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 Part
II: The Story of "The Seeker"
By Kara Warner
“The Seeker: The Dark is Rising” is based on
the second book in Susan Cooper’s five-book series,
“The Dark is Rising Sequence.” Published in 1973,
it is above all things a story of good vs. evil or, as in
Cooper’s world, The Light vs. The Dark. The plot revolves
around eleven-year-old Will Stanton’s discovery that
he is one of the Old Ones, a protector/ warrior for the forces
of The Light. Will, played by newcomer Alexander Ludwig, learns
his first task as part of the ancient entity is to seek out
six signs of power, which will provide the forces of The Light
with their first defense against the coming forces of The
Dark.
Will’s chief allies in his search for the signs are
fellow Old Ones: Merriman Lyon, played by Ian McShane, who
acts as Will’s mentor, and the infallible Miss Greythorne,
played by Frances Conroy. Working against Will is The Rider,
and the chief soldier of The Dark played by Christopher Eccleston.
For reasons we can only assume to be action-oriented, Fox
Walden has chosen to begin their franchise-hopeful at Book
2 of Cooper’s five-book saga. They’ve also brought
in screenwriter John Hodge (“Trainspotting,” “Shallow
Grave”) to give the original material a family and franchise
friendly makeover. What, you ask, is a writer like Hodge doing
in PG-rated territory? And what kind of make over has he given
Cooper’s work?
Luckily the 1996 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nominee made
his first appearance on set the same day we visited, so we
were able to get some answers to a growing number of questions:
An Interview with "The Seeker"
screenwriter John Hodge
Q: We’re looking at the call sheet here and there’s
stuff on here I don’t recognize from the book, like
a Viking village. I’m assuming this is stuff you guys
added to spice it up a little bit?
JOHN HODGE: Yes. When I looked through the book, I thought
it was going to be tricky to adapt because a lot of the book
is almost sort of lyrical, sort of flights of fancy that are
taking place inside the young boy, Will Stanton’s head.
So as with any adaptation, you’re looking for ways to
dramatize what is more internal in a novel. Obviously some
novels are more prosaic than others and you can just put it
out on the page. But this one called for some sort of re-thinking.
And you mentioned the business of the Vikings. There is a
bit, there’s an illusion to Vikings in the novel and
one of the signs, which I don’t know if you know, he
had to find these 6 signs in which is hidden the power of
The Light. One of them I think is found on an old Viking boat,
which is excavated and then appears in the story. So it was
kind of inspired by that reference. But yes the sequence doesn’t
appear in the book.
Q: Can you walk us through the story?
JOHN HODGE: Right. In brief. For those of you not familiar
with the book. I haven’t read the script for a while
so I’ve been thinking about this on the way out here
in the long journey. Essentially it’s a story of a 13-year
old boy, Will Stanton, who finds himself caught up in the
eternal struggle between good and evil. That’s in this
story between what are called the forces of light and the
dark. Specifically, he discovers that he’s not just
a normal 13-year old boy, that he is in fact someone called
the seeker. And he has special insights and special powers,
but most specifically he has a specific task, which is to
find these 6 little signs in which is hidden the dormant part
of The Light. And at this point in history with evil ascending,
that’s to say the dark is rising as the title suggests.
He has to find these 6 signs, restore the power of the light
and then defeat the dark. And he has to do this, and this
is what I thought was interesting about the story, he has
to do this at the same time as being a 13-year old boy and
dealing with the issues that a 13-year old boy has to deal
with. So, for example, he’s the second youngest in a
large family. He has older brothers who are picking on him
and kind of trampling on him and ignoring him because he’s
at the lower end of the family. His parents don’t seem
to take much notice of him. So these are the kind of issues
he’s kind of dealing with at the same time as saving
the human race. That’s the story.
Q: You’ve made him 13 instead of 11. Is there some
romance in the movie that isn’t in the book?
JOHN HODGE: There isn’t romance. He’s a 13-year
old boy, there’s a girl he’s got a crush on from
a distance. And she does have a part to play in the story
but we don’t explore the relationship. But she does
have a very important part to play in the story. He’s
13 rather than 11. That was partly, it was something I felt
and the producers agreed that as a protagonist, basically
he’s more plausibly capable given that extra couple
of years. And perhaps it’s also a time of greater turmoil
in the life of a young person. 11, you’re still almost
a child. There’s more of a transition at that age of
13, which to me made him more interesting at that age.
Q: Is the film set in a contemporary time period?
JOHN HODGE: Yes. Absolutely.
Q: But there’s time travel involved?
