Last Podcast On The Left - Minisode: Doctor Sleep

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

Ben 'n' Henry chat with director Mike Flanagan about his upcoming film Stephen King's Doctor Sleep. Stephen King's Doctor Sleep hits theaters on November 8th.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Hey, what's up everyone? How you doing? Welcome to a very special edition of Last Podcast. On the left, I am Ben Kissel, hanging out with Henry Zabrowski. It's almost too special. It's too special. It's a little too special. This is, guys, we're covering an interview with a very talented director, Mike Flanagan, who recently directed Stephen King's Doctor Sleep. Yes, indeed. Today we're going to be talking about Doctor Sleep. You saw the movie. I did see the film.

I highly recommend this movie. So Stephen King's Doctor Sleep is the next chapter to the Shining Story. It takes place 40 years later. So today we speak with Mike Flanagan about making the follow-up to the Shining. I mean, Henry, can you even imagine that endeavor following Stanley Kubrick? Oh yeah, Eyes Wide Butt. Wait till you see my Eyes Wide Butt. It's going to be great, man. It's going to be a great film. Everyone's going to really enjoy it. Everyone's going to circle around. I am a person. Natalie and I are people who have seen every single Stephen King made for TV movie. I've seen every single Stephen King film. I love Stephen King. And yes, his uvra, it can be on a little bit.

You could almost say corny side, but I'm also going to say it's also like a weighted blanket for your soul. It is. I love the feeling of watching a Stephen King film. Obviously, we're talking now about Stephen King's Doctor Sleep. The first time I saw Shining, that was one of those films where it made me horrified because the child character, which is actually in this film, now played by Ewan McGregor, I was exactly that kid's age. And there's something about seeing a father freaking out on camera. And I don't know why it resonated with me, but there was something about seeing a father just angrier and angrier and angrier every single day where I'm like, oh, I could see

myself at the Overlook Hotel being that kid. Daddy, daddy, I want French fries. Yeah, well, I'm trying to write a novel. I believe, but also Stephen King famously hated that movie. So we're going to talk about this. We'll talk about this a little bit with Mike Flanagan, see what he says. So this film takes place many years later, and Ewan McGregor plays Danny. And of course, you'll know Danny, he's the boy who was talking to his finger and his finger was saying, which of course, in the mirror is mirrored air. Yes. So we're sort of seeing what was the future like for this child who had, I'm just going to say, a turbulent childhood. How did he grow? What did he become as a man?

And this, I tell you what it became. What's that? Even good old fashioned booze hound. He did indeed. And so when you get a chance to see it, it is interesting to see like, all right, cool. This is Danny all grown up. Wonder what he's going to be like, probably super well adjusted. Well, it turns out some of the hauntings of his father's past are also haunting of his. It turns out Danny Torrance is a member of a gigantic group of psychic vampires. No kidding. That's where it goes to. I don't mean to jump the, I don't want to put the cart in front of the car here. All right. But yeah, there's a lot of psychic vampires in the story. Absolutely. So when you sit down to watch Stephen King's Doctor

Sleep, which I remember, I highly recommend watching the shining first, you know, just watch the shining home just so you can like leapfrog right into the sequel because again, it's been some years now. And for you to just, you just have to rewatch the shining every three years just to remember how incredible that movie is. And when it's in a theater, when you get a chance to see it, if it has a theatrical release, it is a must see because it is beautiful when it's huge. Absolutely. Jack Nicholson and Shelley DeVall, they really did put on a performance of a lifetime. Oh yeah. I mean, Shelley DeVall was was tortured for it. Yes. So Stanley Kubrick definitely screamed at her until she screamed and Jack

Nicholson, I apparently also was very scary on set, which he should have been on. What are you going to do? You jump into the brain of Mr. Torrance. It's really not a lot. You can go around that. And but it feels like they had a lighter experience on Stephen King's Doctor Sleep. Yeah, I don't think the sequel had the same amount of Stanley Kubrick screaming at the actors. I'm pretty sure Mr. Flanagan, the director doesn't like, I don't know, bring a ball and chain with him to set the same way that Kubrick did. I mean, we'll ask him. We're going to ask him. So I have a question here for you, Henry, because you're the foremost expert on this stuff. Sure. So can you explain what the heck is the shine?

