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Something Wicked This Way Comes · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film Is lit the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie, I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit. We are the hungry ones. Your torments call us like dogs in the night and we do feed and feed well. It's something Wicked this Way comes and this Film is lit. Hello and welcome back to this Film Is a Podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. Sorry this episode's a little bit late. Kind of. We just moved around when we were going to do it, but we're going to be right back on schedule after this. We have every single one of our segments to get to, lots to talk about. Let's jump right in. If you have not read or watched Something Wicked this Way Comes, right? Going to give you a brief summary of the film right now. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. This summary is sourced from Wikipedia. In Greentown, Illinois, two young boys, a reserved Will Halloway and someone and somewhat rebellious Jim Nightshade, leave from an after school detention for whispering in class and hurry home. The boys live next door to each other and were born a minute apart. On Halloween, Will lives with his mother and father, Charles, while Jim lives with his single mother. It is heavily implied that his father walked out on them. A lightning rod salesman named Tom Fury arrives and sells one to Jim, claiming that it will protect him from an upcoming storm. The boys soon hear of a carnival coming to town. Led by the ominous Mr. Dark, the carnival arrives and is set up overnight. Will and Jim notice that many of the residents seem oddly entranced by some of the attractions, such as the amputee bartender Ed, who sees his missing arm and leg return in a mirror, and the boy's teacher, Ms. Foley, who wishes to regain her youth. Will and Jim see a carousel that is closed off and are confronted by Dark, who quickly becomes suspicious of them. Later, they witness him using the carousel on his assistant, Mr. Coogler, who reverts to a little boy. Will and Jim head off to see Foley, but she is with her nephew who is actually Coogler, and are forced to leave. Foley suddenly becomes younger, but loses her vision and is taken by Cooger to Dark. Will then gets into an argument with Jim when the latter reveals that he has always been envious of the former being older and wants to use the carousel. They then witness Fury being tortured by Dark, who wants the secret of the upcoming storm, and uses his other assistant, the Dust Witch, to seduce him, but to no avail. The boys run when they are found out and try to go to bed. In the middle of the night, the duo are attacked by tarantulas, but the lightning rod that Fury gave Jim earlier saves them. In the morning, Dark leads his carnival, now consisting of some of the townspeople, in a parade, though Will and Jim deduce that it is a search party for them. Charles eventually figures out that the boys are in trouble and when confronted by Dark, manages to deter him. Charles, Will and Jim head to the library, where the former reveals that the carnival had come to town before and that his own father had fought them. Dark arrives searching for Will and Jim and offers Charles his youth back, but he resists. He knocks out Charles and makes off with the boys back to the carnival. Charles regains himself and heads to the carnival just as the storm arrives. He runs into Jim's mother and deters her before she too succumbs to Dark's powers. Charles heads into the hall of mirrors where Dark continues to taunt him about his age. Will declares his love for his father and repels the Dust Witch, allowing Fury to escape his imprisonment and impale her with a lightning rod. Will and Charles find Dark attempting to use the carousel with Jim in tow, but they rescue him just as the lightning strikes the ride. Dark begins to age and decay before being reduced to a skeleton which collapses into pieces. Will and Charles express happiness to awaken Jim and the three flee with the horses and ponies and the townspeople. Just as the carnival begins to get sucked away into a giant tornado. Will and Jim and Charles head back into town and begin to happily dance back home with the danger now over. All right, that was a brief summary. We do have some guess who's this week. Let's do it. Who are you? No one of consequence. I must now get used to disappointment.
• 4:23
  Speaker B: All right, I think you'll get this stuff. And the first boy with hair as blonde white as milk thistle shut up one eye, tilted his head and looked at the salesman with a single eye, as open, bright and clear as a drop of summer rain.
• 4:39
  Speaker A: Well, assuming that they look similar to the Movie. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this is George. Isn't that his name? Charles? Charles? No, Jim. What is Will. Good Lord. Why does it say George?
• 4:56
  Speaker B: Where did George come? I don't know.
• 4:59
  Speaker A: I'm gonna say this is Will.
• 5:01
  Speaker B: It is Will. It is.
• 5:04
  Speaker A: I have no idea why I said George. I don't know.
• 5:07
  Speaker B: Of all the names I was thinking might come out of your mouth, George was not.
• 5:10
  Speaker A: I think it's something about Halloway. It feels like his name should be George Halloway to me. I don't know why, it just feels right. Sorry, Will?
• 5:19
  Speaker B: Yeah?
• 5:19
  Speaker A: Did you say yeah, it's Will? Yeah. The blonde hair was the. Yeah, yeah.
• 5:23
  Speaker B: His hair was wild thick and the glossy color of waxed chestnuts. His eyes, fixed to some distant point within himself were mint rock crystal green.
• 5:36
  Speaker A: Terror was wild thick in the glass killer. I mean, I don't know, I'm gonna guess that maybe this is the other boy and say that this is Jim.
• 5:44
  Speaker B: It is Jim.
• 5:45
  Speaker A: I don't understand. His eyes fixed to some point. To some distant point within himself. I don't understand what that means.
• 5:53
  Speaker B: I would take that to mean, you know, like when you're kind of looking at nothing and your eyes are unfocused, like you're just in thought.
• 6:03
  Speaker A: Okay, that makes sense.
• 6:05
  Speaker B: I do like that he has fan fiction eyes though. Mint rock crystal green. Great, good stuff. They stared down at bright flame red hair, bright flame blue eyes and rippling biceps.
• 6:20
  Speaker A: I have no idea. I mean the little kid that turns into. And the fact that they said they stared down at. But the kid, Cougar, I think is his name, who turns into a child. He has red hair in the movie, he's a little kid, so he doesn't have rippling biceps. So I don't. I mean, I guess as an adult, maybe he did it. He's just a guy in the movie, but I think that could still be him. I'm gonna say that's Cougar.
• 6:45
  Speaker B: It is Cougar.
• 6:46
  Speaker A: I'm a genius.
• 6:47
  Speaker B: See, you're doing great at this. He's holding them up in the air in this scene. That's why they're looking down. He's using his rippling biceps to hold them up in the air. Ah.
• 6:57
  Speaker A: Oh, that's right. He does pick them up. I do remember that.
• 6:59
  Speaker B: Okay, okay, last one. This second man was tall as a lamp post. His pale face, lunar pockmarks denting it, cast light on those who stood below. His vest was the color of fresh blood. His Eyebrows, his hair, his suit were licorice black. And the sun yellow gem which stared from the tie pin thrust in his cravat was the same unblinking shade and bright crystal as his eyes.
• 7:30
  Speaker A: I mean, this sounds like a villain to me. I feel pretty confident that this is Mr. Dark.
• 7:37
  Speaker B: It is Mr. Dark.
• 7:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, I believe it's pronounced Cravat, but I could be wrong. Is it Cravat?
• 7:42
  Speaker B: Cravat.
• 7:42
  Speaker A: Have you. I've always said cravat, but I don't know for sure. That's just how I've always said it. So yeah, those were pretty easy. Generally speaking. I wasn't sure. The only reason I was questioning Cougar is he didn't feel like an important enough character necessarily to like have a. But yeah, that makes sense. I have some questions. Let's get into em in.
• 7:59
  Speaker B: Was that in the book Gaston? May I have my book please?
• 8:02
  Speaker A: How can you read this?
• 8:04
  Speaker B: There's no pictures. Well, some people use their imagination.
• 8:07
  Speaker A: So as the story opens up in the film, one of the first things that kind of happens is we're introd. We see a guy walking. It might even literally be the opening shot of the film. After the opening credits we see a guy walking down the lane towards the town carrying a bag. And then eventually it is revealed that this man is named Tom Fury and he is a traveling salesman of some sort who is selling traveling, selling lightning rods. He has like these custom lightning rods that he's selling. Kind of a snake oilsy way of like your house is I can inspect your house and tell you if you need a lightning rod kind of deal. But then he ends up selling one to Jim. He shows up at their house and he's like, this house needs one. And so Jim ends up buying a lightning rod. And so I wanted to know if a strange old man comes to town selling lightning rods and if Jim ends up buying one.
• 9:01
  Speaker B: The book does open with Tom Fury, the lightning rod salesman, meeting Will and Jim on his way into town. And he does predict that lightning will strike Jim's house. And then he. He just gives him the lightning rod in the book though he doesn't sell it to them.
• 9:17
  Speaker A: I see. So but the reason Jim has to make the purchase in the film is because it is revealed that his father is no longer get a ton of information, but it's kind of revealed. He's like, well, his father's off somewhere and he's like no, my dad's going to come back eventually. And Will is like. In particular, Will is like, I don't think so, man. I think your dad just left. And I wanted to know if that same element came in from the book that. That Jim Nightshade has to be kind of the man of the house and then his mom doesn't seem super involved and he. Yeah, he kind of has to take care of himself, essentially.
• 9:52
  Speaker B: Yes, it is established that Jim's mother is a single mom. I don't think the book ever definitively establishes what happened to his dad. It is kind of lightly implied at one point that his dad may have been like, physically abusive.
• 10:11
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 10:12
  Speaker B: But the book doesn't ever say, like, is he just gone? Are they divorced? Did he die? We don't know. He's just not in the picture.
• 10:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's very strongly. And I guess you don't know for sure in the movie, but it's pretty strongly implied that he just like left. That he just like skipped town, basically, and didn't. Went out for cigarettes and never came back.
• 10:31
  Speaker B: Right.
