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Pennywise Surprisingly Anti-Queer · Like a Virgin

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Can you do your best? What's your do an impression? Um,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: it's kind of hard. Um, God hates fags. Today, we're
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: gonna you know, file out the what's the what's the
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: code and libraries. We are going to uh file We're gonna, um,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: we're gonna look at the Dewey decimal system and you
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: can check out a Stephen King book from the library.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Fully not knowing how the Dewey decimal system working, because
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: this is like a virgin the show where we give
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: yesterday's pop culture today's takes. I'm ros Damo and I'm
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: fran Toronto. You are aware that I was a somewhat
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: precocious child, right, I think I've given some evidence to
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: that fact. No, no't no. I I feel like you
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: were totally normal, like a completely you know, not a nondescript,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: kind of unmemorable childhood from what I remembered, totally sweet
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and demure. Well I might have been, but I was corrupted.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: And I actually have always been able to trace that
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: corruption to one choice. Sure, just one. Well, I'm one
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: that that stands out as defining. And I think I've
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: said before that I've always been a big reader. Um,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: you know, if I was like in a rom com
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: or something. The thing about me would be like I
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: love to read it so quirky. Um, But um, you know,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I never I kind of went straight from children's fair
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: to adult literature. And the way that that happened was
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: through the work of Stephen King. Because I was I
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: spent a lot of time at the library as a kid,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: especially when I spent weekends with my dad, And I
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: remember being in the library one day and for some reason,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I was in the like adult book section because I
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: was already a little like I knew that I was different.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And I saw a book cover um of a woman's
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: face and it was on fire, and I just had
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: to know what it was. And it was the novel
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Carry by Stephen King. And I checked it out of
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the library and read it and was obsessed with it.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: And I do think it was one of the things
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: that fundamentally shaped and shifted the kind of media I
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: was interested in and the kind of cooky, spooky girl
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I would become. Okay, I want to hear about this,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: but can we just have a quick aside to tell
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: the truth on this podcast that there is like a
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: kind of like phrase in the culture which is you
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: can't judge a book by its cover, but I actually
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: find that a lot of times you can the book.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: The book cover is about as good as the book.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Like that really happens a lot, and we as a
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: culture should be saying that. Yeah. I mean that's why
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: when you see all these covers, stay of the with
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: the with the cartoon people of them, you know exactly
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: what kind of book you're you're about to get yourself in.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Rose and I are alluding to like a genre of
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: like rom com books that we're talking about, Red White Royal. Yeah. Yeah,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: there are these little kind of like oscar health style,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: like millennial illustrations on the cover of like two little
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: you know, gays. It's like a guy with this arms crossed,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: another guy's like leading against one of the letters. Anyway,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: you know exactly what you're signing up for. So Carrie, Yeah, Carrie,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: And I was very young. I was in fourth grade,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: so let's say I was eight or nine years old,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: way too young to read Carrie, which is a horrifying book.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Um that's kind of made all the more horrifying because
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: of how first person it is, so you're very much
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: in the psyche of all these people doing horrible things
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: having horrible things done to them, and it really did
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: shape me in a lot of ways. So I do
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: owe a lot of myself in a way to Stephen King.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: talk about him today, along with the fact that when
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you're talking about the horror genre, you can't not talk
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: about Stephen King, because Stephen King is often credited as
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: the father of modern horror. And I think when you
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: look out at the cultural landscape of horror, supernatural horror,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: everything can be traced in some way back to Stephen King,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: at least American horror. And when we see things like
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: stranger things or goose bumps or like things like that,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: like it all is in his lineage. And I think
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: the tropes that make a Stephen King book are things
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: that are going to be replicated till the end of time. Yeah,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: And you did not have like much familiarity with Stephen
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: King before I brought this episode up. Prior prior to
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: preparing for this podcast, the only Stephen King thing I
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: had ever seen was the Carrie remakes starring Chloe Grace
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Morett's and Julianne Moore, which I did on your insistence,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: watch half of last night and we'll get into it.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: But I I knew you wouldn't spoiler alert. I was
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: not happy. Um, So let's talk about the man, the myth,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the legend, Stephen King. Um. Stephen King's old. I don't
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: know how old, but he's an old white man. So
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: who cares. Um. He's published sixty four novels, which is
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: a lot um more than that flop Joyce, Carol ods
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: have you did you see the oats tweet that has
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: been that was circulating about what about how she's not
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: hot and shouldn't be writing about Marilyn writing. Look, it's
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: it's not it's it's kind of not wrong that that's
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: we kind of spilled like literary non hotties should know
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: their lane, and we do. We do. Um. So he's
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: written a lot of books. I would say that some
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: of the things that he kind of returns to over
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: and over again are childhood and adolescence. That's a huge
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: part of a lot of his novels. And I would say,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: especially the most famous ones, the Manifestation of Inner Demons
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: as Outer Demons, he talks a lot about addiction. Um.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: He is famously was an alcoholic and it worked its
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: way into a lot of his writing. I didn't even
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: know that. Um. And I also think you know his
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: kind of um fascination with an understanding of children adolescence.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: A lot of that comes from the fact that he
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: was a teacher. M Kerry, which was his first published novel.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: It was it was originally published as a short story, um,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: while he was working as a teacher at a like
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: a fancy private boarding school, and then the book was
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: published in nineteen seventy four, um, and that is really
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: what started his career. I would say he didn't pick
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: up like he still kind of worked as a teacher
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: throughout the seventies, even as he started to publish more
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: novels and they became adopted into films. Carry was adopted
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: into a film only two years after it was published. Wow,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: So he became kind of an immediate sense. He wasn't
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: he was an immediate sensation. I would say that, like
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: the real Stephen king Mania is very eighties and that
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: is when he became the figure he is today, which
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: is I think it's he's a very as our producer
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: put it, um, Airport Bookstore author. That's how I would
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: have categorized him to like, to be totally honest, like,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: I just as I didn't know anything about Stephen King,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: and in my head he's in the category of airport novels.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I would have catalog when when authors are this prolific, sorry,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: like the Daniel Steels of the world, or like the
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: John Grishams or whatever you kind of um I put
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: him into that category of like a person who makes
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: a ton of um almost formulaically engaging novels, you know
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: what I mean? And I don't actually think maybe that
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Stephen King belongs in that. I think what he does
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: is maybe a lot more masterful, or at least his
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: popular work is a lot more masterful than airport PAPERVACU
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: think so too, when when when I say airport novels,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I just mean that he's reached such a critical mass
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: of consumption that his work is readily available, his work
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: is always being adopted. We're right now in a in
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: a moment where for the next couple of years there's
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: like almost always going to be some Stephen King adaptation happening,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: which I honestly think is part of like effect, right,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Like I think that a new popular rization and or
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: rather invigoration of prestige horror and UM a greater popular
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: popularization of horror and possibility for horror to win awards.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I think it's being people are being like, well, what
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: other Stephen King things are like out there that we
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: haven't you know, looked at. Yeah, And so much of
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: his work has been revisited multiple times, as we see
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: with Carrie with It UM. A lot of it has
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: also kind of been remixed UM in a in an
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: almost incestuous way, like the Hulu series Castle Rock that
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: UM aired a couple of years ago, and I tried
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: watching a few episodes of and just wasn't super interested.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: But it was a TV show in which UM characters
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: from all of his novels kind of lived in the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: same town and interacted with each other. UM. So there's
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: just so he's he really has UM spread kind of
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: out to every aspect of our culture, and now his UM,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: his sensibility is one that is now being mimicked by uh,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: you know, the new things that are peak culture, Like
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: like you mentioned, Stranger Things. Stranger Things is a direct
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: homage to Stephen King. It's the you know, kids, kids
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: riding around on bicycles, spooky stuff happens young girl with
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: you know, terrifying powers, Like it's all allusions to things
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: like it like fire Starter and carry um, like stand
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: by Me. So he has had all of these peaks
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: and valleys of being you know, relevant in culture, and
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's stopping anytime soon. So you know,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: what better time to talk about him than in our
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: spooky era. And I think that honestly, something that's like
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: indicative of like more or rather more things that are
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: indicative of Stephen King's work that you're kind of getting
