V for Vendetta director John McTeigue sheds a fictional light on the last days of Edgar Allan Poe in his film The Raven, out in cinemas on Friday the 9th of March.

John Cusack takes the lead in this serial killer thriller and he was in town last week to talk about the process of evoking the spirit of Poe and the inspiration he found in the words of the poet. My review of the film will appear on the site shortly and while there are significant shortcomings they are not the fault of Cusack whose performance is about the only point of merit in the whole affair.

The serial killer in the film is inspired by the works of Poe and The Raven’s internal logic has the man himself accosted into the investigation and for me the most intriguing element at play here is the notion of a poet stepping into a world shaped in some way by his work.

On researching the character of Poe through his work,

I think poets tell better history than historians. Historians lie all the time but the poets can get to truth of it. So, if you know what Poe’s written about in all his stories and you know what he’s said about all his stories and you know about his letters, you can investigate him. So, you have Poe investigating the mind of Poe. All we see is a bit of the dream within a dream. Where does creativity end and the imagination and reality begin? What are the boundaries between life and death? He took his creativity to the edge of madness. The stories and poems – they spoke to me more… turns of phrases and imagery and symbols.

I think we made a movie that was much like Poe’s writing, which was high-brow and pop. That’s sort of what he was. And I think it’s dark. I tried my hardest. I came back exhausted and 187 pounds. I touched down in Chicago at Christmas and I didn’t know where the hell I was. I was stumbling around. It was like being on a bender in a weird way. It had the feeling of some sort of run and I’ve felt that before. I thought that was like a journey into the underworld artistically and that was kind of exciting, but I don’t want to stay down there and I’m glad I’m out of it. But I thought it was a good artistic journey for an actor or an artist.

On playing Poe as a difficult, reluctant, hero

I thought it was really interesting. It’s almost like… when we started the thing off we made sure that we really used his language and his idiom to make him as complex and as fucked up and all that stuff, to do the Poe thing. Then the narrative starts and it starts to go like a locomotion, so you’re doing things but then there are these moments when you stop and then the characters have to just catch their breath, and those are the moments when you have to reveal more character.

He’s the protagonist but he’s got all the problems you could ever imagine a human could have. He’s not some super-angel with perfect muscles who loves his queen. He’s fucked up. He’s one of us, right? And he’s worse than us, or he’s better than us. But it’s not simple. It’s not reductive.

You just keep on and as it’s picking up momentum you keep revealing character on the run and it’s a very interesting way to do it because there’s momentum… it’s sort of how life is, too, because we’re very busy and then there’s these little bits of behaviour that reveal things and you always go back to his language. You go back to all his stories and you’re like: “You know, what he’s saying to the father is like…. let me see how he insulted all these different men” and “oh, let’s take this thing here and say that to Brendan Gleeson! Look what he wrote here, this is horrible… look at how mean he is to this…”

On the notion of Poe’s legacy and the effect of The Raven on his life.

It’s funny because The Raven was world famous and he actually went to The White House but he got drunk… he showed up drunk at the White House because he was on a bender. But The Raven was published all over the world and he was a famous poet. But there was no copyright, so he couldn’t get any money for it, and he couldn’t make any money from his books. So, he was one of the first people to try and be a professional writer, actually; he was the first professional journalist. But he was famous for living in a hovel.

He was so destructive and would burn every bridge that he ever fucking built… like any connection he would have with editors, any other writer, I mean you’re talking about a guy who would self-sabotage. He was at war with the entire world. He just wanted to… he would write these vicious attacks on other people’s writings and you could tell they’re not really… he’s just trying to totally destroy the other writer.

The idea that he sort of created the serial killer is an ultra modern conceit. It’s almost like a Jules Verne… it’s a sci-fi twist on Poe. It’s a twist on the past.