The Unseen Rotten Easter Eggs of Andy Muscietti's "IT".

The Darkness Lurking Beneath IT:

By

D.Krone

Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1138 page epic novel IT is undeniably a monster hit. Some people might call it a new horror masterpiece. I certainly wouldn’t. However, I did find the film highly entertaining. And while I’ve combed through lists and lists ad-nauseam regarding references to the novel and easter eggs in the film (none of which noted that there are actual easter eggs in the film) I realized a handful of things. Things that most people must have missed or just weren’t talking about and they are more insidious than cute subtle winks to an immortal cosmic space turtle.

This new movie is a circus of nods to the old film, the novel, films from the 70’s, 80’s, and also a few meta sensibilities are peppered in rather clever ways into the final film. But if this movie is a circus then let us address, for the purposes of this article, the bull elephant in the room.

Let’s dive into something I didn’t really pay any attention to until I saw it on a thread. Let’s talk about the Lolita complex of Beverly Marsh.

Some people were deeply disturbed by the sexualization of Beverly Marsh in this film and I honestly never really looked at it that way. The new film takes place in the 80’s and it’s a Stephen King story about the bridge between adulthood and childhood. IT is a coming-of-age tale and the spooky clown serves as a metaphor for childhood fears and trauma and overcoming them during the transition into becoming adults.

Richie Tozier in this new adaptation of IT refers to Beverly Marsh as Molly Ringwald. I don’t think that reference was chosen simply because of Mrs. Ringwald’s popularity in the 80’s, or even Lilis’s haircut, but the connection she has with the coming of age genre during that time. A lot of Molly Ringwald films deal with the awkwardness associated with budding into sexuality. Her character, Claire Standish, in The Breakfast Club, is being teased constantly about sex in a similar fashion to Beverly Marsh in IT, though Lillis is younger than Ringwald was back then. 

The particular change to her characterization from the novel is something some readers took serious umbrage with. Both Beverly Marsh and sex are a large part of that novel. But novels are able to discuss touchy subject matter in much more open and nuanced ways than a film can. That infamous scene in the book (wisely not included in the film) notwithstanding the book still does feature a lot of disturbing sex stuff around the children. The leper in the novel offers young Eddie Kaspbrak a quarter for a blow job and then works his way down to a dime and as Eddie runs away he chases after him yelling “Comeback here, kid! I’ll blow you for free...” and Marsh's father asks to check her hymen to make sure it is not broken in the book. The book contains some truly disturbing moments regarding sex and isn’t for the faint of heart.

The entire through-line of the novel is about the loss of innocence and transition from childhood into adulthood, and that theme is a bit more problematic for a film to pull off in a limited run time. 

Especially when the film transmuted into what, when I saw it, came across as a standard popcorn flick designed for maximum profits. In that regard, the film was a smash success. IT broke numerous records including one that was held by The Exorcist from all the way back in 1973.

On initial viewing I didn’t take the way Beverly Marsh was portrayed in this film as fetishizing the actress or the character but as a realistic portrayal of how kids behave and experience the world at that age. It’s true that some girls who are sexually abused at a young age act out sexually. I didn’t think Sophia Lillis portrayed her in any sort of gratuitous or exploitative fashion. The kind of sexual teases she experiences and the abuses suggested by her father are very real experiences lots people deal with. Scenes like the one with the middle-aged pharmacist grossly flirting with her were, I thought, was being portrayed realistically.

Let me present to you an old joke (Paraphrased): “So the penis was out talking with his friends. (It’s an anthropomorphic penis joke and I don’t remember all of it.) And he said, “Yeah humans are really weird. When I get really excited they shove this plastic bag over my head and put me in a dark, smelly, moist room where I do pushups until I have to throw up”. I heard this joke when I was around 10 or 11 years old at a Summer Camp in a Catholic School. Tween age kids talk about penises and vaginas and for an R-rated film based on a book that explores the line between childhood and adulthood not to explore this might be a tad bit disingenuous but in film those lines are very tricky to  avoid potentially crossing.

IT is not King’s only story to address the subject of childhood and sexuality. The movie Carrie (based on another Stephen King novel) opens up with naked high-school girls in the shower who tease young Carrie about her period fears by throwing tampons and loudly screaming "Plug it up, plug it up" at her and it is one of the most horrifying portraits of bullying in cinema history. Widely considered one of his best novels, Dolores Claiborne deals with the sexual abuse of a child as well and is tied to the trauma experienced by Jessie Burlingame in King’s other beloved novel (currently on Netflix) Gerald’s Game. The issues surrounding sexual abuse are important parts of those stories and King’s overall oeuvre. I’m not sure why this is such a common trope in King’s lore. I just know that it is and is no less prevalent in the novel IT.

 

I knew going into IT that the film would deal with this kind of thing in some way. I looked at the scene with the kids all swimming together in their underwear as a director trying to honestly portray that particular kind of childhood experience as best he could. However, there were a lot of people who felt he crossed a line.

Did he? Perhaps. Perhaps all of this could have been dealt with in a much more subtle way. The scene where she hid tampons behind her back seemed to perfectly sum up what she was struggling with and her father and the pharmacist were creepy enough without being too over the top in my eyes.
When I saw the swimming scene I thought to myself, “Yeah when I was 13 I used to swim in lakes in my underwear and even went to a Bible camp where I’d swim with girls and get super duper awkward.”

