five with frights:- mick garris
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Mr. Frights is pleased to present this interview with MICK GARRIS whose many talents in story telling have consistently entertained horror fans with everything he's done from "Critters 2" to "Masters of Horror" and beyond!!
Post Mortem on FEARnet
MR. FRIGHTS: What drew you into working in horror?-
MICK GARRIS: I've always been interested in horror, though never exclusively. I was always drawn to the dark side: TV, movies, comics, fiction, all of it. I think it might have been the appeal to the outsider; I was never a popular kid, and was drawn to things it seemed no one else cared about. My family was not the close-knit TV family when I was growing up, either. My parents split up when I was about twelve, and I'm sure that seeking escape in horrific stories worse than my own had something to do with it. -
MR. FRIGHTS: Critters 2 & The Fly II are both really fun sequels, but you kind of just stopped writing sequels after that stuff. Was there something behind that?
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MICK GARRIS: I never planned a career in sequels, despite being involved in several. When I was just getting going in my career, sequels were as ubiquitous as they are now, and
CRITTERS 2 was the first movie offered to me to direct. We don't always get to choose the projects we eventually get produced. I would guess that the vast majority of screenwriters out there never got their favorite scripts produced. But
FLY II was a great opportunity, one that
Cronenberg recommended me for. But there were great fights between the studio head and the executive handling it, and I left when I got the offer to rewrite and direct
CRITTERS 2. And then, of course, came
PSYCHO IV.
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MR. FRIGHTS: For the Masters of Horror series, did you have any criteria for choosing who would work on the project or did you just have a huge line of people clamoring to get to do it?
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MICK GARRIS: The primary criterion was that the directors were people who had made a name for themselves with unique, wonderful, iconic horror films, filmmakers with a directorial personality that would be reflected by their work here. Most of them were people that I knew well, but I always wanted there to be an international contingent as well. We also made a deal with Kadokawa in Japan to do a film there each season. I was a big fan of
Miike, and was thrilled to get him to participate. And on and on...
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MR. FRIGHTS: You have a lot of different credits under your belt, writer, actor, director, producer... if you could only do one for the rest of your life, which would it be and why?
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MICK GARRIS: Well, it certainly wouldn't be actor or producer; I'm not very good at the former, and don't really enjoy the latter. I produce to protect myself and my
protégés. Directing is great, because it means you're actually making the movie. It's a social occupation, as well, whereas writing is very solitary. Of course, writing is also the most freeing and personal of them all. So if I had to choose one, it would probably be writing, as you can do it anywhere. And it would include prose, too, which I also enjoy writing, not just screen material.
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MR. FRIGHTS: When you sit down to enjoy a horror movie, what do you pick to watch?
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MICK GARRIS: Anything that doesn't have teenagers in it or a number in the title...
Hit the Grab Bag Questions below to go on with the interview...
GRAB BAG QUESTIONS
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MR. FRIGHTS: You're interested in developing a new project, but you want to work with people you haven't had the chance to work with just yet. Who do you call first?
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MICK GARRIS: Usually when I'm developing a project, it's something for me to write and direct, rarely otherwise. The producing I've done has mostly been my own material, so it's kind of a moot question.
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MR. FRIGHTS: The brand of horror you do, the style, is it something you've choosen or worked to stick to or something that kind of just took shape over your career? If it was a choice, what was behind that?
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MICK GARRIS: Well, I'd like to think that I'm most drawn to material that has a certain grounded quality to it, things that are strong on character and story. One of the many things that draws me to
Stephen King's material is its emotional core. I hope that as I continue to work, my films continue to grow and evolve, and that the more real life experience I have, the more it is reflected in the stories that I tell. So it's hard for me to stand outside of my work and describe a style to the way I see a story, or the way I shoot a scene or a film. But what I want to do is to shoot each shot to convey the maximum emotional intent of the scene as creatively as possible--without it being masturbatory, flashy in a way that takes you out of the story.
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MR. FRIGHTS: If you were held hostage, and were given a chance to escape if you offered one part of your body for extraction/dismemberment... What part would you offer up and why?
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MICK GARRIS: Probably a toe. I could do without that.
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MR. FRIGHTS: If you were to remake a horror movie, what would it be and how would it be different from the original?
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MICK GARRIS: Well, I don't consider
THE SHINING a remake, as it was a complete new take, from a screenplay written by the novelist who was never happy with the original movie. But there's an old
Bela Lugosi film from 1932 called
WHITE ZOMBIE that I'd love to do over. It's a little slow and creaky now, but it's got the basis for a wonderful creepy, sexy, romantic story about bringing the dead back to life... for love. I'd love to amp up the passion and incredible basis for a very personal horror with that one.
- MR. FRIGHTS: What can fans expect next from you?
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MICK GARRIS: We're doing King's
BAG OF BONES as a 4-hour miniseries for ABC next, and I just finished shooting ten interviews of horror icons for my
FEARnet show,
POST MORTEM.