THE WILDCLAW CLIVE BARKER INTERVIEW
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Interviewer: Charlie Athanas

Clive Barker

On Charley Sherman & Steve Pickering's adaptation of Barker's In The Flesh:

"I saw the production and I was astonished at how beautifully, how elegantly and how, very honestly, how simply they pulled off some of the more difficult things in the story.

On Arthur Machen:

"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..."

On his new movie, Book of Blood:

"On Friday, I head to London to help with the final week of shooting for the Book of Blood, the original story from the first book, which we’ve made and is just knockout. It’s killer."

CHARLIE ATHANAS: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today. It is always a pleasure talking to you. I have a couple of things I want to talk to you about. One is Arthur Machen…

CLIVE BARKER: Yes.

CHARLIE: …and theater in general, but I would like to start with if you have any recollections from your experiences working with Charley Sherman on In The Flesh in Chicago.

CLIVE: Those were days that are fixed in my head, because here was Charley and his cohorts really taking an incredibly difficult story to adapt for theatre and fearlessly, I mean fearlessly, just charging in and, my god, pulling it off. Obviously, I saw the production and I was astonished at how beautifully, how elegantly and how, very honestly, how simply they pulled off some of the more difficult things in the story.

CHARLIE: That was a fun show to work on.

CLIVE: It was a wonderful production. I was blown away by it. It really was. I’m not a man who blows smoke, so if I don’t like something I tend to be just quiet. If I do like something, it means I really will speak about it and if I’m speaking about it, I really like it. This was a show I really liked.

CHARLIE: Well, we have a new one now and Charley has adapted The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen.

CLIVE: Of course!

CHARLIE: So what are your thoughts on Arthur Machen and The Great God Pan?

CLIVE: Well, this is a huge subject and we haven’t time, but there are a lot of things to be said. First thing is, 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.

CHARLIE: We’ve had quite a challenge. This is a big show.

CLIVE: It’s a big mythology. This is the thing about Machen. What he is essentially doing is offering you a glimpse into what I believe were genuinely his philosophical and his physical beliefs and if you read his letters, which I’m sure you’ve done, they are filled with a sense of landscape. A sense of the chargedness of landscape. Of how powerfully charged the English landscape is with it’s Roman and Pre-Roman history. And a profound respect for the Pagan.

CHARLIE: Yes, that’s been big in this play.

CLIVE: Right. And these are not easy things for a man, who was after all a man of the cloth, of his time to be espousing. You’re familiar of course with the huge effect that his story about the Angel of Mons had during the First World War and the amazing way that story affected England. You do know about the story, right?

CHARLIE: Do you have a moment to tell me?

CLIVE: Yes. He published a story set on the battlefield of France in which he recounted in almost documentary fashion the idea that the English side was being supported by angelic forces that manifested themselves in the sky.

CHARLIE: Really?

CLIVE: You’re not familiar with this, Charlie?

CHARLIE: No, I’m not.

CLIVE: Oh, you might want to go and look at this.

CHARLIE: I think so.

CLIVE: It’s a very, very short story. It became a massive issue in England, because the war was not going well. The casualties, of course, were terrible and here was this man writing about the presence of God and his angelic archers are fighting on our side…are manifested in the vividly lit skies above France.

CHARLIE: Well, you can certainly see why he would be such an influence on your work.

CLIVE: Oh yes, in the mixture of the Pagan, the Blakeian, the mysticism. The thing is that he isn’t writing horror. He is writing something which is uniquely his own.

CHARLIE: Right.

CLIVE: 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. That’s a street in London.
H-o-l-b-o-r-n.

CHARLIE: Okay.

CLIVE: 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.

CHARLIE: Well, I want to save your voice and we have a couple of seconds left. What are you working on now?

CLIVE: I’m writing Abarat III.

CHARLIE: Very good.

CLIVE: We are in 42 languages with these books and I‘ve painted all the pictures for the third book and many for the fourth and fifth. I am into the final draft and having a wonderful, wonderful time and I’ll go straight on to writing book four. And on Friday, I head to London to help with the final week of shooting for the Book of Blood, the original story from the first book, which we’ve made and is just knockout. It’s killer. And we’ll shoot that and then hopefully have that out by this time next year.

Meanwhile, one last thing, Midnight Meat Train, a movie that you can look at the trailer online. Please look at the trailer. It opens across America. Incredibly bloody and violent (laughter), but superbly well done. Please go look at the trailer.

CHARLIE: Oh, we will.

CLIVE: And the best of luck with the production.

CHARLIE: Well, thank you and thank you so much for your time, Clive.

CLIVE: You’re so welcome.

 

Trailer for Midnight Meat Train:

 

Clive Barker discusses Midnight Meat Train at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con:

 

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