Lilja's Library

by Hans-Ake Lilja

  Once I get established in Hollywood (as a credited, paid screenwriter), I not only hope to make my feature version of The Last Rung on the Ladder, but to also see if I can get my short film, and maybe some of the other worthy “Dollar Babies,” released on video. Time will tell…

  Lilja: In your essay, you also write that the only proof you’ve got that King has seen your movie is because he’s mentioning it in The Shawshank Redemption: The Shooting Script—have you had any contact with him at all during the years?

  James Cole: None from him directly. I have received correspondence from his office (assistants) and even from his lawyer regarding my quest to get an option on “The Last Rung on the Ladder,” but the answer was always “no,” or “not at the present time.” The responses were always decent, but I admit I have been a bit disappointed that after ten years of trying, I have never received any word from The Man From Maine himself. I still hope to someday.

  Lilja: Do you have any plans for making more movies based on Stephen King’s stories? If you could pick one story to shoot, which one would it be and why?

  James Cole: I have no immediate plans, simply because I am not yet established in the industry. I believe that once I sell a script and get a movie made I’ll have a “name” and may be able to get somewhere with King at that point (I’ll have “proven” myself, I guess). But I would never adapt another King story without the rights or an option. It’s just not worth the work.

  As for a story I would pick (as a feature), I would love to do The Long Walk or Desperation. There are other short works I’d love to adapt, like “The Monkey.” I also love “One for the Road” from Night Shift, but I’ve never been able to figure out how that could be done, considering most of it takes place during a Maine blizzard! (As I don’t have a Storm of the Century budget!)

  Lilja: We’ve heard that you are a close friend of Frank Darabont, the man famous for his stunning version of The Shawshank Redemption and the upcoming The Green Mile. How did you get to know him?

  James Cole: I met Frank in 1993, just after he’d finished shooting The Shawshank Redemption in Ohio. Once again, I don’t remember how I got ahold of him, who my contact was. I think I simply wrote to his office and identified myself as a fellow “Dollar Baby” (that’s before the term was even coined by King). I told him I had also adapted a King short story, that I was a fan of The Woman in the Room and that I was thrilled that he was doing The Shawshank Redemption. Amazingly, he responded, and we spoke on the phone a couple times. But this introduction happened in mid-1992. I had to wait almost fifteen months before I met Frank in person, in December 1993. We’ve been in and out of touch in the years since. I’m back in close touch with him since last Autumn, when I visited the set of The Green Mile several times.

  Lilja: Have you seen anything from The Green Mile?

  James Cole: Except for what I witnessed on set (which was amazing), no. However, I expect to see an almost-complete cut of the film in the next few weeks. I’m very excited.

  Lilja: Have you read a first draft to his (always) upcoming adaptation of The Mist?

  James Cole: No. I know it’s a story Frank wants to do, but even I don’t know if he’s written a script yet.

  Lilja: What are you working on currently?

  James Cole: I just completed my first horror script, called Bedbugs, about a boy’s battle with his “monster in the closet.” It may surprise you and your readers, but this is my first horror script. As much as I love King, my favorite genre to write is straight drama. My other scripts include a story of a kid sent back in time to the Depression and a relationship-piece about a man searching for his lost love.

  Lilja: Thanks for taking the time to answer this little interview! Anything you want to say to our readers, who definitely haven’t seen your film?!

  James Cole: Be patient. I truly believe you will have the opportunity to see it within the next few years, once I get established in the film industry. And I still hope to make the feature version of The Last Rung on the Ladder as well.

  Thanks for your interest too. I’ve never given an interview to people outside the United States before! If any of you are fellow writers, keep writing. The more you do it, the better you get!

  After seeing the movie (you can read a review of it elsewhere in this book), I wanted to see how James felt about the movie today. Therefore, I contacted him and asked some follow-up questions about The Last Rung on the Ladder.

  Lilja: Hi Jim! First, let me thank you for giving me the opportunity to see the movie. It was great of you!

  James Cole: No problem. I’m always happy to get my film seen, even if it’s on a one-to-one basis…

  Lilja: How do you feel about your movie today? Is there anything you wish you had done different?

  James Cole: Where do I start? Seriously, the biggest thing I wish Dan and I had done differently back in 1986 was to have had a decent budget. All the movie’s shortcomings have less to do with performances or story and more with technical limitations. I am still very proud of the movie today, after thirteen years, but parts of it always make me cringe. Some of the insert shots of the letters the adult Kitty had written to Larry are almost impossible to read, because we couldn’t easily focus up close. On top of that, the tripods we used were very flimsy, and many of the shots in the film are just too jumpy for my taste. Originally I didn’t notice this, but recently I watched the film on a 27” TV and I was quite discouraged at how much unintentional movement there is, even within some quick shots.

  In summary, we did the best we could do with what we had to work with, and how old we were at the time (I was twenty and Dan was fifteen). In a way, it was good that we were inexperienced. It made us just say, “What the heck, let’s try!” Had we been older, we would have been more aware of the difficulties and probably decided “it can’t be done.” I will never regret making it.