Was the choice to have them in their underwear to sexualize them and not a representation of the fact that some kids go swimming in their underwear? I saw it as the latter and I’m assuming most of the theatre going audience saw it the same way too. However when I saw the early photos released online of all the child actors in robes I got nervous and thought to myself, ‘They are covered in robes, so they're probably in swimsuits or not very much clothing at all and despite the context someone will still think ‘HEY REMEMBER THE GANGBANG IN THE BOOK?’ and that's a real problem. 

I’ll cite one one example in film history to try to make some kind of point that will become apparent how incredibly hard it is of a point I’m trying to make. I still think it’s important to try to make this point despite how linguistically rocky a road it is to make it. The classic film Taxi Driver features a young, future-Academy-Award-winner, Jodie Foster as a prostitute along with the line: "She's 12 and 1/2 years old. You ain't never had no pussy like that.” Even in the most aggressive and direct forms of the disturbing nature of youth and sex and sexual abuse has been portrayed in film. But Taxi Driver's tone and frame is a lot different than IT.

However if I were to write an article on the portrayal of youthful sexuality in the history of cinema than this article would be a book, and in my research I’m sure I’d uncover some things I wouldn’t want to find. But my point is that cinema has never been shy about the fears of women coming-of-age and the horrors of the male gaze manifested in the form of monsters.

Through the lens of film history and film language watching the film I never did feel that Andy Muschietti crossed any line here and I don’t really think that the millions of people that went and saw IT took out of those scenes anything more than a director trying to honestly portray a youthful experience. Muschietti grew up on 80's films. This felt like an 80's film. But I know there are members in the audience who were deeply disturbed by it, and yes they are allowed to be. They aren't seeing something that isn't there.

Sex is a subject coming-of-age films often deal with and that is what Stephen King's IT is, a coming-of-age story. It’s no surprise that the film attempts to tackle those themes somehow. Fiction, especially adult and R-rated fiction, should be able to deal with subjects that are hard for people to talk about. As long as no one is actually hurt I'll take a fictional story about almost anything. But here I need to dive much deeper into the darker parts of cinema and cinema history.

This is the horror world, but real monsters do exist here. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is a great, important film in horror history, but despite how good that piece of work is as a film, in 1977 Roman Polanski was charged with 5 offenses against a 13 year old girl and ended up fleeing the United States because of it.

Another real life monster is the director of Clownhouse, Victor Salva and like Polanski, Victor is a child molester (Roman was arrested and charged and Salva convicted. Roman left the country before his trial was finished.) and this past year the 3rd film in his incredibly popular Jeepers Creepers franchise was released and sat in Redbox alongside IT.

Why is talking about Salva important while discussing the seemingly unrelated film IT? Because of some very weird coincidences and not just that both films feature scary clowns.

2017's IT decided to move the timeframe of the story from the 1950's to the 1980's. Very specifically 1989 and not 1986, when the novel was published, or 1990, which would be 27 years prior to this film's release and the year of the release of the still very popular T.V. miniseries— but 1989 which is also the year Clownhouse was released and specifically June 1989 as a title card at the beginning of IT (2017) states. 

IT rather than taking place mostly in the sewers, like the climax does in the novel and T.V. miniseries did, 2017's IT takes place mostly in a spooky house on Neibolt St that serves as Pennywise’s lair . . . a Clownhouse, if you will.

Is it worth also noting that Pennywise’s lip makeup seems to echo the the exaggerated shape of the eyebrow of the clown in Salva’s Clownhouse. Both lines seem to overlap. Is that too much a coincidence? 

The design of the Neibolt house also seems to have a spire similar to the house in Clownhouse. And is it a coincidence too that this new Pennywise’s hairstyle seems to be incredibly similar the clown in Clownhouse of three distinct orange peaks, almost identical?

Maybe I’ve been in the entertainment industry so long that I just notice little details like this and understand that when it comes to subtext, makeup, art design (The posters on the walls.), costume design, and even individual word choices in a film everything it seems is mulled over to the highest degree. But I find it hard to believe that in a film this packed with subtle Easter Eggs and nods to other films, including an obscure nod to the film “Let’s Scare Jessica To Death”. Is any of that is really just a coincidence? Perhaps I’m wrong. This article is merely playing devil’s advocate in pointing out something insidious lying underneath the surface of what some have chalked up as a ‘popcorn horror’ film.
Derry, Maine might speak to the larger 'see something, say nothing' part of rape culture but was any of this intended? And is intent all that matters when speaking of this kind of art?

Perhaps it was not intended, but the fears at the back of our minds are still present whether we know it or not. And this was too frightening of a “coincidence” for me not to make a note of. Like Fox Mulder of the X-Files once said, "If coincidences are just coincidences why do they feel so contrived?”

With so many online lists of ‘easter eggs’ chomping at the bit to point out cute turtle references, or the fact that Pennywise’s eye, as well as a woman in the library, are staring awkwardly toward the audience, maybe this one just hit the head on the door too hard for me. But if IT didn’t want me to be thinking about children and sex, and if Muschietti & Co wanted me to forget about the tween gangbang in the novel maybe, just maybe, putting a song whose lyrics read ‘Six different ways go deep inside’ over a scene with 6 young boys and one young girl was a wrong choice of music. 

But I’m not sure I can chalk all that up to a coincidence. I would love to think of this work of art without all that but even Honest Trailers felt the need to mention the child gangbang scene from the novel. In fact most articles it seems felt the urge to mention that scene and how it surprisingly wasn’t filmed . . . yet it most certainly was winked at and most certainly was referenced but done so in such a sneaky subtle way that most people would probably tell me that ‘I’m just seeing things’. And I would be left to feel much like the children of Derry do when their parents don’t listen. 

