Don't want to be buried in a Pet Sematary.
I'm glad that I did it.
I wouldn't do it again though, you know what I mean? It is a very disturbing
part to play thinking about what this man does. And you know King's got a
wonderful way of just making it intimate and making it close to us that we can
understand it and believe it and imagine-- what would you do? Or would you keep
going now you crossed then--you just put the shovel and then just keep digging you
open it up and you know it's it's just there's an immediacy there which he,
which he seems to make us all lean into that we find ourselves in the middle of
this horror. I was at my mind for most of it. After a
while you're in such a tunnel you're like you're not really--but there was a
moment when I was digging up Ellie and I'd--it really occurred to me that I was in
a real graveyard an old graveyard in northern Montreal. I was going what we
couldn't find an empty field to do this and plant some fake ones?
I mean there's graves around me everywhere here felt very strange all of a sudden.
I wanted to get out and I couldn't without help.
I've long been a Stephen King fan .
And Wyck Godfrey, the producer, studio boss at Paramount was the producer on
the Damien Chazelle film 'First Man,' which I'd done.
And it was his first film once he'd taken over at Paramount. And then he should read it.
He said you know there's a bit of reticence. It's been made and it's a famous book
you think uhh, you know, but the script was then--the script really delivered, I thought.
I love what they've done with it and I thought you know what Louis Creed,
I think I can do that.
It's okay now. You're back.
Back from where?
And the book is wonderful. I mean I just I kept listening
to the book after reading it. Because you know the descriptive patterns of Louis's
inner monologue of when he's going through the woods or when he's in the
cemetery that night is so visceral. It's about our first you know--it gives you
that, our first touch of death and understanding of you know you know life
is not [in]finite, is with our pets. And it's always tricky to adapt such a
well-written novel into something that's got to work in the cinema, but I thought
you know it grounded it in reality. The big change which is you know everyone without
being a spoiler because it's in the ads, is Ellie is the main protagonist instead of Gage.
So you know I mean King's book is so disturbing and frightening because it's
based in reality. It's clo--there's an absurd jump about things coming back,
it's very close to the bone and we can feel it, you know loss of a child and the
need you know what we'd do if we could. You know it's a great meditation on
being human--you know on what we are as people, and what we are as a family,
and what these things mean to us and the depths we would go to. There's even a bit
of the old Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein.' You know you build the monster and the
monster comes back. And it's a you know it's, it's your daughter, but different.
I mean it's one thing to think, you know, what if he could bring your daughter
back, would you? But then the other question for Louis I always thought, was
he knows that this place brings them back, so what kind of parent is he, if he
doesn't try?
Those woods
belong to something else.
It took a lot of work to find that ending by everybody
involved and I thought it's honest to the you know it's honest in a way to the
book and to what King initially meant, but also brings you know an explosion of
I don't know cathartic relief to the audience. I mean you know when, when that
ending, before that moment happens, you see what happens you know to the others.
And so you can hear audiences exploding in the cinema just going 'oh my god!'
And then that end comes in and they're just like 'oh my.' You know it's, it's a
wonderful visceral way. You know and I was very proud that as a film we went
there. In A, the darkness, and B, making it work for cinema, you know.
Because you're not sitting there reading it on your own in the dark. You're sitting
there watching it hopefully with hundreds of people and, and it becomes a
big community experience. The ending is wonderful though it's really--it gets you.
It just kind of seeps in, doesn't it? You have immediate you feel it's it's like
it's full on, isn't it? You release emotions and that's why good horror works in the
cinema still. Like big action is something you should watch with other people.