• 10:32
  Speaker A: So we're kind of getting introduced to everybody in this very obvious backlot town that they. It's one of the most obvious, like, this is film.
• 10:39
  Speaker B: How dare you. This is a charming, Americana little town.
• 10:44
  Speaker A: It's very funny. I was like, boy, this. This town circle. Cause like, as a kid, it was not obvious to me in a lot of movies. I don't know if I would've recogn recognized it in this one. But even today there are movies I can watch where I'm like, it. It's not as easy that they're shot in ways where it's not super easy to tell. Like, oh, this is a. Yeah, this is a backlot. But boy, this one, this one is clearly, very clearly a backlot. And. But I wanted to know. So we're introduced to all these characters and one of the people we're introduced to is the barber. We're introduced to like a lot of people. The guy who runs the. The barkeep, the.
• 11:15
  Speaker B: The cigar shop.
• 11:16
  Speaker A: The cigar shop guy. And then the barber. And the barber has this very interesting interaction with Charles. That's the father's name, right? Yeah, Will's father, Charles. They're kind of chit chatting on the street and he's like, oh, I can smell it on the wind. I smell visitors coming. But specifically he can smell like perfume in something. He's like, I smell the beautiful ladies are coming or something.
• 11:43
  Speaker B: I guess he wasn't wrong.
• 11:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. But anyways, I wanted to know if that came from the book. Cause that's an interesting. Nobody else is at least I don't remember anybody else. I guess Tom Fury kind of is like a weird, whimsical, like, mystically feeling guy. But the barber being like, I smell visitors in the air was, like, an interesting. Because, yeah, we're kind of setting up that this world maybe is. It's not that he's magical, but just that there's an air of some level
• 12:11
  Speaker B: of magic in the air, and there's
• 12:13
  Speaker A: just like an air of, like, mystery. I don't know, strangeness to this world that I thought was interesting, and I want to know if it came from the book.
• 12:24
  Speaker B: So I don't think we ever actually meet the barber character in the book. We know that there is a barber or there was because they talk about the fact that he has vanished, but he goes missing so early on in the book that I didn't even clock that he was supposed to be a victim of the carnival until, like, way later, like, super far into the book when another little nugget gets dropped about him. I don't think. I legitimately don't think we ever actually meet him.
• 12:55
  Speaker A: Okay, so barring him specifically, is there anything like that in that interaction with anybody, if. Even if it's not with him or, like.
• 13:02
  Speaker B: I don't think so.
• 13:04
  Speaker A: Like, there's. There's no, like, one of the townsfolk being like, I smell people coming.
• 13:08
  Speaker B: You know what I mean? We spend very little time with adults in the book. We're mostly in the perspective. In the perspective of Will and Jem.
• 13:17
  Speaker A: Okay. But speaking of Will and Charles, his father, who had a conversation with the barber, we find out, and it becomes very, like. It's established very quickly and recurrently, recurringly that Charles, Will's father, is an older gentleman and that he has a young. Cause in the movie, I would say Will is probably like. I don't know.
• 13:38
  Speaker B: They say that they're 12.
• 13:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. Did I say 12 in the summary? Yeah, he seems even younger than that at times. Yeah, he looks really more like 10 or something. But anyways, he's supposed to be, like, 12. And I think we find out later that he's in, like, his 60s or something. 50s. Well, the actor who plays Jason Robards, who played Charles in the movie at the time of filming, was right around 60 or early 60s or something like that. So I assume he's supposed to be around that age. I don't think they ever say his name exact age, but he's old for. And he's old for to be this child's father, essentially. And he. So he, like, laments being too old to play baseball with them. He also, on top of being old, they specifically keep referencing that he has kind of a bad heart or he's had issues with his heart previously. The doctor mentions it, his wife mentions it. And so he, on top of being old, he also has like heart condition of some sort. And I wanted to know if that. And because that becomes kind of one of the central themes is him kind of coming to terms with not only his morality, but just like, not morality, mortality, but also just like being a coming, being comfortable being Will's father, even though he is an older man kind of. And I wanted to know if that central theme was from the book.
• 14:56
  Speaker B: Yes. Will's dad's midlife crisis is one of the main driving themes of the entire story. He kind of has to come to terms with it and learn to not let the fact that he is older stop him from being a father to Will.
• 15:14
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:15
  Speaker B: Similar to the movie, everyone in the book is very dramatic about him being older. But at least in the movie, I went on such a journey with this in the book. So in the movie he at least looks notably old. Like, you look at him and you're like, yeah, that man is in his 60s. He's fairly old. In the book, it's established that he's 54. This man is 54 years old. And like, okay, I get that that isn't young per se.
• 15:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's slightly old for somebody who has a 12 year old son.
• 15:51
  Speaker B: And I also know that 54 was probably considered older when this book was written in 1962 than it would be now. But also like, I spent this whole book being like, God damn, like the man. This man spends the whole story acting like he is on death's door and he's only in his mid-50s.
• 16:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, is. Is there any mention of the heart thing in the book?
• 16:18
  Speaker B: So I actually had a note about that later. But basically I think the movie kind of more concretely confirmed that for me. It was loosely implied in the book that he had had some health trouble and then even more loosely implied that it may have been his heart. And I feel like the movie confirmed that a little bit.
• 16:42
  Speaker A: The movie is very explicit. Like I said, the doctor literally says like, hey, gotta keep an eye on your heart. Don't have too many drinks or whatever. And his wife says the same thing. There's multiple references to his heart being kinda. Yeah, he probably like had a heart attack or something at some point.
• 16:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, like, like I understand all of the like, details and circumstances around this midlife crisis. But it was kind of funny reading the book because. Because he is being, like, so dramatic about it. And then it's revealed that he's 54. And I was like, that's not. That's not that old man. Like, that's not. Like, it's a little old, but it's not that. You're not going to drop over or anything.
• 17:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Unless he has, like, a serious heart condition. Like, that's a different.
• 17:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's a different element.
• 17:29
  Speaker A: Yeah. So then one night as they're sleeping, a storm kind of blows in. And they hear. They hear a train in the distance, and Jim runs off to go see what's going on, and Will ends up seeing him and follows him. And they end up seeing this train roll into town. And they actually hide kind of next to the train tracks and see it come in. And we see that the train appears to be empty. There's no driver. And then we see, like, it's mostly like, you know, cargo things, but towards the back there is a. Like, a passenger compartment that also appears to be empty in the film. And then they run over to, like, where it went. And when they arrive there, there is a carnival just, like, set up. We do see the last remnants of it in the film kind of being, like, materializing. And I talked about in the prequel that there was a longer sequence that they removed that was like a graphic or, like a cgi, A mixture of
• 18:20
  Speaker B: CGI and traditional animation, early CGI of
• 18:23
  Speaker A: the carnival, like, setting up. That was like, a combination where, like, there's, like, spiderwebs that turn into the. The Ferris wheel and all this kind of stuff. And they just ended up scrapping it because they didn't think it looked good or whatever. And I think we see, like, maybe the very, very end of those shots or something like that, like, at the final moment of them. But I wanted to know if that played out similarly, where they kind of see this, a mysteriously empty train. And then when they arrive at the carnival, it is just, like, magically set up.
• 18:53
  Speaker B: This happens very similarly in the book. Jim and Will hear the train coming in. I don't think we see that the train is, like, seemingly empty.
• 19:04
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 19:05
  Speaker B: I don't think. But they hear the train coming in. They sneak out to, like, go watch the carnies set up the carnival. But then when they get to the fairgrounds, everything is already up and it appears to be deserted.
• 19:17
  Speaker A: There's no one there.
• 19:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:19
  Speaker A: One of the other people that we. That we are introduced to One of the other townsfolk we're introduced to, and I was interested to know if he was in the book, is Ed, the barkeep. And in the film, he has one arm and one leg.
• 19:31
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 19:32
  Speaker A: And he hobbles around. You know, he has, like, a crutch he uses sometimes and other times. But he. But he's very much kind of has a zest for life and does not let the fact that he is missing an arm and a leg seem to slow him down. We see him sweeping in front of his shop. We see him, like, playing catch with a football. The movie kind of goes out of its way to illustrate that he does not seem put off by his disability or, you know, by missing an arm and a leg. And I wanted to know if that character was in the film and if he was portrayed similarly. Ultimately, we do see him regain his limbs, and it doesn't really go anywhere in the film. It kind of just. He disappears and then becomes a child, I think, which I thought was strange. We'll get to some of that. I have mixed feelings on this movie overall, but does that. Is that character from the book?
• 20:17
  Speaker B: That character is not in the book. I felt. I feel like the movie wanted a character with which to super clearly visualize what was going on with the mirror maze.
• 20:28
  Speaker A: That makes sense.
• 20:28
  Speaker B: Where he, like, looks in the mirror and sees his. Sees himself, like, whole again.
• 20:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 20:33
  Speaker B: Which is fine. But I wish it would have done more with his character, because, like you said, we just see him as a kid later on, but it doesn't even feel particularly ominous. We just, like, see. See him.