Every time a child goes missing or something terrible happens in Derry, Maine, the town just turns a blind eye and looks the other way. Maybe this haunted town is more like America and Hollywood culture than we are really still ready to admit. Maybe society has this object permanence issue, where if something bad doesn’t directly affect them it’s okay just to feel like it really isn’t there. And maybe there is a part of me, and society, that is just waking up now.

This is a dark fear that the novel reminded us of, and this new film does as well if maybe only for me and a few others. It seems that most people are talking about IT as standard 80’s style popcorn horror but when I came to see IT I saw something far deeper and more insidious onscreen. This film reminds us that children are abused, which the book did, but this film pulls that fear out of me and others in a much deeper way. I'm still unsure if that was the director's intent, but now that I am thinking about it I can't get that fear out of my head.

IT is that dark place deep inside us all that we don’t want to talk about or even admit is really there, like a ghost lurking in our subconscious. In fact, IT could just have easily changed the title to ID.

When news broke about Harvey Weinstein, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood for a long, long time, was anyone really surprised? Since the days of Fatty Arbuckle, we’ve ignored Hollywood’s dark recesses and the real monsters hidden in plain sight. Our silence enables them to creep around in the shadows without fear of reprisal. Film and film language, like all art, builds on its history and Hollywood’s history isn’t as pretty as the backdrops and lights we normally associate with it. 

Alfred Hitchcock ruined a woman’s career because she didn’t want to sleep with him according to numerous accounts. He is also considered a genius, who portrayed his monsters as human. But maybe a part of his legacy should be that he was also part-monster. With recent news coming out about Harvey Weinstein and so many other industry people, perhaps the light of day is finally shining on these issues the way it needs to, and the problems most of us turn a blind eye to for the sake of our entertainment will hopefully be addressed. Only time will tell if we are now on the right track.

The glamours of Pennywise the Dancing, child eating, Clown lurking underneath the sewers of Derry, Maine manifest themselves in the greatest fears of those who encounter it. Maybe this film was just able to accomplish that with me sitting in a theatre with friends outside of the drama onscreen most would consider a fantasy. But I still can’t watch Rosemary’s Baby without thinking about Sharon Tate and what Roman Polanski became and I still can’t watch IT without thinking about Victor Salva. But maybe I’m seeing things that aren’t really there, just shadows on the wall, just coincidences. Maybe the film has that same kind of power that Pennywise has. But the fear, the fear that something deeper may be lurking in the film is still no less real to me. 

If Andy Muschietti’s IT didn’t creep you out, like it now does me, maybe you just weren’t looking deep enough.

(Below is my initial response to the film.)

IT AND THE ID

Millennial Journal Entry.

 Millennial Journal Entry 1#:

 Man if I don't post this meme no one will ever know how woke and down with caring about people I am. Dammit. How will anyone ever know?

 I could just try to live my life being nice but damn I really want to post a dank ass meme about it. Well fuck, guess I'll just smoke my Xanax Vape and listen to my Post Malone vinyls while dancing to Drake in the freeway traffic after I finish making my tide pod spaghetti. I wish I could afford a house if only I didn't eat all that avocado toast in my youth.

 Now to go bankrupt Applebees and be blamed for it by simply not eating food from there. Next up Hooters.

 I don't know why they even call them that. Owls don't have titties. They aren't even mammalian.

 Life is just a perplexing mirage.

 LOVE ME!!!!!!!!

 End of journal entry.

Coping with The Moment.

   

     Sometimes, like most people my age, it seems I wake up with the perpetual fear that my best days are behind me. Sometimes that is a relief considering how exhausting some of those days were and other times that thought scares me to death.

      Back in May 2016 I went though one of the strangest most bizarre experiences of my life and was only held together away from death because one of my best friends in the world was their to keep me from going so far off the edge as to turn my 30th birthday into my first funeral.

      When I got back to Alabama I had a lead on a steady job at one of the local news stations . . . that fell through.

       When I got back to Alabama I had a girlfriend whom I loved who had a kid I wanted to take care of like a father . . . 4 months later I realized what some of my friends had already told me and cut it off after I'd started to pick out a ring.

       Three months prior to moving back to Mobile I found out that the very mentor I'd had since I was a kid, who got me my first production gig when I was a kid back in 1999, had died of a horrible disease.

       Two years prior to that incident my Father had died violently.

        After moving I was able to work on some great productions such as "Gerald's Game" and "Get Out" and even a cool commercial shoot for the State of Alabama I've still never seen but hope to one day. After I realized that they were going to cut the film incentives and a lot of productions and production friends were leaving Mobile for places like Birmingham and New Orleans I realized I needed a regular job which brings me to where I am today.

        Last week a project I helped out on I had the pleasure of seeing on a giant screen in a beautiful theatre. The person who made the film had told me I was an inspiration to their passion. A theatre full of people clapping over a small film made almost entirely out of passion reminded me why I even got into film and media in the very first place. I'd spent nearly a decade making films for other people through the tedious process of mountains of paperwork and even larger mountains of egos I'd completely forgot what it feels like to fuel a passion project for little to no money but for the love of the project itself. That moment alone threw as spark back inside me I hope becomes as big as the fires that were inside me when I initially moved my ass from Mobile to the West Coast.

