Carrie (1976)

It’s been 50 years since Brian De Palma turned prom into a blood bath, so let’s find out what went wrong on ‘Carrie’. Join Chris and Lizzie as they dive deep into Stephen King’s first on-screen adaptation. Find out why no one wanted to adapt the novel, why De Palma had to beg for the job, and why he was dead-set against casting Sissy Spacek. Plus, discover why that deadly prom sequence was just as scary in real life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lizzie Bassett?

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• 0:45Lizzie Bassett?

  reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who will step up and become the new dawn? Let the games begin. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Mob, premiering October 26th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:05Chris Winterbauer?

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• 1:37Speaker 02

  You go 15 seconds back and then 30 ahead. You land mid-sentence, so you're scratching your head. What went wrong and what can you do? Listen ad-free with just a click or two.

• 1:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, howdy, folks, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. I don't need to say the rest. We wanted to let you know that we are now offering bonus and ad-free episodes to all Patreon, Spotify, and Apple subscribers for only $5 a month. Well, now, that's less than going to one-third of a matinee at your local theater. Just so you know, because of technical limitations with Apple, you Apple special features recipients may not see the ad-free episode until the afternoon on release day. Y'all gonna have to be patient. Now, go on and sign up on Patreon, Spotify, or Apple, and have a good day now, y'all.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  You go 15 seconds back and then 30 ahead. You land mid-sentence, so you're scratching your head. What went wrong and what can you do? Listen ad-free with just a click or two.

• 2:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, full stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone the first in perhaps over 100 adaptations of the most prolific American horror writer of the 20th and 21st centuries. As always, I am Chris Winterbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, where are we headed today? And why is high school the scariest place we've ever been?

• 3:27Lizzie Bassett?

  We're headed to the prom, Chris. Get on your peach-colored dress and cover up your dirty pillows, because we're going underground into Carrie. I'm so excited to talk about this. I have read Carrie, which I'd never read before. I know you have. People may not know this. Chris is a Stephen King superfan. I believe you've read, how many have you read of his books?

• 3:47Chris Winterbauer?

  At least 40, maybe 50.

• 3:49Lizzie Bassett?

  40. Wow.

• 3:51Chris Winterbauer?

  I read basically everything through, is it Duma Key? I think in like 2011 or so, and then I kind of fell off when we graduated from undergrad.

• 3:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Got it.

• 4:00Chris Winterbauer?

  But I was pretty consistent through the mid-ots.

• 4:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, well, I need to get on this bandwagon, because I absolutely loved it. I read The Outsider, which I loved. I read The Stand, which I loved. I've read like a lot of the big hits, but I haven't really gotten into more of the other stuff. And as you said, he's unbelievably prolific, so there's plenty for me to read. So this year, for the month of October, if anybody doesn't know yet, we are doing a box office book club for our subscribers. We will be covering four new releases and also reading the books that they're based on. Those are going to be Verity, Incidents Around the House, which is adapted into Other Mommy, Sense and Sensibility, and Wildwood. So that's part of the reason why we're covering this. Obviously, this is a book-to-screen adaptation, but also, it's the 50th anniversary of Carrie this year, and we are getting Mike Flanagan's miniseries adaptation of Carrie in October.

• 4:47Lizzie Bassett?

  So now's the time to talk about this.

• 4:49Chris Winterbauer?

  There's one more reason, Lizzie, that I'm so glad you picked it for this exact moment.

• 4:54Lizzie Bassett?

  What?

• 4:55Chris Winterbauer?

  The myriad ways in which this film is an homage to Psycho.

• 4:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 4:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Which we just covered, and I didn't fully appreciate.

• 5:02Lizzie Bassett?

  I know, an unintentional connection, but yes.

• 5:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 5:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Well, Chris, let's talk about it. What was your experience with Carrie? And what did it feel like re-watching it, especially now after Psycho?

• 5:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Really quick, before we even dive into that, if you guys hear any small children running around screaming, it's my telekinetic children terrorizing each other at the vacation rental that we are with Mike's extended family at, so apologies for any background noise. However, I do think it's appropriate.

• 5:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Honestly, I do feel like if any child is going to be telekinetic, it might be Nora, just throwing it out there.

• 5:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Maybe, but if any child could use sheer force to destroy a town or high school, it's Eve. And so, just like her sheer strength.

• 5:39Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. She's a bruiser.

• 5:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, so Carrie, I have read Carrie before. It was Stephen King's first, I'm sure you'll go into this, published novel, but it's not the first one of his that I read. But what I always loved about Carrie was how unusually brief it is for a Stephen King novel. This is before he got into candidly things like The Stand or It, for example, where we get the more, I don't know the exact right word, but indulgent king, perhaps you could say.

• 6:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Maybe a little bit more like world-building or sort of universe-building.

• 6:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Sprawling, yes.

• 6:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Chris Winterbauer?

  There is an ensemble quality. Carrie feels very focused. I think it's a really great book. It's really interesting that this was his first published book, because it's about a high school girl, and he seems very far removed from this. I don't want to dive into the writing. I'm sure you'll talk about it, Lizzie. All to say, when I saw the movie, like many horror films of the 70s, by the time I saw it, it felt dated relative to the updated sort of horror films that I'd seen in the 90s, for example. So re-watching it for the podcast, I kind of assumed, oh, this is going to feel a little bit, you know, dated, maybe it won't hold up as well. And as one audience member kind of rudely, although accurately, pointed out, I have

• 6:53Chris Winterbauer?

  a real blind spot in my filmography with Brian De Palma, who I've seen a number of his movies, but I definitely don't know his work as well as other directors we've covered. Okay, anyway, I enjoyed this movie growing up. I always thought, oh, this is just the showcase film for Sissy Spacek. You're just with her the entire time. That was my memory of this movie. Rewatching it, A, from the very first shot, the slow motion with the sort of operatic, sort of pastoral score that opens this scene of the girls in the locker room, and it's like the virgin spring, and she's bathing herself, immediately, I was like, oh, yeah, okay, Brian De Palma knows what he's doing. This guy is a master of juxtaposition. And I gotta say, this movie just surprised me at every turn.

• 7:35Chris Winterbauer?

  I forgot how much the film actually focuses on the terrorizing characters as opposed to Carrie Etta, Sissy Spacek. I vaguely remembered Piper Laurie's performance as the mother, but Betty Buckley, as Miss Collins, really stood out to me in this re-watch as a fantastic performance.

• 7:50Lizzie Bassett?

  She's great.

• 7:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and then, of course, like, you know, Amy Irving and whatnot, and John Travolta, they all pop up.

• 7:55Lizzie Bassett?

  He's one of my favorite parts of this movie.

• 7:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, he's such a turd. And I guess what I really felt watching it this time was, I thought it was such an interesting exploration of kind of the indiscriminate pervasiveness of violence, physical violence around Carrie. And then Carrie sort of, in the end, snaps and then externalizes all of those internalized feelings through her own telekinetic power. But the sheer volume of slaps in this movie, for example, is really shocking. And I know some of it is the time, but I also think it's Brian De Palma making points about the casual cruelty with which these characters are interacting with one another in certain ways. And maybe I'm wrong, but...

• 8:30Lizzie Bassett?

  A lot of that is in the book, but yes, almost all of it is on the page.

• 8:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Fair, but I'm saying, be it King or De Palma's interpretation of King.

• 8:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, totally.

• 8:39Chris Winterbauer?

  The storytellers here, I think, are doing a great job of pointing to the ways in which, you know, violence begets violence, and it just spirals out of control. And I know in the book, the climax is much bigger.

• 8:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Let's save that. We're going to talk about it, because yes, the ending of the movie is, in one very important way, quite different from the book.

• 8:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 8:57Lizzie Bassett?

  And I understand why they did it for this.

• 8:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I found, especially after watching Psycho and watching a bunch of Hitchcock, and then I did watch some De Palma that was also inspired by some other Hitchcock movies. And we can talk about another movie.

• 9:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Did you watch Sisters?

• 9:08Chris Winterbauer?

  I didn't watch Sisters this time. I saw Sisters years ago. I did watch Obsession, which came out the same year. And anywho, so I thought this movie held up wonderfully well overall. And I'm really curious, Lizzie, about some choices that he makes in terms of nudity, et cetera, and how you reacted to those, because I had a specific reaction. But I may be wrong. And I also love the way he used music in this movie. And I feel like the way that the music is used, yes, there are some specific horror homages. There is a screeching violin stab that is so Bernard Herrmann.

• 9:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Very intentional. Intentionally, yes.

• 9:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Very intentionally, but the way that that final cue as the house is imploding around Carrie and her mother does not lean into the melodrama or the terror of the moment, but almost juxtaposes a sort of beauty, right, to that scene. I thought was so effective and it was actually kind of the one of the things that I was saying, oh, at the end of Thelma and Louise, I almost wished we had the Hans Zimmer, You're So Cool score juxtaposed against the tragedy of that decision. That I felt like De Palma pulled that off in this movie. Anyway, I just love it. I love he shoots the third act, leading to the bucket pole, like it's a political assassination about to happen, right? You know, you're following the rope as if it's a fuse and the characters are looking at one another. The use of slow motion, I actually think is like pretty judicious and very effective in this movie. So I thought it was great. I really liked it.

• 10:23Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm with you. I was reading, I was almost done with the book when I watched the movie. And when the movie started and I saw how much nudity there was right away, I felt like my stomach kind of twisted and I thought, oh no, is this going to be like lascivious in a way that the book is not? And I guess I should say, so I had seen Carrie many, many years ago. I probably haven't seen this for at least 15, maybe even 20 years. And I remember enjoying it. I remember certain images from it, obviously, but it's not a movie that I had rewatched and obviously I'd never read it before. And the thing that I was really struck by in the book is that Stephen King, obviously, he was a 20, I think, six-year-old man when he wrote this.

• 11:08Lizzie Bassett?

  And it is such a both compassionate and searing look at what it is to be a teenage girl and also a teenage boy. I think actually John Travolta's character Billy does get quite a bit more sort of internal exploration in the book. That's really fascinating. Basically, the way he's written feels very much like a prototype for characters we get later in like the stand, for example, the sort of, you know, sociopath. But I was so impressed by the way that Stephen King wrote about teenagers, about the violence specifically of teenage girls, because it felt very, very accurate to how vicious teenage girls can really be.

