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The Behind the Scenes Pics of the Day floats. We all float down here.
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s Behind the Scenes Pic!
I ran a pic of Tim Curry in the Pennywise make-up from the IT mini-series early on in the column’s run and received another shot from the making of the series from make-up man Bart Mixon in response. This one has Mr. Mixon touching up Pennywise the Dancing Clown’s make-up.
I’m kind of glad the proposed re-do of IT hasn’t come to fruition. I mean, the mini-series is about a tenth as scary and awesome as Stephen King’s book, but the movie they were talking about doing was supposed to be from Beverly Marsh’s perspective and that doesn’t sound like a good idea at all to me.
And really, you can’t get a better Pennywise in design and performance. Tim Curry was inspired casting and knocked it out of the park, creating an iconic monster, which is doubly impressive when you consider how mediocre the rest of the series is.
Thanks again to Bart Mixon for sending this one along. Hope you guys enjoy!
If you have a behind the scenes shot you’d like to submit to this column, you can email me at quint@aintitcool.com.
Tomorrow’s behind the scenes pic wouldn’t hurt a fly.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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Click here to visit the complete compilation of previous Behind the Scenes images, Page One
Click here to visit the complete compilation of previous Behind the Scenes images, Page Two!
Readers Talkback
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First, focus on kids, a la "Stand By Me" Second, the adults' story
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DC is really slacking in making their characters look like they did in the comic. he never had red hair.
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As much as I love "It" the novel, I think we all have to acknowledge the end, as written, is terrible. Incomprehensible, and kinda gross too. The novel gets huge points for creepy atmosphere leading up to the end, but it's a very typical SK ending, much like the air leaking out of an over-inflated tire. I doubt any remake would improve upon Tim Curry's Pennywise anyways, dude was FREAKY.
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I know most people would choose The Stand, but you can make an argument that IT was King’s best example of character development and attaching to something truly horrific (a child killing sewer clown?!?). Great use of the structure of flashback + flash forward to tell the two overlapping stories, and a great feel of what you experienced as a kid. It does have one of the more bizarre endings (even for King who traditionally has difficulty with that type of thing) and also features a rather interesting ritual to link all of the kids together (no way that would fly today and quite honestly it comes way out of left field.). But pound for pound it’s a great example of what made the older King so good. BTW – The Dark Tower could have been his magnum opus, but after he got hit by the van it was over. Wolves of the Calla starts a precipitous drop-off in the quality of the story from which the series never recovers – damn shame too, since “Wizards and Glass” was at the time the best thing he’d written in 20 years. I miss the old King – The Stand, Firestarter, The Shining, It, and The Dead Zone were an amazing way to spend an evening.
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Curry gave me the creeps.
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When is that getting off the ground?
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It's a great book (and could have been his best book) that completely falls apart at the end. A bunch of pre-pubescent kids have a gang bang in a sewer? *That* was the solution?? The weird giant spider/giant turtle thing didn't make a ton of sense either, and didn't have much to do with the rest of the book up to that point. It's a shame because everything about the book is tremendous until the last couple hundred pages.
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The Stand had sometimes a very slow pacing, whereas IT was a constant winner on EVERY page! The grand 27-Year-Cicle Masterscheme! They did an OK-2-parter for TV. Back then I wished, they could have done it for the Big Screen, with IT1 and IT2. But even the movies were crap fests back then, so IT on TV kicked them in the balls by far. But as it is - you can't compare the book to the TV experience. They are different worlds. But it was fun to see the cast - they all had great performances and they were not no-names. If the ending wouldn't have been that kind-of-easy bad (the slingshot effect) it would have had greater impact, I believe! Even the soundtrack gave the audience some kind of good scare. Tim Curry, Richard Thomas, Annette O'Toole et al - they were great - even the kiddos!!!
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...still has Ehren Kruger listed as screenwriter on IMDB. Yeah, no thanks.
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I HATE CLOWNS I HATE CLOWNS I HATE CLOWNS
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it sounds lame
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Maybe if I hadn't read the book... This is one of his Top 5 books. Might be his best. Can see that argument being won.
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If they were only to get one thing exactly right in the series, they picked the right one.