JOHN HODGE: There is some time travel involved. Yeah. It’s
the boys in the here and now. As it happens, it’s an
American family but they’ve relocated to England. So
he’s a high schooler.
Q: Why make the characters American?
JOHN HODGE: Good point. There’s obvious reasons. But
actually when I was reading the book and had my reservations
about entering into the screenplay, one of the things I thought
was that he should be culturally alien to the setting because
one of the questions I had is, why is this happening to him
now? And you always have that feeling if someone’s an
outsider than it kind of feels more appropriate that there
should be sort of the person to whom these strange things
are happening.
Q: Can you talk about how you came on to the project?
When you think of your movies, you don’t exactly think
kids. How were you brought on to the movie?
JOHN HODGE: I was sent it about ten years ago by a different
producer. And I looked at it then. I was busy doing other
things and I thought it wasn’t really for me. And then
this time around, as well, when it was sent to me, I started
reading and I didn’t really think it was for me. But
when I got talking to the producers and we started talking
about making the boy a little bit older and having that possibly
making him American or making him an outsider, and being fairly
free with the adaptation, that’s when I got into it.
Q: Were there any restrictions to adapting it?
JOHN HODGE: I don’t think so. No.
Q: Have you met Susan Cooper?
JOHN HODGE: No I haven’t met Susan Cooper. I know that
[Producer] Marc Platt had a lot of dealings with her but she
was, as far as I understand it, she said, “Do what you
need to do.” She’s done screen adaptation herself.
Also this has been around for a long time. And I know there
have been a lot of people who have been going to make it and
then have fallen short. So perhaps she was quite keen to finally
get it done, whatever it took. Obviously when you’re
adapting a novel, you want to respect the writer and all that.
But at the same time, perhaps it’s different with “Harry
Potter” or something where it seems like every child
has read it but, when you’re looking at a book that
was written quite a long time ago that quite a lot of people
have not read, then your duty is to the film not to the author.
Q: In adapting a book like this for the film, you clearly
need to have clear action or action beats. Can you talk about
what you’ve done that you’ve added to the film
that was not in the book to make it more of a movie?
JOHN HODGE: Right. I think perhaps the most obvious addition
is a sequence which doesn’t take place in the book,
where Will goes to do some Christmas shopping a couple of
days before Christmas. He lives in a small village. He’s
going to get the bus to go into town to go to the malls and
as he’s waiting for the bus and sees a gathering of
rooks in the trees. And rooks play a kind of recurring part
in the story. They’re the kind of foot soldiers of the
dark as it were. And these rooks are gathering, it’s
a bit like a scene from “The Birds” or something
like that. And there’s a bit of tension, but they don’t
attack. The bus arrives, he gets on, he goes. Then he’s
in the mall, he’s doing some shopping, he buys a gift
for his sister. And then he’s approached by two security
guards. And the security guards suggest to him that they think
he’s taken something from a shop without paying for
it and they ask him to come to their office. And their office
is kind of back stage of the mall, if you like, behind all
the breeze block and all that. They take him in and they start
questioning him and they get very aggressive and it’s
quite intense. And then as the interview is progressing, they’re
demanding that he gives them the sign. At this stage of the
story, Will doesn’t even know what the signs are so
he’s really perplexed under pressure. And then basically
the men, they change into rooks. And then he runs and he breaks
out of this office and they start chasing him along a corridor.
So he’s being chased by these men who, kind of, they
change into, I haven’t actually seen this done on screen,
all I know is how it is in the script, they become like scarecrows.
They’re men made of rooks and they break up into their
constituent rooks and the birds pursue him aggressively along.
So that’s an addition that was in the script as a moment
of action and tension. There’s another moment I can
think of. In the book, or one that’s closer to the novel,
one of the signs is found in a church and in the novel there’s
an atmosphere of threat and then he sees light shining out
from the wall and he finds the sign. That’s fine, but
that’s not quite enough action for this kind of film.
And so we basically increased the scale of the battle of it.
They have to battle against a whole lot of snakes and then
Will finds himself dropping down into a crypt where he has
to open a tomb. You get the idea.
Q: When you’re adapting a piece like this, you’ve
done adaptations before. I should think one of the important
tasks you have at the beginning is to sort of tear the whole
thing apart and figure out what you have to keep and what
you have to change. What were some of the big decisions you
had to make early on? You made an illusion before about maybe
having a few reservations about adapting this, what was your
thought process when you started putting this together as
a screenplay?