• 11:48Lizzie Bassett?

  But he does it in such a way that doesn't feel exploitative at all. And I think that to be a man writing about that is extremely impressive. And that's not to be like, oh, men can't write about women. It's not that. It's that he doesn't have this lived experience, which he will say. And so he's able to actually put himself in the shoes of people and tell their stories in a way that I just thought was so amazing. So anyway, when the movie started, I was like, oh, this feels very opposed to the way that he actually wrote both the shower scene and the book itself, almost like leering. But as the movie continued and I settled into it, I understood more what Brian De Palma was doing, which is that he is heightening everything. He is making it campy.

• 12:32Lizzie Bassett?

  He is leaning into the satire of it and I loved it. I thought it was great. You know, I think the nudity at the beginning, I don't know, maybe you do need it to a certain degree, particularly because the women that are in that scene are not teenage girls. Like those are very clearly very developed women in their twenties, you know? And there is something about that juxtaposed with how little Sissy Spacek is that does do something effective for the narrative. So I don't think he's just showing the bodies, but you mentioned the nudity. What, I mean, what did you think?

• 13:01Chris Winterbauer?

  It almost felt like he was doing it also as a bit of a misdirect to the audience.

• 13:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 13:06Chris Winterbauer?

  It almost felt like he was doing it as a sort of cheeky, you know, oh yeah, come get comfortable, come look, I dare you, you know what I mean, to leer at this? And like, this movie's gonna fuck with you by the end of it. You know, this is not actually what I'm doing. I totally agree with you. I think there is a Garden of Eden quality to that. So like the imagery that's evoked throughout the movie, the Christ imagery that he puts into it, the speaking of Eve as weak, et cetera, you know, this sort of banishment from the Eden, this idea of like women being comfortable with their sexuality. I do think it sort of sets up this idea that there's this fraternity or sorority of sisterhood that's happening, right? All of these girls are running around, like you said, they're very developed. Like there's this sense of we are all comfortable with one another. And then it tucked in the corner, right, is Sissy Spacek, the one virgin sort of of the group,

• 13:50Chris Winterbauer?

  literally washing her body clean with soap in the way that she will be drenched with blood at the end of this film. And then she, you know, has her period and everyone just turns on her. The group just ostracizes her immediately, not for her nakedness, you know what I mean? Like, but for her ignorance. I found it effective, even though I could see somebody else having, the interpretation of De Palma just wanted some tits and ass in the beginning of his movie, you know?

• 14:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I don't think that's true, but it was the initial gut reaction that I had. I will say, Sissy Spacek, as we'll talk about, is not an obvious choice for this character, especially when you read the book, because she is so striking and so beautiful. I understand that she's unusual looking, but I did find myself wishing, and she is wonderful. I'm not saying that she shouldn't have been cast in this movie. She's amazing. I'm thrilled that she is. I did find myself wondering what it would be like to actually watch a version of Carrie where you see a more plain, more normal looking girl in this role. I think it would potentially make it harder to watch because it would amplify the cruelty

• 14:52Lizzie Bassett?

  to a certain degree. She's so beautiful that some of it almost makes you feel like, well, you know, but she looks like that, like she'll be able to turn it around, you know?

• 15:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, but that being said, I do think in high school, there's cruelty that transcends looks.

• 15:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course.

• 15:07Chris Winterbauer?

  There's other ways of being an outsider. And the other thing that I think it helps with is with William Cat's character, with Tommy, I do think you actually start to believe that dynamic more as a result of maybe Sissy Spacek's casting. And there is an element of her, when she takes on her power towards the end of the film, even before she does it in a negative way, there's sort of like, things are gonna change around here and she goes and she's made the draft. I don't know. I think there are some benefits to it as well. I can totally see the downsides, but.

• 15:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. And just to clarify, you know, the way that Stephen King writes Carrie, she's not like deeply unattractive. She's just a more normal, more average looking girl who by the end, in the same way, has, you know, spruced herself up. She's done the she's all that transition at the end into the prom dress. But I did find it interesting that King did explicitly write Carrie's mother in particular as being overweight and Carrie as either feeling that she is or, anyway, there was some stuff in there about them being overweight that they did obviously erase for this.

• 16:04Chris Winterbauer?

  We don't need to get into it, but King has a tendency of doing that with his somewhat fallible characters. He did it in the stand. He does it in a number of, like it's Trope leans into with it and then eventually kind of tries to subvert, but doesn't really. So, yeah. I mean, I think it's common in a lot of books at the time.

• 16:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, 100%. So I don't know that you need that. I'm just saying there's something about how striking she is that makes it slightly more palatable, but let's get into it. Our main sources for today are the 25th anniversary Acting Carrie Making of documentary, of course, Stephen King's On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft, and many other articles, retrospectives and interviews from the cast and crew. Here are the details as always. Carrie is directed by Brian De Palma, written by Lawrence D. Cohen, of course, adapted from the 1974 novel by Stephen King, starring Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, William Cat, Betty Buckley, John Travolta, Priscilla Pointer and more. The IMDb log line is, "A social misfit with psychic powers turns prom night into hell on earth."

• 17:01Lizzie Bassett?

  As we said, Carrie was the breakout novel for Stephen King. So let's start by talking a little bit about Mr. King. He was, of course, born in Portland, Maine in 1947. When he was only two years old, his father abandoned his family, leaving his mother to raise him and his brother David by herself. As King put it, "From a very early age, I wanted to be scared." He had a deep fascination with horror, starting in the early 50s with movies like The Creature from the Black Lagoon and the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as well as The Brain from Planet Eris, which according to him was, quote, "In some way, I've never been able to figure out the basis for my novel Carrie." Now, we discussed this on The Shining, so I will keep this background brief, but King's writing career really started with, I would say, some light plagiarism. He would copy Combat Casey Comics, but then he would add his own descriptions

• 17:46Lizzie Bassett?

  when he didn't like what was written. He showed them to his mother, not betraying exactly what he had done and she was of course amazed, but then he admitted they weren't exactly original works, to which she said, "Write one of your own, Stevie. I bet you could do better." So King wrote in On Writing, quote, "I remember an immense feeling of possibility at the idea, as if I had been ushered into a vast building filled with closed doors and had been given leave to open any I liked. There were more doors than one person could ever open in a lifetime, I thought, and still think." Now, in the 60s, after hitchhiking home one night from a screening of The Pit and the Pendulum, he decided he would turn the movie into a book. Novelizations. Did Stephen King invent them? I don't know. Also hilarious because of course, The Pit and the Pendulum was already a book. It's based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.

• 18:30Lizzie Bassett?

  But he wrote it in two days, printed about 40 copies, brought them all to school, charged for them, and he sold two dozen copies in his first day. He eventually won a scholarship to the University of Maine, where he met and fell in love with?

• 18:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Tabitha.

• 18:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Tabitha. Tabitha Spruce, who would eventually, of course, become Tabitha King, his wife and partner. But something else happened in college. He picked up odd jobs here and there to make money and one of them was working as a janitor in a high school. Now, when he was scrubbing the rust stains off the showers in the girls locker room, there was something different about the bathrooms than the boys' rooms. Obviously, there were no urinals and also the showers actually had curtains. But more specifically, Chris, there were some strange metal boxes attached to the tile walls. They were too small to be for paper towels. So he asked his coworker, "What are those?" To which the man replied, "Pussy plugs for them certain days of the month."

• 19:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, haven't heard that alliteration before.

• 19:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Now you have. He graduated in 1970 and his daughter Naomi was born the same year. He and Tabitha married shortly thereafter and had another child, Joe, two years later. Unsurprisingly, neither one was planned and suddenly Stephen King found himself desperately needing a reliable source of income to support his family. He struggled to find teaching jobs initially and instead worked in a laundry while writing on the side. And he did write on the side. As you pointed out at the top, he had already written three novels by the time Carrie came along and they all sat unpublished. They were Rage, The Long Walk and The Running Man. And in 1973, the shit really hit the fan for the King family. They were living in a trailer outside Bangor, Maine, which is not a booming metropolis. They couldn't afford to fix the transmission on their car.

• 20:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Tabitha was working at Dunkin' Donuts and they had no telephone. Stephen was still working at the laundry when he found himself thinking back to that janitor gig and more specifically, those boxes in the girls locker room. He thought about how exposed a young girl would be in that space, especially if the showers didn't have curtains, and an idea started to form. Quote, "This one girl starts to have her period, only she doesn't know what it is. And the other girls, grossed out, horrified, amused, start pelting her with sanitary napkins. The girl begins to scream. All that blood. She thinks she's dying, that the other girls are making fun of her even while she's bleeding to death. She reacts, fights back, but how?" Now, the how came from an article in Life magazine that he'd read years earlier, which posited that some percentage of reported poltergeist activity may in fact be telekinesis.

• 20:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh God, let's go back to the days when this is what was being published in reputable news sources. Chris, what is telekinesis?

• 20:59Chris Winterbauer?

  The ability to create physical disturbances, move things, et cetera, with your mind.

• 21:07Lizzie Bassett?

  With your mind. That's right. Now, the article also suggested there was some evidence that these powers may be stronger in young people, more specifically, girls, around their menarche or advent of their first period. Suddenly, the two ideas collided and Carrie was born. Now, initially, he thought it would be a good short story that he could submit to magazine outlets like Playboy. While it might seem bizarre to pitch this to a men's magazine like Playboy, it does make more sense when you realize that these magazines paid for short stories. Playboy paid like $2,000, which would have been more than they needed to fix their car. So he put Carrie on hold, though, when he finally got a teaching position at Hampton Academy in Hampton, Maine. A few months later, though, he came back to his story idea. So he wrote three pages of a first draft. And then, Chris, what happened next?

• 21:52Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know. Did he put it away? Did he put it in a drawer?

• 21:54Lizzie Bassett?

  He crumpled them up and threw them in the trash.

• 21:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, that's right. Oh, this is right.

• 21:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 21:59Chris Winterbauer?

  And then he pulled them out.

• 22:01Lizzie Bassett?

  He didn't. We'll get there.

• 22:04Chris Winterbauer?

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• 24:15Lizzie Bassett?

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• 25:25Lizzie Bassett?

