Exclusive Interview: Frank Darabont

Every once in a while a show comes along that creates a sensation. The Walking Dead is such a show. It started as a comic by Robert Kirkman and captured the attention of Frank Darabont, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, who served as writer, director and executive producer and brought the zombie apo­calypse to spellbinding life on the small screen. The Walking Dead was not only critically acclaimed; after premiering on AMC, it became the most-watched drama series in basic-cable history in the U.S. among the 18-to-49 demographic. It was also the highest-rated show in pay tele­vision in most of the 120 countries where it aired on Fox International Channels. Darabont talks about his passion for zombies and storytelling.

WS: How did you come across Robert Kirkman’s comic The Walking Dead and what appealed to you about the material?
DARABONT: Five years ago I walked into a comic shop in Burbank and came upon the first trade edition of Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic. That edition contained the first six issues. Having the “love of zombies” gene I immediately picked it up, and as soon as I read it I began pursuing the rights to it. I loved that Kirkman created a smart, character-driven drama set against this edgy zombie apocalypse.
I’ve wanted to do my own take on the zombie mythos ever since I saw one of my all-time favorite movies: the 1968 black-and-white [George A.] Romero film, Night of the Living Dead. This was in 1973; I was 14 years old. By the time I saw it, the movie had gained a legendary, mythic reputation…quite a disreputable one. People wanted to see it but were almost afraid to, so of course my friends and I sought it out. I loved it immediately; it was such a visceral and wildly original conception. These were the pre-video days when you had to seek this stuff out in actual movie theaters, mind you. Back then Los Angeles had a number of revival houses that played older films not in current release.

WS: What opportunities did working off a comic book offer you compared to working off a story, such as the ones by Stephen King that were the basis for The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist?
DARABONT: Aside from certain technical issues, like having to think in terms of television act breaks and things like that, the job of adaptation still entails the same things regardless of the nature of the source: extracting the great ideas, finding the character insights, etc. As long as the source material has strength, which The Walking Dead does, the job doesn’t fundamentally change. And as far as visuals are concerned, you get as many good ideas from a well-written novel as you do from a well-drawn comic-book panel: both plant images in your mind’s eye that you try to capture as a filmmaker.

WS: How has working in television and telling a story over a number of episodes been different from working on a movie? What are the different creative challenges in each?
DARABONT: I’ve always loved the zombie genre and have long wondered how I could approach it in a fresh way that hadn’t been done before. Many self-contained films have been made, many excellent ones, so I never saw the reason to try that. Then I read Kirkman’s comic and I thought, Here’s the different way to do it: as an extended character-driven saga for television, a serialized take on the zombie apocalypse seen through the eyes of an ongoing group of characters. That, to me, felt like the fresh approach that hadn’t been done before.

The biggest difference I’ve found between adapting for film versus adapting for television is that with television you have a far greater period of time to explore the story and characters; you’re not trying to squeeze everything into the two-hour running time of a film. A TV series can be a creative luxury in that sense: you can let the story and characters expand and breathe because you have a far greater span of time to tell the tale. But that does involve a shift in thinking when it comes to adapting material: you have to resist the urge to say everything all at once, as you would in a film. For television, you stretch the story out rather than compress it, hopefully in a way that keeps the audience intrigued rather than making them impatient.

WS: The Walking Dead has been extraordinarily successful in every country in which it has aired. What do you think makes it so appealing?
DARABONT: You tell me! Zombies have become embraced as an idea in the wider mainstream culture in the past few years in a way that has frankly taken me by surprise. This used to be an obscure subgenre of horror with a very loyal but limited fan base, but suddenly it’s everywhere you turn; I see grandmothers buying zombie books at the big bookstores now. In our case, Kirkman’s great knack for telling these stories combined with what appears to be the right cultural timing has made the show a success; it seems the mainstream TV audience was ready for this show to come along.

The response both in the States and abroad has been amazing and gratifying for everyone involved. I also must give highest praise to AMC and Fox International Channels for promoting the show so superbly. They really believed in it from day one and campaigned like champions for us.

WS: There was quite a bit of blood and violence in The Walking Dead. How much creative freedom did AMC give you? Would you have been able to make a series like this for a broadcast network?
DARABONT: We didn’t experience any constraints with AMC, and we did some pretty edgy stuff. At times we’ve been shooting and I’ve thought, I can’t believe this is going to be on television! We’re definitely doing stuff that we would not be able to do on network TV. Actually, when I first began working on the show it fell under an overall deal I had at NBC. Thank goodness it never went forward there, because it couldn’t possibly be the same show it is now; it would have been so diluted and bloodless compared to what we’ve been able to do on cable with AMC.

WS: There are some overarching themes to The Walking Dead: maintaining your humanity in desperate situations, dealing with despair, survival instincts. Why are these important to you?
DARABONT: Those things define most drama and art, don’t they? I think if you look at any great story you will find those components expressed in some fashion, whether subtle or grand, because aren’t those themes essential to describing the human condition itself? Aren’t we all teetering on the knife’s edge between joy and despair, between hopelessness and hopefulness, between life and death? That’s the well from which most storytelling is drawn. One of my favorite movies of all time is It’s a Wonderful Life, which is an interesting choice for a seasonal Christmas favorite because it’s about a man deciding whether or not to commit suicide. That is powerful, universal storytelling.