        I've been working and writing a side-project I'm deeply, deeply, deeply passionate about but the quicksand of this fast paced world and the depression that sinks in when I see the domino effect of things I've lost in the recent years seems to sink my abilities to put the hammer down onto the steel and deep into the anvil to make this thing. Despite all my setbacks I am determined to finish it and this project fuels my passions away from my hobbies, friends, and the bottom rung of Maslow's needs I currently am only a step or two above subsisting on.

 

     

         “For what it’s worth... it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". 

                                         

       

 

Reflections Are Moments in Time Enriched by the Past Like Mulled Wine.

   "All are lunatics but he who an analyze his delusion is called a philosopher." ~ Ambrose Bierce.

   Keeping my access to the internet as light as possible over the next couple of weeks reminds me of the famous Kurt Vonnegut story "Harrison Bergeron" about a man who has been weighted down against his full potential so that society is more balanced. Eventually Harrison breaks from his chains.

   I feel like our dependency on machinery and social networking is doing essentially the same thing to all of us. It's funny when satire aligns. Although in a society as richly detailed and nuanced as America or the rest of the world somewhere our strange predictions tend to line up properly if not exactly regardless of our efforts to push them there. Perhaps it's just the osmosis of god crafting the universe out of our dreams reflected in our arts.

   The older I get I realize that the human psyche, or perhaps just mine, is like its own organism almost separate from my body experiencing the world outside of itself. This blog, my poetry, my writing experiences, my lifestyle, so far when I pause and stop the momentum of my brain it separates in a serene void of endless reflections I can pick apart ad nauseam. This experience used to sicken me to dizziness but now I find it an exhilarating ride to pick apart my own mind in this way.

   The thrill of life has deadened somewhat inside me to a point I cannot explain anymore. I've felt and done quite a lot and can remember almost all of it. Life in the thick of things can be like a gross sisyphean ouroboros task. We're constantly working with no goal or purpose in mind hoping that at some moment in time you'll be able to reflect and then eventually die looking back on a life as ghastly full of memory as an old storage shed where you can say yes . . . I did that thing, kissed that girl, saw that band, ate that dish, viewed that piece of art with my naked eyes, wrote that poem, danced until my feet bled, I was alive . . . but our fear at the end of it all will still be that it wasn't enough.

   I'm spending this month dealing with social media and my need to be noticed as little as possible despite still being pulled back here and there.

   You are alive now. There is no no past, there is no present, there isn't even this moment, there are only the moments in between that fold deep into your psyche and section you off to be the person you are which is just a moment in time for someone else.

   And I hope that moment you become yourself makes someone else happy and in turn they return the favor. After all that is what love really is isn't it? Love is just by nature someone noticing the beauty in you that you cannot notice yourself and you noticing the beauty in them that they cannot see themselves. That's all love really is.

   Do you remember the last time you kissed someone and it made your soul float?

   Or are you so old now that those moments are just mysteries to you faded away beyond memory to a place of bitter nostalgia for the days when you were slightly younger but always forgetting how ignorant you really were back then?

   I would not do this life over. I would only try to do it better now going forward and perhaps slower for my health.

   Who is Daniel Louis Krone . . . simply the reflections of other people's perception of him. He is really nothing more than a shadow of a full connection he may never understand even though he's certain he once did.

Gaslighting By God in the Land of Dreams.

"I could write it better than you ever felt it." - Fall Out Boy.

"You only hear the music when your heart begins to break." - My Chemical Romance.

    Why did I begin this fruitless blog writing exercise with quotes from two bands who most would say aren't as important or worthy of quotes compared to other titans of musical writing such as Tom Waits or Bruce Springsteen?

 I could have opened it up with crazy quotes such as . . .

 "The eggs chase the bacon around the frying pan and the whinin' dog pidgeons by the steeple bell rope..." - Tom Waits "In the Neighborhood" or some such noise.

But if you need a kind of lyric-less musical palate cleanser while reading this I'd recommend "4" by Richard D. James cause that's what I was listening to while writing this.

Almost a full year ago I sent in an audition tape to play a character in a new Stephen Spielberg film called "Ready Player One", a character by the name of Wade Watts, whom I've come to find out is the lead.

I'd completely forgotten about this until recently last week while stuck at work I decided to slay my procrastination by cleaning out my laptop and found my old audition recording with copies of my paperwork for the submission on my laptop. No sense in dwelling on that now. Or drowning myself in the preverbal 'what could have been world'. I've been in that world. I've swam around in it and I assure you it's not a nice place to be. I didn't get the part, I'm sure most of you have guessed that by this juncture, but I'm happy to say I did shoot for the moon. Missed horribly. But I aimed right at that fucker. 

I've spent over 10 years working in film and T.V. working a verified cornucopia of hats as a 'jack of all trades' from focus pulling to editing and from editing to acting and from that to script doctor I've done all kinds of wild and interesting things that will nowhere near give me any sense of fame (which I don't want) or a trajectory for a career path whose outline probably looks a lot like an Umberto Boccioni futurism painting but in my old age will maybe give me the kind of menagerie of stories I desired so much to tell in my pitiful youth by the time I became old. 

However despite all that I still feel, like so many people I'm sure do, trapped in a machine trying to escape the pains of their past. 

This past week has been nuts. It's been so nutty in fact I've taken time out of my busy nutty schedule to sincerely reflect on my future and how I want to proceed in this muddy swamp filled with machiavellian monsters known as the prestigious "entertainment industry". 