  So a couple of reasons why he threw it away. One, he did not find himself emotionally moved by the story at all. Two, he didn't like Carrie, as in the character herself. According to King, quote, "Carrie White seemed thick and passive, a ready-made victim." Three, he was understandably uncomfortable with writing a story where basically all of the main characters are high school girls. And four, he felt it would only work as a novel and all the men's magazines had very strict word count limits. But the next night, he came home from work to find his wife with the crumpled pages spread out in front of her. She had been emptying the wastebasket, found them, read them, and wanted to know what happened next. He said he didn't know jack shit about teenage girls. And she said, "I'll help you with that." She told him, "You've got something here.

• 26:09Lizzie Bassett?

  I really think you do." So at 26 years old, Stephen King started writing Carrie, mostly from the laundry room of their double-wide trailer. He drew on two, quote-unquote, ghosts from his past. One was a girl from a very religious household who was relentlessly bullied at his elementary school. She would eventually die of a seizure. Another was another girl who was bullied, who later died by suicide following postpartum depression. King wrote in On Writing, quote, "I never liked Carrie, that female version of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold." Those are, of course, the Columbine shooters. "But through Sandra and Doty," those are the pseudonyms he gave these girls, "I came at last to understand her a little. I pitied her and I pitied her classmates as well because I had been one of them once upon a time." So because he felt the basic story was both too long for a short story

• 26:53Lizzie Bassett?

  and too short for a full novel, Stephen King took the Dracula approach. Do you remember the format in which Carrie is written?

• 27:01Chris Winterbauer?

  It does not take the novelistic approach of, oh, we're going to put you either in the head of a third-person omniscient narrator or the, you know, head of our characters. Instead, it's almost as if it's being pieced together, witness statements, you know, et cetera, after the fact. What happened in this town? You know, here is a collection of everything, you know, that kind of came together.

• 27:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. What I love about it is that weirdly, it's both.

• 27:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 27:23Lizzie Bassett?

  So a lot of it are statements, research documents, as you said, witness testimony from this fictional white commission that's investigating the events that happened at the prom.

• 27:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 27:33Lizzie Bassett?

  But then also, you do get the internal monologues, not just of Carrie. You get Carrie, you get Sue Snell, for sure. You get quite a bit of Sue. You get Billy.

• 27:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I believe you get Tommy.

• 27:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 27:43Lizzie Bassett?

  You get almost all of the main characters.

• 27:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, he'll do a lot, especially, I feel like, if you go then to like It, for example, like you get a lot of the antagonist perspective, you know, not Pennywise, really, but the antagonistic children, you know, eventually in that one as well. Or The Stand, that's another one.

• 27:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, The Stand.

• 27:58Chris Winterbauer?

  That you get a lot of that perspective.

• 28:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, but it's remarkable to see it juxtaposed with the sort of research documents as well. It's really cool. I highly recommend everybody read it if you haven't. According to On Writing, "He never grew to like the character and never really understood what Sue Snell's motives were for sending her boyfriend to the prom with her. But he learned two very important lessons. One, a writer's first impression of a character can be just as wrong as a reader's. And two, stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea." He sent his manuscript to his friend Bill Thompson, who worked at Doubleday. And then he basically just forgot about it, thinking it would wind up the same place as his other three novels. But of course, Stephen King was wrong. In March of 1973, the receptionist at Hampton Academy told him his wife had called with important news and he needed to call her back.

• 28:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Over the phone, she read him a telegram from Bill Thompson. It said, "Congratulations. Carrie officially a Doubleday book. Is $2,500 advance okay? The future lies ahead. Love, Bill." Now, $2,500, pretty small advance even for the 70s. And it was only for the hardcover print. But it was enough to fix the transmission on their car. So that was good. It was not, however, enough for King to quit his job. So he signed on for another year of teaching. And he held out hope that he could get more for the paperback rights than the advance that he'd gotten on the hardcover. He was hoping for $10,000 to $60,000. And for reference, Mario Puzo had just been paid $410,000 for the paperback rights to The Godfather. So he wasn't really hoping for much.

• 29:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and I feel like with a novel like Carrie, genre, it's slim.

• 29:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 29:26Chris Winterbauer?

  200 pages, you're hoping for paperback success. People are, they're gonna buy it at the airport and read it on the plane, you know, sort of thing.

• 29:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly. But in May, Chris, he got another call from Bill Thompson. "Are you sitting down?" Bill asked. "No," he said. "Do I need to?"

• 29:40Chris Winterbauer?

  "We don't own a chair."

• 29:42Lizzie Bassett?

  "We can't afford one." Bill said, "You might." The paperback rights to Carrie went to Signet Books for $400,000.

• 29:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 29:51Lizzie Bassett?

  It was, of course, enough for him to finally quit the teaching job, focus full-time on writing. And in April of 1974, Carrie was published in hardcover. And it sold a modest amount. It got somewhat mixed reviews. But one year later, in 1975, the paperback came out and stayed for 14 weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers list. You nailed it. This sold over a million copies in its first year.

• 30:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 30:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Let's roll the clock back to 1973. Carrie had just been picked up by Doubleday, and a copy of the as-of-yet-unpublished novel had made its way to the desk of producer David Suskind. But it wasn't Suskind who picked it up. It was a young freelance film reviewer named Lawrence D. Cohen, who moonlit as a script reader doing coverage for Suskind and others. And Lawrence was obsessed with this book. He tried as hard as he could to convince Suskind to buy the rights, but Suskind said, "No, as did everyone else Cohen was doing coverage for at the time." And when the hardcover came out and failed to make much of a splash, it seemed like all those producers had been right. Maybe Cohen's instincts were off. Things didn't really change for Carrie until that whopper of a paperback deal came through. And all of a sudden, Hollywood started paying more attention, especially a young director named Brian De Palma.

• 30:58Lizzie Bassett?

  In fact, he loved it so much, he called his agent to find out who had the rights and was shocked to learn no one had picked them up yet. Like Cohen pitching the book to every producer he read for, De Palma called every studio and told them how interested he was. "I want to make Carrie." But he heard nothing back. More on Brian and why he heard nothing back in just a little bit. Meanwhile, Cohen had moved to LA and worked as a production executive on Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. And he was referred by a friend to producer Paul Monash, who had a development deal at 20th Century Fox and was looking for a story editor. They met, and Chris, they did not hit it off. Cohen didn't like any of the projects that Monash had mentioned. But then, as he was walking out the door, he was literally already down the hall. Monash called out and said, "Wait, there's one more thing." He said, "I've just bought the film rights

• 31:43Lizzie Bassett?

  to a little book that you've probably never heard of, called Carrie." And Cohen, obviously, came rushing back into his office and took the job as quickly as he could. Now, much to Cohen's surprise, Monash had commissioned a screenplay for Carrie already and really didn't like the way that it had turned out.

• 31:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 31:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Monash was frantic to get a working screenplay in order. And so Cohen, figuring he had nothing to lose, said, "I can write it." So he took the gamble on him. And Cohen churned out a draft in about six weeks.

• 32:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 32:12Lizzie Bassett?

  And to be clear, he had never written a screenplay before. He just loved the book and was like, I'll die in church. His first draft was very faithful to the book, retaining basically the same Dracula structure that King had put in place. Meanwhile, Brian De Palma had heard that Monash had acquired the rights, so he called him up and met with him, said, I should direct this movie. And Monash said,

• 32:33Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 32:34Lizzie Bassett?

  No, that's right. Why? Well, Brian De Palma was not exactly a hot commodity at this point, and he had had an unusual path to Hollywood, so let's talk about it. He grew up in Pennsylvania, the child of a serial cheater. According to De Palma, quote, "I used to follow my father around when he was cheating on my mother. I took photographs of him. I had broken into the office by ramming my fist through the glass door. I had a knife with me. I threatened him and said, where is she? I searched through the office and I finally found her in the closet." Jesus Christ. Well, he's effective. He was studying engineering at Columbia University when he saw Vertigo, and it changed the way that he thought about storytelling. But he didn't start making feature films yet. He started making documentaries and some political films on the side.

• 33:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Eventually, he pivoted to studying film in the graduate program at Sarah Lawrence, where he made a student film, The Wedding Party. And this was, I believe, in collaboration with a couple other students and a professor, I think. And do you know who it starred?

• 33:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it was De Niro.

• 33:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, Robert De Niro. So at this point, he started directing micro-budget movies like Murder à la Mode, Greetings, and Hi Mom. The latter two starred De Niro there, I believe. And then he got his big-ish break, signing up with Warner Brothers in the early 70s alongside Scorsese, Coppola, and George Lucas. He directed the Tommy Smothers comedy Get to Know Your Rabbit. At the same time, Scorsese was editing Medicine Ball Caravan. Coppola had shot Finian's Rainbow, and Lucas was finishing THX 1138. Now, Chris, what commonality ties all of those movies together?

• 34:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm not sure.

• 34:05Lizzie Bassett?

  It's that they were all big-time floppers.

• 34:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:07Lizzie Bassett?

  They all did really badly.

• 34:09Chris Winterbauer?

  They were all sharing editors, too, though, because like Paul Hirsch was involved in this as well.

• 34:13Lizzie Bassett?

  They did all work with a lot of the same people, which will continue, as we'll see.

• 34:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. Finian's Rainbow I knew, and THX I knew. I guess I didn't know Scorsese and De Palma at the same time.

• 34:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Flop Town, USA, taking place on the Warner Brothers' lap. But this led to a real kinship between these four filmmakers. Now, De Palma had pivoted to horror with Sisters in 1973, which I watched and loved. It is bizarre.

• 34:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Charles Durning.

• 34:38Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. Charles Durning is so great in this movie, one of my favorite parts of it. This movie, listeners, if you haven't watched it, you should. The best way I can describe it is like, it's a Rear Window, if you're watching Rear Window from the perspective of the apartment in which the murder happens, and then also malignant.

• 34:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, that's true. There's a lot of Hitchcock in it. And doesn't he do split screen in it, too?

• 34:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he does.

• 34:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Like at the end of Carrie?

• 34:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 34:59Chris Winterbauer?

  He does some really interesting filmic techniques. He also does, I can't remember which director called it this, the American cut, they call it, which is a punch-in-on-axis, which Hitchcock did, for example, on Norma Bates, right? You see the Y and you punch in straight, close on her, which was a very unusual type of cut. And De Palma does this, too. He does it in Carrie to go close to her eyes to suggest that she's about to move things.

• 35:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 35:22Chris Winterbauer?