JOHN HODGE: For me the key to what you’re saying there
is what do we have to keep within the motive for doing this
piece of work. Because obviously there’s lot of things
you could keep or chuck out but you really ask yourself “Why
am I doing this, what do I like about this?” And for
me it was that thing about here’s a boy in the real
world dealing with being in a family or fancying a girl or
whatever it is and at the same time he’s kind of dragged
into having to save the world. For me that was different from
say, “Harry Potter.” which is great, but there’s
a boy and you never really have any sense of his real life
or his real family. I mean the family are sort of, almost
comic. So what I wanted most to retain was his family life.
And then obviously there’s the sort of parameter of
the story is the 6 signs of The Light that will defeat The
Dark. And then that’s the framework around which you
kind of rebuild the story. And the signs were specifically
itemized within the book as being made of different elements.
It felt reasonable to stick to that. They’re made of
stone, iron, wood, bronze, fire and water. And you know those
were Susan Cooper’s choices and they’re all sort
of rational within the book.
Q: Can you talk about beefing up the family element of
this story? In the book I guess it’s not that prominent.
JOHN HODGE: No, it’s there in the book. I would say
in the book it’s more of a happy family. And I think
in sort of following the adage that conflict is drama, I just
introduced a bit more tension. For example, the opening of
the film, Will arrives home with his twin older brothers who’ve
been kind of persecuting him on the bus and then as he arrives
home there’s another brother who has been away at college
has arrived back and he’s the kind of bohemian of the
family and there’s that tension there. And then we discover
that the returning bohemian has taken Will’s room and
he says, well, I’ve got your room. There’s just
nothing Will can do about this. And he goes to try and share
with his other brothers and it’s like “King Lear”
or something. Every door he goes to, he gets turn away from.
He’s offered less and less every time. And so I put
in stuff like that just to give it a sort of family life.
Q: What did producers tell you as far as, I mean it’s
one book out of a series, what did they tell you about keeping
it open ended? Obviously this would be a stand alone movie,
but did they say they wanted it open ended so they can do
another movie?
JOHN HODGE: Yes. But that’s there in the book as well.
That almost went without saying in a way.
Q: Did they have to have an ending in case they just did
one movie and they wanted to have an ending to it? Or did
they do it open ended?
JOHN HODGE: It was always going to be a happy ending. So
in that sense it could stand alone. Say, “Lord of the
Rings,” that feels open ended. It was never going to
be like that because the book isn’t. “Lord of
the Rings,” they feel like one piece, whereas the books
feel more stand alone as well.
Q: Are there elements from the other books you added for
back story?
JOHN HODGE: I haven’t dipped into the other books at
all.
Q: So you just focused on the ‘Dark Is Rising?’
JOHN HODGE: Just ‘Dark Is Rising.’ Yeah.
Q: The challenge of a film like this after ‘Harry
Potter’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Eragon’
and every other movie that’s come out in the last three
years is to make it fresh or different. How do you do that?
JOHN HODGE: Well, as I say, I think the thing that’s
different is the fact that it’s, you know they’re
all very good, the thing that’s different about this
one is the fact that we open in the here and now with a real
boy in high school on his way home on the bus. And that’s
not literally where the story ends, but it ends with the boy
in the real world and his family as well. So I hope that’s
distinguishing.
Q: Setting it in the real world, the dark rising, does
that elude to any happenings that are going on now?
JOHN HODGE: Well, if you want. But I mean it was written
in 1970 so maybe there was an oil shortage threatening in
the early ‘70s as well. So nothing’s changed there.
If you’d been making it in the ‘70s, you’d
have to come from, unpopular war, no I mean, you could reel
all that into it, but I think that would be laying too much
on the film. I mean it’s aimed at its audience. And
I hope that there’s something in it for other people.
Q: A story like this is also kind of a metaphor of coming
of age and finding your own power as an adolescent growing
up. Is there something else that you see in this that is a
metaphor? Or is it just what it is?
JOHN HODGE: I think it would be closer to say it’s
just what it is. I mean I hope, and this may depend on the
casting and the film, it’s one of these things I hope
it’s there like a boy finding his place. But without
having it stamped in the subtitles.
Q: When you’re doing a film like this, how difficult
is it to sort of establish the rules of the universe? One
of the things I found in the book is that it’s sort
of esoteric. And from a screen-writing perspective I should
think you have to make things very clear so that your character
doesn’t suddenly pull these abilities and powers out
of nowhere, which doesn’t really work on screen as well
as it could in a book.
JOHN HODGE: Yeah. You’re right. I think in Susan Cooper’s
book the powers are, as you say, esoteric, a bit fluid and
I think that perhaps it’s just that she was writing
at that time. I think nowadays, authors write with one eye
on the film rights and all that. They would have kind of a
set up where the rules are explained. So that was kind of
devolved to the scriptwriter in 2006. So, yes, we have a little
bit of exposition about you can do this and you can do that.
