Darabont tells apocalyptic story with 'The Mist'

by Caroline Basile, associate editor

Deep within a fine, almost sheltering mist, horror and monsters are hungry for humans. They lurk and cause shoppers to be in fear, locking themselves inside their hometown grocery store.

“The Mist,” which stars Marcia Gay Harden, Chris Owen and Thomas Jane, is a film adaptation of King’s novella, which was first published in the 1980 horror anthology “Dark Forces,” edited by Kirby McCauley. It later appeared in King’s short story collection “Skeleton Crew.”

Darabont, who has written and directed such screenplays as “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” joins author Stephen King to turn one of King’s most famous stories, “The Mist,” into film.

“I think I have a particular love for the man’s work,” director and screenwriter Frank Darabont said of King. “You know, his voice as an author tends to attract me as a director. You know, the stories that he tells I find particularly compelling, so it seems to be - it seems to have developed into a well that I go back to draw water from again and again. And, you know, luckily he digs what I do with his material.”

“The Mist” is the story of a strange, cloudy mist that appears over the small town of Bridgton, Maine, reducing visibility to almost zero and hiding many different species of strange creatures that viciously attack any human who risks walking out into the open.

In a recent phone interview with the Plainsman Press, Darabont and Harden elaborated on what it was like to work on the film, which debuted in theaters on Nov. 21.

“I’m not getting any younger.” Darabont said. “I feel like I’ve got some more movies to make.”

“The Mist” displays in large part the predicaments that are encountered by citizens of Bridgton who are trapped inside a grocery store as the Mist encompasses the town.

Darabont explains that it can be hard to come across a good script to work on, and says he often comes up with his own material to work on.

“You wind up reading a lot of scripts in Hollywood,” Darabont said. “And I'm sure my colleagues can vouch for me -- there aren’t that many good ones. It’s very rare to read a script that - where you get excited about it, ‘Oh, great. Yes I’d love to work my butt off for a year and a half doing this.’ It’s a lot to put yourself into. I find that I have to really love some material in order to want to do that. And those scripts come along rarely. Oftentimes, I wind up generating my own material.”

Harden, who won the Academy award for Best Supporting Actress in 2000 for her role in “Pollock,” went on to agree and explain how she looks for a good character who will liven up the script.

“They’re few and far between,” she said. “But you can find something in most every script to get excited about. Sometimes scripts come along that are completely wonderful because they're telling a great story. But for me, it’s a lot more about character -- what’s the character arc? What can I do with the character? Because the script is totally the director’s medium.”

Harden says that she worked on developing and researching her character, Mrs. Carmody, an apocalyptic religious zealot who rises to power over others in the supermarket who have broken down psychologically. Harden’s character eventually convinces a majority of the survivors that these events fulfill the biblical prophecy of the end times and that a sacrifice must be made to clear away the Misty cloud and its unwanted guests.

“It was fantastic to play this lady,” Harden says. “And what I did is I bought this book called “The Idiot’s Guide to Revelations.” Because a lot of her lines were biblical, and so it could be “and so God talked” down to the world and tells you blah, blah - and just - and there's a way that one gets didactic in that speaking. And I wanted it to be as real as it could be, and yet she had to say some of the things she had to say. So I bought this book to find out what is the allegory, what are the stories behind it, what does this mean, what does that mean? The four horsemen come up all the time.”

Harden also described what drew her to making this film. It wasn’t just Darabont’s excellent directing skills, but his ability to create a meaningful, human story.

“Frank [Darabont] drew me to this script,” Harden said. “He tells a really human story and often the humans are far scarier than the exterior event. So in this case, I thought that Frank told a beautiful story.”