What was it like the first time you heard Stitch Head — this character you’d been writing for years in the novels — finally voiced to life by Asa Butterfield in this movie?
Yeah, that was a bonkers experience. The process of the film had been going on for a long time and I had no idea who should be cast as Stitch Head. I didn’t have any idea whether it would sound right — and then, listening to him, it was how it sounded in my head.
My wife will tell you that I’m sort of never satisfied with anything. When I first heard about Asa Butterfield being cast, I think it’s the happiest I’ve ever been in this entire process, because I knew his work and I was like, “He’s absolutely right.” And then seeing him in the film, hearing his voice, it was like it had jumped out of my head.
The film version of Stitch Head was written and directed by Steve Hudson. What was it like to watch your work interpreted by another writer?
Yeah, the cliché is that all authors hate people messing with their stuff [laughs]. To be honest, I found the whole experience just really satisfying. Steve early on showed me a couple versions of the script and asked for feedback. So I got involved early, and then when he started making it, I was very happy to step back.
I actually was really pleased [with the final product], because the story retained all the stuff that was important to me about the books. It was about Stitch Head having this unrequited love with the Professor, who’s kind of his father, and then discovering these new friendships through the Creature and Arabella, this human girl.
The heart of the book and the heart of the film are very much the same.
When you’re writing Stitch Head or Dinkin Dings or Spynosaur, what is it like tailoring your story for a young audience, but still keeping things clever and sophisticated — appealing to kids on their level, without talking down to them?
I kind of write for myself. Obviously, I have in mind that these are going to be young readers, but that’s what I like about children’s books — they communicate on a couple of levels, at least. You’re expecting that some parents are going to be reading this as well, and that there’s another layer there to be absorbed and experienced.
But by and large, people who write for children are adults, and so they come to it with an adult perspective and you just have to adjust various things. In children’s books, there’s often a simplicity to the language, there’s a lot of cutting because you tend to write shorter books . . . The main difference is generally that it’s a young protagonist. That’s what defines a children’s book very often. And I think I’m still sort of 10 years old in my head, so . . . helpful!
Is it a more complex process writing something that tries to appeal to both children and their parents — as opposed to just writing for a more mature audience?
Having never written a novel for adults, I couldn’t possibly comment. I don’t know. I think you have to be conscious of writing for two readers — the young reader and the older reader. I always keep that in mind.
And I often write genre twists. So, I’ll take an existing genre, something kind of familiar — like with Stitch Head, it’s essentially based on Frankenstein — and give it a little twist so that both adults and children have a really easy way into that, because they recognize the genre and they don’t have to worry about the setup. I can then concentrate on the character and the stuff that makes me excited — the narrative, where the story’s going, how these people feel . . .
Given that you’re operating in the horror genre with these books, was there ever a moment when you had to pull back a little on the horrific content because of your young audience?
In a way, I feel like writing about inhuman characters or “monsters,” you can push it a little bit further. If you are writing about robots or aliens or things that aren’t human, you can generally make them suffer more than you would if they were human — which I kind of enjoy because the thrill of storytelling for me is getting your characters into as much trouble as possible, and watching them try and crawl their way out.
Of course you have to be mindful of the sensibilities of younger readers . . . When I first pitched Stitch Head, it was a story of two dismembered limbs that were alive and ran errands for this mad scientist. And at that point, my publisher said, quite rightly, “That’s a bit much!”
Hey, it worked for The Addams Family . . .
[Laughs] Right. Well, maybe that was it. Maybe it was just too much of a cliché!
How does Stitch Head grow and change over the course of your stories? And how did your understanding of him change over the years?
Stitch Head is always trying to return things to the status quo [by cleaning up the messes of his Professor] — which presents a lot of challenges as a writer. He’s quite efficient, so I’m constantly trying to kind of scupper him.
I hope he develops over the series, but there’s also a human girl from the nearby town called Arabella. She’s not in the first book very much, and then I had a whale of a time writing her, so she’s in the rest of the series much, much more. And I think because she’s human — because she can literally grow, whereas Stitch Head has been a boy for maybe half a century — I had that opportunity to show her growing and changing in a way that was different to Stitch Head. That was fun.
