By Craig Modderno
Photos by Ralph Nelson/SMPSP

From the 1981 fright film Hell Night - which was his first movie credit as a production assistant - to the current hit The Green Mile, director-screenwriter Frank Darabont's creative life would seem to go from horror to horror. This mild-mannered filmmaker made his directorial debut with the USA Network cable movie Buried Alive starring Jennifer Jason Leigh. He also has writing credits on A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the remake of The Blob and The Fly II. But it was his 1994 adaptation of Stephen King's story, The Shawshank Redemption, which catapulted him to the forefront by earning him his first DGA Award nomination as well as an Oscar and WGA nomination.

DGA Magazine spoke with Darabont about his latest film, which he also adapted from a Stephen King story, The Green Mile, which has earned him his second DGA Award nomination, and his directorial methods.

Why did you choose to adapt and direct another Stephen King prison story as your second feature?

I wasn't looking to do another prison movie, believe me. It was really just coincidental that The Green Mile was a similar arena. I fell in love with the story irrespective of the setting.

The Green Mile is emblematic of a certain quality that is always present in Stephen King's work that I'm attracted to. That quality is a ferociously good grasp of characters. When he's dealing with a more thematically complex piece of work, those characters rise more to the fore. It did in The Shawshank Redemption and it certainly does in Green Mile.

When he's dealing with more obvious story elements - obvious in the sense that you've got a haunted car or a crazed dog - those elements tend to be the fangs and the fur. Filmmakers generally think those elements are what work about Stephen King and they tend to miss the subtleties. Steve himself has described it as the between-the-lines stuff. There's a texture, there's a flavor to what he does, and it's very much rooted in characters.

Usually when Hollywood adapts a Steve King book, it's the subtleties that go out the window first in favor of the set pieces, the monsters. Sometimes it's all you're left with. That's why so many of the movies based on his work have proven to be very callow.

As an addendum thought, there's also the kind of low-budget producer who takes a short story of Steve's and blows it up into a feature film that doesn't bear blowing up. Otherwise that story might have made a very good short film.

The filmmakers who have actually listened to Steve's storytelling voice, are the ones who have generally made the better movies. Rob [Reiner] certainly did with Stand by Me and with Misery. David Cronenberg did with The Dead Zone, which was fabulous. There are other examples.

Did Tom Hank's involvement in The Green Mile come out of your doing an uncredited rewrite on Saving Private Ryan?

No, not at all. That was just a confluence of other things. I'd been talking to Steven [Spielberg] for a few years about working together. He really liked my work with Shawshank and he's liked my work as a writer. Lord knows, I'm in awe of him. Not a guy that I would mind working with at all, certainly.

He had offered me a few writing gigs along the way in the last few years, all of which I turned down for one reason or another. I should digress for just a moment and say I tend to try and stick to my guns when it comes to, even as a writer-for-hire, taking the gigs I know I can be the most passionate about. If I've developed a reputation, it's because I'm willing to say "no" to stuff unless I think I can shine with the material.

Steven approached me about Saving Private Ryan because we were both fans of the script. We had both read it, I think, the same week. And he knew of my enthusiasm for that film. When he approached me--that was a no-brainer--I thought, "All right! This is wonderful material. I know I can bring something to this that will make it more so."

Is it true that you did a rewrite on the first part of it, that...?

No. I did a rewrite on the whole script.

Is it true that Spielberg wanted a bigger opening battle scene?

Yes. I don't want to get too far into this because I want to take nothing away from [credited screenwriter] Robert Rodat and his achievement with this. There was certainly a D-Day sequence in his draft. It was the rangers at Pointe du Hoc. It was like an eight-page scene, actually, somewhat cursory, and Steven looked at me and said, "I want to do Omaha Beach. I want to do that." And I said, "Steven, that's going to be a 25-page sequence." And he said, "You write it, I'll shoot it."

[laugh] I wrote a 25-page version of that on Omaha Beach and, indeed, Steven went and shot the livin' shit out of it. I mean, my God, what a powerhouse piece of film making that half-hour is. Believe me, I had plenty of sources to draw from, including the Stephen Ambrose book, D-Day. You didn't have to make this shit up. You just had to present it honestly. I don't think it was any secret that the Ambrose book was quite an inspiration for the film. I mean, you take those oral histories and you basically put them together and you present an accurate depiction of what landing on the beach would have been.

How then did Tom Hanks get involved on Green Mile?