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: at is the storied quality to them that like supersedes
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the horror genre. Like if you took the IT Book
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: or whatever and you took out all the kind of
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: horrific graphic things that happened and happened in it, it
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: would still be a fucking good, compelling story. You know,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: he is a master of plot, and you know, I
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: think that you you pointed out the stranger things um
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: parallel to me when we were watching for the Part
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: one remake together. But like something that I've noticed after
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: consuming a few more things in preparation for this episode
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: is that Stephen King's work has a kind of like
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: sublime eerieness to it, Like there's the kind of obvious
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: eereness of like basements or ghosts or you know, things
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: like that. But like Stephen King understood why clowns are
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: scary or whatever, he knows why twins are scary, right,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Like um, a kid with an imaginary friend, a really
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: really Christian protective mom. Right, he sees the kind of
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: hidden uneasiness that we might encounter in a literal, normal
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: human life, and it's an eeriness that is pulled out
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: of our lives. Like there's a really good quote from
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the Philosophy of horror Um in which Noel Carol writes
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: that for King, the horror story is always a contest
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: between the normal and the abnormal, such that the normal
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: is reinstated and therefore affirmed. That's such a great way
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: of putting it. It's like what I was trying to say, honestly,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and and yeah, and I think on top of that,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the thing that you were talking about, that childhood adolescence
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: um component that works its way into a lot of
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the books, I think lends itself to Stephen King's fascination
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: with outsiders, nerds, people that are ostracized. Deviance, yes, deviance
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of any kind. Um, people with unique talents, people more skills. Yes,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: And I think that also, like that abnormal normal thing
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: you're talking about is like Stephen King, I think introduces
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: um very inventive, if not totally bizarre monsters and scares,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: like things that you could never really I think. I
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: think the specificity of his work is what makes it
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: really good. And I also think, honestly, the specificity of
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: his work is something that gets him in troublesometimes. But um,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: we'll get into that. Yes, but you know, let's go
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: back to the beginning, both for Stephen King and for
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: me more importantly. Um So Carrie, as I said, was
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: published in ur first as um, you know, a story
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: in a magazine, and it was something that he thought
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: he should like stop working on, and his wife, Tabitha,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: was like, no, no, this is good, you should keep
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: at it. And he kind of leaned on her to
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: help get inside the female psyche. So his wife's name
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: was Tabitha. Is that weird? Tabitha? I mean, she's sounds
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: a name. She sounds like a like a wench. I
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: think it sounds like Tabitha makes perfect sense. Is the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: name of someone who's married to Stephen Carry, Yes, it does.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: That's I don't know, she's still married. It's like two
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: on the nose is like what I'm saying, that's funny.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: So Carrie for the Virgins UM is a very short
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: novel about a girl named Carrie. A girly named Carrie
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: White who um is bullied at school because she's weird
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and also because she has an extremely religious mother who
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: has sheltered her her entire life. The book starts with
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Carrie getting her first period um during gym class in
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the showers, and her mother has never told her what
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: it is, and so she thinks that she's dying. And
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: the other girls who kind of have been looking for
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: this reason like an excuse to bully her, um, you know,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: torment her in this really ugly way, and it unlocks
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: this latent ability Carrie has, which is telekinesis, which is,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: you know, being able to move things with your mind. Um.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: These girls are punished by not being able to go
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: to the prom um and they react in different ways.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: One of them decides to have her boyfriend take Carrie
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: to the prom out of penance. UM, and then one
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: of them decides to further humiliate Carry at the prom
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Um and this all leads to, you know, the iconic
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: scene where it Carries Crown prom queen gets pigs blood
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: dumped on her and then her mind fractures and as
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: revenge she destroy She kills everyone, destroys the town, kills
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and is killed by her mother. Oh, she's killed by
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: her mother in the original Yes, and in both in
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: both the book and the film adaptation. Before Carrie is
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: able to kill her mother, her mother stabs her, and
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: then Carrie kills her mother and escape. It's their house
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: which burns to the ground and Um you know, dies
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: later after Sue Snell, the sort of sympathetic girl who
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: had her boyfriend take carry to the prom Um, finds
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: her and with her as she dies. UM. In the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: In the book it's it's Um a little differently than
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: the Brian de Palma film. Um Carries Powers also have
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: a sort of you know, psychic um, a component where
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: people in the town. Because the book is an epistolatory novel,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: so a lot of it is told through UM letters
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: and through letters and also UM transcriptions from so in
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the world of the novel, what happened Um in Chamberlain, Maine,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: which is where the book is set Um has become
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: this national phenomenon, and there's a whole inquiry into it.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: So a lot of the novel is told through court
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: transcripts or magazine are articles um, and you find out
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: that a lot of people, like while Carrie was going
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: on her rampage, I knew what was happening because they
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: had the psychic connection with her. And Sue Smell at
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the end of the novel is inside Carrie's mind while
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: she dies, and it it adds this component to it
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: of um, this girl not only taking her pain out
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: on people in a physical way, but also kind of
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: making this town that has tortured her be witness to
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: what is happening. Can we talk about the fact that
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: like in this kind of like out the outsider troupe
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: that's like in Stephen King's books, this like psychotic break
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: that Carrie has and the literal revenge that she enacts
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: on like the people that have like really torture her
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: is so satisfying. It is, it is incredibly satisfying, but
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: it's also horrific Um. And it it is that fantasy
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: that all of us have of being able to get
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: revenge on but but it's taken to you know, the
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: nth degree. But it also is the blueprint for a
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: lot of things that would come after it. You know,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: we would not have things like um, The Dark Phoenix,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Saga and X Men. We would not have Wanda Maxim
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: off the Scarlet which, you know, losing her mind. Um,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't have like Willow from Buffy going evil. All
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: of that. It goes directly back to carry these mentally
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: unstable powerful women, you know, letting loose on the world
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: or the universe favorite tune to them. It is also
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite tropes. Yeah, I um, I've never
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: have I've yet to see the original. It was one
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: of the things that I was not able to get
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: to before we watched, but I did. Such a beautiful,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: beautiful film. I can't It's incredibly sad. Sissy Space is
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: so good in it. And even though Sissy's basic is beautiful,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: she has this sort of like awkward gazelle like quality
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: that works really well. Um for Carrie. It reminds me,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: or at least what you're describing, and from what I
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: know from like clips of the movie. It actually I'm
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: just now feeling like it's reminding me of Shelley Duval
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: and the Shining like it kind of feels like a
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: similar archetype and like an unassuming, like skinny, awkward white
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: woman and her mother who's played by Piper Laurie. Um,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: you know, Margaret Um is horrifying. UM. I mean, she's
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: as she's given sort of this I think, I mean,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: because Piper Laurie was so beautiful, she's almost um like
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: resplendent in her you know, um psychopathy in the movie.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: In the book, it's much more. It's just disturbing because
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: you also there's a lot of chapters that are first
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: you know, from her perspective um of how you know,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: she sees Carrie as this as um, you know, an
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: abomination because she you find out that Carrie's mother was raped,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: that's how she became pregnant with her, and she wanted
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: to kill her when she was born and she didn't,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and she sort of regretted that Carrie's whole life. But
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: genetic trauma honestly is like also a thing in Stephen
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: King's books, like the parents are always fucked up and
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: makes the kids sucked up, Like he really over and
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: over again, has a kind of childhood thing that keeps
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: coming through and according to my therapist, I have a
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: similar thing. You watched a half of the reboot starring
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Chloe Grayson, Rats and Julianne Moore. I okay, I have
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: to say when I watched this movie years ago, I
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: had a pretty low threshold old um of quality for
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: like horror movies in general. So I remember actually really
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: liking it, in large part because I like Julianne Moore
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: and I like Chloe Grace Morett's um But I think
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: that the thing maybe you did not like about it,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: which I now retroactively do not like about it is
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the kind of imaxification of the story right, like it's rotted,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: it's and I don't even I mean, what do you
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: mean by imaxification? I feel like, um, the so you
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: didn't get to the end, but like I you see
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: it throughout the film I've watched. I have watched clips
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: of the prom scene, so I do know a little
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: bit what the end looks like. Okay, It's like she
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: literally like blows up the town. There there's so many
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: special effects explosions like um c g I elements that
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: like have to create Carrie's kind of like psychotic break.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: And I think that that is in large part like
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: what's wrong with like a mayor Can movies right now?