As the novels went on, what was your usual process for coming up with a new Stitch Head book? How would you decide which themes you wanted to tackle in the next story?
Usually, I’m writing one book and something occurs to me. There’s only so much that you can do in one book because it has to be a manageable length.
So, by the time I’d finished the first one, I was like: “I definitely want to get him outta the castle.” And so, the second book is him fantasizing about being this pirate adventurer; he goes out into the ocean. Then, by the end of that, I was like: “Well, I need to take him home, but I want to mess up his home life . . . right, I’m gonna burn the castle down!”
Each book was a response to the previous book, really. That was the way that the stories kind of presented themselves to me — if that doesn’t sound too pretentious.
To what extent does this first film follow the narrative of your first book, 2011’s Stitch Head, and how does it differ? And if it does differ, why was this the right way to introduce a movie audience to the story?
I guess the first half is pretty close to the book. And then, in the film, he’s tempted away from the castle by this circus owner called Fulbert Freakfinder. In the book, when he’s tempted away, he really doesn’t get very far. He basically opens the door and lets Freakfinder in and the trouble starts.
But in the film, he leaves and he joins the circus — and I actually think it was a really good way of making it wholly cinematic, because there’s loads of visual opportunities there. There’s loads of fun, there’s loads of colour — he gets to have his own trailer! When Steve sent me the script, I was like, “Oh yeah, I get this.” I came to appreciate the necessity for it to be a much more visual thing. Also, he had an hour-and-a-half, and so he had the opportunity to make a bigger, longer kind of adventure.
You wrapped up the books with the sixth and final instalment, The Forgotten Creation, in 2023. What was the process like of figuring out exactly how to end a saga that’s been such an integral part of your career?
That was funny, because I actually thought book four was going to be the last one, so
I sort of changed the status quo in the castle and introduced all these human orphans. I thought it’d be a really nice way of showing that the humans and the monsters can live together in harmony.
Then basically the series did a bit better than we thought and I was asked to write a couple more. So, I had to unpick the ending that I made for myself. But the ending I came up with in the last book, I was quite pleased because it’s about ownership; Stitch Head finally gets a sense of ownership, and therefore a sense of belonging in the castle, that he’s previously not had.
Given the immense popularity of the books all around the world, what sorts of fan encounters have you had during the past decade or so? What does this franchise mean to them, and what has learning about that meant to you?
I visit schools and book festivals all the time. So, I’ve spent the last 15 years talking to kids about Stitch Head.
You know, it’s been really interesting. I’m talking to people now who grew up with Stitch Head. Steve, the writer-director, his children were maybe eight when they were first introduced to it — and now are adults. They talk about Stitch Head like a sort of sibling.
That’s been great — the idea of people growing up with Stitch Head in all those formative years. I remember books and comics and TV shows and things that I was obsessed with when I was a kid. The thought that Stitch Head could be that for somebody else was mind-blowing.
Stitch Head, available On Demand
MEMORABLE ROLES:
An award-winning children’s author based in the U.K., Guy Bass’ offbeat, heartfelt books include Skeleton Keys, Spynosaur, Anna Gain, Laura Norder and Noah Scape. But his most indelible creation is, no doubt, Stitch Head — the Frankenstein-inspired saga about a young ghoul who’s unlucky enough to be the very first “It’s Alive!” moment of a mad scientist who is very good at creating life, but not so good at caring for it. As such, Stitch Head takes it upon himself to tend to his “father’s” hundreds of creatures — and keep the local townsfolk from sharpening their pitchforks.
CURRENT GIG:
It’s been an eventful few months for Mr. Bass, as his Stitch Head stories (totalling six in all from 2011-2023) have been adapted into a collection of graphic novels, available in Canada via Penguin Random House. What’s more, the character has crept onto the big screen in a cartoon feature voiced by Asa Butterfield, Joel Fry and Rob Brydon. Following its theatrical run, the film will soon be available at home via streamer CosmoGO.