I thought one of these days maybe I'll have the right thing for him. And indeed, The Green Mile came along and as I was writing it I was thinking to myself, "My God, this would be perfection if I could get Tom into this thing. This would be a great match." True to his word, when I called him up and I said, "Tom, I got something I want you to read. Castle Rock is going to make a formal offer," he read it and committed to the film in about 48 hours. The script moved to the top of the stack and he read it. Of course, Steven had already read it himself because we'd since become friends. We'd have these cigar lunches just the two of us over at DreamWorks and shoot the breeze and just talk movies and talk trash and stuff. He knew I was working on the next script that I wanted to direct.

He really had and has taken an interest in me as a friend and mentor. Steven has been very, very generous to me. When he heard I actually finished the script, he said, "Oh, can I read it?" And I said, "Sure, Steven, why not?" So I handed him The Green Mile to read, thinking, "Oh gee, maybe six months from now he'll get around to reading it." He read it that night and he called me the next day raving about it. He knew that I was interested in Tom for the lead and promptly, in his lovely mentoring fashion, proceeded to just harangue Hanks about what a great script he thought it was. So when Hanks got it in his hands, it had come with a pretty good recommendation. It wasn't just out of the blue. That Steven was excited about it certainly helped, I'm sure. But in truth, Tom is not an insincere fellow and when he says, "Gee, I'd love to work with you some day if we find the right thing to do," he's willing to read a script when you send it to him. He's just that way. He's got that kind of integrity and lack of bullshit.

Is there any Stephen King work you don't think you're capable of adapting?

The Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three and The Wasteland. It's dynamite stuff. I could never possibly make that into a movie. He's been kind enough to offer me the rights, which he apparently has never done for anybody for any reason. But he's been so happy with the two films that I've made, he figures if anybody could try and crack that material it would be me, which is the ultimate compliment coming from him.

Another thing about his stuff is that some of his novels are just huge pieces of work.

Is that more of a problem for you as a screenwriter or a director?

Screenwriter, definitely. When you're trying to adapt for generally what is a two-hour running time, how do you cut something down like that and still retain the flavor of the meal? You throw out all the ingredients, what are you going to wind up with? Whereas, if you have Misery which was a very tight, muscular novel to begin with, you're going to stand a much better chance of really capturing the essence of King's flavor. Shawshank was a 100-page novella. The Body was about the same length and that became Stand by Me. How do you take something like The Stand and turn it into a two- or even three-hour movie? You can't. They had to make it a miniseries.

As a director, how did you approach the electrocution scenes in The Green Mile?

Particularly the death of Delacroix, it was a fine line to walk. It was certainly less graphic on film than it was in Steve King's book. I always knew that scene would be a challenge for the audience because it is so visceral. I really didn't want to go too far with it and have eye balls exploding like in the book because I figured that would make people want to get up and leave.

I was just thinking that structurally there are a lot of similarities between Saving Private Ryan and The Green Mile in that you have the bookends and reflect back to the past and the very visceral violent images that you don't back away from.

I don't think it's glamorized either.

Absolutely.

Steven did a letter perfect interpretation of violence in Ryan in that he depicted it honestly without making it sexy which is the flaw of a lot of films. I guess I try to do the same thing with the violence in The Green Mile. I didn't want it to be the equivalent of people stopping and looking at an accident because it's ghoulish to see, but I didn't want to back off too far because if we're going to assess the death penalty, we should assess it honestly. If we choose to have it, or we choose not to have it, at least we should look it in the eyes and see it for what it is. I think that Steven did the same with the issue of war. If you're going to have a war, let's look at it honestly and see it for what it is.

You've got Shawshank and Green Mile, both set in prisons. I'm reminded of what Sidney Lumet said that "Yes, 12 Angry Men and The Verdict are both set in courtrooms, but they are shot completely differently and with a different look." You certainly have that in your films. Was that a conscious effort? Shawshank was very grey and Green Mile different colors.

Shawshank was somewhat monochrome except for the scenes outside the prison. Green Mile is very lush looking, almost romanticized in its photography, much kudos there to David Tattersall who shot Green Mile. But I definitely did want to go for a different look because I was going for a different story. It really is a very dissimilar piece of work to Shawshank. That's a great analogy, by the way, 12 Angry Men and The Verdict, yeah, they're both set in a courtroom, but they couldn't be more different. And, by the way, may I add that I think The Verdict is one of the best movies ever made. Mr. Lumet really hit one out of the park with that one. But I don't think you're going to get a Shawshank redux by looking at The Green Mile.

There is so much involved in screenwriting, then a lot of work directing. What makes you say this is the story I want to commit all that time, a year writing, another year or more directing?

It was actually about two years in the directing phase and two months in the writing phase.

Really?

