Creepy - The Losers' Club: Stephen King Interview

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

Enjoy this episode of fellow Bloody FM podcast: The Losers' Club. A podcast dedicated to all things Stephen King. And what could be more appropriate than their interview with the man himself: Stephen King! Enjoy!***Subscribe to The Loser's Club at:***Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/35nHecwisk2T0ljGFgNH2q***iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-losers-club-a-stephen-king-podcast/id1194913358***Website: https://consequence.net/the-losers-club/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Good morning, afternoon or evening, and welcome to the Bloody Disgusting Network. The following show is just horrifying. Beware. Hey everyone. This is a time of year where a lot of people are traveling or they have some time off from work or from whatever obligations they normally have and it can be a good time to find some new podcasts. So I want to share a little something with you all from another show on Bloody FM. I consider myself a pretty big Stephen King fan. I'm sure many of you do.

So I wanted to drop an episode of The Losers Club in the feed this week. This is a podcast that's all things Stephen King, from the books to the adaptations, to the Made for TV movies, and more. And this episode is a very special one as they had a particular fan of their show, Come On to Chat, the one and only Stephen King himself. Enjoy. And make sure to subscribe to The Losers Club,

wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everyone. This is Mike here, joined by Randall and Mel. All today, we're joined by an author, listeners of this podcast may have heard of. Stephen King, welcome to The Losers Club. Hey, it's great to be here. Thank you. Glad to have you.

Now that we know that you're a fan, we got to ask, have you ever listened to one of our episodes and just said, oh, fuck off. Like, you know, get out of here. What are you nuts? No, I've never done that. My favorite one, I think, was with John Donnie. Ellie. Yeah. Saying that right.

Because that guy just kind of like, was on a speed rap, and I just loved that, you know. He, uh, guys head must just be full of ideas because he just wrapped along, you know, he'd say, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think Mel said to me after the interview, she's like, how does he live with that brain? Yeah. And you couldn't see this, but he was walking around.

He was doing stuff. he was occupied that whole time. He was playing basketball. I could actually hear that. And, you know, the other one that I listened to with great interest were the things on writing. Oh, yeah? Because you guys opened up about yourselves on that. And I like that a lot.

That was good. That was good because that's what that book's supposed to do in a way. It's supposed to open up writers. You know, and you get a chance to talk about what you're doing and how you're feeling about the craft. And that was good. That was good. I heard a lot of good stuff. Yeah. That's so funny. We were just talking about how that was. A very personal episode for us. Yeah, it was.

Yeah. We have to ask, too. I mean, is there anything useful or at least entertaining in hearing people deconstruct your work or offering new takes on old stories or revisiting favorites? Well, no, I mean, it's like, and I said this on the King cast because I did them. The only reason I did them first guys was because they asked first. Oh, hey, you know, that's fair. It was like, it's always like Huck and Jim going to their own funeral, you know, except that you don't just hear good things. You hear things that are sometimes not so good, but that's cool too.

Yeah, I think that's one of the things about our podcast is we see you as sort of this really wonderful prism through which to explore, I don't know, contemporary genre fiction. And so I think taking you seriously by, you know, examining your works from, you know, a celebratory but also a critical point of view is probably the best way to do it. Yeah, no, I'm a fucking luncheon pad. That's all I am, you know. No, no, no. This is what we're saying is there's such a doubt. of work and such a, you know, a diversity of work there that it's, it's been, we've been doing this podcast since 2017 and it's been nice, nice recovery guy. He's good at that. Yeah, but it's just,

it's been, it's been, you know, so illuminating, I think, to kind of like spend that much time with all these different works, but yeah. It's because, yeah, in all honesty, because it does go in different directions, you know, and you have some interesting people on and it's, it's, it's, It's good. You know, it isn't like the center of my life or anything like that. But it's always interesting to check in and, you know, like listening at a keyhole or like going to a funeral. What did you first hear about it, though? Or like, how did you first hear about it if you remember? I don't know. I mean, I didn't know very much about podcasts. And, you know, I kind of thought, well, this is kind of a rinky dink thing. It's like inventing radio. And I think that about six years ago, somebody said,

you ought to check this out, or there was something on my Google alert about the Losers Club. So I checked it out. And I said, oh, these guys are kind of interesting. That's great. And we're so glad to have you here. But let's talk about what you're up to right now. So we're fairy tale.

