My Favorite Weekend

Clive Barker is a horror novelist, screenwriter and director, whose work includes “Hellraiser” and “Candy Man.” A show of his paintings, “The Weird and the Wicked: A Halloween Exhibition of the Erotic and Fantastic,” opens Friday at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, 4633 Hollywood Blvd.

Staying In: Saturdays and Sundays are the times in which I purely do the things I would do the rest of the week if I weren’t interrupted by meetings: painting and writing. My studio is in the house next door to mine in Beverly Hills. In an ideal world, I would never leave the compound. I think it’s a function of age. I’m not as social as I was when I was younger.

Movie Time: My other half, David, has a daughter from his first marriage, so every other weekend she comes over and stays with us. We’ll maybe catch a movie with her, or rent a movie. I have a taste for flashy, large theaters, like [Mann’s] Chinese. I hate malls and cineplexes with a passion. When I first went to the cinema 40 years ago, it was an event. Now you go to the multiplex and it’s like getting a hamburger. At the Chinese, there’s still enough glory in the old building.

Magic Moments: I go to the Magic Castle now and again. I love to be amazed. Occasionally we go to Las Vegas and take in Cirque du Soleil and Siegfried and Roy.

Down With the Dead: One of the things Hollywood does have is pretty cool cemeteries--and I’m not just playing to the gothic moment here. I loved them in England and Paris, and I was ready to be disappointed when I came here, but I was not. There’s a lot of flamboyance where stars are concerned, whether it’s [a statue of] Al Jolson down on one knee or Marilyn Monroe’s tomb. I tend to go to the obvious ones, the famous ones. . . . I’m a buff where early Hollywood is concerned and there’s an interesting paradox here. Movies confer a type of immortality, so it’s a strange thing: How can Marilyn Monroe possibly be buried here, at Westwood Village Memorial Park?