The shine is a thing that some people have. Okay. Even some places have. Oh, like the overlook has a shine. So what happens if you get the shine? I mean, nothing good. It's the shining is the shine seems to be a type of psychic ability that Stephen King has invented, but not not too different from the force. Okay, where the shine allows you to communicate with others who have the shine. Some people are affected differently. Some people are more clairvoyant. Some people are more telekinetic. Some people can. So some people can see what happened in the past just by touching an object. The shine is Stephen King's TM brand of psychic powers, right, that has now become a thing throughout the

Stephen King universe. And obviously, so telepathy is involved. You can speak with telepathy. So telepathy is involved. You could obviously you can speak with with spirits and you can speak with different kind of energies. Henry, you got the shine. Let's say you just got the shine. Oh, kiss will stop thinking that. Yep, you got it. Oh, kiss will stop thinking that. Oh, man. What spirit? Who are you talking to? Jane Mansfield? Who are you talking to? What's the spirit? I just saw Napoleon Bonaparte just sitting on your knee. He's so cute. Very nice. So in this sequel against Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, more than one person has the shine. You are correct. And isn't

that gonna and that's what makes it so much more exciting in many ways. It's hijinks and then the shiny because everyone's got it. But this is it's it's very classic sequel thinking where instead of giving it to the pivotal character, like that's the idea is that him and Dick Holler and the only people that have the shine and overlook is all kind of mysteriously connected with Dr. Stephen King's Doctor Sleep. Let's see what happens if everybody shines. Everyone shines. Henry, other quick question for you. You got a free hotel. Expedia is like, oh, congratulations. You have a free weekend at the Overlick Hotel. You just called it the Overlick. Yes, I know. I'm going to the Overlick. No, that's a different

hotel than the Overlick. No, you have a free. You have a free weekend at the Overlick Hotel. Are you going or are you going to say, you know what, my soul is too important to spend two nights in this scary spooky hotel. Of course I'm going. You're going to look at the incredible book check Torrance wrote. That's a lot of pages he put down. I mean, he did. He did do a lot of writing. He did write a lot of words. There were times that I was really afraid that when Marcus was alone writing our book, that that he would show up. He'd be like, I wrote a great chapter this week. I was like, cool, Marcus, cool. Yeah, just send her away. And then it was just all like all work and no play. Make Marcus

go fucking crazy like again and again and again and again. So now let's get to the interview with Stephen King's doctor sleep director Mike Flanagan. Today we are honored to have with us. He is a director. Now Henry loves a lot of his films as do I. He is he's been around the block. This man is a fantastic director. His latest film is Stephen King's Dr. Sleep. We are honored to be with director Mike Flanagan. Thank you so much for being on the show, Mike. Are you kidding me? The honor is all mine. Oh, no. So Stephen King's Dr. Sleep. This is not the first film that you've worked on that is an adaptation of a Stephen King book. What is it about his work that inspires you and says, all right,

this is a this is a guy that I want to visualize his creation. What is it about Stephen King? Oh, wow. Well, you know, I I read my first Stephen King book when I was way too young to be reading Stephen King books. And he's my hero. He's my my favorite author. He has been since I was a kid. And I think the reason why I think what, you know, to your question about what about him and his writing really grabs me. It's that he's not really writing horror. You know, he it's about his characters. He's writing these humanistic explorations of such kind of relatable and profound human ideas. And they just happen to kind of be told through the lens of horror. And and I find, you know, that that has shaped the

way I see the genre since I was very young. So it's it's always, you know, it's always been a dream of mine to be able to play in his sandbox. And yeah, he's let me do it twice now. We'll see if he if he kicks me out or not. That's awesome. Famously, right? Because this is Dr. Sleep is the sequel to The Shining, which he wrote himself in 2013. And he famously was not a fan of the original The Shining, right, which is I think it led to him because then he ended up directing a bunch of well he directed Maximum Overdrive. I was watching an interview with Stephen King recently where he was just like, I just wanted control. And it's like, no, I understand the feeling. But how do you feel

