The Big Picture - 'It' Director Andy Muschietti on Adapting Stephen King | The Big Picture (Ep. 24)

Episode Date: September 8, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey chats with Kate Knibbs about Stephen King’s classic horror novel ‘It’ (0:30) before sitting down with Andy Muschietti, who discusses adapting the book for the screen and re-creating the terrifying character Pennywise (6:20). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Wanted to make sure you subscribe to The Watch with Andy Greenwalt and Chris Ryan, two longtime friends who have had this podcast since 1973. Yeah, that's how long. It was even before podcasts, they were having this. These guys spent their whole life arguing with each other. And now we just record it and they go at it.

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on the internets. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. Because that's what the story is. It is sort of a parable of the death of childhood and the death of a world of imagination and magic that you will never experience again in life. I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer,

and here's the big picture. There's really only one movie out this weekend that people are going to care about, and with good reason. It's the latest adaptation of Stephen King's It, and I'm happy to report that it's great. Scary and sweet in equal measure. I read It as a teenager, and I can still picture my parents' dog-eared copy. I love the 1990 ABC miniseries starring Tim Curry. The new movie captures something new and something old about the story that I think people are really going to like. The director of the new movie, Andy Muschietti, is here to talk about his vision of It, what King thought of his movie,

and where he's going next with it. But before we talk to Andy, I'm joined by Ringer staff writer and Stephen King fan, Kate Nibbs, to talk all things It. Kate, thanks for joining me. Oh, thanks for having me. Kate, you told me last week that you were rereading the book It, written by Stephen King. Why are you rereading this book? So It was one of the only horror movies and books that I was allowed to read as a child. And I was especially obsessed with the 1990 miniseries, actually. So I rewatched that as well. And then I just decided to give the novel another go. I had also been alerted to something

I forgot about the novel, which is just some very bizarre scenes in it that haven't aged well involving a child orgy. And I just felt like I had to read it and see if it was real. So Andy Muschietti and I talked about that a little bit and we kind of talked around it, but I don't understand, especially because there was a child orgy in this book, but for many other reasons, why was that the one book and miniseries you were allowed to read and watch as a kid? Well, the miniseries was not rated. And I don't know, my parents thought because it was a clown, it was funny and I could watch it. You might have to ask them. Also, my friends really loved watching the miniseries and reading the book. So it was sort of a communal

activity. And we felt like it was appropriate because the book and movie are about a group of tweens which we were although we were mostly all girls and definitely didn't have basically any parallel experiences to the kids in the book yeah so famously the story is about this group of friends who call themselves the losersers. And it's six boys and one girl, right? Yes. And they encounter an evil clown who is a manifestation of lost childhood, possibly, any number of things, called Pennywise. What did you make of the Pennywise character

and just the whole construction of the story going back and rereading it as an adult? It's really interesting because what I remembered of Pennywise was the Tim Curry portrayal from the miniseries where he's this sort of like really showboaty sort of funny clown. And then the book, it's only one manifestation of it is Pennywise. It comes in a lot of different forms. It will be a werewolf. It will be a giant bird. It will be someone's parent. In the book, it makes it a lot

clearer that it's not just a clown. The clown is one form it can take. It's really this sort of structural evil that's like the scaffolding of the city of Derry that both the book and movies are set in Derry, Maine, which I guess is like a stand-in for where Stephen King is from. Aside from the aforementioned child orgy, was there anything else in the book that stuck out to you as kind of strange or just didn't feel very 2017? Yeah. I like how King develops the relationship between the kids in general, but some of their dialogue, one of the kids, Richie, who was portrayed by Seth Green in the 1990 miniseries,

he does these voices because he's supposed to be a comedian, and some of the voices are very racist. Oh, no. Yeah, so it was a little jarring to read that, and none of the other kids really comment on the fact that his voices are completely inappropriate. They just are like, shut up, beep, beep, Richie beep beep richie like ha ha ha and um it was weird to reread i can report that that character in the new movie is played by finn wolfhard who is mikey from stranger things and he he does not use racist voices that is that is really good to hear a relief although i kind of

