Interviews 2008

A Life In Horror Has Paid Off Well For Barker By James Adams, The Globe And Mail, 2 January 2008 (note: full text online at www.theglobeandmail.com) "My relaxation is my work, I'm incredibly lucky in that somebody up there decreed, 'This man will have a hole in his head and we'll be able to pour strong fluids, liquors and syrups into his brain and he will imagine bizarre things...' "I think there is an absolutely direct, indisputable correlation between my life as an artist and the rhythms of my life as a writer and the rhythms of desire. [With Mister B. Gone] I wanted to do something that just came out of my guts and, yes, my balls and through my heart, bypassing my brain, and out. I had to be in that man, that creature, Jakabok Botch... We're talking about energy essentially, creativity: the sex goes into the book, even though there's no sex in the book. If I have sex in the morning, I am useless for the rest of the day; I'm too bloody happy; I've scratched the itch." Rehearsals For The Apocalypse By Kevin Nance, Chicago Sun-Times, 6 January 2008 (note - full text available online at www.suntimes.com) "The world needs to change. It clearly doesn't work, the way we're working it. All of the drowning of the polar bears because they can't get from ice floe to ice floe - they're exhausting themselves in the water. Things are not right. It can't be fancied up by little accords signed tentatively and falsely, then rejected by our own leaders despite our shameful performance of the last two decades on gas emissions. The richest country on the planet, we should have been leading! We need to be scared, we need to be shocked out of our complacency. Three-buck-a-gallon gasoline isn't going to do it. It's do or die. And so the pictures are rehearsals, you might say, rehearsals for the apocalypse." Clive Barker: Raising Hell By Andrew Davis, Windy City Times, 9 January 2008 (note - full text available online at www.windycitymediagroup.com) "For a lot of people, [the Chicago exhibition] will be the first time people see my [paintings]. The reproductions in the book are fine, but they are reproductions. The bulk of the pictures I'm showing in Chicago are 60” x 48”, so we're talking about pretty large pictures. There will also be smaller pictures, so people will be able to come in with $200 and be able to leave with a picture. We want to make the gallery experience a fun one. "I would say [the artwork is] 'expressionist'. It's very colorful and it lends itself to fantasy. It's fantastic. If I was really pressed, I'd [categorize] it as surrealism, but André Breton wouldn't have me anywhere near the surrealists because I do think the pictures through and a true surrealist doesn't plan his [work]. I'm also showing a few pictures from the Abarat books. With Abarat, I paint the books and then find the stories in the paintings - a very different way of writing a narrative. I'm putting all of these together in what looks to be a five-book series; I'm currently writing book three. There will be paintings from books that are not out yet - and I'll be selling these as well." Barker Talks About His Baby 'Hellraiser' On Its Birthday By Robert K. Elder, Chicago Tribune, 11 January 2008 (note - full text available online at www.chicagotribune.com) "I'm writing Abarat 3, with all the paintings painted now. In fact, some of the paintings that are on display and for sale at the exhibition are Abarat pictures. I think what I write is pictorial, shall we say. A lot of my stuff begins with an image that - for some reason or another - I couldn't get out of my head. It's a bit like the piece of sand in the oyster, not to say all my work is pearls. But it serves the same function. It irritates in an interesting way." Apocalypses Video Tour By Clive Barker, Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, 13 January 2008 (note: full video footage here) "This picture was sold and someone already took it away! We've only had the exhibition up two days and they're already taking pictures off the walls! "We've sold a lot of pictures and I've met a lot of really wonderful people - certainly this is a gallery and a city I will be returning to often..." Interview By [ ], Artbeat Chicago, Chicago Tonight, 23 January 2008 "I've never been terribly interested in what we'll loosely call horror fiction nor horror painting, if there is such a thing; nothing in this gallery is intended to frighten. It may be intended to disturb or surprise or to push people's buttons so they re-examine the way they think about the world a little bit, but horrify? No, the headlines will do that." A Great Way To Make A Living By Paul Kane, Writers' Forum, February 2008 "I've always known somehow or other that I wanted to tell stories. Stories put order where there is disorder. Stories make sense where there is nonsense. It may be a temporary order but it's reassuring to us... "One of the hopes I have for Mister B. Gone is that, although it is short, it will linger. It's wonderful writing big, fat books like The Great And Secret Show and Weaveworld, and indeed Scarlet Gospels, but there's also something very satisfying