Then there was the thing they dug up… that still lives today.
It’s still really scary and really atmospheric.
And it was in his contract with Paramount that the movie would be shot in Maine.
Credit: Mary Lambert/Twitter
It definitely added to the texture of the film.Maine was just so beautiful.
Everything that Stephen had described in the book was there.
I felt like that was really important.
So we actually dug up a full-grown tree and planted it in the yard.
You dug up something and it lived!That was fun.
They promised me that the tree would live, so I’ve been told that it did.
I didn’t want to kill a tree.
It actually was because of the high infant mortality rate.
A lot of those pictures are of dead children that have been dressed so their parents can remember them.
Was that a real painting or something you created for the movie?
It is very unsettling.No, I had it painted especially for the movie.
First we designed the costume that we were going to put Gage in at the end.
And then we had the portraitist do the painting of the little boy in the costume that reflects it.
It knows what you’re afraid of.
I don’t believe you oughta say those things out loud in the movie.
They just need to be there visually, you know?
It’s a thing that most horror movies don’t want to acknowledge.
They want the thrill of death, but not the sadness of it.
But you went there.
I think of the funeral scene where Louis and his father-in-law fist-fight and knock over the coffin.
That little hand appears when the lid flips open, and it’s so sad.
I think that’s a real secret power of this movie.
Did you all discuss that much?I think it’s a secret power too.
[They felt] it was too sad, that it took away from the scariness.
At first there was a little bit of pushback, but it was overcome very quickly.
We talked about Keith Carradine.
I quite liked the idea of Keith Carradine [pictured above, center] for a while.
He was the other leading contender.
I think he would’ve been a great Louis Creed.
What about Rachel Creed?We definitely looked at a lot of other actresses.
She was somebody that we considered for it.
Also Colleen Camp [above, right], who’s quite an amazing character.
She recently played the lady next door inThe House With a Clock in Its Walls.
[Laughs] And really good friends with Dee Dee Ramone, who wrote the song.
It was such a perfect song too, isn’t it?
I’ve read that King gave him the book and he wrote the song at his home.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.”
It took him about 24 hours, and it’s so obvious.
“I don’t want to be buried in the pet cemetery.
I don’t want to live this life again.”
But you know what?
Dee Dee had a really, really tough life.
Like, “Oh, I could do that.
It’s so stupid.”
And I don’t think Dee Dee did want to live this life again.
She would’ve been in Chicago when everything happened.
So I thought it would be really cool to have her come back and bring her cat.
There’s several different ways that could happen.
We don’t know exactly what happened [to the Creeds].
I was leaning towards Louis, just because of the Louis-Ellie connection.
That he’s undead, still living out there?Yeah, that there’s an undead presence.