We're very excited about this. It's certainly not what we expected after Billy Summers, which was also great, but, you know, definitely not in the supernatural realm. What excites you about fairy tale and what can you tell us about it? Well, as a kid, I liked all the stories by Robert E. Howard and I liked Edgar Rice Burroughs. You know, one of the greatest things is that I think the land that time forgot, the story starts with a never. who finds a manuscript on the beach. And the narrator says to you, the reader, read five pages, and I will be forgotten. And to me, that's what fiction's all about, you know, particularly fiction where a lot of stuff happens and where you're kind of on an adventure. And you say to

yourself, what I would like to do is for my reader to forget all their problems for a while and just relax and get totally immersed in the story and get carried away to a different world. But I loved all this stuff with Robert E. Howard and Conan, the Barbarian, and some of the characters in the Edgar Rice Burroughs books who would find these strange deserted cities or these monsters and things. And I thought, well, it's kind of like fairy tales. And I started to kind of get interested in that. And I thought, you know, maybe I could combine those two things. I could take the whole fairy tale riff. Have you guys read that book yet? No, not yet. No. It's got pictures in it, too. All the check. Oh, interesting. Gabriel Rodriguez, who does my son's lock and key, did half of the

illustrations and another guy did the other half and they're they're really cool but i i say to myself these books particularly the edgar rice burroughs books you know like john carter of mars which i read before i started again and you know they're supposed to have this hero who's like muscular you know he played football in college and but at the same time he's got a brain and you know he's handsome and got a cleft chin and all that good stuff. And I thought, I'd like to write a character like that. I'd like to write a character who's big, tall, strong, who's smart. But I want to give him a dose of reality.

That is, this is a kid who, as a younger man, a younger kid, put dog shit on a bad teacher's windshield and glued somebody's ignition. shut. In other words, I wanted him to have an anti-Disney kind of thing in there. And then the other thing was I thought to myself, I can give this kid an adventure in this other world that's called Empus. And I can give him that deserted, scary, monster-ridden, deserted city. But I can add in all these fairy tales. And maybe, just maybe, I can. and make people believe it. You know?

So that was fun. But the fairy tales, I tried to cram in every goddamn fairy tale I could think, including Ariel, the mermaid from the Disney. Oh, that was a personal fave. So we actually just talked about Black House on the podcast. And, you know, we've covered the talisman quite a bit ago. I mean, and I think those were the first books that came

to mind when I read about what fairy tale was about. And we're also covering sort of adjacently ghost story. So it got us thinking, you know, we're kind of thinking about Peter Strub and your collaborations. Do you think we'll ever get that third talisman book? I really don't, I don't know. I'm not, I'm always hopeful, but I don't know if it will happen or not. There's certainly an idea there. Peter had a wonderful plan. lot for it. And I've just been busy. He's been busy. He's had some health problems, one thing after another. And so right now it's on hold. But the one thing that would help is, come on you guys, get this thing on Netflix with the brothers. That would be good. If that happened,

I think maybe the third book would have a little more, you know, a little more attraction. Well, I mean, it's kind of timely because Stranger Things, I guess, is coming back this weekend. I guess. Like, I don't, I'm not, you know, I've been champing at the bit for it like the last few days. Come on. Yeah, come on. I need it now. You can't wait for it.

But are you, I mean, is there in further discussions with the Duffers with it? Or have they just been so busy with, you know, been on the upside down and all, so to speak? Man, I don't know. I don't mess too much with movie business. And I have an agent in California. who keeps me informed when something comes up. But the best thing that you can do, you know how they say a watch pot never boils? The best thing is to, you know, stick to what I do, which is to write stories.

And if something comes up, whoa, it's fantastic, you know. I've got a make, and tonight I'm going to watch Mr. Harrigan's phone. Oh, interesting. I'm hopeful for that. It's Donald Sutherland and Jaden Martell, who. who was in It. And, you know, the thing is, Fire Starter, maybe not exactly what we had all hoped in terms of the film.

But it was nice. I think the girl who played Charlie McGee was fantastic in that. And it was such a relief to see that Pennywise didn't eat her in It. Yeah, seriously. On the subject of adaptations, I just have to think it must be so weird to exist as an individual, fallible, human, and also as a representative for a mountain of intellectual property. You got Stephen King the man versus Stephen King the brand.

And how do you think about that? How do you relate or reconcile those two self-hoods in your life? Well, I don't, mostly. And the thing is, I've become extremely popular. Now, I think that when I die, I will kind of disappear from the paperback racks, but that fucking clown is going to live forever. That's one thing that I've got going for me. But when I sit down to write, I put myself in a different place. I'm always a little bit humble by the chance to do this for a living.

and I try not to think about what's the audience going to think about this or what's a critic going to think about this, what's the losers club going to think about this when they chew it over because I just want to tell the story. So I try to keep that separate. And my wife keeps me grounded. The kids do and mostly, man, I just live a life, you know. Yeah.

three hours a day I do this thing and then I go to the store or I go to bank and cash a check or whatever. It's always got to be personal. Yeah. I guess I'm curious because you mentioned the clown and how Pennywise is this character that you created in the 80s and has evolved through so many manifestations, whether it's different actors, different forms of iconography, artwork, adaptations, all these other things. These characters that you create that are then that end. that sort of like enter the pop cultural sphere and are remolded and remade. Does that change your relationship to the character that you first created over time?

Like, how would you sort of characterize your relationship to Pennywise now versus them? Well, I don't have a relationship with Pennywise now because I have no intention of going back to it. This is in the hands of people who are doing this. I guess Andy and Barbara are going to do Welcome to Derry. They're talking about it anyway. And they've got sort of a handshake deal, I think, with HBO Max. You can check me on that. But it's an interesting possibility to do that.