• 20:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, well. And it just kind of. It leans into some of the mixed messaging that I was getting from the movie at times where I. I was, like, a little. I was like, oh, this is interesting. I thought he was gonna almost be a foil to Charles's character, where Charles is this older man and the journey he goes on is kind of learning to, like, appreciate his life for what it is and not, you know, and not like, dwell on the fact that he's older and that his health isn't perfect and to just enjoy his life with his child and be there and. And, like, you know, engage in his relationship with his son and that he can be this boy's father. And we set up this Ed character as a guy who, despite missing an arm and a leg, in a time where it would be very difficult. The disability. I have a question about later, when this takes place. But the Disability Rights act has not been passed, and there are extra issues that a Person missing limbs like that is gonna have to deal with at that time. But in spite of that, we see he seems like a very happy character. He's always smiling. When we see him again, we see him doing his job. He's sweeping. He's. He's. He's living his life in a way where he doesn't seem to be too bothered by the fact that he is missing these limbs. And then. So there's that element. And I was like, oh, that's gonna be interesting. Foil. And I. I don't know, whatever. But then he ends up going to the fair and wishing he had his limbs back and getting them.
• 22:09
  Speaker B: Well, the movie does. I thought it was implied that he was previously, like, a high school football star.
• 22:17
  Speaker A: Yes, for sure.
• 22:18
  Speaker B: And, like, wants that back. Wants his glory days back.
• 22:23
  Speaker A: Yes. And that's fair. Yeah. But again, that still felt a little bit in contrast with how his character was initially established to me in a lot of ways, again, of how seemingly unbothered by this he was. The fact that he Then. Yes, he wants to recapture his glory days, because that, again, is a similar thing that what Charles is kind of going through. But then. So he goes to the fair and he sees himself with his arm and his leg back. And so he goes into the mirror maze because it lures him in with the promise of his limbs growing back or whatever. And then we don't really see him again for the rest of the movie until towards the middle or end where he shows up as a child. I was like, what does that have to do with.
• 23:05
  Speaker B: In the parade.
• 23:05
  Speaker A: Yes. And I was like, what does that have to do with anything? Like, it just felt just that. Like, his storyline felt disconnected at that point. I was like. So I guess then he. At some point he got onto the carousel and they sucked his soul away to turn him into a child backwards.
• 23:22
  Speaker B: And his limbs grew back because he had them when he was a child.
• 23:25
  Speaker A: I guess that's the idea. Yeah. But it was weird to me that he sees himself. I guess, again, I just had a. It just was a little messy in a way that I thought.
• 23:35
  Speaker B: I literally think they just wanted a character to visualize what was being seen in the mirror.
• 23:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 23:43
  Speaker B: Like your deepest heart's desire or whatever.
• 23:45
  Speaker A: Yes. And that. Yeah.
• 23:46
  Speaker B: And then they didn't even, like, consider what else they might potentially do with this character.
• 23:52
  Speaker A: And that's fair. I guess it would have just. To me, it would have made more sense than to initially depict him as maybe more wistful for his missing limbs and maybe less seemingly content in his current life than they did. If you're gonna do that. I actually thought it was compelling and interesting that he was portrayed that way, but then that kind of goes the other direction. You're like, okay, sure. I. You know, I don't know. It just didn't. I was. I was a little disappointed.
• 24:18
  Speaker B: No, I agree. This was not, in my opinion, did not end up being a good addition to the story because they don't do anything.
• 24:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. It just felt kind of muddled in what it was doing in a way that didn't exactly add a whole lot. But on that note, we then see that all of the town folk kind of go. Who go to this carnival end up finding or getting things that they've been desiring. As I said, the barkeep gets his limbs back or sees himself with his limbs and then I guess the ages to when he had limbs. The barber who had. Was dreaming of a wife or dreaming of a women or whatever, goes to the fortune teller who tells him that he will find Lad. And then he goes into the. The belly dancer tent and they're. And they're all like, around him and. Yeah, yeah. The teacher who is wistful to be young again because she's an older Ms. Foley ends up becoming young again. And there's. Oh, the cigar shop guy who's at the beginning was talking about obsessed with winning the lottery and wanted to, like. He's like, oh, I'm playing all these numbers, ends up winning some carnival game and gets like $1,000 or whatever. So they all end up getting these things that they desire. And I wanted to know if that was a similar. I assume that seems like it would be the primary element of what the carnival does, but does that come from the book?
• 25:33
  Speaker B: So I actually thought that the movie did a better job of setting up and illustrating the idea of what the carnival does, because that is what the carnival does, is that it preys on those desires that you have those kind of unachievable dreams and uses that to lure you in.
• 25:55
  Speaker A: To lure you in so they can consume your soul or whatever. Yeah.
• 25:59
  Speaker B: In the book, it's really only Ms. Foley that we like. We see her get shaken up by what she sees in the mirror maze, and then later on we meet her again after she's been aged backwards. So I liked the idea that the movie used more of the townspeople to illustrate what the carnival's dark purpose was. But again, I wish the movie had just done more with what they set up.
• 26:27
  Speaker A: I.
• 26:27
  Speaker B: Because we see all of those characters as part of the carnival later on. But the movie doesn't really do anything with them or even try very hard to make them interesting or like scary.
• 26:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. I do wonder, and I thought this constantly throughout the movie, especially after what we talked about in the prequel. Kind of the production hell this ended up in where it got taken away from the original director and they reshot scenes and because they were like, it's not, it's. It's not enough of a family movie. It's.
• 26:55
  Speaker B: It's too scary.
• 26:56
  Speaker A: It's too whatever. And I do wonder if maybe in the original version of this movie, because I could see elements of this that felt like, oh yeah, this director was clearly trying to make like a legit like a real movie that was like an interesting, compelling like kind of morality tale about this carnival that has children in it and they are like the protagonists. But it's not really a kids movie, I think is what the director probably thought he was making. And Disney was like, no, we want a kids movie that maybe has a little bit of spookiness to it or whatever. And it's more like a fun Halloween movie. And I think maybe I wouldn't be surprised if what happened is that a lot of this got lost in the shuffle when it got taken from the original director, recut a million times, new scenes added, etc. Etc.
• 27:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, I agree.
• 27:44
  Speaker A: And so I was, I do have a feeling, I do wonder at least if maybe some of these criticisms we have of like these characters never really go anywhere, doesn't really resolve in a way that feels like anything is because when they recut the movie to maybe pull the focus back to the children and make it more of like a fun spooky adventure story, we lost a little bit of like what we were looking for. That would not surprise me at all.
• 28:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, you're. I mean, I'm sure you're right.
• 28:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. So when they, they get to the carnival, they're kind of snooping around, they end up finding a closed off carousel and they sneak on into the tent that the carousel is in and they, they see dark for the first time and he has Mr. Cougar get on the. I think it's Cougar gets on the carousel and it runs backwards and we get kind of a cool effect where he like de ages and then he turns into a little kid. And I wanted to know if that came from the book because then we, he just is a little kid from then on and boy, that little kid is super creepy. They follow him home like, he leaves the fair or the carnival and they follow him, and he ends up going to Mrs. Foley's house, which I don't understand that either.
• 28:55
  Speaker B: He goes to Ms. Foley's house. He's pretending to be her nephew.
• 28:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, but I don't understand. Cause she's not. Why would she be into that? I don't understand.
• 29:04
  Speaker B: So I think the idea is that it's like, his job to lure her in and make sure she comes back.
• 29:11
  Speaker A: So she doesn't. She's not in on it. He's pretending to be. Okay. I guess I misinterpreted that. Cause I thought she was like, yeah, okay. I don't know. I thought she. I was like, why would she be in on it yet she hasn't been.
• 29:22
  Speaker B: Because the way that. And I think this gets a little muddied in the movie. The way that. Or at least this is how I read it in the book. The way that the carnival works is that you go in the mirror maze, and the mirror maze shows you something.
• 29:38
  Speaker A: Right.
• 29:38
  Speaker B: It either shows you something that you desire, or maybe it taunts you with something that scares you.
• 29:44
  Speaker A: Something like that.
• 29:45
  Speaker B: And then that gets kind of, like, stuck in your mind until you end up coming back to the carnival to ride on the evil carousel and try to get your heart's desire. So Cougar is. His job is to make sure that Ms. Foley.
• 30:01
  Speaker A: That definitely gets lost in translation, because I did not get the connection. Like, I, I, Yeah, the mechanics of how the. The carnival potentially worked. I was. I. To be fair, I wasn't trying super hard to figure it out, but I just. The, the, like, I, Yeah, I could. I didn't know if maybe the. Because I had the same similar confusion with Ed of, like, why is. He sees himself in the mirror with his limbs and then he goes into the mirror thing, but then later we see him as a kid, so I guess he rode the carousel.
• 30:25
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 30:25
  Speaker A: That makes more sense, though. What you just. The way you just explained it makes a lot of sense. And I think that is probably what the movie's going for. Maybe just either I missed what it was trying to do or just didn't quite explain that as, like, succinctly or as well as maybe it thought it did, but that makes sense. But anyways. Does the carousel rewind time seemingly? Because that seems to be the main thing it does, I guess. I don't know if it's the only thing it does.
• 30:49
  Speaker B: I think that's the only thing. The carousel makes you younger or older. Yes, depending on which direction it runs,
• 30:55
  Speaker A: because we see that at the end,
• 30:56
  Speaker B: obviously it runs forwards or backwards. And I think that's the only thing we see it do in the book.
• 31:01
  Speaker A: Okay, and that makes more sense too, then that the. So then, see, that's interesting because that, I guess the cigar guy thing is maybe muddied. My understanding of all of this is that what the carnival actually has the power to do seemingly, is basically control time and either, like, make you younger, make you older, generally make you younger being the main thing that most people want. And that makes sense for Ed, the barkeep, because when he was younger, he had his arms and arm, his legs, so he wants to do that. Ms. Foley wanted to be younger, blah, blah. Jim wants to be older. That all makes sense. I guess my confusion then is like. So, like, okay, that's what the carnival does, and that's what they're. And so they show you something in the mirror maze that, like you said, then drives you to either want to be older or younger or whatever.
