Episode 670: Father's Day w/ Stephen King & Joe Hill

The boys celebrate Father’s Day with a visit from two generations of horror royalty as Stephen King and Joe Hill join Last Podcast on the Left for a rare joint conversation on family, fear, and the business of nightmares.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:23Speaker 02

  There's no place to escape to. This is the last. On the left.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  That's when the cannibalism started.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Big day here, boys. Big day. Big day. Massive day. This is such a, let's just say, a victory. Yeah. This is a victory. Yeah. For LPN. This is a victory for Last Podcast on the Left. Validation. Validation. We got him, the white unicorn.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left, ladies and gentlemen. My name's Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zebrowski.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Pink unicorn.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  The pink unicorn, Henry Zebrowski.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Got filled with shrimp.

• 2:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the hairy unicorn.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  I was gonna say illiterate unicorn.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  Just your beard is looking quite nice. Have you been trimming?

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, well, yeah, I have a person who trims.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  It looks great.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  Thank you. I appreciate it, because I was worried it was looking bad, but now it gets another week like this.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  You really look good in that way, like, but the thing is, the guy who trims your beard definitely.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Woman.

• 2:36Speaker 03

  Wow, but he makes you look like an Iranian lord.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 2:40Speaker 00

  I'll take that.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, you do look like a lord of some kind.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Hey, you wanna get through the straight? You come talk to me. You alright? I'll get you through the straight.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  I'll get you through the game.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  I got submarines. I got big old submarines full of the oil.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Alright, we got our rock topic here.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Rock topic. The big topic that we have today is that, okay, we interviewed Joe Hill, author Joe Hill, a few months ago.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  Fantastic man. It went so well.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  And we never, we didn't really even say anything about his dad.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, we didn't say, we said nothing about his dad.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  We were so cool during that interview.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  But it went so well that he came back and he brought his father, Stephen King, with him.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  That's right. He was like, I got my dad. You guys are talking about me and I got my dad here now.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  But then he did a whole thing, you'll see in the interview, where he's like, my dad will beat you all up.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  And Stephen King stood up and he was like, come here, you little F-words, and he yelled that five or six times.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  You'll see, you'll see, it's all there, it's all, it's all there.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  But this is our Father's Day special.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  It is.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Because in many ways, Stephen King raised us. He was definitely a big part of my childhood and a very big part of everything I've ever known about horror and novels.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, no, he's one of the cultural voices of the 20th century. He's one of the guys who created the 20th century, culturally.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's unbelievable. I, I, I watched a documentary called King in Movies, and I was like, oh, he's like shaped my thoughts completely.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm very excited for this, but let's just get to it.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  Let's just get to it, yeah, because I finally, I finally got to ask him about shitters.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  And I didn't even, I just rewatched Christine, and I was like, oh, yeah, shitters.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  You should read it. In the, they tone it down in the movie a lot.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Oh, he asked him about it.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  I look at that book on my shelf all the time.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Let's get to it.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  How are you guys?

• 4:37Speaker 03

  We're doing fantastic. How are y'all doing today?

• 4:40Speaker 05

  I'm good.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  First question, out the gate, doing well?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Wow, this is real, watching this. I just want to say, I hate to disappoint because honestly, our dads really wanted to meet you guys too. And one of the hardest things was is that I noticed when I was bringing them over here, the urn was really loose.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  And so I didn't want to spread them all over the stuff. I didn't want to spread them all over my car.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, the urn was loose because when you weren't paying attention, I actually switched out my dad's ashes with your dad's ashes. And so now I got your dad in my house and your dad, my dad's at your house.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  How many ashes have you been presented with as a couple?

• 5:22Speaker 04

  Oh, uh, I, no one's given me their ashes yet.

• 5:28Speaker 05

  I have made an ash of myself once in a while.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  I was at a, uh, I was at a signing at a library in like Boise. This was years and years ago when a guy came up to me. He was one of the last guys in line, sort of a decrepit old fella. And he said, you know, I loved heart shaped box so much and your dad's books have meant so much to me. And I just wanted to give you something to express that, how much those books meant to me. And he lifted up this leather bag. It looked like a doctor's bag. And I, I accept, I said, thank you. And I opened it and this stink just rolled out like there was, you know, I don't know, like a rotten piece of meat in it or something like that and a chemical odor as well.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  And I said, what is this? And, uh, he said, my dad embalmed people for 40 years and that was his, that was his bag. That was the bag he did for his work. And I was like, boy, you shouldn't have. Thank you. Thank you so much, you know, and I, I will say, I will say that I had him, I had him chuck it as soon as like I left the thing. I'm not bringing. Fucking bag like that on an airplane?

• 6:39Speaker 00

  No, you can't even bring it to the Hilton.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  You know, it's always the last person in line when you're really tired and you just want to go back to your hotel and pee. You know, just somebody that shows up with with that.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, Stephen, what was what was something that that sticks out in your mind that a fan brought to you that you were just immediately revolted by?

• 7:10Speaker 05

  Well, it wasn't so much that, but I was at a place one time signing books and this fat kid comes up to me and says, "Hey, kid, where's the Nazi books?" And so I took him to the Nazi book.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  I'll tell you what, you you you just can't tell what people are gonna do. One guy came up to me and said, you know, about Salem's Lot, he said, you know, "You ought to write a squeal in that Jenner." And I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "A sequel in that genre."

• 7:50Speaker 04

  You know, you know, one thing, speaking of grotesque gifts, you know, disturbing gifts, John Wayne Gacy sent my dad some art back in the day from prison. And actually, I found that so disturbing. That's in the first paragraph of Heart Shaped Box.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  You know, that kind of hung in my mind because the other thing is is Gacy wasn't terrible. I mean, he was obviously terrible. I can't underline enough how terrible he was.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Well, he was a funny guy. Yeah, he was a funny guy.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  We've already singled it out. You're screwed.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's gotta be the clip to sell this episode. John Wayne Gacy was pretty good. You know, what what he did.

• 8:32Speaker 05

  A real mushroom. He was a fun guy.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  He could, he could do a passable, he could do passable like Disney characters and stuff.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Well, he used to do paint by numbers. He used to go and get the like, he would have a whole system of other serial killers, including one of the, uh, the guys from the Chicago Rippers. And he also had the guy that killed everybody to avoid the earthquake in Southern California.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Herbert Mullen.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Herbert Mullen. He had other serial killers working for him on an assembly line, painting these paintings for him.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  That's not true.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Is that true?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yes, because he's, he literally was a job creator. He was a executive manager. He was a project runner. That's what he did. He was a project manager.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  They had an art club in prison?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  It was kind of like a chain gang. Like literally, you need to kind of force them to do stuff and then they would bring in, there's a whole story about how John Wayne Gacy was sort of gamed by this young man that called him and pretended to be really into him. And so this young man started arriving to visit with John Wayne Gacy. And then the two of them would talk to the other serial killers like they were his little like crew. Like it was like his little brothers.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  So don't feel that honored about the art.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Is it like that?