like? How is the pressure like you already because you work with him for Gerald's Game when he was talking about that? And was he on set for Gerald's Game two and this movie? Like, do you have to appease Mr. King? Or is he going to send his legion of bats at you? No, Steve, he historically and very kind of intentionally stays away from the movies. He's used the book as its own thing and the movie adaptation as its own thing. And he wants it to be the filmmakers. He doesn't want to interfere. Now, that said, he will absolutely not be shy about what he thinks about what you did when you're finished as Kubrick learned. You know, he's not going to bite his tongue if he doesn't like the way you treated the

material. But he's also not going to, you don't have to appease him. He's not kind of in your hair. He really steps back. And as he put it to me, he's like, look, I win either way. If the movie's great, people say, of course it's great. It's great. It's based on a great book. And if the movie sucks, they say, whoa, the book was better. So he wins no matter what. He was not on set for Gerald or for Dr. Sleep. And in fact, the first time I ever spoke to Stephen King on the phone was after Dr. Sleep was finished. Seriously? Oh, I thought that you might have had to have a meeting with him and like have to go through his haunted maze. And if you don't scream, you can meet with him.

It was always via email. After Gerald's game, we were in touch, you know, on email. And there was a lot about Dr. Sleep that I had to get his permission for because I'm such a fan, knowing how he feels about the Kubrick film, knowing what I wanted to do with the movie, I had to get his blessing to kind of bring back the Kubrick iconography and bring back the overlook. Yes, absolutely. He had given me that blessing. I wouldn't do it. But I would have made the film. That's what's so fascinating about this film. It's you're in the shadow or not in the shadow, but you're making a sequel to a movie directed by Stanley Kubrick, one of the

greatest directors in the history of directors. And it's an adaptation of a book written by one of the most prolific writers in the in history. So that must have been like, oh my, you must have looked in the mirror or did you look in the mirror at one point and just be like, I am really, I got to nail this. This is like this is a big opportunity right here. I mean, how do you sort of follow in the footsteps of someone like a Stanley Kubrick? Oh, you can't is the secret. The thing is, I'm not Stanley Kubrick. I'll never be Stanley Kubrick. No one else will ever be Stanley Kubrick. This has been the most intimidating experience of my career for the exactly the reasons you're talking about. And I do think

it's standing in the shadow. I mean, these are two monolithic creators, you know, Stephen King, you know, is Stephen King and Kubrick redefined what horror cinema is right with the shining. You know, I mean, this is nothing to take lightly. And so I felt like I was about to throw up for the last two years. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Everyone says, aren't you excited to be like a part of the arts or make a living and making your own content? You're just been like, I feel like I'm going to die all the time. Yeah. No, it does. It has felt like like any minute now, I'm going to step on a landmine that will be nothing less. But like this little Mike shaped scorch mark in the earth. Right. And I'll deserve

it for having walked out into this field at all. When you are working with so you're working with you McGregor playing an older Danny Torrance, right? When when you guys are tracking these performances, like the way you are taking even just stylistically because it was awesome how like you shot inside of the actual Stanley Hotel and you actually did exactly like you did it with the same like lighting techniques as Stanley Cooper. You made it look like the old movie and you carried it. How do you do these performances? Because I know you're also you've done a lot of rehearsal. Like I know with haunting of the Hell House, you guys did a lot of rehearsal, right? Like do you guys sit and talk about this shit?

Like does he watch the original Danny Torrance's performance and carry it over? Oh yeah. I mean, Ewan is a very prepared actor. And the reason I cast him at all was because when I met with a bunch of candidates for the part, you know, he identified immediately. He said, I'm not here to try to do a Nicholson impression. I'm not here to try to, you know, marry this performance back to a performance that already exists. I'm here to look at a character who we haven't seen in pop culture since he was a child. And I'm here to talk about this character's struggle with addiction and with sobriety, which is what Dr. Sleep is all about. Shining is clearly Stephen King dealing with his own addiction issues, anxiety about what