• 31:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:51
  Speaker A: And that forces you to come back, and then they end up stealing or sucking out your life force or whatever. Whatever it does that. The evil deed that it's doing. The cigar guy thing confuses me in that regard then, because he doesn't really fit into that in any way. Like, he just wants to be rich, and that's not related to how old or young. You know what I mean? Am I missing?
• 32:09
  Speaker B: So we do know in the book that there are seemingly other ways that the carnival can pull you in and trap you. And we know this because at one point, the boys find Tom Fury's bag just, like, laying on the ground, and they're like, oh, he left his bag behind. And then later on, when they're interacting with some of the carnival freaks, there's this little, tiny little figure, and they assume that he's like a dwarf, but what he actually looks like is somebody who's been, like, squished and shrunk. And they see his eyes and they realize that he's actually the lightning rod salesman and the carnival has, like, done something to him.
• 33:00
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 33:01
  Speaker B: So it's not just the carousel, but the carousel is the main thing that we're dealing with here.
• 33:07
  Speaker A: Okay. We then get. They end up getting back home, and Will runs into his dad at home, and they end up having this conversation. And his dad kind of has confesses this story to him about this time when Will was a child and he was swimming in a lake or a river or something like that, and he nearly drowned. Charles was unable to get in, like, dive in the water and save him because of his bad heart.
• 33:34
  Speaker B: I think they also say he can't swim.
• 33:36
  Speaker A: He also can't swim, but I think it's also implied specifically that he just physically was unable to save him because of his age or whatever. And. And so they reveal. And I don't know how important it is, but it's. He also says it's like a reveal that doesn't matter, really, but that Jim's dad is the one who dove in and saved him, ultimately. But he tells this story and it is a. It's a very emotional. I thought it was a really well done scene as a very, like, emotional kind of revelation about this character and about why he is so concerned about his age and why he feels like he can't be Will's fathers because he's like. He can't keep him safe. He can't. He doesn't have the. The verat. Not veracity.
• 34:22
  Speaker B: Vitality.
• 34:23
  Speaker A: Vitality. There's another word I was thinking of. But yeah. In order to, like, be his father and protect him and blah, blah, blah and all that sort of stuff. And I wanted to know if that conversation and that backstory was in the book.
• 34:35
  Speaker B: I don't recall there being anything like this in the book.
• 34:38
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 34:39
  Speaker B: It's possible that I missed it and I'm not remembering it, but I don't remember there being anything like this in the book. As a movie addition. I could honestly take this or leave it.
• 34:51
  Speaker A: I liked it. I really liked that scene in the movie.
• 34:54
  Speaker B: But I also understand the movie wanting a concrete story to illustrate his dad's anxiety.
• 35:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think it made a lot of sense. And again, I think it was a very well acted scene by both of them. We then cut back to Ms. Foley's house and we see her standing in front of her mirror, and she kind of, like starts seeing. And this is, I thought was interesting. She's at home when this happens, and not at the carnival, but whatever. She's staring at her mirror and she kind of briefly gets a glimpse of herself being younger and is like, yes, please. And, like, starts wishing for that and then becomes the younger version of herself. And then. But when that happens, it's kind of a be careful what you wish for. I don't think it's technically a monkey's paw, but it's whatever, because people are. I found out in the obsession discussion, people are very finicky about what is and isn't a monkey paw situation. You have to use that term very Succinctly or very specifically. And I don't think this technically counts as a monkey, but whatever. As she becomes younger, she then also goes blind. And I wanted to know if that happened in the book.
• 35:57
  Speaker B: It does not. What happens in the book is that about halfway through, Ms. Foley leaves her house to the sound of the carousel. So this is after she's already been in the mirror maze and witnessed herself younger, presumably, is what she saw in the mirror maze. So she leaves her house to the sound of the carousel. In the next scene, Jim and Will find a little girl that they don't know hiding under a tree and crying. Just inconsolable. And. And they deduce that Ms. Foley rode the carousel and that they made her much younger than she wanted to be in order to scare her into, like, working with them. Which apparently works because then they go back to find her later and she's not there anymore.
• 36:49
  Speaker A: Yeah. Huh. Okay. So they end up getting back home and going to bed one night. And as they're sleeping or. No, it's as they get back into the. They're not asleep, they're just. They get back into there. They sneak back into their bedroom or something. I can't remember exactly when this transpires, but they then start having some crazy stuff starts going on. The storm starts blowing in, the ceiling starts ripping apart, and spiders start showing up everywhere. Tarantulas start crawling through the ceiling, through the door. They just start coming everywhere. And I wanted to know if this happened in the book. I think I know the answer to this, but I'm gonna ask it anyways. Does that happen?
• 37:30
  Speaker B: No, the spider scene does not happen in the book.
• 37:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, I assumed because as I mentioned in the prequel, that was a late edition one of the reshot scenes. So I had a feeling that it probably wasn't in the original version.
• 37:45
  Speaker B: So I believe that this scene is a stand in for a scene in the book where the dust witch rides in a hot air balloon to find them. And the balloon leaves like a snail trail on Jim's roof to mark his house.
• 38:06
  Speaker A: Interesting.
• 38:07
  Speaker B: Which the boys then wash off with a hose. One of the weirder things that happens in the book.
• 38:13
  Speaker A: Very interesting, honestly.
• 38:15
  Speaker B: And then Will chases the balloon down with a bow and arrow, tries to shoot it down, but his bow breaks. So then he's clinging to the basket and he just throws the arrow at it. And this works somehow. And it pops the balloon.
• 38:32
  Speaker A: Okay, sure.
• 38:35
  Speaker B: Truly one of the more bizarre things that happens in this book.
• 38:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, you could tell it was in the movie and knowing the backstory that this was added later is that it was very clear. Clearly they felt the movie was getting too boring. Yeah. And too like, we, like, we need something spooky and something attention getting. Something we can put in the trailer of like spiders falling. You know, something that is like going to spook little kids and is going to make it, you know, memorable and blah, blah, blah. Cuz I just think I had a feeling that. I have a feeling they were like, yeah, this just isn't. We're not doing enough here was probably their concern. But. Yeah, but then it is. It does become a thing I thought was interesting is that the lightning then strikes the lightning rod and this seems to stop the. Does the lightning rod ever come into play in the book?
• 39:24
  Speaker B: A little bit. Immediately prior to the hot air balloon scene, Jim had actually taken the lightning rod down. And they realized during this scene that maybe they should have left it up.
• 39:38
  Speaker A: Oh. That maybe it was somehow.
• 39:40
  Speaker B: Maybe it was somehow protecting the house.
• 39:42
  Speaker A: Interesting. So Dark is now looking for the boys and has been for a while after they escaped from the carnival. And he's like wandering around town looking for them and he bumps into. And I think this is during the parade.
• 39:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is during the parade.
• 39:57
  Speaker A: During the parade, he's having this parade through town. The boys see him. They're hiding in the sewer. I don't know how they got in the sewer, but they are hiding in the sewer. They're watching this happen because they realize that this parade is a cover for him to come look for them because he wants to find them. And during this parade, he then bumps into Charles, who is standing on the street. And he's asking Charles if he has seen these boys. And he's like, have you seen a boy? And he's like describing them. And then he opens his hand and reveals on each of his palms he has like a tattoo. I assume it's supposed to be like a tattoo, but it's like, it looks like a little like drawing of each of them, of each of the boys on each of his palms. And that he shows them to Will's dad while he's trying to find them. And I wanted to know if that happened in the book.
• 40:40
  Speaker B: Yes. Mr. Dark has the boy's faces tattooed on his palms, which really should have perturbed everyone a lot more than it seemed to.
• 40:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. To be fair, in the movie, the only person we see him show it to is Charles, I think.
• 40:54
  Speaker B: Right.
• 40:55
  Speaker A: So. And Charles is already kind of weirded out by him and is like something's wrong with this guy, but yeah. And then Charles then hears the boys are hiding in the sewer right underneath him. And so he's able to have a brief conversation with them and tells them to meet him at the library. And they sneak off to library and they're doing research in the library and they're reading, they're going through. And they go through an old journal that belongs to like Charles's great grandfather or just grandfather or something like that. And it is revealed that it's a very exposition heavy journal that they have here in the film. It is just like basically explicitly lines out what is happening. But this journal reveals that the carnival has been to the town before, like in the 1800s. And that it offers people their deepest desires, their deepest wishes, and that Charles's great grandfather or grandfather or whatever was involved in helping fend off the carnival somehow. I don't remember if they go into much detail or not, but fend off the people before. And I wanted to know if that whole scene in the library and the journal and the backstory all came from the book.
• 41:59
  Speaker B: So there is an excellent library research scene in the book. Love a library research scene. It's a little different though. There's nothing about this being a family legacy of fighting the evil carnival. We do find out that the carnival has been to this town multiple times in the past. We learned that by looking through old newspapers. Classic thing you can do in the library. Love, love. A micro.
• 42:26
  Speaker A: They wouldn't have had a microfiche in this time period. I don't think they would have just actually had newspapers. But. But a microfiche scene is yes, classic rip microfiche.
• 42:37
  Speaker B: Charles does read from an old religious text, which is I guess, kind of similar ish to the journal scene that we get. But the text that he reads is about the autumn people, which are implied to be the same type of evil beings or maybe the exact same question mark as the people who are running the carnival.
