Mick Garris - Development Hell

Staci Layne Wilson / Horror.com: Congratulations on the publication of your first novel, Development Hell. Has it been a long time in the making?

Mick Garris: Well, I wrote it over a long period of time. The first chapter is the title story of my first book. And it first appeared in Hot Blood back in 1989, or something like that. When I decided to collect my stories and put my first book together it was because I wanted to write a sequel to that like 12 years later. That was the second chapter, Starfucker. Those two both appeared kind of book-ended in my first book. Then I thought, because that story picked up after the first one ended I didn't want to give up that character. I really liked the idea of the character and I wrote a third story that started where the second one ended.

Then I wrote a fourth story and I showed them to Stephen King. The third one appeared in another book. I showed them to King again, and he said "Boy, this is like you're writing a loose novel." I thought about it a long time, and in between jobs decided to just keep going. Whether it became a novel or not, I wasn't sure, but I would do another chapter, another story, that would be self-contained. Then I decided to go back from the beginning once I got several chapters in, and reworked it so it was a novel.

Q: Wow, I couldn't tell that it was from different short stories at all.

Mick Garris: Oh, good. Well, like I said, I went back and did a lot of work and made it go from one to the other. I think the most abrupt change is between chapter one and the rest of the book.

Q: Yeah, but the first chapter hooks you in to it real good.

Mick Garris: It's appeared in several collections.

Q: I haven't read it before… sorry!

Mick Garris: No, no, that's fine. It's better as the first time reader of the novel to not be familiar with any of its previous incarnations. The whole point of writing the fiction in the first place is that there are no rules, there's no budgets, there's no cast, there's no visual effects, special effects or anything to rein me in. The only thing between me and the audience is the computer keyboard. So it's all about the language and not everything that comes between the storyteller and the audience.

Q: What about using people's real names? Were there any qualms with that?

Mick Garris: You know I had no qualms about it [laughing] but I don't know about business affairs. It's a small publisher. I don't even know if they have a legal department.

Q: But isn't it if you use it for satire, then you're OK?

Mick Garris: Yeah, pretty protected if it is for satire. There's not a whole lot that's insulting to the real names. Spielberg I think comes up very well in it and he's somebody with whom I've worked several times and hope to in the future. If I was going to write about Hollywood I didn't want to make up all those, some of them maybe. I just wanted to go for broke. I thought it would be a little more bold and it would feel more real and suck you more into it.

Q: Was the main character based on anyone in particular?

Mick Garris: Yes. When I first wrote the first story it was. Someone, I don't know what he's doing now, but he was a hotshot out of film school. And his feature career did not go the way and everyone around him expected it to. And I'm not going to say who it was. Because after that first story... I mean, there's so much about the story and everything that followed that's not at all like him, but he was a very cocky young filmmaker who was really full of himself and thought that he was going to change Hollywood. Rather, Hollywood changed him.

So that's kind of what the book started with, the short story was about that. From there I just thought how great to write about an incredibly egocentric Hollywood character who meets his comeuppance time and time and time again. You know, there's a reason that the character, I don't know if you've noticed, has no name throughout the novel.

Q: Of course I noticed that. It's kind of like Rebecca.

Mick Garris: He never has a name, and that was intentional because he doesn't really have an identity of his own. He has only lived through movies and now movies are forcing him to live real life. Whether it's through Jean Harlow or through the experience of losing the actress wife he had and the baby that they made. Real life is removed from him by Hollywood and so he's nameless.

Q: It's very deep on some levels, but it's a fun read too.

Mick Garris: Well you know the depth is there for people to get, I hope, but it really is an extreme erotic horror novel that's disguised. It's Hollywood satire, really, that's wearing the disguise of an extreme sexual horror novel.

Q: Yeah, it's erotic but it's definitely not sexy.

[laughter]

Mick Garris: To some it may be.

Q: OK…

Mick Garris: And we worry about those people.

Q: Yes, we do. They're in therapy even as we speak. In your book there's also the concept of whoring out the dead, which they do all the time now by digitizing deceased actors into movies, and so on. How did you decide to put that in the literal sense for Development Hell?