wish that seth green would have gotten to make a cameo, because he's pretty good. He would have been a good Pennywise, to be honest. Yeah, I wonder, maybe he was busy. You know, also when I was rereading the book, it reminded me of Stranger Things. And I think Stranger Things kind of owes a debt to it in the way that it imagines this, like, boys club infiltrated by a girl fighting evil. I think that's definitely true. We're kind of in an interesting moment where everything created between 1977 and 1987 is now fit for, is nostalgia bait, right?

Mm-hmm. So are you going to move on any other King adaptations, or are you just sticking with it because the movie's coming out? It is so long, Sean. I thought I would be able to read it in a few days, but it's 1500 pages. So I'm like, just, I'm just about to finish, but it took longer than I thought. I would like to reread The Shining because that was another one of my favorite books as an adolescent. I have a feeling it will hold up pretty well. I also, I read like all the ones that had sort of silly

monsters. I read Christine and Pet Sematary and Cujo when I was a lot younger, and I might give them another go to see how they hold up. Well, in praise of the long novel and the good Stephen King adaptation, Kate Nibbs, thanks for coming on and chatting with me. Thanks for having me. And now here's my interview with Andy Muschietti. I'm really excited to be joined by Andy Muschietti today. Andy, you are the director of It, which is the most anticipated movie of the fall. I am very excited. Yeah, last time I checked. So Andy, 10 years ago, you were living in Argentina,

and you had made a short film called Mama, and no one knew who you were, and now you're here today chatting with me. How did this happen? Walk us through the last 10 years of your life a little bit. Well, actually, 10 years ago, I was in Barcelona. I moved in the year 2001 from Buenos Aires to Barcelona, chasing a commercial directing gig, and I was offered.

And I stayed there for 14 years. I had my production company there, very different cultures, in spite of what you might think that, you know, Spain and Argentina, this is the motherland and stuff. But I was doing commercials in Spain, my sister as a producer, and we had our own company. All through that period, I was writing scripts and making shorts and stuff. And Mama was one of those pieces that sort of stood out a little bit. And with the help of diffusion through YouTube, it became like some sort of little phenomenon because it was a three minute short and got some attention. Guillermo del Toro, obviously, it seemed like he noticed it and played a part somehow in bringing you to

stateside culture. How did that happen? Well, we were already starting a version of a production in Spain for the feature movie. But things in Spain are, you know, sometimes they depend too much on the economy of the moment. So it wasn't really starting as fast as we were expecting. And one day Guillermo del Toro called us and he said, I love the short, man. And he offered his help to produce the movie. Was your hope always to be making films in Hollywood? Is that what you and your sister wanted?

Not really. I studied film in Argentina. My goal was to make movies no matter where. Hollywood was a little bit of a long shot. It was never a present reality. So my ambition was to make movies that I liked. But of course, like, you know, it's sort of a backburner dream in a way, where you always sort of fantasize of making a movie that has that kind of diffusion and distribution.

Because that's what Hollywood movies have, the power of international distribution. So many more people can see it. What were the kind of movies that you liked that you wanted to make? Well, horror was a longtime love for me because I started watching horror movies as a kid, and it became sort of an addiction for me. Was there a catalyzing movie? Was there one that you saw that just kind of set you off on a path? Well, it wasn't a horror movie, but it terrified me.

It was Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I saw it when I was five on a drive-in in Buenos Aires. And at the same time, I had that feeling of magic and horror because it was all going well until the last sequence when the alien queen comes out of the UFO. And it was like, what the hell is that? So yeah, at five, you can imagine like those things are very impressive to you. Fitting time too, because it turned 40 and it's really in theaters this weekend. I don't know if you saw that Close Encounters. They put it back in theaters. Yeah.

