The Official Clive Barker Resource - Revelations

Mixing up a couple of our approaches of recent times, for this conversation with Clive, we decided to go for a general "what's keeping you busy?" update supplemented by a small group of questions sent into us through the website. Not only was the call unusually timed in that it happened in the time normally set aside for Clive's post-lunch writing session (rather than pre-lunch) so disrupting the normal flow of the day, the subject matter of those questions caused Clive to call us back an hour after we'd finished so that he could continue to address them and to scratch the surface for a much broader discussion still to come...

Clive Barker : "I’m well... Let’s dig into this - it’s nice that you’ve laid this all out for me. There’s a bunch of things to say... Can I just start with a more general topic which we’ve already talked a little about between us but I just sort of feel like it can go on the site?
"The beginning of this year I think has marked a significant change in my attitude to the way I want to divide my energies, henceforth. It was all brought about by going to Hawaii and finding myself so completely depleted, so thoroughly depleted that I left the house once, twice and slept and gazed mindlessly at books which I brought to read but didn’t have the energy for. I mean, we’ve all been in these places - the times when your energy burns out, but I’m used to having bags of energy. It was a big shock to me to find that some of my reserves were so low that I literally did not have the interest to go out and look at the water - and I’m not exaggerating, it really was that, I mean I really I was just so - oh, I can’t describe it - it was like somebody opened a tap and poured... my energy and passion poured out of me. And I got a little panicky, after a week, and then I thought no, let’s think about this, there’s a lesson here, and the lesson is you’re 54 and you can’t keep burning the candle at both ends, (and the middle!) you know, without this happening, and probably worse. So things have got to change.
"And when I came back, I made a general announcement to my guys at Seraphim and Joe, and to my agent - obviously first off to David - that I was going to severely cut back on what I did for movies and television. I would never pitch a project again, I decided. I would never go to a studio to pitch a project - if they wanted to come to talk to me about something then of course, I would listen, but my pitching days, with all the anxiety attached to them, and then often the sense that it wasn’t really worth the effort you put in anyway, or else the idea you find is stolen from you and used somewhere later - which has happened to me countless times - I’m just over that. I get so much joy from the painting and the writing that the notion of expending creative energy talking to a development person - who, really his or her job only exists if the movie is never made - is just so soul destroying and frustrating that I joined that long line, headed, I suppose by one of my heroes, Terry Gilliam, of people who’ve said, ‘The hell with that!’ and 'I can’t do this anymore.'
"The difference with me is that I still want to be part of the movie machine - and it is a machine, everyone’s got to admit to that - but in a much more low-key fashion. We are involved in a lot of things, some of which we’ll talk about in a minute, which are going fine, it’s just that my life as a pitching machine, someone who has a lot of ideas and takes them to a lot of people, is over.
"And suddenly, when I made that decision, and had spoken to everybody about it and everybody agreed that’s exactly right, you should do that, a great weight was lifted off my shoulders and energy poured back in and I realised, only then, how much, boy, how much of a price I was paying in anxiety and, to be truthful, a kind of depressed state often, because I felt as though I was spread too thinly and there’s a certain amount of frustration in that.
"Now I’m concentrating on the things that I do here at the house - write and paint and photograph - and at the same time as I get back, of course, a whole bunch of projects just jump and take a leap forwards and the key one is Midnight Meat Train which is being shot now. We’re actually in the second week. The stuff I’ve seen so far looks wonderful, though I’ve been in the game far too long to trust dailies - you know, you have to see the movie - but the performances are lovely and I think things are looking very, very good. Pig Blood Blues gets much nearer to being made...
"So, the other big change is that when I got back, I’ve been writing a novel quietly, in secret, because the darkness of Scarlet Gospels was starting to take its toll on me and I really felt as though I wanted to be able to write and have a lighter feel: it’s an incredibly dark book. And as I moved into writing the final 4,000 pages (handwritten), I realised I wanted to take a little break before I plunged into the final draft. Then I called my editors and I said, I talked to them about a project called Mister B. Gone - as I talked about to you before. This is a short novel, which I almost have finished, which I’ve been writing as a sort of release from the tensions of the darkness of Scarlet Gospels. I’m not writing Scarlet Gospels right now, I’m writing the final draft of Mister B. Gone"

Clive Barker : "Yeah, absolutely, except that it’s also about a demon, it’s just a very different kind of book. It’s in the first person; I’m writing in the voice of Jakabok. Jakabok is 'a minor divil’ he calls himself, but he’s actually a vicious little bastard and he’s talking to us and giving us the inside skinny on what it is to be a demon. But he is also threatening us... I don’t want to give too much away, but that’s where we are… It’ll be slightly longer, I think, than Thief of Always. It obviously has no illustrations; to illustrate that book would be terrifying! It has some very dark stuff in it, it’s set in the Middle Ages, in part, and let’s leave it at that - we’ll talk more about it when it’s a little nearer."