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Like it just scrubs out. I think a lot of
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the integrity of what could be a really good story,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Like these are complaints that you and I have of,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Like a lot of Marvel movies are like a lot
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: of just like when when it gets too far into
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: the c G, I it's like I don't really care
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: about these characters as much anymore. Right well, because the
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: original movie is all practical effects and it's so much
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: more effective. The remake, I think is bad a lot
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: because of Chloe Grace Maria ut perfectly cast. She's not
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: she's she's way too pretty to be carried like I
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: is carrying on supposed to be pretty. No. I mean
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: in the book she's written as much more like kind
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: of plain and dumpy. But I don't think it. I
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: don't think it's like, um, she needed to be ugly.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: It's just she looks like a movie star. And I
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: mean that's a problem with all movies, is like these
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: people just look like very attractive actors. Um. But Chloe
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Grace Martz is also just a bad actress. Um, She's
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: just not believable in the way that Sasy's face it was.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: And I also think this is a film that is
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I don't think it really works outside of its time
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: in a couple ways, Like I can suspend disbelief that
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: in the seventies Carrie White would, because of her extremely
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: religious mother, not know about menstruation. But I don't believe
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: that a teenager in the tens, no matter how sheltered
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: they were, would who went to public school, would not
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: know about menstruation, like would not have taken a health
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: class at some point. It's just not believable. Yeah, I
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: I the the reboot. Yeah, it takes place in the
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: modern day ish and like, I totally totally agree with you,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I do think, Like, honestly, another reason, maybe another reason
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I enjoyed it was really just because it was the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: first time I was watching any iteration of the Carry story,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: and I probably would have had a much more positive
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: reaction if I had watched the original first. But I
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: think a lot of what I was feeling and I
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: was watching it was kind of my own connection to
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the subject matter, you know, like, I don't know, it's
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: really personal. My my mom is not a Carry level mom.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Like it's it's not anything like that, but like a
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: child that is like protected from the world because of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: like oppressive Christianity and like you know, doesn't know things
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: about her own body that then cause real world harm
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: to her because of that kind of protection. I was
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: just like, whoa like that actually is like something that
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: uniquely hits home and hasn't like a an ever present
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: relevant to it. But I totally agree with you, it's
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense in the two thousand's. Yeah. Also,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: all the girls in the movie look like Paxson models
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: really weird. M Chloe Grace Moretza's hair extensions are I mean,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: are like a horror movie unto themselves. What about Julianne
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Moore's hair extensions, I mean Julianne Moore's it's not hair always.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: It's not that it's not actually a hair extension problem
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: with her, It's just that her her hair is still
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: like kind of even though it's like looks very dry
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: and kind of unkempt, it's still like a gorgeous red color.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: And I don't believe that Margaret White would like you do,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: but like fall prey to the sin of vanity coloring
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: her hair and because because she's a redhead. They kind
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: of tried to do like a strawberry blonde thing with
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Chloe Grace Moretts and it just it just looks like
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: someone forgot to put toner on her after she got
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: her roots touched up. And also thought it was really funny.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: You know, there's always a scene in a supernatural movie
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: where the character goes to the library to like research whatever.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: That happens in a lot of Stephen King And there's
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: there's a point where carries reading a book that's just
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: called telekinesis and like, I don't think that book exists. Stupid,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: that's so dumb. I forgot about that. And um also
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Ansel L. Gore is in this movie, which you know,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: oh my god, but he does die. Um. But Judy
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Greer is in the movie, which I was very happy about.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: But then also she dies. Happy about Judy Greer in
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: literally any movie at any time. Um. But Carrie, like again,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: you know, cannot be overstated how much, um I think
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: culture is is owed to it, how much I am
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: owed to it? Um. And you know it kind of
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: set a lot of things that um, I mean, uh,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: And Stephen King owes his whole career to it, and
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: It's set in motion a lot of things that he
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: would revisit, like fire Starter, which um he wrote after this,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: which has also been adapted into various films. UM fire Starter,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: fire Starters another novel about a girl with special powers.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: It's about this girl whose um parents were UM part
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: of these trials of experimental UM hallucinogenic drugs in the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: seventies that gave them like low grade psychic powers. And
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: they have a child who has this like insane pyrokinetic
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: power where she can create fires with her mind, and
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: a government agency wants her. It was made into a
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: movie with Drew Barrymore. It's one of her like first
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: big films. I think it was pre Et or maybe
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: post Et, I don't know. Um. There was a recent
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: remake of it too. Was Zac Efron as the Dad
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: character I would watch unfortunately, UM, but was it his
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: new or old face? Sorry? Dad, it was his old face.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I miss his old face old face too. But UM.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: You know, adolescence is something that Stephen King would return
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: to again and again. UM like an it which we um.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I've read the book, I've seen the contemporary remakes. I've
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: never seen the miniseries UM starring Tim Curry Um. The
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: book was published in six The TV movie, which was
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: a two part um movie, came out in and then
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the modern remakes came out in seventeen and twenty nineteen,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: so we watched it part one together recently. It was
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: a lovely experience, to be honest. Um, my kind of
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: childhood association with it on slee is like associated with
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: a fear of clowns that I think permeated like the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: nineties was all across like Halloween costumes, Like was absolutely
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: like um in like goose Bumps or like in other
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: kind of scary things that I had growing up, And
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: I just like, I was like, I don't know, I
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like, uh, well, here's my question. Were clowns
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: scary before it? I bet you anything. I'm sure that
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: maybe there maybe was like a conversation in the culture
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: about how clowns are creepy, But there's no way that
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: they would to this scale be immediately associated with horror,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: because I think now clowns are immediately associated with horror
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: because of Suman King and and you know in the book,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: the way that it's explained why it the entity takes
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: the form of Pennywise is because children love clowns. It's
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: a way for him to lure them to him so
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: he can scare them and eat them, right. And that
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: is to say, like I think at the time that
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: this novel came out there we didn't have culturally the
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: immediate connotation of clowns being scary. And I do think
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: that it is the red print. Yeah it isnt the print. Yeah,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: I I um I for for those of you that
