Pennywise: The Story of It (2021) - Documentary Review
What do you when you take a documentary filmmaker who loves a film and sets out to make an honest, heartfelt tribute to one of the greatest horror adaptations of all time?
One of the best horror documentaries ever made.
Let’s Discuss.
As anyone who has discussed horror fiction or film with me, they would know I have a decisive relationship to Stephen King’s work. I believe Stephen King is an iconoclast who brought horror into the main stream. I believe he has written many brilliant works including some of my favorite books of all time such as The Dead Zone,The Stand, and Doctor Sleep.
I also believe his great works are few and far between and overall due to his own self-inflicted market saturation and over exposure. Furthermore, I believe Stephen King in the modern era is overrated.
Woah now folks, put your pitchforks and torches away and let me make an educated argument before you cancel me.
I have read 25-30 books per year for the last decade. 75% of those books are horror, again—on average. Stephen King was my first adult horror novel experience when I picked up Cujo when I was 6 years old.
Yes, I was something of a child prodigy when it came to reading—but to be fair, I grew up in a house with no television for a good chunk of my childhood. It makes a world of difference.
Cujo is a great illustration of the best and the worst of King, but also a great starting point for a trend of opinion that has carried forward to the modern day.
Cujo the film is a classic, taut thriller that makes every second of the runtime stressful. Cujo the book is a longwinded, bloated mess of a novel that I would challenge anyone to honestly convince me that they enjoy reading. A good chunk of the book is about a food scientist who made a cereal that caused Army soldiers to have chronic red diarrhea. The actual portion of the book that addresses the rabid canine is almost a side plot to the benign human drama full of all of King’s cliche-stereotypical negativity, ie. every married person is an alcoholic adulterer and/or a pedophile.
Yet, if you ask people about Cujo—they will say it’s a great book. However, when you ask them about the main plot points of the book and how they could possibly say that it was an enjoyable read—-they won’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
King’s work is perfect for adaptation due to how bloated almost all of his book are, and most people don’t have the patience or force of will to fight through the page counts—however, a screen writer has a ton of room to work.
Most people haven’t even read the King books they quote as greatness—they’ve only seen the masterful adaptations / abridgments of his works.
Don’t believe me?
Let’s look at a couple other examples—
The Shining - While I love the book for it’s painfully personal depiction of the addiction and parenthood, as well as the ending which brings an almost Grecian Comedy Redemption of Jack. However, as an adult and as a lifelong drug addict—I understand why Stanley Kubrick changed the story. Kubrick’s massive diversion from King’s work may be the greatest adaptation from book to screen as Kubrick took the massive book and brought it down the most important part—Danny. As an addict and a writer, I am a narcissistic mess that is constantly having to remove myself from my work. King has never had that ability. His main characters are almost always filled with his demons and their redemption is more important to him than the reality of the damage we as addicts cause. Kubrick cut King’s ego out of the equation and made the focus of the film on the family and on Danny and made a more realistic ending in that of Jack being lost to his demons and staying at the Overlook where he belonged. This also applies to Doctor Sleep film, which is more a sequel to the Kubrick film than the novel. Though I love the Doctor Sleep book, it pales in comparison to the extended cut of the film—which riffs more on the lifelong implications of dissolution of Danny’s family and the genetic and psychic inheritance therein.
The Stand - 1,152 pages. That all I really need to say. I don’t know a single person that’s been willing to commit to reading this novel—as much as I have tried. It’s an epic that few writers could ever hope to match. This is the first King book I read that lacked the ego and cliched characters of King’s universe. This book is a masterclass in writing that should be required reading in schools. I would guess it’s probably the lowest read of King’s works—but by god did Mick Garris match the quality of the novel. Garris directed a masterpiece of a miniseries based on the screenplay by King. Next to IT this may be the greatest TV movie of all time. I remember churches held viewing across my city. Churches! It was incredible—and again most people’s memories of this story were from the Garris masterpiece instead of the incredible novel.
Why does this matter?
Because there is no better example of the disparity between cultural knowledge of a book / adaptation than IT.
