No More Rewrite Work for Darabont

In the wake of news that director J.J. Abrams is bringing on more writers for Mission: Impossible 3, and earlier news that George Lucas had rejected Frank Darabont’s script for Indiana Jones IV, Darabont himself has sworn off further rewrite or script doctoring work. In an interview promoting the 10th Anniversary DVD release of The Shawshank Redemption, Darabont told us that it’s time for him to focus on his own projects again.

“Indiana Jones is not the reason, but a reaffirmation of a decision that’s been coming for a while,” Darabont said. “I won’t say I’ll never do it again because that’s silly. But it’s been sort of a career focus for 18 years now, writing for other people. And I’ve come to a place where I’m really very anxious to be focusing on getting my own movies made and not wrestling with other people’s problems and other people’s deadlines. It’s been a great run of good fortune for me as a writer. I mean, how many people can claim an 18 year career? But for now, I’d like to put that on the backburner for the first time, so I’m turning down work right and left. I want to get my next movie made.”

Though Lucasfilm and producers like Frank Marshall have said the only problem with Darabont’s script was the third act, the writer himself did not receive such specific feedback. “I have no idea and I’m not being coy, believe me. I’ve not heard anything about the third act or anything else. All I know is that I developed the script with Steven and that he was very happy with it and George was not. And so I got stuck in that crack between two very significant opinions on this project. So to my knowledge, I have no idea what’s going on.”

That pressure almost counteracted the fun of writing an Indiana Jones movie. “It was an incredibly grueling experience working on that film. I spent over a year working nonstop on that, developing the script with Steven and feeling like I really had something special to live up to as a writer. So for me, it was an enormous amount of pressure to get it right. Consequently, a very interesting and disappointing experience to have Steven think I got it right and George not. But hey, as they say in The Godfather, this is the business we have chosen. Things turn out, sometimes they don’t.”

Conversely, Mission: Impossible 3 was a lower pressure assignment. “Mission: Impossible 3 was actually a total gas for me. It was really fun. There was a shape to it when I came on the project. They had a very strong idea when I came onto it. I can’t say that about Indiana Jones. That was sort of developed along the way with Steven. So I was brought in really as a script doctor. I came in on MI3 with something already in place really, and took it from there and did three drafts for Tom on that. And working with Tom was just, I have to say, just a stone pleasure. He is a great guy and a smart, creative guy too. That was really, really fun.”

Darabont was working on his third draft when Joe Carnahan left and had no knowledge of the reasons for the split. By the time J.J. Abrams signed on, Darabont felt he had no more to contribute to the film’s current draft. “I had pretty much done my third draft by the time J.J. came on and I’m anxious to move onto other things. I’ve got The Mist to write this year. Who knows, at some point they might call me back in for something which I’m sure I’d be happy to do, but who knows? At this point, the script might be close enough for J.J. to do whatever polishing he needs to do on his own. That would be fine.”

Comparing the experience of writing for iconic characters Indiana Jones and Ethan Hunt, Darabont said that Hunt had a few more restrictions, especially since the idea for MI:3 is to have more realism and less face swapping. “You don’t want to go too far afield with a character like Indiana Jones. You want to keep it somewhat real but my God, there’s certainly an element of the fantastic with Indiana Jones that you lack with Ethan Hunt. With Ethan, there’s much more of a grounding in reality.”

The Mist is another Stephen King story, as Darabont has excelled at adapting King in the past and has no plans on stopping. “I will always look at his work. I’ve got a few other things along those lines that I’m getting to.”

The story of people trapped in a supermarket surrounded by a fog filled with violent creatures, Mist will bring monsters into the sort of human drama Darabont likes to explore. “If you focus on the human story, everything else is gravy. What I love about The Mist is how character driven it is. It’s a really heated human situation. That’s really where the story is. It’s not so much with the monsters outside. I will not forsake the monsters though. That’s part of the fun.”

Darabont will direct The Mist as well, but he’s hoping another project can find a home first. He began adapting Ray Bradburry’s Fahrenheit 451 before getting the Indy IV assignment, and has now finished the script. “I think it’s the best script I’ve ever done. Now it’s a matter of trying to find a home for it and getting somebody to cough up the dough to make it. That’s always the challenge. Particularly with something that’s that politically charged as Fahrenheit 451.”

The story about book burning in the future was a political statement when originally written, and could be even more of one today. “It is definitely based in the period that Bradburry wrote it. It’s still very much a futuristic piece, but Bradburry wrote that as a metaphor for what was going on in this country during the McCarthy hearings. So its relevance has come back around again. It’s never not been relevant, because there are always forces lurking under the skin of democracy that want to turn us all into mindless robots. That’s become all the more relevant now.”

Though he’s passionate about both projects, he has a longer history with Fahrenheit. “The Mist is something I’ve been wanting to do for 10 years. Fahrenheit’s something I’ve been wanting to do since I was nine years old and I first read Bradburry’s book. So that’s a lifelong dream, that movie.”

It was a combination of all of these projects that kept Darabont from making a Shawshank Redemption DVD any earlier. “It took 10 years because I’ve been really busy. I know that sounds like a stupid answer, but the truth is I really have been crazy busy. I’ve directed two other movies and done an enormous amount of work as a screenwriter. And let me tell you, when you’re meeting deadlines like that, years just go clicking by. The day comes when you realize, ‘Oops, we’re coming up on our 10 years anniversary. Maybe now’s the perfect time to do that.’ So that’s the thought that hit me last year and I said, ‘Okay, let me put my attention on this now and kind of get this ball rolling.’”

Looking back at the film gave Darabont a chance to bring all of his memories to the front of his mind in preparation for his very first director’s commentary track. “It was really fun to look back at the movie and do my homework before we started recording. I’d sit here at home and watch the movie and think, ‘Okay, if I were sitting in a class of, say, film students or just fans of the movie, what would I say that might be of interest to people?’ And those anecdotes inevitably do arrive when you’re thinking about that.”

Seeing some of the documentaries put together on the film brought back even more memories that Darabont didn’t even know were preserved. “In the Mark Kermode documentary, which I thought was just terrific, there was a lot of little on set footage that I didn’t even recall being taken. Just shots of us working there in the prison yard or what not. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t remember that.’ We didn’t really have a ‘making of’ documentary going on while we were shooting. We were a low budget movie and kind of flying under the radar for the most part but obviously we had an EPK crew show up once or twice on the set. I don't know where they found that footage.”

Check out Darabont’s DVD on October 5 and look out for the progress of Fahrenheit 451 and The Mist.