IT holds a dear spot in my heart, and when I say that I mean both Stephen King’s epic, sprawling 1986 novel and the 1990 TV miniseries.
I discovered the book around age thirteen, at the height of my adolescent Stephen King obsession (I read his entire oeuvre up until that point in a period of slightly under two years). The telefilm hit the airwaves the year after. I don’t remember how I convinced my dad to let me keep my TV on the extra hour those nights, but I do recall sitting on my bed glued to the screen, scared to go to the bathroom during commercial breaks lest I not get back fast enough and miss even a minute. Good/bad, none of that sort of critical assessment registered at that point, it was IT on TV and that was awesome.
It’s also worth noting that IT gave me one of my firsts: it stands as the longest book I read before entering high school. Yes, I’m a horror nerd from way back.
I’ll be revisiting IT in depth this year; I went on set while the new film was shooting in Toronto last summer and some of the interviews I conducted that day will run in an upcoming issue of Rue Morgue. To say I’m looking forward to this walk back through my own childhood with the Losers Club is an understatement. It’s a story that has a very formative place in my development as a horror fan (and horror writer/journalist), and is without a doubt worth a revisit all these years later.
Which, of course, brings us to the reason why you are here and why everyone is talking about this 31-year-old book again: the trailer for the new feature, which is being directed by Andrés Muschietti and stars Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise.
Dig in, and then tell me you own stories about IT in the comments.
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