• 9:49Speaker 05

  It was like Hair Club for Men, but with art.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Do you find that in speaking of terms of collaboration, because you guys worked together, because John Wayne Gacy can really run that type of collaboration. I'm sure you guys really, you guys put some really good stuff together. Like, because In the Tall Grass was a great, like, how do you guys feel like when you're together working?

• 10:12Speaker 04

  We've only done it twice. We've only done it twice. We, we, we wrote In the Tall Grass and we wrote Throttle and, you know, I mean, I feel like when I, the times I've written with Dad, you ever seen like the, the Warner Brothers cartoons, when Wile E. Coyote climbs on an Acme rocket and lights the fuse and then suddenly it takes off under him?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  That's what it's like writing with my dad. I feel like I'm just kind of hanging on for dear life, you know? I, I'd sort of like sweat and pull my hair out over like three pages or something. And then I'd, I'd email it to him and like, 45 minutes later, he'd be like, "It was great. Here's five, here's five more pages."

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Jesus Christ.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  I wrote five, I wrote five, I'm keeping up.

• 10:58Speaker 05

  Well, you know, there was, there was a, a time when I was chemically assisted by some of those things in the, the books with Peter Strab in the early days, but, uh, those days are behind me now.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, now it's just what Cialis, lot of, lot of Snapple, that's what I do.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  I crush up my Cialis right into the, right into, I just do it, I do it line by line each day, just to get me going to do podcasting.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, and under the lid of those Snapples, they got funny little things, you can just slide right into the book, you know, if you wanted to.

• 11:37Speaker 05

  So man, if you say so.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  We had a pretty good movie made out of In the Tall Grass.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Oh, it was great.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  It's so good.

• 11:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was pretty cool, that was pretty cool, and, um, for a while, for a while, uh, Sylvester Stallone was talking about doing throttle behind the scenes, and like, as a guy who grew up in the, you know, I mean, me and dad went to go see all those Rocky films and everything together, and wow, what a blast that would have been, but it didn't happen.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  I just want to say right now, Sylvester Stallone as the gunslinger, can it just like, let's just do it, make it expendables.

• 12:15Speaker 05

  I, I don't think that would really work at, at his age, I mean, Chuck Norris could have done it, I mean, Chuck Norris could have just wiped that shit out entirely.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  No guns at all, he could have just used his hands.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  I always saw Daniel Day, Daniel Day Lewis was my gunslinger in my mind, who, do, do you have a gunslinger that you wish, besides, I mean, I loved Idris, but you got a gunslinger in your mind that you wish you could see walking around?

• 12:43Speaker 05

  Clint Eastwood, back in the day.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 05

  Back in the day, it would have been great, would have been great, I mean, I got the idea for those books in a large part because of those Sergio Leone westerns, you know, I saw them in the theater, uh, because, um, uh, uh, you know, I'm, I'm old, and,

• 13:06Speaker 05

  so, you know, they were just widescreen men, and, and it was, Eastwood was so quiet in those movies, you know, he, he wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful, so that, that was great, uh.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, they didn't even give him a name.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  The man, he was literally the man with no name, that's right.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  How did you respond, Joe? Like, do you li- are you as big of a fan of The Dark Tower as the rest of us? I'm sorry, Marcus, I'll get you your questions, I'm just sorry, I just started on Dark Tower and it means, it actually means the whole world to me, but you've seen a lot of fat guys that say this to you, Stephen. So I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm doing this at you, I'm just...

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Well, I love those, I'm a big Stephen King fan, I love all those books, and I mean, the thing about the the gunslinger books is, is, I always think of them as the gunslinger books, not the Dark Tower books.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  You know, and they're kind of like the unified theory of the Stephen King, of Stephen King world, you know, and, and, um, because it picks up so many threads from all the other books and, and it's almost like a nervous system running through the whole body of Dad's work. Um, and they're just such great reads, they're just so much fun and such a terrific cast of characters and, and, and it is a little bit, in some ways, it is a little bit surprising, there haven't been out of, you know, well, there was, no, no, there was the Idris, there was the Idris film, but it didn't do very well.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  It's because it needs to be 25 hours long!

• 14:34Speaker 05

  Good, to ea- either. I love the Idris film too, but they talked for a while about Javier Bardem doing

• 14:43Speaker 01

  That's sexy.

• 14:44Speaker 05

  That would have been great.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's sexy, that would have been good.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  I, I mean, I think there is an attempt right now to try to make it five seasons, you know, to try to do a TV thing, but I'm not sure how far along it's gotten.

• 14:55Speaker 05

  Have any of you guys seen, uh, Cape Fear, the new one, where Javier Bardem plays the bad guy?

• 15:01Speaker 00

  Not yet, not yet, I'm very excited for it, though.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  I am too.

• 15:05Speaker 04

  It's great.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  It looks really cool. Javier Bardem, scary as hell, man.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  So Stephen, earlier you, you mentioned that, you know, the spaghetti westerns were a big influence on, on The Dark Tower series, like, when, you know, you were writing all those iconic works, how much inspiration did you take from other mediums and, and other genres for your own stories?

• 15:30Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I was a big fan of western movies, period, and, uh, I tried to get in a lot of the, uh, the things that, that, that those-

• 15:44Speaker 05

  Books and movies were based on, you know, that, that, that, the idea that the guy has to be alone and he has to be a hero. And although in the early books, Roland isn't very much of a hero, uh, he's, he's actually kind of a bad guy.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is, he is. And then he changes. Yeah. Go then there are other worlds in these. I think about this and I'm so happy you brought that back. I'm so happy you brought it back for the next book. I'm so excited, Mr. King. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna show up at your house. I'm gonna show up. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, sir. Um, can I, um, no, I won't. I won't. I'm sorry. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform that helps you stand out online. Yes, that's right. You don't have to smash your face with a hammer. You can just start a business. It's got everything you need on Squarespace from securing your domain to building a professional site and showcasing your work all in one place. Let's say you want to show everybody how you can carve your ribs out

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• 20:45Speaker 01

  Live from your grave. Um, Joe, I've been watching a lot of interviews to prep for this between, between you and your dad. And I gotta say, one thing-

• 20:53Speaker 04

  I'm so sorry.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, you know, it's, I'm, I'm, I'm getting a taste for them. But Joe, my question is, you, you seem like, your father seems so proud of you. Uh, what's that like?

• 21:09Speaker 04

  Um, I'm sure there's a joke here somewhere, but I, I, but I can't find it. You know, um, you know, um...

• 21:18Speaker 05

  Just, just pretend I'm not here, Joe.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  I know, right? I mean, I hardly know how to talk about it. I have a great relationship with my dad. We love a lot of the same things, you know. Owen and dad and myself, my, my brother Owen. Owen is a wonderful writer. He wrote Sleeping Beauties with that and, and Owen's last novel, The Curators, and absolute, you know, stunner. The first two pages of The Curator are better than anything I've written in my whole life.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  Um, you know, and the three of us have, have, uh, both a playlist and a message thread. And we talk to each other every day and mostly what we talk about is rock and roll and sometimes what we're watching on, on TV and- Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan, and Meatloaf. We talk about Meatloaf a lot.

