Happy Birthday Frank

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Tomorrow night on Fox in the UK #MOBCITY 10pm @jonnybernthal @simonpegg @DanaRAshmore @robert_knepper @JeremyLukeTurbo @IddoG and more!

— Frank Darabont (@FrankDarabont) January 16, 2014

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Frank Darabont Talks

comicbook: I know this is based on true events, but I was wondering how did you sort of frame it; I’m sure some of it isn’t. It’s fictionalized for drama, and I was wondering, you know, what’s true and what’s not?

Frank Darabont: It’s an excellent, excellent question because this is honestly the loosest adaptation I’ve ever done. It’s not in any way to disregard John Buntin’s book because it really is the inspiration for everything. It’s really a good book, definitely our touchstone. I gave myself license very early on to just make up as much of I felt we needed to make up to tell the most entertaining, good sort of meaty, you know, mob story, good, pulpy, good, noir stuff.
I mean that’s the promise that I wanted to deliver on, and not turn it into sort of the, you know, the Masterpiece Theater docudrama version of events. So, yeah we’ve thrown caution to the wind on this one. Bless his heart John is abundant; he seems to be definitely enjoying the fact that we’ve done that. So we’re weaving fictional elements very much into the non-fictional historical elements and having a blast doing it. Hello? I hope I didn’t lose this call.

comicbook: I wanted to ask about Jon. He’s a great choice, but I’m seeing it after the fact and recognizing how great a choice. What was it that made you know beforehand that he’d be so right for this?

Darabont: You know, when I first started working with Jon some years ago, the first time I worked with him I had the thought in my head, if I ever get to do a Noir project, I’m going to want him to play my Noir hero. I’m going to want him to play my lead, because he’s got that very period feel to me. He doesn’t come off as like, you know, like a contemporary guy.
Plus, he’s got this tremendously quiet, masculine, it’s not forced; it’s not, you know, showboat, but he’s got this very testosterone kind of masculinity that’s quiet, and it’s genuine and it feels like such a throwback to me to Robert Mitchum and John Garfield.
You know, an earlier era of actor, of actor, of men who came up in tougher circumstances during the great depression, and fought in those wars, and just had to go out, you know, get through life as best they could without making a big deal out of it. You know, it’s just such a throwback aspect to it. He so reminds me of those guys and those generations.
So for me it was, you know, just a self-evident marriage of, you know, a certain kind of story that I wanted to tell. This actor who would be so, you know, perfect to tell that story.

all interiew = www.comicbook.com
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Frank Darabont: I'm on Twitter... Hi!

Mob City is a labor of love from an intensely talented cast and crew. From all of them, and me, welcome to the show! I'm on Twitter... Hi!
— Frank Darabont (@FrankDarabont) November 26, 2013

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Frank Darabont and TNT President Michael Wright talk...

Question: How hard did you fight to keep the L.A. Noir title?

Darabont: We both fought very hard to keep that title.

Wright: It was just not available. The simple answer is that we would love to have had that title. It was just very simply one of those things where the lawyers tell you what you can and can’t do.

Question: How did you end up working with both Jon Bernthal and Jeffrey DeMunn again?

Darabont: For me, it’s as simple as, I love these actors. I always want to work with them. And I had two roles in mind for them for a show, and god bless them for saying yes.

Question: How dark can this show get on TNT?

Wright: As dark as we need to get, to tell the story properly. To be honest, that’s always our approach. We never want to be gratuitous. If it’s germane, you do it. That really is our rule. With this particular series, an audience is coming to it with a vocabulary. They’ve seen the genre done. So, if you’re not authentic, it’s easily dismissed. So, our approach with Frank was, “Whatever you do, be authentic. Don’t be gratuitous, but this is an inherently violent, sexy, pulpy story.” That’s what makes it so rich. It has very high stakes and very big personalities, engaged in genuine life and death conflict. Using that description, you understand why a guy in my job is drawn to this story. So, our job is to say to Frank, “Do what you have to do to make it authentic and interesting.”

Darabont: What [Michael] actually said to me was, “I want to give my standards and practices people sleepless nights.”