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: don't know, uh, the book itself is like bible length,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Like it's it's a thick, thick book um. And I
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: feel like I know a lot of people that are like,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: oh my god, it is my favorite book ever, I
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: love that book or whatever. Like I think it's despite
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: being so long, I'm always surprised by how much of
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: a sensation it like still is. But when I sat
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: down to watch part one with you, I had no
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: idea that there was this like kind of epic um
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: lifelong story inside of it. Um for the Virgins, there's
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: a group of kids that you know, start to encounter
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: it as it's slowly killing children in the town of
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: dairy Um, and a lot of horrific things happen. It's
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: vanquished and then boom, it jumps twenty seven years and
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the kids have to return to Dairy to kill the
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: clown again as it starts finding new victims because they
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: made a pact between each other as kids to come
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: back to the town and do so if it ever
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: happened again. Yeah, And what you find out is that
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: it is an entity that has lived in Dairy since
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: possibly the beginning of time, and like is an alien
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: from outer space that crash landed into Earth. And it's
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: an entity that feeds off of fear, So it visits
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: primarily children because I guess their fear taste better, they're
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: easier to scare, and it manifests as whatever they scare
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: them most. But it's most favorite um you know form
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: is Pennywise, the dancing clown played by Bill scards Guard
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: in the film by Tim Curry in the original TV
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: mini series and like as a kind of monster, Pennywise
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: frequently finds its victims at their emotionally lowest points, like
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: it finds children back Nastian broke, like gay bashed, or
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: you know, like uh, just finding victims when they feel
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: already like outsiders, like playing back to this like outsider
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: thing that keeps going in and out of Stephen King's work. Um,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: but I'm curious actually to know from you, uh why
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: this like kind of reboot worked for you, because you
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: know you're kind of staunchly against reboots. You and I
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: have not seen, um, the Tim Currery one, so you know,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: virgins out there. We're virgins to the Tim Curry mini series,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: so we would love to know, like why it's so great.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: I would imagine it's just like Tim Curry that makes
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: it great. But I wh when I was googling, like
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: trying to find like images of like him as it
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: or whatever, I had a really hard time visualizing how
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: this series would work in the eighties, how the practical
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: effects would work, all this different stuff. Because Bill's Scars
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: cared so fucking good he is. I have watched some
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: clips on YouTube of some of Pennywise scenes, and I
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: think the way Tim Curry plays it is much more.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: He goes there is a very um dramatic shift from
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: when he's doing Pennywise, just this sort of like Wise
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: crack in clown too, the monster who eats children, and
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: with Bill Scars guard, I think it's I'm not gonna
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: say it's one note because it's not at all, but
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: it's he's always he's always menacing, He's always a monster,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: no creepy, no camp. I would say there's still a
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: little camp because it's a clown, but I think it's um,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: it's he's always sinister and and Tim Curry while still sinister,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: like you still could there's there's I think there's a
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: little more humor there, um than with than with Tim sinister.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Camp is like in every Tim Curry role I can
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: think of, I actually feel like him. Curry is unable
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: to not seem either sinister and or camp like it
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: really is in every single I'm literally cataloging in my hat.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: I can't think of anything. You know, I've never seen Clue.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: I really want to watch it. All the virgins are
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: at home screaming. I'm not like I'm not like a
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Clue die hard like I've seen a billion times, but like,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: I know that people have that relationship to this movie.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: We have to someone needs to If we have somebody
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: out there that like wants to come in and like,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: uh pop our cherries on Clue. I've only seen it once,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: we should do it. Um, you know, maybe like for
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: around the Holidays might be a good one. Okay, so
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: why did the reboot work? We were what why else
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: did you like the real I think it's I thought
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: it was gorgeous. I thought it was like prestiguous. Yeah,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: it's very scary. Child actors are amazing, yes, um. And
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: also it started this Stranger Things level craze of people
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: being obsessed with these child actors, probably partially because this
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: came out at the same time of like peak Stranger
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Things maybe, And um, that little kid is in both
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: of them, and the girl the main girl is also
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: from a Netflix thriller franchise. I'm not okay with this,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: which is so good. Yeah, Like, my sisters were obsessed
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: with this movie. My sisters are about to turn twenty,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: so they were like peak you know, teen like audience
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: for this movie when it came out, and they even
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: went to a meet and greet that had. It was
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: like a mall meet and greet like what they used
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: to do for boy bands, and you could meet actors
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: from Stranger Things and it The Stranger Things kids are
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: so internationally famous, like so mind blowing, the most famous
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: people in the world truly, Like Millie Bobby Brown is
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: the most famous woman in the world, the most she
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: we we really as a culture, Like I don't think
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: we even fully can grasp how famous those kids. Sorry,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: it's it's kind of wild to me. Um, but I
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: thought this movie was amazing. I think I was really
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: when we were watching it together, I just remember turning
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to you and being like, this is like a genuinely
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: compelling story, like uh, And it's hard for me to
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: feel that in a lot in a lot of like
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: the horror genre. I didn't feel that way about part two,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: which we'll get to. But the scares are so well done.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: The effects are really good. Effects are really good. Um,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Bill scars Guard can do so much with just a look.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Have you ever seen him do the smile out of makeup?
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: It's he does it on a late night talk show.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: It's really fun. I need to watch that, I think. Um.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: The scariest, not well, like, the biggest jump scare of
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the first movie for me is the scene where they're
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: watching the projector and then between one frame and the
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: other you see like the woman turning into him, and
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: then between one frame and the other he comes out.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: But even just like the little moments of him, like
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: he's like standing with Billy's ripped off arm, and like
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: a waving with it, or when he has the blue
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: and it like comes out of his face. It's just
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: it's oh and we I mean remember the Pennywise mania
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: there was when this movie came out. Every fucking beauty
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: YouTuber Pennywise did a Pennywise tutorial for Halloween that year,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Stephen King was paying Nick's cosmetics lifell they were they
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: had it down something else that this movie kind of um,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: something that's this movie maybe unknowingly uh taps on that.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I'm curious if you noticed was I immediately started thinking
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: of balloon fetishists. Do you know that a thing? Oh
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: my god, girl, I'm actually sure. Is it people who
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: would like to sit on balloons and and pop them? Yes?
