Last week I got to participate in a roundtable interview with producer/director Sam Raimi. He had agreed to talk with the online community to promote “30 Days of Night” – a film that his production company Ghost House Pictures had made.

Obviously we all wanted to talk about “30 Days,” but we also wanted to talk about all the other movies he might be involved with like “The Hobbit,” and we definitely wanted an update on that other franchise – “Spider-Man.” And since we got over 30 minutes with Sam, we were able to ask questions about everything. From his production company Ghost House pictures to all the movies that might be coming up, he answered all of our questions and if you’re a fan of Sam’s, you’ll love the interview.

And now that a lot of you have seen “30 Days of Night,” I think the interview is even better.

As usual, you can either read the transcript below or listen to the interview by clicking here. It’s an MP3 so you can save it to your computer for listening later. I've got a lot of other interviews about to post, so get ready....

Question: Can you talk about the love story between Eben and Stella and why that part of the film interested you?

Sam Raimi: At Ghost House Pictures we’re always trying to find the next great script or the next great story and when I read Ben Templesmith and Steve Niles’ “30 Days of Night” graphic book, I thought it was really gripping and powerful both visually through the illustrations and the concept seemed just great. It seemed like it should have been thought of before because it’s so obviously great that you’d go up to a place like Barrow, Alaska where night falls for 30 days and you’ve got to survive that time period with vampires at your throat. But nevertheless I’d never heard of it before. It was original and maybe that’s how great ideas are. They just seem like somebody should have thought of them before. But I’d never heard of anything like it. So I was struck by the originality of it, what a great concept it was, the great visuals, but as you suggest, the thing that really connected me to it were the two characters at the center, Eben and Stella, and their love story. At Ghost House, we always want to find something that’s new. Recently we’ve been looking in the Far East for filmmakers and their newer visions that they can bring to films, but this was a homegrown picture which is really very exciting, a homegrown idea, and the thing that connected me to it more than all those concepts and cool ideas were those characters that Steve Niles wrote about. I really liked the fact that they were having problems, that they loved each other, that they were real human beings, and that it was a love story at its heart and I loved the book ends of how it began with the sunset and ended with the sunrise and the two of them and the journey they had taken throughout the course of this one long night. Those are the things that I thought made it really new was the attention to detail of character.

When Ghost House was formed, this was one of the first pictures you bought. Since then you’ve put “Grudge” on the map and put all these other films on the map like “Boogeyman” and so on. This was a long journey. Was it worth the wait and going through the various scripts and a couple directors and finding the right people?

Sam Raimi: Absolutely. This was a long journey. I wasn’t pulling the oars. I wasn’t the writer or the director. So it’s easy for me to say, “Sure it was worth it” [laughs] because I was watching the boat move across the harbor. “Keep rowing fellas. You’re almost there.” I think it was worth it because what I really wanted to do is make sure that Ben Templesmith and Steve Niles felt that their work was being properly adapted to the screen, and because I’ve read that they feel that, I think it was worth it in retrospect. I hope therefore that the fans feel that it’s a faithful adaptation. Even though the director and the writers have to make a tremendous amount of changes in any adaptation, I hope they believe that we’ve captured the spirit of Steve and Ben’s work and therefore it’s worthwhile.

Does it feel as if you’ve come full circle since you began your career with a splatter, gory, roller coaster horror movie and you’ve gone from where you started and now you’re here with a film which I think is quite similar in a way?

Sam Raimi: Yeah, I do. I’ve always loved…actually I didn’t always love horror films. I started out and I only liked comedies and dramas. Then I had to learn how to make a horror film because my buddy Rob Tapert said, “If we’re going to break into the business, we need to make a low budget film that’s a horror film because we can probably only raise a couple hundred thousand dollars in Detroit and the only movies that are made and shown for that amount of money are horror films. So can you make a horror film?” So I had to learn how to make a horror film. He said, “Do you like horror films?” and I said, “No. I don’t actually like horror films. They scare me.” And I didn’t have fun being scared back then. It was a scary experience, so I watched them to learn if I could make them and then I grew to admire the craftsmanship that went into them, and then I grew to really love them after a time watching the audience react and interact with them. And now, this company, Ghost House Pictures, gives me a chance to dabble in horror films and not have to do the hard work of directing but more or less work with a great artist which is a lot of fun, put a few two cents in without actually taking the bruises myself. It’s lovely being a producer. It’s really a lot of fun and I can learn a lot. I get to see dailies of David Slade or I get to see dailies of Takashi Shimizu and I get to see them working with the actors and I think, “Oh that’s a really smart idea the way they got that performance from that kid. I never would have thought of that” or “how interesting that he put the camera there” or “how interesting that he doesn’t play this as a scare but he just lets that creature while they move out of the darkness give me like a chill running up and down my spine.” That’s not how I would have thought of doing it. I’m so much louder and brasher and uglier in my approach. So I learn a lot also watching these filmmakers work. Yes, I feel like I’m returning to horror as I started out in it and I feel like I’m going to school again.

