Horror Reanimated… the home of Bloody Books

Interview with Mark Gatiss! Part Two

December 19th, 2008

In which Mark talks about the joys of casting and producing Crooked House, his personal views regarding those things that go bump in the night, the tradition of the Ghost Story for Christmas, his childhood influences, the ‘renaissance’ of horror and sci-fi on TV and the ‘mighty’ task facing the new Doctor Who…

Bill Hussey:      You have a great cast for Crooked House…

Mark Gatiss:     My little black book has been exhausted!

BH:      And you’ve got Jean Marsh who appeared in one of my favourite movies, The Changeling. But I think the big surprise is Derren Brown making his acting debut.

MG:     It’s only a cough and a sniff, don’t get too excited! He plays Sir Roger Widdowson, the man who built the original Tudor house. He was one of Queen Elizabeth’s courtiers in the story and had a reputation for consorting with witches. Essentially he’s just in flashbacks, but I think Derren is a natural actor. I’ve thought for a long time I’d like to ask him to do something. With the cast, I really wanted to get the right people for it.

BH:      I know you’re producing this too. Is this your first very heavy involvement in production?

MG:     Well, last year I did The Worst Journey in the World about the Antarctic and that was my first credit as co-producer. It’s something I’ve always wanted, to be this hands on, and it’s very hard to relinquish once you’ve got it. It’s not about throwing your weight around or the power, it’s about seeing it through. Without being too pejorative, it’s like that scene in Doctor Who. I just didn’t have that level of involvement there. If I’d been around I could have said we need this scene where the Doctor puts his ear to the wall because that’s how I imagined it. And that’s what production’s all about – being there all the time to make sure… You see, sometimes people make assumptions. Sometimes right assumptions, sometimes unbelievably wrong assumptions from the printed page. And the worst thing is if you then get the rushes and you think, oh God, that’s just not it. So it’s really just that: wanting to follow through from the beginning to the end of the process. We’re literally finishing the final mix now and that’s a culmination of eighteen months work, but I couldn’t bear to wave it off and move on to something else.

BH:      There was another thing I wanted to ask about the actual business of writing Crooked House. I was doing some research for the MR James angle, and came across a quote from that mad old anthologist Montague Summers. He said that to write convincingly about ghosts you have to at least entertain the possibility of the supernatural. What do you think? Do you believe in ghosts?

MG:     I do, yes. I don’t know what they are but I know there’s something. There’s been too much evidence over thousands of years. I saw a documentary a couple of years ago about a laboratory in Edinburgh which this physicist moved into. The cleaner wouldn’t stay there, she said the place was haunted. The physicist was extremely sceptical. He was working there late one night and he suddenly went incredibly cold and, out of the corner of his eye, he could see this white shape. It scared the life out of him. Then it happened again a few weeks later. He thought, look I’m a scientist, I’m going to get to the bottom of this. He talked to people who’d worked there before; they’d all had the same experience. So he stripped the laboratory from top to bottom and he discovered that the ventilation fan was slightly off-kilter. It was creating a vibration on an intra-sonic level which was pressing on the back of his eyeballs, giving him a visual hallucination and sending a message to his brain which made him go colder. He repaired the fan and the effects went away. At the beginning, however, he thought he’d seen a ghost… So I think there are incredible things out there that we don’t know about. I don’t think it’s the continuation of the soul but I think there’s a lot in it.

BH:      I’ve often wondered what purpose is served by those people who go off looking for the Loch Ness Monster. They end up finding nothing and you wonder, who’s the better for that?

MG:     In the end, I suppose, that’s why with ghosts we’re on to a sure-fire thing here, because no-one’s going to prove or disprove it. As Robert Aickman says, the mystery remains, not the question.

BH:      So with the ghost story for Christmas being this solid British tradition, probably going back to Dickens’ The Signalman, why do we enjoy being scared at this supposedly cosy time of year?

