Revelations: And expecting to be rumbled any day now.
Clive Barker: Exactly, exactly. And so what it does, in terms of where the supernatural enters the world, is how easily... the number of people I know who have private tarot card readers or private astrologers or whatever. Why? Because, exactly right, Phil, people expect to be rumbled tomorrow. People are living from day to day, afraid of what tomorrow will bring. Afraid that tomorrow will bring a complete bomb and that their careers will be over. And so you look to do what you can to keep those horrors at bay, the horrors of failure. And some of things you do are supernatural things. You pray to unhealthy gods, you are overly preoccupied with astrology, with the tarot card readings, with the ouija board.... The other thing that people do here, they use physical means as a means to aid their chances in the world. They get little nips and tucks, they get their teeth taken out so that their cheekbones protrude more, all of these various things. They get collagen injections in their lips and that's a particularly naked one right now which just drives me nuts! .
Revelations: So you're not tempted into any of these beauty parlors yourself?
Clive Barker: No, I'm a writer and I'm allowed to get old and grey and wrinkled and crinkly.
Revelations: You 're still too much of the Brit at heart.
CB: I think I am, but I also think it’s just a different feel if you're a writer. I think if you're a writer, the marks of age are part of the proof that you've been in a battle. A battle with deadlines, a battle with your imagination sometimes.
The interviewers thank Fiona Mcintosh at HarperCollins UK and Joe Daley in Los Angeles, whose help is warmly appreciated.
Revelations : "Oh you hope so - you can only hope and pray so."
CB: "Oh I hope so, my love, you don't know how much I hope so."
Revelations : "I think maybe we do!"
CB: "Yes, exactly! I'm writing his death scene, whether they choose to take account of that in the movies is up to them, but I am writing his death scene and, after which I will have no more literary or cinematic dealings with him whatsoever."
Revelations : "Have we got any TV coming from you?"
CB: "Yes we have - in fact, this afternoon I'm going to talk about the Lord of Illusions series, the Harry D'Amour TV series which is going to come from MGM. We have Saint Sinner which is a show I'm doing for the Sci-Fi Channel - it's not based on the comic. "
Revelations : "Oh, it's not?"
CB: "No, I just love that title! We'll probably start shooting that towards the end of this year. We have a script for a movie called Bloody Mary which will be turned into us next week, which is a story which we found, actually, in the pages of a Miami newspaper and just loved, I don't want to tell too much more about that. It's a pretty hard-core horror story. And then Warner Brothers, as you know, are doing Damnation Game."
Revelations : "Yeah, we started seeing some big names attached to that, some very big names."
CB: "So did I, I don't know where they came from -1 assume those names came from Warner Brothers."
Revelations : "They made us worry for the film, and certainly for the story."
CB: "They worried you? They worried me! I think at one point I saw Paul Newman and I saw Sean Connery, who else did you see?"
Revelations : "Certainly those were the two big ones..."
CB: "Yeah, I don't think either of them are very likely, frankly! We have a $45 million movie here!"
Revelations : "It's just not going to happen, is it. We saw Dame Maggie Smith and Kim Basinger also looking for roles in it."
CB: "I don't know where either of those people could fit in the movie, do you?"
Revelations : "No -1 can't see it, Oh, I guess I can see Kim Basinger if she's gone downhill a bit!"
CB: "Right! But it's really hard to see where these things come from. Obviously somebody's given some thought to this - it isn't just names pulled out of a bag."
Revelations : "Yeah, because this cropped up in a few places"
CB: "I completely agree, it was a weird thing. Weird... We still have high hopes for Weaveworld, but, y'know..."
Revelations : "You've always had high hopes for Weaveworld, but y'know..."
CB: "But, y'know!"
Revelations : "We've had that on the site for so long under a title..."
CB: "...that says 'Pending.' "
Revelations : "..it's got the Monty Python quote from The Search For The Holy Grail which says this is in danger of making Ben Hur look like an epic..."
CB: "Yes, exactly - that's exactly right! But we've got lots going on, as you can hear; we will take Thief of Always out... Oh and Ectokid, the comic, has just been sold to Nickelodeon, the movie - which I will produce, so we have Ectokid, Abarat at Disney..."
Revelations : "What's happened since Peter Schneider's gone? Was he the great champion for that?"
CB: "Which is regrettable - he was a good guy - but there's a lot of good guys there and our... we've had no bad experiences there so far, they've been really super, so I'm cautiously optimistic that it's all going to work out well. And the book I'm incredibly excited about. I am coming within 2 weeks of finishing the book and in a way, the thing it will remind you most of will be Weaveworld, because it has a wild imagination and it has great villains and it has some big ideas floating around in it, you know?"
Revelations : "Is it like Weaveworld would have been if you'd kept Cal as a little boy?"
CB: "Yes! Well, Candy is 15 just going on 16, so she's not little little... There's 300 [Abarat]paintings here, man."
Revelations : "Are they not in Disney's vault yet?"
CB: "No, I'm saving them for you! I guarantee, and I'm not joking about this, I guarantee that when you come in and you see these pictures your view of who I am will change instantly - there will be one big change where you will go, 'Oh. My. God...!'"