IT the novel is my least favorite King novel. Why? Because it’s a bloated mess of every disgusting King trope embodying that I assume is King’s view of the world in all it’s moldy degradation. Every adult is a drunken pedophile. Every child is a consumable resource to be corrupted, raped, or killed. The narrative is a mess of bouncing back and forth through time—many times without any point of reference to let you know where you, the reader, are at any given time. You’ve got a rapist, necrophile teen character. An over the top, brutal bully who does things that would land anyone in prison, even if your father is the sheriff. You’ve got an incestuous father of the leading girl character, a character who is mainly used as a tool for the male characters to lust after and to be the focal point of the climactic child orgy. Yes—there is a graphic child orgy in the novel that was cut from all versions of the film. It’s a divisive scene that is almost universally pointed to as a misstep—which King himself refuses to accept.
IT is the ultimate keystone of King’s ego and I think gives the reader the best viewpoint into King’s unbelievably negative world view.
I understand he had a rough life, but so did a lot of people.
Speaking for myself—I was a latchkey kid whose father was an alcoholic security guard and whose mother left our home in my early teen years, never to return in any major capacity. I was exposed to sexuality at an extremely young age due to being subjected to the attention of deranged family friends. I was verbally and physically abused during my elementary school days at a right wing religious school. I became a drug addict in my early teens and survived a handful of overdoses before the age of 18. I tried and failed to kill myself three other times outside of these events.
You could say I had a negative upbringing, but unlike King, I refuse to let that darkness corrupt my outlook on the world. I force myself into the light again and again. I write about horrible things, but there’s always a light. There’s always a way for the characters to find redemption—at a cost.
Then again—I’m not a successful writer. I have a small, dedicated fanbase.
I’m also willing to admit my shortcomings as a writer and as a man—
This is part of the reason I love this documentary—it’s honest.
This documentary takes the viewer on a journey from book to script to screen without pulling any punches. Perhaps this why King did not participate in the documentary outside of previous interview footage.
It shows the tremendous onus Tommy Lee Wallace took on his shoulders not only directing this masterpiece, but also in managing a cast of adults and children—and adults who act like children—Looking at you John Ritter, you beautiful legend.
Wallace and writer Lawerence D. Cohen candidly discuss the shortcoming of the novel, in particular the over sexualization of children depicted in the book and how the child orgy scene nearly derailed the mini-series before it got started and how they both found that the novel went too far. They discuss the difficulty in adapting such a monster of a novel and how the narrative of the book was a rough task to adapt due to its time jumping antics. They point out the shortcomings of King as well as their own shortcomings in adapting the book. It’s a beautifully honest tale of the struggle of adapting someone else’s work, especially when your personal viewpoints are boldly different.
This honesty carries through the rest of the documentary as the actors and production staff members discuss their experiences both positive and negative in creating the film.
My favorite portions are the segments dedicated to Tommy Lee Wallace and Tim Curry.
Wallace is one of the most underrated Master of Horror in the history of the genre. Unless you’re listening to John Carpenter sing his praises, you rarely hear about Wallace.
Unfortunately for Wallace, the majority of his opportunities came in the form of sequels no one else wanted to touch. However, these sequels are some of my favorite movies of all-time: Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Fright Night II. These movies were derided on their original releases, but once they hit VHS, folks saw that they were groundbreaking films. If these movies had been standalone features without the burden of a previous film’s title on the byline, they’d both be considered all-time classics.
Fight me.
And then there’s Tim Curry.
There is no actor or personality in the history of cinema that I love more than Tim Curry. That includes my favorite actor of all time, Ethan Hawke. Tim Curry is more than an actor to me. As a child who grew up in darkness, often alone—I bonded with the characters I found in books and movies. My most watched movies growing up were Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Star Fighter, Clue, Legend, Home Alone 2, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 4 out of 6 times I’d pop in a VHS—Curry would be on screen. I know that he’s lauded by genre fans in the modern day, but overall his career has never garnered the respect of other character actors. Whether that’s because he was just another British actor, like he discusses in the documentary or because he just didn’t care much for fame—we’ll never know for sure, but this documentary provides a loving tribute to him and he appears to speak for himself, even though his health has been poor for years. It’s sad to see him in such a state, but hearing his trademark wit was still intact brought a smile to my face.
This is one of the best retrospective documentaries of all time. I could go on and on—but I think you’ll agree I’ve gone on long enough.
Please watch this documentary and share it. This is what a documentary should be. It’s an honest, heartfelt look back at a film that changed television history. It includes both the good and the bad of the production and address all of the tragedies surrounding the cast and crew including an incredible look back at two great actors and men in John Ritter and Jonathan Brandis.
I can’t recommend this enough.
This is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and Shudder.
