It’s June, but it feels like Halloween.

Norman Prentiss stands at a podium inside The Shoshana S. Cardin School in North Baltimore, preparing to read from his recently released novella Invisible Fences (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2010). The room is large and bright, with standard issue beige walls, fluorescent lights, and vintage posters of Orioles heroes Frank Robinson and Eddie Murray. But the black-robed, skeletal Grim Reaper hanging above Prentiss’s head hints that the story he is about to tell will fall on the darker end of the literary spectrum.

The lights lower, and Prentiss begins. “There’s an invention for today’s dog owners called an invisible fence,” he reads, laying bare the book’s central metaphor. He describes the Pavlovian system for keeping dogs from straying with carefully delivered painful shocks, then lifts his eyes from the page and gazes directly at his audience. “But it seems a bit cruel to me.”

Doctor Prentiss, as he is known to is students, teaches English at the private Jewish high school, and he looks like the stereotypical warm and fuzzy high school teacher—graying goatee, wiry glasses, mirthful eyes, and an infectious laugh. And he is warm and fuzzy, at ease and joking among the hundred or so people, including more than a handful of his students, who turned up at his reading on a warm Sunday evening. But as he continues, what unravels is a story that is anything but nice—a deeply disturbing tale of a young boy, Nathan, caught in the tight trap of his parents’ poisonous fears.

Prentiss’s voice is quiet and reserved, but enticing as much for what it withholds as what it reveals—I have a secret, and it’s not a pleasant one, and I’m going to let you in on it.

“When I was growing up, my parents invented their own kind of invisible fence for me and my sister. All parents build some version of this fence—never talk to strangers, keep close to home after sundown, that kind of thing. But my parents had a gift with words and storytelling. . .”

The only sound in the classroom is the low buzz of the air conditioning. With barely a hint of what is to come, Prentiss has built his own storytelling fence around his captive audience.

Invisible Fences comes at a time when Prentiss is gaining a significant readership and recognition (he won the 2009 Stoker Award for his short story, “In the Porches of My Ears,” which also appears in the anthology Best Horror of the Year). It’s to his credit that the psychological phantoms that emerge are more frightening than the supernatural monsters or deranged murderers found in much contemporary horror fiction. The fears caging in young Nate are horrifying because they are familiar—dope fiends lurking in our collective childhood woods, waiting to shove syringes full of corruption beneath our skin; a dark stain in the shape of a run-down kid on the street, where the cleanup crews couldn’t soak up all the blood; and the screeching jigsaw in the workshop seemingly begging for a finger to sever. When I was a kid, those phantom fiends and dismembering blades were more terrifying than any ghost, vampire, or boogeyman, and Prentiss skillfully weaves into his tale the barriers that well-meaning adults build to protect their children—and the dangerous results of fanatical over-protection.

Are the horrors within our minds real, and can they attain a form of objective reality? Can ghosts from our past take physical form, or are they phantoms of perception? Invisible Fences doesn’t offer easy answers, but instead plunges us into the disintegrating reality of the grown-up Nathan as he finds himself literally and figuratively trapped in the darkness of his past.

The reading ends with a story told by Nathan’s senile father, a gruesome metaphor for the dark secrets we try to cut away from ourselves, only to find that they always come back. Like any good reader, Prentiss leaves his fans wanting more, and as the line for signed copies stretches around the room, it’s clear they do, indeed, want to discover the rest of the macabre secrets enclosed within Invisible Fences.

Visit the product page for Invisible Fences to learn more about the book or to place your order.

When Jason and I met in 2003, we were both working in high-tech. I was a Microsoft geek, and he was a photography and digital imaging expert for Fuji Film. We were both frustrated artists: Jason wanted to be a filmmaker, and I wanted to use my imagination for something more than just user interface design.

A little over a year later, we moved to Los Angeles to follow Jason’s promotion at Fuji. I worked for a few media related tech companies (one of them a spin-off of the Lucas empire which required me to commute to the Bay Area twice a month), and we worked on amassing equipment and knowledge. Jason had some ideas about the early science fiction scene in L.A. and wanted to write some scripts about it. When we met Ray Bradbury and Forrest J Ackerman at San Diego Comic-Con, it seemed a good time to start. Jason and I thought we should cut our teeth with a documentary, so JaSunni Productions was formed and we started filming some of the genre legends of the area. As our Forry documentary started to take shape, we kept hearing more and more about Charles Beaumont. In fact, so many people told us we should do a Beaumont documentary first that we eventually switched gears.

As we got more into the process, we decided that we needed more time to work on our projects. Jason and I needed to get away from working for other people, and we needed to move away from L.A. for a while. We moved back to Vancouver, WA and made regular trips across the West Coast to finish filming for our documentaries.  During one of those trips, we interviewed George Clayton Johnson, who told us that we should talk to William F. Nolan. “He’s living up there in Bend, Or-e-gon. God knows what he’s doing up there.”

Bill Nolan was one of our last interview subjects, but he has since become a close friend and invaluable resource in understanding “The Group”.  Listening to Bill’s stories and meeting with Roger Anker (the official biographer of Charles Beaumont), gave me enough context to get at the daunting task at hand: turning some fifty-plus hours of raw footage into a movie.

I read somewhere that an experienced editor spends about an hour working on the project per minute of finished film. This was my first feature length project. It took many scrap piles. It took hours and hours and hours of meticulous note taking to log every interview. It took several false starts. It took a few years.

I looked at my role as honing in on the story. Jason set the vision: he had an idea of how he wanted to start the movie (after we scrapped an earlier cut based on feedback from John Tomerlin and a few key others), and he wanted lots of dynamic visuals to break up the talking heads. We agreed that we didn’t want to copy Ken Burns; we wanted something of our own style, and we wanted it to be self-guided without an omniscient voiceover. We wanted it to be intimate, personal – the story of a man.

Contrary to what some critics may believe, I am not a frustrated animator; I’m not all that interested in animation, but I can do it competently if forced – and Jason V Brock can be a damned demanding director. I would no sooner finish a short sequence and show it to him, than he would say, “I like this but can you make it spin around and angle it…” Sure, just give me another four hours and I’ll have that five seconds just the way you want it…

The most enjoyable aspect of working on a film is uncovering the story from the raw footage. Like Michelangelo said about sculpting, “I saw the angel in the marble, and carved until I set him free.”

Jason and I are proud of the result. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s a tale of the life of man who was full of drive and passion, and manages to inspire even in tragedy.

But what would the public think? To paraphrase a popular indie film handbook, “You’ve made a movie. So now what?”

We had an early screening of the rough cut (well over two hours long) at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR. The audience seemed to love it. Potential programmers for other venues and festivals wanted it shortened to 90 minutes.  Now we have two versions of the film: we screen the 90 minute version on the circuit and sell the longer Director’s Cut on DVD.

We read many articles and books about promotion and distribution. We watched Official Rejection – a documentary about film festivals. We pondered the issue of where to give up the “World Premiere” cherry.

The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, CA (part of American Cinematheque) was absolutely perfect! We fit right in with a weekend Charles Beaumont tribute. They believed in us and our film: it was a great feeling and a vindication of years of effort. We lined up a ten day event schedule in Los Angeles, printed posters, postcards, and ruthlessly promoted online. Five days before the event, we visited the theater. We wanted to see the poster on the marquee. We wanted to make sure the Blu-ray copy was playing OK for them. We wanted to pinch ourselves and make sure it was real.