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: If you don't know, there's like there's a huge kind
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: of subb cultural fetish about people that are really really
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: turned on by the popping or anticipation of popping balloons
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: and find that scary. It is scary. That's the thing.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Is Like, I'm curious if it was if there's anybody
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: on set who knew about this, because there are a
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: few moments. I know there's one, there's like one or
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: two in part two. Um, but I think there's something
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: in the first part movie as well, where like there
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: are several kind of there's tension built around a balloon
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: that's gonna pop, you know what I mean. And I
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: thought that that was again just kind of the thing
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: that we're talking about, that sublime eerienus, that kind of
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: like unnamable antition, anticipation of something that the tension is
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: so thick in these movies, but particularly the first movie,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: and also there's so many easter eggs that you don't
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: see of because it has control of the town of
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: of Dairy, and a lot of scenes there's usually someone
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: in the background who's watching one of the child characters,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and you know, there's lots of YouTube compilations of all
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: these moments that you missed in they're really eerie, and
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: it's just it's I think it's just very good filmmaking,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: um and acting and like all of the all of
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: the parts came together in the right way, which unfortunately
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: can't be said for the second movie. I yeah, the
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: second movie, I um, I honestly didn't even finish because
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: in the first like twenty minutes or so, I just
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: felt like there were so many scenes in a row
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: where I was like this feels really Um, it was
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: giving me stars. It was it was giving me like
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: unearned like stars with this yes, sorry sorry stars with
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: the Z stars net clarify. Yeah, yeah, sorry sorry sorry.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: It was giving like soapy, unearned melodramatic moments. I'm thinking
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: specifically of, um, Jessica Chassan, which, how the funk was
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Jessica chestingon in this movie is so baffling to me
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: because she's literally because she's a redhead. Like people they
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: were like, who's the redhead actress that we know? You know,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: it was either her, I mean them, and I'm sure
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Amy Adams was like I'm good love and yeah Amy
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: would have chewed though. Um. But Jessica Chastian has this
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: scene where, um, first of all, in the in the
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: part one of the movie, you've spent a lot of,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, gratuitous scenes with this like pedophile father. Right,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: this character has a dad, Yes name, great name, Beverly
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: has a dad that's a pedophile. There's a lot of
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: really hard to watch scenes wherein he's like just she's
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: a captive in her own home. It's really like yes,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: And it's one of those things that I think Stephen
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: king leans into and why it finds her as a
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: victim and finds her at the lowest moments so frequently.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Do you know why? I mean Part two was like
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: critically like not you know, loved, like people didn't like
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: it at all? Why didn't people like it? Like? Do
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: you know? I think a lot of it is just
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: because the adult story is not as interesting as the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: child story. Um. You know, the way the novel plays
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: out is that, um, the two are kind of intermingled.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: I mean it is separated into the older and younger,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: but they do kind of interact with each other a
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: bit more. And I you know, like it. When you
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: think of it, you don't think of the adult parts
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: of it. You think of the kids being scared by
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: the creepy clown. And so I think it's just, um,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: not enough story. Um. In the back half of the
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: book is stretched out over a lot of movie and
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: and it was three hours long. It's a really long.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: It's not as effective. I will say, there are still
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: scenes that are good and Larry, I think one of
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: the scariest visuals is when um, James McAvoy is in
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: the fun house and Pennywise is behind the glass trying
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: to get to the kid hitting his head and his
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: mouth stretches open. That just that image haunts me, and
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: it's like incredible c g I work really good acting, like,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: but that's all the movie is. It's like a collection
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: of moments that are kind of good, but they're not
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: held together by um, you know, a movie that knows
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: how to weave them all together in a compelling way,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: which I think the first one does really effectively. And
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: I think in part two there was some of this
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: like imaxification thing that we were talking about too, Like
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: I felt like there were way more big swings on
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: the c g I level to pull off Part two,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: like the big Paul Bunyan guy. Yes, the little like
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: create not scary, and the little creatures coming out of
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: the fortune cookies and stuff like that. Um. I think honestly,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: part of the reason it didn't work for me was
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: that the anticipation of seeing it and when we don't
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: see it um, which by the way, I love that
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: it's pronouns are it um, which maybe Stephen King invented
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: it it pronounced um. I feel I felt like, because
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: we've already seen it, it was a lot less scary
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: In part two, I also feel like, um, there was
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: something totally off about Bill Hayter, who had really great
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: jokes and like I really was probably my favorite part
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: of the movie, but felt like a different movie, you
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like his jokes were like just
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: um something that I added levity and we're definitely true
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: to part one. But I was just like, I feel,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know if he's like in this like cinematic universe.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I think like the Wise cracking, you know, class clown
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: figure again works and another trope maybe that Stephen King,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: you know, laid the foreground, because we see that trope
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: in a lot of different things today. But queer legend,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: careeer legend right, Bill Hayter spoiler alert Bill Hayter's character
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: and of being closeted gay man, Why does Bill Hayter
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: keep playing gay? Well, let's talk about The Shy Name,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: which is maybe in my top five movies. You say
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: it's one of the greatest movies ever created. I would
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: say that and like with absolutely no hyperbole I I
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: and I would completely validate that. I thought it was
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: an amazing So the novel was written in nineteen seventy seven,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: making it, you know, one of Stephen King's earlier novels.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: I think it's UM one of his most personal novels. UM.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: The film version, directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Jack Nicholson
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: and Shelley Duval. Um came out in eighties, so pretty
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: quick turnaround there. Um the film is I think like
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: universally considered one of the greatest films ever made. It's
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: definitely one of the best horror movies, if not the
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: best horror movie ever made. UM one of the defining
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: films of Jack Nicholson's career. I think probably and Shells
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: and Shelly's probably the thing that is associated with Stephen
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: King more than anything. I do think that three, the
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: three things we're talking about today are probably Stephen King's
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: most famous novels, UM and the ones that that people
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: think of first when they think about him. UM. And
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: I think because The Shining Is is so personal to
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: to him, and there's so much more of him in
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: it than than the other two things we've talked about,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's partially why can you describe that? Because Stephen
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: King does, I think, routinely put himself or a shell
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: of himself into a lot of his books that you
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: can spot pretty quickly. But I but I, yeah, I
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: did recognize that it was. He was very in the Shining.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: A lot of his characters are authors. You see this
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: in Misery, UM, which I've still never seen or read. UM.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: I think The Shining specifically is really personal to him
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: because UM, Jack Torrence, the main character, is an alcoholic
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: UM and Stephen Hang, as I mentioned at the beginning
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: of the episode, had a really intense struggle with alcoholism,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: and I do think this is a you know, a
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: version of himself in which he's trying to work that
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: out on the page. UM. The book and the film
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: are very different. I think The Shining is one of
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: the few examples of a film adaptation transcending its source material,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: because it is I didn't read the book until, like, um,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: kind of crazy enough. I read the book in early
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: COVID quarantine that sounds like, which is like a bit
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: on the those to read a book about being stuck
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: somewhere until you're driven to madness and murder. Honestly, I'm
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: surprised I was inhabiting spaces with You at the same
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: time and survived to tell the tale. I will say,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to say that the movie is better
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: than the book, because I don't think that's like an
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: interesting take. I would say though, that it transcends the
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: book just because of how iconic it has become in
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: terms of its visuals, which I think are more than
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: anything what Kubrick brought to the project, like this incredibly
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: artistic visual language to tell this story, um, which did
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: sacrifice a lot of what King thought was important about
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: the novel, and he has gone on record many times
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: saying that he's not a fan of the movie. I
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: did not know that the actually though, um So, Stephen
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: King did write a sequel to The Shining Doctor Sleep um,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: and a movie version of that was made. It's I
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: actually love the movie. Um. You and McGregor plays the
