Ethan Altar writes in his introduction to a series of interviews, "Twenty-five years later, Stephen King’s It still has the power to push its way into your slumbering mind in the dead of night, filling it with nightmarish visions of fortune cookies stuffed with eyeballs, balloons filled with blood and clowns with razor-sharp teeth."
Well, unfortunately -- not really. But I wish that's how it was, so let's pretend that's reality. (The truth is, the second half of the film is terrible.)
The Participants (In Alphabetical Order)
Dennis Christopher (Eddie Kaspbrak)
Larry Cohen (Screenwriter)
Stephen King (Author)
Bart Mixon (Special Makeup Effects Supervisor)
Annette O’Toole (Beverly Marsh)
Emily Perkins (Young Beverly Marsh)
Tim Reid (Mike Hanlon)
Marlon Taylor (Young Mike Hanlon)
Tommy Lee Wallace (Director)
Gene Warren Jr. (Special Visual Effects Supervisor)
A few of my favorite insights:
- ABC was always nervous about It, primarily the fact that it was in the horror genre, but also the eight-to-ten hour commitment. They loved the piece, but lost their nerve in terms of how many hours they were willing to commit. Eventually, they were agreed to a two-night, four-hour commitment and at that point, a couple of things happened.
- His script for Night 2 wasn’t nearly as successful, in my opinion. For reasons of his own, he had completely moved away from the plotting of the book, and created a much smaller story, a very interior melodrama focusing on Beverly’s husband as the ultimate bad guy, or something to that effect. (That explains a lot)
- Most of the adult casting was “telephone” casting, which is, “No need to audition so-and-so for the role, they’d be brilliant.“
- Casting the kids came after casting the adults.
- Obviously the piece of casting that worked the best in the show was Tim Curry as Pennywise. (King)
- The movie, really, is only as good as its villain, and Tim carved out a place for himself as one of the great movie villains of all time.
- Filmed over two to three months on location in Vancouver, It proved a demanding shoot
. . . a lot more interesting stuff here. Check out the article. You'll like it.
I may be one of a very few who don't even find Tim Curry good in this mini-series. In fact, the older I get the stupider I find this series.
ReplyDeleteIt is a crime that we will never see Cary Fukunaga's It. I want to see this remade some day (so much so that I made a blog casting a Stephen King Shared Cinematic Universe) and Fukunaga (a true talent) was one of a select few I thought could give us a truly special version of it.
I will never understand why so many of King's adaptations went to broadcast TV. No channel but cable or subscription should be touching his stories, and only then if they're willing to devote the time and budget needed to do it right.