CONFESSIONS
January 1997

Lost Souls: What's going on at 20th century fox?

Clive: We've been working on a number of things for them. We are lookingfor a writer to get on board to start writing the new things before the beginning of the new year.

Lost Souls: Is this to be a mini-series or...

Clive: This would be a series, but right now it's just a pilot. I have to get a bunch or original story suggestions together as well for a series ofmovies of the week, which we are also doing for Fox. We have a bigpresentation after the first of the year to present these to them. There'sa lot of stuff going on right now!

Lost Souls: How is the 20th Century Fox team to work with?

Clive: We've loved working for them, we being Anna, Robb and myself. We have no complaints about these people. They have welcomed us into the team.They seem very creatively open and very excited to be in business with us. That's a very nice feeling. So, we feel very good about the whole thing and very up about the whole process. The relationship between us is beyond courtship, but we haven't got to fucking yet!

Lost Souls: It will come.

Clive: It will come, so to speak! (Said with a laugh) Mick Garris is also directing something for 20th century. The project is called "QuicksilverHighway". It's based on two short stories, one by me and one by Stephen King. "Chattery teeth" is the story that Steve had adapted and I have "The Body Politic" in there. If that goes forward as it's supposed to by the beginning of the year, Mick will start preparing it. There's a lot of television going on right now, and it's all for Fox, which we like.

Lost Souls: Television has come along way in the past years.

Clive: Absolutely. Whatever one's feeling are about individual episodes of X-files or Millennium or whatever, the truth is that they are much more interesting television than the average cop-show or whatever you find on the networks. Certainly the Chris Carter revolution over there has been very good, in the sense they are very open to the fantastic and science fiction oriented or whatever makes up that type of material. It's a good time, butit's very hard work because we are affected in the end.

Lost Souls: What's going on with "Vipex" the sequel to Lord of Illusions?

Clive: United Artists is talking about it, starring Scott Bakula. It is supposed to start shooting next year. It will be a television and videolife. I don't know if Scott has committed yet, but I think he will. He's not had great luck as of late, but he's a very talented actor and I like working with him. So we are hoping that we will have that going, we will have Mick's show, we will have the movies of the week and the television series all for next year. Plus, at some point, don't hold our breath, Weaveworld from Showtime.

Lost Souls: Scott didn't come back and have anything bad to say about working on Lord of Illusions. We only ask because of Craig Schaffer's comments after Nightbreed.

Clive: Scott? No, he had a great time working on the movie. Craig had some problems. Scott, on the other hand, is solid. He's an old fashioned star,in the sense that he learns his lines and he comes on and does what he needs to do. I have nothing but respect for the man. So, we will see what happens with the sequel. If it works, the idea is to then do a Harry D'amour television series.

Lost Souls: How's the new book coming?

Clive: It's called "Galilee", as in the Sea of Galilee. This is the name of the lead character, who's named himself after the Sea of Galilee because he read about it in the Bible. You'll be the first one's to print this. The only other people that know is my publishers.

Lost Souls: You never know in this day and age of the Internet.

Clive: One of the very scary things that I find about the Internet is the universal access that people have to this kind of material. It's so fucking scary! It only takes one person to tell another. Is it about bragging rights?

Lost Souls: Absolutely!

Clive: It's scary how much information people get a hold of and how fast it gets on the net. It's not going to get any better. For somebody who values their privacy, like myself, it's impossible. It's electronic gossip and suddenly everybody is a correspondent for the National Enquirer.

Lost Souls: On a lighter note, we loved the new book.

Clive: Thanks. We have Forms of Heaven out now and a lovely little book published by Harper prism called Barlowe's guide to fantasy. He did alovely painting of the Gek-a-Gek from Imajica. Sacrament comes out in paperback in March. Galilee will be turned into my publishers late 1997 for spring 1998 publishing. Meanwhile, Incarnation will come out in paperback in 1997 as well. The A-Z of Horror book, the tie into the BBC television series will comes out in 1997. Imajica is coming out in a large trade paperback book, and Fred Burke's book, The Encyclopedic Guide to the World of Clive Barker is also coming out. So it's a very heavy book year in 1997.In April, we have the art exhibition at Luz de Jesus hear in California. It's a very cool place and we plan to have a lot of new work there, a lot of erotic work.

