Authors: Clive Barker
And in time it will be as though men had never come to this perfect CC[348-676] 9/10/01 2:29 PM Page 676
676
CLIVE BARKER
corner of the world—never called it paradise on earth, never despoiled it with their dream factories; and in the golden hush of the afternoon all that will be heard will be the flittering of dragonflies, and the murmur of hummingbirds as they pass from bower to bower, looking for a place to sup sweetness.
COLDHEART FEATURE 9/10/01 2:33 PM Page i
Coldheart Canyon
: The
Revelations
Interview
Clive Barker took a break from writing
Arabat
, his new book for young readers, to speak with
Phil and Sarah Stokes
, creators of the Clive Barker website,
Revelations
. An excerpt from that July 10, 2001 interview, “Nips and Tucks, Tits and Fucks”:
Revelations:
The first time we heard about
Coldheart Canyon
it was going to be a short novel – when did that turn into a 600-page epic?
Clive Barker:
In fact I do say at the beginning that even though I was sort of mourning my Dad, finding it difficult to write, I was at the same time finding the thing I needed to write, really, if I was going to pay respect to it as a subject, as an idea – I was going to need to tell it more fully than I had originally planned. I mean, the original thing had been, I don’t know, 50,000, 60,000 words, I suppose and it had been originally told entirely from Todd’s point of view. And it was really going to be a very simple book about a rather narcissistic actor in Hollywood who encounters some ghosts and we’re not sure at the end of the short story or the novella, whatever it was going to be –novella, I suppose – whether he’s really seen them or whether he hasn’t. That was the book.
Revelations:
A real
Twilight Zone
.
Clive Barker:
Exactly – and as I got into it I realized these ghosts are sort of really interesting and I want to write about them because they represent Old Hollywood and here I have a chance not only to talk about new Hollywood but also to talk about Old Hollywood and to contrast their methodologies and to talk about Hollywood in a much more rounded way than I had originally anticipated. So it was a judgment call made out of ambition, I think, just to tell a better story.
Revelations:
When we were looking at the novel again last night, we started talking about similarities to
Day of the Locust
.
Clive Barker:
Well,
Day of the Locust
was certainly sitting by my side, amongst other things.
Revelations:
With Mr. Todd Hackett the protagonist of that one.
Clive Barker:
Locust
is a completely depressing vision. I wanted to write something which was sort of bittersweet, that both showed the dark side but also showed that it had some life in it yet. So I was try-
COLDHEART FEATURE 9/10/01 2:33 PM Page ii
ing to get a little bit of both going, really – trying to tell the story of what it is to be an actor who is
so
beloved that you sort of feel that belovedness….
Revelations:
Now that people are starting to read
Coldheart Canyon
…what sort of reaction are you getting?
Clive Barker:
They have a great time. And they have a great time because it’s not what they expected. This is a Barker book which people who didn’t like Barker books – like! There’s people saying “Ooh, I really like this one!” They’re very, very surprised. I think the Hollywood setting, I think the relatively small amount of fantastic material in it – sure, when the stuff about the tiles comes in it gets pretty wild, but it’s really limited to that area, where you really have to take a big imaginative jump with me.
Revelations:
In the prologue where Zeffer goes and gets The Hunt, that part is so beautifully evoked you must have sketches of that all around the house. I would
love
to see those sketches.
Clive Barker:
Hey, hey! I did do sketches, of course.
Revelations:
[Phil:] As you can tell, Sarah’s a bit of a perv. [Sarah:]
Okay, hands up, I liked the sex!
Clive Barker:
There’s a lot of it in the book and that’s the other thing which people are liking about the book – it
is
a sexy book and it’s sexier than anything I’ve done in a long time, wouldn’t you agree?
Revelations:
Yeah, we’ve been anticipating stuff in the
Scarlet Gospels
, but that’s still to come. Certainly anything that’s gone before has been much more tamed.
Clive Barker:
Right, and there were voices that wished to tame this, but they were silenced, because I said “No, absolutely not! I
want
to do the scene with the whip and the clitoris. I
want
to do the orgy scene,” and I wanted it to be the wildest stuff I could make it.