• 22:04Speaker 05

  We talk about meat a lot, you know, we really did.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  Because Owen loves Meatloaf.

• 22:09Speaker 05

  One time Meat and, and Jim Steinman showed up at some place where I was shooting a commercial or something like that, and they were wearing these white gloves, man. Like, like Disney characters, you know?

• 22:25Speaker 05

  Now they're, they're both dead, but I didn't have anything to do with that.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  The white gloves should have been a sign of the afterlife.

• 22:33Speaker 05

  It should have been, yeah.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Well, Joe, you say that you and your dad like love a lot of the same things. Did you have to watch The Shining in a friend's house or something? Or could you watch that at home?

• 22:44Speaker 04

  I saw dad took me to a screening of it before the film was theatrically released. Like a day or two before, or maybe it was the premiere night when it opened in Bangor. And I was just like, uh, six or something. And when I came out, I was gripping his hand and I said, I know, I know, I know. But it was the seventies, it was different.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we're the same, we're all the same.

• 23:05Speaker 04

  I mean, like, you know, um, um, and when I came out, I said, who wrote all the great dialogue? And my dad said, me.

• 23:17Speaker 04

  I just thought that was, that thought had never crossed my mind. That was kind of like this unbelievable realization. Um, you know, that my, that my dad was a guy who invented fictional people and then put them into terrible situations and stuff. Somehow I hadn't really realized his connection to that material.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Um, I mean, I also saw, also, we also watched Salem's Lot together when I was way too young.

• 23:44Speaker 05

  What?

• 23:45Speaker 04

  The kid out the window.

• 23:46Speaker 05

  Oh, the Salem's Lot, yeah. But, you know, Joe played a part in, in Creepshow. You know, he was the little kid.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  Who, uh, who, who stuck pins into the doll. And his father was kind of an abuser and, and beat him up. It wasn't on the screen, but it was off screen. So that when he shows up, uh, they had done makeup so that there were a couple of bruises on his face. And one night, the shooting wrapped late. And Joe said, could we get a hamburger? Could we like drive through McDonald's? And so we drove to McDonald's and here's this little kid that's, that's up at 11 o'clock at night. And he's looks, got all these bruises all over his face. And, uh, the lady in the drive thru called the cops.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  That's so funny, cuz like, that all's like, isn't, is because of Creepshow, is Father's Day a thing in your home? Like, because of that, like, is there a, where's my cake? Like, is that, does that come from your own personal experience, Mr. King? Like, is that the, did you not receive your cake?

• 25:02Speaker 05

  Well, yes, but I didn't get my cake, but nobody came out of the grave, you know, brought me the cake, so, you know, that, that didn't happen. That was make believe, okay, guys?

• 25:18Speaker 01

  I know, I know, I know.

• 25:20Speaker 05

  That was make believe.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  I thought you made documentaries!

• 25:25Speaker 01

  You're ruining my life, Mr. King. You're ruining my life.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  So you were also in Creepshow, The Lonesome Death of Geordie Verrill. Um, now, your performance in that, was that intentional, or?

• 25:37Speaker 05

  Well, we, we won't even talk about that.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  You're way, stop. You terrific, it's a terrific comic turn. I, I love that.

• 25:48Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  When I, when I watched that the first time as a little kid, I got teary.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  Because it was so sad what happened to, what happened to Geordie Verrill.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Or you were just teary eyed because you were a better actor than your father.

• 26:04Speaker 05

  A lot of times, people will come up to me and autograph lives and say, say media shit.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, great.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Honestly, I just watched Sleepwalkers the other day, and as a comedian, your commitment to that awful joke, is it bombed in, on screen, over and over again? I, I do, I love a comedian that really sticks by a bad joke, so I appreciate you, Mr. King.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  The, the mother and son relationship in, uh, Sleepwalkers, is that anything similar to, uh, what you experienced in real life?

• 26:43Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, it was just like my home.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Did you, Mr. King, did you get with Tabitha to breed authors? Is the goal was for you guys to get together, was this like a program that you, was like a King-based program to install?

• 26:59Speaker 04

  Let me just rephrase, I just want you, I just want to remind you guys that I'm sitting here.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  The question you just asked was, Steve, did you get together with your wife to breed? Like, I don't want to, wherever that question is going, it's already gone someplace I don't want to think of.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  It's science.

• 27:16Speaker 05

  We're talking about Southern Freud chicken here.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 05

  But still, you know, the thing is, my wife is a writer and I met her in a poetry seminar. And, uh, so we come by it quite naturally. We're, we're both writers and, uh, she's, she's as good as I am or better in some ways. So she's like, what, five, Joe, five books, seven books?

• 27:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think six. Everyone in the family takes the manuscript to her first.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  You know, and, uh, I'll tell you a story about my mom. I, um, my third novel, Nosferatu, had a really bleak ending. Dark and dark, ugly ending, you know, where, you know, hopeless. And I'm like, and I'm not changing a word, because I'm a fucking artist, man. I'm gonna take the reader and just rub their face in the hopelessness and futility of life, you know? And I was dead set, like, I'm staying with it. And the first person I sent the book to was m- mom. And she blasted through and, and she called me up, you know, a week later and she said, Joe, I, I finished the book and it's just so wonderful, but that ending

• 28:28Speaker 04

  really won't do. And I said, okay, mom, I'll change it. So that's how long my artistic integrity held out.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  And, you know, the other thing about mom, and it, it's, I think it's given us, everyone in the family sort of tough skin when it comes to reviews and stuff, is she writes all the bad reviews first. When Dad finished it, she said, the critics are gonna say you left off two letters.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  And when he finished Insomnia, she said, oh, I can see the reviews already. Stephen King's insomnia cures it.

• 29:05Speaker 05

  She talked a lot about misery too. She said, the critics will say, "The whole review is written in that one word, misery." Misery.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, was she the one who came up with the phrase, it sounds like it came up, the phrase, "Kill your darlings"? Because for me, that is one of the best pieces of writing advice that you've given is that, you know, "Kill your darlings." It's so difficult. Is there like a darling that you have, like something that you felt was just so beautiful, but just didn't quite fit, that was, you know, that you had to kill, that sits out in your mind?

• 29:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. Going back to Tabby again, I wrote a book, it was published last year called Never Flinch, and there were three main stories in it. There was a dog napping, which I finally got in another book, which is forthcoming, and there was a serial killer, and there was a dope thing. And Tabby came to me and said, "This dope thing has all been done before. You know, this is so fucking boring."

• 30:17Speaker 03

  [laughing]

• 30:19Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I fought for it. I fought for it, but in the end, she was right. She usually is.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  I've seen that a few times, too. I've seen Dad gnash his teeth for 48 hours because Mom said something didn't work. But then, he always makes the changes, you know? You've really never, you've really always felt in the end that, that actually she was probably right, and that was the right direction to take stuff in. So there's been a, there's been a 50-year collaboration of ideas there, you know?