could happen to his family. But Dr. Sleep, the novel is written by the same man with decades of sobriety under his belt. And it is so much about recovery. It's a different animal. They're two sides to the same coin, but they are different. And Ewan immediately said, you know, let's put the shining out of our minds and let's talk about Dan Torrance and his recovery. And that's why I cast him. But that's beautiful. Yeah. And that's really interesting. Would you, so if you, when you're an actor, obviously playing a character that has already existed on screen, what do you recommend? Would you recommend that an actor go and study that character that was previously on screen or just sort of approach it with

new life and just be like, yeah, that was this character as a child. And we obviously through life, we changed dramatically. So did you and just more come at it like I'm a whole new Danny or what were, did you notice some of a similar, did you try to continue on some similar strains from the original? Yeah, it's a combination of both. You know, he absolutely spent a good amount of time studying the side. And a lot of it, you know, to not only look at Danny, but of course we changed so much, you know, between when we're six years old and when we're adults anyway. Right. But to also look at his father and his mother in the movie and to kind of look at the traits that Shelley Duvall was presenting

and that Jack Nicholson was presenting and say, I have to play the offspring of these two people. Right. That requires a good amount of study. But it also, in the way that we're not our parents, had to be his own performance. And that was our approach to the whole film. It wasn't just to the actors who were playing characters that had been established. It was to the hotel itself and to the aesthetic of the movie. Right. You know, I look at Dr. Sleep as much as a child of the shining, you know, as it is a sequel. And in the, yeah, it has elements of its parents. And I think its parents in this case are Stephen King and Kubrick. But it's also an individual. And, you know, that's that balance and the whole

challenge of this thing. So when you take a concept like the true not. So in the movie, the true not says kind of like roving pack of essentially psychic vampires that Danny Torrance is kind of also going after. So this is kind of like a comic book movie concept. Like this is, it's a little bit more, it's more intense because Stephen King got wild imagination and it reads in the novel than it would if you were going to actually show people being the true not. How do you handle something like that? Like a, like an elevated idea that could swing to corny. If you want it to, like if you're, if you're bad at both, like if Stephen King was bad and you were bad, it would swing towards corny. But it's the fact

that you guys can handle it. Like how do you work that out as a director? You know, I always try to keep it as grounded as possible. Right. You have to kind of use your own tastes as the barometer for what could tip to be, you know, too much or go corny. As you're saying, fortunately with something like, and I'm just going to sound crazy, but something like the concept of a psychic of empire. It's only something you can kind of look at and say, oh, that sounds like it could be a little comic book.

Right. Just because comic books have pulled from the same well of source material that everything else has. That concept of an emotional vampire, you know, that's a thousand thousands of years old. Right. Oh yeah. I think these ideas persist because there's something about it that speaks to a universal anxiety that we have. This case that something else would eat our feelings. That's a terrifying

and very grounded idea. The only thing that, you know, would, yeah, you just have to make sure is don't present it in a way. Yeah. That's so, the more grounded you are, the better. Absolutely. And I think we've all had those experiences in life where you meet with someone or you know someone and after you leave speaking with them, consistently feel worse. And then you have to slowly cut those people out of your life. So sticking with True Not, the leader of True Not is Rose the Hat. What did you have in mind when writing Rose the Hat?

What was the, did the character that you wrote, was that the one that manifested itself on screen? Can you speak a little bit about that? I loved her on the page. I thought Rose was one of the best King antagonists in a number of years. Yeah. And then the character I wrote doesn't, you know, it paled in comparison to the character that Rebecca made. And I think the reason was that Rebecca figured out very early. She said, well, the thing is, Rose is the villain. Rose is the monster of the story. Rose has

to believe she's the hero of the story. Oh, yes. And, you know, she said, I'm not a monster. I'm not a horrible thing. I'm someone who would do anything to protect her family. Yes. And when she rationalized all the horrible things she does in the movie through that, she said, I'm the hero of the story. And that made her an awesome villain. That's awesome.