Like most people in this business I love the work but hate the pettiness, thanklessness, and egotism this industry attracts sometimes. I don't like to suck up to people and if I ever do a good piece of work I hope no one will ever suck up to me. Well that is to say if people ever see the good piece of work I've done because it's now dawning on me that I've done something quite good and soon if I play my cards right people will see it. 

I can't talk about that too much, too many hands involved, but that is the crux of why I'm even writing right now. My past like a pack of rabid wild animals have caught up with me all at once and a part of me is frightened and a part of me is deeply elated by the prospect of these metaphorical hell hounds gobbling me up.  

A project I spent years trying to develop just e-mailed me back with a resounding "YES", well more of a tepid yes, but a yes after waiting so long on a project that I thought was DOA is something more than I ever would have expected. 

And 

. . . 

At the same time 

...

Another project I helped develop when I was back in LA came back. It's basically finished but this time a ruff cut of the film was sent to me for notes and I've been making those all week. This is a film I tried to find financing for while managing a gas station in Orange Beach over this past Summer. Which is quite an odd thing to try to do and even odder after all this time to see that project completed...holy fuck! 

And it ain't half bad, and might be, what's the word I'm looking for . . . poignant. 

. . . 

And this next one is painful. 

An essay both I (from my point of view) and one of my very best friends (from his POV of course) got finished regarding the time I was put in the hospital for 4 days on my 30th birthday. For those of you that don't know the full story it's a very long one and an incredibly painful one especially for me to remember. 

I can't say I cried when I read my friend's account about me. I can honestly say I cried throughout reading the entire experience. It was like re-living dying again emotionally. But it was beautifully well written so hopefully it can be shared in time. 

...

It snowed here in Mobile. That's something that very rarely happens.

. . . 

A film I worked on, though just  as a tiny cog in the machine, still makes me a little proud that it might actually get a Best Picture nomination and that's something I'm not sure I could accomplish even randomly like how this all worked out if I still lived in LA. 

...

All of these and all manor of other things too numerous to recall happened all within about an 8 day period. It was like a whirlwind sucking me back into a life I thought I was leaving behind but now fear I may never be able to escape. 

...

It's funny how things workout and it's also very funny how things don't. My failures are even more impressive I think than my successes. I've always felt I was hanging by a thread on the fringes of my own industry barely hanging on for relevancy like a gremlin on the wing of a plane. But upon reflection in this strange place called Alabama that I've grown more accustom to seeing as a home . . . maybe god just likes to gaslight people and send them all the strange feelings at once. But I sit here with some amazing opportunities, still struggling, and saying to myself . . . this thing called life isn't speed chess. You've lived a lot rushing around. You can breath. You can take a little time with this next move. Your past as it is will always haunt you and will only grow thicker as you grow older so if that forrest in your head, a sea of older rancid memories, grows thicker than fill it up with all manor of new wild things to then reflect upon once again when you are older than you are now. 

...

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War, No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't” 

                              ― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

                                           

Confession

Last year on May 11th 2016, on my 30th birthday, I had a violent hallucinogenic psychotic delusional breakdown that landed me in a hospital for 4 days where I thought I was dying. Since emerging out of that I made the decision to move back to my hometown of Mobile, Alabama and try to live a quieter life for myself and be surrounded by some different people I love that I’ve not been able to spend the same kind of quality time with as I had people from California. 

9 1/2 years is indeed a long time to be gone from a place you’ve called home most of your life but it’s not a place I honestly ever wanted to move back too. 

Several weeks ago I thought that there’s a very good possibility if a new job I’m looking at comes through that I could turn down a job on a major movie in town with one of my all time favorite actors and that has recently come to pass. That decision to actually turn down work just a few weeks ago I probably would have killed for has its own level of pain to it. (Although there is still a chance I may work on it during my off days.) Lower Alabama if you don’t know does have a moderate enough film market to limp by on production work provided you subsidize other work at the correct time. Case in point, probably more than LA, lower Alabama is a grind but it’s a beautiful place to grind away. 

For that stability and a little bit of piece at a day to day job I’d turn down the chance to do what I love to do and what for the longest I can remember have always wanted to do and have been doing for about 17 years. However this job currently gives me enough downtime to write and read and I desperately need to work on projects for myself rather than working to help make someone else’s dreams come true. I’ve done far too much of that in my career. 

It feels weird being in my skin lately. The manic obsessive wild Daniel seems to still be tucked away inside my head, resting and sleeping, but re-polishing and refocusing for almost a year has been both a blessing and a curse. It’s strange to be in a mindset where you cannot recognize yourself as the man you were a few short months ago. Trauma I suppose like all great transformative forces in life will do that to you.  

I used to be deeply religious, a regular ole Bible thumber. I used to have severe asthma. I used to be a man who never could have imagined the things I’ve done and seen now; parties full of drugs, sex, and nudity *(ooohhhlalala I know) I guess really all that comes with being imbedded in the LA world, well the world in general if you know where to look. Skydiving on a whim with a perfect stranger. Sleeping in a piece of art. Running my fingers across a Degas when no one was looking. There are things I won't elaborate on here. Jumping off a rooftop into a pool and the classic drunken wild mania of an unhinged LA personality, shaking hands, and asses trying to get attention to hopefully get more jobs so I can say when I’m older, 'I’ve done the thing, I did the things, and that was important for me', and when I’m old and grey like Roy Batty once said I just might say ‘Time to die’ with a little sly smile as the grip of life loosens its fingers from around me. Death is after all something I’ve done or been very close to doing at least 3 separate times.   