We parked off Hollywood Boulevard, and walked into the courtyard of The Egyptian. Behind the glass, on the back wall, beyond the lights and the red carpet, there it was – Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man, on a big movie poster! We checked the schedule: everything was in place. We posed for each other and took photos in front of the placard. We peeked into the glass doors.

Then, from out of nowhere, a very large black man in a tight black shirt with an earpiece started towards us. For a moment, I wondered why the theater needed a bodyguard, and then I realized that there was an entourage gathering at the entrance. They were all wearing tracksuits, one had a giant afro, and there was a tall skinny guy with sunglasses – Snoop Dogg!

“You’ll have to step back, we’re taking some photos here,” said the big bodyguard.

So what’s a woman to do when facing the nerves of a pending movie premiere and being kicked out of the theater by Snoop? I turned to Jason and said, “I want to go find some new shoes…” We managed to make it past the crowd that was now gathering on the sidewalk to gawk at the Dogg posse, and headed down to the myriad of shops.

***

Nearly a week later: it was less than an hour before the official start of the premiere and people were starting to come into the theater for the signing of The Bleeding Edge (the anthology that Jason and Bill Nolan had co-edited, which included new/unpublished content from every living Twilight Zone writer) that had been arranged before the movie.  I stayed busy selling books, jumping up for photos, and greeting authors and guests as they arrived.

Jason and Bill signed copies of The Bleeding Edge along with authors George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner, John Tomerlin, and Cody Goodfellow. Marc Scott Zicree mingled and signed copies of The Twilight Zone Companion. Jason was running around like crazy. People kept coming. I kept selling books. More people kept coming.

Later, after an introduction by the programmer for The Egyptian and Aero Theatres, Grant Moninger, Jason went to the front to introduce the documentary and I escorted friends and authors to the balcony. The theater was nearly full (over 400 people turned out). I was amazed at the interest in our little film…

It’s hard enough to walk in stiletto heels, let alone down a carpeted staircase in a darkened theater. I have a secret preference for them I’ll admit, though. “Sunni’s wearing stripper shoes!” William F. Nolan announced as we were all posing in the lobby of the theater for the photographers and moving into the auditorium. Thanks, Bill.

The lights went down, the place fell silent as a five minute preview of our next film, The AckerMonster Chronicles (the Forry Ackerman doc) rolled, and Jason made his way to sit next to me and Diane O’Bannon (wife of the late Dan O’Bannon) in the Egyptian’s amazing balcony. Finally, it was time to start the film. I hoped that the people here would like it as much as at the Lovecraft festival. I crossed my fingers and prayed that any technical difficulties were minor.
The opening credits looked great! The Blu-ray gods were smiling it seemed, or perhaps it was Ray Bradbury’s well wishes from the day before (he was schedule to speak, but was unable to attend due to an injured leg). In any case, it seemed to be playing well. People chuckled at Rod Serling’s snarky remarks interspersed with the beginning titles. I sighed in relief.

There were moments in the movie where I planned to gauge the audience reaction: the part where John Tomerlin is laughing so hard that he has tears in his eyes and he turns to his wife, Wilma and they both smile; the hilarious interchange between Nolan and William Shatner regarding the shooting of The Intruder; the underwater sequence to simulate a near-drowning incident. Would they get it? Would they laugh and gasp and snicker and hold their breath in all the right places?

They did. And it was wonderful.

Afterwards, the theater played George Clayton Johnson’s, “Your Three Minutes Are Up” based on his moving short story about receiving a late night phone call from beyond in which the long-deceased Charles Beaumont encourages George to get back together with the remaining members of ‘The Group’:  William F. Nolan and John Tomerlin.

As the end credits rolled, we took our places at the front of the theater for the question and answer session moderated by Marc Zicree. As I climbed onto a stool, I looked out at the seats. A few people were leaving, but most of the audience stayed to participate (including radio great Norman Corwin and his personal assistant, Chris Borjas). I was shocked at how many people were in the front row – press and media people with cameras and recorders, from American Cinematheque, to the L.A. Times and many genre magazines and web sites! Wow. This was it.

Fittingly, George, John, and Bill – the surviving core group, took their seats alongside me. Marc Zicree introduced us and started the session as Jason came up.

Marc talked about Charles Beaumont and his influence on the genre. George, Bill, and John told stories about the group and how Chuck compelled them to do things. Jason and I related how we came to know them and what it was like to create the movie.

A lot of bulbs flashed. Questions were asked and people were really interested. Afterwards there was a round of applause and a crowd started forming at the base of the screen. We signed autographs and shook hands. We posed for pictures. We set up interviews for later.

We had done it. We had made a movie and had a premiere – and now we were getting a great reaction! We even sold enough books and DVD orders that we actually broke even on the trip. Success. Phew!

But we still have a long road of festivals and special screenings ahead of us, and much incurred debt to satisfy (we completely self-financed the films, and in spite of what people may believe, we’re not wealthy)… Negotiations and legal fees… Late nights screaming at crashing render jobs and fiddling with finicky tape decks…  More flame mail with angry film producers over he-said, she-said insider politics and delicate egos… Tempers have flared, tears and laughter have flowed, feedback has been great, and reviews have been mostly excellent.

But alas, we aren’t out to make a fortune (we’ll never make it back, in fact) or become A-listers (that kind of fame is fleeting anyway). No, we wanted to make an impact on intelligent people and influence the influential. We want to tell stories that need to be told. This is our freshman effort, and we’re proud of it. Is it perfect? No, but what ever is? As Jason likes to say, “Always have a follow-up ready,” and we do have more tricks (and treats) in store.

Stay tuned.

How many living legends can you cram into one small bookstore on a Saturday afternoon? An amazing number, it turns out.

Saturday, February 20^th, 2010 saw legendary writers alongside up-and-comers at the mega-signing event for The Bleeding Edge anthology at Mystery and Imagination bookstore in Glendale, California. Editors (and contributing authors) William F. Nolan (Logan’s Run; he had just received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Horror Writers Association) and Jason V Brock (Charles Beaumont: The Twilight Zone’s Magic Man), hosted the event in cooperation with book shop owners, Malcolm and Christine Bell.

Brock had earlier dedicated the gathering to the memory of Dan O’Bannon (Alien), who contributed to the book and was scheduled to attend the signing before his untimely passing in December 2009. In his stead, his wife, Diane, chatted with all of the writers and the store had a portrait up in his honor.

In attendance were authors Ray Bradbury, George Clayton Johnson, John Shirley, Earl Hamner,  John Tomerlin, Cody Goodfellow, James Robert Smith, and Lisa Morton. Appearances were also made by John Skipp (The Light at the End), Pete Atkins (Clive Barker’s A-Z of Horror),  Dennis Etchison (The Dark Country), Paul G. Bens (Kelland), Paul J. Salamoff (Logan’s Run: Lastday), and many other writers and Hollywood insiders. Although Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) was unable to attend, he received birthday greetings via a phone call.

The event was a huge success, both in sales (nearly 100 copies of The Bleeding Edge were sold!) and excitement (by estimates, over 300 people). It was covered by Famous Monsters of Filmland, and the local newspapers. John King Tarpinian kept the crowd in line with threats of “Soylent Green” for those who didn’t keep the order. Fans were lined up out the door and down the block to get their copies inscribed, as author/fan Paul G. Bens became a volunteer crowd controller, noting that the Fire Marshall was concerned about the throngs of eager patrons jammed into Mystery and Imagination. James Beach, the publisher of Dark Discoveries, was also assisting with crowd control and mingling with the authors and fans.