They talked about a prequel, which struck me as an okay idea. I'd love to see what Pennywise was up to 27 years before the 50s. Or I guess it would be the 80s because they updated the, So it would be, you know, like before World War II or something. It would be interesting to see what happened with that. And that's the way I am with all the movies. It's interesting to see what they do with them. I'm always curious what they do, what they change, if the changes work.

A lot of times I feel like the closer they stick to the story and unless they go off on their own, the better off they are. But yeah, it's fun. It's fun to see what they do with them. Well, that, you know, sticking to the story, I mean, one of the companies that certainly did that was, you know, Castle Rock Entertainment. And I, you know, like Pennywise, I guess it's coming back, you know,

from, you know, into the fold. I wondered, you know, have you and Rob Reiner kept touch over the years? And has you ever approached you about doing a third film? I mean, because, you know, the two of, you know, he did hit grand slams with the two works that you did with you. I've always wondered. He's fantastic. Rob, Mark, and the last time I saw him, I think, was just before COVID. He's very politically active.

And he asked me to take part in a little movie for his political filmmaking company. I can't remember the name right offhand. So I went in. I saw him. We talked over some of the old times. and some of the things that we've done. And, you know, it's... And William Goldman was involved in misery, too.

And William Goldman, I just idolized that guy. And they did some stuff in that film where they had changed certain things that happened in the book, and those things worked. In the book, Misery, Annie chops off his foot with an axe. And in the movie, she hobbles him. And that really, that's still a scene that's hard for people to watch where she puts that, you know.

What does she say, I love you? So sick. And she breaks the shit out of this book. And in the book, she runs over the sheriff with a riding lawnmower. of course that didn't happen. So they kind of took it down a notch in some ways, but they kept the suspense up. But to go back to what you're saying,

where your question actually came from, now I sound like John Darnielli, right? And that was a fantastic book, wasn't it, right? Oh, loved it. Loved it. I thought it was amazing. Incredible, just incredible. Anyway, Rob is doing an update on spinal

town. Yeah. Yeah. So he's a little bit busy right now. Well, let's talk about books a little bit. There's books people love of yours, obviously, that gets, you know, unanimous praise. And there's others that kind of have become punching bags, I guess, like in terms of your larger collection, and you've even taken some shots at them. There's the Tommy Knockers, Dreamcatcher, books like that. Although I will say we have a lot of defenders of those two books on this podcast, Mel and I both included. And I guess I'm curious, are there things you personally love about these works even though, you know, they've taken something of a drubbing over the years. Sure.

Dreamcatcher was written longhand because it was after the accident and I couldn't sit at a desk and run the word processor at the same time. So I was at the dining room table with my leg, which had a fixator on it, spread out to the side. And I had these books that Peter taught me this. Peter Straub wrote everything longhand. And he had these wonderful ledger books. So I filled up two of them with Dreamcatcher.

And like a lot of the books, I felt that the ideas just sort of fell into place. So I like all my children. You know, I think of them as kids. And I see things about all of them that I like. I mean, Tommy Knockers was coped out totally. and I still thought it was a fantastic idea. I originally got the idea in college. I just thought, what if a guy stumbled over the edge of a long, buried, flying saucer?

And I went from there. If there's one book, I guess, that took a real pasting that made me angry. The only time I've ever really been angry was needful things, which I thought of as a comedy and a comment on the whole Reagan, let's all go out and make money and it's all about, you know, getting stuff and being the owner of stuff and I'm better than you because I have more cars or I have more boats or anything. And I thought, let's take that to the limit and do that. And I thought needful things was hilarious in a black way.

I think that a lot of critics who read that book thought, well, this is just nuts. It isn't what he does. There are no boogie monsters coming out of closets and that sort of thing. There's just this old man trading goods. And so that was a disappointment for me. critical disappointment and one where I felt like it deserved better. Yeah. Yeah, we're big fans of needful things here.

That was one of the first books by you I ever read. And it's continued to this day to be one of my favorites. And we talked a lot about in our episode on it about how funny it is. I think that's something that, you know, really went over people at the time. I mean, what is it? The woman throws shit at sheets or something. And she's got a bumper sticker on the back of her little car that says, is how's my driving?

I was $1,800 each shit. Man, I guess it just didn't work for a lot of people, but there you go. Well, it worked for us. It's comic who bombs at the laugh club. Sure. Well, you just mentioned shit, and I have to, you know, without getting crude, one of the things I... Go ahead, get crude.

Let's get crude, then. Let's do it. One of the things I always bring up is the kind of rampant, scatological humor and horror that I feel manifest throughout your work. And I wanted to ask where this anxiety comes from. And I have a theory because I feel like on writing, you talk about this really harrowing incident involving poison ivy. And I wonder if that had an incident. I wiped my ass with poison ivy.