Revelations:
This was probably more acceptable because it was largely hetero or lesbian, which is an easier sell.
Clive Barker:
That’s right. The homosexual stuff, although it’s there, is much reduced from other books. Even so, you’d be surprised how many people said, “Wow, this is too strong.’”
Revelations:
There’s always going to be someone who says it’s too COLDHEART FEATURE 9/10/01 2:33 PM Page iii
strong, whatever you write.
Clive Barker:
Yes, though these were, in many cases, people who’ve been taking a journey with me for a long time.
Revelations:
They should know better!
Clive Barker:
They should know better, I would have thought, yeah, but at the same time, to be fair, when I made the argument “This is the way it needs to be,” that’s the way it stayed. I mean, the book you’re reading, with the exception of those things which were taken out for legal reasons which is perhaps five or six sentences in total, all the rest of the stuff is as I intended. There was one thing – in the orgy scene – when Todd becomes very involved in the orgy scene, physically involved, I had a replay of the S&M stuff that had gone on between him and Katya, and Jane Johnson [Clive Barker’s editor], very rightly, said, “You know, this is a bit of an echo of something that we’ve seen before. Can’t you go into something different?” And I said, “You know what? You’re exactly right.” So I dove into something much more extreme really, which is the three-way sandwich down in the heart of the orgy, as it were.
Revelations:
There are always some images that will stay with you after every book – and that’s one!
Clive Barker:
Then she looked at that and she went, “Oh my god!
Okay, maybe we should just go back to the whipping scene?” And I said, “No, no, no, you were absolutely right.” And she was. I don’t want to repeat something that I’ve already done once in the book.
Let’s go with this, so she said, “Okay, I trust your take,” and we went with it! You know, one thing is Hollywood is a very sexy town – it sells sex constantly, it sells beauty. Yes, it sells sexuality.
Revelations:
And beauty’s a prevalent theme. It’s a recurrent theme.
It’s only the beautiful people who get to go to the parties. They need to keep going to stay beautiful. Todd needs to get even more beautiful with the face-lift. But it contrasts with Tammy and the inner beauty coming out; with every new horror she faces you get to know more about her and she goes through a transformation from fat girl to hero. She’s
the
most unlikely heroine...
Clive Barker:
She is the
most
unlikely heroine, and that’s what I like about her. I think, I suppose of all the characters in the book, the one I enjoyed writing about most was she because her journey was going to be a big one. She was going to be the fat girl from Sacramento, COLDHEART FEATURE 9/10/01 2:33 PM Page iv
who was going to end up really saving the soul of her hero, at the same time as realizing that her hero is not worth worshipping.
Revelations:
Which is a fascinating twist.
Clive Barker:
Yeah – so she saves him in spite of what she discovers about him, or perhaps
because
of what she discovers about him. And in a way, I think, one of the ways to look at the book is as a kind of elaborate jigsaw in which each of the characters in some way or other presses or impresses themselves upon another. Maxine touches Tammy, Jerry, Todd, and you know, I just take her as an example. And each of the relationships she has is a necessary one for the development of her or the other person. And what I wanted to do was make sure that this kind of jigsaw worked throughout the entire book, so that everybody got some transformation of some kind. Even a relatively minor character like Jerry is saved from his cancer.
Revelations:
I think Jerry’s a fascinating character – was he based on Roddy McDowall?
Clive Barker:
I couldn’t say... All I could say would be that that was a very smart guess!
Revelations:
The interesting thing about Roddy McDowall is that we read that, after he died, he asked for his diaries and personal effects to be locked up for 100 years before they were read. I’m just wondering whether any of it’s going to be like
Coldheart Canyon
when we get to read it!
Clive Barker:
Well, I’ve read a lot of that stuff and I knew Roddy really well and I don’t believe
Coldheart Canyon
would be what it is without Roddy! But I kept Roddy out of the dedication pages, or the thanks, because he passed away and it just didn’t feel appropriate to be talking about that when he had been so very passionate about not... he didn’t want a memorial service; we were all ready to go to the memorial service, it was canceled the day of... but I would go to his house...
