PopHorror Let's Get Scared
If you read horror books, then you’ve heard of author Nick Cutter (pen name for Craig Davidson). Nick’s book The Breach, released on October 22, 2020 as an Audible exclusive (which means there is no print edition, it is audiobook only) has recently been adapted into a film directed by Rodrigo Gudiño.
Counting down his last days as Chief of Police in the tiny town of Lone Crow, John Hawkins must investigate one last case when a mangled body with uncanny wounds washes up on the shores of the Porcupine River.
To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with Nick via Zoom about the inspiration for the book, co-writing the screenplay, why he loves horror, what’s up next, and more!
PopHorror: I watched The Breach last night so I’m super excited to speak with you.
Nick Cutter: Cool!
PopHorror: How did you come up with the story for The Breach?
Nick Cutter: Long story there. I had written a script. I’m a novelist by trade but there was a point where I was making a dalliance with trying to write scripts. You tend to think if you can write a short or a novel, why can’t you write a script? You discover quite quickly that it is a different skill set. But I had written one. As a Canadian I’m always fascinated by the northern parts of our country and just the isolation of it, which obviously is a great vector for horror. Frankly, it was probably more indigenous inflected, and I think having written it, I’m like, “I’m probably not the right person to have written this.” So I went back and thought, how can I maybe dovetail this more to the sort of things that I find interesting as a novelist – science run amok, Lovecraftian overtones. I had read a really great novella around the time by a writer called William Sloane. It was called The Edge of Running Water, which sort of had some interesting ideas in it which I thought I would work with to my own devices here in Canada. I wrote a novel and then I had a producer who I had a long-standing relationship with and he had some interest in. Then I reached out to my friend and screenwriter Ian Weir – he’s in Vancouver to the opposite end of the country – and we went back and forth. I went out to Vancouver and we sat down and we started writing it. That was the process of it. It came from another idea but I really loved the northern context of it. I just loved the idea. Obviously in horror, one of the main things is you try and find a way to isolate your characters, partially because of the rules of civility and law and all those sorts of things kind of erode. I did like the idea as well that there’s a kind of mystery and the people going out to that mystery site. Same with The Thing, for example. It’s their left to kind of on their feet to figure out what is happening and if they don’t do it quick enough, their lives are at risk.
PopHorror: The Breach is an Audible exclusive, and I’m sure you get asked this like every day. Any plans on releasing it as a book?
Nick Cutter: Not every day but every so often. My agent fields calls every so often about it. Just the other day I was speaking with my agent and there’s tentative plans to release it potentially through the same as all the Nick Cutter books so that deal may or may not come to pass. If it does, I’ve got some other Nick Cutter books in the pipeline now so it would be after that, but I guess all I can say Tiffany, is that potentially.
PopHorror: I’ve never done an audiobook so this might be my first time.
Nick Cutter: I haven’t either. Most of my books I have written are turned into audiobooks because a lot of people really prefer them, or at least they like them a great deal. I personally think like you, I’m a traditionalist. I don’t even really like a Kindle. I shouldn’t say I don’t like it. I have never made the transition to a kindle. I would like to see it in print at some point if we’re able to work this deal out.
PopHorror: So how did the film project come from your book?
Nick Cutter: Good question. I’m not really too familiar. I’ve certainly had books optioned but usually, at least from my perspective as a writer, I’ve been quite distant from the process, which is fine. That’s normally the way it is as an author unless you really want to be invested in the filmmaking process and if there’s an offer for you to be invested because sometimes, quite frankly, I would say the author is not welcome really. Which is fine. I think they’re two separate realms and if you’ve got a director or a screenwriter, they probably would prefer to have the IP have the material and nurse it along and mature it in the ways they feel is valuable for what they’re trying to do without any kind of influence from the person who initially created it and I think there’s sometimes a sense that we would be ornery about it. Me personally, I’m not. I guess long and short, I’ve never really had this opportunity but again, I’m here in Toronto, and there’s this guy, Andrew Hunt, a film producer and a film director with a distribution company here who is getting into making low-budget Canadian set horror films. We worked on the script and I got my buddy Ian involved, and we got some money. There’s a government granting body up here that was able to help out. Then they went up and they shot it during the pandemic. I sort of heard about how things were going. It was a fairly quick shoot, but they got some really good mostly Canadian actors I think because during the pandemic, a lot of Canadian actors, even if they were abroad, came home. They were available to shoot and everything that I heard through Rodrigo (Gudiño), the director, and whoever I’d spoken to, it was a really convivial, friendly sort of summer camp aspect. They went up there to Parry Sound, which is about four hours north of Toronto and battened down at this hotel, and everything was shot around the hotel. It was amazing when I watched the film, just how often they were like, “This was actually shot in the parking lot!”
PopHorror: Oh wow!