I had to stay in the tub of starch for weeks after that. It was just everywhere, man. It was terrible. But look, you know, I don't have a big phobia about bodily functions. But what I do have is it interests me that in most books and most movies, nobody ever goes to the bathroom, ever. You know, every now and then you'll see some guy take a leak. And a lot of times you'll see characters throw up.

That's a big moment in some movies where the guy, just ralphs all over the place. And it certainly is a big moment in stand by me when that happens. But a lot of times you just don't go there. And I thought to myself, particularly when I wrote Dream Catcher, I thought, what if these creatures are ingested and you have to trap them out? And they come out and they have big teeth and all this stuff. And I thought, nobody's ever done that, man. I'm going to do it. You're so right that nobody shits in movies, which is not like a new idea, but like now that I'm thinking about it, I can't.

That's why the scene in train spotting, I feel like is so legendary. You actually see shit everywhere. There are a couple of movies like that, too. Every now and then you will see something. And I can't remember any specific movie. But yeah, it does happen from time to time. But you take a picture like Rambo. And I love that movie.

But when does that guy ever go to the bathroom? No, he never does. It would really humanize him if we knew. There's a serious issue here. And that is one of the things that horror fiction is supposed to do is it's supposed to be transgressive. We're supposed to go to places that we don't ordinarily go. There's a scene in Pet Cemetery where this guy digs up. up his, Lewis Creed digs up his son and he opens the coffin and he actually sees moss growing on his

dead son's face and I thought, this is terrible. For a long time, I didn't think that I would even publish that book and circumstances demanded that it be published. And, you know, I guess that you can't possibly overestimate the appetite of an audience for real horror. I think Claude Bacher proved that

with the books of bud. So, yeah, I think you're supposed to go places that you don't ordinarily go. That's not to say it's always successful, but oftentimes it is. We spoke with Stephen Graham Jones about that recently

in terms of like what can you do that hasn't been done before, what is even transgressive anymore. And I'd love to get your take on it, given how long and rich in the history of the horror genre is. It's like this mound of bones. Can you ever escape reference or homage when you're writing a new horror story? And what marks the difference between recycling something or honoring something or innovating on something? Well, there are certain places where I go again and again. I think that we're all afraid of death. and we're afraid of dissolution.

We're afraid of falling to pieces. And I've gone there several times. And the thing is, with zombies or any of these things, you try to do something new with it. You try to go to a place where you haven't been before. I just wrote a story, long story called Rattlesnakes. and it involves, in one part, twins who are only four years old falling into a rattlesnake pit. And the snakes get them, basically.

It's a terrible scene. And you don't want to say with a thing like that, oh, well, I'm doing this. And nobody has done that before. It's all supposed to be organic to the story. It's supposed to serve the story. so that I don't think a lot about, you know, going to a transgressive place on purpose, the nature of the story itself. And if you ask me why I write this stuff or why I want to, I can't answer that question.

I just always have sort of gravitated there. That's where my, that's true north for me on the compass. So I go there and you try to do something. where you say to yourself sometimes, this is going to really scare people. Hopefully, it's really going to scare people. I knew that in The Shining, when the little boy goes into room 217.

I knew that that was going to be scary because it scared me. So you try to go there and you try to find the places in yourself where you say, this is just awful. Is there any modern horror, whether in film or fiction, that you would say you find transgressive by today's standards?

Like, what is transgressive in modern horror? Yeah. Have you seen The Innocence? I have, yeah. That goes there. Yeah, I think so too. This is a movie where children do evil. and they really do evil and you

relate to it because it's not absurd it's not although I love this movie there's a movie called The Strangers where these creep shows masks on that's a fantastic horror movie but in a way

it steps away from what you think of is reality there's a scene in the innocence where something happens to a cat Randall do you remember that? Yeah I have had to fast forward a little bit through that.

Yeah, you can't do that, Randall struggles with Kat Hylants in particular. Yeah. Well, that's a transgressive scene. Yeah, it is. That's true. Yeah, there are things that I can think of in movies. In fact, one of the movies made out of my stuff, Cronenberg's Dead Zone, you know, there's a scene where the killer puts,

a scissors and then he opens his mouth. And you know what he's going to do. He's going to drop his head forward and impale himself through the roof of his mouth. And that's a scene where you go, no, no, just no. Yeah. Don't go there. Yeah, we debated that. We were like, you know, the practicality of that suicide's not great. You know, probably would hurt. And I don't know if you kill you immediately. It was the aesthetic of it, though. Yeah, we really broke it down. But Along those lines, I think when you talk about transgressive acts in your works that sort of were added by the filmmakers, I think of the mist, Frank Deribon's The Mist and the ending that he added to that. And I actually interviewed him a few years ago and he talked about watching it with you and the joy of watching you be satisfied by that ending. And so I guess because that was pretty divisive that ending. And it is, I would say it's very transgressive and was divisive for that reason. Would you characterize that as transgressive as well? Yeah, I would. And a lot of people were just horrified. They're still horrified by the ending of that movie. And, you know, one of the things that happens with a horror movie or a horror story that really works is that the first reaction of viewers and critics is this is horrible. This doesn't work at all. The reviews of the mist were just, savage. The reviews of Pubricks, the Shining, at the beginning, were just savage. But time goes by