• 30:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, she, she changed the whole ending of Other Worlds and These. In fact, there was a point where I thought to myself, "I would really like her to write a chapbook about all the sub-characters in that, in that book." But she said, "You know, somehow, you have to bring it back around to the kid that he was, you know? Because Jack saw your starts."

• 31:25Speaker 05

  In The Talisman, all those years ago, and uh.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  What a great opening, that first bookhead too.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  The Talisman is.

• 31:33Speaker 04

  Standing on the beach, outside, rotting in.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  It's my favorite. It's one of my, uh, the first times I ever cried in a book was reading The Talisman, uh, when the, well, I'm not.

• 31:42Speaker 05

  Knocked it on your foot, right?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  I, how do you feel like, cause you've said this, like, you don't know what's gonna happen. I'm like, you guys are both kind of said similar things where you don't quite know what's gonna happen to the characters you create when you start, they kind of go in a way, but when you write something like that, like in The Talisman, when you kill somebody beloved, like, do you laugh? Like, do you laugh to yourself? Like, are you like, ah, I got these fuckers? Or are you like, or are you sad?

• 32:15Speaker 05

  How twisted do you think I am?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Sir, I think you might be.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  I, I don't laugh. Joe, do you think ahead? Do you know then characters are gonna die, or does it sometimes?

• 32:29Speaker 04

  I know I'm working towards a big scene. Sometimes I, sometimes I have like a set piece in my mind, and so I'm working towards that. Um, a few characters died in the last one, King Sorrow.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:41Speaker 04

  And, uh, when, when one of them died, it took me by surprise. I didn't realize that was gonna happen. And I felt a little bit shaken up by it. What's funny is when Ryan, my 22-year-old, read the book, he said, "Oh, I knew that character was gonna be the first one to die. You, you, you really gave that one away way in advance." And I thought, "I did?" Cause I had no clue.

• 33:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Fascinating. How, how far along in the writing career did you get when it was like that? Or is it a thing that you have to have? Like, the idea that you get to the point where the characters just live? Where you create the characters and they just live in your, is that just natural? Or is there a thing, is there a craft in that way that you learn? I know you guys went to school and stuff, but it's like, how do you guys get to that point? Where you could just be like, "Yeah, I don't know what the character's gonna do." How do you write books?

• 33:39Speaker 00

  How, how write books?

• 33:41Speaker 05

  One of the things that, you know, you talk about characters that, that died.

• 33:47Speaker 05

  A little boy died at the end of, of Cujo, you know, in, in the novel, in, in the movie.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Jesus spoilers.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  Joe, the book is fucking 50 years old, almost, so.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  Go read Cujo.

• 34:04Speaker 05

  Anyway, the, the little boy dies at the end of the book, but in the movie, uh, he lives, but he got licked by the rabid dog. So I think he died horribly of rabies after the fade out. But, you know, the thing is, when, when children die or, or adults die in books, uh, that's one thing. Don't let a dog die, you know? I have heard more about that. I mean, Greg Stilson kicks a dog to death at the beginning of The Dead Zone. I, I've never heard the end of it.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  That's, that's an automatic one star off your Goodreads rating. You kill, I, I, I killed a cat in a story called Jackknife and I, I have eaten so much shit about it online, you know?

• 34:57Speaker 00

  My, my mother's dog, who I took in, uh, Tootsie, she actually passed away yesterday out of complete, you know, randomness. She was only 19 years old. Um, so, you know, why do they?

• 35:08Speaker 04

  She could almost buy a beer.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Why do they go so young? But, uh, I, so we, we did a wonderful thing with her. We, we took her up and we, we, we put her up, we, we, we brought her body up a hill and then, you know, we, we, we put her in the ground and there was a beautiful rock structure on the ground. It was like some kind, it was just gorgeous. And then we were putting her in the ground and it was, it was thin soil. It was sour. And, and, uh, so I'm hoping when I get home, uh, she'll be, be there waiting for me.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  Pet cemetery, yes.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Go and go down that road. Ah, Lance Howard. See, I don't think that's better.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  Is that your Judd Crandall? I'm sorry, was that your Judd Crandall?

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Sometimes that's better.

• 35:55Speaker 04

  I hope that your routine doesn't depend on the quality of your impersonation.

• 36:01Speaker 05

  No, he was good at it.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was great.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  He's unbelievable.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  But I have to ask about Pet Sematary because like you, I am a massive Ramones fan. Massive, massive Ramones fan. And, you know, and the story goes, uh, that's been told that, you know, you invited them over to your house when, you know, before Pet Sematary was being made and Diddy Ramone took a copy of Pet Sematary, disappeared for an hour and came back with the song fully written. Did that, did it actually happen that way?

• 36:32Speaker 05

  No.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Great.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  How did it actually happen?

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love, I love getting past a musician's stories.

• 36:38Speaker 05

  I said, I said, would they, would they write, you know, I, my idea was that they would do the soundtrack for Pet Sematary and that didn't fly, but they did do that song. I, I don't want to be buried in a pet cemetery. And that was what, you talk about a great line, burying in a cemetery.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  I don't want to live my life again. That's such a sad little, sad little, you know.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  But every lanky nerd boy knows that feeling. They're all just like, I don't want to go through junior high again. That's what it's about.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  You just get a whole album out of AC/DC.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  You know, they did, they did the whole soundtrack to Maximum Overdrive.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  I just saw that movie to prep for this. Do you remember directing any of that, Mr. King?

• 37:25Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, I, I remember too, too much of it. But, uh, you know, the thing is, I didn't know, Dino said, hey, Steven, this is Dino DeLorenz, he said, hey, Steven, uh, I think, uh, what we want to do is make a movie and, uh, you're going to direct it. Well, I'd never done anything before. I hadn't been in, uh, film school or anything. I learned as I, as I went along. I could actually. Do a pretty good job the next time, but.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  It was a blast, I have to say.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  I also feel a lot of it because you have such a deep understanding of movies because you guys were both big media. You guys watch a lot of movies when you guys are writing novels versus like our screenplays like easier than a novel or is it like like because sometimes you're retrofitting from one of your other previous works. Like what's the hardest thing that you do? What's the thing besides getting up in the goddamn morning?

• 38:28Speaker 05

  I mean, going to the dentist, I think.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 05

  Probably having a proctological exam, but.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Those are, I mean.

• 38:36Speaker 05

  Oh, is it easier to write scripts or books? Which one is?

