Reality is a funny thing
It all boils down to perspective, doesn’t it? Each person builds their world-view based on what surrounds them, which in time becomes their reality. Still, even then, most seek out other realities to step into. Worlds constructed by minds that offer the sort of fantasy, excitement, danger or catharsis that their own does not. And as we grow and evolve, as our technology and understanding of the human mind shifts, at what point do our mounting realities shift, change and evolve along with us?
I first watched In the Mouth of Madness (1994) alone on my couch with absolutely no knowledge of what it entailed. I knew it was a John Carpenter movie and therefore driven by a voice I’m always interested in hearing. The film plays eerie and engrossing, captivating me with the parallel collapse of the protagonist’s sanity and the very fabric of the reality of the world around him.
Carpenter has always shown a proclivity to decimate the supposed reality of his protagonists, but the manner in which he utilizes the art of storytelling to do so felt altogether fresh In the Mouth of Madness. After the credits rolled I began to research the film and one name kept coming up:
H.P. Lovecraft.
I was certainly aware of H.P. Lovecraft but that was about the extent of it. I knew what Cthulhu looked like and I had heard things described as “Lovecraftian” before but my knowledge ended there. As I read about the author’s cosmic notions toward otherworldly horror and interest in the “Old Ones,” it occurred to me that John Carpenter had created a brilliant adaptation of a voice very clearly difficult to nail-down. That is to say, the creative decision to embrace Lovecraft’s thematic tendencies as opposed to a literal adaptation made for a more genuine and appropriate work than would’ve been possible otherwise.
That sense of adaptation, of adherence to a higher creator’s work while at the same time allowing one’s own efforts to be true to their unique voice, runs through the very DNA of Michael De Luca’s tautly written script. No scene better inhabits that mental and thematic space than the one where John Trent faces Sutter Cane just after he has completed his masterwork. The culmination of John Trent’s journey and Sutter Cane’s machinations, the events on screen track the very last moments of the protagonist’s safety and the Lovecraftian nature by which the veneer between worlds is shredded and yet made clear.
Deeper still, the scene stands as a microcosm for adaptation and the alterations that must occur when changing one form to another. The screenplay tells of the same sequence of events not with monsters in a mouth-like tunnel but with a rip in the fabric of reality, an ever-expanding black mass of darkness which consumes everything in its path. Both versions of the scene accomplish the same thing, driving John Trent to the mental and emotional place he needs to be in order to deliver the manuscript, but they achieve their aims in different, albeit parallel, ways.
John Carpenter is a master of the genre and this sequence is a testament to that skill. Employing ideology and mental cacophony in the stead of an action set piece, Carpenter and De Luca ultimately held true to their source while managing to allow a glimpse into the sort of madness Lovecraft was attempting to warn us about.
THE SCENE
John Trent falls to the ground before Sutter Cane’s desk. Cane finishes his book and informs Trent that he is a character in the novel, as is the town, and that Trent will ultimately be the method of the manuscript’s delivery to the world. Cane approaches the bulging door to the other realm and tears himself in half, like a page from a book, opening a black hole. Trent peers inside as Styles reads his terrified reaction from the pages of the book. He attempts to flee as monstrous creatures emerge from the darkness, running down a seemingly endless tunnel, only to trip and fall as the monsters close in.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
Immediately the scene deviates from what is scripted as instead of awakening in a steel chair, John Trent lands hard on the floor. The opening words of the scene describe what’s occurring far more overtly, John and Styles exchange words about Cane, his whereabouts and his actions. The most impactful alteration, however, is this omission:
a RIP in reality appears behind Cane and grows wider by the stroke.
In the screenplay, a literal tear in the world around the characters is widening as they interact. Conceptually, the break in reality serves an important function, driving tension by way of the obvious danger it presents and forcing the truth of what is happening upon Trent with undeniable force.
In the film, the scene is quieter and less bombastic, skipping to the dialogue that lies just beyond the paragraphs describing the RIP on the page. Cane completes his typing and puts his manuscript away. In the screenplay Cane points to the rip as he recites the books’s title: THE MOUTH OF MADNESS. In the finished film, he simply converses with Trent, casually and unassumingly. When told he will be the one to deliver it, the script describes Trent as shouting his response. In the film, his response comes as barely a whisper.