Clive Barker : "And that’s a Halloween release, yeah. I’m actually quite excited because in seven weeks I have to deliver it because it has to be out in October - I’d better have an ending, hadn’t I..? Then I will get back to Scarlet Gospels and maybe even start tinkering around with Abarat Three, for which all the paintings are now done and so now it’s really just a question of turning those paintings into a narrative reality which is coming together very nicely. I am painting like a fool here - I’m actually having a great time - I’m way Stacked canvases

ahead of the words, right now - you guys know more than anybody how much further I am, there are more paintings than I could possibly use in the two books that will be left after the third is taken care of - to which you may reply oh, why the fuck are you still painting? And the answer is two-fold, actually three-fold... The first one is just that I’m crazy, and I’m enjoying it, but the real reason is that as long as there are images of Abarat in my mind, I want to download them onto canvas, because I don’t know exactly - I have a vague idea - but I don’t have a clear idea of the processes of books four and five I think it’s my duty to the narrative to keep providing visual options, to keep them coming. Nothing will be wasted! Because it’s my hope that we will eventually use every single one of these paintings maybe in an expanded form of a kind of guide to the Islands, maybe an expanded form of the Almanac? So everything that I’ve painted for Abarat will eventually be printed as an Abarat image, it’s just a question of whether they appear in the series of five books or appear in some other form but I really am enjoying the darker aspects, having had the relatively light touches involved in the first two books.
"There was a wonderful exchange online - I very seldom do this, but I actually watched this exchange - somebody said, 'Oh Barker’s just ripping off Alice in Wonderland, why doesn’t he get the...' and somebody had very wittily given the riposte that they didn’t remember lips being sewn up or the darker aspects, he didn’t remember those pieces being a part of the Alice narrative. For which defence, my thanks. It was very wittily put, very nicely written. So the paintings continue..."

Clive Barker : "For the exhibition? That’s also why I’m painting. At the same time as learning from the Abarat paintings that people like colour and I’m not being afraid to let the impasto build up a little bit to really give the paintings textures and I’ve learned a lot through painting the Abarat pictures, you look at those very early ones - we talked about this when you were last here - there’s no real comparison, it’s just a different style and at first I worried about that I thought well, I’m learning as I paint here, as I publish. And I worried about the differences bothering the reader, but it seems not to and in a way it’s all part of a journey - I’m taking a journey just as Candy is. Midnight Meat Train designs

And so, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself and yes, there will be a lot of new paintings for November."

Revelations : "And you've done some artwork pieces for Midnight Meat Train, production pieces, very dark, four of which were displayed at the Berlin Film Festival…"

Clive Barker : Oh, yes, those were oil pastels and they’re on paper. I have those back and I now have another five designs which I’ve added, so there are nine Midnight Meat Train designs which I have done and when the movie comes out I think we’ll probably exhibit them."

Revelations : "And in amongst all this activity, there's also the Hellraiser project..."

Clive Barker : "The Hellraiser treatment has been signed off on by Miramax. They have it in their hands and they like it, and they want a bit more Hellraiser mythology, which is music to my ears - it’s the first time I’ve ever heard that request! You know, where do I sign? But they’ve already signed so that’s fine..."

Clive Barker : "Jericho - it’s been a busy morning! I had half an hour with Joe Falke, the English co-creator of this - he’s the Codemasters guy on the project - he’s a really good guy. They’re putting together a promo right now. I’ve seen a short trailer which is eye-blinding, and now they’re putting together something a little longer, so as soon as I have that - "

Revelations : "Yeah, comments about how dark it is, how gruesome and, on the other time zones that you've described in a couple of places as being like peeling back the layers of an onion to find the different periods to explore, people want to see them..."

Clive Barker : "‘Others’ he says, lightly... There’s a lot of ‘others’ but right now a lot of them are repetitions of what we’ve talked about before and I’m not sure they’re creeping any closer to being realised, Thief of Always being the obvious example. There’s a great deal of frustration on that but at the same time other stuff that originated with me, like Midnight Meat Train is being made, so it feels a little ungrateful to be complaining that oh, that isn’t being made and that isn’t being made when there are plenty of people in this town who don’t get anything made, and I was one of them until recently! So I’m grateful for The Books of Blood being made and very much hope that it will stimulate people to look again at what they have, you know?"

Revelations : "And you said you had a second draft through on Damnation Game?"

Clive Barker : "Yes, and it’s tremendous, and it’s been delivered to Mike Medavoy at Phoenix and I guess he’s reading right now and we’ll see what his response is. I’m incredibly proud of Mr DiBlasi – you know this is a guy who came in to Seraphim what, four years ago, and now he’s a fully-fledged writer and he’s soon to be writer/director and I am incredibly impressed."

Revelations : "And do you get the same sort of satisfaction when Anthony turns out that sort of work as when Pete Atkins produced his first screenplay for Hellbound and demonstrated such skill and success?"

Clive Barker : "I would say these are both guys whose passion and enthusiasm and vision have made it possible for them to be in the screenwriting business for - well, Pete, he’s still doing it, so what is it, twenty years? It’s pretty darned rare - and to throw in a couple of novels in the meanwhile..."

Revelations : "And next weekend is the World Horror Convention where Pete's the special media guest of honour..."

A Spiritual Retreat