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: grown up Danny Torrence the little boy, and we can
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: get into this, I think after we talked about The Shining,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: But it does bridge the book and the movie versions
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: um to kind of combine them and fix some of
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: the problems and re insert a lot of what was
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: lost in the adaptation of the novel. And Stephen King
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: has said that that film has helped him appreciate the
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: original Shining film in a new way. Oh that's really cool.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: That makes me want to watch it, honestly, now that
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I've watched The Shining, So for the Virgins. The Shining
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: is about UM, a writer named Jack Torrence who has
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: recently been fired from his position at a private boarding school.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: You find out more of this in the novel, but
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: it's because he like hit a kid or something and
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: so Stephen King, So ste what were you doing that
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: your your your your school that you were teaching that.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: He's UM trying to find work to support his wife
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: and young child, UM, and he gets a job as
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the winter caretaker at UM this hotel in the movie,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: it's the Overlook Hotel, and essentially what that means is
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: he and his family will spend the winter they're just
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: maintaining the hotel, UM, but they're going to be totally
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: by themselves. UM. Kind of unbeknownst to him, his son
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: has the psychic ability that the cook at the hotel
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: tells him Um he refers to as the shining, which is,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: you know, he can see ghosts and he UM has
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: this sort of like psychic ability, And it's explained to
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: him that UM, people shine, but sometimes places shine. In
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: this hotel is a place that shines, and also kind
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: of wants to eat his power, and so they spend
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: the winter in this hotel. And the hotel um kind
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: of as a way to get to the sun, which
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: is more explicit in the book than is in the movie,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: uses Jack Torrens as like a vessel and it corrupts
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: him and drives him crazy until he is driven to
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: try to kill his wife and son. Yeah, it's kind
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: of the quintessential cabin fever story, so to speak. It's
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: like introduced thematically right at the beginning. And um, it
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: must be said that American Horror Story Hotel is essentially
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: like a bastardization of of like what Stephen King invented here,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: which I honestly didn't know until I turned on the movie,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: like really like and I was like, oh, this seems familiar.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't even watch American Horror Horror Story Hotel, though,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: I feel like we should watch it together because I
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: want to see Gaga my mom. It's um, I don't
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: know that I can do another rewatch of it anytime soon,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: because I have rewatched it a fewture but we'll we'll
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: have to do an American Horror Story episode eventually. You
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Virgin really wanted us to do one. You could not
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: make the time for it because I can't. It's it's
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: a lot to consume girls, and I've only watched one season.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: But I'm really interested to hear what you thought of
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: the movie watching it for the first time. Yeah, so
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: hot off of our Silence of the Lamb's discussion, which
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I you know, uh didn't. I didn't love that movie
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: for reasons you can listen to. I kind of went
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: into The Shining putting this movie and something of the
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: same category, right, Like you thought I overhyped it. No, No,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: not you. Specifically, I thought culture at large was putting
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: this much like Science Lamp, like The Shining, one of
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: the greatest movies ever created. Um, it was starring middle
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: aged white guy and his struggle you know what I mean,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: like and I feel like um and and also just
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: middle aged white guy who's evil and like the woman
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: that is beholden to like his like villainie or whatever. Um,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: totally not the same thing at all. Uh. And also
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: stylistically had so much more to say than Silence the Lamps,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: which was much more procedural. Not a bad thing, but like,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: much more procedural of a movie than I feel like
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: a Stanley cubrick vehicle, which is so imagistic, and you know,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: even just the opening and they're driving up the mountains
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: and all those overhead shots with the score in the background.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I was kind of entranced by cubricks very exacting process
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: and the kind of very specific and creative directorial things
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: that I think I'm really you know, attracted to. Usually,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: like all the girls know that, I am a kind
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: of style over substance person. Sometimes this movie brings both, um,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: but it but it is it does lean more heavily
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: on style. It is so stylistic, and obviously, you know,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: you can't have a conversation about the Shining without talking
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: about Shelley Duval and her like experience of making this film,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: um and how it was a really grueling weeks and
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: weeks and weeks long process that was much longer maybe
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: than your average kind of film might be, and she
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: was terrorized by Stanley Cooper. Yes, and there are like, um,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: you know, this this movie hat holds the Guinness World
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Book of Records for like most takes of a scene
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: with dialogue in it or something like that. There's the
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: scene between the kid and um, the guy that kind
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: of explains what the shine is and what the title is. Um.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: They apparently shot that like a hundred and fifty eight
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: times or something. But the staircase scene, which is maybe
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: my favorite scene in the movie, where in Jack Nicholson
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: is kind of experiencing this psychotic rather his psychotic break,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: is really crystallizing, like Shelly Val exactly something that is
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: said a lot um in the novel. It's like this
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: recurring thing like mask off, but it's when he reveals
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: to Shelly Duval that like he's after her. Yes, she
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: is now explicitly aware that, like the jig is up
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: and it's all happening on this staircase as he's kind
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: of ascending like slowly, like creepily talking to her, and
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: she's holding a bat and being like, get the funk
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: away from me, Like, but she's talking to her husband,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: you know, She's like, I don't know who you are
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: anymore and what's going on. They apparently shot that hundred
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: and twenties seven times. And if you haven't read the
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: Hollywood Insane and if you haven't read the Hollywood Reporter
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: profile on Shelly Duval um, I strongly recommend it. It's
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: so good. It's about like her her um life as
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: a recluse after you know, losing a relationship with Hollywood.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: She pretty much has your ideal life Rose Like she's
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: like living in like podunc nowhere, Texas, like you know,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: with her like truck and like all of her things,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: like just sitting around and like enjoying life and enjoying
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: like her her own company and like just like being isolated.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: And the profile writer UM talks to her about Stanley
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Cubeck's process and how grueling it all was, and they
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: talked about the staircase scene, UM and how it was
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: shot on twenty seven times, and Shelley Duval says something
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: to the effective like, I actually haven't watched the movie
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: in a really long time. I would actually like to
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: revisit it, which is shocking to me. And then because
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: it is, you know, the thing that she's the most
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: known for, even though she you know, she also like
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: is known to a generation of children because of her
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: fairy tale show Yes, and also as olive Oil. Um
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: in Popeye is olive oil. And she had um like
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: several other you know, notable roles before the Shining, but
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: the is what cemented her in pop culture. Um, you know,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: her image I think, and her her voice and her
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: manner right, And so when she said to the writer
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: of this profile, like, I would love to rewatch it,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: the writer pulls out their phone and they watched the
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: staircase scene together and Shelley Duval just starts crying and
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: the writers like what's going on, and She's like, that
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: took three weeks to shoot. We shot this one scene
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: for three weeks, and it is a emotionally traumatizing scene.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: It's an emutually traumatizing movie, which is part of what
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: the profile is getting at and why Shelley Duval's unraveling
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: was so entwined to a process that was way too
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: close to the subject matter. I think that Shelley is
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: unfortunately an example of like why we need mental health
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: professionals on the sets of films that deal with traumatic
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: or all consuming or like method kind of like acting right, well,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: because now we have things like intimacy coordinators, and we
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: also have, um, you know, there have been so many
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: stories in recent years about the dangers of people going
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: method and like being horrible on set. So when are
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: we going to have you know, like a humanity coordinators
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: to make sure that these fucking like asshole actors and directors,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: because you know, right now there's a conversation happening around
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: David or Russell in his film Amsterdam, Oh, and how
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: abusive he is to his actors. You know, like it's
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: just is you have to think is it worth it?
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: And like I think a lot of people would look
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: at the shining and say it is worth this woman's pain.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: But I can't help but wonder, like, is what ended
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: up in the movie? Is that from take one? Or
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: is it from take twenty or is it from take
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: a D seven? Like we'll never know. And it's like
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: with the staircase scene as an example, It's like, is
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the deterioration I'm watching on screen acting or is this
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: shot a hundred and twenty six? And like Shelley's really deteriorating?