and people recall with a kind of twisted joy what they felt at that time because they get a little distance. They get a little bit removed from it. You know what I'm saying? And so at the end of the missed. For a long time, Frank wanted to do that. And he had a clear picture of what he wanted to do. He didn't want to use a lot of CGI effects. He wanted to, he wanted it to be a throwback to what that story really was, was a drive-in movie. And that's the way it came to me when I wrote it. And I understood that. I loved it. And he said, but I don't know what to do with the end. because the end of the story is they're sitting in the mist and they're listening to a radio. And the narrator says, I heard some word that started with H.

It might have been hope. And that's where the story ends. And Frank said, what did you mean by that? Because we had a lot of discussions about it. And I said, I didn't know what came next. So I just ended the story. And he said, well, I can't do that in the movie. There has to be some kind of a button on this thing.

What am I going to do with it? And I said, what if they all die except for the main character and then the mist clears? I think that it was me that said that. But it might have been Frank's idea or it might have been a collaboration. Probably it was Frank. Anyway, he did it. And it was very brave. and he resisted the studios notes where they said,

you know, this is such a bummer. Nobody's really good at all Steve this. And he did it anyway because that's right, man. That's frank. I love that guy. It's just a gut punch. And I think in contrast to the drive-in style that you just referenced, a lot of horror now when I look at it,

it seems to be married to this monster as metaphor type of narrative. Monsters are standing in for everything. from grief to addiction, to other social issues. And when I think of your work, the monster is usually pretty independent. It's pretty external. It's exploiting someone's inner turmoil and making that relevant, but it's not one-to-one. And so I'm curious how you think of this sort of growing sub-genre, this monster-as-metaphor model. Well, I've wrestled with that because it comes down to is it outside evil or is it inside evil?

And outside evil is so much more optimistic somehow. You say, I didn't do this. That isn't my fault. It just happened that way. Attack came from outside. They released tack from the copper mine and invested people. And they weren't to blame. They weren't to blame.

then it becomes kind of an adventure story. You see what I'm saying? Whereas something like Pet Cemetery, where you say to yourself, well, this guy got a worm in his mind from that place. And he did something that was just, you know, again, transgressive. He dug up his son and tried to bring him back, even though he knew better, you see. So that's that kind of inside evil. And I think you see in a movie like hereditary, that kind of thing where it's in people.

Yeah. You know what I'm looking forward to a little bit is what Jordan Peel? There's a movie. Nope. Nope. Yeah. And it looks to me like it might be the sort of thing where it's almost what you were talking about, kind of a metaphor.

Yeah. So we'll see. Well, you. mentioned optimism and I got to love a movie called no I know how can you turn away from that that's the trailer is great the see who is going to be yep well you know we're going through your works chronologically and you you know you just mentioned optimism and that's something that we've been kind of talking about a little bit as we're reaching the aughts you know we've we've kind of noticed there's a little less anger we feel on the pages I feel like um you know evil tends to lose a little bit

more these days as a, you know, by comparison to a lot of the 70s and early 80s works. And I wondered, would you say your writing has become more optimistic over the years, you know, and do you feel like there's, you know, an area to credit for that? I think I'd mellowed a little bit. I was a very angry young man when I wrote books like Carrie and the Long Walk and Rage, which has been withdrawn. because, you know, the running man, all those books were just angry, angry, angry books. And I think actually around the time of the stand, when I was married and I had children

and I thought to myself, you know, there are good people and sometimes they stand up to the evil things that happen and good can win over evil. And so there's been a steady evolution over the years. Pet Cemetery is certainly an ugly book in a lot of ways. Kujo is an ugly book in a lot of ways. And this novella that I've just written Rattlesnakes is actually a sequel to Kujo. But I think by the time you get to, say, 2010, something like that, you start to see like a character like Holly Gibney that I never could have written, I think, earlier on.

Holly is what Carrie could have been if she was allowed to grow up. She has some of the same problems, the smother love, and she somehow rises above those things, and possibly because she finds a friend and Bill Hodges. But friendship is possible. it's possible that people are changed. That's the most optimistic part of my mind, the idea that people can change for the better. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you do a guttural punch, though, like revival, which seems to be like kind of a left hook, you know. Where did that come from at that point? The thing is, I don't want people to think that I've gotten entirely soft. Okay. And I did,

I was just so taken by that Arthur Markin's story, the great God Pan. And I tried to meld that with some of the Lovecraft ideas. And those two things just almost guarantee that the ending is going to be pretty horrifying. And you don't shrink away from that. You just, you know, Frank Norris said back at the turn of the 20th century, some of the critics didn't like my work. What care I? I never chuckled.