I moved back to Mobile in order to settle down, be with my girl, and get a regular job, and concentrate on my writing and finish up a project that has been ripping me to shreds creatively. Well the girl is gone, my car died, my mentor who started me out on this journey of films had died, and the tax incentives for the state of Alabama were pulled. Well I got a steady decent paying job after almost a full year of hustling and I was still able to work on some film and T.V. projects. I was happy to be a part of, “Gerald’s Game”  

and “Get Out”

, plus a tourism commercial at Mardi Gras, and yes Mobile celebrates Mardi Gras, we did invent the holiday after all and are allowed to celebrate it. And I've worked on a few other smaller projects as well out here too.

I still find it weird in a career of over 17 years the things I've worked on that have the strongest chance of lasting through the ages were all from Mobile, Alabama.

I feel the need to write this confession about my journey here because this whole journey of being back home has ripped my soul apart and it’s taken a while to (insert absurdly predictable Humpty Dumpty joke here) to put all of my pieces back together again . . .  

. . . and yet still there is a part of me that will remain broken, maybe that’s why I’ve taken back to writing again because when my hands float to the keys no matter what I’m saying or trying to say, wether conveyed or not or read or not for now it is just therapy and there is no drug I can think of that could fill this heart up the way when I am moved to write actually does.

 For now there is only the wonder of if things were different but in all human hearts we know that 'if only things were different' is a curse and it's best not to dwell on curses. 

IT, The ID, and the Deeper Horrors inside us.

via GIPHY

                               :BAD PUN DETECTION WARNING:

    The town is Derry, which is pronounced like Dairy, and since I've left this blog out too long there is spoilage ahead...(Daniel Louis Krone was crucified and burned at the stake for making this atrocious pun. May he rest in ashy peace.)

    “IT” is a loaded gun from the get go just like “Man of Steel” was. Everyone has what their ideal Superman is in their mind much like I think everyone has their idea of what makes a great Pennywise and for fans of the horror genre Pennywise the Dancing Clown of Derry, Maine is just as iconic as the Man of Steel.

    Everyone loves Christopher Reeves as Superman even though after all these years turning back time to save Lois is stupid as fuck! And in 1990 everyone loved Tim Curry as Pennywise…but c’mon fucking spider, fucking Ray Harryhousen spider!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh fuck!!!

    Our loves in cinema are not always perfect much like love is in reality. Ahhh, the human condition, ain’t it swell. And some of us are still afraid to admit that.
 

    Do you remember how scary “Nightmare on Elm Street” was? And now do you remember that it features a comically silly scene where a cell phone grows lips and a tongue?

(Super serious horror film you guys...super duper serious) or how about a FUCKING HOME ALONE TRAPS MONTAGE?!?!?!? Was Freddy breaking into that dream-house or the wet bandits? What!?!?!?!?!?! Nightmare on Elm Street Traps Montage 

    Our loves in cinema are not perfect and for the amazing amount of praise this film is getting IT’s not perfect and for me IT’s not a new classic or anything so richly soaked in hyperbole. IT really isn’t about perfection to me though. The novel isn’t perfect and the miniseries isn’t either. IT is about an idea and I love that idea and the lasting power of that idea has lasted 31 years in the hearts and minds of readers and I know will continue to last for a long long time. The haunted town of Derry, Maine is unique to every reader and viewer and that is truly part of what makes Stephen King's IT magical but is also what makes this material more divisive than most. IT is a story that goads the imagination out of us and reminds us what it’s like to have an imagination and especially one that’s incredibly vulnerable. So I’ve seen the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel IT and well it’s exactly what the novel is…a mixed bag. 

via GIPHY

    I’ve been reading threads and watching other people’s reactions to this new IT film and like a very small percentage of films everyone seems to be getting a completely unique experience out of IT. That is both a good and a bad thing. Most people I speak to get slightly different things out of every movie but the people I speak to, especially people in the horror world, seem to be getting drastically different experiences from IT and that comes to one of the core problems with IT and is probably also what is accredited to its distinctive mass appeal…tone. Tonally 2017’s IT is all over the god damn place.

    One of the critics I watched kinda described it like Dolores Claiborne, meets Stand By Me, meets The Monster Squad, with a scary clown thrown in for flavor...and that might also be a great descriptor for the novel as well accept as a much richer experience. via GIPHY

via GIPHY

    I had a totally unique experience as I’m sure everyone else did. I saw this film with my identical twin brother via GIPHY
(twins used for reference) who had seen the miniseries and has also read King’s epic novel just like I had. He’s right handed and I’m left handed. He plays guitar and I work in movies. You get the picture. We’re different. Him and I both have similar experiences with the novel and miniseries though. But we had entirely different reactions to this movie. I enjoyed it. I didn’t love it. IT wasn’t the best horror movie I’ve seen in 10 years or anything drastically hyperbolic but it was worth my time and I will probably own it. My brother on the other hand I think saw a partially entertaining but incredibly wasted opportunity to bring something unique to the screen and took the train to disappointment town. via GIPHY(train used for reference)

    2017’s IT (much like my blog) has serious tonal problems and a lack of identity. IT has an atmosphere problem too and IT has a trope problem but then again so did the novel. And while the lack of real atmosphere and the inconsistent tone is inexcusable for a film like this, that is to say a large budget film from a major studio based on a beloved work, I still really enjoyed Andy Muschietti's IT. IT is a mixed bag. IT is cinematic trail-mix. Sometimes you’ll get candy, sometimes you’ll get a nut, and sometimes you’ll get something else...something dark bubbling under the surface of Derry and maybe something will crawl up from the depths of that slime in your own mental sewer known as the ID at the back of your mind. 