• 38:42Speaker 04

  I mean, books, I'd want to write books any day of the week over writing screenplays, but I do write screenplays because that's how I get my healthcare. So I try to write at least one script every year, you know, but you've had a lot, you've done a lot more in that space. You've written whole TV shows, you know, like not just like the pilot or something, but like every, literally every episode. I think you wrote every episode of Golden Years, you wrote every episode of Lisi's Story, you wrote every episode of Storm of the Century.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  But does it suck to go from being able to be Lord and Creator in your own world of writing a novel to like having to go talk to a bunch of suits in a building? And trying to tell them what your ideas are. Do you just, you just not care? Or they just like, oh, whatever you want, Mr. King?

• 39:23Speaker 05

  No, I mean, it isn't that way really, but what I do because I have this wonderful cushion that I don't have to write for the rent every month and that's a big fucking deal as you guys probably know. The thing is I can write a script on spec and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I did a series of scripts for a show called Storm of the Century.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 05

  And that's, that's my favorite one really, you know, that really turned out well. And because I had a good relationship with director, you know.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Well, it's also really glad, I'm glad to hear that the OnlyFans is really working out for you guys. And that that is really paying the bills. And I just really, I think that that's really great for you guys.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  It's regular. I've noticed that you have the same director do your stories, you know, like your multiple movies. Is there a certain director you think that understands your, your, your stories better than anyone else?

• 40:33Speaker 05

  Mike Flanagan.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  Life of Chuck was awesome.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  He's good, but who's the other guy? I want to say he's got like a name like Jack Holden or something, or like maybe he directed The Hitcher.

• 40:46Speaker 05

  You're talking about, uh, uh, Jack, um.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Jack Bender.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  Jack Bender. It was Jack Bender. Thank you. You just saved us.

• 40:58Speaker 04

  A lot of your stuff bad.

• 41:00Speaker 05

  Jack Bender is terrific. Uh, and, and he's somebody who can do things that are just wonderful on a, a, a low budget and short time. And he's fantastic at both of those things. And it doesn't look phoned in, you know, that's, that's great.

• 41:22Speaker 06

  On October 30th, Dexter Morgan is back. In this season, he's facing the scariest threat yet. Middle age. A lifetime of blending in gets to you. And now Dexter is up against two rival killers stealing the spotlight. Taking them down means changing his MO and things are gonna get messy. Starring Michael C. Hall, Uma Thurman, Dan Stevens, and Brian Cox. Dexter: Resurrection. New season, October 30th on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.

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• 45:16Speaker 03

  Live from your grave. Well, it seems like, speaking of, you know, things that you've written for the screen, like I, one of the massive influence on, on me was the, the TV mini-series for The Stand that, you know, came back in, in 1994. Like that, it blew my mind when I saw that when I was a kid. But, you know, with, you know, writing that and also, you know, writing the, the novel, which is also, of course, incredible. When COVID came around in 2020, were you surprised by how people acted? Or were you pretty much like, okay, this is what I expected to happen when a plague hits?

• 45:55Speaker 05

  Well, one thing that, that did happen is, this is horrible to say, but the book went through the roof again, right?

• 46:08Speaker 05

  It's like that story like, uh, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the plague?

• 46:15Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, we, we know, we did a whole series in, in 2021 on the Black Plague, like the history of, of the Black Plague in Europe. And one of the things that really struck us was how similarly people acted back then, how they reacted to the Black Plague in medieval Europe as people reacted in, you know, 2020 to, to COVID. Like, do you think that people are basically the same always?

• 46:44Speaker 05

  In, in the days of the Black Plague, did they have like arrows in the supermarket so that people would only go one way?

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a huge thing. It was a huge thing. And they had, it was a lot of Zooms.

• 46:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, a lot of Zoom calls, yeah.

• 47:02Speaker 04

  There's a, there's a Dutch researcher named Mathias Clausen, who wrote one of the best nonfiction books about horror as a genre. It's called Why Horror Seduces. Um, and he's really the, he's really the sharpest, you know, the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to, you know, talking about the genre. Um, and he co-authored a now fairly famous paper that showed that horror fans dealt with COVID psychologically and emotionally better than people who don't enjoy horror. You know, that if you're, if you consume a lot of horror films and read a lot of horror novels, that you, you absorb the emotional shock of the COVID

• 47:43Speaker 04

  years at a higher, at better. Um, and, um, and like, to me, that makes sense because we've all read The Stand. And so we've already got our action plan for when Captain Trips hits.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. Have you guys seen Backrooms?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  We're on our way. We're on our way to see it.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  I've actually got tickets to see it tonight. I'm very excited. I've seen plenty of the, the, um, the YouTube videos.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, we spoke to the boy himself. We spoke to Kane.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  I almost, I came this close to going to see Obsession last night, but Gillian's got a sore throat and I, I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna dump the kids on her when she wasn't feeling well, so I stayed home.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Obsession is amazing because Obsession does a great, which is what I think you guys have just destroyed. You guys have this ability to do, which is take a simple idea, like a, like a, kind of like a flatter idea and then explode it out. Like, Joe, I was just, you guys have an idea like.

• 48:38Speaker 05

  There's a scene in, in Obsession where the girl smiles for about 20 seconds.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  It's so good. It's so good. She's so frightening. She makes hot, she's so frightening.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  I mean, so it just seems like, it seems like you still keep up on, you know, pretty much every horror movie that comes out still.

• 49:01Speaker 04

  There's so much good stuff out there right now, right?

• 49:04Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  There's so much like, I mean, Keith, Keith Rossen had that great novel Coffin Moon last year. Nat Cassidy had, um, When the Wolf Comes Home. That was incredible. Um, Widow's Bay is great. I love that movie Weapons.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:20Speaker 04

  And, and like, like I feel thrilled, thrilled by all this stuff, but also a little bit challenged and stressed out. Like, I've kinda gotta step up my game to keep up with some of what's coming out now because there's just, there's just so much great stuff.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Well, I honestly wonder if that's a question you can even ask your, your dad, cause like, think about the, like you, you have changed formats too, Mr. King. You also do like, you write some crime, you write some drama and you're like, obviously Joe, you're in the same way. You got, you go, you go into fantasy, you go into sci-fi, you go into horror. One of my favorite stories you ever wrote, Joe, was the one where the guy's trapped on the cloud.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  Oh, aloft, yeah.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  That shit scared the fucking shit out of me. Just cause it's so, but it's so simple. Like, how do you take an idea that might be, like, as you say this, so it's like, an idea might not work out. I listened to your anecdote about the ladies room story you were working on, Mr. King, where you're talking about how you, you spent 90 pages. You never figured out what happened inside that fucking bathroom, right? When does the idea tip? How do you know when the idea is gonna tip to become a novel versus I've just spent a hundred, I've just been a hundred pages doing nothing.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  Joe?

• 50:31Speaker 04

  I mean, I mean, I, I don't know. I mean, I can, when I have a really great concept, I can usually write on that for a couple of days. But if I don't have a great character after a couple of days, there's gotta be someone I give a shit about. You know, there's gotta be a character who, who I wanna spend a, a few weeks or a month or a couple of years with. You know, someone who's got some stuff inside them that seems like it would be interesting to explore. And whose way of interacting with trouble seems interesting and a little bit different. You know, if I can latch into a good character, I feel like I'm off and running. Then I, you know, then I'm really excited to see where the story goes.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  When stories die on me, you know, usually there was a good concept there. There was some, it had a clever hook, but I just couldn't find anyone interesting to write about. It didn't seem to, you know? I don't know. What about you, Dad? I mean, you know, what, I mean?