All Interview = www.collider.com
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Frank Darabont’s Brilliant Pitch for a New Conan the Barbarian Movie

Yesterday we premiered the first taste of our amazing exclusive roundtable interview with legendary movie poster artist Drew Struzan, director Frank Darabont, and Being Human's Sam Witwer, with an update on Darabont's Godzilla.

Now here's another helping of Darabont news — including his vision for a new Conan the Barbarian movie, and updates on his TV show starring Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal.
Watching Your Work In Front Of Your Friends

Do you guys watch each others projects together? Frank and Drew, do you guys watch Being Human together?

Frank Darabont: I do watch Being Human. I will not watch it with Sam, he keeps talking through the it. I never have to solicit Sam for telling me stories about the shoot or about the content. I can't shut him up.

Drew Struzan: We all have the same experience, but it is really insightful and wonderful because I watch it emotionally. Then [Sam] explains about the writing and acting, it opens up a whole new vista for me, because that's not where my mind goes. I really, really enjoy it. I like actors because they are the opposite of me. He's big he's loud, and I'm just the opposite, I love it.

Is it hard for you to watch your work in front of others? Frank, do you give a running director's commentary when people watch your films together (because that would be awesome)?

Frank Darabont: I'm one of those people — unless it's tragically bad, unless it's like Showgirls bad, I really can't have people talking around me. As a kid I would go into a movie theater by myself, because I really wanted to focus on the movie. Once my attention is on that thing, I don't want chatter. I want to concentrate on the movie.
On The Newly Re-titled Lost Angels

Sam Witwer: Frank recently showed us a wonderful pilot that he did... We all went into Frank's screening room and the next thing I know he says, "OK, enjoy" — and then leaves. And we watch, and then he comes back and we talk about it. But boy, he doesn't want to be there during the experience.

Frank Darabont: No, there's no point. For one thing, I've been in an editing room with the darn thing for a few months and every frame is now printed on my brain. I don't want anybody's reaction to feel stunted because I'm in the room. I want to be able to pick your brain afterwards. And my take away from that was very valuable. It was an in-progress pilot, my takeaway from that was that it needed to tighten up a little bit still, the cut. Since you guys saw it, I pulled another two minutes out of it. Now I feel that it's landed on its feet and is where it needs to be. It's the equivalent of the test screening — but they're not strangers, they are your nearest and dearest friends. And you get that feedback and it's very valuable.

Is this for the new noir series you are currently working on?

Frank Darabont: Yes, it was going to be called L.A. Noir, based on the book by John Buntin. But the video game company with the video game called L.A. Noire (with an e!) threatened to sue the shit out of me, TNT, every company that actually ever worked in Hollywood. And they have the billions of dollars to back it up, apparently. So we're changing the title, and I do believe the title is going to be Lost Angels. This is being announced right here. It's a very, very cool show. It's [set in] 1947 LA and it stars my very dear friend Jon Bernthal, whom I worked with on The Walking Dead who is now free of that...

Sam Witwer: Shackles?

Frank Darabont: Those Shackles. He's a pleasure to work with like Sam is a pleasure to work with, and other actors that I've worked with repeatedly. I just adore him and god he's going great work.

Sam Witwer: He's right for that role, because he has a timeless quality. Not a lot of actors have a timeless quality. I've watched Bernthal and thought, this guy really does have that. You need that for something that takes place in the 40s, you need actors that can inhabit realistically that time period.

Frank Darabont: He projects this effortless masculine quality, which we don't have a lot of in movies anymore. He's definitely a throwback. He reminds me of, if you were to genetically mix John Garfield a young Charles Bronson this is the guy he's playing on screen. And it's not an effort for him, he projects this fantastic testosterone without showboating it...

Before we're off the subject of Lost Angels, let me also point out that Simon Pegg, whom I adore, came and played a role for me in this pilot as an American. He plays a stand up comic in 1947. It's not a funny role. It's a serious role. He's laying down a dramatic performance in a flawless, American dialect of the era... People who are Simon Pegg fans will be blown away by what he has done in this. I am his friend, and I've always known he's a very good dramatic actor and I expected great things from him, even my expectations were knocked on my ass by how good he is. So, you have that to look forward to.