Oh, I can't wait to see that again. I haven't seen it in a while. That makes sense though, that there is a little bit of a Spielbergian wonder in the two films you've made in Hollywood. Absolutely. Well, like Spielberg came in a little later. My first contact with horror movies were after Close Encounters.

I was seven, eight years old. I was stuck in front of the TV Saturday nights. It was a family activity. I would watch movies. And probably the ones that really, really left an impact in me were The Omega Man. Really? Yeah, it was a big one.

I remember one called Manster. This was this show, this TV show on Saturday nights. It was presented by an actor, a Spanish actor that was sort of like a Spanish luncheini. His name was Narciso Ibañez Menta. He was a legendary actor from the 40s and 50s. So he would introduce this TV show and they would show every kind of horror movie from the, you know, universal monsters like hammer to more trippy 60s and 70s movies like dr fives oh yeah she's a big one price film yeah yeah that blew my mind and scared me a lot i mean there was a trilogy of terror i remember that that third episode with a zuni doll just like terrified me and it was sort of like a seminal

experience i heard guillermo talk about trilogy of terror too he does yeah well you know we're Zuni doll just like terrified me. And it was sort of like a seminal experience. I heard Guillermo talk about Trilogy of Terror too. He does. Yeah. Well, you know, he's older than me, but he, you know, growing up in a Latin American country where the movies that we saw were like sort of the same period of time, probably. And yeah, yeah. It's good to find like, you know, someone that has your same references.

And when we started talking with Guillermo, it was like, yeah, oh, Zunido. Yeah, remember that? It was so scary. So when you're a teenager and you're growing up, are you imagining you're going to be a filmmaker? Is that your aspiration? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

And I wanted to actually drop high school to enter film school, but it wasn't a good idea. My parents did not approve. So as soon as I finished high school, but it wasn't a good idea. Like my parents did not approve. So as soon as I finished high school, I went into film school and then, you know, I got in contact with other kind of films. So I sort of became a little more cultivated in world cinema. That was my love for Italian cinema started. And other genres too. Like I'm a big fan of Italian comedy too. It's part of my upbringing. Yeah, you can see that wended through both of your films, especially It. So

It is a significantly larger production. There's a lot of characters, a lot of speaking parts. You're diving into Stephen King's world. Were there more challenges to doing something this big or did you feel prepared to do something at this level? No, I always feel prepared in the sense that, you know, I grew up reading Stephen King, which is something that came hand in hand with my film experience. Yeah. If you've fallen in love with horror movies, you kind of fall in love with Stephen King at the same time, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I started my passion for horror started before, but when I started reading Stephen King around 13, 14 years old, a new world opened. A world that was like more layered.

And I started thinking of characters and story. Were you very devoted to the books? Oh, yeah. When did you first come across it? Well, my first experience was Pet Sematary. Okay. I was like 13 or something. And then I went into like his short stories like Skeleton Crew and Night Shift.

I remember reading some of his Richard Backman books. Yeah. Thinner, I remember. I always had a hard time figuring out how funny he was trying to be in those books, you know, like how serious they were. Thinner in particular, I was like, is this a comedy?

Is he, I couldn't always put my finger on it. Well, but he's always, Stephen King is, you know, he doesn't shy away from singing the reader from one tone to the other. And yeah, sometimes it's weird. You know, I remember in Thinner, now that we're talking about it this this guy who's the victim of the spell he's looking for for the gypsy community and he's

in the middle of the night and he can't see anything but he knows that the gypsies has dogs and suddenly he hears a weird sound and he recognizes that it's a dog's fart and that's how he comes to the conclusion that he's close to the gypsy camp. I mean, he has that scatological level of humor that is sometimes is weird, but it's interesting.