The Bleeding Edge has been called “A Landmark Anthology” by the genre press, and certainly this was a landmark signing. Ray Bradbury wore his medal for Arts and Letters from the country of France and signed for over two hours while warmly greeting his fans.  Best known for Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Dark Carnival, Ray invited everyone to attend his musical, Wisdom 2116 playing in Pasadena that evening.

Many fans lined up to see Norman Corwin (On a Note of Triumph), a radio great and contemporary of Orson Welles. The 99-year-old was chipper as ever and also signed copies of his book, Thirteen by Corwin.

George Clayton Johnson, co-author of Logan’s Run, writer of eight episodes of The Twilight Zone, and the first Star Trek original series episode to be aired, sat next to Corwin. The self-proclaimed “Dog without a Collar” greeted enthusiasts with vigor, and signed with his trademark doodle and dated copyright.

John Shirley, whose contribution entailed a ghost that follows a family home from Costco, was equally inundated with fans. Readers also snatched up Shirley’s novel, Bleak History, to get autographed copies.

Co-editor Jason V Brock rounded out the authors at the front of the store. Fans and colleagues congratulated him on the fine book, his editorial debut – and the overwhelming success of the event.

There were so many authors at the event (over 14 including surprise guests), that an additional line was formed for more writers to be seated in the second floor of the store. Upstairs, James Robert Smith, whose novel, The Flock, has been optioned by Don Murphy for a summer tent pole movie release, was blown away by the number of people. Cody Goodfellow (Perfect Union) and Lisa Morton (The Castle of Los Angeles) were equally astonished by the turn out and the company they were keeping.

Earl Hamner (The Twilight Zone, The Waltons, Falcon Crest) enthusiastically penned his name and chatted with numerous aficionados in his warm Southern drawl. John Tomerlin, who helped create The Twilight Zone’s classic, “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You”, signed alongside William F. Nolan. “This is the biggest signing I’ve ever attended for a single book!” exclaimed Nolan. Tomerlin concurred, adding that his hand hurt from signing so many times.

Marc Scott Zicree, television writer and author of The Twilight Zone Companion, noted that, except for Richard Matheson, all of the living Twilight Zone writers were present.  “You’ll never see all these people in one place again,” Marc said to Jason during the group photo session. James Robert Smith kept repeating: “This is amazing! Amazing!”

There will be another signing opportunity for The Bleeding Edge in Los Angeles at The Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, prior to the world premiere of JaSunni Productions’ documentary Charles Beaumont: The Twilight Zone’s Magic Man. The signing will begin at 2pm, with the movie starting at 3pm.

Brock and Nolan plan to follow-up The Bleeding Edge with another anthology based on cross-genre fiction and featuring authors writing out of their comfort zones. The next book is titled The Devil’s Coattails and should go to print Fall of 2010.

Let’s get this out of the way: Under the Dome is not the second coming of The Stand. Both novels have impressive page counts and huge casts; however, there are fundamental differences between them.

King used the entire continental US as his tableau in The Stand, whereas in Under the Dome he is confined to Chester’s Mill, Maine. The Stand was a chess game, with King taking months of story time to maneuver his characters into position.  Under the Dome is a rapid-paced game of checkers—with one piece in the back row already crowned before the start of play.

The books explore good and evil, but in The Stand these concepts were taken to an absolute level. God does not appear in the Dramatis Personae of Under the Dome. The most sincere “religious” character is a minister who doesn’t even believe in Him any more. The town leaders loudly proclaim their faith and “get knee-bound” in times of crisis, but are corrupt and decidedly un-Christian. Not Evil; merely evil.

The mysterious Dome that descends over Chester’s Mill on a sunny Saturday morning in mid-October somewhere between the years 2012 and 2016 is semi-permeable. People can communicate through it, but it is unmovable and, apparently, unbreakable. It isn’t really a dome; it has the same sock-shaped perimeter as the town’s borders with places like Castle Rock and TR-90, and extends upward over eight miles. There is limited air exchange, and a jet of water directed at the outside produces a fine mist inside. The electric lines are down but—thanks to the prevalence of generators in Western Maine—cell phones, cable TV and the Internet all work.

The world is aware of the town’s plight. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper report on the phenomenon from outside the Dome and, later, from Castle Rock after armed forces establish a perimeter.

Though the town’s residents feel like ants under a magnifying glass, they have more pressing worries, like how long will their food and propane last, how will the Dome affect their weather, and when will the air no longer be safe to breathe? Those trapped by the Dome aren’t so different from people stranded in New Orleans after Katrina or on Little Tall Island in Storm of the Century.

There’s price gouging for commodities and a storeowner sells his overstock of questionable, stale-dated frozen food to unsuspecting customers.

These badly behaved people are small potatoes, though, compared to Big Jim Rennie, used car dealer, town selectman and operator of one of the largest meth labs in the country. When (if) the Dome is breached, Chester’s Mills will fall under intense scrutiny. He needs to dismantle the drug lab and return the town’s reserve propane tanks, which he appropriated for his illicit purposes. Like Flagg in The Eyes of the Dragon, Rennie is the power behind the throne, allowing a weak man to take the leadership position on the town council, and forcing through a malleable replacement when the sheriff’s pacemaker explodes after he gets too close to the Dome. He surrounds himself with stupid people who won’t question his orders or motives.

The book’s hero, Dale “Barbie” Barbara, an Iraq war veteran employed at the town diner, was already persona non grata in Chester’s Mill after a run-in with Rennie’s son and other punks. Recognizing his situation as untenable, he was hitchhiking out of town when the Dome appeared. Colonel James Cox, his former commanding officer, reactivates him to duty, and they share intelligence about the situation in the town and external efforts to penetrate the Dome.

One of the book’s themes can be found in the lyrics of a James McMurtry song: Everyone in a small town is supposed to know his place, and everyone supports the home team. When the President declares martial law in Chester’s Mill and installs Barbie as the interim leader, Rennie’s diseased heart goes into palpitations. Outside forces can’t implement this directive, though, so Rennie starts discrediting Barbie while turning the town into a municipal dictatorship. To discourage resistance, he beefs up the police department with ruffians and thugs. He stages riots to demonstrate the necessity of his actions. He also seizes the opportunity to settle old grudges.

Tempers fray as days pass and efforts to break through the Dome fail. People commit suicide. Others die in accidents and altercations, or are murdered when they threaten Rennie’s plans.

A small group of rebels forms around Barbie, including Julia Shumway, owner/editor of the town newspaper. Not only did she not vote for Rennie, she editorialized against him during election campaigns. The previous sheriff’s widow and the Congregationalist minister are co-conspirators. As the situation degrades, other people begin to question their allegiance to Rennie.

King uses the metaphor of addiction to explain the townspeople’s behavior. Anyone can become a drug addict after an injury because the body and the brain conspire to create imaginary pain to rationalize taking more painkillers. Rennie is the town’s brain and most residents go along with his deception. This is the way people like Rennie are allowed to take power, King says. On a larger scale, he might have turned into another Pol Pot or Hitler.

The book is populated with fascinating, three-dimensional characters, including a trio of precocious and resourceful children, two out-of-towners forced to become surrogate parents, a physician’s assistant pressed into running the hospital when the town’s only doctor dies, the owner of a megastore that stocks everything imaginable, an unstable man suffering from a brain tumor, and a few dogs who offer more than comic relief.

