SYDNEY — I didn’t know that Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States of America, was a vampire killer until I met Seth Grahame-Smith, the novelty author whose latest work Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has just been made into a movie with the lanky actor Benjamin Walker (More about him in Conversations with Ricky Lo on Sunday, July 1) in the title role, opening next Wednesday, July 4, nationwide.
That’s one of the reasons that brought me here — to find out from Seth himself how and why he knew that the beloved Abe, the paradigm of honesty, secretly battled vampires, chopping off their heads with his legendary ax, as he sought to end the Civil War that had torn America apart.
With journalists from Asia invited to the junket, I watched the movie the night before I came face-to-face with Seth (and, of course, Benjamin) at suite-turned-TV-studio of The Intercontinental Hotel where we were billeted. In the blood-curdling style of its producer, the Tim Burton (who also directed such Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Alice In Wonderland and the recent Dark Shadows with Johnny Depp; and Beetlejuice and two Batman flicks with Michael Keaton, etc.), Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (of the blockbuster Wanted, etc.) has come up with a thriller in 3D that will make you jump in your seat every time Dear Abe dismisses a nemesis with one swing of his ax. Ouch!!!
I have read the book and I was amazed how Seth cleverly and intricately interweaves fact with fiction, mixing two genres with impunity (and with glee), in the same style that he did with his other best-sellers like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the recently-published Unholy Night, described as a thrilling adventure surrounding the three wise men of the nativity (coming soon to the big screen?).
So what inspired Seth, who looks and acts more like an energetic athlete than a deep-thinking novelist, to do the “Vampire Abe” book?
“The idea came to me during a 2009 tour to promote my book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” said Seth, as if ready to spring more surprises that he does in every chapter of the Abe Vampire book. “That year marked the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, and many of the bookstores on my promotional tour had two displays: One featured books about Lincoln and the other was a vampire-themed display including the Twilight and Sookie Stackhouse books (on which the hit TV series True Blood was based). It led me to think about combining the two subjects.”
How did he get fascinated with vampires and zombies?
“I was lucky enough to grow up in a book-friendly house,” began Seth. “My stepfather was a used-book collector and dealer and we had in our basement 5,000 books on shelves. On my birthdays, he would give me books as presents — books by Stephen King and other writers of the genre, first editions in hard cover. I grew up in this world of fantasy and horror, and that’s all I wanted to work in. I grew up on Wes Craven movies; I was a big-horror movie fan and I watched all the Friday The 13th movies. My whole vocabulary as an artist is dark and scary. Those are the things that come naturally to me.”
Wow, 5,000 (and more) books! Has Seth read all of them?
“Hmmmm,” he said in jest, “only 4,999 of them.”
The book shows a photo of Abe with Edgar Allan Poe side by side, with Poe several inches shorter that Abe.
“The reason for Poe being in the novel is because Lincoln loved him,” explained Seth. “Lincoln could quote The Raven from memory; he used to carry Poe around in his pocket…oops! not Poe the person but Poe’s books.”
How did he make sure that he captured the essential Abe Lincoln?
“Well, I made sure that his humor came through,” said Seth. “You know, Lincoln could be the life of the party, and he was an exciting and entertaining man.”
Okay, how much of the book (and the movie) is fact and how much is fiction?
“In the book,” said Seth, “quite a bit is real. I tried very hard to map Lincoln’s life.”
I volunteered the opinion that the vampires in the story could be symbolic of the evil people that made Lincoln’s life and those of people in those times very miserable, and Seth nodded, “You could be right.”
If he were to live a thousand of years back, what period in history or the evolution would he choose to be?
“I wondered what it would be like to live for hundreds of thousands of years — to have been around since the building of the pyramids. I wonder, what kind of personality would emerge from that eternal existence?”
Come to think of it, how did Seth think Lincoln would react if he saw the movie?
Breaking into a wide smile, Seth said with certainty, “He’d love our movie!”
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