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On Conan The Barbarian

Sam Witwer: Little Bernthal side story: when you were casting for Walking Dead and I asked, "How is the Shane casting coming, how's that going?" And this was the first thing you said, which is a tremendous compliment, you said, "You know there's this guy, and if I was doing a Conan movie I'd hire him to play Conan in a minute."

Frank Darabont: I talked to Bernthal about that very thing just a couple of months ago. I would still do a Conan movie! It would be an incredibly smart one. Because he could play what we've missed in Conan today on the screen. He's got some wit and he's got some intelligence. He's a canny, wily, brutal guy. Bernthal could play that, he really could...

How do you make a smart Conan movie?

Frank Darabont: You go back to Robert E. Howard, there's a lot of heart there and a lot of mysticism and a lot of questing and yearning in that character... How do you make a smart Conan anything? You do what Dark Horse did with their series of comics. They went back to Robert E. Howard, and they have one of the smartest adaptations of Conan. And that's how you do it smart, it's been done.

Drew Struzan: I did some drawings of Conan 2, they didn't use them, it was too smart.

Frank Darabont: [Joking] He was reading a book!

And that is just another taste! The full audio will be released very soon.

all interview = www.io9.com
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Did you know?

Frank Darabont and Jeffrey DeMunn will work together for the fifth time.

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Why Frank Darabont can hold his head up high in the world of TV

Frank Darabont is a legend in the world of film and one of the most underrated writer/directors of our generation. But for the last few years he’s been moving away from film towards the world of television. Everyone in Hollywood considers television a step back for such an established writer/director, but is that the right way to think?

His best known film The Shawshank Redemption was snubbed at the oscars in 1995 and barely even made its money at the box office (and only after being re-released the following year). Darabont has always had a topsy turvy relationship with Hollywood throughout his life, but did you know that before he even got a job in the film world he had already gained the rights to adapt a work of Stephen King?

Darabont was born in 1959 in a Refugee camp after his parents fled Hungary in 1956. They very swiftly moved to Chicago and then onwards to the Mecca of LA. Darabont says that after his parents split he spent most of his time with a father who didn’t want him watching movies and the rest with a supportive mother who let him sit up at night and watch the b-movies he loved as a kid. As soon as he left high school he already knew he wanted to be a script writer and make films, but he had no idea how to do any of that.

In 1980 he wrote a letter to Stephen King asking for the adaptation rights to The Woman in the Room. This was before he even had a real job in the industry, but Stephen King saw something in the kid and gave him the rights for $1 (part of his “dollar baby” general deal with young up and comers). Darabont then worked with future partner in crime Chuck Russell on the set of Hell Night as a Production Assistant. Spending his days working and his nights raising funding for The Woman in the Room.

Eventually, after scraping by on absolutely no money, he shot and edited the film, which was entered into the Oscars for that year. It wasn’t nominated but was named in the top 9 of 90 films and became one of Stephen King’s favorite “dollar baby” adaptations. This led to King allowing Darabont to adapt Shawshank for the screen. But before Shawshank there was a tumultuous eleven years of struggling to survive in the film industry, waiting for another lucky break. Darabont worked various PA jobs, working a few months at a time and then writing until he needed more money and so on until he got himself an agent and started working as a script doctor, eventually writing (with Chuck Russel)Nightmare on Elm Street III. And then in 1989 he directed his first film, a schlocky cable film for USA called Buried Alive. This was his first waltz into writing and directing for Television but it would be several years before he decided to stay there.

The success of The Shawshank Redemption in 1994/95 brought Darabont a lot of offers (most of them to do Die Hard rip-offs so he says) and a lot of fans, but thankfully, so he claims, it was such a slow burning success that he never became too much of a commodity for Hollywood, allowing him to continue to work anonymously. This led him to work on another successful King adaptation in The Green Mile, which became a box office hit and was critically acclaimed (though Darabont was once again snubbed at the Oscars).