I told the truth. And for me, the truth of revival was that this guy just realized the whole universe is basically an antio. Yeah. I just gave away the end of that book. No, I think a lot more happens. It's still worth the read for anyone who's spoiled. So Holly, you have coming out somewhat soon. Is this a book that you'd say is more of a character study?

Because you're talking about Holly as this character that you're evolving and who is changing and flourishing in some ways after the events of the Mr. Mercedes series. Is that something that you'd say as a focus of the new book? Well, she continues to evolve as a character. and I think she evolves in really good ways. But I have to tell you that Holly is pretty horrible in a lot of ways. There's a lot of horrifying things that go on there in that book. I don't want to say that much about it. I don't want to be spoilers and that sort of thing.

But it's, I'm smiling because it's so fucking grizzly. Jesus. That's what makes us smile too. Yeah. I know. We're awful people, aren't we? No, we're not. I mean, we get this out in a way that is socially acceptable.

We go to horror movies and we read horror stories and we revel in those things. But none of us are ever going to go into a classroom like that kid in Texas and shoot a bunch of defenseless children. That is real horror, and that's probably somebody who never read revival. I think it is good to get at the truth in extremity that horror does. I feel like horror fans are vulnerable. We want to feel that vulnerability from a safe space, right? I know. Yeah.

And it's my job to try to make your flesh creep more. Yeah. But I also want to write stories that are. relatable in the sense that people read them and they feel like those things could actually happen. I mean, one of the things about fairy tale is fairy tale is set mostly in another world, but the first, probably third of the book is set very much in our world in the year 2014. And this kid goes to high school. You know, he plays sports in high school. He has a job with an adopt a highway, that sort of thing.

In other words, what I want to do is I want you to say, I know this kid, I know this world, I know the town that he lives in, these things are real. Therefore, I will follow him when things get strange. And, you know, there's always a point, you know, where the real world gives way to the make-believe world. And the thing is, that's a hymn, like a hem on a skirt. And you want to make it just as fine. Those stitches want to be just as fine as they can possibly be so that you bring the reader from one side to the other side. The movie's worth that way, too.

It's great when they do. Yeah, you know, that melding. Is it making sense at all? No, it does. It absolutely, absolutely does. And actually kind of something that I've always gravitated. towards your approach to writing. I mean, one of my biggest takeaways for the on-writing book was just, you know,

the fact that there's a legitimacy to genre writing that I think that, you know, those that do get interested into, you know, into writing. Oh, I know. Okay, I want that. Because that, I mean, that ultimately is one of the reasons that was, that really hit me personally, especially reading that, you know, that book. Because, I mean, I had teachers that shun me away from it. They didn't want me to write a story that had, that was steep in genre,

even though I was dealing with real world things. But we won't get started on that then. I can remember in fifth grade, I went to a little one-room school in Durham, Maine. And I had a friend named Ronald Roberson. It wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, so to speak. And he wore his hair like he'll be. this and he had a black motorcycle jacket and there's some missing teeth and everything and one day

he brought in a book and he said i bet you read this and he gave me the book it was called the blackboard jungle and it had a picture on the cover of this this chick you know this teenage chick with the the scoop neck top you know and a lot of her cleavage was showing and she's got this looking on her face like, I know what you want. I'll give it to the two if you want. And our teacher saw that and she took it away from me. And she said, you don't want to read junk like this, Stevie. And I thought to myself, that's exactly what I want to read. And I did. I got it. And I read it. And it wasn't that good, but doing a lot of other stuff that really was. So the genre writing should be taken on the basis of,

it's literary merit. And that's the only thing. And a lot of critics refuse to do that because they don't have any background in it. I got into this actually, and I ended up on the Today Show with Scott Smith. He had written a book called The Simple Plan. And it got roasted by the critics. And I thought, well, the reason they got roasted is because they don't understand that he's working in a genre where he's drawing on all these archetypes from the same genre.

So, you know, I get angry about that. I grinds my gears when other authors who are clearly drawing from genre will sort of deny the roots, you know? That's another thing that I'll get on a soapbox about. I wanted to ask, I mean, talking about Holly, talking about fairy tale, it just seems like there's so much in the works. Is it possible for a writer to stop? writing as long as they're still capable of writing, of putting pen to paper?

I don't know. What I know is when I'm not working, there are three or four hours a day in the morning that see, when the kids were little, my wife used to say the hours between four and five were the hours that God should never have made, because they got so crazy. And if I'm not working on something, and I have to take some time off to let all the dials reset, those hours between, let's say, 8.30 when I come back from my morning walk and 1230, seem like very long hours. And I'm not sure what to do with myself. It seems wrong to turn on Netflix or to vegetate in front of the prices, right?

and even reading a book seems somehow wrong. And I have my dream life becomes extremely vivid because it seems to me like the machinery keeps working. That's kind of a creepy concept. Well, you talk a lot about, and I think a lot of your books and in on writing about the guys in the basement, you know, that kind of are always working in the sort of intuitive nature, I think, of your writing. Do you think the men in the basement are still the ones that are driving a lot of your work? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know. When I start a story, I usually have an idea of what's going to happen and where it's going to come out. But, you know, when John Irving says something like, the first thing that I do is write the last sentence of my book.