Crossovers to other King novels are slight, except for a symbol that should inspire discussions about the true nature of the Dome. Children experience visions of the near future, but there are few other supernatural elements—beyond the Dome itself.

One character with literary ambitions muses about the risks involved in writing a novel. “What if you spent all that time, wrote a thousand-pager, and it sucked?”

King need have no such fears. This thousand-plus-pager most definitely does not suck. For such a massive book it is an incredibly fast and breezy read. It has the urgent pace of Cell without the wonky pseudoscience, and the insightful depiction of small town politics of Needful Things—except the characters in Under the Dome are sympathetic.

It’s not The Stand II, but people who liked that book—or Desperation or ‘Salem’s Lot—will love this one.

•••

Bev Vincent has been writing News from the Dead Zone since 2001. His first book, The Road to the Dark Tower, an au­thorized companion to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, was published by NAL in 2004 and nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. He contributes a monthly essay to the Storytellers Unplugged, contributed to the serial novellas Looking Glass and The Crane House, and has published hundreds of book reviews and over 50 short stories, including appear­ances in Shivers (vols II and IV), Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Tesseracts Thirteen, Doctor Who: Destination Prague, and this magazine. His latest book is The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, available in November at Barnes & Noble. Visit him on the web at www.bevvincent.com

We received a copy of the brand new Under the Dome by Stephen King Limited Edition from Simon & Schuster today and we thought our readers might enjoy seeing a few photos:

the front cover of this huge volume

the package that held the artwork playing cards

the full color endpaper at the front of the book

Stephen King's signature

The title page and the first exclusive drawing

The drawing of the woodchuck

Madness, Blindness, Astonishment of Heart artwork

The character artwork playing cards.

The back of the cards have descriptions of the depicted character.

]]> http://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/first-look-photos-under-the-dome-limited-edition-from-simon-schuster/feed/ 5 http://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/the-final-question-special-halloween-online-edition/ http://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/the-final-question-special-halloween-online-edition/#comments Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:32:04 +0000 Brian Freeman http://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/?p=1104 Thanks to everyone who took the time to email in their feedback on “The Final Question” in Cemetery Dance magazine.  If you have any comments or even a suggestion for a question you’d like to see answered by your favorite authors, feel free to email me directly: brianfreeman@cemeterydance.com.

If you’re new to the magazine or if you haven’t ordered your copy of Cemetery Dance #61 yet, the premise of “The Final Question” is simple: each issue we’ll ask a handful of authors to answer the same question and then we’ll publish their responses exactly as we receive them.

Normally this feature is limited to the magazine, but we wanted to do something special for our website visitors this Halloween, so here you go!

The special Halloween question is: What is your earliest Halloween memory?

Ray Bradbury:
One Halloween was a big mistake for me. I had a bunch of my friends over, and I put on my Houdini manacles. I was supposed to break free from them, to show my friends what a good magician I was, and I couldn’t get out of the goddamn things. So I fell down on the floor and writhed around, and all my friends gathered and looked down at me and laughed. I got mad at them, and I said, “Get the heck out of the house! You’re not wanted here now.” So I sent them all home.

Elizabeth Massie:
My earliest Halloween memory – the year I was five – is all the more clear in my mind because my father had bought a home movie camera to record all the important moments in the lives of his kids. Christmases. Birthday parties. Easter Egg hunts. And, of course, Halloween. The camera was one of those Keystone 8 MM silent wind-up dealios with the excruciatingly bright lights that turned every documented event into a cheerful marathon squint-fest. My mother, a very creative soul, always made our costumes. This was the year my older sister was a witch, I was a fairy princess, and my younger sister was a bunny. My younger brother was stuck in the playpen, squinting and watching his older siblings in the pre-Trick or Treat parade of costumes back and forth across the living room floor, grinning for the camera. I envied my older sister’s excellent, bright yellow yarn witch wig and my younger sister’s gloriously full white yarn bunny tail, but I love-love-loved my glitter-covered star wand.

Rick Hautala:
I wrote about my most vivid (and scary) Hallowe’en memory for CD’s October Dreams, but my clearest first memory of Hallowe’en is rather mundane … I remember getting candy corn for the first time and trying then (as I still do today) to bite each triangular piece into thirds on the lines where the colors change. How mundane is that?

Al Sarrantonio:
I was obsessed with skeletons.  When I got older, my brother and I would use face paint and make-up and take great joy in rummaging through my father’s box of old clothes for hobo getups — but my very first costume, when I was perhaps five, was an out-of-the-box, store-bought skeleton costume (the only one I ever had) that I never forgot.  The mask alone scared hell out of me (and, I hoped, everyone else): bone-white with large hollow eye holes and a set of grinning bone-teeth that were nothing short of creepy.  The mask was too large for my head, of course — but the body of the costume was the kicker, satin-black to blend with the night, with printed white bones right down to the splayed bony feet.  I looked, and felt, like a vintage jointed cardboard skeleton come to life.  They don’t make them like that anymore.  At least I hope so — if I saw me coming, I’d run the other way!

Trent Zelazny:
I was no older than four or five.  After Trick-or-Treating, my folks went out to a party.  My kindergarten teacher, Cathy Cavanagh, was watching my brother and me for the evening.  We scooped the brains out of an overdue yet innocent pumpkin while the original Halloween played on TV.  Needless to say, the movie scared the crap out of me.  Jack-O-Lantern finished, movie over and a couple of games later, I went to my bed, which was right up against my bedroom window, for a long stretch of nightmares.  I was just drifting off when a tap came at the glass.  I opened my eyes and screamed at the horrific sight of a bleeding Frankenstein snarling at me from outside.  My brother got in some trouble for that one.

Peter Crowther:
In England, we tended to concentrate on Mischief Night and Bonfire Night  (4th and 5th of November) but there were some kids — particularly those whose world existed within the four-color confines of the American comicbook and the stories of Ray Bradbury — who were aware that there was something else to be had . . . another special day; one with something more than mere firecracker mayhem to entice and inveigle. That special day was All Hallows Eve . . . when witches rode the cool winds on brooms and the dead left their soily resting places to walk the night-time streets once again.

Of course, my childhood imagination created all manner of spectral happenings and I’ve written about many of them. But the first real memory I have comes from much later . . . when I was in my early 30′s. For it was then, armed with thermoses of coffee and hot milk and little packs of sandwiches and chocolate biscuits, that Nicky and I took the boys — then aged seven and five — up to nearby Knaresborough Rocks to watch for witches.

I write this stuff for a living, of course (at least, I do when PS Publishing lets me have an hour or two off for good behaviour!) . . . so I’m probably not a good judge. But I reckon the best rush you will ever get out of Hallowe’en is through the eyes of a child alongside you. It could be your child, could be someone else’s — doesn’t matter. Just watch their eyes, wide like saucers, their mouths dry with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Unbeatable.

We repeated that excursion other years — in fact, it became a staple in the Crowther household — until the commercial side of Hallowe’en took over and Olly and Tim went out trick-or-treating. But, you know, for a long time after — all the time we were in Harrogate, in fact, years after the kids had left home — Nicky and I still went out to Knaresborough Rocks, scanning the dark skies . . . looking for witches. I think I even saw one once or twice. . .