  Lilja: How do you feel about the fact that Lucas Knight is doing a longer version of the movie? In reality, this must mean your chances to do a longer version are pretty small, right?

  James Cole: I don’t think it will have a long-term effect on my feature version, but who knows? My feature has been on a back burner for a few years now, and I’m not as interested in it as I once was. Of course, I still believe in it, but I am concentrating on selling my original scripts first. I actually wish Lucas the best, because I know he’s spent over three years trying to pull together the funding and equipment. Certainly, part of me is nervous to see a “remake” (even though it isn’t that exactly—just a different interpretation of the same story). Clearly he will have more of a budget and professional equipment, but as to if his final film is “better,” we’ll have to wait and see. I’ll always be proud of mine, most especially the performances I coaxed out of my young actors. Even after all these years, it still gets praise from people both inside and outside the King community.

  Lilja: Is there anything else by King you are thinking of adapting?

  James Cole: Not until I sell a script and make a name for myself in the industry, because I would never want to try to do the dollar deal again, knowing there’s no guarantee I could get it distributed or seen. And, of course, I could not adapt any novels without the rights, which is something King has not granted, and probably won’t until I have a bit more “clout” as a writer.

  But if I had any dream projects, most are short works. I’d love to do a long-short film version of “The Monkey” from Skeleton Crew, or “One for the Road” or “Gray Matter” from Night Shift. As for features, most of King’s books have already been adapted or are in the planning stages. Still, something like Desperation, which Mick Garris wants to direct but has had trouble getting off the ground, is a dream project. King’s own script was so tight and riveting, I’d love to direct it myself. But odds are it will be made by Mick or someone else. Still, I can dream.

  This may come as a surprise, but I’d really love to be the first director to do a King remake. My choice? Firestarter. It’s one of
my favorite books, and not his usual genre (despite the horror elements, it really is a suspense novel with many twists and turns). The 1984 film version was abysmal, and it’s the first time I understood that a book can be adapted faithfully in terms of structure and plot, and yet have none of the King “flavor.” To me, the film felt like a flat television movie, with no tension or suspense whatsoever. I think it deserves a more faithful remake someday.

  Lilja: Thanks for talking with me. It was (as always) great!

  ****

  Jay Holben

  Posted: November 22, 2000

  Here is an interview with Jay Holben, the man who turned King’s poem “Paranoid: A Chant” into a movie.

  Lilja: First, let me say I’m grateful you let me do this interview with you. I also want to thank you for letting me see and review your movie Paranoid.

  Could we start this off with you telling me a little about yourself? Who are you?

  Jay Holben: That’s kind of a question for the ages, isn’t it? Who am I? Why am I here?

  I was born in Chicago, Illinois, but moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, when I was five. Just after the big move, my parents took me out to see a movie at a beautiful single-screen theatre (back then they had such things) and when the lights went down, I was hooked. The film was Star Wars, and when we emerged once again into the blazing July Arizona sun, I boldly informed my parents that I was going to be a film director.

  Twenty-three years later, I’m still following that same goal. I realized early on that to be a truly good director, I needed to understand and have a certain level of competence in every aspect of filmmaking. I started with acting, primarily in theatrical venues, but with some television and movies. Eventually I moved through the theatre world to working backstage as a carpenter, rigger, electrician, master flyman, lighting designer, set designer, director and producer before I moved into film. I started professionally in film in Los Angeles in 1995 as an electrician in feature films and some television work. I worked my way through the electrical department to chief lighting technician and eventually to director of photography—my current professional position. All the while I continued to direct smaller projects and hone my craft as a filmmaker. Along the way I have produced a number of projects (features, shorts, commercials and videos) and continued to dabble in gripping, production design, costume design, camera department and pretty much anywhere I can get my hands dirty to learn a bit more.

  From 1990-1993 I was an addendum teacher at Horizon High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, heading up a program I designed to teach students to be professional theatrical technicians. I have also taught several seminars and workshops over the years on the art and technique of filmmaking. For the past three years I have also been a frequent contributing writer for American Cinematographer Magazine and, more recently, for The Hollywood Reporter.

  I live in Los Angeles with my girlfriend of many years, Jennine and our dog, Ripley.

  Lilja: How come you chose Paranoid to make a movie of? Many would say that it’s impossible to make a movie out of a poem.

  Jay Holben: Oh, if I had a quarter for every time I heard that…

  I’ve been a Constant Reader (for those non-fans, read: constant Stephen King fan) for many years—ever since my brother handed me a copy of Thinner sometime around 1985. “Paranoid: A Chant” has always been a quiet favorite. It’s a great piece of writing that is often overlooked and forgotten. So many people quickly label King as a “Horror Writer,” but I think he’s much more of a sociologist. He has an extraordinary gift for capturing the souls of people and putting them down on paper. It is King’s characterizations and expressions of humanity that keep me coming back to his words time and time again. Paranoid is a great example of how he gets you inside a person’s head in a short, concise and powerful way. It isn’t Catcher in the Rye—he’s not spending two hundred pages immersing you in a character—he’s doing it in less than two hundred lines in a visceral way that is incredibly potent. In my high school days, I was a member of the speech team competing in competitions all around the state of Arizona. One of the pieces that I used, to a good deal of success, was Paranoid—and it’s always been close to my heart.