about a first-person narrative which is much shorter but has, hopefully, a few sounds, a few darker notes that would perhaps go unnoticed in a longer piece." The Great Imaginer Of Our Time By [ ], The Canberra Times, 16 February 2008 "I am not a horror writer, nor do I consider myself a fantasy writer either. I am a writer who works in my imagination. In one sense, all writers re-invent the world, though some do it with more enthusiasm than others, and with more desire to see the world shaped to their particular longings and anxieties. The only difference in the world of literature is between the guy who writes out of a perceived reality and the guy who creates one for himself. My writing, indeed my work, I think is an attempt to create a narrative in which all these possibilities are explored." Pages From A Demon's Notebook By Michael Ehrhardt, Gay City News, 21 February 2008 (note: full text online at www.gaycitynews.com) "I live pretty much outside the Hollywood red carpet set and the celebrity circus, in what was originally Ronald Colman's house. Having come from industrial Liverpool, where it's constantly rainy or overcast, Los Angeles is a sort of paradise. In fact, today the sky is brilliantly blue now, and that's invigorating and inspiring. And David and I live way off the beaten track, with enough property for privacy. Occasionally, we'll go into the city to catch a few films. Mainly to keep up with the new trends and talent in film." The Wildclaw Clive Barker Interview By Charlie Athanas, Wildclaw Theatre.com, 4 March 2008 (note: full text online at www.wildclawtheater.com) "Arthur Machen is wholly neglected in this country and I’m afraid in England, too. He is, to my mind, easily as important as Lovecraft. He’s certainly a better writer, no question, and infinitely subtler in his effects. Infinitely more humane in his philosophies and completely untouched by the anti-Semitism and misogyny, which to my mind is so strong in Lovecraft that it makes the work odious... "Yes, this man redefines genres as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never had a taste for Lovecraft. Never understood why anybody would have a taste for Lovecraft. I recommend to you, for instance, a little story not more than three pages long called, I think, An Incident On High Holborn... It’s three, four pages long and it is so charged with magic and, as they say, a sort of documentary reality. It’s like nothing in English fantasy. Like nothing in English fiction. Extraordinary stuff." Pivotal Voices: Was, Is And Will Be By Phil and Sarah Stokes, 11 April 2008 (note - full text here) "I have been, in the last few years I suppose, slowly cutting back on a few things, saying 'I will let that be what it's going to be': that’s been the case with some of the movies, I’ve allowed Joe and Anthony to do their thing and trusted them to do the brilliant things they’ve done, I’m proud of them. Now, just this allows me to come back to the place where I am sitting right now which is at my desk with my dogs all round me and do what I do best, which is to write stories. "I got a little too drawn into the movie business, you know, I think I did it out of some self-preservation. In the end though I have realised that the ‘self’ that I have to preserve is this self; the books will be there when the movies have been made and have been either good or bad or indifferent and, you know, onward... "I’d be much, much happier to be writing more books and painting more pictures in the years to come than I would be spending time arguing with producers - other people love it, you know, Joe loves it and he’s very, very good at it; I am constantly wishing I was sitting somewhere quietly with pen and pencils and so it’s really lovely to feel like I have a burst of energy and life to get on and move forward with the books." Interview By Dee Snider and Debbie Rochon, Fangoria Radio, 18 April 2008 (note - full audio online at www.fangoriaradio.com) [Re Midnight Meat Train paintings] "These drawings were done early in the process as just, you know, hopefully some portion of inspiration but really in the end it's got to be the guys who are on the cutting edge of things; the people who are actually making the prosthetics, the people who are actually wearing the prosthetics who really have to create these things. So I was doing the easy part, just doing a few drawings... "It's been interesting because I did not think we'd have any problems with the MPAA with this picture [Midnight Meat Train] and boy, oh boy, oh boy did we have trouble. You know, they said, 'Oh God, it's the hook man!' - Can you believe it, I have a nickname at the MPAA! They are so tired of my bloodthirsty ass coming around causing trouble - so I'm 'the hook man' as far as they're concerned..." Fangoria Weekend Of Horrors By Tony Timpone, on stage Q&A at the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors, 26 April 2008 (note - full transcript online at www.hellraiserprophecy.com/clive/) "They wanted to take the word ‘meat’ out of the title. I guess it was, The Midnight Tofu Train. No, they thought the title, I guess, was too… crude? Too