Lost Souls: Weren't they going to release a book to go along with the exhibition?

Clive: No. I'm taking charge of art-book stuff for awhile. I'm not planning on doing anything, as far as art-books until maybe 1998. I have so many cool images coming along right now, and I'm excited by the direction of the art. However, the next books I put out I want to be more authoritative than the one's we were able to put out through Eclipse. We are striving fora higher level of reproduction in the next book. I think Fred Burke did agreat job on them as an introduction to what I was doing, but next time I want them to be a more closely policed endeavor.

Lost Souls: A question for one of the fans. They wonder if there would be asequel to Imajica.

Clive: Absolutely not, I think. Some books you just feel are finished and closed. You feel like it would be a violation to open the narrative again. This would be one of them. I love that book, but I would spend two years writing a sequel in a sweat that I was fucking up the first book by writing another one.

Lost Souls: Are you planning on getting involved in the theater in the future?

Clive: There's an interesting couple of things going on here. The production of The History of the Devil was very successful and received excellent reviews. There a lot of talk about productions of other things now. History is probably going to play again in Texas. Here in Los Angeles, one of the play from the new collection, Subtle Bodies, the Geffen playhouse is apparently interested. Whether it happens, I don't know. I'm interested, certainly, in getting to do some more theater work. It's really a question of factoring it into a schedule that's already crazy. It's been great to see people respond to the plays the way that they have. You know these plays are fifteen years old, so it's doubly nice to feel that the work I did then still has some purpose. People are laughing at the jokes and being scared in the right places, that's great.

Lost Souls: How about a Dog Company reunion?

Clive: Yeah, but we would have to have wheelchairs. Did I tell you that I had written an introduction to a book on Diamanda Galas?

Lost Souls: No

Clive: She did "Dancing in the Dark" for the Lord of Illusions soundtrack. Getting back to the plays. There's a good possibility that Doug Bradley will play Pinhead on London stage sometime in 1997. I'm really hoping that somebody picks up Subtle Bodies and turn it into a movie. I think it's a great two million dollar movie.

Mike Bundlie: I'm interested in how you create. Do you set aside time where you might not sleep? When I'm creating, there are times I keep working until I'm done or I pass out.

Clive: How old are you?

Mike Bundlie: Twenty-one.

Clive: Yeah, I'm forty-four. I think I pass out quicker than you do. The times of being able to run three days without sleep have gone. I can't do that anymore.

Mike Bundlie: But they did exist?

Clive: Oh absolutely. I don't necessarily think that I did my best work on the third day, Mike. I think there's something very romantic about that. I'm just going to burn myself out. The truth of the matter is that some of your quality control goes after awhile. I work seven days a week . I work at my desk in the morning and I'll be painting until around ten thirty at night. I'm not a party boy, I'm not really very interested in a social life. I like to paint, play loud music, smoke cigars and get drunk.

Mike Bundlie: Do you find your social gathering, or comfort in your artwork?

Clive: To the extent that any creature on this planet can expect comfort. Am I comforted by my paintings? Yes, I think I am. I think I'm comforted by being able to go to a place which is inside of me. This is true of the writing and the painting. Movie making, I find is much more about impressing your ego on other people. To me, that's not a very attractive thing to do. I don't particular like that process much. There's always tension in movie making. The good thing about painting is, 'what's the greatest tension going to be?' "Oh, I dropped my cigar in my tea." In writing, I sit in my library surrounded by thousands of books, my music and my light, and I'm watching the moon come up. It's a much more peaceful life than making movies. Truth is, I like that, particularly as I get older.

Mike Bundlie: Is that part of the reason your taking a break from movies?

Clive: The main reason I'm taking a break is because of the people you have to work with. They are by and large not nice, generous, creative people. Ineeded to be away from that for awhile just to get back in touch with what I really like to do, which is to paint and write. I'll enter that arena again, somewhere down the line. I just signed a four book contract with Harper-Collins that takes me through until 2002. So, there's plenty of work for me to do. The last couple of months I've been offered plenty of horror movies and today I was offered Cinderella.

Mike Bundlie: To rewrite?

Clive: To write and direct. I told them if my agent played the ugly sister. He said he looks wonderful in a dress, but let's not go there.