You can read the entire interview at BloodyDisgusting.com...
Before I get this interview winding, some of you are probably curious as to why some of us here at CBM are covering a vampire film; one that isn't
Twilight. Well the explanation for that is because the upcoming remake will be adapted by Dark Horse Comics and is to be penned by Marc Andreyko. This has also stirred up controversy with the swedish book's author, John Ajvide Lindqvist. The writer who has vocally been optimistic about the American-sanitized retelling is turning his head as he claims that he did not give permission for the comic industry to adapt his work, "Nobody has asked me about [doing a comic] and I think that the project stinks. I am looking into this matter and hope that they have no right to do this." Now that the explanation has been cleared, here is the very lengthy interview from Bloody-Disgusting:
Here's a bit
BD: The childlike innocence of the characters interactions really makes the story what it is.
MR: Yeah, we need that childlike innocence. The second thing I said was that we shouldn't remake it. I read the book too and was completely taken with it and I was really intrigued how personal the story felt. I thought John Lindqvist had written this terrific story, and he also adapted it for the film. And it has all these really great things in it and I thought that he did a great job adapting it and condenscing elements of the story and he knew what subplots he could work around or cut out. If you had done a direct adaptation, it would have been a 10 hour TV miniseries. I wrote Lindqvist and told him that it wasn't just that I was drawn to the story because it was a brilliant genre story – which it is – but also because of the personal aspect of it. It really reminds me of my childhood. He wrote back to me and said that he was a big fan of Cloverfield and I got very relieved and excited about that. He said, “What I liked about Cloverfield was that it was a fresh take on an old story, which I loved but it was sort of a funky way of doing it and that's what I was trying to do with this. But I'm more excited that you're responding in a personal way because this is my autobiography.” He talked about how it was his story and he grew up in Blackebery and that whole thing. So my intention was to take the story and to, as much as possible, honor that story and tell it but in an American context. What happened was that there were some people I mentioned that to in talking about the movie and there's this idea that somehow Americanization means we're dumbing down the story and it means we're going to take everything that's cool and interesting in the story, and everything that's shaded, delicate and nuanced about the story and rip it out and put one-liners and explosions and that kind of stuff. That was never my intention. What I meant by that was to take the story and to do it in a… There's this great thing about the book. Have you read the book?
BD: Yeah.
MR: So, in the beginning of the book, he's talking about Blackebery, which is where Lindqvist grew up, and when he wrote to me, he said that, “Other than the vampire aspect of the story, this was my childhood; this was my life at the time.” He talked about Blackebery was this planned community, which we have all these tracked housing communities in America. I thought that was very analogous but there was one aspect that wasn't. He talks about how the community is built and you can imagine one day that all the residence moved in on the same day and he described it; it was beautifully written. But at the end of the chapter, the thing that hooks you and keeps you reading – it hooked me – was that he says the one thing about the community and all the things that were built was that there's wasn't one church. That's probably why they were so unprepared for what was about to happened. I thought, oh my God, that's so cool and how very, very Swedish. The idea of that sort of godless track community and being unprepared for [the vampire] and being so disconnected from its history. I thought, here's something interesting: how would that be in an American context?
The book was set in the 80s and the film was set in the 80s and I thought in 80s American, it was the Reagan era. It wasn't a godless America, it was a God-fearing America. It would be one that was concerned with the concept of the evil empire and the idea of evil being out there but not in us. I thought to Americanize the story would be to take the context of that kid who is being bullied mercilessly, day in and day out, who has no friends and no one he can turn to and whose parents are going through a divorce so he's invisible to them to a certain degree. And he would have all these dark impulses. Oskar collects serial killer memorabilia – the article clippings and stuff – and you can imagine he would do that because is so helpless, it's the only he can act out anything in his life through his fantasy life. Well, somebody who is in that kind of state and in a world where none of those feelings are acceptable, what would it be like as a 12-year-old? So that's what I meant in terms of Americanization and how the story developed. Anyway, I wrote the script and from the beginning, wanted to make sure it wasn't about “who is the cute kid” but rather who could even play the roles. And with Chloe, Kodi and Richard, the idea has always been to honor the story as much as possible in that we would make our approach as serious as possible. The same thing with the DP. He had never seen the original and I told the actors not to watch it either so we could make our own version but stay very true to the essence of the story. We could sort of organically find our way back to the essence of what Lindqvist's story is. So that's what our approach has been. Then the film came out and became a huge phenomenon and with people who are genre fans. And if I were looking in from the outside as a genre fan, I'd be just as cynical. “Oh, you're going to dumb it down and you're going to do this and that.” I just hope that people give us a chance. The original film will always exist and the novel will always exist and they'll never go away. Hopefully, this will be another telling of that story that people will respond to and give us a chance.
: I'm glad we've been skimming over the topic of the book because there's A LOT of truly messed up and disturbing stuff that goes on in it, stuff that wasn't in the original film. When I read the book, I kept thinking, “Wow, this is really intense and graphic and dark.” The pedophile character, Håkan, does some really grotesque things. Since you really used the book more as your Bible, how did you find a find a balance between keeping the dark essence of the story and knowing when to say “this works in the book but there's no way I could put this on- screen”?