He worked on several high profile script doctoring jobs during his downtime between movies, including Mission Impossible 3 and Saving Private Ryan— and these jobs led him to a dream gig with Steven Spielberg when Darabont’s childhood idol hired him to write a script for the fourth Indiana Jones. He worked on the script for a year and Spielberg claims it is one of the best scripts he has ever read, but another childhood idol, George Lucas, decided he didn’t like the script and it was never made. This was the end of Darabont’s playing ball with Hollywood and one of the things that brought him to the world of television.

There is a lot more control in television where writers also act as producers and are far freer to make changes and even direct episodes— which of course plays to Darabont’s strengths. There is also a sense of grandiose to the longer stories television is able to tell, which fits with Darabont’s epic film runtimes for Shawshank and The Green Mile. Darabont says instead of thinking he’s making a television series exactly he tells his writers instead that they are making an eight hour movie.

Darabont, who recently stepped down as a showrunner for AMC’s The Walking Dead also claims to have been a lifelong TV drama fan, directing an episode of The Shield and almost directing an episode of the re-imagined series of Battlestar Galactica. But the biggest reason, he thinks, that television is now his medium of choice is the alacrity of the process. He finished writing his latest pilot, LA Noir on New Year’s Eve and it was green lit in April. He’s showrunning this new show for TNT who are hoping to rival AMC’s growing audience— and what better person than Frank Darabont who left The Walking Dead under a cloud of controversy over budget cuts at AMC.

Frank Darabont is not the first or last person to make the leap from big screen to small screen but he does take pleasure in sublimating the expectations of Hollywood. You can see this clearly in his cameo role in Entourage Season Five where he tries to get Vincent Chase to join him on a new TV Series. Darabont has never been one to follow the rules and that is why he is such a great filmmaker, and I why I can’t imagine we’ve seen the last of him on the big screen.
www.whatculture.com
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Frank Darabont on His New TNT Show

In his first interview about the new project, Darabont talked to TV Guide Magazine about how L.A. Noir came about. And for the first time, Darabont addresses his exit from The Walking Dead, including why he thinks he was forced to leave, and how it wasn't easy for him.

TV Guide Magazine: Talk about tackling noir, and how did you first come across this specific book?
Frank Darabont: I've loved noir my whole life, and I've always wanted to go into that area of storytelling. I'm a huge Raymond Chandler buff, which is actually why I grabbed this book off the shelf at LAX in the bookstore as I was about to get on a flight. It seemed right up my alley. I read it on the flight, and then the following day after I couldn't put the darn thing down. When I got back from that trip I called my agent to find out if the rights were available and word came back to me that the rights were with [former New Line president] Mike De Luca, whom I've known since 1986. So I called Mike and said, "What are you thinking of doing with this?" He said "I don't know, you want to do something with me?" And boom, it was that easy.

TV Guide Magazine: That sounds almost too easy. It's rare that a project can come together so fast and with that much ease.
Darabont: I know, isn't that lovely? The strange confluence of good fortune extended beyond that because Mike had a meeting to go in and talk to Michael Wright at TNT, and no sooner had this come out of his mouth that Michael said, "I want this." It's a book he had read because he's also obsessed with this era and this genre. He knew the book intimately and was quoting from it in this meeting. It should always be this easy. It's not always, but this has been great.

TV Guide Magazine: Tell me about your adaptation of L.A. Noir. What's the focus, and who are the main characters?
Darabont: That's going to be the fun of doing this, to invent that tapestry of characters. The very first character I came up with, an invention of mine, is a character named Joe Teague, who was on the police force. And he's caught in that moral gray zone between the William Parkers of the world and the Mickey Cohens of this world. And what a great, fun gray zone to be in. Caught, as he puts it, between the white hats and the black hats.

TV Guide Magazine: There are plenty of people who might argue that Parker was a bigger villain than Cohen.
Darabont: Yes, both very interesting and very complex characters. Mickey Cohen actually maybe not so much. He was a one-track minded fellow, but Parker, yeah, a very interesting guy.

TV Guide Magazine: How will you strike a balance between the real-life and fictional characters?
Darabont: I think that's yet to be determined. I've focused on writing the pilot script and I've got some sort of long-range arcs in my head, what would comprise the first season. Certainly Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Siegel and William Parker will be vital components of that. But where exactly the mix lands, that's work yet to be done. Joe Teague is the lead of the pilot, he will be a good way to step into this world. And what's a good noir without a great noir dame? I definitely have in mind a very, very nice, complicated girlfriend for Joe. It's not quite a meet-cute scenario but they're definitely going to have some heat to it I think.

