Happy Birthday: Frank Darabont

Frank Darabont

Born: January 28, 1959 in Montbéliard, Doubs, France

[on his rejected script for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) (aka Indiana Jones 4)] Steven [Steven Spielberg] was very, very happy with the script and said it was the best draft of anything since Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). That’s really high praise and gave me a real sense of accomplishment, especially when you love the material you’re working on as much as I love the “Indiana Jones” films. And then you have George Lucas read it and say, “Yeah, I don’t think so, I don’t like it”. And then he resets it to zero when Spielberg is ready to shoot it that coming year, [which] is a real kick to the nuts. You can only waste so much time and so many years of your life on experiences like that, you can only get so emotionally invested and have the rug pulled out from under you before you say, “Enough of that”.

If you look at a classic horror movie like The Exorcist (1973), part of what makes it so scary is that it feels so damn real. If you add a layer of too much hysterical, theatrical reality, then audiences take it less seriously. But if you play it for absolute reality, then the dread and the horror – which is why we go to horror movies in the first place – is reinforced.

The Shawshank Redemption 1994 dir. Darabont starring Tim Robbins Morgan Freeman

The Green Mile 1999 dir. Darabont Starring Tom Hanks Michael Clarke Duncan

THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 1 Best of the series

THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 2 Best of the series

Best of THE WALKING DEAD TV series

The Mist 2007 dir. Darabont Starring Thomas Jane Marcia Gay Harden

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