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First, it's almost impossible to defend the "love scene" without sounding like a creep, but I'll take the bullet. It doesn't come out of left field. Much of the horror in the book is wrapped up in pubescent fears of sexuality. The most obvious example is Bev and her dad. Eddie's run-in with the leper and his rotten offer of a blowjob is another example. There's the gay guy who gets killed because the thugs are homophobes. There's the Bowers-Hostetler scene. Those are the ones I can list off the top of my head and I know for sure there are more. The love scene does a great job of showing how these characters deal with their fear of sex by drawing strength from it (which is what they had been doing in the face of every other fear, so it's consistent). This is to say nothing of the fact that thematically it's more about a rite of passage than an actual sex act. Sex aside, there's a very obvious, very sweet, group crush going on with Bev that informs the love scene. It's just unfortunate that it gets read as "children screwing" instead of "a group of friends physically expressing their love". I mean, it's not a gang rape or anything. Is it a little weird? Well, sure. I would never argue that it HAD to be included. But it does work, regardless of some people's prudish responses to it. It works for the plot AND for the theme.
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So it's either PSYCHO or DALAI LAMA - THE MOVIE
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July 11, 2011, 1:06 a.m. CST
Of course the pre-pubescent gangbang works, if by "works" you mean "was fucking horrible"
by Greggers
mrgray wrote: It's just unfortunate that it gets read as "children screwing" instead of "a group of friends physically expressing their love". This reminds me of the NAMBLA episode of South Park. Yes, fine, it's a touching expression of love among friends that reflects a major theme of the story...but dude...IT'S CHILDREN SCREWING! I'm with the prudes on this one. Context only goes so far. If that shit hadn't been in the book, it's biggest crime would have been that the big bad is [spoiler alert] a big spider [/spoiler alert]. No, wait, I'm sorry, [spolier alert again] it's creature *so mindblowing*, the best the human brain can do to interpret it is to see a big spider.[/end spoiler] Oh come on, Stephen King, that's the best you can do? The sad thing is that aside from King's usual indulgences (painfully facile characterization for villains, etc.), the book was readable. The concept of a killer clown is rock solid. As for Tim Curry, I was disappointed. Hear me out: Curry's voice was blatantly malevolent, like a old timey New York cab driver. Kind of on the nose. In the book, I don't recall the voice ever being described, so I imagined it sounding like a clown's voice: much more innocuous and actually friendly, and therefore surrealistically scary.
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I had conveniently forgotten it until you guys reminded me why I did forget it. Yes it was really lame and just didn't work and little kids having sex just doesn't thematically work on many levels..the whole frog/spider thing didn't make sense either. Oh well, he was/is a mad genius and that's the best he could at the time..the rest of the book is excellent even though he fumbled near the goal line.
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Because, for the most part, the book was fantastic, aside from King's fucking closeted pedophilia at the end, but that is easily removed. I read the book and loved it, but the miniseries was pretty damned sorry aside from Curry being damned good as Pennywise. Is he too old to reprise the role? I'd like to see a four-part miniseries that gives it a fuller, better treatment. I think Super8 showed that you can still do a movie that reminds you of what it's like to be a kid again, much like the novel It did. They could pull that off in a new miniseries, and I'd love to see the right hands take a crack at It.
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Gotta agree with Greggers here. "on the nose" is exactly right. curry nails the comedy of the character, but never really the horror. Some of the make-up work and direction does that for him. But I will also defend the "gang bang." Don't forget that the kids are all about to die down there in the sewers. They're lost, exhausted, and their collective will is shattered. That ultimate moment of love and friendship brings them the strength to move forward.
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Some great stuff from the actors, but the director is so informative. He openly acknowledges some of the problems and weaknesses of the movie (e.g., the ending) and explains why they made a lot of the choices they did.
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Jesus H. Maybe we should cross Victor Salva off the short list of redo directors. What's Larry Clark up to?
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The way he switches between first and third-person narrative shows a writer at the very top of his game. Sadly, after 'Misery' in '87, it was all downhill after that...
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It's very very rare when King doesn't fumble the last few chapters of a great book. The STAND has the 'hand of god' and Flagg on an island ending. The Dark Tower... well, the less said the better. But for me, IT was the one where everything worked right up until the very last page. Even the kids sex scene, and the Turtle and the Beams and the not-really-a-spider. It tied into the Dark Tower series in that respect. And Tim Curry was genius as Pennywise, even if the rest of the miniseries was a huge disappointment.
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Don't you want it? Don't you want it? DON'T YOU WANT IT?!?! DON'T YOU WANT IT?!?!?! DON'T YOU WANT IT?!?!? ARF!!! <p> Always wondered why there was a dog bark after that? Watch that part on the DVD
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I liked the Frank-N-Furter pic better, but this one is good too. I don´t like this adaptation of one of my favourite books, BTW
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July 11, 2011, 4:03 a.m. CST
I wish they could have just released this on the big screen.
by Doctor_Strangepork
And leave in all of the sexuality and gore of the book.