And her take on the character is way cooler than whatever I could have come up with. And of course, she took her to a new level. And of course, you're speaking about Rebecca Ferguson, who did an incredible job in Stephen King's Doctor Sleep. You got to check out this movie. Right now we are speaking with Stephen King's Doctor Sleep's director, Mike Flanagan. Check out this film. It is in theaters November 8th. Make sure you go just watch it in a theater because it's one of those films that's scarier on the big screen. I guarantee it. Well, now that you are, so you are currently sitting inside of the Stanley Hotel, which

was the real version of the hotel overlooking. Now, it has rumors and has a history of ghost activity. And when they were shooting the original The Shining, I know that some people said they experienced some stuff. I don't know if that was just being afraid of Stanley Kubrick. Are you? Honestly, Kubrick is so much scarier than any ghost. The behind the scenes like extended cut of The Shining. I'm like, that is the movie. That's the scary movie is the making of this film. But you experienced anything? You guys see any ghosts?

So it's interesting. So the Stanley Hotel, you know, is where Stephen King was staying when he had the idea to write The Shining. And as you walk through this place, which has an amazing history, you can see the inspiration for everything in the story. Kubrick, when he made the film, he used the Timberline Lodge in Oregon as the exterior of the hotel. He built everything else. Everything else was built on sound stages in London. And so for us, you know, we just rebuilt the same sets that he had created. We used his blueprints to do it. The cool thing about being at the Stanley is that it's the hotel. They shot the miniseries here, the Mick Garris miniseries.

Yes, that's right. What's his name from Wings? Yeah, it was Steve Weber. Yes, love him. Yeah, me too. And I thought he played a wonderful Jack Torrance. You did. The cool thing about this hotel, you know, I always request the haunted rooms because I want to see a ghost. It hasn't happened for me yet. But this hotel, because Stephen King stayed here in 1974 when it was deserted. He was the only guest here. He got really

drunk at the bar with a bartender named Deloitte. He stumbled around trying to find his room, which is room 217, couldn't find it, wandered through this hotel, drunk off his ass. And it gave birth to a story that has since changed horror fiction and horror cinema forever. Wow. I mean, it's a sacred space. The horror genre, as we know it today, would not be what it was were it not for this building. Yes. And that's why it's such a, I love being here. It's my third time staying here. My wife

and I came here for a week to write Hush here. I love this, the energy here. I love the impact it's had globally on this honor. And most people, you know, even horror fans might not know the story, might not know the importance of this family hotel. It's such a cool thing to be here. And you are an incredible horror movie director. Also, Ouija Origin of Evil is a kick-ass movie. I love that movie. It's really good. It's so good.

Do you think that Stephen King, do you think that he needed to go through the life cycle that he went through? Did he need to just go break his brain in a way with all the booze, all the drugs in order to put himself in a world such as Jack had in The Shining? And what drugs are you using to get into the same mindset? Have you been juicing? Have you been getting in there in order to get truly scary? Because you've got to scare yourself first. Of course. The only drugs I've been able to get into my system right now are Clarida. Just to deal

with the travel of it. Oh yeah, of course. We know that. But I don't know if King needed to go through what he went through in life. What I do know is that he did something that only masterful storytellers can, which is he took these things he went through and he used them to create stories that help other people who are going through similar things, help them confront their demons, their failings and their anxieties in a way that gives them hope. That to me, whether he needed to go through it or should have gone through it because

he's lived a life fraught with heartache and mistakes like any of the rest of us. Whether he needed to do it or not, I'm glad that he took what he took from those experiences and kind of converted it into something that has touched so many people around the world. I think that's incredible. Yeah. Do you think like modern day Danny Torrance that you have to drink in order to stop directing? Is it your power directing so strong that you have to booze yourself to sleep? Is that a way? That's what I do to explain to my family why I have to drink at night. It's just to

get down to improv machine. Right. I used to think that, yes. I used to think exactly that, actually. And oddly, I stopped drinking while I was making Dr. Sleuth and I haven't had a drink in more than a year now. Holy shit, congrats. Thank you. I was really worried at the time. I thought, oh my God, can I still do what I do without this in my life? Because of Stephen King and because of diving so hard into the

world about recovery. And I had a number of people in my past who were recovered and who no longer drank or who have had issues with drugs and had overcome them. Wow. It started as a very small thing, right? So I'm going to try this for a little bit. And I have loved having a year of sobriety in my life. That's awesome. It's opened the world up for me. Well, thank you so much for sharing that story because I know a lot of our listeners, we get