But I think it’s sort of like the time travel, the film
isn’t really all that much about his powers. It’s
more about his experiences. And wherever possible, I tried
for him to solve the problems he’s faced with using
his own kind of normal human resources. Of course, he does
use his powers. But he uses his mortal powers rather than
his supernatural ones.
Q: One of the things I was eluding to is the part right
from the book, he basically reads this book, which gives him
all the powers of the universe and…
JOHN HODGE: Yes. Yes.
Q: And in a way that’s sort of an easy escape route
for a writer because suddenly low and behold, I can do this
because I read it on page 56. So you would have to be more
careful as a screenwriter in indulging yourself like that,
wouldn’t you?
JOHN HODGE: Absolutely. Yeah. The kind of scene where he
learns about his powers comes rather a bit earlier in the
script and someone tells him what he can do. And because Will
is 13 he doesn’t really want to be involved in this
at this time. He denies that he is this special person. And
part of his journey to accepting that he is the seeker is
when he gets one of the powers that’s described to him,
they tell him at certain moments of tension, you will find
that you have greater strength. And he gets home and his twin
brothers are hassling him, as we’ve seen earlier on
and he discovers that he has kind of much more strength than
he thought he had. And so the discovery of the power is part
of his journey to accepting that he’s the seeker rather
than as you say reading a book and, oh great I can fly.
Q: One of things about Will in the book is that he spent
a lot of the book with people telling him, ‘then you’re
going to go do this and this is going to happen.’ Obviously
that doesn’t work in the movies. How did you make him
look more proactive as a character?
JOHN HODGE: In the book he is quite passive in that people
often just end up giving him the signs. So yeah, we made him
13 rather than 11. We felt it was reasonable to ask him to
do more. And yeah, you just tackle the problem head on. You
just make him do things. For example I was talking about the
scene in the church where he goes into the tomb. He’s
on his own in this crypt. He has to work out how to open the
tomb himself and there’s a small opening and he has
to get into the tomb himself beside the very old skeleton.
He has to actually to be a bit brave. He has to do things.
The scene in the tavern, there’s a scene where his old
brother, the kind of bohemian one has kind of become taken
over by the force of evil and he has to take on his brother
physically. As I say, he has to take it head on, say it right,
going to have to do things rather than just be given them.
Q: Talk about writing with and working with the director
and the producer on the script. Have you been involved with
being on set to do rewrites and stuff like that?
JOHN HODGE: This is the first time I’ve been here.
Q: Did you work with them a little bit before production?
JOHN HODGE: Oh yeah. I met David [Cunningham]a few times,
not as much as I think we would have liked, but it was difficult
with me being in London, him being in America and he was spending
a lot of time here obviously. He was obviously working very
closely with designers and the location staff at that point.
Q: Did they take your screenplay and work from there or
did they have to work with you a little bit?
JOHN HODGE: I mean I think I did rewriting with the producers
before David came in. And I would say David had some points
about it, mainly he wanted us to put stuff back in that had
been in the first draft that we’d taken out. But yeah,
that pretty much worked for me. I did a little bit of rewriting
while we were shooting just for production reasons, just stuff
that wasn’t feasible and all that.
Q: I don’t know how you feel about this but when
I read the book I thought one of the things that really stood
out to me was the idea of this teenage boy was basically now
told that he’s one of the most powerful beings in the
universe and yet he can’t tell anybody.
JOHN HODGE: Yes.
Q: And in a way it’s almost sort of a wish fulfillment
for teenagers, isn’t it? Is that sort of an aspect of
the film that you wanted to tie up at all?
JOHN HODGE: Yeah. We did. I liked the idea that there was
a conflict between what he has to do and what he can do. What
he has to do is find these signs and save the world but kind
of in a sense what he would rather do is find a way to sort
of fit in and be respected and accepted and maybe have the
courage to talk to the girl that he never has the courage
to talk to. And there is a scene about halfway through where
he goes to one of the mentors. I think he goes to the character
played by Ian McShane, Merriman, and he says, ‘look,
I’m fed up with this. Why is it me?’ And Merriman,
I wanted this to be different to kind of the tradition mentor,
basically the mentor says, ‘well, that’s tough.
That’s the way it is.’ Rather than being the kind
[character] who puts his arm around him and says, ‘oh,
you know, you’ll understand the mystery of the universe.’
The guy just says that’s life. You got to live with
it. And so Will does what any kind of self-respecting kind
of teenager would do, he goes off and he kind of lets loose.
