Fantastic Metropolis

Neddal Ayad: Given the choice, who would you like to see direct?

Thomas Ligotti: I don’t follow directors. Actors interest me, but not directors or screenwriters or even director-screenwriters. I think the craft of filmmaking is 90% acting. I just finished listening to the commentary track on the DVD of Catch-22. Steven Soderbergh was chatting with the director Mike Nichols. Neither of them seemed to know or care anything about the story, probably because that was Buck Henry’s job as screenwriter, or rather adaptor, of Joseph Heller’s novel. So many, if not most, good movies have a book behind them. Anyway, Soderbergh just kept saying, “That’s a really nice shot.” And Nichols kept talking about the guy who photographed the movie. Nichols gave some credit to the actors but was not as concerned about them, by his own admission, as he was about cinematic technique in that particular film. Damn, that movie probably had more terrific actors in it than any other in film history.

Neddal Ayad: Do you have to get into a different headspace to write for the screen?

Thomas Ligotti: There are obviously differences between film and fiction, and to some people these differences mean everything. But it seems to me that film is just another form of fiction, just as comic books are another form of fiction. The images in both film and comic books exist primarily to orient the reader or viewer to the setting and to let him know which character in the story is speaking at any given point. Without those basic elements of location and dialogue, movies aren’t movies, which is to say that they’re not fiction. Then they become pure images and function more or less as documents in the manner of photography. So I think that while movies may have aspects that distinguish them from fiction—preeminently acting and music—there aren’t in any important ways in which they differ from fiction.

Alfred Hitchcock thought that movies resembled short stories rather than novels. I think that this is a brilliant observation that has largely been ignored by critics and movie fans. The first thing a screenwriter needs to do when adapting a novel is to strip it down to its plot and major characters. In the case of popular novels, this is always a good thing because it saves the consumer of the story from having to suffer through all those boring patches that pad out a thriller, a horror novel, a spy novel, or whatever. In the case of more sophisticated novels, the movie has to settle for being a different creature entirely from the book, which it can’t hope to render as well as genre novels. But movies can potentially deliver an excellent rendering of a short story, specifically that long short story known as a novella. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that screenplays and novellas are in the same range as far as word count is concerned—something around 20 to 30 thousand words. An outstanding example of novella-to-screen is Apocalypse Now, which comes as close as any movie I’ve seen to rivaling its source material, Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Of course, without Heart of Darkness there would be no Apocalypse Now. And, when it comes down to it, Apocalypse Now suffers upon subsequent viewing because, like all films, its images grow overly familiar and lose their effect, whereas this doesn’t occur with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, or any other classic literary work.

None of this is to argue for the artistic superiority of literature over film, since both ultimately function as a means of passing time for their consumers and of making a living or a name for their creators. As Blaise Pascal wrote, all human troubles derive from our inability to sit still and alone in a room. But, of course, we live in a world where this is impossible except in rare instances. We’re born into a society that encourages us to distract ourselves with such things as movies and books, then we have them forced upon us in schools and by other people, and we’re never allowed to have a clue that there might be some other way to exist other than having our brains constantly stimulated and operating like popcorn machines even when afforded the leisure to function, or at least try to function, in a way that would bring us face to face with the inescapable troubles of existence and perhaps enable us to deal with those troubles by more effective means than those offered by the entertainment industry.

I see no necessary reason for humanity not to have followed this path, so I have to assume that we never had any idea where our best interests lay. Individually, as well as in superficially diverse yet tediously similar groups, humans are just not the whip-smart life form that we suppose ourselves to be. I don’t think that Pascal meant that we should sit still and alone in a room every second of our lives. After all, someone had to build that room, and the person sitting in it needs to eat. But beyond attaining food and shelter, our species has pursued a range of activities every one which always comes back to bite us in the ass. Let’s just say it—human beings are the most retarded organisms on planet Earth. So put another movie in the DVD player and pass the popcorn.

Neddal Ayad: In another interview you mentioned that you liked stills from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari better than the film itself and that you like Lovecraft’s description of the King In Yellow better than the actual story. Is this something that happens a lot?

Thomas Ligotti: Of course. Just think of all the trailers you’ve seen for upcoming movies that are so much better than the movies themselves.

Neddal Ayad: Have you ever had any trouble switiching between your editorial work and your writing?

Thomas Ligotti: Not until I started making a living as a freelance editor. Now there’s no switching to speak of. After finishing the work I do to earn a living, I don’t have much energy or motivation to do anything but sleep. I’ve never worked harder in my life. But at least I don’t have to work in an office under insane rules of management. That’s a big plus in this modern world. I don’t think I could make it through an interview for an office job—or a job of any kind—without breaking out in mad laughter. I’m simply no longer fit to be part of the American working world.