messages quite often from people who have recovered from drug abuse or alcohol abuse. So that is a great story for our listeners to hear. And for us to hear as well, because it is a bizarre safety net and it's more of a habit that you have to break. And I know it's extremely difficult, so congratulations. Thank you so much. When it comes to Danny Torres, why was he sort of nicknamed or why was he called Dr. Sleuth? What was the sort of story behind that? Oh, this is one of the coolest things that King did. So, you know, in the shining, they

called him Doc because of Bugs Bunny. He loves Looney Tunes and it was just what's up Doc. So he gets this job at a hospice as an orderly where he's taking care of dying patients. But because of his shine, he can help them and comfort them in the moment that they're about to die. He knows when it's going to happen. Right. And then he uses his gift form. And so the nickname that they come up with, because they at first think he's a doctor showing up in their room late at night, but he's just an orderly and he's saying I'm not a doctor. But they say, you know, it's time to go to

sleep is what he tells them. He says it's not death, it's just sleeping. And the patients there nickname him Dr. Sleuth. And so he has the same nickname he had as a kid. They call him Doc for a completely different reason that I think is so beautiful. And it's one of the acrobatic writing maneuvers the King was able to do by completely recontextualizing that nickname. And it's when I first saw the title and when the book was being published, I didn't get it. Of course, it's impossible to understand it was like how why would you call this book Dr. Sleep? It doesn't mean anything. Right.

And then you read it and it means so much. But yeah, it's really it's kind of a lovely, lovely note he did there. Did you do any talking about whether there was any sort of original plan for there to be a sequel to the shining? I feel like when you read the original book, you know, it all explodes. So you wonder what he really thought was going to be, which is like the main reason why he didn't like the original the shining was because everything doesn't explode, which I mean, I get well, I wrote a huge explosion. The thing I would be like, Hey, it's for a movie, make it blow up.

So you think that Kubrick should have, you think that Kubrick should have tagged teamed in Michael Bay at that point for the end and just get, just get one big explosion in there. It's so funny. I think, I think that King was done with it. I think he was finished with that story. And I think that's why you read Dr. Sleep, you know, he's emphatic that the hotel is over. And it's, you know, he, I think he, as the years went by and he, you know, he was so kind of in thoughts and AA and in his own kind of sobriety. I think he, as he put it, he wondered what happened to Dan and he wanted to write a story that was kind of informed by the events of the overlook, but was its own story.

Right. I just thought it was such a, a cool opportunity to try to, you know, the root of Dan's issues as a character or in his childhood and in the overlook and what a great opportunity to go back with him. Oh, he's addicted to writing and getting hit by the van made him work harder. I know he's, he's retired like what four times and every time he retires, there's like three new novels on its heel. Like nevermind. Like he's a machine. He's a machine. I wonder too, cause in Gerald's game, I'm going to jump the plot a little bit.

In Gerald's game, you throw a little bit of dark tower stuff into it. Oh yeah. Is that a thing that you as a fan of Stephen King want to make sure stay in his work or is that like a script thing? Like working with Stephen King? Cause I know that as the years go, he's really trying to make sure he ties together the entire dark tower world as much as humanly possible to his old work. Oh, totally. That one's, that's me as a fan. He never asked for anything like that. I just can't help it. I'm such a dark tower fanatic.

Yeah, me too. But no, he's never kind of pushed for anything like that. And he's always kind of delighted when he sees it and he's like, Oh, you did that. And that's like, yeah, your approval. Dude, please. Can I come to your spooky house? Honestly, man, we are all just Chris Farley interviewing Paul McCartney in that SNL sketch at the end of the day. Cause being like horror movie fans and just being horror fans, it's just, we just want approval from our idols so bad. Do you remember when you made Pennywise? Was that scary? Like that's all I could.

Okay, let's jump in. So when again, we are speaking with Stephen King's doctor's sleep director, Mike Flanagan. And I mean, just kind of the final question that I have, Henry, unless you have another question, I have, I have one more. Okay. My question is, so you were to, when you made the haunting of Hill House, I know that you had a long rehearsal process because you did really long extended scenes in that show, which was great, which was great. Did you, do you have an extensive rehearsal process for these other shows, for like, especially something like doctor's sleep?