  Last summer, I was producing a number of small projects that I had carefully arranged to work together to reduce costs. In the midst of orchestrating these other projects, I realized that I had the opportunity to helm my own short utilizing the same resources. The only limiting factor would be a considerable lack of time—I’d really only have a single day to shoot a project. I wanted to find something that would demonstrate my photographic abilities as well as my directorial strengths. I went through a number of options, but I kept coming back to Paranoid. I had an extremely clear picture in my head about how that film would work and in the end it won out over any other ideas.

  Lilja: Tell me a bit about how you did the movie. Did you start out with the poem and then build the rest around it?

  Jay Holben: Absolutely. The poem was of paramount importance to me. It was the center of everything. I spent a great deal of time carefully studying the poem and working to get the cadence of King’s words in my head. When I was writing the screen adaptation (I hesitate to call it a screenplay because all I did was take King’s words and put them in screenplay format with some stage directions to get my interpretation across to those involved in the project) I was extremely anal to keep the rhythm and patterns that he created with the poem. I went so far as to meticulously compare the hardback publication (of Skeleton Crew, where the poem is collected) to the paperback (which has some differences where the page breaks fall) to make sure I was faithful to his original structure of where line breaks and paragraph breaks came in his prose. That structure became the structure for the film. The layout of the acts, the structure behind the camera operation, editing, score, her voiceover—everything came from the poem. I was also very strict with Tonya when we were rehearsing and recording her voiceover. She had to stay true to the poem, even though there are some very strange turns of phrase—“Got off the bus at 35th and Lex.” It’s natural for an actor to want to say, “I got off the bus…,” but King’s words were very carefully chosen—and although keeping true to that structure proved very difficult for me later on in post-production, eventually I stayed true. The poem is what I loved and the poem is what I had to adapt.

  Although many people thought it was a bad idea—how could I interpret this? —it was always very visual to me. From the very first read I saw these pictures in my head and I knew I could translate it to the screen without too much difficulty. In the end, every one of those “naysayers” recanted and eventually became fairly big fans of the film.

  Lilja: I know that in one of the early versions of the movie there was a scene in which the girl (Tonya Ivey) sat in the corner of the room, her legs crossed, and rubbed her feet. In this scene you could really see that she isn’t one hundred percent sane. Why didn’t that scene make it to the final version? Personally, I thought it was a great scene.

  Jay Holben: That was a fun shot that was actually in the script. Really, it comes down to finding the best pieces to the puzzle that make the best whole. Movies are about juxtaposition. How one shot relates to what comes before it and after it. The editing is an extremely important part. In the end, it came down to finding the right rhythm between the shots and the story. There’s an old phrase, “Kill your babies,” that refers to being able to let go of something that you really love because it isn’t right for the film. It’s dangerous to be both a director and cinematographer in this respect because it’s easy to fall in love with a shot or a moment—but, in the end, if it isn’t right for the film, it goes in the recycle bin with the rest of the waste.

  Lilja: I understand this movie will be distributed on the Internet, right? Tell me how that will work. Will it cost anything to download it and, if so, will you rely on the honor system, like King does with The Plant?

  Jay Holben: The film will be on the Net, but no—there will be no cost to
view and download the film. This is not meant to be a commercial endeavor, and indeed, my agreement with King excludes that possibility. More than likely the film will be featured on a site like iFilm.com for everyone to see.

  Lilja: How about fans that don’t have the Internet? Will the movie be available on video?

  Jay Holben: Once again, the agreement with King excludes the possibility for commercial distribution—so, no. However, we are working on a possibility right now that may circumvent this and make the film available to a larger audience (at least in the U.S.).

  Lilja: When will the movie have its premier? I understand it won’t be until next year…

  Jay Holben: Unfortunately, we’re in a holding pattern. We’ve submitted the film to some very prestigious festivals that preclude its presentation anywhere prior to the festivals. Right now we’re looking at a date in the spring of 2001 for wide Internet release. Keep your eyes on the website and this site for more information.

  Lilja: You have a website for the movie (http://www.paranoidthemovie.com/). Right now there isn’t much out there, but I understand there will be a trailer on it soon, right? What else will be on it?

  Jay Holben: Yes. That is currently in production and, like everything else I’m involved in, I’m working very hard to make sure it’s the best possible presentation we can do. Translate that to I’m very picky and the designer is working very hard to meet my desires (poor guy). The trailer will be there, notes on the film and the making of it, bios of the principal people involved in the production, a page of current news about the film and its various exhibitions, links to communicate with the principal people involved, links to other King sites such as Lilja’s Library (Have you seen it? Ya gotta see it!)—the typical website content.

  Lilja: Were there any funny or special moments when you made the movie that you would like to tell me about?