• 42:58
  Speaker A: Yeah. And we do have an allusion to the autumn people in the film. They say that in a scene right during this whole.
• 43:04
  Speaker B: A far more whimsical name than perhaps these people should have gotten.
• 43:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So then Dark arrives at the library. He somehow knows they're there. He shows up and the boys go and hide and Charles is gonna kinda try to push him, put him off the trail or, you know, distract him or whatever so that try to send him away. And Dark starts talking to Charles though, and he kind of starts taunting him and starts trying to appeal to Charles or sorry he's appealing in this scene. That's what it is. He does all of that. But then he also is talking because he knows the boys are nearby or something like that. And he starts taunting and kind of appealing to Jim specifically by trying to say, hey, come out. Come to me and I can make you an adult, basically by offering him to make him older. And then also he kind of also says, and I could be like your father or whatever, and appealing to the fact that obviously Jim's father ran out on him. And I wanted to know if both of those elements of both offering to make him older, but or also kind of simultaneously offering to be his father came from the book.
• 44:16
  Speaker B: He definitely offers Jim adulthood in the book. One of the running themes, kind of Jim's whole thing, is that he is far more keen on growing up than Will is. He's ready. He wants to be older than he is right now. I don't recall Mr. Dark offering to be Jim's father, but Jim also seems less bothered by his fatherlessness in the book than he does in the movie. Yeah, I felt like the movie made more of a thing out of that than the book did.
• 44:52
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it's honestly almost a little contradictory in the film. It was kind of interesting because the way I interpreted Jim's desire to be older in the film was that he was already thrust into being the man of the house, having to take care of things. And thus, in his head, he wants to be older because he's like, well, I can take. If I'm a man, if I'm an adult, I can actually take care of things. Like, I can be my own man. I can take care of the house, I can take care of my whatever. And I think that that's what it felt like to me in the film. His desire to be older came from. Was because he had. Didn't. Doesn't have a father to take care of things. And if he were older, he could, you know, get a job, whatever, do stuff that would. That would be able to, like, take care of himself, essentially, if he were older. And so I thought it was a little contradictory that he offers him that but then also offers to be his father. Because it's like, to me, those things are almost like running counter to each other because, like, if you're going to offer to be his father, then he doesn't need to be older because you can fill that role. And he doesn't need to grow up necessarily because he has a father then who can take care of him. And so I thought Those were a little. Again, ran a little counter to each other. I thought it still works. Cause he's just kind of trying lots of things to appeal to Jim in that moment.
• 46:08
  Speaker B: He's just kind of throwing spaghetti.
• 46:09
  Speaker A: He's just kind of throwing it at the wall to do whatever he can to get Jim to succumb to his evil desires or whatever. But it was an interesting scene, by the way. The whole library scene, I thought, was just the best scene in the movie. It's very. Well, it's very creepy. I thought all of Jonathan Pryce, who plays Dark. Excellent job in this scene, including my next question, which is they have this great interaction, which I stole a little bit of for the intro quote. But he has this back and forth with Charles about kind of explaining who they are and why they're there, but in a very kind of poetic way. And at one point, Charles kind of accuses him of like, I know why you're here. You stuff yourself with nightmares and Dark responds and butter our bread with delicious pain. It reminded me a little bit of some of the moments in the dialogue and stuff from, oh, my God, the one we did last Halloween, Hellraiser, kind of like the Cenobites or whatever, of, like, relishing pain and blah, blah, blah. Like a little bit of that. And I did love the kind of nebulous, unexplained nature. Even. Even with this conversation where he kind of outlines why they're there, it's still left very poetic and nebulous as to, like, exactly what they're doing and exactly what their goals are and exactly, like, you know, what they're getting out of this, other than just, yeah, they. They're consuming these people and kind of feeding on their fears and all that sort of stuff. That whole conversation, though, between Charles and Dark, I wanted to know if any of that dialogue felt like it came from the book, because I really enjoyed their back and forth.
• 47:53
  Speaker B: Overall, that exchange is very close to the book. The prose in this book, truly 10 out of 10 great stuff. The specific line about nightmares and buttering bread, they don't have that as an exchange in the book. But Mr. Holloway says something close while he's talking with Will and Jim about the type of people running the carnival. He says the stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain.
• 48:25
  Speaker A: Ah. Yeah. So, yeah, definitely where that came from, for sure. And then my final question here. And I do have some more we're gonna get into in Lost, in Adaptation, but my final question here is that as we get to Kind of the climax. And I have a more specific question in Lost Adaptation about the whole ending or the big ending. But my last question here was that Charles is able. He. He knocks Charles out briefly and, like, has the. The Dust Witch, as I now know she is called Pam Grier, like, kind of, like, stops his heart briefly or whatever and, like, puts him to sleep. But he comes back to. And then goes to the carnival to try to. Because Dark ends up grabbing Jim and. And Will and takes them, and he ends up following them and going to the carnival to try to find them. He ends up going into the hall of mirrors. And as he gets into the hall of mirrors, he is, like, wandering through the hall of mirrors, and he also. We're seeing Will is also in the hall of mirrors, kind of running around yelling and stuff. And Dark is, like, taunting him in the hall of mirrors. And I wanted to know if that whole kind of final confrontation between the two of them played out similarly. He, like. He's taunting him in these mirrors. It's very, very cool shots. Like, in the film, it's all these circular mirrors, and we get these shots where they're, like, endless circular mirrors going into the distance. The floor is all covered in fog. It's very creep and cool and constantly. I thought this climax was pretty effective and pretty cool because it ultimately gets to the point where Will confesses his love to his father, and this inspires Charles to. I say confess, this is probably not the right word, but he reaffirms his love for his father, and this inspires Charles to kind of fight back against Dark. He punches through one of the mirrors, and we get this cool shot of him punching then and saving Will from the water from earlier. And, like, kind of ties that all together in a way that's really compelling. And I wanted to know if all of that moment kind of felt similar to the book. I know I added more stuff,
• 50:26
  Speaker B: so I have a much longer answer about the end later. But to kind of sort of answer your question in a very short manner right now, the part of the climax is Charles going into the mirror maze and being met with reflections of himself as a decrepit old man.
• 50:45
  Speaker A: Okay. So that element of it. Yeah. Maybe the rest of it.
• 50:48
  Speaker B: The rest of it is maybe a little different.
• 50:49
  Speaker A: Okay. Which we will get into just a second as we jump into Lost in Adaptation.
• 50:56
  Speaker B: Just show me the way to get
• 50:57
  Speaker A: out of here, and I'll be on my way. Yes, yes.
• 51:02
  Speaker B: And I want to get unlocked as soon as possible.
• 51:05
  Speaker A: So one of the questions I had as I was watching the film and the Wikipedia summary did not include this because I checked that because very often I was like, maybe I just missed a line where somebody said it or it was on a newspaper that I missed or something. And I thought usually the Wikipedia summary would have that in there. Did not have a year in there. And so I was wondering what year this is supposed to take place, because the book was written in 60 something. Right. And then the film came out in 84, I believe.
• 51:29
  Speaker B: 83.
• 51:29
  Speaker A: 83, yeah. Early 83. 80s, but very clearly set in an earlier time period. And I was, to me, in the film, it vaguely looked like the 40s, slash 50s maybe, but also not. It was hard to describe. Like it felt a little bit like a similar setting to like A Christmas Story, like that time period, which I believe is the 40s. Yeah. And. But again, there were some elements that felt older than that at times. Like some of the clothing and stuff. I was like, doesn't it seem. I don't know.
• 52:00
  Speaker B: Anyway, I have an answer to this.
• 52:01
  Speaker A: So when is this supposed to take place?
• 52:03
  Speaker B: I mean, I have. I have my own answer to this. I don't think the movie specified a year. I didn't catch it either. And I'm pretty sure the book also does not specify a year. The movie, I think, is set in a time period that I have just decided to call post mid century Americana nostalgia land.
• 52:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, that makes. Yes, which is exactly when A Christmas Story is set.
• 52:33
  Speaker B: So this imaginary time period mostly looks like the 40s or 50s, but sometimes looks like the turn of the century.
• 52:44
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 52:44
  Speaker B: For example, this movie mostly looks like the 40s or 50s, but everyone has a 1910s telephone.
• 52:52
  Speaker A: You see multiple phone calls that take place on very old timey phones.
• 52:56
  Speaker B: And some of the costume and styling looks like it was borrowed from the set of Newsies.
• 53:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Although to be fair about the phone thing, I don't actually know. That would be interesting to know, like from a historian, if people like continued using those older phones and because I imagine phones were fairly expensive and if you had one that still worked, I don't know, I mean, my grandma had one of those phones that worked and was hooked up through the early 2000s or the late 90s. Now it wasn't her primary phone, it just was, but I bet it was her primary phone through the 50s. I wouldn't be surprised. I could ask my mom. I don't actually know how late they used that phone as like their primary phone, but anyways.
• 53:38
  Speaker B: But not the only movie that does this kind of thing where it's like. It's kind of a mixture of multiple time periods that Americans tend to be nostalgic over.
• 53:50
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 53:51
  Speaker B: Some of the Rankin Bass Christmas specials are also set in this imaginary time period. If you rewatch A Year Without a Santa Claus, you'll see what I mean.
• 54:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 54:02
  Speaker B: Because it mostly looks like the 40s or 50s, but then everyone has a 1910s telephone and a bunch of the women are dressed like it's the Edwardian era.
