Horror Reanimated… the home of Bloody Books

Interview with Mark Gatiss! Part Three

December 20th, 2008

In the final part of my interview with Mark Gatiss we talk about his exciting new television project – a modern-day take on Sherlock Holmes, co-written with the new Doctor Who supremo Steven Moffat. Mark also gives aspiring writers a few practical tips and talks about the importance of luck in the scribing game. Finally, he picks his best and worst examples of the horror form…

Bill Hussey:      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?

Mark Gatiss:     Well, quite a lot. Steven Moffat and I are doing a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. We shoot the pilot in January and we’re hoping we’ll go pretty straightforwardly into the series.

BH:      Can you tell us who’s playing Holmes?

MG:     Not allowed yet. All these secrets!

[It was revealed yesterday by the BBC that Benedict Cumberbatch (Atonement, Agatha Christie's Marple, Starter For Ten) will be playing Holmes with Martin Freeman (The Office, Hot Fuzz) as Watson. Rupert Graves will play the updated Lestrade. We are promised a 21st Century Moriarty but the actor taking the part has not yet been announced]

BH:      And, of course, the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes might be out the same time.

MG:     And possibly the Will Ferrell Holmes spoof. All I’ll say is, I refer you back to my answer about hoping that good things will out. I don’t worry about any kind of threat because they are terribly different animals. [The Downey Jr film] seems to be a turbo-charged period Holmes, which is fine, I’ll love to go and see it, but it’s not what we’re trying to do.

BH:      It’s an intriguing idea bringing Holmes up-to-date. I assume you’re not going to do what they’ve done in previous movies: freezing him and he is actually the Victorian Holmes?

MG:     No, nothing like that. Holmes is alive now. The thing that inspired us to do it is, much as we adore all Victoriana and fog-bound London, the essential characters have been lost in the fog. So many accoutrements of top hats and hansom cabs that, when you read the stories, you realise Holmes is an extraordinary modern man in a modern metropolitan London. They weren’t period stories to the people that were reading them. So we worked off exactly the same principle. And the magical way in is that Watson is in the same war – he’s wounded in Afghanistan, just like in the first story [A Study in Scarlet]. He comes home, has no friends, nowhere to live, and he meets someone he went to medical school with who suggests he gets a flat-share. Watson says, ‘Who’d share a flat with me?’ and the friend says, ‘Funny, you’re the second person to say that to me today…’

BH:      And so you’re keeping the essential character of Holmes?

MG:     We’re not only keeping it, we are restoring it. I’ve become so tired of adaptations that think they’re being sexy and modern by giving him this incredible drug habit. They always get it wrong. In that recent version of The Hound of the Baskervilles - at the commencement of the greatest case in his career he goes off to the loos and shoots up. He does it because he’s bored!

BH:      And they got the relationship between Holmes and Watson very wrong in that adaptation. The friendship wasn’t there. Why would Watson stay with Holmes unless they were great friends?

MG:     You couldn’t be more right. The key to it is that these are the best friends in the world. They fill a hole: Holmes is humanised by Watson, and Holmes saves Watson’s life essentially. Watson has nothing left in his life, he’s invalided out of the army, he has nowhere to go, and then this amazing man gives him a life of adventure. But Holmes is virtually a psychopath and Watson knocks the edges off him. Together they become best friends. That’s the essence of the idea – to get back to what you love from the stories: that these are the best two people you could ever want to be around.

BH:      That’s right. I’m a big Holmes fan and I always go back to that episode in The Three Garridebs when Holmes believes Watson has been fatally injured. The anguish in Holmes’ voice…

MG:     We were quoting it the other day. ‘You’ve harmed my Watson’ he says. It doesn’t come straight away but they build this incredibly strong friendship and that’s why you love them. That’s why the characters have survived for over a hundred years.

BH:      Well, I can’t wait to see this. Now, are we going to get to see any more ghost stories for Christmas from you?

MG:     I hope so! Like all Christmas traditions, it should be brand new. The tradition of me doing Christmas ghost stories should now start! I’ve got something I’d love to do next year. If it comes off it’ll be amazing. It’s in a similar vein to Crooked House but not exactly the same. The thing I find so frustrating is it’s taken me all these years to get this to happen. Every year they would show the old MR James adaptations again and they knew there was a gap there for new ones. It didn’t happen until very recently, when they did A View from a Hill and Room 13, which I thought was great.

BH:      It is always a joy seeing the old MR James adaptations, but inevitably they lose their terror on repeated viewings. So it’s great to get a new programme in that style.

MG:     I think that’s very true. You do become very familiar with them. It’s like seeing old friends.

BH:      But we want terrifying old friends, I suppose.

MG:     (laughs) You should see my old friends!

BH:      Joseph and I are doing a continuing blog on the practicalities of writing a novel. I wonder what piece of advice you would give to an aspiring writer.