  He was both like an illusionist, like he would rip off all these other big filmmakers, but he was also creating so many cool things, too, you know? He's such an interesting guy.

• 35:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, and I think Sisters is worth watching ahead of Carrie because, A, it's kind of his first full dive into the horror pool to a certain extent. And also, you can see him messing with the shots more in this, particularly the split screen. The way that he uses it in Sisters is very effective, although it's used a lot more sparingly than it ends up being used in Carrie, which we will talk about.

• 35:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, and I feel like it's also like thematically makes a lot of sense, right?

• 35:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Sisters formerly conjoined twins that have been separated, you know what I mean? So the split screen.

• 35:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Spoilers, Chris. Yes, Margot Kidder with a twin on her hip. It's fun. You should watch it.

• 36:04Chris Winterbauer?

  It's stuck on you, but better.

• 36:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Stuck on you meets Rear Window meets malignant. So what a pitch. He followed that up with Phantom of the Paradise, which also did not do well. So he's basically never had a hit, which is why Monash said, see you in hell, when De Palma pitched himself for Carrie.

• 36:24Chris Winterbauer?

  And his movies are like highly referential. It's almost like Andy Warhol-esque.

• 36:29Lizzie Bassett?

  They're very stylized.

• 36:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, like Phantom of the Paradise. I mean, he's, again, riffing on so many other movies and whatnot, so.

• 36:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, important to note, you mentioned Obsession. He had filmed it, but it was also sitting around unreleased at this point, probably because his string of clinkers.

• 36:45Chris Winterbauer?

  And Obsession is a huge Hitchcock reference film. I mean, it's basically, it is Vertigo, almost. It's him and Schrader's version of Vertigo. Also, if you guys like the movie Old Boy, the Korean movie Old Boy, I feel like Old Boy takes a lot from Obsession as well, if anybody's interested and likes that movie.

• 37:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Nice. So Monash plowed ahead, helping Coen finish up the script and submitting it to 20th Century Fox, who hated it. They rejected it immediately and put Carrie in turnaround. But Marcia Nassitier, who had recently become a VP at United Artists and had already helped broker the deal for the film rights to the book, snapped it up right away. However, the script was pretty messy, which is understandable. This was Coen's first ever screenplay, and he'd written it in six weeks. So De Palma pitches himself again, and he says, I can fix the script. Finally, Monash called George Lido, who was De Palma's producer on Obsession, who vouched for him, as did some execs at United Artists. And finally, he gave in and hired Brian De Palma. Now, as promised, De Palma did, in fact, help Coen rework the script, encouraging him

• 37:46Lizzie Bassett?

  to make it a more straightforward storyline. What you see in the movie is basically a linear narrative, which is very different from the way that the book works, and remove all of the framing devices that were still present from King's book. United Artists approved this draft. And other than a few changes, this is the one that went into production with a budget of about $1.8 million. Now, for context, another movie that we will cover later this year, Rocky, which won the Best Picture Oscar this year, was made for only $1 million. So as the film went into pre-production, Brian De Palma realized that his old buddy, old pal George Lucas, was looking at a pretty similar casting pool for his next movie. They would both be looking at primarily young, up-and-coming actors who could play high school age or early 20s. So, Chris, what was George Lucas casting?

• 38:28Chris Winterbauer?

  He was casting Star Wars.

• 38:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he was.

• 38:31Chris Winterbauer?

  And they held joint sessions.

• 38:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, they did. They sat in on each other's casting sessions.

• 38:34Chris Winterbauer?

  I forgot about that from our Star Wars coverage, yeah.

• 38:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Lucas did apparently kind of have first dibs, which makes sense. With De Palma kind of picking up his scraps, which resulted in a few actors who barely lost out on Star Wars parts winding up in Carrie. Do you know who they are?

• 38:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Didn't Amy Irving read for Princess Leia?

• 38:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, she did. She was a frontrunner.

• 38:55Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I don't. I mean, I would assume maybe one of the young men, William Cat or John Travolta, but...

• 38:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, that's exactly right. So Amy Irving, who plays Sue Snell in the movie, she was a top choice for Princess Leia. She obviously lost out to Carrie Fisher. But Brian De Palma loved to cast real mothers and daughters. So the upside is...

• 39:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Priscilla Pointer is her mom.

• 39:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he cast Priscilla Pointer as Sue Snell's mother in the movie, who's great. I actually really like the dynamic between the two of them. And of course, around 1976, Irving also met Steven Spielberg. They were together for 14 years. The other is William Cat, who plays Tommy. He was a very top contender for Luke Skywalker.

• 39:29Chris Winterbauer?

  He makes a lot of sense as Luke Skywalker to me.

• 39:32Lizzie Bassett?

  He does. I actually think he's great in this movie.

• 39:34Chris Winterbauer?

  I think he's very good. I think he does a good job of, I actually believe that he's come around

• 39:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:41Chris Winterbauer?

  to Carrie. But he really sells the arc very well across this movie. I think it's effective. He doesn't overplay it.

• 39:47Lizzie Bassett?

  No, and he also manages to play the jock in such a way that like, it's not clear whether or not he's a bad person early on, and then it becomes clear by the end that he's definitely not, and he's been genuine the whole time.

• 40:00Chris Winterbauer?

  And one of the most brutal moments is when he gets hit in the head with that bucket, and you just know that would fuck you up.

• 40:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, he's maybe dead. I don't know.

• 40:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I know. Yeah, exactly.

• 40:09Lizzie Bassett?

  He might have been deaded by a bucket to the head. The role of Chris, Chris Hargensen, was one of the hardest to cast. And reportedly, people were nervous that Nancy Allen might not be able to pull it off, given that she had almost no experience prior to the film. By the way, following Carrie, De Palma and Nancy Allen actually started a romantic relationship, and they eventually got married. They made a bunch more movies together.

• 40:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. Wasn't she in Dressed to Kill?

• 40:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Dressed to Kill, Home Movies, and Blowout.

• 40:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah, Blowout, too. I like Blowout a lot.

• 40:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I secretly like Blowout a lot. Also, she looks exactly like Sydney Sweeney, to a point where it was distracting.

• 40:42Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I watched it and I went, Sydney? What are you doing here?

• 40:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Get your dirty pillows out of this movie. Now, John Travolta was one of, if not the biggest name in the movie. And as I said, he's one of my favorite parts in this. The way he's just covered in his own drunken spittle for most of this movie.

• 41:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Lizzie Bassett?

  He's great. He's pitch perfect.

• 41:04Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a real dirtbag. He's real perfect dirtbag.

• 41:06Lizzie Bassett?

  He plays a dumb dirtbag really well.

• 41:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 41:09Lizzie Bassett?

  He was, of course, starring on Welcome Back, Cotta at the time. And he literally walked over from taping on his lunch break in his Vinnie Barberino costume, which probably helped.

• 41:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. He was huge in television, but he hadn't done features at this point.

• 41:22Lizzie Bassett?

  No, he hadn't, although he would shortly do Saturday Night Fever after this and blow up.

• 41:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly.

• 41:27Lizzie Bassett?

  So Betty Buckley, who you mentioned, who plays Miss Collins, did not have a ton of interest in Hollywood and was much more focused on theater. But she had caught Brian De Palma's eye during auditions for Phantom of the Paradise. Now, she didn't get the part, but he pulled her into loop for both that movie and obsession. And he thought she was perfect for Miss Collins. She, however, not particularly interested, because if you remember in the novel, the gym teacher, who has a different name, is a pretty small part. But Cohen had composited the gym teacher and principal, and even maybe some others, into the Miss Collins character, making it much more prominent. So she was on board. Now, she also was in her twenties, making her basically the same age as the kids that she was teaching in the movie, which actually is not dissimilar from the book. They do mention that the gym teacher is close in age to all of them.

• 42:10Lizzie Bassett?

  But I wonder if that's why they do her makeup so aggressively.

• 42:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, they style her hair, they do her makeup, they style her outfits in a way. So to me, she does read older than her twenties. I would have guessed she was in her mid to late 30s, you know? But part of that's just generational time.

• 42:25Lizzie Bassett?

  I think that's the styling.

• 42:26Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. What I do think is important is that there is a very striking contrast between her and Piper Laurie as the dueling mother figures for Carrie. I don't know what the actual age difference is between her and Piper Laurie, but I think it's pretty significant.

• 42:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I think it's quite substantial, yeah.

• 42:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and I think that's actually a pretty important contrast in this movie.

• 42:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Piper Laurie is born in 1932.

• 42:47Chris Winterbauer?

  So they're 15 years apart.

• 42:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 42:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Let's talk about Miss Piper Laurie, because she was an even tougher sell on this movie. If you don't know, she had been a teen star in the 50s in Louisa with Ronald Reagan and Francis Goes the Races, but she was quickly put out by Hollywood's treatment of young women, and she took an extended break from acting. She told the New York Times, "Every role I played was the same girl, no matter whether my co-star was Rock Hudson, or Tony Curtis, or Rory Calhoun. She was innocent, sexual, simple, the less intelligent, the better, and complexity was forbidden and always slender." She returned in 1961 to star in The Hustler before again, saying, "No, thank you," and taking another break from Hollywood. She was completely out of the loop when casting for Carrie was taking place, so much so that no one had any idea how to get a hold of her.

• 43:32Lizzie Bassett?

  It was actually Marcia Nasotir's idea to cast her, and she had to track her down via a former agent to just even find where to call her. Finally, when Laurie read the script, she went, huh? She thought it was way too cliche. She didn't even think it read like horror at all. She was very confused by it, but her husband was film critic Joe Morgenstern, and he convinced her to give De Palma a chance. Yeah.

• 43:52Chris Winterbauer?

  I didn't know that.

• 43:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 43:55Lizzie Bassett?

  He explained that De Palma's style was relatively comedic and encouraged her to read it as more of a satire than just pure horror. And when she went back and read it with that, it finally clicked for her. So she really built this character as a caricature and played her as such. I think she is so good in this movie.

• 44:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, can't you see so much of this performance in what eventually becomes Kathy Bates in Misery?

• 44:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yes.

• 44:20Chris Winterbauer?

  I feel like there's such a direct line between these characters, probably for Stephen King, but also for the filmmaking teams as well.

• 44:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, the theatricality of her performance, I think, is a big part of it.