And it comes with him. And, you know, the great thing is I learned storytelling in big part from Stephen King. So... How do you honor that tonal shift, though? Because your movie is very funny. It's also extraordinarily scary. Plus it's, you know, it's, it's sentimental at times. It's nostalgic. How do you work all those things together? That's very difficult to pull off. Well, you know, there is a balance and it's not arbitrary humor and emotion in a horror

movie are there to make you connect emotionally with the characters. I learned love for characters from Stephen King because he's fixated with description and the psychology and backstories of the characters. So that sort of came natural to me. It is a part. Even though I love horror movies, I have that counterbalance narrative,

which is, okay, yeah, you're trying to scare people, but you also want people to like the characters and care for them before the monster attacks. So you care for them. And so you're more engaged in the story. That's roughly what it is. And you don't get that from, that's not a lesson you're taught from the big bulk of horror movies. In fact, there's so many that are sub-genres that are about like wanting the characters to die. Right. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. There's some distaste or some lack of development. And the less the characters develop, the more likely they are probably to be killed, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I think they make a point.

In slasher movies, it's like, yeah, you need, you want them to get it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not a fan of those movies at all. You know? And I was never into slashers or anything. So I learned more storytelling from Stephen King than from movies in general, probably. That's why when It happened, I sort of understood,

okay, we need people to get to the heart of the story and the soul of the characters and really get that emotional connection. And an emotional connection to childhood too. You know, we've all been children. It, of all his work, probably is the most loving letter to childhood. And I wanted to bring that to the movie. What role does King play in something like this?

Does he have to approve of you to sort of bless you to do this? Or does he just say, go and make your film and good luck? Yeah, more like the second. That doesn't mean that he didn't approve. He did sign off on an early draft before I was in the project because you know that this project has been in development

for like six years or something. Yeah, I want to ask you about that too, what it's like to come on to something that another filmmaker has left and then how to make it your own too. That must be a challenge. Yeah, but I'll tell you about King and then we can talk about the other filmmaker. So Stephen did not interfere with the production or or the all the development while i was directing so it wasn't until the movie

was finished that he asked to see it were you nervous about that yeah it wasn't it was nervous before i was doing my thing you know reimagining it nervous about making those choices no no because you know for me it was about like finding my vision of the story, because otherwise it's strange. You have to own it. And of course, there's a recognition of the work and a love for the essence of the story of the book. But I really wanted to go back to my own emotional experience when reading the book for the first time and translating it into a movie that I would relate to as an adult. I also read the book like 25 years later and I found a lot of things I didn't remember.

They weren't in my memories or emotional memories. I wonder how people will respond to the movie because of that too. Obviously, this movie in some ways is halved because we only get one side of the story of the losers, this group of young kids. But I think that some people will misremember the book in some ways, or they'll see something in the movie that they think maybe was in the book, but wasn't. You know, it'll be interesting to see how people parse it too.

I know. Well, some people might miss that dialogue between the two timelines, because in the book, it's clearly present day and we jump to the past. And there are these interludes, which like everything that that mike hanlon has written in those 27 years of research but you have strictly isolated the story to the kids as kids yeah yeah because i think you know i'm i'm emotionally attached to the loser story to the losers when they were kids and i didn't want to interfere with that journey you can credibly see though that like there is a version of the book maybe that plays out the way that you've done it as well. I could see a version of the book that the first half is

like this. And then maybe the second half is the adult lives of losers, you know? Yeah. It doesn't seem forced in any way. I know. It's just the way that Stephen King chose to tell the story, but it's still a factor that I want to bring in a second part. First part, it was for me like a pure and uninterfered version of their story. But I still think that, you know, if we get to tell the second half of the movie, the adults,

there has to be a connection to their childhood. Because the whole story for me is about childhood and the magic of that era of those years and the end of childhood. You need those kids

to not grow up too fast then. I know. I've been talking to their parents. Stunt their growth. I didn't ask for anything specific. Just like, you know, you know. What's good for them is good for you. So, you know, as you said, you came on after another filmmaker had been developing the project.