• 54:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, yeah. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, that makes total sense. And yeah, I agree. And I think that works. And I think that's honestly intentional by the film and the book, probably. I obviously don't know what the prose is like describing it in the book, but I think it's a very intentional choice by the film to make it a time. We talk about this with other things, even more modern things, where you can make something feel more timeless by giving it kind of a. Nebulously.
• 54:34
  Speaker B: It takes place in the past.
• 54:36
  Speaker A: Yes, in the past, and. And now we get that with like, the 80s, 90s, 2000s, that all kind of get blurred together into, like. If you want a timeless nostalgia set. Like, nobody has cell phones, but some of their fashion feels newer than, like, the 80s or 90s, but, like, the cell phones don't exist because we don't want cell phones to exist because that makes it a very marked thing, you know, and so there are plenty of movies that do very similar things like that. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but I know we've talked about it on this show before. Like, I remember having conversations about that. I want to say there's one of the, like, Flanagan. Mike Flanagan movies. We did adaptations. We did that was. Did that or something. But anyways, one of the other questions I had here is that at one point early in the film, we see Charles's father, or not Charles's father, Charles, and I believe the cigar shop guy. Maybe two different people at Lightning rod salesman. Oh, the lightning rod salesman. Both look into this shop window that is like, not a mortuary, but like a funeral home or whatever. They're selling coffins and they see this coffin that then turns into what appears to be a block of ice with a woman inside who has this ring on.
• 55:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 55:48
  Speaker A: And then it turns back normal or whatever. And I was trying to figure out what was going. Now I have more information, like the movie then, kind of. Anyways, do you have anything else on that before I go off on what?
• 56:01
  Speaker B: Not really okay. This also happens in the book. We see Will's dad and Tom Fury see this block of ice that is advertised as having the world's most beautiful woman.
• 56:14
  Speaker A: Oh, is it at the carnival, though?
• 56:16
  Speaker B: It's implied. No, it's not at the carnival. It is similarly in a window, but it's implied to be part of the carnival.
• 56:22
  Speaker A: Okay, but is it mysteriously transforming back and forth from something else? Or is it just, like.
• 56:29
  Speaker B: I don't think it's as concretely transforming as it is in the book, but it's implied to be, like, a thing that's, like, there but not there.
• 56:37
  Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
• 56:38
  Speaker B: Does that make sense?
• 56:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, a little bit. It would be hard to tell, but I. Yeah, because in the movie, it's almost like they're hallucinating and like they aren't sure or whatever. Yeah.
• 56:48
  Speaker B: So we do see Will's dad see her, and he is, I guess, able to resist the most beautiful woman in the world in her ice cube. But then Tom Fury goes in to get her, and that's how they get him.
• 57:03
  Speaker A: That's how they get him.
• 57:03
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 57:04
  Speaker A: Which is what happens in the film.
• 57:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. We never see this world's most beautiful woman again. And I know you have a note here that in the movie it ends up being Pam Greer. I think. Well, she has the same ring.
• 57:16
  Speaker A: That was the thing. So, like, eventually, when we see Pam Grier's character, who I believe is the Dust Witch. I don't think she's ever called that in the movie, but the Wikipedia summary called her that.
• 57:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because that's what she's called in the book.
• 57:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. And so I assumed that was supposed to be her in some capacity because again, she has the same ring.
• 57:32
  Speaker B: It seems like she appears as lots of different characters in the carnival.
• 57:37
  Speaker A: Okay. And I also. I did notice that when the train is rolling in, we see one of the cars, I think, has that block of ice on it.
• 57:46
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 57:46
  Speaker A: And so it's implied that it's part of the carnival, but I just wasn't exactly sure why it was in this. This shop.
• 57:53
  Speaker B: I couldn't tell you. I don't know.
• 57:56
  Speaker A: Going on there. And it doesn't necessarily need explanation. I was just. Because, again, it's all kind of vaguely magicy creepy. They're doing.
• 58:03
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 58:03
  Speaker A: They're luring people in different ways.
• 58:06
  Speaker B: She appears to do a lot of the luring in the movie because we see her on the Ferris wheel with the guy who wins all the money. And I think she's one of the belly dancers, too.
• 58:16
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah. She probably is. I didn't notice for sure, but she probably is. Yeah, that would make sense.
• 58:21
  Speaker B: Mr. Dark.
• 58:22
  Speaker A: She's also, I believe, depending on her. I believe she's the fortune teller. Yeah, I think.
• 58:27
  Speaker B: I think so.
• 58:27
  Speaker A: I would have to. Because they change her and they're covering her face at different times and stuff. And she's wearing like a shawl in front of her face for a lot of reasons.
• 58:33
  Speaker B: She's doing like 18 different jobs for this carnival.
• 58:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. My last question, and this goes back to what we talked about earlier, is the ending. I was a little confused by the ending of the film and what the heck was supposed to be happening. So we get to the big ending. He saves Char, as I mentioned in the last segment. He ends up saving Jim. Not Jim, Jesus, Will. By pulling him out of the water, like pulling him through the mirror, blah, blah. They reunite, they're happy. But then Jim is still missing. They go and they find him. He's at the carousel. Dark has him. Him on the carousel and is going to make him older or whatever. Yeah, but they are able to. Will is able to. As it's spinning up, Charles is able to run up and like, grab him off the Ferris wheel or the car. The carousel, not the Ferris wheel. And they fall on the ground. And then the Ferris wheel is spinning and Dark is still on it. And Will, Jim seems to be like, dead. He's like unconscious or something. And then the. The fair, the carousel gets hit by lightning and starts spinning super fast, crazy out of control. And ultimately this ends up aging darkens in crazily and he ends up dying and killing him or whatever. But meanwhile, while this is happening, Charles is saying something to Will about Jim and how they can help him. But I couldn't really hear it because of the loud lightning. Yeah, carousel stuff happening. Something. He says something about happiness and I was like, what is. And then so they. They are happy. I think the idea is that Will is like upset and sad and is like, no, don't die. And Charles says something like, no, don't do that. We need to be happy. And then them being happy, like, saves. I thought it was very. I could not tell what was happening. And I need to know if any of that is similar in the book and if so, what happens there and what's going on.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker B: Okay, so you initially had this as a couple different questions. I decided to just lump all of them together because the endings of the book and the movie are pretty different.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker B: And I'm gonna have to run through everything that happens in the Book. And it's a lot. Okay, okay. So our two plots start to diverge after Mr. Dark takes the boys from the library and he tells the dust witch to give Mr. Holloway a taste of death, which we see in the movie. And it's implied that she does this. So what she tries to do in this scene. And Mr. Dark and the boys have left already, so it's just her and Charles in the library.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker A: Same in the movie.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker B: She tries to slow his heart down.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker B: But the sight of the witch who is not hot in the book. Okay, okay.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker A: Not played by Pam.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker B: Now erase Pam Grier from your mind and instead picture like she's described. She's described as looking like, you know, the animatronic fortune teller type. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker A: Like that's like an unfortunate caricature of like a.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker B: Yes, yes. So picture that. So the sight of the witch, like, shuffling towards him, whispering slow. Makes him laugh.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker B: And this stops the witch in her tracks. And he realizes that laughing seems to, like, rob her of her power. So he does it more. Okay. He just starts laughing at her and she ends up fleeing back to the carnival and he follows.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker A: Okay, what happens in the film? I must have been writing a note during the end of the.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker B: I think it's implied that she does slow his heart down.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker A: And then he just kind of.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker B: And then he just kind of recovers from that. That's what I thought.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker A: I felt.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker B: Because I was like, we don't see what we don't like. They just show her going up to him.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, they show him going up to him and doing the slow. And then I remember taking a note for writing something. And then I thought I remembered the next scene like him, like, shuffling down the street, heading to the carnival. And I was like, how did we get. And I must admit.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker B: Okay, okay. So then at the carnival, Mr. Dark, he has a crowd of people and he sets up the last act of the carnival. Gotcha. Which is a death defying bullet trick where an audience volunteer shoots a rifle at the witch and she catches the bullet in her teeth.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker A: Bullet catch.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker B: Classic truth. Yeah. So at first no one is volunteering, but then Mr. Holloway arrives, Charles gets there, and he gets to do a dramatic. Katniss Everdeen, he's. I volunteer. I volunteer to shoot the witch. So he gets up on the stage and he is then able to basically force Mr. Dark to bring Will out by pointing out that he needs some help because his hand is broken. Because Mr. Dark broke his hand earlier. And he calls for his son, Will. He's like my son, Will. Where's Will? Will. Will, help me. And then people in the audience also start calling for will. So Mr. Dark is forced to bring Will out. So he rests the rifle on Will's shoulder to shoot it, and then shows the witch that he has carved a smile into the bullet, which is made of wax.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker A: Yes, I think that's traditionally how that trick is done. Yes.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker B: So he has carved his smile into the bullet and he shoots. And the witch dies.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker A: Okay. Killed by happiness.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker B: Yes, killed by happiness. By joy. Then we have the scene in the Mirror maze, which is pretty similar. Mr. Holloway is almost overcome by seeing these visions of himself as this old, decrepit man. But then Will is like, no, you're my father. I love you no matter what. I don't care that you're old.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's very similar to what we see in the film.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker B: And then Charles's acceptance of himself breaks all the mirrors. All the mirrors shatter at once. So then they chase Jim and Mr. Dark to the carousel. And kind of similarly set up Mr. Dark has Jim on the carousel. Jim rides around once while Will tries to pull him off of the carousel. It's implied that Will's hand ages an extra year during this scene.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker A: Oh, no. An old hand.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker B: And eventually he succeeds. He's able to pull Jem off, but Jim is similarly not waking up. And when Mr. Holloway, Charles, tells Will that he needs to laugh and dance because he knows that joy is the thing that wards off this evil. So basically, they revive Jim through the power of joy to answer that question.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker A: Okay, that makes sense then. But it makes sense because we have set it up.