Revelations:
How did you come to know him?
Clive Barker:
We met at a Fangoria convention!
Revelations:
Of all things.
Clive Barker:
And he said he loved what I did, and he was very familiar with the books; I obviously loved what he did. I went to his house COLDHEART FEATURE 9/10/01 2:33 PM Page v
dozens of times to dinner and met Gore Vidal, Elizabeth Taylor... and so on and so forth, the list is endless. And a lot of the time, I was just the observer, very quiet, I was
easily
the least important person in the room and I thought it was just important to do my job as an author and just shut the fuck up!
Revelations:
And then report back afterwards from wherever it is –
“the furthest reaches of our imagination...” – however the quote goes!
Clive Barker:
Hopefully so! The fun thing about this book is that it matches the furthest reaches of our imagination with things that we all know are going on all of the time, and I think if the book has a different kind of chance in the marketplace to previous books it’s because Hollywood is fascinating to everybody. Because everybody knows that people are having face-lifts and tummy-tucks and ass-tucks and all kinds of other things all the time and here I am just simply saying what people already know is the case. And there’s
nothing
I think I can say, beyond the outrageously fantastical stuff (of which there is obviously a significant amount, but it doesn’t, I think, overwhelm the book) there’s nothing amongst the factual stuff which is not supported in some way or other by something I have either personally experienced or personally heard – that is to say, none of this came just from books.
Revelations:
Right, it resonates as a real story on those levels.
Clive Barker:
Thank you! Thank you – that is the most important thing you could say. Thank you, Phil, I appreciate that, because, obviously the fan part of it I know about. I know a lot of people who work in the “body improvement” business and I got hold, through them, or through one person in particular, of some descriptions of protocols for what happens if things go wrong, which were... chilling isn’t the word. And there are so many things I could have had happen to Todd which were so much worse than what actually happened to him. You only have to think of Michael Jackson to see a man who took a journey for which there is no return – so that part, I supported all that. I supported all the stuff with fact and information and interviews. And the stuff about the movies themselves – that’s my experience. The stuff about Oscar night, y’know, where he’s sitting there at home, wishing he wasn’t there, at the same time despising every minute of it – that is completely my experience of Oscar night and, having been there as a guest, as it were, that whole thing of fake smiles and... Yeuch!
COLDHEART FEATURE 9/10/01 2:33 PM Page vi
….
Revelations:
There is some marketing to do around this book. It’s almost in a genre of its own; it’s another of those
Lord of Illusions
crossovers. It’s an edgy crossover.
Clive Barker:
It
is
a crossover.
Revelations:
And what we saw from
Lord of Illusions
is that if you don’t get the crossover marketing right, you lose the audience.
Clive Barker:
Yes, but I think the audience in literary terms, the reading audience, is much more willing to accept crossovers than a cinematic audience – it’s a smarter audience – and I have greater faith, I will say, in the reading audience than I do in the movie audience.
Maybe that’s a misplaced faith but, you know, I’ve given my readers a whole host of very different kinds of books. Just over the last little while I’ve given people a lot of different kinds of things –
Sacrament
and
Galilee
– and each thing that’s come along has been very different and in many cases they’ve been crossovers in a way, or hybrids: the gay novel with the metaphysical adventure novel in the case of
Sacrament
; the inter-racial war novel going with a strange romance about the Kennedys in
Galilee
; and I think in this case, this one is perhaps the easiest of the combinations because everybody knows Hollywood is a weird place. And I think that the suspicion that the occult hangs around Hollywood, that Hollywood has always had an unnatural or an unhealthy … preoccupation with the occult is something I think that people generally know. You think of the Manson business and you look through the pages of
Hollywood Babylon
and there’s plenty of stuff there. It’s an interesting place because Hollywood lives in a dream of itself – half believing itself and half not. Half in fear of losing its own grasp on its sanity.