How radically does it change? And what do you have to do then to make it your project? It's not too complex of a process. It's pretty natural when you're reading. I mean, you have this story in your heart and then you're given a script that someone else wrote. Immediately, ideas and thoughts surface like, oh, they're missing this thing or, you know, oh, why isn't this character in? Or, you know, oh, why isn't this character in or, you know, oh, I like to make this incarnation different. So it was natural. I think it's, in fact, it's probably easier than starting from scratch. You have an outline and then you can pick and choose where

you want to build. Yeah. So tell me about building Pennywise. For many people, there's a vision of Pennywise. There's the cover of the book and then there's the 1990 miniseries. Tim Curry was the clown. So how did you go about building your own Pennywise and casting Bill Skarsgård? I wanted to stay true to the essence of Pennywise, the Stephen King character, but bring something new and more edgy and more layered to the character, which does not oppose his description of the character at all. Just, you know, there's some spaces left on his creation of the character that that's where I wanted to sink the spoon.

And there was, because there's little crumbles and bits of information that don't mean a lot for a reader, but that you can, like, grab them and make them flourish or blossom. Was there anything in particular that you wanted to really expand on? Yeah. Well, there's a bit where Pennywise is described as a creature that is not very good at emulating

human emotions, which is pretty challenging for a shapeshifter who uses that as a bait. Right. And that's something that I loved and that I wanted to bring to the character. I don't think people really have that in mind when they think of Pennywise, because even in the book, he's described, he's sort of articulated and he's always acting like a clown. And there's also these reflections that all living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit so as a reader you imagine that the clown is always acting like a clown but then he says that little thing like he wasn't too good at mimicking human emotions and i wanted to take that to fruition and and you can see i mean if you see

the movie there's a there's a moment of trickstery when in the opening scene when pennywise is talking to georgie and everything seems to be going all right and at that point something happens i don't want to spoil it but something weird happens and and that's where everything gets twisted a little bit yeah lack of empathy is revealed right and then things go blank yeah it's a weird moment but again he's a he's a creature that likes to play with his victim, and he doesn't care. His mimicking is not perfect because he knows he's got the bait. Then there's this other thing that stuck to me a lot, and it's also like a little bit of

information, a crumble. The story in the book is told through the eyes of the losers, and so it's very speculative when it comes to the monster and the nature of the losers. And so it's very speculative when it comes to the monster and the nature of the monster. But there's a passage where Bill is reflecting on the monster and he says, maybe it eats children because that's what we're told that monsters do. So immediately you connect to the idea that maybe this monster is real,

but only if it's alive in the imagination of children, doesn't mean that it's not real. Yeah, you artfully don't totally answer that question all the time, right? You don't feel the need to kind of like clarify the pure logic of the story because that would kind of ruin what you're building towards, right? Oh, definitely not a subject that is like explained to overkill. It's just mentions here. Bill, the hero, is always trying to convince his friends that what is happening is not real out of faith, leaps of faith or perception that he has. He doesn't have the certainty that that's not real, but he, you know, it's about belief, basically. And what about Bill Skarsgård? What did he bring to the part? And how do you direct an actor that is transforming all the time and that may not be real depending on the interpretation of the character?

Well, this last thing we talked about, the possibility of it being a product of children's imagination was something that we kept between us, talking about the nature and the psychology of this monster because it's not human. So you have to hold to something. We were, like, basically talked for hours about what Pennywise was and how he behaves.

We concluded that we wanted to bring horror through a different angle than people expected, and that came through the unpredictability and the madness of the character. And Bill took that concept and started building the character with that base of unpredict character. And Bill took that concept and started building the character with that base of unpredictability. And I let him do it. Was it difficult for him to stay in that character for a long period of time? I feel like there's something, it's pretty high level maniacal. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, of course, like there were like, you know, long sequences that took

length shots and stuff, but normally he wouldn't stay in character for a whole day. In fact, when the cameras were not rolling, he would like just sit down there and catch a breath. Yeah. Because he's so physical and he's like, the character is so physical. It's relentless. Yeah, chasing and crawling.