Or wherever it’s kept.

In the frontal lobe…?

    Fuck, I don't know. This review or strange ranting hodgepodge of my thoughts on IT isn’t medically accurate or psychologically accurate. Hell it's probably not grammatically accurate. So like Jerry Smith says, "You better cut me some slacks". Also probably not quote accurate. 

    This was a spook-house 80’s creature feature with partially a “Monster Squad” or the “Goonies” tone and also was a serious serious coming of age drama about child abuse, bullying, and still managed to squeeze in a few moments that were pure unsettling horror and jokes that were pure comedy gold. But somehow for me 2017's IT still managed to, for the most part, gel together like a complete work should.

Okay let’s now address the elephant in the room….

“Hey you elephant get up on out of my room!!!” 

God I have no idea how that elephant keeps sneaking in here. 

Now to the other elephant in the room.

No space turtle (although references, yippee)

and no . . . . THIS PART OF MY BLOG HAS BEEN DELETED OUT! SORRY FOLKS. THE SUBJECT MATTER CONTAINED IN THIS ASPECT HAS BEEN EJECTED SO THAT I CAN WRITE MORE ON THIS SUBJECT AND ELABORATE MORE ON IT AND POSSIBLY GET IT PUBLISHED IN A REAL PUBLICATION OUTSIDE OF MY BLOG . . . . HIDDEN HORROR'S IN IT < ~ (Here is the questionable easter egg hunt and find.)

via GIPHY
Now that I've presented you with some vague food for thought above is a visual palette cleanser.

Let's discuss a tiny bit about Easter Eggs and visual cues in the film and by discuss I mean just read and discuss IT amongst yourselves:

    First of all I'd like to note that the film literally has Easter Eggs in it. An no one has made a pun about that yet out of all that I've watched on lists of Easter Eggs in the film.

    Pennywise's mouth while original to some visually seems to be directly inspired by films like "Wicked City" (gif below), Beetlejuice (poster seen in Bill's bedroom) and "The Company of Wolves". Company of Wolves Transformation and Beetlejuice Transformation

            (*Of course if not references to film probably just references to things like a goblin shark, whose jaw is probably the origin of this more obscure monster trope.)

    Everyone seems to have mentioned the Tracker Bros. shirt, The Christine inspired shirt, the car from Sleepwalkers (Car from Sleepwalkers Easter Egg), The Freese's Shirt, and the Tim Curry clown doll in the clown room and so so so much more so I'm sure if you go digging you'll find things buried deep in the film so I'm just going to mention a few things and then link lists that have already done the research for me.

    Pennywise's eyes don't reflect in the water in the basement scene is another wonderfully subtle touch as well as the fact that one of his eyes is staring directly into the camera lens when he kills Georgie. So to the people who said this film has no subtlety and all the scares were jump-scares...well nope this film has plenty of subtle things. You were just distracted by everything else going on to notice them. But then again that is the nature of subtlety but is also what will increase the re-watchability and longevity of this film.

    Here are two great videos by New Rockstars on some of the references in IT and one by Looper but in a film this dense I don't think it would be possible to catch them all. New Rockstars How IT Redefines Fear  (Oh there's a subliminal flash frame shot in this video if you can catch it.) and New Rockstars IT Easter Eggs plus Looper IT Easter Eggs and there are tons and tons of these lists online if you are curious. 

Is Georgie's mom dressed like the woman from "Let's Scare Jessica To Death" before she turns into Pennywise in the projector sequence? 

Oh,

 even the article I found this photo on that references little Easter Eggs didn't even mention Pennywise is in the mural. Jesus christ man he's right there! Run motherfuckers!!!

    But additional things I don't see too many people mentioning online are the addition of the bulb head design created for Tommy Lee Wallace's IT in 1990. Also to note it kinda looks like a babies head, something that Skarsgard modeled the performance after, and also an inflated balloon but Wallace on the IT (1990) commentary noted that he just wanted to use the appliance to make Curry seem subtly off and otherworldly in a way your mind can't quite place a finger on it.

   Oh the subtle blue makeup above Tim Curry's eyes could be a reference to Pogo the Clown or John Wayne Gacy as he's known.

And if you know anything about the Novel IT you'd know that the creature at the end of the book manifests itself in the form of a spider. While I'd already mentioned before that the turtle is referenced in the film twice. I haven't seen any other article regarding Easter Eggs in this film that mentions that there is a subtle nod to the spider as well in what I think is a beautifully elegant design choice for Pennywise. 

    Those beautiful buck teeth and while yes some of his behaviorisms and mannerisms is like that of something trying to imitate a baby...'We all float down there, yes we do, yes we do' as in with Richie after the leper sequence teeth like that are similar to that of spiders and babies with buck teeth.

    Namely tarantulas. And also to note an italian folk song surrounding death is called a tarantella. Here is an example of one from "Interview with the Vampire", Lestat's Tarantella. (Link not working.) Although I don't think Ben Wallfisch, the composer, utilized one in the film but did create a motif similar to Freddy's infamous '1, 2, Freddy's coming for you, 3, 4, better lock your door', so that's always fun. Yes I remember the movie marquee and oh yeah 5 is the one about the baby. But since I mentioned Tarantella's I think I'll point out that musical reference the film uses is from an old nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons and yes much like most nursery rhymes it does have a sinister theme.