MG:     I suppose in the popular imagination it started with A Christmas Carol. But Dickens was already drawing on something there, I think, that feels right. I think it’s to do with the turn of the year, I think it’s the cold and the dark, and most people would’ve been sitting around the fire telling stories. Old acquaintance, out with the old in with the new, inevitably you reflect, you think back, always thinking about the past. I think it’s a combination of those things. And the pagan tradition of ghost story telling. And unlike Halloween, it’s not monsters, ghouls and goblins, it’s ghosts. A very particular thing which I think must be tied into the idea of the concentration on the past, those we’ve lost or vengeful spirits. But I think you should just enjoy it, Christmas and ghosts just go together perfectly. You can’t really explain it. They shouldn’t but they do.

BH:      When you were growing up…

MG:     I’ve never grown up!

BH:      Quite right! But you’ve had so many influences growing up, as far as horror is concerned. Who would you say was your core influence?

MG:     Definitely Nigel Kneale. I didn’t see Quatermass when I was growing up, before my time, but I knew the films backwards. When the John Mills one came out I got the script. I devoured everything I could find of Kneale’s. Eventually I got that self-published book with the script of Sex Olympics and The Road and The Stone Tape. I remember seeing The Stone Tape on TV. I think he’s the one main influence because it’s just a fantastic combination of great storytelling, erudition and loving the idea of scaring the pants off people. The thing about Kneale was that he was quite grumpy, quite a curmudgeonly man. And yet Quatermass II is very much a sort of horror comics serial. It’s the least clever of the three but it’s still brilliant. It is very much like a Hollywood-monsters-from-space storyline. I think he was just as able to enjoy that aspect as anyone, he just never admitted it, I suppose. The thing I really admire about him most is his incredible economy in terms of storytelling and knowing how to scare. My favourite in this sense is probably the bit in The Woman in Black when Adrian Rawlins gets in the train and he’s shunting through the stations to East Anglia. Then Bernard Hepton gets on and Rawlins drops his papers and Hepton says, ‘I couldn’t help noticing you’re concerned with the Drablow estate.’ And Rawlins says, ‘Yes, I’m a solicitor, I’m going up for the funeral.’ Hepton replies, ‘Oh, you’ll be the only one.’ A wonderful little warning. Then Rawlins says, ‘I expect to be in and out of Eel Marsh House quite a bit’, and Hepton says ‘Do you now?’ Those three words to me are words that half an hour of special effects and gore can’t come near. It’s just so beautiful, such economy. That’s the way to do it.

BH:      And so have you tried to channel that style of dialogue into Crooked House?

MG:     Yes, definitely. It’s also the fact that I love history and I love writing historical pastiches. I love getting into the language of the period, so I had great fun doing the Georgian one and the Twenties one. I’m always trying to find a place to do that sort of thing, because I know how much it works for me. So if you can get anywhere close to Nigel Kneale’s skill with that then you’re onto a winner.

BH:      Ten years ago there seemed to be very little horror on TV at all. In fact, the only place I got my horror fix on TV was with The League of Gentlemen. Is the genre going through a renaissance on television?

MG:     Hard to say because these things are often illusory. I remember a time flicking through Starburst or something and it was just wall-to-wall bland American sci-fi. I never watch those things; I have no interest in sub-Star Trek with that same cast photo. But I used to think, these things are massively popular. And now it has happened again. It’s part of the ’70s renaissance, I think. And Doctor Who is largely responsible for it. Except I think most of the shows that have come about aren’t anywhere near in its league, and it would be nice to have a few programmes responsive to Doctor Who that weren’t just diluted Doctor Who. You see, fantasy/horror used to be a TV staple, as much as police and hospital dramas. Especially in the ’70s, that was the golden age. But now we are getting huge, high-concept things like Life on Mars which wouldn’t have been entertained a few years ago. So I hope there’s a lot more of it to come but we’ve got to be careful of false dawns.

