From Walk To Fahrenheit

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There's a short lil' interview with the director Frank Darabont over at STYD today, and it reminded me that I still ain't watched the black-and-white version of The Mist that's on the DVD, and I need to. ASAP! But besides that, Darabont chats up a couple of the projects he's been trying to do for ages. On Stephen King's story The Long Walk, he says:

""The Long Walk" is a bit on my back burner at the moment. I won't spend too many more years before I make it, it's going to be coming up I think pretty shortly. But I'll be making it, I'm sure, even more cheaply than "The Mist" because I don't want to blow the material out of proportion. It's such a very simple, weird, almost art film-like approach to telling a story. So let's do it honestly, let's do it that way. Let's not turn it into "The Running Man." So we'll make it down and dirty and cheap and hopefully good."

Yes, good is a hopeful place to start. From there talk turns to his long-gestating adaptation of Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451, which he says this of:

"That's my other great priority, to try and get the greenlight on that and that's been a bit of a struggle. Hollywood doesn't trust smart material. If you show them a really smart script. I actually had a studio head read that script and say: "Wow, that's the best and smartest script that I've read since running this studio but I can't possibly greenlight it." I asked why and he says "How am I going to get 13-year-olds to show up at the theater?" And I said "Well, lets make a good movie and I bet that will take care of itself." But that argument cut absolutely no ice. The movie was basically too smart for this person, too metaphorical, etc., etc. It's a bit of a battle you've got to fight. When you're faced with it, how do you overcome that prejudice?"

With machine guns, Frank. Machine guns.
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