• 51:31Speaker 05

  I start with, with an idea, something that, that's, that's interesting to me. Uh, sometimes it's just an image, but it has to connect with something else. I mean, it's like, uh, an engine without a transmission. It's gotta be two parts, you know? It's gotta be an idea and then it's gotta be some nuts and bolts, um, that connect it all together. And, and then, man, I just go and, and I hope that everything's gonna turn out pretty good in, in the end, you know? It's, it's like shooting off a, a, an intercontinental ballistic missile.

• 52:12Speaker 05

  If the warhead is big enough, it doesn't matter if you really hit exactly the spot. Everything blows up in the end, so I just try to do the best I can. And, and, and, you know, you gotta try to be honest with the characters. And you can't, you can't bullshit, you, you know, like, say, oh, oh, guess what? It was all a dream.

• 52:36Speaker 04

  I hate that. I hate it.

• 52:38Speaker 05

  Shit doesn't work.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  You know, like, like, the other thing, though, is like, Dad's first drafts are so clean. You know, he, he, um, I came across something. I was cleaning out the basement. I came across an old Entertainment Weekly where he had written a book review for Entertainment Weekly, but he had written it. He was in New York at the time and he, he wrote the review on a ruled, a yellow legal pad, longhand, and then had it sent over to the Entertainment Weekly offices by courier. And Entertainment Weekly was so shocked to receive the manuscript that way that they actually printed the review, but they also printed a, a scan of his copy.

• 53:21Speaker 05

  That was the days before email.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I hear the wagon wheels.

• 53:26Speaker 04

  What's crazy is there's no strikeouts. There's no, every sentence is clean in first draft. There's no corrections or edits or anything. It was just, it was just this sort of perfect, you know, straight from, straight from your mind onto the page and none of my copy ever reads that way. None of my copy.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Maybe he's a demon. Maybe he's a demon and he needs to be exercised. I don't know, man. Cause that scares me. Hearing you say that, Joe scares me.

• 53:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. I, I certainly need exercise. I could do that.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Well, with something like that, like when, when you get back a, a manuscript or review or something like that with, with no strike throughs, you know, nobody is, is giving you any notes. Do you ever ask yourself like, is this good because it's good or is this good because I'm Stephen King?

• 54:16Speaker 05

  No. Yeah. I, I always think that. And, and you know, what, what I always think is, I'm gonna send this manuscript into the publisher and they're gonna call me up and say, Steve, this doesn't say anything. It's just blah, blah, glob, glob, blah, blah. You know, have you ever had that feeling, Joe, that, that it's not good, that, that it's?

• 54:41Speaker 04

  No. No, I always figure it's, I wrote it, so it must be pretty great.

• 54:53Speaker 04

  Every word delicious.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so nice to have that confidence. I love it too. I never doubt. I'm just like, everything I walk out of, I go, man, I was fantastic.

• 55:06Speaker 05

  You know, one of the things that excites me is the, the audio version of, uh, Other Worlds in These, uh, Lewis, um,

• 55:17Speaker 04

  It's Patton Oswalt.

• 55:17Speaker 05

  Patton Oswalt is gonna do the, the recording of that. And this is a character in the book who's a stand-up comedian, uh, who was kidnapped into this other world. So, uh, I think that I can't wait for, to hear that.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Are you guys both big, are you stand-up guys? Do you guys watch stand-up? Do you guys, are you into stand-up? Like, do you, or do you have, you go to comedy clubs?

• 55:42Speaker 04

  Ma, not re- not really. I, you know, I, I've had some of the, you know, sounds so old-fashioned. I have some co- like comedy records.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Yeah.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  I love my Milton Berle. I go, I was this, my old, my old, that's some of my favorite. Burns and Allen.

• 56:02Speaker 05

  I, I am old enough to remember, hello, mother. Hello.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Hello, father.

• 56:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. But I, I like, I like comedy. Um, particularly, I, I like lame jokes. I, I like jokes that make you go, oh, shit.

• 56:21Speaker 04

  You know, you know, it's interesting to think that stand-up comedians are also writers. That they're, you know, that they spend time writing and they're building up material and that it's, it is, it is the same process as, you know, writing an essay or a short story or a piece of fiction.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  My dick is so small and does not work. Ah. Heads in a basket was hilarious. By the way, basket full of heads was hilarious.

• 56:44Speaker 04

  Heads, yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had such a good time with that. And I gotta, now, do you have to talk, do you talk to your dad about referencing Shawshank and Derry and stuff like that? Or does it all live in the same world? Or is that just you throwing an homage in there?

• 56:59Speaker 04

  Um, someone asked me about that online and I, I said, I just thought it was like, you know, Dad, me going in the backyard to throw the ball around. Not that we ever really did that because I'm, I'm, I, I, I'm not much of a baseball player. I like to watch it. Owen was the one, Owen, Owen's little league team went all the way to the playoffs.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  There's other balls, you know, you could, you know.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:24Speaker 05

  Around, but we, we played games and we, we did a whole bunch of shit, you know? We had great.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Frisbee. I guess we throw the frisbee around. So it's like that. So it's just, it's just, you know? I mean, we did have one thing when he was working on Doctor Sleep and I was working on Nosferatu. At some point we both realized we were writing books about vampires that steal energy from people, steal their souls. The, the basically his antagonist and my antagonist operated along the same lines. And when you realize something like that is happening, there are two things you can do. You can either run from it and try to obscure the similarity, or you can run towards it and kind of embrace it. And just, I just think it's, yeah, it's just better to embrace it. So, so he stuck my bad guy in Doctor Sleep.

• 58:14Speaker 04

  He stuck Charlie Manks in Doctor Sleep and I stuck the true not in, um, Nosferatu.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:21Speaker 04

  And it just seemed like sort of a way to, you know, acknowledge, you know, sort of acknowledge in passing that there was a similarity there.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Was there like one horrible person that both of you met at the same time? That made you think like, I need to write something about energy vampires?

• 58:36Speaker 01

  It was a, I guess an editor or a publisher?

• 58:40Speaker 04

  I don't know, but, but you know, I, I remarried in 2018 and my wife and I had twins, you know? And around about that time, Dad wrote a story about a haunted pram.

• 58:56Speaker 04

  And I wrote a story about a haunted pram. I wrote one called The Pram. And what was the one you wrote? Rattlesnake? Rattlesnakes, was it called?

• 59:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 04

  You know, and, and, and neither of us knew what the other one was doing. And then we found out, and I remember saying to Julie, what are the odds that we both write, that the two of us would both write stories about, you know, haunted baby strollers at the same time? And she's pushing the baby stroller back and forth with one hand to keep the twins asleep, which is like, what inspires you? I can't imagine. Where do you guys come up with this stuff?