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The most consitantly over rated author of our time. Never wrote a good ending, just knocked out boil-in-the-bag regurgitated crap masquerading as imagination.
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July 11, 2011, 4:48 a.m. CST
Wait what the book ends with an orgy/gang rape with children?
by KilliK
robin,to the bat-Kindle.
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July 11, 2011, 4:59 a.m. CST
Stephen King's short stories and novellas are better than his novels
by murray_hamilton
His novels always run out of steam towards the end. And that's after they've already meandered around for 300 pages. But his short story collections are all pretty solid, especially Nightmares & Dreamscapes.
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July 11, 2011, 5:04 a.m. CST
And Summer of Night by Dan Simmons is better than IT
by murray_hamilton
Similar theme of kids coming up against evil, but the stakes are much higher. Terrifying book; give it a read this summer.
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but if we have to have one, can we PLEASE have the 10 part HBO standalone series? <P> This way we can have it all; the previous appearances of Pennywise, the Morlock holes, Patrick Hockstetter. It would be fucking brilliant. Finding someone to top Tim Curry would be hard, don't think he'd fancy revisiting the role. You just need someone with scary eyes. No updating either: 1958 and 1985.<P> IT is kind of precious to me, but I think that someone has the chance to put the definitive version out there. The idea to update it and have a 120 min running time is retarded.
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There's been glances of future episodes for the new season of Haven. One involves a clown and another a child chasing a boat down a storm drain on a street. Is this IT related seeing as its a King series on tv???
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If I remember correctly it's almost as long as the bible...
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Am I right in remembering that the alien shapeshifter is really a manitou, or it's the basis for all the North American manitou legends? Something like that, anyway?
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King's love for Lovecraft is the emphasis for all the big bads in his mythos being things the human brain cant understand. Big cosmic monsters who make you go insane when you look at them.
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from the macroverse, the void surrounding the universe. I don't think it had anything to do with Manitou.
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Sure, the ending was kinda lame (as it was in the book), but I thought the mini-series was a pretty good King adaptation (especially since by that point, there had been so many bad ones -- I don't think the movie for Misery had come out yet). The first part was more effective than the second, I thought (and that might be a flaw with the book -- from what I recall, the adults basically recreate what happened when they were kids, so it got repetitive). Of course, for me, the best part was that my school roommate was so creeped out by Curry as Pennywise that I could regularly just say, "They all float down here!" and annoy him. Good times.
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the decline of SK. Its seemed like he was writing books that screamed "make me in to a movie" , please!!
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Ah right, cheers. I had a vague recollection of alien monstrosity coming to Earth millennia ago and becoming the basis for the manitou legends or something similar. I wonder if it's from some other novel altogether. Perhaps I'm confusing 'It' with something like Dean Koontz's 'Phantoms' or Douglas Clegg's 'Halloween Man' (or 'You Come When I Call You'?), both of which deal with shapechanging / bodysnatching "Evil from the Dawn of Time"-type entities.
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...and I don't understand why so many people adore the mini-series. It just didn't hold a candle to the book. Plus IT mostly just looked like a clown in the mini-series. While the book had it take the form of your worst fears...so many different forms not just a dang clown.
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Not really. The long chapter/section dealing exclusively with the dry history of the town itself was only slightly more interesting than watching paint dry.
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July 11, 2011, 8:29 a.m. CST
I scared the shit out of my cousin years ago with this.....
by sam jacksons wig
...he now has a morbid fear of clowns. Oh well.......
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July 11, 2011, 8:35 a.m. CST
The last time I looked forward to a new Stephen King book
by Dr Hemlock
Reagan was President. (And that's no exaggeration.) What the hell happened, Steve? From Tommyknockers forward, most of the stuff you've been churning out has been crap.
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...there's no reason to re-cast the role of Pennywise...the added 2+ decades will only make Tim Curry's appearance under the makeup even creepier. And for a good laugh, watch the Nostalgia Critic's review of the original miniseries, where he humorously deflates a lot of the silliest aspects of the story. For me, I had yet to start reading King's fiction circa 1990 (I turned sixteen that summer), so the miniseries was my first exposure to the story, and I remember it being very effective for the time. After reading the book, the miniseries can't hold a candle to it.