Simon Clark:
My parents, for a Halloween treat, allowed me to stay up late to watch a TV ghost story. Possibly, I was aged five or six. I don’t remember the show’s title now (it might have been from the Mystery & Imagination series; if I’m misremembering then I might be combining childhood Halloween memories, which for me adds to the emotional potency of that night). The series graphics were of a frantically beating dove, shown in ghostly negative, then an ominous thudding heartbeat would begin. And then….

….and then I’d had enough. Terrified, I scrambled off to bed before the film had even properly started. Oh, but the dreams – and the nightmares – those opening credits triggered…

Bev Vincent:
I grew up in rural Eastern Canada, where the houses were spread out along the main highway. We set out in a group of five or six and wandered abroad for hours, covering three or four miles in each direction. Because of the latitude, it got dark early. Our parents didn’t appear to worry about the fact that we were gone until eight or nine o’clock.

Since it was a small community, everyone knew everyone else, so part of the game was to guess who the masked visitors were. At some places, every young person in the community had a specially prepared treat with his or her name on it. Usually the treats in those places were homemade: fudge, Rice Krispie squares, things like that. Nobody had to worry about apples with razor blades or candy with needles, though we knew those things happened in far-away places. We all coveted nickel bags of potato chips, though. That was the barometer of the evening’s success: how many bags of chips we acquired.

We had plenty of time for shenanigans. We had fights with ripe cat-tails, which could be thrown like hand grenades and would explode to cover you with seeds that looked like feathers. Setting off fire crackers and soaping windows were the standard tricks. Hiding or knocking over yard implements. One member of a political organization had his garage wallpapered with posters for the opposition party, I recall. It was all good clean fun and the night seemed to last forever. In my memory, it now seems straight out of a Ray Bradbury story and I regret that my daughter wasn’t able to share that magical experience, since Halloween in the suburbs in the 1990s was a different creature altogether.

Ronald Kelly:
I reckon one of my earliest Halloween memories was in 1966. I was six years old and the Batman TV show with Adam West was the big thing that year. Every kid in our neighborhood was Batman crazy. Dozens of Caped Crusaders were running around, leaping across ditches and climbing up porches. I guess the neighbors were a little confused, wondering if they were handing out candy to the same kid over and over again. I don’t think there was a single Robin in the bunch. Who wanted to be stinking Robin anyway?

I remember I had my mom cut the bottom half of my plastic mask off — the man face part — leaving only the cowl. All the other kids thought I was kinda weird because of that. But at least I wasn’t huffing and puffing and sweating under my mask. At least I could breathe!

Thomas Tessier:
I was 5 or 6, had never really been out after dark on the streets in the neighborhood.  A perfect Halloween night — cool, blustery breeze, leaves hissing in the maples and scuttling down the streets.  I was a “hobo,” complete with a beat-up old fedora and a mascara stubble, applied by my mother.  What I remember most is the thrill of being out at that time of day, how the neighborhood seemed so different, the taste of the autumn night air.  I got a lot of Mounds and Almond Joy bars — at that time, they were all made at the Peter Paul factory in town, long before it was taken over by Cadbury, and eventually moved, just a few years ago, to some other location.  I didn’t think of Halloween as necessarily scary then, just different, fun and once-a-year unique.  Scary came later.

Stephen, Tabitha and Owen King read from their works at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington D.C. on April 4, 2008 as part of the PEN/Faulkner reading series. The event was originally scheduled to be held at the Folger Shakespeare Library, but due to demand it was moved to the larger venue across the street. I heard that over 500 tickets were sold.

Earlier in the day, the three authors met with students from several area high schools at the Library of Congress as part of the PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools program.

Eager fans started gathering on the church steps early in the afternoon. The sign near the sidewalk announced “GOD RESCUES OUR LIVES FROM DEATH.” The steps grew crowded and the line extended down the sidewalk by the time the Will Call doors opened at 7 pm. Attendees were of all ages. Some were dressed in horror-themed t-shirts and a couple of guys looked like they just got off their motorbikes. People who had never met before but knew each other by screen names from message boards sought each other out. Precious books were tucked under arms or clutched to chests.

The first person I recognized was Norman Prentiss, who’ve I know from NECON and Shocklines. He was there with a friend. Four Cemetery Dance employees showed up shortly thereafter and joined our little group. I had to leave my place in line to pick up my tickets from the Will Call table–if you saw me rejoining my friends, I wasn’t cutting in line. I swear!

When the doors opened at 7:30, we found a pew with enough empty space on the right-hand side of the sanctuary. Three chairs were arranged on the left-hand side of the chancel where the authors would be seated. The first few rows of the sanctuary were blocked off for PEN/Faulkner members and affiliates. Attendees clustered around the center aisle so they could make a fast break for the Folger later to get in the queue for the book signing.

The rules concerning the event were announced frequently, and reiterated from the pulpit before the Kings took the stage. A young woman took photographs of the audience and the event for PEN/Faulkner.

After introductions, Tabitha King was the first to read. Each author was miked but, after a moment’s hesitation, she decided to read from the pulpit. She could barely see over the top (I was reminded of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the White House several years ago), but she got a laugh when she said that her daughter, a minister, would be jealous. Her daughter’s congregation isn’t as large as the one seated before her, and the pulpit isn’t as nice, she said.

She read from a novel in progress called The Potter’s Rib, explaining that a “rib” is a tool potters use. She skipped the prolog, which she said was about the death of a cat. “It’s sad,” she said, her Maine accent making the second word long and flat. A woman goes to visit her ex-husband, who wants to consult with her about some expensive porcelain his new wife purchased. He suspects it might be counterfeit. The main character is non-committal, but the new wife, bearing a box of the pottery in question, appears at her door later that evening when she is getting ready for bed. During the reading, Tabitha stopped from time to time to make editorial comments about the work. In the midst of a passage about the history of porcelain, she said, “Isn’t this riveting? Don’t worry. There’s exciting stuff ahead.”

Owen followed his mother’s lead and stood behind the pulpit, looming over it. The story he selected was called “Nothing is in Bad Taste,” recently published in Subtropics 5. The editor who accepted the piece was in the audience. The story is about catch phrases that become part of a couple’s vocabulary. In this case, the phrase is “I just needed to park the car,” first uttered by a mental patient after he “parked ” on top of a homeless man after circling the hospital parking lot for a day and a half.

The protagonists use this phrase in various situations and gradually pervert it from its original form–it degenerates in parallel with their relationship. She wants her husband to work less and to move out of the city and start a family; he’s happy with the status quo. The story was well received by the audience, although Tabitha put her hands over her ears for a couple of passages that contained words that aren’t normally uttered from a pulpit. Because of the story’s length, Owen abridged on the fly.

Stephen high-fived Owen at the end of the reading. He remained in his chair and used the portable microphone rather than taking the pulpit. He read a passage from Duma Key, the section where Wireman tells Edgar about winning “la loteria”-the tragic story about what befell his daughter and wife.

At the end of the reading, a brief Q&A session was held, though the questions were predictable and mostly focused on Stephen, who tried valiantly to encourage audience members to ask questions of his wife and son. Most questions seemed to presume the answer; for example, Owen was asked if his father ever read him bedtime stories. Owen answered, “Yes.” After a pause he said, “I’ve been asked that question a lot before, and I know what people expect me to say.” There ensued a brief discussion between Stephen and Tabitha about whether they had read certain potentially damaging stories to their son.