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Where does it come from?

• 59:31Speaker 00

  How scared are you two of cars? What is the deal?

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, what you guys, that is the truth. In your work, there's a lot of scary cars, a lot of haunted cars.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  Trucks.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Evil cars.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  You know, the cars are part of our lives. You know, they're just everywhere. And you know that if you're going to get into an accident, a serious accident is probably going to be in a car.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:59Speaker 05

  Of course, I, I didn't have an accident while driving a car. I just had an accident while I was walking along the road and I got hit by a car.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Speaker 05

  So, but you know.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  This was before that. The cars were there before.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, cars are a part of our lives, you know, so that's it. I want somebody to do a good, a good story about a good haunted GPS story. Haunted GPS story. Think about that, guys.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, it just keeps leading you to John Wayne Gacy's house.

• 1:00:32Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Honestly, that is, it's not a bad idea. It's obviously it's because it comes from Mr. Stephen King.

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  Guys, that is pretty good. You know, every time, you know, you program the GPS and you think it's taking you one place, but it keeps taking you back to the same place and it's someplace you didn't want to go. There's something interesting there. That's

• 1:00:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:00:55Speaker 04

  I like writing about cars because because it's like a shortcut to letting you know something about the character.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Speaker 04

  You know, because when you think about it, the biggest purchase a lot of people make in their lives is their automobile. You know, after the and it and and it's such a reflection of, you know, the things you think are cool or will make you look cool. Or will meet a set of objectives.

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  Cars are personalities, right, Joe?

• 1:01:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  I mean, that was the whole thing with, you know, with with Christine, the car makes the man. Uh, and I I loved Christine, but I for some reason I I became obsessed for some reason with the the insult shitters. Uh, that was used.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  I have to ask, man, like shitters. What's up with shitters? Cause I I.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  You're so good at coining a curse word.

• 1:01:49Speaker 05

  I I do. I remember that the best line in that movie was the guy says, uh, I'm gonna sell this shit hole and buy a condo.

• 1:02:04Speaker 05

  I was popping this line.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  So good. A question. All right. Now, in Full Dark No Stars, the story 1922, you guys wrote about you wrote about Mr. King, about a father and son, uh, hiding the body of.

• 1:02:17Speaker 05

  How long are you gonna call me Mr. King?

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Mr. King, Steve, Mr. Steven. Stevie baby. Mr. Steven. Hey.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Is that, uh, something that you guys wanna do? Do you guys?

• 1:02:30Speaker 04

  Very a body together?

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Is that something that you've ever thought like, have you really thought about putting your strengths towards crime?

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  Uh, I'd be scared to go to jail.

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  No, I'll get all out in my in my imagination.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  You don't think you'd do well in jail?

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  You know, for a guy, I have to tell you, for a guy who writes fiction for a living, too, I'm a terrible liar. I think I just confess. Whatever it was, I wouldn't be able to. I wouldn't be able to get away with it. I just, you know, I just blob everything the first time a police officer looked at me sideways. So, yeah. No, best to best to best to leave the murders on the page.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  I understand. Likely story.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  You guys are also creators because this is a part of why we had this and I want to say thank you guys an incredible amount for doing this with us. A part of this was because it was about it's Father's Day, right? Father's Day is coming up. And you have created some of the scariest fathers that have ever existed, right? You guys have both together created some very scary fathers. Who is your favorite father figure in media? Like if there's like a there's a dad like we either look up to a dad or you don't want to be that guy.

• 1:03:47Speaker 04

  I I said to my dad once when I was a young dad, I said, I just, I just wanted to be like Gregory Peck playing Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. And I'm just, I'm just so not able to rise to that level. And dad seemed very perplexed by that. And he said, Joe, you know Gregory Peck had a script.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Did you tell scary stories to your children?

• 1:04:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, I did. I did. But I told him funny stories too, because I didn't want to go to bed with, you know, a scary thought in mind. I mean, funny story would be, you know, Goldilocks and the three bears, but at the end, Goldilocks doesn't get away. She's eaten by the bears.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  That is funny.

• 1:04:45Speaker 05

  Goldilocks is funny to me.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Would you never threaten him with like Pennywise? You mean, like, you know, I made up Pennywise? Like Pennywise is right here.

• 1:04:54Speaker 03

  I got Pennywise like, you know, the Henry's dad used to say like, I got, I got Santa Claus's number. Did you ever say, I got Pennywise's number?

• 1:05:05Speaker 05

  No, I mean, Pennywise now is out there. He's not in my head anymore. So, you know, I'm fine, you know, kind of like, fuck you, you know?

• 1:05:19Speaker 03

  Well, and actually.

• 1:05:21Speaker 04

  He did used to say, he did used to say when I was little, he would sometimes say if, if we were just being crazy and you know, the house was in chaos and stuff, he'd say, hey, don't make me go put my ass kicking boots on. And I remember looking in the closet to try to find them.

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  We were looking at, you know, at shoes and boots and, you know, sort of speculating about which were the ass kicking pair. He never did put them on.

• 1:05:48Speaker 05

  You know what did he come after me? I'm very ticklish and he would go cellar dweller. Ba ba ba.

• 1:05:58Speaker 05

  I hated that.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  My dad used to go, uh, he used to, when he was like, wanted to do this, that he would do this bit as a family where he'd go, you know what happens when I take my belt off? And the whole family goes, your pants fall down. And it was like a funny thing.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Every time, but it was a subtle threat.

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  My father, my, the first horror movie I ever saw was Silver Bullet and my father, he used to torture me. He knew, so he had this like furry hand and he'd grab my baseball bat and hit my window in the middle of the night with it and scare the shit out of me. So thanks.

• 1:06:37Speaker 05

  Oh, it's wonderful.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  We had time for, for one more question and this one, it's, it's a little large, but it, it's kind of a question that I've been asking myself a lot lately. Like, you know, Steven, you know, you're one of the most prolific and influential cultural voices of the 20th century, but you know, like I'm not the only one that's noticed that American culture, we keep dipping back into the 20th century for our stories, for our music, for our movies. Like, do you think that, you know, like as one of those voices, do you think over the last 20, 25 years that American culture has become sort of stuck? And if it has, how do we get unstuck?

• 1:07:21Speaker 05

  Man, I don't really know because it's even like we have this thread, me and my two boys, and a lot of them are about music, for instance, music and movies and TV, all the cultural things that are, you know, kind of like pop culture.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:45Speaker 05

  And I don't follow a lot of what they say because I kind of like have lost the beat in some ways and I don't want to be one of those people who gets into their mid or late seventies and say, "Well, I'm hip," you know, it's like Donald Trump when he tries to dance, you know, "Oh, fuck, don't do that."

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  I love seeing you dance, though. It is, I've never seen you move like that. It's great to see it.

• 1:08:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know.