The distinction between the page and the screen in this instance is an important one: when putting words to paper, there is often a desire to convey the energy and intensity of the scene with clarity and observable qualities. However, often the best way to transmit emotion is with subtlety and grace— something that absolutely landed on screen.
The dialogue on the page reads closely to what appears on screen, with the exception of some slight shifts in line placement and a few added, complimentary words which serve to create a more natural flow of back and forth dialogue between Trent and Cane. The camera continues to close in on the two of them, moving fluidly from wide to medium to close up views as their dialogue grows ever nearer to the breaking point.
As the two talk, the large wooden door, blackened with decay and slick with water and filth, pulsates unnaturally. The thing’s appearance is akin to some strange organ, incubating and close to birthing some form of large, restless alien life.
This builds to:
ON TRENT
mind reeling. He thinks back to the agent charging in the coffee shop.
The camera holds on Trent here. He looks lost, forlorn. The depth of his confusion bleeds onto his listless expression and there is a real sense of quiet loss. The screenwriter was careful to add a break in action description at this moment, a point where the confines of Trent’s carefully constructed reality are falling away, providing the audience a window into his psyche. That’s when he says the line which follows the break:
I’m not a piece of fiction.
There is defiance in his voice, but not nearly as much as before. He is still quiet. Cautious. Perhaps unsure.
At this point in the script, the rip grows wider and the inhabitants of the other side start to come across. Instead, Cane approaches the wet and crumbling door and explains to Trent how to escape, pointing out the hallway behind him saying: Your world lies beyond.
The next scripted difference offers a stark contrast to the quiet, disturbing nature of the scene. First, Cane addresses Trent, saying, Spread the word and then:
Cane picks Trent up and HURLS him out the window.
Again, the script chooses a literal path. Cane thrusts the new world upon Trent in both cases, but instead of flying out of the steeple and bouncing off the roof, Trent remains where he is in the film. He bares audience to Cane’s ascension, calling back the initial, hitherto abandoned RIP in the fabric of their world.
Cane grips his forehead and starts to tear, seeming to physically pull away at his mind first, the genesis point of his ideas and therefore his realities. He pulls downward, removing a portion of his face and upper body. Behind him is cold, black darkness. Then, he raises his other hand and grips the opposite side of his face, once more pulling away at himself as if he were constructed of a flimsy piece of parchment. Behind him is a hole in the fabric of the world, a darkness which flowers open to Trent and Styles with oversized petals of torn pages of text.
The screenplay reads that the steeple EXPLODES in blackness. Furthermore the aforementioned blackness expands and starts swallowing everything around it. While obviously more grandiose in nature, the intended effect is the same: the other side is now accessible and what lies within is headed for our world.
The screenplay tracks an intensive chase as Trent attempts to outrun the cloud of blacker than black darkness. He reaches his car and speeds off as the darkness eats everything around it.
In the film, Trent merely approaches the rift in space and peers down into it. In true, Lovecraftian mode, Styles reads from the pages of Cane’s new book, offering narration which provides insight into the loss of sanity, belief and the sense of truth that is occurring within Trent’s fracturing mind. The sequence is subtle and fairly muted, despite the strange disembodied noises drifting from the darkness. As Styles describes the creatures which are “tumbling upward” toward our world, we see only the reaction on Trent’s face. Still, his disquieting reactions conjure more disturbing creatures in our minds than any physical beast could ever hope to live up to. Removing the high-octane sensibility, from the original intended onslaught of the realm beyond John Trent’s, serves to not only amplify the quiet, contemplative nature of the protagonist’s dissipating rationale but to heighten the power of what the film does opt to show emerging from the void.
Creatures appear suddenly in the hole. Trent, fully realizing the nature of his predicament, attempts to convince Styles to flee along with him. She declines saying that she already “read to the end.” He runs into the mouthlike tunnel, carrying with it a semblance of the literal nature of the original screenplay. While his escape is from monstrous creatures and not encroaching darkness, Trent’s actions and reactions are in line with what the screenplay called for: He takes a fevered look back, and panics.