And always like, that's incredible what Bill did. I don't know if he knew the character would end up being so physical. It was an exploration for me and for him, like working together in this character. We had a concept, but then he was exploring how that concept will shine through in the movie. And he grabbed that concept and took it to the maximum. And he would surprise me sometimes because he wouldn't give you like the same thing in the next take. You know's what's so great about bill he really took the concept of unpredictability and really brought it to life you didn't tell me what uh what king

said when he saw the movie well i was a little concerned of course like two days before because it was like very fast he said oh steven wants to see the movie we're sending like the dcp to florida he's there he wants to see it by uh by himself uh in a movie theater and he has been critical in the past of some adaptations. You know, he's not necessarily an easy critic. Of course, because, you know, he's like probably the most adapted writer alive. On the other hand, he has like a very open minded about adaptations and he understands that the adaptation is a work on its own. So he embraces adaptations and he had a lot of experiences.

And probably The Shining was sort of seminal experience. it's pretty vocal about his displeasure with the original yeah yeah so that was like you know he probably hit a wall there and i don't know or maybe started shaping his opinions about adaptations but he embraces them now and still he was like i'm gonna watch it by myself i don't need the filmmaker to be next to me. And I understand, obviously, because if he disliked the movie, he don't want to have the filmmaker next to you. And so I wrote a letter with the DCP, a handwritten letter, and it was basically asking for indulgence and forgiveness for all the liberties that I took. And I wasn't there, but from what I know, he loved it. And he in fact wrote an email back saying how much he had loved it. Was that meaningful to you? Were you happy that you

got the cosign? Yeah, because he didn't need to, you know, it was something that, that came very spontaneous from him. And he immediately after seeing it, he wrote me an email and I couldn't believe that I had an email from Stephen King on my inbox. And the first sentence I read is, it's brilliant. That could be interpreted a number of different ways, right? It using, just using the title, you know, yeah. There was a feeling of relief and joy at that point. And at the end, like maybe as a joke, when he said, don't worry about all the things you've changed, all the changes are approved. That's good. Yeah. I'm curious. I mean, I know you've been asked about before,

there's like a very famous, strange scene near the end of the loser story in the book. Oh yeah. It's quite sexual in nature that I will be honest. I have always found a little bit confounding when I read it. Everyone, confounding, confounding. Yeah. And obviously you made some choices with that scene um yeah but it wasn't for me it wasn't was not about a moral thing in the book it comes out as a broad metaphor of the passage between childhood to adulthood you know these are kids that are on the verge of losing childhood and facing the horrors of of what's on the other side because that's what it the story is. It is like sort of a parable of the death of childhood and the death of a world of imagination

and magic that you will never experience again in life. So everything that is not the childhood is a threatening force. So the adults are the antagonists because they corrode. In a way, the adulthood eats childhood and eats that world of magic. That's why they call it the eater of worlds. He's not eating planets. He eats worlds of faith. This movie in particular kind of reduces people to a childlike impulse, though.

You know, that sort of like base fear where you're just, or you're laughing, but mostly you're just sort of like, I feel so tense and I'm very afraid. And it's a very distinct and pure feeling, right? It's not the complications of adulthood. Well, it's the anxiety of being 13 too, I think. All your life you've been a child and suddenly things start changing, you know, and you have like, you probably enter high school. In my case, it was very much defined by going to high school where you were like in the same patio with 18 yearyear-old guys that were mean and bullies. And it was a big change. And also your mind changes.