Yes. I try to never take longer than two months when I'm writing because for me it's completely consuming. I close the doors, shut off the phones, and nobody hears from me for two months. I have no life when I'm writing so I try to get through it as speedily as I can.

But is that saying directing is not as completely consuming?

More so, but you're not as isolated. All the details of your life do fall by the wayside, and for a much longer period, which is why making that commitment to direct is such a big deal for me. I don't find it's something you can do and have a normal life. So you have to be ready to give the life part up for a long while. It's not a decision I make lightly. Green Mile was almost two years from the beginning of pre-production to the final edit. But what attracts me is a really compelling narrative coupled with a set of compelling characters. The circumstances they're in then brings us to a thematic layer that really says something about humanity. Those things. When you answer a question like that you always sound like a pontificating old fart.

[laughs] It's really the qualities of the storytelling. You either respond to it or you don't. It's like loving chocolate ice cream versus anything else.

In the prep stage, how do you determine your visuals? Do you do storyboards?

For certain sequences I do. For the more action driven or logistically larger scenes I will do storyboards. The death of Delacroix I did a few boards on, although not the whole thing because ultimately I feel the coverage comes from rehearsal with the actors. All the scenes with the mouse were extensively storyboarded because there were a lot of people who needed to know exactly what footage we were going for including Charlie Gibson, who directed by 2nd unit and who was also my special effects supervisor on the show. He got me an absolutely enormous amount of mouse footage. Some were trick shots and he was the man who knew how to go about that anyway. Those were definitely storyboarded. But when it's a scene of dialogue of actors interacting, I leave those alone. You're going to block it out on the set, you're going to figure out what coverage you need with the DP in 10 minutes and you go.

How about rehearsals?

What was interesting is that I did no rehearsal on this movie. I did two weeks on Shawshank. For some reason I just felt a level of confidence here. I looked around the table after the first read through and thought, "I'm not going to stick these people in a room for two weeks. I want to start shooting." So we went ahead and started shooting. When you have actors of that caliber, they come to the set knowing what they're going to do, or at least having an idea of what they're going to do. It's not like the film suffered at all. Although on Shawshank, Tim [Robbins] and Morgan [Freeman] are also of that caliber. Maybe it was my confidence going in that had changed. Maybe I recognized going in what I had and what I needed. But it worked both ways. Maybe the next time it will be a piece of material where I'll feel the need for rehearsal, or maybe it will be like this.

You have dealt with violent subjects in films. Some people try to ascribe the level of violence in society today to Hollywood.

That's a pretty volatile issue. I have some strong opinions on it. Number one, I don't think Washington should be trying to duck its responsibility by pointing the finger at Hollywood. I think they can give us script notes just as soon as they pass some realistic gun control laws in this country instead of the bullshit that we've got. So, to the politicians in Washington who are adept at pointing the finger of blame at anybody but themselves, all I can really say is, "Fuck you guys."

However, having said that, I do think that we do also bear a responsibility. You cannot tell me that what we do doesn't have an effect. You cannot tell me that when so many films or television shows boil all the intricacies of human interaction down to the simple equation of "I can solve my problems by picking up a gun and shooting you" that it doesn't have a numbing effect. You just can't convince me of that. That brand of nihilism is something that I would like to see us outgrow.

Is excessive screen violence an outgrowth of bad writing?

When you consistently solve all your problems by shooting the bad guy, then we're degrading all human conduct. We're presenting heroes who don't think around problems. We're presenting heroes who bludgeon them with an axe or impale them with an ice pick or blow them away with an Uzi. I think that has a cumulatively deleterious effect. I'd like to see us present human interaction as a more intricate equation than, "You piss me off; I'll blow you away." Which is not to say there isn't room for a good action picture either. Unforgiven, well, it was a meditation on violence and the cause and effect of it, wasn't it? That was a very smart movie. I don't think it degrades us as human beings.

Let's look at the granddaddy, Die Hard. What a great movie! I never felt like our hero was just some psycho who wanted to lay waste to other human beings to solve his problems. I've always described that as a fascinating movie about a guy who's trying to apologize to his wife. That's the whole premise of the movie to me. Here's a guy who's split up with his wife, who's desperately trying to apologize, and God is throwing in his path everything that He possibly can to prevent him. It's Job-like. There is this enormous array of obstacles.

So I'm not saying there shouldn't be some circuses in our entertainment. I would never be that presumptuous. Life can't be all highbrow. But it can't be all lowbrow either. We seem to be scraping the low brow more often than not, and that worries me.

Craig Modderno is a freelance writer for a number of publications.

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