No, not typically. We don't have time normally. No. That, that episode of haunting was a special case just cause the shots were so complicated. It was like doing live television. So we, we sat down production for six weeks to prepare for those. That's incredible. I'm lucky if I get two or three sessions with office before we roll and then we rehearse every morning when we get to set for the day's work.

Yeah. That's crazy. Cause Gerald's games also would require, as far as I was concerned, I thought it would require a lot of rehearsal because the acting in that was fantastic. That was such a good, like bottle episode of a movie. No, we, we had, I think, two rehearsals before Gerald's game with, with Carla and Bruce. The rest, you know, we do it on the day, but that's why you get good actors. Cause they've got to kind of do it out the gate. Well, and speaking of great actors, Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, and we have a newcomer, Kylie Curran.

What was that like for you? Did you take, as we were sort of joking about Kubrick earlier, um, tormenting Shelly DeVall to a degree that I don't know if is legal still today. But what was, uh, when it comes to working with those three people, you got them all together. Uh, what was that like when it comes to, um, not having them look forced when the scares occur, but something more natural because that's the one thing with horror films. People don't fully understand how hard it is to act scared. You kind of have to be scared.

Did you, did you do light touches of Kubrick? This is why Kubrick was good. This is why Kubrick was good. You gotta, you gotta scare your actors. You do. Directors all know, you all do. I know Mr. Flanagan. I know what you guys do.

We're a bunch of cattle. I know what we are. We're moving to props. But yeah, did you take light touches of, uh, of the Kubrick method of truly terrifying your cast? Not at all. I'm so the opposite of that. Like I, um, I really think, you know, it's the old, uh, marathon man, um, Justin Hoffman story. You know, Lawrence Olivier said, Hey, it's called acting.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm completely in a different place. I want to make this set as comfortable for the actors as possible. Oh, come on, man. This is your chance. If you are cast, if you are ever cast in a Mike Flanagan film, you're going to be very grateful that he doesn't torment you.

Oh yeah. I don't have teddy bear. I just want everybody to be happy. Oh, thank you guys so much. All right. So people, uh, just in 10 seconds, what do you want people to get from this film? You want them to walk in and what do you want them to walk out feeling? You know, I want people to, to walk out feeling the way I felt when I walked onto the set of,

of the Colorado lounge in the overlook hotel. It was so much like walking into a memory for me, uh, kind of walking into a dream of, of a movie that's so near and dear to me. I want people to have that feeling. Awesome. And beyond that, I want them to just really, you know, I want them to, to take away all the things Steve had to say about honor and recovery and responsibility, you know, through Dan and Abra.

I really hope they get that out of it. More than anything with any movie, I want people to have a good time. Hell yeah, dude. Stephen King's Dr. Sleep director Mike Flanagan. Thank you so much, Mike. We really appreciate you being on the show. That was wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you guys so much. It was such a pleasure. I'm going to run to the airport, but it has been such a delight to talk to you. All right, there it was. Our interview with director Mike Flanagan. He, uh, he's awesome. He's very awesome. He's very good.

I'm glad that he is nice to his actors, even though it's funny here. The stories about Stanley Kubrick being really mean to Shelley Duvall, even though technically it's traumatizing. Never going to be mad that I even said that. I think that he did make a great movie. He did, Henry, but you're an actor. Don't you? I think I just, I know how unimportant actors are.

All right, people. Thank you all so much. All right, people. All right, y'all. Thanks so much for listening to the show. We really hope you enjoyed the interview. Check out Stephen King's Dr. Sleep on November 8th. I had a chance to see it previously and it really is fun.

It's a super great movie and, and, uh, Mr. Flanagan, he knows how to make a good horror film because you can just go through his resume and honestly, it's a kick-ass resume. As a fan of Stephen King shit, it's really great. It just gets to go in. It's, it's, for me, Stephen King is a lullaby that puts me to big time sleepies. Weird. I actually, I know, I stay awake for the films, but good, good, good. I don't know, man.

It's just nice. I just love Stephen King. I do too. All right, everyone. Thank you all so much for listening. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Magustalations.

Hail me ples. Let's do a Hail Stephen King, shall we? Hail Stephen King, baby. Hail to the king. Hail to the king.