BRING IN THE CLOWN
PLAY
trying to do a new adaptation of a movie and do it similarly to the first one. We wanted to reinvent the character and I think we did. me. I wanted it that Pennywise had humour for himself, but that the audience wouldn’t find it funny.
So I wanted the humour to be that Pennywise finds the most grotesque and evil things hilarious, but I never wanted the audience to laugh or smile with him. I wanted them to be repulsed by his humour.
When he is in control, he’s having a lot of fun – he tends to play with his food, so to speak – but it obviously shouldn’t be enjoyable for the kids in the movie or the audience watching it. stray away from it as far as possible. But Heath as an actor has always been an inspiration to me, like so many great character actors have been. I was adamant to do as much of my own thing as possible.
It’s a strange thing to come to terms with – that if I really succeed with this, people will have nightmares about this character for a really long time.
Ultimately it’s all just fun and games – we do seek out fears – and the world is a much more terrifying place than Pennywise can ever be. I know that Tim Curry’s performance, I have close friends who were completely traumatised by it.
An older sister or brother forced them to watch it when they were way too young and it traumatised them. I don’t think this movie should be watched by someone of that age. But who knows?
We did have a separation so the kids wouldn’t become too comfortable with me being around until we started shooting.
But then the kids were so mature and smart that pretty early on they understood that this was just pretend and Pennywise isn’t real and we just worked together professionally to make the scenes as good as they could be. And I think we did. The kids are such a huge asset to the film and part of the reason it works is because of how good the chemistry between them all is. It