Nick Cutter: Yeah, they found all sorts of creative ways to stretch the budget, which with low- budget filmmaking it’s exactly what you have to do. You have to keep your nickels close to your chest and find every kind of creative, thoughtful way to try and make the best of it. They did and I’m grateful for the work they did.
PopHorror: When you were helping write the screenplay, was there anything from the book that you were adamant about keeping in the film no matter what?
Nick Cutter: That’s great, Tiffany. I didn’t ultimately have that. Even if I had been adamant, it comes up against the budgetary thing often. I think a lot of my stuff… First of all, as a novelist, you don’t really put a line item on anything. You don’t say, “Oh, I wonder how much that would cost to shoot that scene.” You just write it and you’re looking for the best bang and pop for your readers’ sense. Often when I was talking to Ian, my co-writer, who has been in many productions, he would just say, “That’s like a $5,000,000 scene, Craig.” Maybe not that much, but we have to really find a new way of trying to convey that information, the thrust of it, without this kind of operatic set piece, or this explosion, or a lot of make-up work that would be required. Even then when we did that and they got the script up north, they ran into a lot of stuff having to do with the pandemic. It was just a different shoot and things that were thought to be feasible. I remember, and this is a different movie, but my first book got turned into a French movie. One scene there’s a whale trainer that gets hurt during a mishap in an aquarium with a killer whale and I guess the director just showed up at the French version of MarineLand or Sea World and was like, “Okay, we’re going to get the actress in the pool with the whales.” And they were like, “That is absolutely not possible.” Insurance and otherwise. So he wasn’t aware of that and probably chagrined that he wasn’t aware of it and they just had to find a way to get the sense of what happened in that scene without actually having, you know. A lot of stuff is run and gun and you’ve just got to figure out when you get there. Whatever the script had even, when they got up there, they had to make changes. I think Rodrigo the director and the producers and actors found some really elegant ways of navigating around the trickiness of that shoot.
PopHorror: What is it that draws you to horror?
Nick Cutter: Oh, man. I’m a child of the 80s and you couldn’t walk down the street without a Stephen King book hitting you on the back of the head, so I grew up on King, Barker, Koontz, and Rice, Shirley Jackson, Robert McCammon, I mean it goes on and on. We moved a lot when I was young and the first place I’d go would be the library and just felt a real sense of safety there as I started to broaden out into each new area and make friends and stuff. But the first place to go was the library and the first section in the library was the horror section. I had written “literary fiction” for the early part of my career, but I had always had a hope that I could navigate towards my first love of horror, and I’ve been very grateful to have done that.
PopHorror: Your name comes up quite a bit when people are looking for horror book recommendations so I’m glad to see that you’ve made it there.
Nick Cutter: I appreciate it! Yeah, it’s a very forgiving genre. Genre/horror readers are very loyal. They really stick with given authors and it’s somewhat different than the literary world in that way, so it feels like hand in glove for me so I’m really happy to have been able to be part of it.
PopHorror: What is up next for you?
Nick Cutter: What is next… My friend Andrew and I, Andrew Sullivan, have a book coming out next month. Then there’s a couple more Cutters in the pipeline so for the next couple years we’ll try to get those out. Some of the Cutter stuff is under option. I’ll have nothing to do with those particular adaptations should they happen but yeah. It’s one of those things where there’s irons in the fire and you have no idea really, and I have no agency as to whether any of those might actually take heat, but my sense is just have as many irons in there as possible.
PopHorror: The Handyman Method, I have read it!
Nick Cutter: Oh you did!
PopHorror: Yes, they actually sent it to me to prepare for an interview with you and Andrew. So we may actually get to speak again.
Nick Cutter: Oh, I hope so! We’d be happy to speak with you, that would be great. Set it up!
PopHorror: I read it last month, and it’s disgusting and I loved it. I’m excited for more people to read it.
Nick Cutter: Good, I’m glad! Thank you. I really appreciate it. It’s a nerve-wracking time when you’ve got projects coming out and you just don’t know how they’re going to land, and that’s just part of life obviously. But thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.
PopHorror: Of course! Just one last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?
Nick Cutter: Oh, man. Over the pandemic, over Zoom, me and a bunch of horror buddies did a horror movie draft, like in the same way you do sports teams or whatever. I ended up with the first pick, which is a lot of pressure actually, and I went with The Exorcist. I guess I would say… Is it my favorite horror movie? I’m not sure, it’s very much up there. But when you think about some of the best of all time, it felt like yes, it might be the best of all time aggregately and also is it up there with my favorites? Yeah, for sure.
PopHorror: It’s a great answer. It scared me at 13, and it still scares me at 42.
Nick Cutter: Absolutely! Some other ones, The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby.
PopHorror: Your three answers are also all book-to-film adaptations.
Nick Cutter: You’re right!
Thank you so much to Nick for taking the time to speak with us. The Breach is now available to own or rent in the UK and Ireland and is also available on DVD!