Did you ever consider directing this yourself? If so, at what point did you feel like you could hand the reins over to somebody else?

Sam Raimi: I never thought about directing it myself. I was so busy with “Spider-Man 2” at the time. I just thought the company, Ghost House Pictures, is really for other directors to direct their horror film and me to help protect them or help get them the finances and the resources they need and link them up with good material.

Do you ever envision a period in your career where maybe you’ll be able to focus almost exclusively on producing just for the fact that you can do more projects at once, rather than directing one film that monopolizes essentially two years of your life?

Sam Raimi: I think that will happen one day, I think so, but probably when they don’t want me to direct them anymore. [Laughs]

Everything seems to be about franchising right now and you have all these possible franchises. Do you plan on a sequel for this or a “Grudge 3” or a “Boogeyman 3” or an “Evil Dead”?

Sam Raimi: I’ve always made sequels, even when I was making Super 8 movies if the audience liked it. We made the “Jimmy Hoffa Story” back in 1976 in Detroit when Jimmy Hoffa disappeared and because it got some laughs from the kids, even though Jimmy Hoffa died at the end of it, we made “Jimmy Hoffa 2.” It didn’t make any sense. And “Jimmy Hoffa 3.” Just like we made “James Bombed” as a James Bond spoof and “James Bombed Again.” And “Civil War” and “Uncivil War Birds” and “Civil War Part 3.” We’ve always made sequels, myself and my friends, Scott Spiegel, Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert, so making those sequels of the “Evil Dead” movies was nothing new. To me, it’s always been just a return to familiar sets and approaches and working within that known set-up. It kind of saves time in storytelling. The stage is already set and the audience knows what type of thing to expect and you can just go for the gags sometimes. So I’ll probably always be making sequels and maybe that’s why television seemed like a good fit for Rob Tapert and I when we did “Hercules” or “Zeno” or “American Gothic” – just a continuing story with the same characters is real natural for us. And I’ve been raised on comics and that’s always been the same I guess too. We currently don’t really have a plan for “Evil Dead.” I know I talked about finding a young filmmaker to re-imagine and remake it at some point because as Rob said to me, “Look, the movie came out in 16mm. It was a blow up to 35mm. We only had 60 prints. No one really ever saw it in the theaters. Why don’t we make a big screen movie of “Evil Dead” in 35mm with really great actors, a great director, real cameras, a great sound track.” I thought that’s probably a good idea because it was so crudely made, a new filmmaker could do a great job. It’s just that once we said that publicly, we haven’t spent any time really looking for people. It’s been all just talk and it’s still just talk right now. I’ve been so busy. But we would like to do that at some point. There is a writer working on the “Grudge 3” right now and he’s working on a screenplay and he’s going to be getting notes from us in about a week and going to go back to work on a second draft trying to finish it before the writer’s strike.

Is this someone we’re familiar with like perhaps Ben Ketai?

Sam Raimi: Ben Ketai is actually working on another project. He’s working on a sequel to the “Rise” movie which Ghost House Pictures also made and he’s got a really good script and that’s going to be shooting this winter.

Are you familiar with “Dark Days,” the sequel to “30 Days of Night”?

Sam Raimi: Yes.

What are your thoughts on it? Do you think it’s as strong as the “30 Days of Night” graphic novel, the first story, because it goes in a completely different direction?

Sam Raimi: Yeah. I only read it once and it was a few years ago, but I thought it was great at the time and it is very different. I don’t know if there’s going to be a sequel to the “30 Days of Night.” Nor do I know if there was if it would be based upon that. We’d have to see if it’s successful at the box office and if people seem to really want to see a sequel and then if they do, I’d probably huddle with Ben and Steve and my partner, Rob Tapert, and figure out what they thought it should be. If there was a sequel, mostly I’d want to be true to the books. I think that’s what got us here in the first place.

On the original “Evil Dead,” do you have any plans for the upcoming DVD? Were there any contribution that you made to it? Also, it was recently announced that Tobey Maguire is going to be doing the “Robotech” franchise. Does that mean he’s out of “Spider-Man” and if he is, how does that impact your involvement with the future films?

Sam Raimi: I’m not involved with the new “Evil Dead” release. I don’t know what that is actually. I didn’t hear about the “Robotech.” That’s cool.

He’s producing it and looking to star in it.

Sam Raimi: Cool.

But there’s speculation that that means he’s done with “Spider-Man.”

Sam Raimi: He might be. I don’t want to speculate for Tobey but it sounds like that’s a cool series he’s in. I actually don’t know what that would mean.

There was something in Variety about a month or two ago that Sony was beginning to look at their options for the future of the franchise and that they had kind of opened the door to you. Do you have any comment on where things are with that?