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker B: Yes, it makes sense because we set it up earlier with the Dust Witch. Then a little boy comes running in and is like, I am so scared, Mr. Dark. He's getting away. But they obviously see through this and they know that the little boy is actually Mr. Dark, who took a ride backwards on the carousel. And Charles grabs this kid and. And basically hugs him and thinks to himself, evil has only the power that we give it. I give you nothing. I take back, starve, starve, starve. And this kills Mr.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker A: Dark. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker B: So the movie basically tries to do, like, hoisted by his own petard kind of thing.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker A: For some reason, the lightning strikes it and spins out of control. It ages him.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker B: He gets stuck on his own carousel and accidentally turns himself into a mummy, which is fine.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker A: It's a pretty cool effects shot.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, and it's fine. It's a fine message. But it's nowhere near as interesting as not Even close messaging. Even if the book's ending probably could have used a slightly heavier edit.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, absolutely not even close. And I do wonder. This makes me. Hearing this now makes me wonder if more of that was in the original version of this film.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker B: I'm betting it was because.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker A: Because one thing you can tell for sure is that some parts of that mirror sequence at the end of the film were reshoots. Because you could see the wig on Will.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker A: Where he has the. He's older and he has the terrible blonde wig that they had on that. That was more similar to his hair when he was younger. And then also they set up the. We. We never see what happens. At least I don't. Oh, no. She gets killed by him. That's right. She gets killed by Tom Fury with the lightning thing and the blah, blah, blah. That's how the Dust Witch dies. But they do set up Charles's hand being messed up.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker A: In the library because, like, dark grabs them and like, it like ruptures his hand and like he, like.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker B: Like the bone is sticking.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's all like gross and gnarly. And then so his hand is wrapped the rest of the time and it never really comes into play.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker B: It doesn't really matter.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker A: And so you're like. That was because they have like a close up of it and everything you think it's gonna like. Yeah. And so I do wonder if maybe the. So there's clearly some reshoots involved and maybe they were setting up for maybe something closer to this original ending and then reshoots and making it maybe more dramatic or something is how we ended up with. I would have to go back and watch the carousel climax to see if, like, that felt like an obvious reshoot where Will is like in the wig and stuff. Or if that feels like maybe that was the original intended ending. Because the ending in the book sounds way more compelling. Again, I didn't hate the ending of the film, but the biggest issue is just that we have no setup for the happiness thing. And bringing like. There's no. I was like, what is happening here? And then on top of that, it was not helped at all by the fact that I could barely hear what he was saying over the sound of all the chaos.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. I don't dislike what the movie does. I like the idea of it, but I don't think it lands.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker A: No, it just. And again, it very much feels like. Because it was hacked to death by a studio trying to meddle in what the original version was. And it just. Yeah, okay. Cool. All right, those are all of my questions. It's time now to find out what Katie thought was better in the book.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker B: Book? You like to read? Oh, yes, I love to read. What do you like to read? Everything. All right. My sections are pretty short cuz we talked about a lot of stuff in our other sections. But a couple things that I liked better in the book. In the movie, Charles Holloway, they say he's the town librarian. In the book, he's the janitor at the library. Which I think is more interesting and compelling.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, both work.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker B: I think it's both work. But I like the idea of him being this kind of unexpected, like an unexpectedly well read janitor.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker B: I was iffy on the depiction of Jim's mom in the movie. Like, I get that the movie is emphasizing his lack of parental guidance, but it felt a little misogynistic.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker B: And it just felt like overkill to me. I'm like, I don't know that we need to show her being like a bad parent or whatever.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker A: Didn't seem super necessary.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker B: The movie kind of hints at this.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker A: In fact, I think you could have actually had a more tragic kind of compelling characterization for Jim. If part of the reason he wants to grow up is to help his mom because she's trying so hard to be his mother or something like that.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker B: She works herself.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker A: She works herself to the bone and blah, blah, blah. Whereas in the movie we just see her like, in bed, like being kind
• 1:09:51
  Speaker B: of like a petting a cat.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. And you're like, okay. Whereas. Yeah, I think it actually would have made it more sympathetic and more compelling that. Yeah. Oh, I get why he wants to. Because he's trying. He wants to help his mom desperately or something like that.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker B: The movie kind of hints at this, but Mr. Dark is completely covered in tattoos that he uses to control the carnival freaks.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker A: Yeah. We see two tattoos. We see at one point early on, he shows, like, his forearm, which has this like inkblot style, like, morphing tattoo. And then obviously the ones on his hands are the kids, but that's it.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker B: I think.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker A: I don't think we see anything else in the book.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker B: They also call him the Illustrated man. And he's also like a circus freak.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, That's a classic.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker B: Like the person covered in heavily tattooed person.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker A: I talked about that in There was something we did. Oh, boy. I don't remember what story that was, but there was something where somebody had a map tattooed on them. In one of the things we've done in the last year that did not make it into the film adaptation. But that was only in the book. And that. He has, like, a. I talked about. He has a. He has a map. Oh, God. What was that? He has a map that he. He, like, flexes and it makes the clouds move. Do you remember that conversation? What was that?
• 1:11:02
  Speaker B: Yes. Oh, my God.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker A: What the heck was that?
• 1:11:05
  Speaker B: I remember talking about how it's moving.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker A: Was that Cloud? It wasn't Cloud Atlas. I don't think it was something else. I don't remember. It doesn't super matter. But there was something where somebody had. It was something.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker B: I keep wanting to say Treasure island, but I don't think. It wasn't Treasure Island.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, it was something I read and you didn't.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker B: Well, then was it Cloud?
• 1:11:24
  Speaker A: Maybe because you haven't.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker B: It's not like you read a ton of.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker A: No, I know, but I thought it was something else. I thought it was something else. It doesn't matter. No, it was. It was Contact. I'm looking at Contact on the shelf. It was Contact. It was the preacher. It was Matthew McConaughey's character.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker B: I remember that now. Yeah.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker A: In Contact, his backstory is that he was a carny and that he was saved from the carnival at a revival. And that part of his act was that he had this tattoo that he would, like, flex and make the waves move and say, okay, yeah, there we go. Anyways, I knew that was ringing a bell somehow.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker B: Yeah. The movie diverges a bit from what happens in the book. Like, kind of in the middle. There's a scene in the book where they see Cougar, so he had turned into a kid on the carousel. And then he goes back to turn himself back into an adult. And Jim and Will are like, we gotta stop him from doing that because if he turns into a huge, hulking adult again, he'll just kill us.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker B: So they. They damage the carousel while he's on it, and then they accidentally turn him into an ancient husk. And then they're freaked out by this, so they run away, and then they call the police, and then they go back with the police to try to help him. But then he's. They have him, like, strapped to an electric chair, and they are able to revive him, and they say he's the new circus act, Mr. Electrico.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker B: Which we kind of see referenced in the movie, the part where Mr. Dark is torturing Tom Fury about the timing of a storm.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker A: He has him strapped in an electric storm.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker B: I realized that what I was describing sounds weird and nonsense. It Works in the book. And actually, I don't have super strong feelings about this change, per se, but because I didn't feel like the ending of the movie landed, I'm putting this in better in the book.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker A: Okay, fair enough. All right. That was all Katie had for that. Let's talk about what she thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker B: I actually think the movie's opening lines are better than the opening lines of the book. The first line is exactly the same. First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. But the book then goes on to compare October to other months. And I liked that the movie just focused on October and autumn. Yeah, I mentioned this earlier, but I liked that the movie confirmed that Will's dad had had a heart attack at some point or some kind of heart trouble, because it was really, like, very. Just loosely winked at in the book, which left me really wondering. There's also. There's a thing in the book, and the movie replaces this with the scene of Jim peeping into the belly dancing tent. But there's this whole thing in the book where Will and Jim, at one point, while they were, like, out having adventures at night, go past this house and they see through the front window of this house an orgy happening.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker B: And ever since that time, Jim wants to go back to that house all the time to see if perhaps there's another orgy happening. Yeah. And Will is like, I'm not into this. We should not do this. Which is kind of funny. But I. I understand. I think the movie made a good choice to keep it within the carnival and kind of get the same idea across by just having him peep into the peep show.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. All right, let's go ahead and talk about what the movie nailed. As I expected, practically perfect in every way.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker B: The scene where Charles picks up the carnival flyer and kind of wistfully looks at it, and then later he's clutching it in his hand and throws it in the. The fireplace. Jim and Will's windows are across from each other so they can, like, yell at each other. Classic, classic Next door best friend things that I assume people who have that experience did.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker B: I guess the scene where they sneak onto the carousel and meet Cougar and then Mr. Dark is pretty close. There's a brief moment where there's like, a little guillotine that chops a dummy head and it looks like Will. Yeah.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker A: And it, like, freaks him out.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's also from the book.