So, this is a transcript of Clive Barker's Q&A session from the Fango convention last weekend. Right now, I'm still working on transcribing it, but I'm putting up the interview segments as I finish them. There's almost an hour of dialog, so this might take me a few more days.

Also to look forward to are The Carver's video and subsequent audio of the Q&A session. Kudos to her for having the foresight to bring a video camera. :) As soon as those are available, I'll put a link to them here.

Throughout the interview, you will see words in [brackets]. These are words that were less than clearly audible on my digital audio recorder in WMA format... When The Carver's audio becomes available, I'll try to correct what I can, if it's clearer...

Enjoy!

- Jonathan S. Kui, 02 May 2008

CONTENTS:
PART ONE: Personal life and Film news
PART TWO: Literature and Art

More coming soon
 

PART ONE: Personal Life and Film News

TT - Tony Timpone, Editor, Fangoria Magazine
CB - Clive Barker, Imaginer

TT: “Well, our next guest certainly doesn’t need any introduction, especially not after that. Let’s hear it for Clive Barker!” 

Applause.

CB “Hello.”

Audience laughs.

TT: “This is getting to be ‘same time, next year.’ You know, we had you at the show last year, and unlike last year, you sound a Hell of a lot better!”

CB: “Yeah, I had a little surgery. A lot of people have asked over the years at signings and things, they say, ‘why does your voice sound so raw?’ People have been really concerned [inaudible]. And, it turned out I had these benign (thank God), growths in my throat which were reducing my air intake to about 10% of what it should be, which wasn’t good, and I was getting sicker and sicker, and about three weeks ago I had an operation, and bye-bye the bad stuff, and I feel. So. Good.”

Applause

CB: “I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who literally over the years (I mean, I’ve had this for, like, five years) who at signings and conventions have said, ‘are you okay?’ and I’ve blithely said ‘yes’ when I haven’t been actually okay, and it’s just nice to feel… I’ve got my energy back and it’s very cool, it’s very cool.”

TT: “You still smoking those fancy cigars?”

CB: “I’ve kind of put the cigars down for a little while, but there’s something that happens in the morning now, which didn’t happen for a long while… With there being some children in the room, I don’t want to be too explicit about this, but, you know with there being oxygen in your system, that little thing that happens to men in the morning, when they look down, you know, and a little ‘Mount Fuji’ thing going on in the sheets, you know, and so that’s now returned which has been welcome. ‘Hello, Mount Fuji. I thought you’d gone forever, but here you are: Mr. Wood.’ So, that’s surely good.”

TT: “Well, the second question on everyone’s lips is, a few weeks from now, we were supposed to be seeing MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN in theaters, and that’s since been delayed---“

CB: “—to August 1^st [inaudible] and I was, in some parts… I want to say ‘responsible,’ but I certainly vociferous about the fact that bringing it out on the 16^th of May against NARNIA, then I think the week after is…”

TT: “INDIANA JONES, right?”                    

CB: “It just seemed like a dumb thing to do for MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, which is a fucking great picture. And the MPAA was appalled by it, which I think is a good sign, and Mr. Kitamura has done an exceptional job. It’s amazing. Really, I’m very proud, I’m very proud of him and the movie.”

TT: “There’s also speculation that the studio wanted to change the title. And that’s got to be the best title of any Clive Barker short story, ever.”

CB: “Yeah, they wanted to take the word ‘meat’ out of the title. I guess it was, THE MIDNIGHT TOFU TRAIN.’ No, they thought the title, I guess, was too… crude? Too on-the-nose? To me, it was like a good genre title. It goes back to something we’ve talked about over the years, about people in this city, in this industry being very happy to take profit from horror movies, but at the same time often being ashamed of horror movies. And it irritates the Hell out of me. I mean, I love horror movies—how long have we been talking to one another? Twenty years?”

TT: “Yeah, longer. 1985…”

CB: “There you go… you were six.”

Laughter

CB: “No, it’s a long time, and that situation of being ashamed of horror movies and just two-faced about horror movies, you know, they would take the profit and at the same time, kind of shun them. You have the situation where very often they won’t put them up for review, you know, which I think is a way of sort of saying ‘we’re ashamed of this. We’re very happy it makes money, but we’re ashamed.’ And it’s interesting when you showed GODS AND MONSTERS amongst the pictures up there. That was true for James Whale back in the early 1930’s, and it hasn’t changed over these years.”

TT: “So do you predict any MPAA bloodbaths over MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN? They’ve been very lenient towards horror films for the last few years, they’ve been kind of looking the other way, are you gonna change all that with this movie?”