• 44:32Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. I think one thing that I like about this movie a lot, and that De Palma does well, is that he's clearly convinced his cast, this is extremely serious for you, but then you need to trust that my filmmaking is actually going to present it in a way that kind of tips the hand of the satire a little bit. You know what I'm saying? Like, the characters don't reveal that.

• 44:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Or sometimes the opposite. Like Nancy Allen had said that she actually didn't even really comprehend how vicious she and John Travolta were going to look in the final result.

• 44:58Chris Winterbauer?

  But that's important, I feel like, because her character would not understand how vicious they actually are. Because when you're in high school, you're a psychopath.

• 45:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Mars. You might not realize it, but Mars is behind so many of your favorite Halloween treats. And I'm not just talking about your candy bowl. Yes, Mars makes iconic candies like M&M's, Snickers, Starburst, my personal favorite, and Skittles. But they also have salty snacks, easy to make meal options, and even treats for your pets. There's something for everyone to enjoy this spooky season. David and I are too old to trick or treat, so we've been getting creative with our Halloween movie night spreads for our friends. I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispy treats and peanut butter M&M's. And because I'm a salty girl, I added some Pringles and my all time favorite snack, Cheez-It crackers. Scary delicious. For Halloween night, I'm making a spooky seven layer dip using Ben's Original Ready Rice, because there is nothing that my kid loves more than a rice and bean dip. And don't think I forgot about our dog, Q.

• 45:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Mars knows he needs a celebration too, so I put together a special Halloween treat jar packed with Greenie's Original Pumpkin Spice Dental Chews and Pedigree Tasty Biscuits. He's agreed to share with the neighbors, because he's a very good boy. Find Mars products in a retailer near you or on Instagram at Mars Global, M-A-R-S-G-L-O-B-A-L, where you can shop everyday favorites and limited time Halloween offerings.

• 46:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Chris, that leaves us with Miss Carrie Etta White herself.

• 46:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 46:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Sissy Spacek was born Mary Elizabeth Spacek in Quitman, Texas. The name Sissy came from her two older brothers and stuck around. She was an excellent musician who planned to attend UT Austin, but her brother Robbie was diagnosed with acute leukemia when she was still a teenager. Her parents eventually let her spend what was supposed to be a few days in New York to take her mind off her brother's diagnosis, but it became a two month stay when she fell in love with the city. Her brother sadly did die the following year, and Sissy abandoned any plans to return to Texas, instead staying in the Big Apple to pursue music. And fun fact, Chris, she actually did record and release a single under the name Rainbow. Have you ever heard this?

• 46:59Chris Winterbauer?

  I've never heard this.

• 47:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, it was a folk song called "John, You Went Too Far This Time," about how John Lennon shouldn't have posed nude with Yoko Ono. Would you like to hear it?

• 47:09Chris Winterbauer?

  I would love to hear it. Also, she's right.

• 47:23Lizzie Bassett?

  You get the idea. I kind of love it.

• 47:25Chris Winterbauer?

  It's great, it's funny.

• 47:26Lizzie Bassett?

  It is funny. Fortunately, her cousin encouraged her to give acting a shot, which led to her first role in Prime Cut, followed by the lead role in Terrence Malick's Badlands, which had run into major distribution issues and most people actually hadn't seen after it came out. But on the set of Badlands, she met a production designer named Jack Fisk. They fell in love, and they married two years later. And it was through Jack that Sissy first met Brian De Palma, and she did not make a good first impression. Fisk had been hired as a replacement production designer on Phantom of the Paradise after De Palma had fired the previous one for not getting the sets built in time. Now, given that it was an emergency, Fisk had pulled in his then girlfriend, Sissy, and her cousin Sam to help paint and decorate the sets. And then one day, Jack had to leave the set. And so he left Sissy and Sam in charge and said, "It's gonna be fine.

• 48:10Lizzie Bassett?

  This set is ready to go." But when Brian De Palma showed up, he informed them that it was ready to go for a different scene. It needed to be repainted and redressed for the scene that they were actually rehearsing. Sissy and Sam had no idea what they were doing, so they completely fucked up the paint job. And as far as Brian De Palma was concerned, he didn't think of her as an actress, more just the world's worst set decorator. But he must have gotten over it, because he hired Jack again on Carrie as art director. And he did actually want to consider Sissy for a role, but it wasn't Carrie. Any guesses which role he thought Sissy Spacek was right for?

• 48:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm, is it Sue Snell?

• 48:44Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 48:45Chris Winterbauer?

  No, then I mean, I would guess Chris Hargenson.

• 48:47Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right, the villain.

• 48:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting, yeah. Hmm, I could see it, definitely.

• 48:52Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, again, she's very blonde, she's very pretty, so I do understand.

• 48:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 48:56Lizzie Bassett?

  That's partially because he was very set on actress Betsy Slade for the role of Carrie.

• 49:01Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't even know Betsy Slade.

• 49:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Look at a picture of her real quick in our time, because I think when you see that, you will actually see that visually, she makes more sense and is much more in line with what Stephen King wrote.

• 49:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 49:15Chris Winterbauer?

  She has a mousy quality that I think, you know who she looks like quite a bit? She looks like Pauline Chalamet.

• 49:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, she does. Again, she's very pretty, but she's not.

• 49:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, she's diminutive, she's also brunette, she's close cropped hair in these photographs, you know, that I'm seeing. You could see her as the outsider to the other women around her, you know, that he's cast.

• 49:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, and she has a kind of chameleon face that I think you could dress down and make much less striking and then much more striking by the end versus Sissy Spacek, who, you know, sort of maintains that throughout. Sissy, however, had already read the novel and was completely determined that she should play Carrie. She insisted on reading for the part, but she had a commercial shoot that conflicted with the dates De Palma had held for the auditions, and he was not going to make an exception. She talked to him about it, and he told her, "You should probably go do the commercial, because I'm gonna cast Betsy Slade, and you really shouldn't get your hopes up." And according to Sissy, quote, "I think I said some expletive and hung up the phone. It just made me so mad." She was so determined that she bailed on the commercial shoot. She said, quote, "I reread the book the day before the screen test, and I think I rubbed Vaseline in my hair, and I found some old sailor suit that my mother had made for me

• 50:22Lizzie Bassett?

  in seventh grade, and I took the hem out of it, and I really, really was into it, and I was feeling very sorry for myself, which was perfect for the character." She said, quote, "So when I went into the test the next morning, I don't think I even washed my face. They had hair and makeup there, and they saw me come in, and they just ran from me because I looked so awful. Of course I was. I think that I felt so used and abused at that point, because I knew Brian, I was not his favorite, and that worked for me. I just decided I was going to get it." Of course, she came in and she blew Brian's first choice out of the water. It's said that he, after watching the screen test, said, that's Carrie. She was 25 years old when she got the role.

• 50:59Chris Winterbauer?

  And she'd played much younger before. I think she's supposed to be 15 in Badlands, and she's 22 or 23 when she made that movie.

• 51:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. You know what's interesting is that her size, I think, makes that believable.

• 51:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 51:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Her face doesn't. She actually doesn't look that young.

• 51:15Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 51:15Lizzie Bassett?

  But she's, I mean, she's great. She's excellent in this. Also, the work that she did for this character in this movie is really admirable. She worked with her husband quite a bit on the way that she would hold herself. She found a book of Gustav Dore's biblical etchings and really studied a lot of the poses from that. You can look these up, especially, you know, at the end when her arms are held out to the side. That's a direct reference to some of those. De Palma spent months and months storyboarding and drawing out each scene with stick figures. He said it's like probably the most time he ever had to conceptualize a story. He said, quote, "Things like the whole use of split screen and split diopter and slow motion and all this stuff was sort of worked out like a musical score." Meanwhile, Jack Fisk was busy designing the interior of the White House to look like the kind of narrow Philadelphia house he'd lived in in art school.

• 52:00Lizzie Bassett?

  He hunted all over LA to find the right crucifixes, rugs, tapestries, tchotchkes to decorate the house. My personal favorite is that Last Supper tapestry behind them on the wall at dinner.

• 52:10Chris Winterbauer?

  There are a number of Last Supper references in this movie.

• 52:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:13Chris Winterbauer?

  And that one is very striking. The religious imagery, obviously, you know, we plant the arrow-stricken Christ on the cross.

• 52:21Lizzie Bassett?

  For the crucifixion of Margaret White, yeah.

• 52:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. At the end, you know, her mother becomes the martyr she's always wanted to be in a way. There's some fun visual mirroring throughout the movie.

• 52:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. We'll talk about that in a little bit. That's also a bit different from the book.

• 52:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 52:34Lizzie Bassett?

  So he drove all over Los Angeles looking for a house that could serve as the exterior, and nothing seemed to fit. He ended up finding the right house in Santa Paula, which, if you all don't know, is north of Los Angeles. It's near Fillmore.

• 52:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, okay.

• 52:46Lizzie Bassett?

  When you're driving, the highway runs east to west up there, kind of in the middle of nowhere. He said, quote, "I saw this one house that had a vacant lot next door, and it was just bizarre. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. The more I looked at it, it was like asymmetrical. Things didn't line up." Filming began in March of 1976 and lasted 50 days. Now, while the climax and gym scenes were filmed at Culver Studios, three high schools did stand in for Bates High School, Pier Avenue School, which is now Hermosa Beach Community Center, Pacific Palisades High School, and Morningside Elementary School, which is in the valley, I believe. De Palma kicked things off with Isadora Mankowski as his DP, but the relationship soured very fast, and he was replaced within days by Mario Tosi, who also did not love Brian De Palma, but at least was able to tolerate him. And like pretty much everyone involved in this movie,

• 53:31Lizzie Bassett?

  he'd done a few low-budget features prior to Carrie, but it was his first big break. Now, when it came time to film the opening shower scene, the actresses hired to be showering nude were not stoked, and that is an understatement. Some of them were having panic attacks, and many flat-out refused to do it. There was some compromise in terms of using steam and smoke to slightly obscure their bodies, although not really. You can see pretty much everything. But it was really Sissy Spacek agreeing to stand nude in the shower without using a body double that convinced the other actresses to do it. Though it should be noted that some stuck to their guns, and that's why you see so many fully clothed girls in the final cut. They were not supposed to be.