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker B: Mr. Dark does lead a parade through the town to find the boys, but they are hiding under a grate in front of the cigar shop. I also don't know exactly what that's supposed to be. It looks like the sewer, but I don't think it's actually supposed to be a storm drain. Charles does do research at the library before Mr. Dark shows up looking for Jim and Will. And Mr. Dark does offer Charles his youth, but he resists. And then he breaks his hand.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker A: All right, we got a few odds and ends we're going to talk about before the final verdict. Ebert mentioned this in his review, but that he was very laudatory to the film for capturing the spirit and the vibes of the book in lots of different ways. Not only the pros, but also the. The seasonal aspect of it. And boy, the movie does. It is a very autumnal movie that was. I did enjoy that. It did feel it was a nice movie to watch in October. It. It's not a Halloween movie, but it is very much a fall movie. And we get lots of gorgeous landscapes as the leaves are turning and we, we get a field full of pumpkins and all this sort of stuff. Stuff. And I thought that was a lot of fun.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. The movie aged the boys down a little and I was wondering why. I don't know.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker B: And the movie specifically says that they're 12 in the book. They are 13, but they're like weeks away from being 14.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker A: I wonder if it's just the actors they cast. Because the actors did look younger than that.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, they look.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker A: Because they even might have looked younger than 12, honestly. But they. And so maybe it was just, Just. Yeah. Trying to get them closer to the actor's age. I, I kind of just mentioned it, but there were some very obvious, but very pretty or very obvious. Now I don't. I think watching it on a. Maybe not like a, A super high def television, you would not have noticed as much. You know, watching it on a big screen in a theater from far away probably would have been less noticeable. But very obvious but very, very pretty matte paintings like the town and the carnival. There's multiple. Like the opening shot of the town where Tom Fury's walking down, down the road. The road is real, but the whole town in the background is all a matte painting. There are several others. There's one we get of the carnival in the distance that is entirely a matte painting. And they were so, so pretty. And so cool. I love. So great.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker B: We kind of referenced this when we talked about the time period that this movie takes place in. But I love that Jim and Will are dressed like chimney sweeps in this movie. Will's hat killed me.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is great. So I was very, coincidentally this year, my company, we were doing marketing for our local carnival, our local fair that runs every summer, fall, like early fall, late summer. And as I was doing research to put together some commercials, some videos for that, I found a bunch of old photos that I ended up working into one of the commercials for it. But as I was going through those photos, one of the things I discovered that I thought was fascinating and then was referenced in this movie that I would not have known it was like a thing was that in the 60s, our fair. Because these photos that I found were from, I think, the early 60s, our fair had a tent that was like labeled Follies and was like a, like Follies slash peep show slash belly dancer. Like the belly dancer thing. Yeah, that was a thing that American Fairs, like, had back in the day. And I just thought that was so, so interesting. And so, like, I. I don't know obviously what that show would have looked like and been like.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker A: Were you there? But. And then. And.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker B: But probably not.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker A: Probably not.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker B: Probably pretty by like today's standards.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker A: But still, there is some element of. That is hard for me to. I don't know, I remember seeing that and going, I can't imagine the outrage today if our current day fair were to have a tent that was like a. A burlesque show. Yeah.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker B: At the family burlesque dancers.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker A: You know what I mean? And again, I would imagine they're probably not even getting down to like, pasties or anything. I don't know. My guess would be it's not that. But still, I thought that was very interesting. And seeing something similar in the movie, I thought was kind of fun.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker B: Kind of mentioned this, but casting did such a great job getting a kid for Young Cougar, because that kid was creepy as hell.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker B: I looked at that. That child's eyes, and I believed that there was a fully grown adult man.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker B: In there.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. I already talked about how pretty Pam Greer was, so. But there's this. There's a scene where Tom Fury, like, when she approaches him, like, I think it's when he sees in the. He goes into the coffin shop or whatever, and then she shows up behind him and he's like entranced. And it's supposed to be that he's like, Magically in trance. But I'm like, that would just be the reaction of Pam Grier walked up to you.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker B: I mean, they definitely. The boys definitely look older in the
• 1:21:39
  Speaker A: Tarantula we talked about.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker B: This is very clear.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker A: And like I said, I noticed it a couple other times. The main one was the. The mirror scene at the end. But for sure they looked older. But again, the big one for me was it was very clear the. That Will had a wig, like a blonde wig that was trying to recreate his hair from previous. It was like the fanforstic movie that came out a couple years ago where the. Rooney Mara or Kate Mara, whichever one. Whatever one of the Mara sisters is in that movie she's playing. I can't remember the character's name, but the girl in the Fantastic Four. And they had to reshoot. That was a whole production disaster. And they had to reshoot a bunch of movies. And so in that movie, you can tell what all the reshoots are because she has this horrible wig on. It reminded me of that,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker B: really. It's no excuse for movies to have bad wigs. Not movies with budgets, anyway.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker B: They didn't even try to make blind Ms. Foley an interesting carnival freak. Did you notice that?
• 1:22:37
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker B: She's literally just a girl who happens to be blind.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. And they're like.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker B: They didn't even get her a new costume or anything. She's just in the parade as a blind girl.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mentioned it earlier, but the whole library scene, I thought, was really good. It's probably the best stuff in the movie. I liked parts of the ending. I really liked the whole mirror sequence at the end with Charles and his father, Will and his father and punching through the mirror and the shattering and just all the way that was shot. There was some really cool shot where Charles falls to his knees and we get this wide shot of him reflected and all. There's really cool stuff in there. But the library scene as a whole, I thought was just really compelling and creepy. And Jonathan Pryce's performance as Dark in that scene is really, really good. I honestly wish he was in the movie more. That was maybe my only disappointment was that I felt like I wanted. He was so good.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker B: I wanted more of it. He was not in as much of the movie as I thought he would be in.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker A: And he's so compelling when he is monologuing that I wanted even more of it. But the particular. One of the shots I really liked in the library scene is after he's looking for the kids and he kind of Realizes they're hiding up in the shelves. He starts climbing the shelves and we get close up shots of his hands like creeping up the bookshelves and like climbing.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker B: I didn't, I thought it didn't even look like he was climbing. It looks like his hands just like extend towards them.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker A: Oh, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, I thought he was. Whatever. Either way, however, it's the, the shot. It's because all I could see in the moment in the specific shot I'm talking about, you just see his hand. So I don't know. But either way, that was what I
• 1:24:11
  Speaker B: thought was creepy about it was that we see his hand start to go up and then it reaches a point where you would think it would stop. Yeah, maybe that was happening, but it just keeps.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker A: Maybe that is supposed to be what's happening, but anyway. And then he appears behind him and he grabs him. It's that whole sequence I thought was very creepy and very fun. So. All right, before the final verdict, we want to remind you you can do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, threads, Blue Sky, Goodreads, any of those places interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about something wicked this way comes. You can also help us out by heading over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our show. Drop us a five star rating, write us a nice little review that is very helpful, helpful, and you can also Support us at Patreon.com ThisFilmIsLit Support us there. Get access to bonus content at the $15 a month level. If you have something you would really like for us to talk about, you can request it and we will do it as soon as we humanly can. And this in fact, was a request from.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker B: This was a request from Cottonwood Steve.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker A: There you go.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker B: Steve had had this request on the docket for a very long time, but it was never streaming anywhere.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker A: It finally was, so we knock it out. There you go. All right, Fantastic. Katie, it's time for the final verdict.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker B: Sentence fast.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker A: Verdict after.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker B: That's stupid. I'm not gonna lie. I did struggle with this book. The prose is absolutely gorgeous and the ideas are super interesting, but man, did it drag when stuff was happening. It was really creepy and it cooked pretty well. But I spent a lot of my read time thumping my head against the Bush book, begging Bradbury to move on to the next plot point. The movie is fine. Overall, I didn't find it nearly as creepy as the book, and I really don't think that the ending landed quite the way that they wanted it to, but it was fine. The thing that my final verdict really boils down to is the messaging. The book has a very clear message. What defeats evil in the end? Love, joy, laughter, truth, self acceptance, kindness, goodness. When Mr. Holloway has Mr. Dark in his grasp at the very end, he says to him, good to evil seems evil. So I will do only good to you. I will simply hold you and watch you poison yourself. Evil only has the power that we give it. I give you nothing I take back. And I think that's a good and necessary message in these times. I'm giving this one to the book.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker A: What's next?
• 1:26:56
  Speaker B: Up next, we are talking about something we've never done before. We're gonna talk about a Goosebumps book.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker A: Goosebumps.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. So we're gonna be talking about Night of the Living Dummy 3. This is a patron request, which is why it's kind of a random one. But this is. It's episodes.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker A: It's not technically a movie, but kind of. It's the length of a movie.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker B: It's the length of a movie. It's a two parter from the TV series. So it's episodes 24 and 25 of season two, which comes out to like right around an hour and a half. And it's based on the book of the same name by one Mr. R.L. stine.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Can't wait. Very, very fun. That'll be our Halloween episode this year. Come back in two weeks time. We're talking about Goosebumps, Night of the Living Dummy 3. And then next week we'll be previewing that and seeing what you all had to say about something wicked this way comes. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary
• 1:27:51
  Speaker B: pals and everybody else, keep reading books,
• 1:27:53
  Speaker A: keep watching movies and keep being awesome. Sam.