I think, why would you do that? Don't you want to know? what happens. Don't you want to be surprised by some of the events? A book like the Green Mile. When I started that book, I had this image of a guy who was a big, somebody who was going to be executed, who is a trustee on this death row, and he was passing out candy and drinks and everything to the people. And I started the book and I thought to myself, well, I'll write this from the point of view of a guy who has to put people to death. But I didn't really know. And I had John Coffey, who was the big guy. He wasn't handing her snacks. He was just in a cell. But I had no idea what he was in for. And I thought at the beginning that he had done it.

And I had no idea that somebody else on death row had actually done those crimes. Those pieces just sort of came together because the boys in the basement, they know what they're doing. And if you let it work, if you trust the process, you're mostly okay, not all the time. I've run into brick walls sometimes, but not that often, actually. Do you do those boys sometimes, you know, come up with stuff that maybe you have to kind of think of other ways to get it out there? Like maybe you're not like, well, this doesn't seem like Stephen Kane. Maybe this seems like, you know, maybe this actually would work for, you know, like for someone else I know, or maybe I could make another pseudonym. I guess basically what I'm saying,

is there other writing out there that we don't know is from you. That's like, you know, maybe you did lyrics for Springsteen one point. You did a joke for Colbert. Maybe there's another Bachman. I don't know. Is there something where you just didn't really feel like it worked for you that, but you still had it? Well, I did narration for a shoot of Jennings album called Herefat. What is it? Hold on a second. Hold on a second. Dead air. Is it black ribbons? It's called black ribbons, yes.

Yeah. So I did narration for that, and that was kind of fun. Have I done other stuff? Well, I played bad rhythm guitar with a rock band called the rock bottom Remainters. Yeah. And otherwise, I basically just write stories and do my thing. Do you, are you playing on, are you still tinkering with the music and thinking about going on the road, the rock bottom mariner's?

I know, I feel like you guys, didn't you do a show in like 2019, like right before COVID? Yeah, we did too. Actually, we did them in L.A. And that was supposed to be the penultimate tour. but the band is playing in, I think, in Hiana Sport next month, and I can't do it because it's my son's birthday, so I'm going to be here instead. Also, you know, they don't really need me. They're really good. I got better as I went along, but I can remember we were playing this song called 6, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9. I can't, I think that's the name of the song.

And it goes from G to C to G to C to G to C. And I was playing at the top of the neck. And Dave Barry looked at me and said, you know, this would be easier if you played a barcord. And I said, what's the barcourt? And he showed me. And after a little while, I learned how to play barcords. It really gets a lot easier.

It changes the game. Totally. It totally changes the game. You know, there's a lot of things. things in rock music where you learn and you say to yourself, this is like when the magician does the trick and brings the rabbit out of the hat and you say to yourself, if you find out how you do that trick, you say, oh, that's not so hard. Yeah.

But of course, it does help they have a little talent. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So you've got your bandmates. That's like one group of friends, I imagine. And as someone who's written so extensively on the strength of childhood friendship, now that we've been through a pandemic, and this is something I'm thinking about all the time, how do you maintain your adult friendships?

How do you stay close to friends after you exit childhood? Well, you never have very many real friends, okay, people that you can open your heart to. You might have two or three. And a couple of mine have died recently. And that's the thing, man, about getting old is you start to lose people and you lose parts of yourself that you used to be able to do. Like simple things like running upstairs. And all at once one day you say to yourself, geez, I can't run upstairs anymore. But I still have a couple of friends.

and, you know, I stay in touch as best that I can. So, you know, what do you do? We have non-stop text threads. There's like 70 articles out there that are like, why is it so hard to maintain friendships after you turn 25? And it's the whole of the world doesn't know how to do it. And so, yeah, we're in group chats. We're doing Zoom.

We have like six text threads. It's ridiculous. Like, it never ends. I had some really good friends in college. And I think some of what happened was that I got. got married and I turned inward to my wife and to my kids and they became the center of my non-writing existence. And I maintained friendships.

But when I got older and the kids grew up, I reached out and I did make some good friends. But, you know, I think it says in maybe in stand by me, I never had friends like I did when I was 12, did you? And I don't think anybody really does, man. That's new and that's great. Yeah, yeah. I love kids. I love writing about kids.

Well, you also love dogs. And we love dogs here. I mean, I got my dog here, it's not really my dogs, my girlfriend watches dog Shiloh, but huge Corgi fans here and huge dog fans. And we're, you know, we love Molly on this podcast. We actually have a shirt that I almost wore today that says, come to the dark side.

We have corgis. They're great, right? I did wonder, you know, first off, when did you love for a corgi start? And then also, you know, what are some quirks that Molly does that make her Molly? Because that's, I just love hearing about dogs sometimes,

and I know how much you love them. Well, let me just start by saying that fairy tale when you strip it to the bone, it's a story about a boy in his dog. Yeah. Okay? And that's the core of the story.