• 54:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 54:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Speaking of Sissy in the shower, she asked for some direction from De Palma for the moment where she sees the blood, and he told her to think about getting hit by a Mack truck, to which she was very confused by, but luckily, Jack Fisk chimed in with, "Well, I was run over by a car once," literally, and proceeded to explain to her exactly what it had felt like. He was run over by a car when he was a child. Poor Jack also had to crouch down just out of frame, holding the blood in his hand so she could reach down and grab it. He was just getting showered the entire time. Now, Sissy intentionally didn't really interact with the rest of the cast until it came time to film the prom sequence, which is one of the last things they shot. Costume designer Rosanna Norton had sourced most of the prom outfits from a rental prom and bridal shop that was going out of business, but she custom-made Carrie's dress herself.

• 54:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Chris, did you notice anything about what Margaret says about the dress in the movie that seems a little off?

• 54:56Chris Winterbauer?

  God, I remember Sissy saying she made the dress Carrieetta at the prom. No, I didn't notice.

• 55:01Lizzie Bassett?

  When she's getting ready to leave and her mother sees her for the first time, she says, "Red. I might have known it would be red."

• 55:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:07Lizzie Bassett?

  But of course, what color is her dress?

• 55:09Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like peach?

• 55:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Woo. Good job, Chris. Yes, a blush shade of peach.

• 55:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I almost said coral. That would have been bad.

• 55:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Coral is, yeah, I think technically incorrect. It's a very light peach. But if you ask David, he probably would have said magenta. We love him. He's colorblind.

• 55:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Blue!

• 55:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, the reason that this is of note is that in the book, the dress is indeed red. They had changed the color for the movie, obviously, to have the blood show up more on the dress when it's dumped on her, but they hadn't changed the line when it came time to film the scene.

• 55:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 55:43Lizzie Bassett?

  And so they were trying to figure out what to say, and it was actually Piper Laurie who suggested that they keep it exactly the same.

• 55:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. She sees what she wants to see.

• 55:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly. Yes.

• 55:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 55:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I love that.

• 55:52Chris Winterbauer?

  I didn't pick up on that. It's a great touch. I definitely didn't notice it in the scene.

• 55:55Lizzie Bassett?

  It's awesome. Also, that shot of Carrie and Tommy dancing was incredibly difficult to capture.

• 56:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, it's like 360 dolly around the two of them spinning, trying probably not to get dizzy while they're doing their dialogue. I can't imagine that shot.

• 56:09Lizzie Bassett?

  It's crazy. So exactly that. They built a circular dolly track about 14 feet in diameter that allowed camera operator Joel King to move around Spacek and Kat. He was lying down on a platform on the track, shooting upwards at them. Sissy and William, they were dancing revolving one way, and the dolly was revolving around them the other way. The lights were also moving above them at a different speed and in a different direction to give it all that dreamlike quality.

• 56:34Chris Winterbauer?

  It does seem to speed up a little bit, too, across the shot as well.

• 56:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 56:37Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that's what it felt like.

• 56:39Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I think it does. I don't know if that was done in post or if that was actually them filming it, but Joel King actually collapsed when they finished shooting this because he was so dizzy.

• 56:48Chris Winterbauer?

  If I'm running and I look over my shoulder too fast,

• 56:50Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm done.

• 56:51Chris Winterbauer?

  I will pass out.

• 56:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 56:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, that's just, your brain can't handle it once you become an adult.

• 56:55Lizzie Bassett?

  No. But of course, this shot was nothing compared to the crane shot that tracks Norma with the ballots, to Nancy Allen and John Travolta with the rope under the stage, to Sue realizing what's happening to the bucket in the rafters, to Carrie and Tommy winning king and queen. It's a great shot.

• 57:11Chris Winterbauer?

  By the way, talk about Touch of Evil influences. This, I feel like, is so influenced by the crane shots in Touch of Evil.

• 57:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Hmm. Well, De Palma was insistent that it be an uninterrupted crane shot, and according to Nancy Allen, it absolutely sucked to film this because they were stuck in their positions for like 12 hours. Of course, she's crouched underneath the stairs, and it was taking forever because one of the crane operators kept pushing too far in one direction, so they had to reset and do the shot over and over and over. Studio executives were really getting tired of how long this was taking and how much it was costing, so they're like, "Can you please just cover this from different angles and drop this?" To which Brian De Palma said, "You'll have to fire me first." He got his way. I'm glad he did. It is a great shot, revealing the bucket. By contrast, though, the actual bucket dump, apparently, not so bad. Sissy said they'd warmed it, so it felt like a heavy, warm blanket. It was an amazing sensation.

• 58:03Lizzie Bassett?

  And it was her own husband doing the bucket dumping from the rafters. Fisk told Birth Movies Death, quote, "There's a story I heard about the remake of Carrie, and they were talking about how they did all this stuff, and it cost them a fortune because they'd worked everything out electronically for the bucket to drop, and they said to Brian, 'Well, how did you do it?' And he said, 'Well, Jack Fisk was on a ladder, and he dropped a bucket of blood on her.'"

• 58:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep.

• 58:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I believe they actually only filmed this once, but this meant that the blood splatter on Carrie's dress had to be consistent, take after take. And Sissy Spacek, legend that she is, opted to wear the same blood-covered dress day after day in order to keep the splatter in place. Some reports actually claim that she even slept in the dress to keep the continuity on both the dress and herself the same. The blood was also made from caro syrup, which is extremely sticky, so they had to be constantly misting her down to keep her from sticking to chairs or herself. She also stayed onstage during the reverse shots of the crowd from Carrie's POV, so they'd have something to react to, even though, of course, she's not in those shots. And by the way, one of the big changes from the book is the ending. What's the major change from the book to the movie here?

• 59:08Chris Winterbauer?

  There are two that I think I noticed, that, again, I haven't read the book in a long time.

• 59:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 59:12Chris Winterbauer?

  The destruction in the book is much more widespread

• 59:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 59:16Chris Winterbauer?

  than in the movie.

• 59:18Lizzie Bassett?

  It's almost the whole town.

• 59:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. It's like, literally, the town, it's as if it disappears into a sinkhole. You know what I mean? It's like she destroys, I mean, the power lines are on fire and, you know, et cetera. The other one is the way her mother dies is different.

• 59:31Lizzie Bassett?

  So those are both changes to it, but there's one that I want to talk about that I actually think is narratively the most different, even though it may feel smaller, which is that in the book, Carrie actually leaves the gym and is sitting outside before she makes a conscious decision to go back in and destroy everything.

• 59:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. Did not remember that, but that is a big change.

• 59:51Lizzie Bassett?

  It is a big change. They wanted her to be more sympathetic in the movie, which is why they make it more of a traumatic response, sort of a knee-jerk reaction. It's interesting. I'll be very interested to see what Mike Flanagan does. I kind of hope he tries to stick to what's in the book there, but I don't know.

• 1:00:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Uh, I prefer the movie version personally.

• 1:00:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Really?

• 1:00:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, because I think it's more in tune with like the themes that are happening in the sense that she has this sort of like instinctive reaction to what's happening, and it's as if she's, you know, pseudo-possessed at the end, and yet she's still conscious enough. To me, it accomplishes the idea that she's aware of what she did when she bathed herself at the end, right? She cleanses herself before her mother approaches her, and it doesn't give her a moment of like, "Oh, my God, what have I done?" So I don't feel like it betrays, you know what I mean, the intentions of the book in that way.

• 1:00:38Lizzie Bassett?

  No, it doesn't. I will say, though, I appreciate in the book how much she is, and obviously, they didn't have time for it in this movie, which is why I'm excited to see a mini-series, but like, she practices quite a bit, and she actually gets pretty good at controlling it in the book. So it is a much more conscious decision.

• 1:00:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. But in the movie, it feels almost like it is...

• 1:00:57Lizzie Bassett?

  It's uncontrollable.

• 1:00:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's, again, it's hormonal or something like that.

• 1:01:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I kind of like it being her choice, because, you know, you said that it's a lot about violence begetting violence, which is true, but I think there's something about it being violence begetting conscious violence that I actually think is a bit truer to life, maybe. So let's see. Let's see what Mike Flanagan does. Now, De Palma was, of course, insistent on using split screen for this entire sequence, and no one else thought this was a good idea. Cohen said, "Prior to shooting, Brian shared with me his intent to use split screen for the destruction, and I admit, it concerned me. As a rule, I find that showy film techniques call attention to themselves and risk removing one from the story. Brian, however, had used it well in Sisters, and argued that it would supply more heft and spectacle to the sequence than conventional cuts would. It was a big gamble, and I cross my fingers that he was right."

• 1:01:43Lizzie Bassett?

  But De Palma was pretty fly by the seat of his pants with what was actually being captured in these shots. He didn't decide until the last minute that the principal should be the one to get electrocuted. He also decided he wanted the fire hose to operate at full force, to which the fire marshal said, "That's going to be extremely dangerous, considering you're firing it directly at people." And apparently, a stunt guy just said, "Ah, gimme that," and started manning the hose anyway. Turns out, Fire Marshal Bill was right. Uh, that shot of PJ Souls, who plays Norma, where she's being knocked down and blasted in the face, it actually ruptured her eardrum. Fortunately, she got to a hospital and was able to make a full recovery, but that is extremely painful. A stunt woman named Mary Peters was also injured after being asked to repeatedly perform a stunt with the fire hose. She was like black and blue afterwards.

• 1:02:26Lizzie Bassett?

  And according to Nancy Allen, a stunt coordinator cracked a rib when he was thrown backwards by the hose. I believe you can see this. I think this is the guy that gets launched back into the table and chairs.

• 1:02:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Several people were sent to the hospital after this sequence.

• 1:02:46Lizzie Bassett?

  But even screenwriter Lawrence Cohen was surprised by what became of Miss Collins, because he had written it that Miss Collins would approach Carrie to try and help her, only to be sort of tossed backwards against a wall. He intended this, you mentioned it, as an homage to Psycho, in terms of, you know, killing off a core character. But much to his surprise, he found Miss Collins essentially cut in half by a backboard with blood pouring from her mouth, and he was horrified, in a good way. This is one of the things I remember most clearly from this movie. Betty Buckley, who played Miss Collins, was genuinely terrified of this shot. She had seen how many people had already been hurt by the fire hose, and she was understandably wary of De Palma and the stunt team at this point. They assured her that the backboard was fitted with a piece of balsa wood. It'll stop before it actually smushes you.

