The relationship between writer/director Frank Darabont and author Stephen King goes back long before The Shawshank Redemption. The Mist is technically their fourth collaboration, though still the third feature film Darabont based on King's work.
Frank Darabont on Stephen King's Stephen King
"It started off with a short film that I made in my early 20s based on one of his stories," said Darabont. "I just sent him a letter asking permission and not really expecting much to come of it, but as it turned out, he had a very generous policy of granting rights to short stories to young filmmakers. That's kind of where it started. We got to be very good friends really as of '94, the year that Shawshank came out. The short film dates back to the early '80s though."
Being friends with King has its perks. "It's been a tremendous privilege to get to know him and get to be friends with him, a side separate really from professional relationship. I really consider him a great friend. We trade a lot of very funny e-mails."
A storyteller like Frank Darabont appreciates having such rich material with which to work. "He's a master storyteller. The guy is just a visionary storyteller, truly one of the greats. I think he's going to be remembered as one of the great authors. But his strength, his muscularity really comes from the character-driven stuff that he does. I think for people who aren't regular readers of his, people have a certain perception of the trappings of horror, the trappings of the genre but he always delves a hell of a lot more deeply than that, which is one of the reasons I think he helped bring horror into the mainstream really. I think before King, it was more of a niche literary form. After King it became very widely accepted and that's because he brings a great variety of storytelling value to what he does. He never writes to the genre. He kind of brings the genre with him into his work. He had a huge impact. I think it's possibly easy to underestimate it now at this late date, but before King you never saw Housewives reading horror novels on an airplane. After King, you saw everybody reading that kind of material so he did a lot to popularize it."
Does that mean Saw owes a lot to Stephen King? "Well, I think everything owes a lot to Stephen King. I don't know about Saw particularly. I never saw it, no pun intended."
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