And also from the emotional perspective, I was in love with a girl for seven years growing up. And when I turned 12 to 13, it went away. There's something changing. And there's signals that are very specific that you're not the same person anymore. Something dies. It is somehow related to an analogy of being an artist and needing to have that child with you. And it's impossible because being an artist is basically building things from nothing. So you need that imagination to believe in things that don't exist. That's what children do. As an artist, as an adult, you need

that power too, but you don't have it anymore. That's an interesting segue, right? Because the reviews of the film have been good and it looks like it's going to make a lot of money. So then now maybe your life changes somewhat. How do you define success personally for the movie? And then also, how do you figure out what you want to do next? I want to keep telling stories that mean something to people. And whether they are like horror or comedy or drama or science fiction or musicals, I think, because I love all those genres. Are those all on the table for you? Yeah. Well, not that the industry has a perception that I like all of that.

I love horror, but I would like to keep exploring the genre in my own way. I'm not very interested in horror scripts that might come from the outside, but I'm open to other genres and other movies. And horror has that, you know, budget limit. I mean, it's weird to say that, but after you made a couple of movies, making a smaller movie, unless it means a lot to you, it's sort of like a step back or sideways in your career. But that doesn't mean that, you know, come across an excellent horror movie that, you know, it's like $4 million and we'll go for it. But I want to go back to that creative impulse that made me do Mama. I wrote Mama and I directed it. And after Mama was released and the whole thing, I sort of fell into a different mode, which was more like listening to what the industry could do for me. And I'm going to, you know, sit down and

write a new story. It looks like you may have to finish this story first though before you go on to the next thing. Oh, that was the question. No, for me, it's so important. I think we have to, I want to complete the story. It's not a second part. For me, it's the second half of the story. And I wouldn't let anyone do it.

Not that I'm the one to decide, but if I'm given the opportunity, I would love to do it. I like I'm the one to decide, but if I'm given the opportunity, I would love to do it. I like to end the show with asking filmmakers what the last great thing they saw was. You can't say your own film. So I know you saw your movie again last night. But what have you seen recently

that really blew your wig back? I lived in a bubble for the last year and a half. So it was more about making than watching. I mean, unfortunately, that's the case sometimes. I hear that from a lot of filmmakers, yeah. Yeah, it's weird. But I still got to see a few movies. I was very pleased by Dunkirk.

Yeah, I'm hearing that a lot lately. It was a very visceral experience. Not a super sophisticated story, but as a visceral experience, it was very, very interesting. And it's also like the way it's structured, even though it's like tricky, because it generates interest from just by like breaking the puzzle. It stimulates that part of your brain that wants to put the pieces together.

So I think it's sort of a trick to compensate for a story that is not too sophisticated. But on the other hand, as I tell you, it got me more from the visceral effect than anything else. Yeah. And that vision of Tom Hardy's plane on fire is incredible. It's fantastic. But all the experience of being in that plane is really something I never felt it before. And I think it's a teamwork, you know, it's a, of course it's from, it comes from the vision of Nolan, but so much about sound, about the visual effects that are so hyper-realistic and the editing.

Well, I had a very similar feeling in It, so congratulations, Andy. I appreciate you coming in today, man. Thank you so much. Thanks again to Andy Muschietti and Kate Nibbs. And be sure to check out our next episode of The Big Picture. I'll be chatting with screenwriter-turned-filmmaker Danny Strong, who's got a new movie about J.D. Salinger called Rebel in the Rye. And so I'll see you with screenwriter turned filmmaker, Danny strong. Who's got a new movie about JD Salinger called rebel in the rye.

And so I'll see you guys next week. Hey, it's bill Simmons. I wanted to tell you about black on the air hosted by the one and only the great one, Larry one more, even though he's a Lakers fan, I still like him you about Black on the Air, hosted by the one and only, the great one, Larry Wilmore. Even though he's a Lakers fan, I still like him. I think he's talented. But he has all kinds of guests on, from Neil deGrasse Tyson to Al Franken to Bernie Sanders. You name it, they're coming on.

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If you liked everything else that he's done comedy wise, if you love this comedy central show, you will love this podcast. It is a medium that he has built for it. It's called black on the air hosted by Larry Wilmore. Get it wherever you subscribe to your podcasts.