The audience was released to join a queue across the street for a reception and book signing. Each author agreed to sign one book per attendee. Colored cards were distributed to prevent people from returning to the end of the line for a second pass. The line wound through the hall in the Folger where the reception was held and into the main library, past medieval manuscripts and tapestries. Quotes from Shakespeare were etched on the walls and mantles. (The library was one of the settings used by author Jennifer Lee Carrell in her novel Interred With Their Bones, which I like to call The Shakespeare Code.)

The three authors were seated side by side at long tables, with PEN/Faulkner staff facilitating by making sure books were opened to the page to be signed. The line moved quickly and smoothly because no inscriptions were allowed and photographs were prohibited, two things that can interrupt the flow at a signing. In little more than an hour, everyone was through the line and grazing on the remains of the fruit and cheese in the reception area.

Editor’s Warning: This special report contains the fates of several characters and several key plot points. Read at your own risk!

Let’s spend a little time behind the scenes of the upcoming film The Mist. Rich Chizmar and I spent a couple of days on the set in late March.

Interior filming took place at Stageworks in Shreveport, Louisiana’s casino district. Grocery store exteriors were shot at Tom’s Market in Vivian, LA and the lake house scenes were filmed at nearby Cross Lake.

Inside the front door, we saw a sign pointing extras toward their staging area. I went upstairs to find the unit publicist, Tracey Zemitis, in the production offices. One wall featured an array of actor headshots with their character names underneath. Tracey gave me a working copy of the script-minus the last handful of pages. Apparently Thomas Jane was the only actor who had the whole thing, to prevent the ending from leaking out before the movie is released.

The publicist took us to the grocery store set on Stage A. The first crewman we encountered was the sound mixer, sitting behind the stage flats in front of a bank of mixing switches. We could see Thomas Jane (David Drayton) on the video monitors. Through the wall we first heard the word that would become a mantra during our visit: Mrs. Carmody shouting “Expiation!”

Once rehearsal was finished, we entered the set. Bags of pet food were stacked in front of the store windows. Through strategic gaps, we caught our first glimpse of the mist. A military jeep and a few cars were vaguely visible in the parking lot, as well as a kart korral like the one Dinky Earnshaw worked at. The mist was a vaguely cloying carbon dioxide-nitrogen mixture delivered on demand through large transparent plastic ducts. Some days the set needed to be cooled to get it to behave properly.

Tracey led us by the cash registers-we had to step carefully around the cables strewn along the floors like tentacles-and past a book rack that featured only King novels. Around the corner at the last aisle, next to the butcher counter, we found Frank Darabont, sitting in front of a pair of monitors that displayed the views from the two cameras. He wore a pale green Hawaiian shirt, tan cargo pants, and a baseball cap.

I was surprised by how far he was from the action. The actors were several aisles away, completely out of sight. To hear their dialog, Darabont and the script supervisor wore headsets while the cameras were rolling. Keeping “video village” around the corner meant it wouldn’t be accidentally captured during a shot. There were no false or missing walls, so the cameramen were free to shoot in any direction. The ceiling had built-in skylights to allow in ambient lighting from the outside world, a trick Darabont used in The Green Mile, which he said was “probably the only death row ever with a skylight.”

A sign painted on the wall at one end of the store said “Serving Castle Rock since 1967.” The “fresh meat” on display was obviously fake, but the groceries in the aisles were real, mostly product placement. An extra brought a box of Arrowhead Mills crackers to Darabont’s attention-Arrowhead was the name of the military project that caused the mist. They joked about product placement but the script supervisor said, “I don’t think we should tie the product into an environmental catastrophe.”

The attention to detail was amazing, down to “bad check” notices pinned to the cash registers. When Darabont asked someone to find dental floss after lunch one day, the assistant returned in seconds. “How did you get that so fast?” Darabont asked. “It was on aisle three,” the assistant answered. Darabont smacked his forehead. “Of course.”

This was the fifth week of shooting, so some of the products were past their expiration dates. Enough mold covered the bread to cure several diseases. There had been some pillaging of chips and snacks, too. Besides the crew looting, the grocery store had been put through the wringer-the aftermath of a simulated earthquake. Groceries lay strewn in the aisles. Tiles and fluorescent light fixtures dangled from the ceiling.

A few months earlier, Darabont spent a week directing an episode of The Shield as training for this fast-paced shoot, where he had only about half as long as he spent filming Shawshank Redemption and a third of The Green Mile shoot. He brought the cinematographer and cameramen from FX with him to The Mist. From directing the TV episode, Darabont learned to use the camera as a participant in the scenes, shooting sequences as long as five minutes in a single take. The experience also taught him to relinquish some of his rigid habits. For most takes, he had two cameras running simultaneously, one of them usually a handheld or Steadicam. Lighting was the most time-consuming part of the setup for each new shot-but even that was achieved more quickly than on a traditional shoot.

To keep on schedule, they filmed up to nine script pages per day, a demanding pace. “I’d love to find a happy medium between a Green Mile schedule and this one,” Darabont told me. Because the film is set mostly inside the grocery store, he was able to film in chronological order, which helped the actors as the story built in intensity. “I’ve got a hell of a cast, and at the end of the day that’s what it’s all about.”

Darabont said he’d get no reprieve after shooting finished because Dimension wants the film out on November 21. “I’ll be spending the summer in the editing room. It’s going to be a really intense year.” He continued, “Anything that’s not on the set is a vacation compared to this. It’s intense here.” He was aware of the toll filming was taking on him, though. “Don’t let me operate heavy machinery,” he said with a laugh.

Between shots, the set was a beehive of activity. Extras filed back to their starting marks for the next take. Crewmen repositioned cables, cameras and lights. “Free dental work, watch your head,” yelled a man carrying a heavy light through the aisles. Carpenters returned sets to original condition. Production assistants dashed back and forth. Completed rolls of film were brought to the script supervisor for documentation and then delivered off-site for processing. Actors came to the director for costume consultations or to check up on their performance and discuss motivation. Darabont consulted with his cinematographer or assistant director about the previous shot or the coverage required for a scene. Thanks to modern technology, he could request immediate playback on his monitors, compare the shots on the two cameras or review earlier takes or scenes.

There was little idle chatter. If the extras-especially a couple of teenagers-got a little rowdy, Darabont or the A.D. hushed them. During rehearsals, Darabont got into the mix to orchestrate the cast’s movements. Some of the mob scenes were especially complicated. When he returned to his monitors, he commented, “Directing is like squeezing an elephant through a keyhole.”

Videographer Constantine Nasr roamed the set capturing material for the documentary features on the DVD. He recorded rehearsals, discussions between the director and crew, and occasionally stopped to interview Darabont about his impressions of the day’s work. So far, Darabont has released two behind-the-scenes webisodes from Constantine’s work—see NewsFromTheDeadZone.com for links.

Darabont was clearly exhausted, working twelve-hour days with only Sundays off most weeks. His editor had spent the previous week on the set, cutting the film with Darabont during lunch breaks. Darabont occasionally escaped to the loading dock for brief glimpses of sunlight during setups. When the cameras were rolling, he smoked cigarillos and focused intently on the video monitors, nodding at things he liked or pointing out glares from lights or an out-of-place actor that required another take.

We weren’t the only visitors on the set. Author David J. Schow (Kill Riff) was hanging out in Shreveport at Darabont’s invitation. Chris Hewitt from the British magazine Empire was another media visitor.