• 1:08:21Speaker 04

  But I don't think that we're culturally stuck. We were just talking about, I mean, you know, and especially in the genre of horror, we just had Backrooms and Obsession open up, you know, to enormous, you know, and they're new and they're being directed by twenty-somethings and, you know, and there's, you know, there are all these, you know, terrific, there's been just, you know, an avalanche of great books in the genre written at a really high level.

• 1:08:50Speaker 03

  Well, but that opens up another interesting question is that like it's, I do agree that like horror is, you know, across media is where like all the best comic books coming out right now, horror, the best movies, the best TV, like it's all like horror seems to be the one thing that's doing new stuff. Why is it that it seems like the 21st century has chosen horror?

• 1:09:18Speaker 05

  Because it's a scary time to, I think, in a lot of ways, because the media, you know, to get clicks, you want to get something that's really horrible. Joe, do you agree?

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, it's like in the 50s when there were all those great horror movies about nuclear war, you know, about like giant ants being created by, you know, the nuclear test blasts and stuff like that. You know, people have these feelings. I mean, maybe it's cathartic to go scream in the dark, you know, especially when, when the times are really stressful and, you know, you can go to a movie and sort of let it out.

• 1:09:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, and you know, audiences go to two movies. This is the great thing about movies when they really work, you know. Somebody screamed behind me in, in, in back rooms last night. That was really good. And, and it just, it brings you together, you know, you can laugh together like in a comedy. You remember Three Amigos, Joe? How, how much fun we had at that?

• 1:10:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, you remember Martin, Martin Short's on the exercise machine from hell?

• 1:10:29Speaker 05

  Amigo Montoya, it's time for you to die. What, what is that movie?

• 1:10:36Speaker 04

  Princess Bride, which was so great. I mean, the thing about, the thing about the horror film, you know, going to a horror film is, we're so politically divided these days, but when we're in the dark and something, there's a really good scare. Nothing brings everyone together like that because we're all frightened together at the same time. That's powerful.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Also, I'll say, you, you guys, you said something, Joe, about your dad's work, and I'll say it about yours too, where you tell you about how people saying, oh, the work's so frightening. And you said something along the lines of like, my dad's work's about bravery. It's about standing up to things despite insurmountable challenges. And I actually think that what we're finding ourselves now is almost like we sci-fied our way in 80s dystopia sci-fi. We sort of sci-fied our way into this reality, and now it's up to sort of like us to create the next version of the future, which seems, which we need a hero, and we need the works of you guys, because you're making heroes and putting them into the world. When you do, when you write what you do, you do put heroes in.

• 1:11:39Speaker 05

  That's a beautiful thing. Yeah, you, you said it, Will.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  To thank you.

• 1:11:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank y'all. Hey, thank y'all so much for joining us today. This has been a true honor and just a lot of fun. And thanks for, let me talk about shitters for a second. Yeah.

• 1:11:55Speaker 05

  And remember, next time you see me, none of that Mr. King shit. I'm Steve.

• 1:12:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, Steve. You got it, Steve. You got it, Steve. Live from Northridge.

• 1:12:10Speaker 03

  And how wonderful was that?

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  I hope it was okay.

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  I hope so.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  I'm still, I still am scared.

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Speaker 00

  Should we do a boner check?

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  No, I mean, there's at least I'll say.

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  If you're watching this on Netflix, you can obviously see we're all wearing different clothes.

• 1:12:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're right. It is a different day, but he deserved an outro.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  I came.

• 1:12:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  I'd already come. It was right after I chucked off real hard my card in the parking lot. Just thinking about how I got to look at him.

• 1:12:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42Speaker 00

  Hear that, Steve? Henry Cape.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  I'm looking, I'm looking at you when I go.

• 1:12:49Speaker 00

  Oh, man. Oh, wow.

• 1:12:50Speaker 03

  Can't believe we got him to do the obsession face. Well, actually, we didn't even have to get him to do the obsession face. He volunteered. He wanted to. He wanted to so bad.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  I'm angry I didn't see it at the time because I would have loved to have talked with him about obsession. And honestly, he did a great obsession face.

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  He really did. Patreon.com slash Last Podcast on the Left is where you can go to support us monetarily and get ad-free episodes. If you want to watch Last Podcast on the Left, if you want to see that obsession face that Stephen King made, you can go watch us on Netflix.com.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Is that how it goes?

• 1:13:24Speaker 03

  You know what? I think most people watch it on TVs. I don't know why. I don't know why I felt compelled to put the dot com in there.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  I think if you're sitting at your computer, you would have to write it that way.

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  You would have to write it that way.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you're at the bus station, you're on your phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We even your phone as an app.

• 1:13:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. And don't forget to follow us on all of the socials, at LP on the Left, TikTok and Instagram. That's where you can find us. And all the live shows we got coming up, we got Grand Rapids coming up. We got Tulsa and Oklahoma City coming up. Those are on our website, lastpodcastontheleft.com. The JK Ultra Tour is winding up.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we're working on like a live stream situation for one of those, right?

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  For Tulsa. Yeah.

• 1:14:02Speaker 00

  So we, we can say that it will be live streamed.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  We are working on it and we don't know how.

• 1:14:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  We're saying right now there, it's in the works, but we don't have any general information. And our manager told us to run with that.

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, but if you are in that area, come see the show live, come to actually check it out in person. If you have to see it on the live stream, that's great. But if you can see it live, make the drive, make the drive to New Mexico, make the drive from the Panhandle, make the drive from anywhere.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  Seriously, get out of there, get out of the Dust Bowl, leave the farmer's daughters alone, let them have a break. Come to the big city, Tulsa.

• 1:14:39Speaker 00

  It's hot, your air conditioner is in your car. Get in your car where it's cold and come to our show.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  I bet you'll find food closer to where the places in Tulsa than you will wherever you live.

• 1:14:51Speaker 00

  Tulsa's got food.

• 1:14:52Speaker 03

  Tulsa's got a lot of food.

• 1:14:53Speaker 00

  Tulsa's got all kinds of food.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  You want to go Best Buy, Tulsa's got it.

• 1:14:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  You need any inoculations?

• 1:14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. And if you drive to Tulsa, you can take I-40, you can stop at the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere. They have a fantastic statue of Jesus holding an aborted baby.

• 1:15:12Speaker 00

  Wow, that is nice.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  And we just have to find the largest man to nail to it.

• 1:15:19Speaker 03

  And they have a replica of Jesus's tomb that you can go and sit in.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  Oh, I want to go.

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  You just wake up screaming, ah!

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  How do you like your aborted baby? I like mine sunny side up.

• 1:15:31Speaker 00

  Oh, see, I like mine rare, as in, I don't like them around.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Whoa, in the toilet.

• 1:15:36Speaker 03

  I like mine bronzed.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  Mmm, permanent.

• 1:15:39Speaker 00

  It's bad on your teeth, but it's delicious.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  Well, enjoy, I hope you go enjoy our interview with Stephen King.

• 1:15:45Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:16:22Speaker 07

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