Sam Raimi: Right now Sony is meeting with different writers to try and bring a fresh new story and approach to the “Spider-Man” franchise. I’ve been in meetings with Avi Arad and Laura Zisken, our producers, and Amy Pascal, and different writers have been coming in and spinning different tales of where Spider-Man could go from here.

Can you talk a little bit about the pressure of doing blockbuster movies in comparison to your projects at Ghost House? Do you find it easier to do a low budget horror film compared to doing these massive blockbusters?

Sam Raimi: Yes, it’s much more fun and relaxing making the pictures at Ghost House because really that’s about just working on a limited budget, relying on the smarts of the filmmaker, and the craft of building suspense and scares, and it’s back to pretty much the old fashioned formula of making a horror movie. Sometimes we fail and sometimes we succeed but I really like that ‘back to basic’ approach without the big budget although I’m not the director on those. The work is put upon the directors usually but I’m enjoying watching them work in the genre and I like the reactions the audience gives us when we’re successful.

Do you see yourself directing personally this type of smaller independent budget film again? Are you contracted to do “Spider-Man 4” next?

Sam Raimi: No, I’m not contracted to do “Spider-Man 4.” I think that will depend on a lot of things. Sony would have to ask me to do it and the story would have to work so I don’t think I know the answer to that right now except it would be great because I love “Spider-Man,” you know, if we could find the right story. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll be a great story. A lot of people are working very hard on a really good story right now. But it is a lot more fun to work in a much more free atmosphere where there’s pure expectations. It’s kind of a dastardly fun thing like being in a spook house. It’s a blast.

In the couple decades since “Evil Dead,” there has been an evolution, or some might call it a devolution, in the horror genre – things like torture porn and the slasher. What do you think about using the technologies available now to show the things that you could only hope that the audience’s imagination could go to in the earlier days of horror films? How graphic do you feel comfortable going and also, is that the direction that horror is going now?

Sam Raimi: Well it’s always been an element of the horror film to show us the gross out. I mean that’s one option for all filmmakers making a horror film and it’s not something I’ve found myself above either. So I don’t want to speak like a big shot. You definitely want to get the “Oooooh! How gross!” reaction to some crowds at the drive-in. That’s an element. Really I want to do a lot of things – build suspense, build scares, do laughs, create some really scary sound moments for the audience to use their imagination, but a gross out is not beneath me or a lot of other filmmakers for a horror film and it’s one tool in the arsenal. I don’t know that it’s a new thing either. Showing the Wolf Man change with Lon Chaney and the hair dissolving and the make-up effect of his turning into the Wolf Man may have been a gross out back then just like “Night of the Living Dead” was in the 60s. George Romero really showed so much, it freaked me out as a kid. Or “Cannibal Holocaust” showed some intensive sites. So when I think about the new ones, it’s just the latest incarnation with probably better technology, like you’re suggesting, better CGI. I don’t know if they used CGI or not, and better make-up effects and maybe showing more and more horrible stuff. But once we’ve see the last one, these filmmakers have no option if they’re going for the gross out but to push the next thing we haven’t seen. So I think it’s a natural…

You practically invented the subgenre of the comedy horror film and now that’s really popular. We’re seeing more and more of those. Does that make you think about how to do an “Evil Dead” differently?

Sam Raimi: You know I don’t think about the other pictures when I’m making an “Evil Dead.” I’m just thinking about the character of Ash and how dumb he is and how low and cowardly he is and what dumb things he wants to do when he should be thinking of more noble things and what misinterpretations he has. I’m just thinking about him and feeling bad for him and disliking him and wondering how we can punish him a little bit more in the future.

You mentioned a fresh new approach to “Spider-Man.” Are you saying maybe a reboot of the “Spider-Man” franchise or a direct sequel to “Spider-Man 3”?

Sam Raimi: I haven’t heard the ‘reboot’ idea yet, but I think Sony has… I’m actually not writing it. Different writers are coming in but I have not heard a reboot idea yet.

Since “Spider-Man 4” is obviously a little bit far away, have you started thinking about what could be the next project that you get behind the director’s chair again?

Sam Raimi: I think it’s too early for me right now because I’m still so busy with the producing duties on the Ghost House Pictures and finishing up, believe it or not, all these DVD details just like two weeks ago I finished up all the last of the “Spider-Man 3” DVD details and only now am I unemployed for a brief period of time so I’m trying not to look at anything just now.

What are your thoughts about where “The Shadow,” the project that you’re developing, is at? There has been some talk that the other characters from that publishing house were also going to be part of that project. Is there anything more you can say about that or what’s going on with “The Shadow”?

Sam Raimi: I don’t have any news on “The Shadow” at this time except that the company that I have with Josh Donen, my producing partner, we’ve got the rights to “The Shadow.” I love the character very much. We’re trying to work on a story that’ll do justice to the character.

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