But I think probably 30, 35 years ago, my brother-in-law showed up with a corgi named Jeremy. And Jeremy was ridiculous. He weighed like 70 pounds. He was this huge wall. But you could see that he was smart and he was loving and he was social. you know and I thought I would love to have the dog link that and so we got a corgi his name was bill and uh bill one day um my son joe who at that time was probably 10 screen you know when your kid screams it scares the hell out of you he says bill is dying and we ran into the front hall

and Bill was having an epileptic seizure. We got over that, but he eventually died, and that was very hard. And we got another corgi, Marlowe, who lived his full span, and we just all, we all love them. And as far as Molly goes, you know, Molly can be a pain in the ass. She really is the thing of evil. but she's also loving and she's smart and mostly she gets along really well with people and people like her.

So there are little dogs that think they're big dogs. Oh, they absolutely do. They have such a Napoleonic complex. It's hilarious. And like, I mean, yeah. But was it your idea to have Funko make Molly a Funko also? No, it was their idea. Oh, okay.

Interesting. You know, Mommy became kind of a Twitter favorite. Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, 100%. I think one of the people who worked for me got her, her own Facebook page or somebody did. And, you know, the thing is I can post about politics and get like 10,000 likes. And I post a picture of Molly and I get 100,000 likes.

Oh, 100. You know, and people post all. these pictures of their dogs and they say things like, I love Molly and she doesn't look evil to me because they don't know her. As we wind down here, we just covered Rose Red on the pod and we talked about how much we enjoyed your cameo in that one. You have a great line delivery in that. And I guess I'm curious, what are some of the favorite cameos that you've done over the years?

And is there anything that you perhaps, I don't know, never got to cameo in that you wish you could like Alf or maybe Bosch, which we know you love Bosch. Yeah. My favorite cameo was I did a thing about a body disposal guy, him sons of anarchy. Name Bachman. Yeah. And who is the producer of that show?

I want to say, Kurt Sutter? Kurt Sutter. Yeah, Kurt Sutter. He sent me a note or an email or something through, through the agency and said, if you want to do a cameo on Sons of Anarchy, we'll put you out a big ass Harley. And I said, I'm there. I'm there. So they did.

That's one way to do it. They put me on a big ass Harley. And, you know, as an actor, I am not exactly what you would call, of Lawrence Olivier quality. But I enjoyed being a shopkeeper in, in, uh, It chapter two. I love that, yeah. And Andy actually had an idea.

Andy Machete actually had an idea about doing me as a young man, and he was going to have Joe play that part. Oh, wow. Looking like, but the movie was running long, and in the end he didn't do it. But that was fun. That was fun. One last question, I guess, for me before we wrap up,

we talked about so much, and I think everyone's brain is buzzing these days. So I wanted to ask when you know that your brain needs rest, how do you give it some rest? Well, I force myself not to work. And sometimes the idea is come anyway. And I'll say, well, I'll put that aside. I'm not going to do anything for a while. You have to let the work breathe and you have to take some time off some of the time. You just have to.

My wife thinks that I never take time off. but I actually do. And you get an idea. I have one now. I have a really great fucking idea. The thing is, I can't write it. I'm too busy to write it because I have to finish this editorial draft on Holly. But it will be there if it's a good idea.

That's what I always think. I always think that the bad ideas fall out on their own and the good ideas stay and you just have to take some time. But, you know, the thing is, I'm not getting any younger and you only get so much time. And I want to use that time as much as I can. I want to entertain people, you know, and that's a big deal for me. But as far as what I'm doing or why I'm doing it, I have no idea. intuitive about that and I don't think about it very much. I just do it and it keeps me grounded a little bit too.

Well, I have one last question. It's really easy. It's simple. It's something that we've joked around for. Oh, Jesus. It's the beginning of the whole show. The fans would kill me if I didn't ask. I need to know on a ranking of one to five Pennywise clown noses,

one being me, five being I love it. What are your thoughts on 1994's The Mask Starring Funny Man Jim Carrey? And one being, me, five being, I loved it. I'd say four. Oh, okay. Yeah, I like the mask. It was good. Nice.

But of course, it won't, it can't compare to Ace Ventura. Yes, I agree. I agree on that. Where he turns around and sticks out his butt and says, let me ask you some type. It's classic. Well, we can't top that. We can't top that. Stephen, this has been an absolute pleasure.

We can't thank you enough for taking the time to chat with us today. Thank you guys, really. We hope you have a lovely, lovely dinner tonight. I'm going to go have some chicken right now. You want to take beer yourself. You too. Have a good. Losers forever.

Loosers forever. Long days, pleasant nights. I got some hot friends. This is the end of our show. For now. Tune in next week. If you like our programming, consider searching for other bloody disgusting podcasts,

such as creepy, horror queers, The Boo Crew, SEP Archives, Nightlight, Margaret's Garden, and more.