Obviously most kids would go up to their room and break something,
play their music loud, but he, having some special powers,
he goes out and I’m not sure quite what they’ve
done here, he blows up a car and makes some trees explode
and stuff like that. And as Miss Greythorne says to Merriman,
‘don’t worry, he’s just expressing himself.’
So kind of tried to put a little bit of that in.
Q: Can I ask you about two of the important characters
in this and how you approached them because the Rider, Christopher
Eccleston, is sort of the only one that doesn’t really
get a huge amount to do in the book. He basically sort of
shows up, act menacing and then is thwarted and comes back.
And at the same time you have the Merriman character who in
the book is basically the sort of exposition. He basically
shows up to provide all the information. And dramatically
I can’t help thinking that neither of those would work
as such as characters. So did you have to play around with
them and try to change their roles in the film?
JOHN HODGE: Yeah. Again it’s a bit like the boy. The
comment was made that he’s slightly passive in the book
and I would agree with you about Merriman in the book. He’s
delivering some exposition. So again, it’s just tackling
the problem head on and acknowledging it and saying, right,
that’s fine for a novel but here we are in the screenplay
and there has to be more in the way of visible physical threat,
for example from the Rider. I mentioned the rooks and he uses
the rooks as a kind of weapon. If you can imagine that can
be quite sort of scary on screen. And he does physically threaten
the boy. I was just trying to think of other moments. One
of the scenes towards the end when all the inhabitants of
the village and Will’s family and Will himself have
all taken refuge in the big manor house, the central manor
house and it’s like that’s the final refuge and
it’s being besieged. The Rider, the Christopher Eccleston
character, he arrives and he kind of personally delivers an
attack of ice and he makes it thaw so that it floods. Just
giving him these kind of proactive roles.
Q: It’s interesting because you talk about the problems
of some of these characters and changing them over. The Walker,
on the other hand, is a character in the book but has always
different motivations for the story. Can you talk about approaching
that character?
JOHN HODGE: Yeah. The Walker is a character in the book who
has been a normal human being who’s been used by these
immortal people, these protagonists of light and dark. He’s
been used by them and he feels very embittered and as a result
he’s kind of sold out to the forces of the dark. He
was interesting to us because we felt that his experience
almost reflects that of Will Stanton a bit. And that Will
is someone who’s been dragged into this business and,
to a certain extent, he’s being used. Although he has
the power, like I was saying, Merriman says to him, ‘you’re
in this situation, there’s nothing you can do about
it. It’s just tough. You got to get on with it.’
The Walker is someone who has given up his soul in order to
serve the light. And he feels very bitter about this and he’s,
in the film, stalking Will because he wants his soul back.
And he can only have that once Will has found the signs. We
wanted him as not a reflection of Will but as a kind of example
to Will of what can happen to you once you get into this business.
Q: You’ve also made him younger haven’t you?
He’s played by Jonathan Jackson. There’s another
element to him that he’s not the older timeless character
that he was in the book.
JOHN HODGE: In the script I didn’t write him as young.
And I was quite surprised, I thought it was really a good
idea when they cast him as young because your initial thought
is he’s timeless. They went for the idea of having him
frozen as he was when he lost his soul and that was casting
I liked. And similarly, casting Chris Eccleston as the baddy,
I really liked that. Because again when I was writing I thought
they’ll probably go for someone a bit more venerable,
Ian McKellen, not necessarily him but I’m thinking of
someone more of that generation but I thought I liked the
idea of Chris because he brings a bit of vigor to it. I’m
not suggesting that Sir Ian doesn’t bring vigor. Let’s
not get in trouble here. But you know what I mean. And also
what he brings to it from the other recent work Chris has
done. I really liked, some of Ian McShane, I thought they
would go for someone a bit more, I don’t know, respectable
in some sense. But I thought what you get from what Ian brings
to it from ‘Deadwood’ and all that, I liked that.
Q: How do you approach doing an adaptation? I know some
people actually take the book apart and have pages that they
work from. What do you do?
JOHN HODGE: This one, ‘The Dark Is Rising’ was
very much about the spirit of the book. And because the book
is quite tricky, a lot of it is in people’s heads and
it’s quite fluid and almost sort of lyrical and a little
bit tricky I think in parts, in stark contrast to a lot of
the modern very successful children’s novels. And so
as I say, it was more about the spirit than holding onto trying
to latch onto a framework of the 6 signs that he has to collect.
So that’s one approach. But then this other book ‘Remainder’
I’m doing is different. It’s a little bit more
like this is the story and I really want to use this bit.
There are certain problems with it but books are all different.
Continued
in Part 3: Interview with Director David Cunningham of "The
Seeker"
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