Schow took us on a tour of the set on Stage B-King’s Sundries. Local artists were dressing the inside with gossamer-wrapped corpses. Unlike the grocery store, only a few items here were product placement. The rest came from a defunct pharmacy in East Texas. The property manager rented the entire contents of the store, down to the soda fountain, shelves and décor. Some items on the shelves revealed how long the place had been closed. When was the last time you saw flashcubes or flash bars?

Another set featured David Drayton’s loft, where he painted movie posters for a living. The work on display depicted a gunslinger, a rose and a tower, painted by movie poster artist Drew Struzan. Hmmm. Wonder what movie that was for.

Schow then took us upstairs to the local headquarters of KNB EFX Group, where foam rubber and latex articulated monsters were being created. Gregory Nicotero (the ‘N’ of KNB) gave us the grand tour. The first thing I saw was a life-sized model of Andre Braugher with his back ripped open. Nicotero said they had “ripping flesh and biting people down to a science.”

Everywhere we looked, there were long, articulated tentacles. They looked like octopus tentacles, except the undersides were designed to open up to reveal suckers that had teeth, surrounded by spiny quills. Cables extend from them so they could be made to writhe and curl.

Among their other creations were the flying bug creatures and the pterodactyls that attack the market, some designed by Bernie Wrightson. The fly-creature had six eyes and its back was lined with porcupine quills. It had sixteen legs, eight large outer ones and eight smaller ones tucked up inside. The body was reminiscent of a wasp, the legs of a spider. Fingerlike organs encircled its mouth. The designers wanted to keep human aspects to their “faces” but make them much more skull-like.

The pterodactyl had two sets of wings. It could flap the back ones or tuck them in and glide on the front wings. Nicotero showed us green-screen footage of the articulated bird being set on fire with the mop torch. Strands of human meat hung from its mouth. Six people operated the puppet, which was also hooked to a boom so it could leap or fly up and down. The green-screen shots may be used as is, or may be used as cues for CafeFX to do in CGI. The final product will likely be a blend of live action and CGI.

A loading dock scene featuring the demise of Norm the stock boy was shot early in production so CaféFX could start working on computer effects.

The movie features some interesting deaths, but not gallons of blood like many horror films. There’s a stabbing and a shooting, and a man is set on fire. The warehouse door amputates some limbs, and a number of people are swept away by the monsters in the mist. A few days before we arrived, actress Alexa Davalos was stung by one of the creatures. Her punctured neck swelled up rapidly, oozing pus.

Dead bodies were stacked carelessly on the floor in one corner of the room, along with the charred remains of the pterodactyl. An oven had a sign posted “Special Effects: Not to be used for cooking.” Cardboard boxes on shelves were hand-labeled “pus and bladders” and “spare eyes.”

Back on the set, I watched Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden (Mrs. Carmody) whip her followers into a frenzy time and time again. Darabont encouraged her to ad-lib so long as her rants included required information. After many of her scenes, she was rewarded with a round of applause. At one point she want off on a tangent, which the script supervisor brought to Darabont’s attention. “Gives me more to work with,” he responded.

On the second day, David and his friends decided to escape from the store. Thomas Jane wandered the aisles looking for Private Jessup to find out what he knew about the mist. A puff of cigarette smoke emerged from the aisle between two checkouts, revealing the private’s location. Ollie (Toby Jones) and Amanda (Laurie Holden) were searching other aisles, so coordinating the action to get the actors to arrive at one location at the same time required several takes.

Later, Mrs. Carmody’s followers accused Jessup of being responsible for the mist. Thomas Jane was knocked down by a punch delivered by Darabont regular William Sadler, followed by some delicate knife work. Jessup was then lifted over the shoulders of several extras and carried to the front of the store, where he was to be cast into the parking lot as a sacrifice.

Sadler came back to video village to review the scene. He was pumped up by the scene’s energy. “It’s moments like these when you’re fully engaged. There’s no acting involved. It can’t help but be genuine.” The punch was “the money shot” according to the cast and crew. The cameramen and Jane rushed to the monitors after each take to see how convincing it looked. The intensity was so high on one take that Francis Sternhagen (Misery, The Golden Years), who was sitting next to the director, retreated from the set. “I don’t want to watch any more,” she said.

“We’re fucking going to kick ass on this scene,” Darabont said after a few takes. “I love it when they lift Jessup up.” The shot was filmed from various angles. “Here’s the place where we don’t rush through it,” he said. “Even if we fall a day behind.” After the low-angle shots were complete, the crew moved shelves of groceries out of the way and brought in a boom crane for a camera that tracked the mob’s progress from above.

While they coordinated the actors’ movement through the aisles with the crane camera-which was computerized to “learn” its motions-they used a naked life-sized dummy of Greg Nicotero as a stand-in for Jessup. During one rehearsal, the boom crane collided with a light fixture, so time was spent removing others that might get in the way. When the mob reached the door, the dummy’s arms extend against the doorframe. “Even the dummy doesn’t want to be thrown out into the parking lot,” the script supervisor said. I didn’t get to stay long enough to see the shot with the real actor-choreographing action and cameras was a long and tedious process that took them well into the evening.

During an afternoon break in filming, the publicist took Chris Hewitt and me out to the “circus” where the actors’ trailers were set up so we could get some interviews. First, we encountered Marcia Gay Harden playing in the parking lot with her children. After that, Toby Jones (Ollie Weeks) invited us into his trailer for a chat. Finally, Thomas Jane appeared at his trailer for his daily cigar and invited us in out of the sun.

* * *

Marcia Gay Harden

While they were planning the look for Mrs. Carmody, Harden presented five different looks to the hair and makeup crew. “There was the nun, the preacher’s daughter, Tammy Faye Baker, the town snoop and the hippie. [Darabont] preferred the nun with the thick eyebrows, but we picked the preacher’s daughter. The prop people gave me this scarf and I put it up on my head, and then props put white gloves in my purse so I’m wearing those. She came in lovely and perfect and very buttoned down and it seems like the character [degenerates]. The hair is down and she’s actually a much more sensual person in her power and in her preaching than she was at the beginning.”

About her dialog: “The language is religious, almost poetic, which makes it difficult to seem natural. Very declamatory. Dialog that typically one would turn off to. I wanted you to be able to listen to her and even wonder if she’s not right, because I think it is the end of the world. If someone said there are monsters and scorpions and man-eating bugs and a mist and everybody is fighting and no one is surviving, I would say it’s the end of the world. It’s apocalyptic. I don’t know how the movie ends-it’s not in our scripts . . . I did ask [Frank] if he would not really kill me off so I could come back [for a sequel]. I love working with Frank. He’s given me freedom-it was wonderful. He came up to me at the end [of a take] and said, ‘You’re fearless.’ I hope he meant fearless and not shameless.”

On ad-libbing: “There were moments when I would lose the thread and make up dialog based on what I know. I did buy a book that’s called The Idiot’s Guide to Revelations and I was reading that so that when he would let me go on I would know what to say and there is a lot of dialog about the Seventh Seal and the Whore of Babylon that’s quite interesting.”

On the mob mentality: “The thing that was interesting to me about it was The Lord of the Flies aspect. This is society in an extremely tough situation where it is a world unknown outside your door. Do you hold together? Do you pull apart? What part of people’s personalities pull apart? Where do people crack? It’s like all the stories about post-traumatic stress disorder. In [Mrs. Caromdy's] case she certainly does crack, but part of what makes her crack is power.”

