Exclusive Interview: David Bergantino

Exclusive Interview: David Bergantino

http: //nightmareonelmstreetfilms.com/site/exclusive-interview-david-bergantino/

Author David Bergantino penned the novel adaptation for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and four of the Tales of Terror novels for Tor Books. Fellow Elm Street fan Richard Mullenax submitted the first part of this interview. Published on his website, he was kind enough to let it be shared here. The second part is our exclusive interview with David where he answers some additional questions about the Nightmare series, writing professionally and more.

Interview by Richard Mullenax

What do Freddy Krueger and Zorro have in common besides for slicing and dicing things with shiny pointed instruments? Give up?

They’ve both been authored by Mr. Scary David Bergantino. David has done everything from writing novels to producing video games. In this interview, Dave will talk about his past novels along with his new upcoming teen horror novel. This is a must for Freddy Krueger fans!

Richard Mullenax: Could you tell us about your latest book called Hamlet 2?

Hamlet II: Ophelia’s Revenge, is the first in a three-book series called Bard’s Blood that I am writing for Simon & Schuster’s Pocketbooks division. At the moment, they are due to start coming out in the spring of 2003, though this could change between now and then. Basically, the books are (take a deep breath) modern teen horror sequels to Shakespeare plays. They are set in modern times in the Ohio college town of Stratford and the college campus of Globe University. The books are sequels in that they are not simply modern adaptations of the works, like West Side Story is an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, but follow the action, albeit centuries later, of the plays, and feature some of the same characters, their descendents or their ghosts. For example, Cameron Dean in Hamlet 2 is a descendent of the original Prince of Denmark. Other characters are analogous to characters from the plays. For example, the original characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet are represented by two dorky freshman, Rosenberg and Gyllenhal. In Hamlet II, Ophelia rises from her swampy grave, angry when Cameron, whose body contains her Hamlet’s soul, professes his love for his girlfriend on a tower at Castle Elsinore, which he has inherited. Ophelia got such bad advice from everyone from in her time, which eventually drove her crazy enough to drown herself, that the prospect of Hamlet finding true love when she was denied really gets her ghostly goat. So, until she can claim Hamlet’s soul for herself, neither Cameron and his girlfriend Sofia, nor anyone else in Castle Elsinore, will be allowed to experience true love. In fact, if Ophelia gets her way, no one will live much longer while she’s around! The next two books are A Midsummer Night’s Scream and Romeo & Juliet II: Love from Beyond the Grave. The books are a lot of fun to write, will be targeted for college and up readers and since it’s an original series of my own (unlike my past books which have been parts of series or have involved other people’s characters, like Freddy Krueger) I get to pretty much write what I want. I get to make up the rules, and the books get pretty wacky. They’ll be as funny as they are scary. Hopefully! I’m interested to see how people receive them.

Exclusive Interview

NOES Companion: Were you a fan of the Nightmare series before you began work on the novels? Do you have a favorite film?

David Bergantino: Oh yeah. After seeing the first movie at a midnight showing, I saw each subsequent movie opening weekend. As I did with every other major horror series, like Friday the 13th and Halloween, and just about any other scary movie that was released. Well, as you might expect, the first one is my favorite and stands apart from the rest of the series, as most first movies stand apart from sequels. It was purely conceived, not as a franchise, but as this supremely creepy tale where the boogeyman had a voice for the first time. But of the sequels, I’d probably go with The Dream Master. It took the idea of the Dream Warriors, which never quite fulfilled its potential of being something like The X-Men vs. Freddy, concentrated all the superpowers into one character and had the satisfying big battle ending the previous film lacked. Dream Child is pretty good, too. I’m not a big fan of the second film or Freddy’s Dead.

Did you try to incorporate any of your personal dreams/nightmares or real life events when writing the Tales of Terror novels?

Er, no. I have dreams that would scare Freddy Krueger! Although I guess at the time, the core idea behind Virtual Terror came from my fascination with those Magic Eye posters and the idea of what if you saw images that were premonitions, rather than what the designers intended. Other than that, I just make stuff up. In all, while I don’t exactly base my stories or even scenes on specific real-life events, I am usually incorporating some theme or perspective I think is important for readers to learn or consider. My Bards Blood series was like that. While they were horror tales based on Shakespeare, they had an interesting feminist angle because, particularly in Hamlet, women were treated rather shabbily. What if Shakespeare had an appreciation for the modern role of women in society, how would that affect his plays? So, ideas like that are embedded in everything I write.

Any guidelines you had to follow when writing Tales of Terror?

There were a few. Because they were teen novels, I couldn’t do graphic sex. Not that I would have. I had to keep the language relatively tame, but again, that’s kinda natural—I use the f-word once (or twice) in the Bards Blood series, and it felt awkward to do so, to be honest (and really made an Amazon.com reviewer very angry! ). Guess I had to prove I wasn’t doing another set of teen novels (which they pretty much were). I also couldn’t make the situations too realistically frightening or disturbing. All the horror had to come from fantasy elements (violent deaths notwithstanding).

For example, and I think this will be the first time this will be publicly revealed, in the first draft of Virtual Terror (written in six days), Keith’s original vision in the poster was that of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding! And the name of the poster was originally called the Challenger, meaning the image on the poster was very difficult to resolve. My editor loved it—and this image figured prominently throughout the first draft of the novel. Well, at some point, someone ELSE at Tor read the novel and said, “No way! ” Apparently, I’d crossed a line of taste and realism, so I had gut the book of Challengerreferences and change it to “Mysteria.” I think it worked, ultimately, especially if you didn’t know what was there originally. However, if you’ve read the book, you’ll remember the climactic scene where a trailer explodes because it’s been filled with gas. Well, that was meant to recall the Challenger exploding. Now, it’s just… an explosion with no obvious resonance. They publisher was probably right to make me change it. Unless I was writing a truly adult novel, I’d probably be more sensitive and avoid such a reference. I can sometimes be insensitive like that. (For example, there are far too many parenthetical phrases in this section, which is insensitive of me, if not downright annoying.)

Meanwhile, the most interesting guideline for writing the Tales of Terror series was… Freddy Krueger couldn’t be in them! It was a guideline from New Line. I believe it was because the more he would be in a novel, the more chances one might have to violate his mythology. So… I was only allowed to have him bookend the story like the Crypt Keeper. He could also appear briefly at the very end of the main story for the big reveal of which character he was possessing, as he did in each story.

Exclusive Interview: David Bergantino

http: //nightmareonelmstreetfilms.com/site/exclusive-interview-david-bergantino/

Author David Bergantino penned the novel adaptation for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and four of the Tales of Terror novels for Tor Books. Fellow Elm Street fan Richard Mullenax submitted the first part of this interview. Published on his website, he was kind enough to let it be shared here. The second part is our exclusive interview with David where he answers some additional questions about the Nightmare series, writing professionally and more.

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