BH:      I wonder myself, looking at it from the publishing point of view: it seemed to me that during the 90s horror publishing was swamped by a load of rubbish. My worry is that this might happen with horror and fantasy on TV – that they produce a lot of rubbish and people go off it again.

MG:     Exactly. But I think you’ve got to have confidence that the good stuff will out. That’s all you can hope for because inevitably there will be a lot of rubbish.

BH:      So I’d imagine you’re hoping that you’re going to get children watching Crooked House and being as frightened to death as you were…

MG:     I hope so. That’s exactly what you want, isn’t it? You want to set the cycle going again so that one day someone will say, ‘Oh, do you remember that one…’ I mean, it’s very like Doctor Who where we say, ‘You remember that one with the maggots?’ They do stay with you and they continue to influence you.

BH:      I want to ask you about Doctor Who. I hear you’re going to be writing again for series five… 

MG:     Maybe…

BH:      Are you not allowed to tell us any more?

MG:     I’m not allowed to tell you anything!

BH:      Then you’re not going to let us in on TV’s biggest secret. Who can possibly replace David Tenant as the Doctor?

MG:     I honestly don’t know. I think whoever does it, it is a mighty task. David has become the Tom Baker du jour. An amazing achievement. I can’t wait to see what happens with the new Doctor because it’s always exciting, but I think it’ll be a hell of a job. Good luck to them, I say.

BH:      Still, I guess Peter Davison came in after Tom Baker and…

MG:     Yes, I think the best precedent is probably Pertwee into Tom Baker because when Jon Pertwee left it was at the height of its fame and popularity. Then Tom Baker came in and it just went through the roof, so these things are definitely possible. But I’ve no idea I’m afraid. Who would you like to see?

BH:      Paterson Joseph seems to be the bookies favourite…

MG:     Ah, but that’s not always the greatest indicator.

BH:      I’m happy to be surprised, I think.

MG:     It’s nice, isn’t it? I can remember my sister running upstairs to tell me who the new Doctor Who was after Tom Baker left. I’d been thinking about nothing else for six months, but I was still like, tell me, no don’t tell me, Oh God!

BH:      I know you’ve harboured a desire to be the Doctor yourself. Is it something you’d still like to do?

MG:     You know, absolutely, hand on my heart, to have written for it successfully and to have played Professor Lazarus  – a part I never dreamed I’d get – I had such a wonderful time. It was amazing to do it, and to work with David who’s a very old friend of mine. I’d felt like everything had come together. I’m really, really content, I have to say. It’s very interesting, isn’t it? To see people’s opinions. To be honest, I’m most excited about the fact that now, not only are we moving onto our third new Doctor, but we’re just able to talk about it like this. Once upon a time it was, ‘Will there ever be a new Doctor?’ or ‘How long will it be before they take it off again?’

BH:      And it’s a real joy to talk about serious actors rather than silly suggestions like Paul Daniels.

MG:     Well, that’s the great triumph of starting with Christopher Eccleston, I think. It hasn’t quite put it to bed because that’s what tabloids always do. But it sent out such a fantastic message to the industry as well. Whoever they’re seeing for the part, it’s an audacious thing for that actor to do, but terribly exciting. It is the biggest job in television!

BH:      It is great to talk about it in those terms.

MG:     Incredible, isn’t it? The Doctor Who Christmas Special is a BBC tradition! We couldn’t have Christmas without it now, could we?

BH:      I’d feel absolutely bereft. It wouldn’t be Christmas without the Doctor… Moving on to your other projects, I’m really intrigued by talk of Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know how much you can tell us about that…?

TOMORROW: PART THREE: Mark discusses his modern-day take on Sherlock Holmes, co-written and produced with fellow Doctor Who scribe Steven Moffat, his hopes for further ghost stories for Christmas, his practical tips for aspiring writers and he consigns his worst piece of horror to the Plague Pits!

(Picture credits: TIGER ASPECT/ED MILLER)

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