Mick Garris: Well, I wanted it to be about Hollywood in every respect: our perceptions of Hollywood and the ghosts of Hollywood and how the history of Hollywood has been lost and cast aside for rock video style. His favorite filmmakers are not the ones people think of as the great filmmakers of history and that's something to do with you. Nobody young pays any attention to the culture that preceded them until they gain some years and some wisdom and some experience and all that. You can't show a black and white movie anymore unless it's a rock video where it's like, "Oh cool, black and white. How weird."

So yeah, since it was about life and death I wanted it to about 'the dead' and the dead history of Hollywood as well as the living history of Hollywood. It was a very freeform book, you know, it's not a tightly structured novel I don't think [laughing]. It's very episodic in a way. But I wanted it to just feel like you didn't know where it could turn next and yet feel genuine. As someone who's worked in and outside of the Hollywood world for twenty-some years there's a lot of things that I've witnessed or experienced. And a lot that I didn't, but it feels like I did because it's hard not to take in the things that are around you.

I've worked very much as an outsider in the Hollywood world for twenty years in the gutter of horror. So it's not like I've palled around with the mainstream of Hollywood power elite.

Q: Did you ever want to?

Mick Garris: I worked with Stephen Spielberg and that was fantastic. It was the greatest learning experience and he was very generous with sitting down and going through storyboards with me and encouraging me. He taught me a lot. That was lots of fun. But I never felt like I belonged there. I would love to do big mainstream movies if there's something original and unique and compelling about them. I'd love that opportunity. For the most part the more expensive the movie is, the shittier it is, to me. You know, 200 million dollar movies are not very interesting to me because there are so many compromises that have to be made to get them out. I mean, that's it. I'd love to be Peter Jackson and be able to make whatever I want to and do it that way.

Q: I was a little surprised there seemed to be sort of a backlash against King Kong, which I actually thought was pretty good.

Mick Garris: Yeah, yeah. I mean it's the movie he wanted to make rather than the movie the studio wanted him to make. And that's great.

Q: But I wonder why it didn't do so well?

Mick Garris: Well, it's over three hours long and the original was 100 minutes long. There's no more story than there was in the original. And I think maybe people are tiring of the spectacle, of CGI spectacle.

Q: But Narnia did great. That was CGI.

Mick Garris: Yeah, but it was also aimed at a wider kind of young audience. An audience that doesn't really get good high-budget stuff aimed at them very often. I think King Kong was not really aimed at kids. It had a strong nostalgic center to it. Setting it in the 1930s maybe didn't help, although I think that was a great choice, to make it period. I just think that over three hours is a hard nut to swallow.

Q: Getting back to your writing… Did you ever think about publishing your memoirs?

Mick Garris: You know, people always thought my first book was a memoir. Because the title was A Life in the Cinema. I don't think I'm important enough. I am to my wife and family but nobody gives a shit about ... it's not that interesting. It would be to me, but I don't have enough of an ego to want to tell my life story to the world. I'm much more shy about my personal life.

Q: You're not a heroin addict or an alcoholic.

Mick Garris: Well that's another problem. I have the least interesting [back-story]. I've never had a drink in my life, I've never smoked a joint in my life. Despite my rock and roll background. Yes, I have one divorce under my belt but I have been married 24 years, so... It's not the most interesting tell-all. I could tell it all and you'd snooze. The work part might be more interesting, but again how interesting was Zelig? He was surrounded by great fascinating people but he wasn't so interesting. And me, my old line is: I'm the Zelig of horror.

Q: So you like to write about other people, shine the spotlight on them?

Mick Garris: Well unless it's something like Riding the Bullet. Riding the Bullet was something that was based on a King story but it drew from a lot of my own personal experience. It wasn't about me but it was about things that happened to me that were inspired by things I'd experienced that I think are universal or at least people can identify with. Telling a story from a very personal perspective is not the same as telling my life story.  

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Be sure and read Horror.com's review of Development Hell.