On her character: “She was written to be sort of a hefty, overweight woman, not an attractive woman in any way, but we felt that you’d walk in the door and you’d go: she’s bad. So you’re setting up a script that is a creature feature-and it does have good and evil, as is necessary in almost any drama-but so obvious. So we’ve given her these moments and episodes: Please God, let me speak through you, let me be your ambassador in prayer, let me be the voice for you. Fill me with the spirit. The personal is always what makes things, your destination or the personal journey, and that’s what we’ve been building. We’re the raw material, and [Darabont] will cook it. I hope some of that stays and doesn’t end up on the editing room floor, but you never know. The more responsibility I have for telling the story, the better. I [usually] don’t mind if they cut scenes I’m in, but there’s other times where I think, ‘Ah, you cut the people story to make it a plot.’”

On her throne: “Frank and I walked through the set and I said, ‘Where is my area?’ He said, ‘You’re probably going to be over here in the produce aisle.’ I said, ‘I want a chair unlike anybody else’s chair.’ And he said ‘We’ve got all these lawn chairs,’ and I was like, ‘anybody can have a lawn chair. I want a throne.’ They found this throne for me and built a little platform and equipped the thing. And I said, ‘I bet I have a shopping cart and scoop things into it, and I was the first one to get a rice bag for my pillow and the first one to get my sleeping bag and I have curtains for my privacy and no one else has curtains.’ So she went from being a fat ugly lady in a yellow pant suit to really being a diva.”

* * *

Toby Jones

British actor Toby Jones played Truman Capote in Infamous, so this wasn’t his first time doing an American accent. However, between takes he reverted to his normal speaking voice. “Playing Capote, it was impossible to not stay in his voice the whole time, because it was a totally different mouth shape. I’d take about an hour and a half to get my jaw in the right place to do it at the beginning of the day.” For The Mist, he said he didn’t want to wear the accent too heavily. Too often, he said, actors are overly proud of their accents. Like the best CGI, accents shouldn’t draw attention to themselves.

On how he was cast: I think [Darabont] saw The Painted Veil, and he really liked that. As an English actor you’re not quite sure how it did happen because of what happens in L.A. You actually hear about it quite late on. I was one of the last people to come on board, which created huge problems with the visa.

“I was very aware of Frank, obviously and The Shawshank Redemption. It’s in my top ten. Frank said I’m sending you a script, I hope you enjoy it. I can’t say that Stephen King is someone I’ve read-I am aware of his stuff on film. To me it’s a fantastic character to play. The unlikely hero.

“I’ve never done what you might call a genre picture before. It requires a special thing in a way because you’re operating in the area of action over character. Anything [the audience] learns about character happens because of the way you respond to extraordinary circumstances. The audience is constantly in the present. They’re not too worried about what happened ten, fifteen minutes ago. The momentum of the thing is moving forward, and as an actor you’re concerned with trying to create a certain consistency. You have to show up and do what the action requires you to do.”

On doing a special effects movie: “We are making a special effects movie in six or seven weeks. I was going, ‘This will be interesting to see how this is going to work.’ I’ve been involved in special effects movies before, but they normally luxuriate in months of prep. Here you’re working with puppeteers and CGI people who are able to do their stuff at such speed it doesn’t really ruin the momentum of the take.

“Often as an actor you just get bogged down in-and there must be doing some weird mental name for this-if I’m doing a play and we rehearse a scene, I’ll have done it once and I’ll be able to remember a whole complicated series of physical activity. Here, you’ll be studying ‘If you could just place it there . . . not there.’ [uses a TV remote to demonstrate two positions an inch apart] I’ll begin to get a kind of amnesia as to whether it was there or there. The minutia overwhelms the big picture.”

On his character’s fate: “I just get zapped, I think. He won’t tell me how I’ve died. I think I won’t find out until I’ve seen the picture. But I have an idea that I’ll play it kind of very, very optimistic-the moment where I make a break for the car [beams optimistically and beckons] ‘Come on, come on . . . ‘” [smile transforms into a look of abject horror]

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Thomas Jane

We spent a surreal forty-five minutes inhaling second-hand smoke as Jane discussed past films (re: Dreamcatcher: “Yeah, some people liked that.”), his graphic novels (a mockup of Bad Planet with a Bernie Wrightson cover is on the rack in the pharmacy when his character grabs comics to take to his son) and future works (re: a sequel to Punisher: “If we can get a fucking director and a script that makes half a fucking sense. The problem is that all the scripts come in like a bad fucking Steven Segal film. I want a fucking dirty, mean, bloody New York story. I want cops and robbers. Good guys and bad guys. I want Serpico. I want fucking Dog Day Afternoon. I want Taxi Driver. I don’t want Under Siege. ”)

On the schedule: “It’s pretty tight, so they’ve been working us really hard. In order to get everything we need, it’s just nonstop. We’ll go a few days over just because the schedule was way too ambitious to get everything we need. But the good news is, we’re not leaving anything behind. Most movies with tight schedules you’re always missing stuff and you don’t have time to do certain shots. Not so here. The way they’ve designed the shoot, we’re never waiting around more than ten minutes for them to flip the lights around.”

On how he became involved in The Mist: “Frank called me and said, ‘I want to send you a script. I’m not going to tell you anything about it. I want you to read it.’ He sent it over and it’s one of the best scripts I’ve ever read. That happens maybe once or twice in a career. The part is fantastic and it happens to mix the two things I love the most, genre movies-the horror/sci-fi type stuff-with action. I feel like I was invited into something very special. So I really gave it my all. I’ve worked really fucking hard on this film. I had an offer to do another movie in between the one I just finished and I turned it down because I wanted to dedicate the time that I knew I would need to prepare for this one. Most of the time you can walk through a genre film. There’s not a lot of prep that you need. Scream. Look scared. This one really requires some acting.”

On working with Frank Darabont: “He has a great eye. It’s pace and it’s tone. He knows how to set a tone that’s believable. And he has great taste. He has an ear for the truth, he knows what’s real, and he also lets everybody do their job. He hires really good people, he lets them do their job. He doesn’t get in their way. He expects you to bring it, and everyone feels that and they do it. Some directors try to get too controlling and they try to micromanage everything and then everybody starts doubting themselves and the work falls apart. He listens, takes advice from everybody and anybody. He’s got a clear sense of the story that he wants to tell, so you can ask him a question and he’ll have a very clear answer. ‘No, and this is why’-or ‘that’s a good idea, and this is why.’ He knows the story that he wants to tell in each moment of the film. He makes it a joy to work for him. You feel that everybody wants to do their best.”

On the set: “The first week everybody’s getting to know each other. The second week everybody knows each other so they’re joking, and they’re having fun and they’re killing time and one morning [Darabont] came in and he goes ‘Chit chat’s over.’ You respect the guy. When he has something to say, he says it very firmly and that’s the way it’s going to be. He sets that tone on purpose. He focuses everyone, and then everyone sees the work that’s being done and that makes them want to be focused.”

On the story: “Shooting chronologically helps a lot for this movie. It’s a cumulative experience-the disaster that everyone’s going through. Another great thing about this movie is that you could replace the monsters with terrorists or poison gas or a burning building or an earthquake and you’d have very much the same kind of film. That makes it relatable in a human, very real way. I think the best horror movies allow us to believe in the horror. Human beings are reacting in a very truthful manner to the given circumstances. In this case it’s monsters from another dimension.”