on-the-nose? To me, it was like a good genre title. It goes back to something we’ve talked about over the years, about people in this city, in this industry being very happy to take profit from horror movies, but at the same time often being ashamed of horror movies. And it irritates the Hell out of me. I mean, I love horror movies - how long have we been talking to one another? Twenty years...? It’s a long time, and that situation of being ashamed of horror movies and just two-faced about horror movies, you know, they would take the profit and at the same time, kind of shun them. You have the situation where very often they won’t put them up for review, you know, which I think is a way of sort of saying, ‘We’re ashamed of this. We’re very happy it makes money, but we’re ashamed.’ And it’s interesting when you showed Gods and Monsters amongst the pictures up there. That was true for James Whale back in the early 1930’s, and it hasn’t changed over these years." Gore Aboard The Midnight Meat Train By Ryan Turek, Fangoria, No 273, May 2008 "Expansion [of the story] has its value if you can really make people care more about the characters - and in this particular case, it has been achieved. Jeff [Buhler] had a way to make the movie work, which is in the script and on the screen... "Kaufman is on his own, and he seeks a companion in the story - and he finds that companionship in the city, as it were. The movie, in that sense, makes a better choice, because he has a lot more to sacrifice." Dark Side Of Clive Barker By Clive Simmons, The Courier Mail, 31 May 2008 (note: full text online at www.news.com.au/couriermail/) "[Writing] gives me a great calm. It siphons off the madness in my head. You know in Abarat where Christopher Carrion siphons off his nightmares which float in the fluid around his neck? Well, the closest character to me of all I've written is Christopher Carrion. Without a peep. "I'm a very, very dark person, I have a very dark place within me which sometimes intimidates me. I'm very aware that I'm a man with a darker side, and that I have to keep it in balance. "Christopher Carrion is fighting a hard battle to retain his own self; his sanity and redemption, and I fight that battle daily. I'm not going to be all Walt Disney or Pollyanna about this. I do write these books, and they come from a place within me, and it would be naive to say that those things are not real." A Life In Books: Clive Barker By [ ], Newsweek, 16 June 2008 (note: full text online at www.newsweek.com) [My Five Most Important Books - 3:] "Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. The abiding myth of my childhood and of most gay men's lives: infinitely postponed adulthood. I will never have children; I will never take on adult responsibilities." Clive Barker Speaks Out About The Mistreatment Of Midnight Meat Train By Tom Blunt, AMC, 24 June 2008 (note: full text online at www.amctv.com) "I have to believe that some of this, if not all of it, is rooted in an age-old problem, something that happens when you have a change of management: the work that was put into development by the previous folks is not treated or finished respectfully. I've seen these politics before, and I'll probably see them again. I know for a fact that we're not the only ones that are having this problem... "The movie is fucking great, and it's not right to stop horror fans who've been looking forward to seeing the picture from seeing it on the big screen. I've seen it with audiences, and they go nuts... This is Kitamura's first American release, and there's no question that it works. I think he deserves to have it seen by the largest audience possible. I know it will be seen in huge numbers on DVD, but that isn't the same as five hundred people in a packed theater." "My issue is with the control that individuals have in these cases - people with no interest in the movie as an artistic piece, with no concern for the care that was taken to put it on the screen... and who very often have only political motivations. They're tossing this thing away as if it matters not at all to them. Usually those agendas are fiscal, and that's what confuses me here. If they wind up putting this film on a hundred screens for a week, they're leaving millions on the table." Heroes And Inspirations By Calum Waddell, SFX, No 171, July 2008 "The Fellows Who Live in the Back of My Head. "I'm serious here. I never had any author that I wanted to follow in the footsteps of. It was always these strange little fellows that live in the back of my head who convinced me to start writing. I wish I could tell you that there was one person or moment that inspired me but that is not true. I felt very different from a lot of my school chums when I was younger - and I think you hear this from a lot of horror and fantasy fans. All I did was take my strange little friends into adulthood. I never let them fade away. They remain in my head, imagining stuff, which is how I write my stories." Interviews Index | Home page This page has been created for information and entertainment purposes only. All quotes remain the copyright of the original owners.