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I was a kid, probably 14 at the time. The sex didn't make any impact on me, it was the cosmic trip that (I believe) Bill and It go on, where his conscious travels out into the beyond and he passes the turtle's shell. That blew my god damn mind at the time. I thought it was one of the craziest pieces of "I WANT TO KNOW MORE!" I had read up to that point, and even since then. They could certainly remake this. Let's be honest, Tim Curry was amazing, but even that performance wasn't enough to call the miniseries a sacred cow. I think Starz or Showtime should be lining up the adaptations if they want to continue to compete with HBO. Dexter will take Showtime only so far, and Starz needs that breakout show to put them on the map now that Party Down is done.
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If there is any justice in the world, they should recast him. Like Freddy Kruger, only one actor should play that character. There is no one else to play Pennywise!
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Great book until the shitty ending. Huge letdown at the end. SK must not have given the ending much thought at all, or didn't know how to end it in a great way.
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Yack yack yack. Commercial break. Yack yack yack. Commercial. One minute of something from the book maybe. yack yack yack commercial break. Typical poor King movie setup. Lets get the gang together and talk and talk and talk.
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July 11, 2011, 9:17 a.m. CST
Stephen King hasn't written a good ending since the fucking Bachman Books...
by THE_CHOPPAH
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And where's *my* fucking blackbox?
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dude always uses space aliens has his grand reveal. Not fair to say King has had lame endings in all his stuff. Salem's Lot, Christine, Carrie, Misery, The Shining, etc--all had exciting climaxes.
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The broken red lettering, the paper boat, the claw coming up from the sewer. If you found that book at the library browsing the horror section, it kick-started your imagination immediately.
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Malcolm McDowell My brother Harry told me. Also, Harry if you're reading this please return my Boba Fettuccine.
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Tommyknockers? King's got some real stinker endings that have come close to ruining otherwise great books, but I think I'd have to go with Tommyknockers as the ultimate worst.
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July 11, 2011, 10:31 a.m. CST
Tom Baker as Pennywise could have been similarly scary!
by wtriker1701
Yes, Tim Curry WAS great, and in a remake I think he'd stil be perfect. Tom Baker nowerdays? Not so... And I'd second a 10-Part HBO series!
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I can think of two recent novels that had pretty damn good endings- Cell and Duma Key. Under the Dome's end was somewhat weak in an IT kind of way, but won't get into spoilers....
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I had no idea that scene was there. How did it not cause an uproar?
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other than Curry.
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...and it scared the shit out of me. Strange: I was never afraid of clowns.
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The dude is scary even when he isn't trying. Or, we could go with the obvious and pick Jackie Earl Haley. He is a great actor.
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Try FULL DARK, NO STARS. SK is back.
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I remember watching this movie as a freshman in college. Half the floor was packed into a dorm room watching on a small TV in the dark. Curry was amazing and creepy!!! My wife and I both agree that the ending is lame. She always states that King must have gotten tired and just made it a big giant spider. Big Giant Spider is our writing equivalent to Jumping the Shark. There was a part of me that was petrified that Super 8 was going to be a big giant spider at the end. As for worst ending I think I would go with the Tommyknockers too. In fact I think that was the worst movie, well except Sleepwalkers. Really? Killing a cop by corn cob to the back? REALLY?
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someone above mentioned the Haven-It connection. The commercial had a kid in a yellow slicker floating a paperboat, some random sewer shots , then a shot of a fat clown with pointy teeth...I know that Colorodo Kid didn't reference any of "It", but if the show can SMARTLY inject Kings "myths" and "monsters" into one town(not being Castle Rock or Derry) you can do alot of cool shit...low men, vampires, evil cars, interconnecting universes, basically a monster of the week show...with King monsters...Hell do it like Fables and have the whole King universe in this town...again done SMARTLY...which probably won't happen. The Haven actor will probably be mimicing Tim Curry instead of portraying Bob Gray...
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Not so favorite 'tv movie'. Man, it was horrible. I read IT for a book report in 6th grade, my teacher let me read it over the course of 2 reports because it was so long. I loved watching the teacher's face as I mentioned the kiddie-train a the end as part of my report. She wasn't expecting that. I do agree that the ending was a bit of a let-down, but not in a 'Dark Tower' level, or even ball-park (then again, what is?) Whoever mentioned that "Big Giant Spider" was their literary equivalent to "Jumping the Shark"... you should change it to "Crimson King's Balcony" or something snappier that encapsulates the DT ending... Stevie King might as well have sent a giant paper bag of flaming dog shit to each reader's doorstep. Anyway, an 8-10 part series for IT on HBO would be insanely awesome... one can dream.