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Like it is? It is? It was hard? It was.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it was hard to watch. I thought
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: she's so compelling and and her performance is cannon forever,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Jack Nicholson on the flip side,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: I patently don't like Jack Nicholson. That's something I'm copying to.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: I don't like watching him in movies. Uh, he's not
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: my Tea. I don't think he's a bad actor. I
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: understand if you like Jack Nicholson, that's fine, by that's
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: like fine for you. He's not my girl, um I,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: I you know, probably has something to do with the
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: fact that, like I've never forgiven him for wooing Diane
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Keaton and something's got to give when she could have
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: been with Keana Reeves. Um. But at the same time,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: I also have never forgiven Diane Keaton for being a
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Woody Allen apologize. Yeah, I feel like that's fine, But um,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Jack Nicholson in this movie was the first time I've
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: watched a Jack Nicholson movie where I was like, I
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: love that, and I loved him in it. He's incredible.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: He's such a good is so fucking good. And you know, um,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: I thinking about this, you know, like I'm writing a
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: book right now, and so much of what this book
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: is about is writer's block. And like, again, this goes
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: back to Stephen King putting himself in his work, like
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: this author who's struggling, who can't write anything. Um it,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: you know, hits a little close to home. I do
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: want to tell you a little bit about Dr Sleep
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: the sequel and sort So I think something to understand
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: is that in the book, the way The Shining ends
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: is not with you know, Jack Nicholson um being defeated
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: and them just abandoning the hotel. Um. What happens is
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: that Jack kind of breaks through the hold the hotel
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: has on him and goes down to the boiler, which
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: has been referenced several times throughout the novel, and sets
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: it to explode so that the hotel burns down and
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: so that Danny and Wendy can escape. So does so
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: he dies, He sacrifices himself and to save them, And
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: so Dr Sleep is about the grown up Danny Torrence
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: who who um you know, Wendy dies early in his
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: life and he spends his life numbing his psychic powers
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: through alcohol just the same way his father did you know,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: And um he establishes this psychic connection with a young
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: girl who has the same kind of you know, shining
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: abilities that he does, only much more powerful. She becomes
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: the target of this group of sort of psychic vampires
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: um who are called the True Not and their leader
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: is this woman named Rosie the Hat. She's played by
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Rebecca Ferguson who she's um, she's Lady Jessica and Dune
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: she'ss mom, Thank you so much. She's so good in
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: the movie. So they're, you know, they're hunting this girl down.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Eventually Danny um links up with her and um, you know,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: they kind of they kill a lot of her companions,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: but then it's kind of just her left against them
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: and they in the book, they kind of they bring
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: her back to the site of where the hotel used
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: to stand, because it's like this powerful place in the
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: movie what they do because in the original Shining film
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: the hotel was never burned down. They go back to
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: the hotel and the film ends in the way that
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: the original Shining film does, where Danny, rather than his father,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: is the one who sacrifices himself and causes the hotel
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: to explain, My god, that's so cool, Like as a filmmaker,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: that's such a smart thing to do. And it does
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: really toying with both like iterations of the in an
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: intellectual property and somehow making both true. Yeah, because it
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: equally draws from both Stephen King's novels and the you know,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: the visual landscape that Stanley Kubrick created and melds them
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: together in this really beautiful way. And I think that's
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: why Stephen King has said that this movie has really
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: helped him appreciate the original film in a way he
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: was never able to before. And it's such a good movie.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: I definitely recommend anyone. If you like The Shining, if
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: you like Stephen King, definitely give it a watch. Rebecca
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Ferguson is such a good villain. Um, you know, I
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: ride for you and McGregor to talk about honestly, Stephen
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: King adaptations more generally, and this very thing that you're
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: getting at about, like being true to the source material.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: Just on a personal level, I feel like I will
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: always appreciate a Stanley Kubrick kind of reimagining of the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: source material that discards some of it for this sake
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: of cinema, as opposed to something like honestly it. I
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: feel like it Chapter two suffered from trying too hard
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: to be true to the book, because I was when
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: I was watching it, googling to see if these scenes
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: had happened in the book, and nine times out of
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: ten it was actually in the book, and I was, like,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: to be honest, I wish I wish it wasn't in
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: the movie, like I felt like it was uncompelling for
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: whatever reason. And I think that there is something that
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: um is really lost when you are too attached to
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: the subject matter and don't understand the importance of your
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: own medium and how it can transform things absolutely. And
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: that is something that is inextricably tied to Stephen King,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: because I think the way that we judge a lot
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: of his work will be either by how true it
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: is to the source material or how far away it is.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: And I think the best balance with Stephen King and
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: probably any adaptation is how you're able to blend those
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: things in the best way UM. And I think things
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: like It Part One, like Doctor Sleep and like The
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: Shining are ways in which you know filmmakers have gotten
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: it right, and like keeping what works, discarding what doesn't,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: and inventing what will bring it all together. I just
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: remembered something that you and I need to discuss in
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: terms of this like book to movie source material thing
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: and the thing that has been left out out of
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: every iteration of it adaptation, which is a scene that
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: happens at the end of the Children when all the
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: children so okay, Virgins. There's six children total. I think
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: it's like it's a lot of children. They're like six
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: children that are kind of the main characters and moving
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: action of this film. They the Losers Club, and effectively
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: like part one, like the part one of the movie, right,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: they go through this whole saga there. You know, it's
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: kind of like enemies to lovers to friends. Like their
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: relationships I'll change because of it. And they their bonds
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: are like forged a lot tighter. Some of them fall
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: in love with each other, some of them, you know,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: grow to love each other or whatever. Um when it
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: is vanquished, reas you told me that there's something that
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: happens in the book that never occurs in the movie.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: Would you like to share with the Virgins and with
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: Phoebe honestly about what happens? Yeah, So like and remember
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: these are all you know, young, like preteen, they're like
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: what they're like, I want to say, when they vanquish
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: it for what they think is forever, but like honestly,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: kind of in their minds, no isn't. Um. They're kind
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: of in this like fugue state, and the novel dives
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: into this more. It's like they do this thing, this
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: like ritual thing, um, a blood ritual. Yeah, but like
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: it's the way that they defeat it is like because
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: they're more powerful together, and in the book, as a
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: way to like seal that power, all of the boys
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: have sex with Beverly Um in the Sewers and it's
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: not it's like pretty much an orgy. Like it's not
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not an orgy. It's like a consensual
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: gang bang. Like yeah, but I guess it happens in
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: this way that's sort of like dreamlike kind of and
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: like in I think this is also kind of It's
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: been a while since I've seen part two, but I
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: do believe that as they grew up, they forget a
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: lot of what happened in the first movie, and it's
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: only they've oppressed it. Well, I think it's part of
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: like the magic of it, and it's only once they
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: kind of go back to dairy that they start remembering things. Um.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, a like thirteen year old gang
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: bang is not really something that we need to see
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: adapted into a film. And I'm glad that that was cut.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: It's so whack a doodle, I mean, honestly, so I
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: haven't read his books. But I can imagine Eugen why
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: it happened, Like it's just something that's disturbing, and Stephen
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: King is good at like disturbing images and motifs, and
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: he knew what he was writing was disturbing. But like
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: when he's been asked, I've like, you know, googled, and
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: like when he's been asked about it um nowadays and
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: why you know, he thinks that hasn't been included and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: you have the movies. He is shocky ly unfazed. But
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: he's like he's like, oh, yeah, you know, it's interesting
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: because people are, you know, much more sensitive around content
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: like that these days. And I was like, no, no, no,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I think we were still pretty sensitive about it when
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: this book came out. Like I don't think anything has changed,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: Like I don't think he he's I think honestly. And
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: this might be a little bit of a bridge to