The film remains reserved, even in these final moments of elaborate creature effects. Instead of long, wide shots of the monsters, the viewer is treated to quick, fleeting glimpses. A fast moving, sinewy glob of flesh. A wide, giant, yellow eye. Round sets of row after row of large, tusk-like teeth oozing with saliva and goo. The motions of the various creatures are blurred in Trent’s wake, but their fervor and their ferocity is heavy and palpable in the distance as they grow closer.
Just before the scene concludes, the film allows one, abrupt peek at the cluster of them: a group of hungry demons the likes of which should never be seen.
That’s when Trent loses his footing and falls. He has seen the unseeable and knows the truth. He has been decimated and it is time for him to be consumed— a conclusion Lovecraft would certainly have found agreeable.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“Lovecraft’s technique when he was writing,” John Carpenter reflected during his commentary found on The Scream Factory blu-ray disc for In the Mouth of Madness (Available for purchase here), “was these are things that will drive you insane if you see them… they are cosmic creatures from beyond.”
Adapting H.P. Lovecraft can be a difficult proposition. Certainly some filmmakers like Stuart Gordon have nailed down the more effects heavy interpretations with pictures like Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986), but few have managed to land the more psychologically intangible theology present in Lovecraft’s works on film. The author had a great deal of heady ideas that while intermingled with the more gooey, monstrous Hell dimensions of the imagination, were also populated with existential ideologies regarding time, space and the notion of what is real. Those are difficult concepts to marry, especially onscreen and with a budget.
John Carpenter and Michael De Luca approached In the Mouth of Madness in a manner befitting the very best adaptive works: with individuality and a conceptualization that paralleled the psychology of the author’s writings. While many of the changes in the climactic sequence discussed were made, in John Carpenter’s words mentioned on the aforementioned commentary, “in order to reduce the budget”, they track the same level of consistent, tonal work present in the remainder of the film.
Along those same lines, the art of creating cinema itself toys with what is real, physically as well as emotionally. John Carpenter recalls in a separate commentary track found on the Scream Factory disc that the tunnel at the end was a “forced perspective tunnel.” He explains that despite how it may seem endless, the opposite is true:
“Actually what it does at the very end is shrink. It’s not as long as you might think.”
The tunnel was not the only illusory build in the sequence as the onslaught of monsters was also more contained than it may have seemed. In an interview found on the Scream Factory disc, Greg Nicotero recalls building the creatures: “It was a massive 22 foot wide steel wired frame that allowed for 14 puppeteers to get inside and move the various Lovecraftian creatures.” Not many, but one large creation. When it comes to storytelling, whether it be on the page or the screen, it would seem that reality is in a constant state of flux.
Adaptation, like reality, is a funny thing. After watching this film, I quickly learned as much as I could about H.P. Lovecraft, finding my way to other adaptations and some of the author’s original works. Like all great transformations, the script’s journey to the screen offers insight into not only the initial schematics of how to bring an otherworldly invasion to life but also the subtlety and power of introspective storytelling in the face of the great unknown.
John Carpenter is a filmmaker known for his ability to tell a tense, exciting story with expert craftsmanship. In essence, he builds realities that viewers are able to become enraptured by. H.P. Lovecraft did the same, except he used a pen instead of a lens. Together with Michael De Luca, John Carpenter evolved this sort of methodology with this film, commenting on the very nature of the world-building he had always been so talented at executing. And no scene in the film better embodies that spirit and process than that where John Trent and Sutter Cane exchange their final words with one another as the realities presented in the film are literally torn apart.
Most importantly of all, the film works from both the perspective of the storyteller and those to whom the story is being told. Even John Carpenter during the commentary track mentioned previously remarked at the end of the scene, “Looks pretty good… I’m actually impressed with it.” He goes on to say, “I mean, I can tell it’s rubber monsters, but…” before trailing off to a different thought.
Perspective is everything and reality is subjective. Or is it the other way around? Whether that means determining if something is a rubber monster or a mythical behemoth, or attempting to discern insurance fraud— I suppose reality is what we make it… and it’s as flimsy as our conviction is in its stead.
Sort of Funny when you think about it… right?
In the Mouth of Madness (1994): Written by Michael De Luca & Directed by John Carpenter