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Misery, Dark Half, Christine, Insomnia, Green Mile, Shawshank/The Stand/Apt Pupil (and other novellas), Pet Semetary, Needful Things, The Dead Zone, Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne, Salem's Lot, etc.
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Even tho' it's from the "I got wrecked, so EVERYBODY gets wrecked" phase. Still a lot of fun. As for the kiddie luvin' in It, a round of French kissing woulda' done the job. Poor Dark Tower, I loved you so...
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July 11, 2011, 12:41 p.m. CST
This sounds like a miniseries that aught to be remade by
by sweeneydave
Frank Darabont! I'm sure he could give it a proper ending too, like he did with The Mist. Anyone else agree?
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It's unfortunate when a pretty good story has a weak ending, because it colors what came before it. The miniseries was intriguing, but the last-minute spider reveal/showdown was pretty silly. A good screenwriter who took some liberties with the story could actually improve IT quite a bit. This is a case when a reboot/remake could actually be a very good thing.
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I read ITwhen I was 12 and the part that freaked me out the most was when Bill was in the mind-lock with IT and as they flew past the turtle, Bill realizes, with horror, that the turtle is dead. No matter how they went about that book, I just know they would leave out the best shit. - The symbol on the small door to IT's layer that everyone see's as something else. (I think they showed the door in the series, but didn't capture the creepy child sized aspect or the changing symbol) - Mike being attacked by a giant bird - The kids in the fort in the ground tripping out in the smoke ceremony and seeing IT come to earth. I need to read that book again now.
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None of that creepy wild dread was in the movie. Just a bunch of blubbering from JonBoy Walton about nothing. And the spider ending was a mess.
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one of my favourite books. I'm not as interested in the Loser's Club aspect of the story as I am in the peripheral Derry stuff. It needs to open like a procedural, with the Adrian Mellon story. Actually, it might need to be twelve episodes long, ten would be cutting it fine. <P> Can you imagine coming home with the entire HBO 'IT' on bluray, to watch? They'd make a killing.
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True story. And you know, he'd do a fucking terrific job of it, Tim Curry or not. http://www.horroryearbook.com/5412476/guillermo-del-toro-would-like-to-adapt-stephen-kings-it-and-pet-sematary
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The TV movie is kind of rubbish apart from Tim Curry, but the book is fantastic. It's up there with The Stand and The Dark Tower as one of King's very best. Genuinely cool and creepy Lovecraftean stuff. I particularly love the way the male, sewer-dwelling clown turns out to be a gigantic, female, pregnant spider from another dimension. It's so fucked-up and unexpected. I realised that it was iconic (or should be iconic) the instant I read it. There's nothing else like it. I think the surreal cosmic mind-trip climax could actually look fantastic on film, and I was pissed off when I saw they cut it from the miniseries. It's like the squid from Watchmen; the whole story kind of becomes diminished when you take it out.
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even without makeup.
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July 11, 2011, 8:07 p.m. CST
Acrually, McConaughey does have the 'dead eyes' thing going on
by IWasInJuniorHighDickhead
which would work. Some black (or silver) contact lenses, that stare...sounds silly, but maybe it would be one of those Ledger Joker type deals.
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I have never loved characters more than the ones from It. Well, maybe Watership Down.
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This site doesn't have the bandwidth for me to fully express my hatred of that piece of shit.
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Easily it is "The Colorado Kid" -- because there IS no ending! He sets up all these mysteries, and then doesn't solve them! Jesus Christ, has Stephen King now forgotten that a story should have a beginning...a middle...and a FUCKING END! (Actually, "IT" had a fucking end...literally!)
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July 12, 2011, 2:21 a.m. CST
@greggers i am with you concerning the ending of the Mist movie
by KilliK
way overrated and out of place.
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I read IT again a littler earlier this year, and it's as fantastic as ever. I saw the mini in the 90's, and couldn't stand it. The Stand was the same way, but with a few great casting choices, and a few horrible ones. I would welcome a feature film adaptation, accepting it couldn't live up to expectations. Are they still working on Dark Tower?
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I thought Curry was a crappy Pennywise. I kept seeing the Rocky Horror fag through the make-up every scene he was in. Too recognizable. Probably shouldn't have done clear close-ups since he was always appearing as different people depending on who was seeing him in the book. A vague clown would have been creepier.
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