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: discussion about Stephen King just as a figure. But Stephen
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: King's subject matter is sometimes a little out of touch,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: and I think that you could see that in it
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: part two with like the quote unquote Native American rune
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: book or whatever. Well that's something he does a lot
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: um a lot of his books feature even the shining
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: you learn about the hotel that it was built on
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: an indigenous burial ground. It's something that is in pet
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: cemetery as well. We won't get too into pet cemetery,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: which is I do love pet cemetery, both the book
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: and the movie, but you haven't seen it, so we're
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: not going to get into it. Um. But yeah, it's
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: it's a recurring thing that he does, and it's just
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: like it's so of the time that he was really popular,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: but that's not an excuse for it. No. Yeah, And
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: I honestly think, um, Stephen King is not alone and
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: that like I think a lot of horror movies exploit
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: UM without any sort of like researcher connection to indigenous communities,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: the mysticism of you know, Native American lore, and how
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: they create a very generic, watered down version of it,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: a very white version of it. Right. That also you
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: know happens with like Stephen King's relationship to UM, like
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: people with disabilities, like able is UM comes up in
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of horror films, not just even Kings, but like, yes,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: he's like Stephen King is guilty of that all the time.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: Another another kind of horrifying part in pet Cemetery is
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: the wife has this um sister who was like very
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: ill or she she had I think, like really bad
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: scoliosis when she was a kid. Her name was Zelda,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: and she's like one of the most horrifying things I've
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: ever seen on film. And it's like, it's not it's
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: not great. Oh really, So wait, you didn't like you
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: didn't love the movie. No, I do love the movie.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: But Stephen King, you know, he is not perfect. He's
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: an old white man. He's literally white man. I mean
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: he did he did say he did um ride for
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: trans people in the face of j K. Rowling, but
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: also but he also kind of like it wasn't in
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: the best way. But he said the tweet was he said, um,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: my opinion is that Joe Rowling is wrong about trans women.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: Leave shitney and hateful out of it. Please, So he's
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: saying like, I don't agree with her, but she's not
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: a bad person. Oh interesting. You know there are some
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: things about like I I'm actually shook. I thought that
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: he would have kind of a worse take because he
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: seems like one of those people that would be like
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: canceled cold. Her sucks am I right, like, um, but
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: he did have like, you know, alongside it, like around
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: the same time. I want to say this like weird
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: tweet about like diversity and like the Oscar's race and
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: how like, um, like diversity and like quality of a
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: film or TV show is they're like mutually exclusive and
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: like how like diversity doesn't improve quality and vice versa.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: And it's like that's like just categorically like not true.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: And of course, like a white man like would say that,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: I like, I feel like I understand what he's trying
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: to say. Like if I if I try to be
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: you know, a white woman whisperer, which I am often
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: uh whisper to me, I do know how to do it.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: I think I can see why an old white man
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: would be like, it's not fair to the material to
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: like to organize it. Like I think a lot of
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: people from this generation are latching onto this idea of
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: tokenization and how it's bad without understanding that there is
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: a vast difference between tokenization and just a story from
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: a person that is marginalized, you know what I mean. Um,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: So I don't know. I wasn't surprised by it. I
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: think it's funny. Um. I remember like when this like
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: tweet storm came up, and he's like again making like
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: quality and diversity like mutually exclusive and like you know
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: you can develf like you really can do both and
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: it costs you nothing. Um. Also, I mean, let let
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: it be said for this man has written sixty four books.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: Not all of them are good. No, some of them
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: I have. I used to be much more kind of
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: hardline about I always finished books. Now I will in them,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: you know modern parlance of book talk. I will DNF
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: a book if it's not working for me, do not
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: finish DNF. Is that like a fan fiction term or something.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: It's like people who were reviewing books, so like I
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: d n F to this because it was bad or
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: like whatever. But when I was a teenager, the only
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: book that I ever stopped in the middle of with
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: was the Stephen King book called Dream Catcher, which was
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: I think about people, which I think was about people
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: who were like um uh, like aliens took over their
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: bodies and then they like farted them out. What. Yeah,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: I would watch that. It was just and I do
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: think it was adopted into a movie. Um, since we
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: are like a virgin can we also just have like
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: a quick reaction to the gay bashing scene at the
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: beginning of it part two, because when you and I
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: were working at Out magazine, I remember seeing the takes,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: did you It was mine. I had a viral article
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: that I wrote. Wait, let me let me google penny
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: Wise Rose Dambis. I can get the title right, Unwise, Okay, yeah,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: the article. The article is called Pennywise is surprisingly anti
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: queer in chapter two, which is but I wrote it
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: as like as a troll. Well as the virgins need
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: to know that, that's do you do they do the
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: virgin to understand why that's a troll the very specific
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: era of the internet, yes, because like this is the
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: era of the Baba Duke and like people making the
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: Baba Duke gay and so like a lot of what
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: was happening on tumbler and stuff was like the Baba
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: Duke and Pennywise are like boyfriends, blah blah blah. And
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: so I wrote this article being like literally the like
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: the deck of this story is the killer clown. Isn't
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: the ally We thought he was right? But the end
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: the headline is a dig at an era of queer
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: media as well. It must be said, we're in into
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: more grinders, like media brand was you forgot about that?
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: There was this headline from Into which amazing journalists into
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: a phenomenal media brand, like really made compelling stories? Had
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: you know a lapsed moment of judgment where in there
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: was a headline um that was like Ariana Grande's album
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: whatever is like surprisingly antiqueer was like just it. We
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: were all writing stupid headlines in in this day and age.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: I don't fault it for that, but it wasn't meme forever,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: Like we were tweeting things about things being surprisingly antiar
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: and this Pennywise moment was an homage. And let me
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: tell you, writing this article has haunted me because, like
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: a couple of other things I've written that went viral,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: it will like in the years past, every couple of
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: months it would go viral again and I would get
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: people commenting on my pin tweet on Twitter being like,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: how could you think that a killer clown would not
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: be homophobic? Like just it would be either people from
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: the right wing being like, you know, saying something about
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: how he should be homophobic, and people liberal people being like,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: you stupid bitch, He's like a murderer. Blah blah blah.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: Even just looking at this article, so many comments on it.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: It's like the anti queer thing. People just didn't get it.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: It was, didn't get it out of its time. Next
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: week we'll be back with another bonus episode on a
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: specific piece of media that is TVD, so it'll be
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: a nice little surprise for you. But for our regular
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: episode next week, we will be sinking our teeth into
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: all things vampires. So prepare your blood sacrifices, get out
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: your your garlic and your iron steaks. Well, no, we
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: don't want that, because we want the vampires. We want that.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: We want to You've gotta you gotta stretch that neck
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: out so they can sink their teeth. Maybe vampires have
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: like a garlic kink. Maybe they like how much it hurts.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it's part of the four play
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: could be anyway. Um in the meantime finals on Instagram
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: at like a vergine, tell us what's your favorite Stephen
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: King book or adaptation? Do you hate Stephen King? Do
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: you think he's a flop? Are you more of a carry?
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Are you more of a Wendy? Um? And as always,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: you know you can slide into our d m s
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: and tell us what you think of the show, what
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: you think we should cover next. Also, please leave a
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: review on Apple Podcasts. It helps us out so much. Also,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: um rate the podcast on Spotify, but only if it's
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: five stars of course. Um I'm your co host, Rose
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Damn You. You can find me anywhere online at Rose
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Damn You, and I'm fran Toata. You can find me
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: at France, Squish Coo, anywhere you want subscribe to. Like
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: a Virgin anywhere you listen to podcasts. Like a Virgin
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: is an i Heeart radio production. Our producers Phoebe Unter,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: with support from Lindsay Hoffman, Julian Weller, Jess Crane Chich
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: and Nikki Eatur. Until next week, See you later, nobody watch.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: She'll play with me. M m hmm