TV Guide Magazine: Will you be incorporating real-life events and real-life crime into the mix as well?
Darabont: Oh yeah, there are a lot of ideas to be kicked around. God knows, in this era there's so much going on. The book couldn't deal with them all, of course, and it would be somewhat off the subject of the book's intentions. But for a dramatic TV series there's all kinds of stuff, so many avenues you can go through. One thing we're talking about and I'm tremendously interested in is what African-American culture was doing at that time in L.A. There was no reason for the book to delve into that. What was the Hispanic culture doing at that time in L.A? How does that tie into the mob world, on either side of that fence? 1947 was in fact the year of the Black Dahlia. I'm really looking forward to picking John Buntin's brain, now that I have a good excuse to do it. There had to be stuff in his research that he left out, wonderful stuff he left on the table simply because he was writing a book and he had to be editorially selective.

The pilot takes place in 1947, this is that massive post-war boom where the soldiers came back and they settled here because they weren't going to go back to the farm or Detroit. A little bit of Joe Teague is based on a gentleman that died back in 1992 but he was the father of a best friend of mine. He fought in the Pacific and was originally dirt poor from the slums of Detroit and he went off to war and when he came back, he settled in Los Angeles like so many others did. That's kind of an interesting world because the whole city is being reinvented. The Valley is being uprooted and turned into housing. There was so much that was happening at the time.

TV Guide Magazine: Any other key roles you can talk about?
Darabont: There's a wonderful character named Hecky Nash. I won't tell you too much about him, but he's definitely a key piece of the pilot. He's got a little scheme going that might backfire on him that ties him in with the mob. That's going to be just a terrific role for somebody. We've got a few people in mind, one guy in particular. Cross your fingers, because he's a great actor and I'd love to get him into this for the pilot.

TV Guide Magazine: Where did the idea come from to adapt non-fiction and merge it with fiction?
Darabont: It troubled me for a moment because I tend to be pretty faithful when I adapt. If you look at the Stephen King stuff that I've done [The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile], they tend to be pretty faithful even though you re-engineer story where you have to in order to make it work for the screen. I thought, as good as the book is, it is a historical document. And it is tremendously absorbing, but it is still non-fiction. I thought that this could run the risk of being a very earnest and well-meaning docudrama. I wrestled with that for a little bit, and my sense was that if I gave myself permission to invent, and I've seen this done very beautifully in other television projects, to invent fictional characters that guide us through the non-fictional landscape, then I felt I would be in a really good strong position. I really want to deliver a show that lives up to that title. L.A. Noir is a certain kind of show in my mind's eye. The book is always my guide, of course, but there's going to be a tremendous fun we have with mixing fact and fiction.

TV Guide Magazine: Most recently, Boardwalk Empire managed to combine fact and fiction successfully.
Darabont: Exactly, Boardwalk has done that very well. And one of my favorite miniseries of all time is Rome, which invented this wonderful ensemble of fictional characters woven into the actual events and did such a beautiful job of it. That's somewhat the approach that we're taking. We don't want to be limited by facts, because we never want to abuse the facts but we don't want to run the risk of this being a dry thing. I want it to be a bright, vibrant piece of fun drama.

TV Guide Magazine: People also are already familiar with a lot of the real-life noir stories, hallmarks like the Black Dahlia.
Darabont: It will be really fun to work around the real characters as well, the Mickey Cohens and the Bugsy Siegels and the William Parkers, and bring all that stuff into it. It will be tremendously fun to weave the tapestry. It keeps it fresh and exciting for me.

TV Guide Magazine: Plus, you'll get to shoot in downtown Los Angeles, some of which remains untouched from that era.
Darabont: Oh brother, can I tell you how excited I am to shoot in my hometown? Everybody on the project so far, and I've got a lot of my most trusted and valued colleagues and key people jumping on board this thing, are also excited. And then nice bonus, everybody can't quite get over the fact that, hey, we get to shoot in L.A. We get to sleep in our own beds at night. That's going to be so great. It's gotten rarer and rarer through the years. Now, it's kind of like winning the lottery, oh boy, we get to shoot in town!