    Oh the 'I Love Derry' balloon that Patrick Hockstetter sees is a subtle reference to the gay panic themes of the novel which features a gay man being murdered wearing an 'I Love Derry' hat if I remember correctly and I won't go into the gay themes of the novel because that would be an essay that could be its own book.

    But that's another reason why this meme of Pennywise and the Babadook as lovers is bothering me. The entity literally capitalizes on the fears of a recently murdered gay man at the hands of homophobic rednecks at the beginning of the novel and while the Babadook's gay icon origins is a rather interesting story Pennywise, a monster that capitalizes on the gay panic of the 1980's, definitely shouldn't be a gay icon in the slightest. But it's a fucking super cute drawing so who am I to ruin anyone's fun. Of course to note (as it has been noted) it is hinted that the creature is female and if IT is not then it is a shapeshifting entity with no sex whatsoever. Unless deadlights are its own kind of sex. Kinky, kinky, deadlights. I'm too lazy to write a comprehensive and funny joke about gay nightclubs with lights in them.

    But if I were to talk about the novel, the miniseries, and this movie, and all of its rich and detailed nuances here this blog would be way, way, way, too long.

    To go over everything I noticed watching and researching this film would be incredibly pedantic and to talk about how the book, miniseries, and this new film affected me would be equally pedantic and I don't want this blog to go to the weeds.

    After seeing the film a friend of mine had called me to talk about it and ask me questions from the novel and perhaps in time he’ll pick up that book and let its magic wash over his imagination. He'd recently ordered the miniseries online which will open up the narrative of Derry, Maine further and that is what I do really love about this new film. IT (2017) is opening people up to the treasured story and lighting up people's imagination around Derry and King's masterful coming of age novel. 

    My final thoughts on the film go like this. If the film had a more consistent tone I think IT could have been a home run. Mike Hanlon and Stan Uris got the shaft. What happens to Eddie in the book with the leper could have been made more scary (and not with the inclusion of blow job offers) but with a better pacing of that moment. The Georgie scene was paced very well and edited well in such a way that even if you knew the story you never really knew when the strike was going to take place and that level of unease even if you knew every single beat of IT is what good editing is and should be but the film loses traction when it becomes "The Monster Squad". That I will note is kind of ironic considering they got rid of the parts from the novel that actually have classic movie monsters.

   Here is a well read excerpt I found online of The Death of Eddie Corcoran which is by far and away one of my favorite parts of the book.

    "The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain." is one of the most beautiful opening lines of any novel.

    The Georgie scene, the most iconic scene from the book, and miniseries, in my mind was pitch perfect and if the film had kept that tone I may be on the boat calling IT a new masterpiece.

 via GIPHY

    IT takes you back to childhood if you grew up on films from the 80’s. IT takes you back like a phone call among friends brought the losers back to Derry and like the monster in the film has divided audiences in completely unique ways. It doesn’t really matter where IT found you on the spectrum. 2017's IT seems to be having a sincere effect on the horror world, horror fans, and the zeitgeist in general much like the miniseries did to those who grew up on IT and much like the book did to anyone who has read IT. The glamours of the beast transform and change to whatever monster and fear lies inside of you and it seems much like Bob Gray, the Dancing Clown of Derry, Pennywise is still manifesting its shape of fear inside of a new audience and that is very special.

    Pennywise has taken something from us all and given us something back. He has reminded us what it feels like to be a vulnerable child and what it's like to have an imagination and for some who had trouble connecting with the children in the film reminded us what it's like to loose that part of our childhood to the monster of time and memory and maybe that's why they're called the losers. It's not because they're 'losers' in the obvious sense that it implies but because they've all lost something to this clown and the adult monsters of Derry. They've lost, like so many of us have, what it means to be a child again and in some way any incarnation of this story reminds us what it's like to have that back just a little bit and just enough to imagine a grinning face in the storm drain inviting us to float down there.

    But never forget Stephen King's epic novel IT was and is always about the sacred bonds of real friendships. “Maybe there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.” And there is real magic in that prose. 

IT could have been a new horror classic but for me IT was just an entertaining film based on a source I love. The best horror experiences I've had in the past couple of years are . . .

(The Witch)

(Kill List) 

And the scariest horror experience I've had in most recent years doesn't even go to a film. It goes to a videogame titled P.T. featuring a Ghost named Lisa. 

    Perhaps all IT (2017) needed for me was more Junji Ito and less "The Monster Squad" but then again to each his own.

    My ideal director for this source material would have been Guillermo Del Toro though. His understanding of atmosphere, fairytales, boogymen, the link between boogymen and real world monsters, and childhood trauma would have done well with this material and it's fun to note his new film "The Shape of Water", which is getting great reviews, is about a monster in the water...but maybe, just maybe, this monster lurking from the depths is about something different than our repressed ID. Maybe this monster is something else

but I still liked what we got.

And however you feel there will always be 3 Pennywise's; Tim Curry, Bill Skarsgard, and the one inside of your mind.

    The best place to experience the deeply troubled and haunted town of Derry, Maine is, as always with stories, inside your own mind and in your dreams and nightmares.

    And that's where Pennywise will always be that place where you aren't sure if you're awake or still dreaming, oh fuck wait nevermind that's Peter Pan.

Also fuck you internet you goaded me to bring back my blog . . .

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