MG:     Give it up! Do scripts instead! As I’m sure you know, writing a book is so labour intensive. I find it much, much harder than writing scripts. But the rewards are tremendous. In the end, you feel as if you’ve really honed it, rewriting and rewriting, you’re pleased with a particular turn of phrase, and you never stop rewriting until you get it just right. And then the deadline comes and you have to settle for what you’ve got! The only thing I’d advise is to keep at it. I was watching Charlie Brooker do a Screenwipe special on TV writing, which was very interesting. The advice was familiar but very true. Tony Jordan said there is no such thing as would-be writer: writers write. Just do it. And don’t be afraid if it’s shit. No-one will see it until you’re ready and even then you can sneak it out. No-one is looking over your shoulder when you’re writing that dreadful first draft or that not so good second draft. I think, in terms of practicalities, as you say, the danger is market saturation with horror. But then I suppose you just have to hope that you’ll hit lucky with the right thing. Sometimes the weirdest dressing up of an old concept, like Harry Potter, becomes the next big thing.

BH:      And there’s no way to foretelling that.

MG:     There’s no way of foretelling. I mean Twilight… it’s not long since Buffy but here we are again. What she [Stephenie Meyer] has brilliantly tapped into is the eternal yearning of the Buffy girl for a beautiful, Undead man. It goes right back to Byron and Dracula. But, you know, two years either side and she might have completely missed the market.

BH:      It’s a huge amount of luck, isn’t it?

MG:     It really is. I’ve been very lucky. I’ve worked very hard but I have been very lucky, especially with the timing of the League. That’s what opened all the doors. Again, a couple of years either side when sketch shows were still out of fashion, or if we’d gone slightly later someone else might have got in there.

BH:      We do a little thing on the site where we ask people to pick their best and worst examples of horror. Recently horror writer Sarah Pinborough consigned The Wicker Man to our equivalent of Room 101, which I’m sure you’ll be outraged about!

MG:     How could she?! Best and worst… very difficult… it does fluctuate. Films I loved as a kid are just not there any more, not in the same way. Something like Dracula Has Risen From The Grave was my favourite Hammer at the time, but it’s actually rather ponderous and not very attractive. But a film like Twins of Evil or Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, oh I love those. And I love the Universal horrors more than the Hammers these days. Worst? I would say something like the Saw films. The first one was very clever but as soon as it becomes torture porn I can’t bear it. That’s not horror – that’s making films for fifteen year old boys who smash up animals with hammers. It’s wrong and unsubtle and ugly.

BH:      And I suppose your best must be going back to Nigel Kneale again?

MG:     Yes, in terms of the thing that’s had the most effect on me it’s probably Quatermass and the Pit because of the incredible ideas which have influenced so many people. He just invented that idea of the ancient invasion. At a stroke there are hundreds of things in that story that have become the staples of modern science fiction and horror. When I finally saw the TV version I was so knocked out by the ambition of doing that live, brilliant performances and it is genuinely spooky. And I’ve just remembered another of his brilliant, brilliant lines! When they’re going through the archives and she says, ‘the figure was small, he said, like a monkey or a dwarf.’ Just brilliant.

BH:      Your own live Quatermass was very successful as well.

MG:     Oh, thank you. It was beyond thrilling to be in Quatermass and to find out that Nigel Kneale liked me the best! To be part of a live drama like that was probably the most exciting performance I’ve ever done, and to be in The Quatermass Experiment was something I never thought would happen.

BH:      And it has echoes in The Lazarus Experiment from Doctor Who. As soon as I saw them chasing you into the church I got that Quatermass chill.

MG:     Yes, it was supposed to be St Paul’s and they pulled out at the last minute which was a shame. But the cathedral part is my favourite bit.

BH:      Fantastic. Well, I’m really excited about Crooked House and Sherlock Holmes.

MG:     I hope you enjoy them. It is a fantastic position to be in, to be lucky enough to put your passion on the air. But something like Crooked House has taken me about thirty-five years to get made! For me, it has been absolutely worthwhile and I’m very proud of it. I’ve said this before, and it’s certainly still true, as long as I’ve been able to I’ve operated on the principle of making the sort of things that I’d like to watch myself. And so, by that token, there’s nothing I’d rather see on at Christmas than this!

BH:      Excellent, I can’t wait to see it. Thank you very much for your time, Mr Gatiss.

MG      My pleasure. And Merry Christmas!

BH:      Merry Christmas! And here’s my last question – what do you want for Christmas?

MG:     I’d like to do this again next year. Making something like Crooked House a Christmas tradition is the best thing I could ask for.

Crooked House begins on BBC Four on Monday 22nd December at 10.30pm with The Wainscoting, Part Two, Something Old, is on Tuesday 23rd, Part Three, The Knocker on Wednesday 24th. The complete portmanteau version is on Saturday 27th at 9pm.

I’d like to thank Mark Gatiss for giving up so much of his time for this interview. A true gentleman, and we may be hearing from him again in the not too distant future…

I’d also like to thank Claire Nightingale and Karl Schmid for all their assistance and Jo O’Leary, Iain Mccallum and Tiger Aspect for sorting out the picture permissions.

(Picture credit: TIGER ASPECT/ED MILLER)

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