CB: “No, I mean, it is very bloody, I mean, the story is very bloody, you know? Bodies hanging upside-down in a train prepared for consumption like sides of beef, and all that imagery is right there in the movie in every gorgeous detail, and though they tried to make some in-roads into the picture, it’s very hard, because the picture is very very [inaudible], and it remains very [inaudible] even though the MPAA has had a go at it, it remains very, very [inaudible].

TT: “The original story was set in NYC, you shot this film in LA, though on a NYC subway, a re-creation of a NYC subway car, is the story still set in NY?”

CB: “Yeah, and I think it has a very nice flavor to it, I think. I don’t think anybody will be troubled, actually, by that at all. I think they’ll all be pretty-- it’s a very intense movie. The story was very intense. There’s no more tongue-in-the-cheek kind of stuff. You know, one of the reasons I think the MPAA has been a little lenient, is because the stuff has been so over-the-top that I’m not sure it’s been sort of believable. I think what Mr. Kitamura did for us in MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN is actually make it sort of believable again. You really feel like… there’s a couple of scenes where we actually see the bodies hanging upside down, there’s a scene with an eyeball… loose, which is very entertaining and fun [for frolics?], but actually a very serious movie if you take the movie very seriously.

TT: “Now this is one of several of your Books of Blood stories on the way to the Silver Screen. John Harrison, director of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE and DUNE has just written and filmed a version of the first story, BOOK OF BLOOD, into a movie, combined with another Books of Blood story. Tell us a little bit about that project, which, not much word has gotten out about the film, except at Fangoria.com.”

CB: “Yeah, we’ve been deliberately coy about that, because we have actually a lineup of pictures coming, in fact. (Did I actually bring my list?) There are so many movies coming  (I guess I left the list backstage. [inaudible]) So many pictures coming that I actually asked the guys to make a list. [inaudible])  We’ve got BOOKS OF BLOOD, or THE BOOK OF BLOOD, because actually, as you’ve said John Harrison is taking the first story from the Books of Blood, and the last from that series, and made a single movie, which is very cool, starring Jonas Armstrong who plays Robin Hood, in the… you’ve probably seen all the huge billboards around town, he plays the [fake medium?] in the story and he’s superb. So, that is being edited now. Mr. Harrison [inaudible]. Then Anthony DiBlase is going to…”

Somebody in the audience applauds.

CB: “…a Mr. DiBlase fan out there, I like that! A very talented man! Mr. DiBlase has adapted one of the most popular stories of the Books of Blood, Dread, and he has adapted and is directing it. That goes into pre-production in June, and then after that comes THE MADONNA, which I think is a very interesting and dark choice, followed by PIG BLOOD BLUES, which is the story about a rampant pig, a possessed pig. So what we’re actually doing is we’re going back to the really hardcore, dark, unapologetically horrific pictures, stories that [inaudible] from the Books of Blood, no apology, no tongue-in-cheek, no over-the-top, just really telling it like I used to like it, I mean we don’t see too many movies which take the supernatural, take the good character stuff and then (by all means, have plenty of blood) and build a narrative that you really get committed to. I hope that’s what we’ve got, so we’ll have, every nine months or so, we’ll have a Clive Barker Books of Blood story coming out." 

TT: “That’s really exciting. And this is running kind of counter to the current trend in Hollywood which is PG-13 horror, which is a pretty dirty word to this crowd…”

Members of the crowd start booing.

TT: “…are you going to shake things up a bit?”

CB: “Yeah, I don’t understand. To be PG-13 and a horror movie is a contradiction in terms. If I’m going to see a horror movie, I want it to be the darkest, most intense picture I can have.”

Applause

CB: “Right? We all want that, right? The idea of making a horror movie for 13-year-olds… it’s: Why? You go to horror movies to be challenged, to have your taboos questioned, to be pushed a little bit further than you thought you could go, I think, and there hasn’t been too much of that around. There’s been plenty of gross-outs, lots of gross-outs, but gross-outs aren’t the same as good horror, I don’t think.”

TT: “What’s the status of the Hellraiser remake? I understand the French directors who did that brilliant French movie INSIDE, I hear they’ve been taken off the project. Is that true?”

CB: “They sort of took themselves off the project. They wrote me a letter, actually, which I received yesterday, saying that they felt that they couldn’t do justice to the mythology the way they wanted to. So now we have new forces at work, and we’ll see how everything progresses. I’m not allowed to talk about directors or writers right now. It won’t be a remake of the first movie, it won’t be just a play-by-play, scene-by-scene remake. It’ll be a new film.”

(Click here for PART 2: LITERATURE AND ART)