lesser known: Gentle Giant, Roy Wood, King Crimson.

Do you have any final thoughts regarding the state of celluloid horror?

Well, it's not in the greatest place, is it? I mean, it seems like it has to be a remake to get a green light. It's all market tested to mallrats, so they all have to resemble other successful horror films. Kind of depressing, really. Some good work gets to sneak out now and then, even successfully, but the average horror movie, like the average movie of any kind these days, is pretty dismal. But there seems to be hope in stuff that gets made direct to DVD.

Amazingly, it seems a lot of the genre stuff made for television is superior to the theatrical stuff. We're trying to go around all those debilitating strictures from the studios with Masters Of Horror. I hope we're not howling against the wind.