MR: Well, that's the thing I was saying. The thing about it is that if you were to make a truly faithful adaptation of the book, you would have a 10 hour miniseries and it would be sprawling and wild. It would be incredible. I mean, the Virginia story and things like that; you would have whole episodes just following her story. And the thing that I thought was so brilliant in Lindqvist's adaptation was that he had distilled it down to what you could turn into a 2 hour movie that would resonate with people. He brilliantly focused on the coming of age story. Toward that end, the elements I tried to bring in from the book but really the essence of the story is Oskar's coming of age tale.
That is the story. I'm very drawn to point of view and to following someone's point of view as much as possible. In a Hitchcockian way, you enter the world with that point of view, you shift suddenly here and there but you create this sort of dramatic tension. Polanski sort of does the same thing; it's all about what you're shown and what you're not shown. Given that it was a coming of age story, I wanted the story to be through Oskar's eyes as much as possible. So one of the ways I tried to approach the subplots in the story as much as I could – there are some parts where as hard as you try, you have to break point of view to tell that part of the story – was to try and tell the story as much as possible through his eyes so that you meet some of these characters that way. Something that's very apparent in the book and sort of in the movie is that everyone lives in this grouping of buildings so it's like this microcosm for the community; a community of this courtyard. I wanted to introduce these peripheral characters – in the sense that they're peripheral to the coming of age story – through his point of view. He sees them and encounters them and it's all about how he experiences them. What would be interesting to him would be looking into the world of adults. Being a 12-year-old kid, you would look into the world of adults and be completely confused by it and find it alluring in a way. Adults have much more power and control over things, obviously the sexuality and confusion and fear of it is part of it. So I tried as much as possible to get in those aspects of the story through his point of view so it does keep it a bit more distant in a sense. It's not like we go off and spend all this time with Virginia. I tried to do as much as possible through his point of view; it's all about how he looks at it. So that was my approach and part of what drew the line. It was laying everything against “how does that apply to the coming of age story and to the things we need to tell this Romeo and Juliet vampire story.” There were some things in the book that I thought were really cool and I tried to take aspects of them and put them where I could but it's pretty faithful to the coming of age part of the story and to the adaptation Lindqvist did himself.
BD: I recently read an interview with Chloe where she said her character isn't very glamorous and it seems like you kept that part faithful to the book and original film, which I really dig. The lifestyle is very dark and dreary and she doesn't even want to be a vampire; she wishes she wasn't. That seems to be a huge change-up considering the portrayal of vampires as of late and I really appreciate that approach.
MR: It's a miserable existence; it's a burden. Some people that came in tried really hard to play a vampire but I responded to a quality in Chloe; she's amazing. I haven't seen Kick-Ass yet but I heard she's amazing in it.
BD: It's a fun flick and she definitely stands out in it.
MR: Yeah, that's what I heard and it doesn't surprise me. She's truly remarkable. When we started working together, I told her that I didn't want her to play a vampire because that's not going to give it a reality. I'm interested in her inner-life and what that means to a vampire and how she views the world and find what will make it feel as believable as possible. In my searches, while I was working on stuff, I found these photographs, taken by a photographer named Marion Mark, of this homeless family and this 12-year-old girl at the center of it and she documented them on several different occasions. There were actually several bad things that had happened to his girl and her family and she actually refers to it. But these images were totally captivating and they had this nomadic existence. I started getting drawn to this idea; a reality that I understood.
Here's this 12-year-old that's seen things and experienced hardships that no 12-year-old should. But she's still 12. There's this thing in the book that really stuck with me where Oskar finds out she's a vampire and says to her, “Well, how old are you?” She says 12 and then he doesn't seem to understand why or how she's still 12 and then she says, “I've been 12 for a really long time.” So the idea would be that this girl is eternally 12 but she has the experience of having lived through and seen such brutal things. So, in working with Chloe, we weren't interested in doing it in a glamorous way. I was interested in finding the darker, more primal parts of her and that was interesting and fun to explore. I wanted it to feel like a burden and feel like being an outcast and a nomad. She started getting into the role and while she had fun playing it, she was like “this existence isn't fun.” It's not glamorous at all. When we were putting on her make-up, I think she was expecting to have a certain type of allure to her and she thought it was ugly and unpleasant and not what she thought it would be. In the story, there's nothing glamorous about it. She's been burdened with this life and that's part of why she bonds with Oskar. She's just as much an outcast and lonely as he is. It's filled with ambiguity.
BD: With all these extra subplots and characters in the book, is there anything that was in the novel that wasn't in the original film that you added in or something in the original film that you took out?
MR: There were some details. I'm only 2 weeks into editing so I don't know the beat of the movie yet but there was one small thing that Lindqvist that he had to leave out of the film. I don't know the beat of the film yet so I don't know if it'll end up staying in mine but I tried to honor that. There are details and tiny references along the way. Again, the story was so big that you couldn't really add a lot of stuff in without taking away the focus of the coming of age story so I tried to have allusions and references to stuff in the book. There are things that he adapted brilliantly in the movie and I borrowed from that because I thought he did a great adaptation. But there are some things that hopefully don't detract and fit into the context of the story. It's a mixture of details from the book, the original film and things that grew out of adapting it.
Let Me In opens October 1st.