LEGENDARY SCI-FI WRITER RAY BRADBURY DISCUSSES SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

10.23.09 - The name conjures up a chronicle from Mars, a foray into the future, a waltz on a waystation at the edge of the universe, a carnival with a magic carousel. The name is Ray Bradbury. The magic carousel in question belongs to Dark's Pandemonium Carnival, the focus of Bradbury's screen adaptation of his own spine-tingling novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes.

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES - Parading through town as an ordinary carnival, Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce) seeks the hiding place of two boys in Ray Bradbury's spine-tingling fantasy.

Bradbury's script for Something Wicked This Way Comes asks: "How much would you be willing to pay to have your deepest darkest desires come true?" And when a seductive stranger known as Mr. Dark brings his mysterious traveling carnival to Green Town, Ill., the task of saving family and friends from its deadly and destructive clutches falls on the unlikely shoulders of Charles Halloway, the town's librarian, played by Academy Award®-winner Jason Robards.

Q: What is Something Wicked This Way Comes all about?
RB: Well, it's about my childhood actually, I fell in love with magicians, carnivals and circuses as a boy and the most magical thing for me was to run down to the train station early in the morning with my brother and welcome in the latest carnival or circus. Help them put up the tents, feel the elephants, meet Mr. Electrico, meet the Illustrated Man and the dwarfs. I got to know everyone and what they represented, without my knowing it, the mystery of life coming and going on the train early in the morning. These people represent the life that's all around you. Some people who never grow up, some people who are afraid to grow old, some people are more afraid of death than others. So actually my novel is about all of life.

Q: Are the characters in the film autobiographical?
RB: The children (Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade) are two halves of myself. There are two halves to all of us. The light half and the dark half. The dark half is murderous and the light half creates out of that murder in order to escape it. We must get accustomed to the darkness in ourselves and get it out in the open in order to survive.

Q: Is the Charles Halloway character patterned after your own father?
RB: Charles Halloway is my father but I didn't realize that until several years after I had written the book. One night I couldn't sleep and got out of bed, went to my library and started browsing through Something Wicked This Way Comes. In the middle of the book I burst into tears and realized for the first time it was my father I had written about. The book and the film are a monument to my dad and I just hope he can look down from heaven and enjoy it.

Q: The library is particularly significant to you, isn't it?
RB: At the center of my novel and the film is the library, The library is my real birthing place. I started going there when I was seven and I love the mystery of probing the library and climbing the stacks like a chimpanzee trying to find the books I would fall in love with. I fell in love with Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Tarzan and H. G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe, and these were my constant companions as I grew up and then I grew into Jules Verne and Aldous Huxley later on. You start with this fabulous romancing of the soul which you find in libraries.

Q: You actually wrote the screenplay for Something Wicked This Way Comes 25 years ago. What is the history of the project?
RB: Twenty-four years ago, Gene Kelly invited me to see a film he had directed, 'Invitation to a Dance.' I left the theatre exhilarated. I turned to my wife and said 'My God. I'd sell my soul to make a movie with him.' I went home and poured through my files to see if I had any stories I could give him. I found one called 'The Black Ferris.' It was first published in Weird Tales in 1948. I spent a week or two doing an outline for a screenplay I called 'Dark Carnival.' I gave it to Gene. He loved it. He took it to Europe to raise financing and came hack a short time later without a deal. No one was interested. By this time, I figured 'Heck, I like this idea. I'm not going to waste it. I have an eighty- page outline here that would make a great novel.' I spent the better part of two years writing what would eventually be called Something Wicked This Way Comes.

We talked to a whole hunch of directors over the years including Sam Peckinpah and Steven Spielberg. I even submitted it to the Disney Studio in the early 1960s. I have a letter somewhere from Walt Disney saying that he liked it but didn't think it was right for his studio at that time.

Q: And now here it is being done - at Disney.
RB: Disney is my real home. I really felt I started here when I was 9 years old and saw the first Disney cartoons. I've been an ardent admirer of the cartoons for a lifetime and I knew Walt personally.

MASTER OF FANTASY - Science fiction great Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay based on his spine-tingling novel for Something Wicked This Way Comes. 'A Walt Disney Productions' presentation of a Jack Clayton film.

Q: Your experiences in the past with Hollywood have been less than satisfying. Why is that?
RB: After The Martian Chronicles on TV. They promised so much and delivered so little. The Illustrated Man was also a huge disappointment. I always hope next time is going to be terrific. Occasionally you get something like Fahrenheit 451 which is worthwhile and there's enough there to love and care about. And of course I'm very proud of Moby Dick (1956) with my screenplay there and the final product with all its flaws.

Last year, The Electric Grandmother (on NBC) and the PBS production of Any Friend of Nicholas Nickelby's Is A Friend of Mine were both beautifully done and quite faithful to the original.

Q: How do you feel about the screen version of Something Wicked This Way Comes?
RB: It's glorious. I used to walk at twilight alone on the set and weep happiness because it was simply fantastic to see my novel come alive. It was like giving birth. Here are all these people I've had in my head all these years, walking around in the flesh. I had died and gone to heaven.

Jason Robards, Jonathan Pryce, Diane Ladd and Pam Grier star in Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, a Walt Disney Productions' presentation of a Jack Clayton film from a screenplay by Ray Bradbury based on his novel. In color by Technicolor®, this film was directed by Jack Clayton for producer Peter Vincent Douglas with music by James Horner. Lenses and Panaflex Camera by Panavision®, Buena Vista releases.






From the original Something Wicked This Way Comes press materials.