• 1:03:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Don't worry about it. Fortunately, on this, they were correct, and she was OK. But you can see the look on her face. She is genuinely very afraid of that thing. And by the way, the direction that Brian De Palma gave her when she is, you know, has the blood pouring out of her mouth was squirm like a bug on a pin. It didn't help that everything was also on fire. The whole ceiling was covered with crepe paper that would catch on fire all the time. They actually called the special effects "special defects" because things kept going wrong so frequently. And when it came time to shoot the car rolling and exploding, our poor camera operator, Joel King, was back behind the camera. Stunt coordinator Dick Zeiger was driving the car, and just like in The Dark Knight, they'd fitted the car with a piston that would shoot down, causing it to flip over.

• 1:04:12Lizzie Bassett?

  They were, however, not as precise or careful as The Dark Knight team was, and the car almost flipped into King, who was operating the camera. He said, "One more roll, and he'd have been smushed." Now, you mentioned this. One of the biggest departures from the book is Margaret's death. Do you remember how Margaret actually dies in the book?

• 1:04:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Doesn't she stop her heart?

• 1:04:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:04:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Lizzie Bassett?

  She stops her heart sort of one beat at a time, which in the book is like, it's great. It's so much more emotional and in many ways, personal.

• 1:04:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's very like agonizing.

• 1:04:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:04:41Chris Winterbauer?

  It's hard to visualize, though, I think, cinematically.

• 1:04:44Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the thing.

• 1:04:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Lizzie Bassett?

  De Palma agreed. He figured it probably wouldn't translate as all that well to the screen. Again, very interested to see what Mike Flanagan does. Lawrence Cohen was out to dinner with Martin Scorsese in Hollywood, and Brian De Palma came scurrying over to their table and said he had a great idea for how to kill Margaret. All the kitchen utensils will impale her. Cohen was like, "Um." Pretty much, everybody thought that this was in really poor taste, including all of the studio executives, who just thought this was not a good idea. But Brian De Palma said, "Yes, it is," and he went ahead anyway. It is indeed awesome. I think this is shot in reverse, so they're pulling.

• 1:05:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, those are definitely reverse shots. Yeah, they're pulling them out of her.

• 1:05:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, with fishing line or monofilament. It's great. It's over the top. She's like having an orgasm while she's getting stabbed by vegetable peelers.

• 1:05:29Chris Winterbauer?

  But that's the best part. She gets to be like, okay.

• 1:05:33Lizzie Bassett?

  She kind of gets what she wants.

• 1:05:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, but also, you know, you hear the tragedy of how she was effectively a victim of marital rape, although it's somewhat murky, I guess, in the sense of, did she also desire it or not? And her relationship to sex is very complicated.

• 1:05:46Lizzie Bassett?

  It's very unclear.

• 1:05:48Chris Winterbauer?

  I feel like De Palma is making the point that, in a weird way, crucifixion and martyrdom becomes a form of penetration that she's actually arguably interested in in this scene. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's a pretty fun, sacrilegious sequence.

• 1:06:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:06:00Chris Winterbauer?

  It's pretty nuts. I like it personally.

• 1:06:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, it's great. I love it. Now, the very last sequence that they shot was, of course, the house collapsing into the ground at the end. But, Chris, that was actually supposed to be the first scene in the film.

• 1:06:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 1:06:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Do you remember the incident in the book that happens very early on, when Carrie is little, involving the house?

• 1:06:18Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 1:06:18Lizzie Bassett?

  When she's a little girl, she asks her neighbor about her dirty pillows, and then her mother comes out and drags her back inside. She accidentally causes a bunch of stones to rain down on their house in what is basically the first and kind of only recorded

• 1:06:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Prepubescent.

• 1:06:33Lizzie Bassett?

  instance of Carrie prior to the prom. So Fisk had built the house at half-scale, and they'd worked out a conveyor belt system to drop the rocks on the model house, but it kept getting jammed up because the rocks were too heavy. And this was a night shoot. At this point, the sun was coming up. The police were arriving because of noise complaints. And so Brian De Palma just said, "Fuck it. Burn the house down. Just let it all fall apart and sink into the ground. Whatever." And they thought they'd completely screwed it up, but when they watched the footage back, they loved it.

• 1:07:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Lizzie Bassett?

  And realized it looked even better than the rocks had, so they chose to end the film with it instead.

• 1:07:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, it's a great choice. That's my favorite sequence, and that's also my favorite cue in the score as well.

• 1:07:12Lizzie Bassett?

  And by the way, that is Sissy Spacek's hand reaching out of the grave. She insisted that it be her. So take that, everyone in The Odyssey. You weren't the first. And I bet she didn't even have a straw. Now, when the film headed into post-production, De Palma took the first vegetable peeler stab at it, taking the reins for six weeks. And he focused on the prom scene because he knew that he wanted to do split screen. He had like over 150 setups, so he tried to do it himself. But it turns out, what they had shot was quite a mess, because he had shot it with the idea of split screen in mind. Carrie's eye line often didn't match the objects she was supposed to be moving. The studio really hated it, so he actually handed it back over to Paul Hirsch, who was the editor.

• 1:07:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Hirsch tried to dial back the split screen and rely more on quick cuts, but much to his chagrin, he found out that many of the takes, of course, again, had been shot with the assumption they were using split screen, so there were often cameras or crew visible in the shots on the half that they assumed would be covered. Even though I love where this landed, which is a hefty mix of quick cuts and split screen, De Palma said, quote, "It's the one thing that makes me think every time I look at the movie and say, 'Well, maybe I didn't make the right choice there.'" I think it's pretty great.

• 1:08:22Chris Winterbauer?

  I do think it's pretty messy in the middle stretch until the fire starts.

• 1:08:26Lizzie Bassett?

  It's just a lot of it.

• 1:08:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. I think that there's a goofy quality that maybe De Palma, he might not have wanted necessarily. There's a bit of a 50s sci-fi B-movie element to the way that the hose moves, et cetera. Again, I don't mind it. I like it personally, but I understand why it might bother him.

• 1:08:43Lizzie Bassett?

  I can see also going from Sisters to this, because it's used so much more sparingly in Sisters, and then to go to this where it's just like a 10-minute stretch, basically, eight-minute stretch of split screen.

• 1:08:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:54Lizzie Bassett?

  The cinematographer also was disappointed because De Palma moved ahead on color timing and correction without his involvement. I'm curious, how common is it for the DP to be integral to that part of the process?

• 1:09:04Chris Winterbauer?

  In my experience, the DP's there, has always been there for color timing. Because, well, to be fair, too, like, they're doing this chemically.

• 1:09:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:09:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is going to be a very different process than it's been digital for me. But, you know, asking the cinematographer not to be there would be, I believe, a pretty big decision. Oftentimes, the cinematographer may be on their next job. You know what I mean? When it's happening, they might have to review it remotely.

• 1:09:26Lizzie Bassett?

  That's what happened.

• 1:09:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Lizzie Bassett?

  And De Palma just went ahead. Now, of course, when it came to the score, De Palma had actually planned for someone very specific to do it. Who was it?

• 1:09:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Bernard Herrmann.

• 1:09:36Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. He had done both Sisters and Obsession with De Palma.

• 1:09:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep.

• 1:09:41Lizzie Bassett?

  But he, of course, died on Christmas Eve, 1975, before Carrie had gone into production. So instead, De Palma tapped Pino DiNagio, who'd had a successful career in Italian pop music. They would work together again on Dress to Kill, Blowout, Body Double, many more.

• 1:09:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, but he was also Dario Argento's composer for some of his films.

• 1:09:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:09:59Chris Winterbauer?

  In the Italian giallo genre. And he composed the scores to one of my favorite horror films ever that we've talked about on the show, which is Don't Look Now.

• 1:10:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh.

• 1:10:08Chris Winterbauer?

  The Nicholas Rogue movie with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland.

• 1:10:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:10:12Chris Winterbauer?

  1973, just a couple of years before, which I think has a lot of interesting parallels to Obsession, in certain ways, De Palma's movie. In terms of a male protagonist in this instance, he believes he's seeing his daughter. It's not actually his daughter in Obsession.

• 1:10:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, Obsession is his wife.

• 1:10:27Chris Winterbauer?

  It's not actually his wife.

• 1:10:28Lizzie Bassett?

  I still haven't watched Don't Look Now. I need to.

• 1:10:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, it's so good. It also has one of like the most notorious and rumored about sex scenes in the history of cinema, which is very interesting.

• 1:10:37Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. Of course, there are many very clear homages to Herman and particularly Psycho across the score, as you mentioned. It's great. I do really enjoy it. It was interesting to watch it with David. I actually think he didn't enjoy it that much, just because of how frequently the psycho stab is used, because it is used a lot.

• 1:10:56Chris Winterbauer?

  That's used quite a bit, yeah. I like the other elements of the score more, personally. The psycho stab is perhaps too ubiquitous.

• 1:11:03Lizzie Bassett?

  To be clear, he really liked the symphonic and more orchestral parts, same way that you did, just didn't love the sort of psycho screechy stab. Now, on November 3rd of 1976, Carrie was released and earned about $33.8 million worldwide. Sissy Spacek was nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Piper Laurie was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. This was extremely rare for a horror film to get these nominations. They didn't win. Faye Dunaway won for Network. Beatrice Straight also won Supporting Actress for Network, and of course, Rocky won Best Picture. Stephen King said, quote, "I liked De Palma's film of Carrie quite a bit. The attitude of the film was different from my book. I tended to view the events straight on, humorlessly, in a straight point-to-point progression. You have to remember that the genesis of Carrie was no more than a short story idea.

• 1:11:48Lizzie Bassett?

  While I think De Palma saw a chance to make a movie that was a satirical view of high school life in general and high school peer groups in particular, a perfectly viable point of view. Sissy Spacek was excellent, but right behind her, in a smaller part than it should have been, was John Travolta. He played the part of Billy Nolan the way I wish I'd written it, half funny and half crazy."

