Mark Kermode: It's More Than Just a Movie

Dr Mark Kermode is certainly known for his opinionated stance on films, books and culture. He is also known for being an entertaining, thoughtful, funny and passionate advocate of the great and the good. He's written a book about how he learnt everything he knows through watching films called It's Only a Movie. We caught up with him mid-book tour to talk about the new book, his favourite books based on books and the time he wrote his own novelisation of 2001: A Space Odyssey not realising it was originally based on a novel by Arthur C Clarke.

> What book that you’ve read do you think would make a great movie?

That hasn’t been made into a movie? Well, I just read the new William Peter Blatty novel, Dimiter, which is terrific and will make a great film.

> He of The Exorcist fame?

Yes. It’s just coming out and it’s very exciting. Like all of Blatty’s stuff, it’s a theological thriller that you can take on as many different levels as you want. It’s theological but it’s very much a thriller. It’s strange and enigmatic and very ambitious. He’s been writing it for years. I started to think he’d never finish the thing. I met him in 1990 and he was writing it then! And then suddenly, he got it done. I’m a big fan of his and it’s an exciting book. It would make a great film.

> How did you go about writing your own book, It’s Only a Movie?

Essentially, I wanted to write something about how films have formed and shaped my life. I didn’t want to write a book specifically about film; I wanted to write about my responses to film. The thing that drove it was that I’ve read a lot of stuff about censorship and how films affect people, how violent or depraved films corrupt people- I think films do effect people but in ways that are so strange that it’s hard to say ‘this movie will do this thing to these people.’ So the primary drive of the book was to write about how growing up with movies has effectively formed my personality, how everything I know I learnt in movies. I was trying to write something fun and I wanted it to be funny. Well, it’s meant to be funny, it’s meant to be a celebration because so much is written about how movies do bad things to people. My experience of watching movies has been completely different, it’s been wholly positive...

> Except for Pirates of the Caribbean 3...

Well, even that- you don’t know what great is if you don’t know what terrible is. I’d much rather have the extreme torture of Pirates of the Caribbean if I can have the pleasure of Pan’s Labyrinth, A Prophet, Let the Right One In or Of Time and the City. In fact what I want is for stuff to not be homogenised; I want the highs and lows- that’s what I wanted to write about. I bookended the book with the Herzog story because I was interviewing him because of movies and someone took a shot at him in real life and yet that story seemed so unreal. I remember thinking, did that just happen or am I imagining things? Is it all just a movie?

> Your description of Russia in one of the chapters has moments of excellent travel writing. Any plans to branch out with your journalism?

Funnily enough, you’re not the first person to say that. I take it as a compliment. Empire magazine said I had missed my vocation as a travel writer. To be honest, I love that chapter. That’s the heart of the madness of all of this. The question was, why were we there? Neither Nigel [Floyd- film critic] or I knew why we were there other than there was an Italian horror being made at the end of the trip that neither of us got to see. That journey really happened; I’ve got the hospital scars to prove it. We started telling that story when we came home and it became like a film narrative. People thought we were making it up. We started to doubt it had happened. We tell this story and people hear it like an anecdote and that was symptomatic of everything I’m saying in the book. In the end everything becomes the story and you reedit it in your own head, showing people the director’s cut of your story. I showed the chapter to Nigel and there were things in it he contended. Everyone has their own raw footage and they reedit it in a way that becomes their director’s cut.

> When writing non-fiction, how much dramatic licence is taken in your stories?

One of the things I say all the way through is that my memory is profoundly unreliable. Consequently, the way I remember things and the way they happen are not always the same.

> Would you consider writing fiction?

No. I’ve been asked to write short stories before but it’s not really my thing. I’m not really creative in that way.

> Do you read a lot? As a man known for not being shy of stating his opinion, do you give books as hard a time as you do films?

I have reviewed books for Newsnight Review and I have been as forthright with them as I have with films. I remember reading Atonement and loving it, which is one of the reasons I had a problem with the film. I’ve read Phillip Roth’s books, which I’ve given a very hard time to on Newsnight Review and there have been other things I’ve really enjoyed like Coma by Alex Garland, which I thought was great. I have read and reviewed books but not on the same level as cinema. I did a literature degree. I don’t read half as much as I’d like to because I’m either watching films or writing about them. I do try and read as a habit because it’s good for the soul.

> What makes a good story for you?

In the end, a good story is about the tone of voice. It’s not usually about the action in the story, it’s about the tone of voice. For example, my favourite novel is The Great Gatsby. I love the tone of voice in The Great Gatsby. The story is fairly slender- on a narrative level, it’s not a complex murder mystery but the tone I could read over and again. I could read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas over and over again even though nothing much happens: he goes to Las Vegas and takes loads of drugs, but it’s the voice. That to me is what I find exciting about those stories. The Exorcist is a brilliantly written novel. Legion, the novel Blatty wrote after The Exorcist is in many ways a better novel; Blatty just has a wonderfully ironic tone of voice that I love. He’s very funny- he was a comedy writer primarily, he wrote the Pink Panther movies, but there’s something about his tone.

> In light of blogs, do you find your job harder to do? If nothing is a mystery anymore, is it harder to be critical of films?

No. The thing is, it doesn’t matter what the outlet is, whether it’s print or radio or television or blogs or whatever, it’s what you do. Peter Bradshaw and I did a piece on The Culture Show on exactly this and he said, ‘Look, opinions are fine but in order to express your opinion you have to earn the right.’ The way you earn the right is to express it in a way that is elegant or amusing or entertaining or informative. If you look at most of the stuff on blogs, a massive amount is utter rubbish. There is great stuff out there as well and people will find it. The best thing about the internet is that everyone has access to it. The worst thing is that everyone has access to it. The editing process, in terms of print, is you go through an editor. In terms of online, you can often do it without anyone coming between you and the audience and that’s great but in the end, good expression of opinion will rise to the surface.

> What was your favourite book as a child?

I read 2001: A Space Odyssey far too many times. I went to see 2001 and I wrote a novelisation of it not realising there was a novel already written. I was 6 or 7 and bound it up myself; it was the first book I ever wrote. Then someone pointed out to me that one existed. I got into Arthur C Clarke and I became devoted to 2001. I read it over and over again. That was my favourite novel as a kid. The thing about science fiction is that it attracts all-comers. No matter how advanced [a reading age] the genre fiction is, the youngest readers will be really young. Kids who love sci-fi really love sci-fi. I was born in 1963, 2001 came out in 1969 and I read it when I was 8, that was the age that stuff really hits. That’s how sci-fi works.

> Have you noticed more films coming out that have ‘based on the book’ tags on them? Has every story been told?

Adaptations of books have always been a staple for Hollywood producers whether credited or uncredited. To have a movie, you need a script and to write a script you need a story. What people like is something that’s been road-tested. If you look at the blockbusters of the 70s, Jaws was based on a novel, as were The Exorcist, The French Connection, The Godfather. These are all things that have been road-tested before they became movies. There was a buzz about the story. People want to look for an existing success. If something has had success as a novel, it has an existing fanbase. You have a story that has proved itself.

> The Exorcist aside, what’s your favourite film based on a book?

The Exorcist is obviously the standout thing. I love The Ninth Configuration, which William Peter Blatty (author of The Exorcist) wrote and directed, based on his own book Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane, which he expanded into a screenplay and book. The recently republished book has an introduction I wrote for it. To me Blatty writes like a film anyway.