I don't believe that the writing was a huge job. And he had it framed and he signed it, "Just in case you ever need bail money." I just thought, I mean, that's just such a great example of the man's generosity and his heart. Then years later, years later when I actually had a pretty thriving career, I get something in the mail from him, and I open it. If I'd offered him $2, I'm sure he would've said yes anyway, but I didn't know him that well at the time. And it was actually a lot of money for me at the time, but I didn't want to insult the man, so we offered him $5,000 for that. I wanted to make a short film, and try to release it commercially, so the dollar thing turned into an actual option. His "Dollar Baby" policy is that it's not to be released commercially. It was one of the very first, if not the first. The writer/director's first project was an adaptation of "The Woman in the Room," which ended up putting Darabont on the map in Hollywood and kicked off the whole "Dollar Baby" idea.ĭarabont: It was, I think, the first time that Steve had ever done that. Having already impressed King with his adaptations of "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile," King agreed.ĭarabont: We did the typical dollar deal, and if it gets made, gets more dollars of course.ĭarabont is no stranger to King's "Dollar Baby" program, in which he'll allow aspiring filmmakers and good friends to option his short stories for a single dollar. So, Darabont reached out to the prolific author about getting the rights to bring "The Mist" to the big screen. And nobody does that better than Stephen King. So it's a fascinating balance to me between very high-brow and very low-brow elements. It just reminded me of that sort of '50s, early '60s, low-budget, usually black and white, grainy kind of horror movie.
In my case, pre-video, late at night usually on some creature feature. When I was reading it, somehow I just pictured one of those low-budget movies that we grew up all watching. It's under the donuts and candy, there's actually a very nutritious meal and I love when that happens. I love when an unpretentious genre movie will actually present a significant theme like that. But turn off the lights, and no lights, no machines, no rules, you'll see how savage people get, and that really struck as true to me. The whole theme of the movie is in this scene where Tom says, "Yeah, when the machines are running and everything's fine, okay." Although even that's getting a little sketchy these days. It's such a thin barrier between cooperation and savagery and I just thought it was such a brilliant callback to things like Rod Serling's great "Twilight Zone" episode, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," or "Lord of the Flies."
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