• 1:12:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:06Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I could have seen a little more of Travolta in this. After Carrie, King, of course, published his second novel, Salem's Lot. It sold 3 million copies in paperback. It went to number one. It did great. And of course, King then publishes The Shining, The Stand, Night Shift. He goes on and on. As you said, he's one of the most prolific horror writers, and I would say also just writers of the 20th century. Lawrence D. Cohen continued working with King after Carrie. He wrote the four-hour teleplay for the 1990s miniseries, It. And then Stephen King will be an executive producer on Mike Flanagan's eight-episode Carrie, premiering on Prime Video October 7th of this very year, which I'm excited. I'm excited to see. So, Chris, that wraps up our coverage of Carrie. What went right?

• 1:12:47Chris Winterbauer?

  So many things went right in this movie, but I would just be remiss if I did not give it to Sissy Spasic. I think this is an example of a film where, were it not for the wide-eyed commitment to her character, it would fall apart pretty quickly. I don't love the remake. I love a lot of the elements of the remake. I love a lot of the cast. And I think Chloe Grace Moretz is a wonderful actress, but one of her strengths has always been a precocious knowing, or as she seems to be older than she is.

• 1:13:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, like Kick Ass.

• 1:13:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Kick Ass, Let Me In, the American English remake of Let the Right One In.

• 1:13:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Which I didn't like, but yes.

• 1:13:26Chris Winterbauer?

  And for that reason, I felt that Carrie's character didn't really make sense to me in that adaptation in the way that Spasic really embodies, I think, what Carrie has to be for this story. To work in at least Brian De Palma's telling. You know, maybe Flanagan will do a different thing that that could work. But I think that it's tricky to at 25, pull off sort of a 16-year-old, late-blooming, naive, housebound, religiously tormented teenager. That's a tricky Venn diagram to thread, and she does it amazingly in this movie.

• 1:14:02Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 1:14:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Secondary shout out, Jack Fisk, one of the greatest production designers who's ever lived.

• 1:14:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:14:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Sounds like a great supportive partner also. And also, without him, we would not have had Spasic as Carrie. And he continues to work. I mean, Marty Supreme, I believe, we just talked about last year, that he did an incredible job on.

• 1:14:17Lizzie Bassett?

  He's amazing. They seem like a really wonderful partnership. I would like to read more about the two of them and the things that they've worked on together. They are still together, which is lovely to see. One thing I am very excited about seeing in Mike Flanagan's mini-series, which, you know, I find Mike Flanagan to be very hit or miss. I, as everyone else did, really loved Hill House. I thought Midnight Mass was all right. And I thought there were some real stinkers in there.

• 1:14:41Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm kind of, I think, a real outsider. His type of horror is just not for me. I will forever remain optimistic. I think he's wonderfully talented. It's just-

• 1:14:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Hill House was great.

• 1:14:50Chris Winterbauer?

  I wasn't a big fan.

• 1:14:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you're wrong.

• 1:14:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Everybody tells me I'm wrong. Clearly, I'm wrong.

• 1:14:54Lizzie Bassett?

  That's fine.

• 1:14:55Chris Winterbauer?

  It just, for whatever reason, we seem to be on slightly different wavelengths, and that's totally fine. But I liked the De Palma wavelength personally quite a bit.

• 1:15:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. One thing, though, I am excited about is that just looking at who he has cast, they look quite young. And I believe that they are more age-appropriate. And I am curious how that will alter the feeling of horror over the course of this story. I think it may make it more horrifying if done correctly, or it might end up being, I don't know, more annoying and twee. We'll find out. But I will give my what went right to Brian De Palma. I think what he does so well in this movie is an ability to give his own spin onto an existing material without erasing what was so remarkable about the material in the first place. I think he understands where to step forward and where to step back in this movie. And that's really hard to do. And I just think it's remarkable.

• 1:15:48Lizzie Bassett?

  And regardless of whatever adaptations will continue to happen of this novel, his movie will always remain its own separate piece of art, because that's what it is, while also, I think, being a pretty faithful adaptation in its own way. So I think, just think he's great. I want to watch more. You know, I've started watching more of his back catalog. Obviously, I'd seen sort of the heavy hitters, as I'm sure we both had. But it's very fun to watch some of his earlier work. And I just think, you know, he has some stinkers in there, as everyone does, but he just has such a panache and such a style. And I think I had misconstrued what that was before diving into this movie.

• 1:16:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I always find that my favorite Stephen King horror adaptations are the ones that bring a bit more of an unhinged sense of humor to the proceedings. Because King, I love Stephen King's writing, but it can be kind of down-the-middle

• 1:16:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:40Chris Winterbauer?

  American maudlin outside of the horror moments. And so that's, for me, it's like, I find Kubrick's The Shining so funny on top of how terrifying it is.

• 1:16:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:48Chris Winterbauer?

  And that's one of the things I love about it that I know King didn't like, because he was like, Jack Nicholson's insane from the beginning of this movie. And Kubrick's like, yes, that's why it's hilarious, sir. And I think De Palma brings some of that sensibility to Carrie in his own way. I think that, you know, you can find other examples of that. And I find the sort of more down-the-middle ones adaptations to be somewhat less. I mean, even Tim Curry as Pennywise, I just find so fun, you know, for example, as well.

• 1:17:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I think they did a good job of it in at least It, Chapter One, the more recent film, I thought was pretty great in that department.

• 1:17:19Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree.

• 1:17:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Very much enjoyed it. Yeah, I'm with you. You know, it's looking at something like even the Outsider series that they did on HBO, which I really enjoyed. And I did read that book as well. I thought it was so great. And then it kind of falls apart a little bit at the end, because the monster itself is like, sort of silly and weird. And if you don't have that silliness throughout-

• 1:17:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Interdimensional space spider of some kind, or something like that with Stephen King at the end.

• 1:17:41Lizzie Bassett?

  More of an interdimensional space worm, man, but yes.

• 1:17:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Lizzie Bassett?

  But yeah, I think you're right that injecting some humor into it helps when you get to the climax ending of these things. But anyway, I'm very excited to watch this series, and I'm very excited to kick off our book-to-screen adaptation. So Chris, how can people support this podcast? And more specifically, how can they participate in our box office book club this upcoming month?

• 1:18:04Chris Winterbauer?

  If you guys are interested in helping out this show, a few easy, simple ways to do it for free. Number one, just thanks for listening. That's the most valuable thing you guys can do. We really appreciate it. We love making this show for you. Number two, hit subscribe or follow on whatever podcatcher you're listening to us on. So we show up every Monday or Friday in your feeds on occasion. Number three, leave us a rating or review on whatever podcatcher you are listening to us on. That helps us with visibility. All right, now, if you do want to throw a few shekels our way, number four, for $5 a month, you can join our bonus feed. Apple, Spotify, Patreon, you get an ad-free RSS feed. That means you get every episode with no ads. And you get at least one bonus episode a month. It's usually two. And this October, as Lizzie mentioned, we are doing our box office book club. How's that going to work?

• 1:18:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie and I are reading the books that are being turned into the following movies: Verity, Other Mommy, Sense and Sensibility, and Wildwood. We are going to record those bonus episodes the Sunday after each of those movies comes out. We'll post these dates on our Patreon. And for people who are patrons through the Patreon platform, we are going to live-record those episodes. And we will have a section of audience Q and A slash participation during those recordings where you all can be part of our book club together. And we're going to talk about the adaptations themselves, and the movies, and the source material, et cetera. Again, we will post all of those dates on Patreon. But if you sign up on Patreon, you can participate in our book club this October.

• 1:19:33Chris Winterbauer?

  And of course, those episodes will then be released the following week for all of you that just want to listen. If you would like to go full telekinetic and physically change our worlds with your donation, for $50 a month, you can get, I don't know what you're going to do, Lizzie. Is it Pino DiNagio? Is it Brian De Palma? Is it Sissy Spasic? Is it Stephen King? Whatever Lizzie decides to do right now, a $50 shout out for our Full Stop patrons, just like one of these.

• 1:19:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Unfortunately, to really do the Carrie scaries justice, I would need a visual medium, so I'm just going to read your names. But feel free to imagine me taking down the gymnasium while I do it. Mike and Clemmie Burbage, Anthony Thomas, Mandy Rarlesen, Pete Reed Peterson, Team Lizzie Always Primer Never Primer, hell yeah, John D. Wilshire, the cast and crew of Win a Trip to Brown Town, Mark Bertha, Alex Barrett, Frankenstein, Angelina Renee Cook, Evan Downey, Amy Elgashlager McCoy, Johan Geyor Gunnarsson, Jory Hill Piper, Felicia G., Tatum Three, Karina Kanapa, James McAvoy, Cameron Smith, Suzanne Johnson, Ben Schindelman, The Provost Family, The O's Sound Like O's,

• 1:20:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Galen and Miguel, The Broken Glass Kids, David Friskalanti, Film It Yourself, Kate Ellington, M. Zodiac, C. Grace B., Blaze Ambrose, Rural Juror, Nate the Knife, Lena LJ, Half Grey Hound, Brittany Morris, Darren and Dale Conkling, Matthew Jacobson, J.J. Rapido, Lousy Susan, Sadie, Just Sadie, Brian Donahue, Adrian Pengkorea, Chris Liel, Brooke, Steve Winterbauer, Rosemary Southward, Jason Frankel, Salman Chainani, Michael McGrath, and Lydia Howes. Thank you all so much from the bottom of my scary Carrie heart.

• 1:21:21Chris Winterbauer?

  My house just imploded. Thank you, Lizzie, so much. What do we have coming for the fine folks next week?

• 1:21:28Lizzie Bassett?

  We have- Would you like to play a game? I would like to play a game. We have Saw.

• 1:21:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Saw.

• 1:21:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Saw.

• 1:21:34Chris Winterbauer?

  The movie.

• 1:21:35Lizzie Bassett?

  I saw it.

• 1:21:36Chris Winterbauer?

  I saw, I thought I thought.

• 1:21:38Lizzie Bassett?

  I thought, I thought.

• 1:21:39Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought I thought I thought. We have Saw. We are just, you know, I had to do a horror follow-up to Carrie, and this is one I've wanted to cover for a long time. It's a really cool story. Just another example of a tiny, little indie horror film that took the world by storm. I think it's really fun to do in the year of our great lord obsession from this year. So I'm really excited to talk about it.

• 1:21:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Can't wait. Yeah, we have more coming up this month. I'm glad we're doing Saw, because then we head into Sense and Sensibility, which will be very different.

• 1:22:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 1:22:06Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, we'll see you next week for Saw.

• 1:22:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Bye.

• 1:22:11Speaker 03

  What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom Podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krupson.