TV Guide Magazine: It's indeed a rarity, especially for a cable drama. Even in the movie Battle: L.A., Louisiana doubled as Los Angeles.
Darabont: That would be really hard with this one. We're not going to pass off Shreveport or Atlanta off as Los Angeles of this era. What is on the badge of the LAPD, it's downtown, it's City Hall, it's the stuff that Curtis Hanson captured so beautifully with L.A. Confidential.

TV Guide Magazine: L.A. Confidential captured that era perfectly. Any other pieces of work that inspire you in doing L.A. Noir?
Darabont: What a great movie. I've complemented [Hanson] on that movie every time I've seen him. I'm just a rabid fan of it, they really got it right. There was also another one I particularly loved that not too many people know called True Confessions. Robert Duvall, who was brilliant in this film, Robert DeNiro, Charles Durning. It's a marvelous film. It is a fantastic cast, it was a wonderful film, it crafted at a high level. I believe it was Ulu Grosbard who directed it.

I'm renting a house here at the beach for a few months, and rumor has it that Robert Towne wrote Chinatown in this house. I only found out the day I finished writing the script, on New Year's Eve. Whether it's true or not, I'm choosing to believe it is.

TV Guide Magazine: When do you start casting and shooting?
Darabont: I'm raring to go. I'm primed. I'm planning to shoot in April. And I think that's cool with Michael [Wright]. He's so sweet, he wants to give us as much time to prep as possible. But especially in our own hometown, this is not going to be a massive prep. I'm actually wanting a little less than he was thinking. I'm ready to go in April, baby, let's do it.

TV Guide Magazine: What made you decide to return to TV so soon?
Darabont: I love the medium. I love that I finished the script on New Year's Eve and we're already greenlit and planning to shoot in April. I love the pace, I love the momentum of it. I love you can get in there and not second guess everything to death. For the guy that directed The Green Mile, by comparison that was a generous schedule. In recent times I've really gotten to like the brisker pace. I really have.

TV Guide Magazine: And there's the ability to tell a bigger story over a longer period of time.
Darabont: Yeah, that's a terrific form. I really enjoy that. I love the oblique nature of how stories can be told. Rather than jamming everything you want to say into a two and a half hour movie, you go, "OK, this year we're making an eight-hour movie." We don't have to get to the point right away. We can hint at it. We can come through the backdoor, keep the audience intrigued by something. It's completely different because you can come at it from a completely different, sneakier angle or perspective and that's really fun.

TV Guide Magazine: It sounds like you've developed a great relationship with Turner so far.
Darabont: They are by all accounts a fantastic place to work. They treat their creative partners with respect and dignity and humanity and integrity, and after the last two years I'm really looking forward to experiencing those things.

TV Guide Magazine: What can you say about your departure from The Walking Dead?
Darabont: It was, for the sake of my cast and my crew, a tremendously regretful thing to face, to have to leave. But I was really given no choice. I don't understand the thinking behind, "Oh, this is the most successful show in the history of basic cable. Let's gut the budgets now." I never did understand that and I think they got tired of hearing me complain about it. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's as far as I want to go with it because otherwise it's just provoking more controversy and that's not really of interest to me. I just want to keep my head down and do my job and be allowed to do my job, that's key, and continue to, hopefully, enjoy it and do good work.

TV Guide Magazine: From all accounts, your departure was particularly hard on the cast and crew.
Darabont: These people are like family to me. It has not been easy for anybody. Let me put it that way: It was like a death in the family. Only I was the dead guy. I felt like William Holden, face down in the swimming pool, narrating this thing.

TV Guide Magazine: There was never really an official explanation about your exit.
Darabont: It was a lot of obfuscation and on my end just maintaining what I thought was the most dignified silence that I could. Who needs a cat fight in the press, oy vey. There's plenty of stuff in this world that I'm excited about doing, and how lovely that we're getting the opportunity to do this with TNT. How great is that.

www.tvguide.com
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