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Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Good morning, guys. It is Monday of this week. And I just woke up to the news that beloved filmmaker Rob Reiner is no longer with us through what is a currently open case that implies was a homicide from a loved one.
I just wanted to put a little bit of a message up front because our episode this week happens to be misery. We had already recorded this episode about a month ago. So obviously this tragedy is not talked about at all in this episode. Most of the Patreon had already received this episode before the news broke this morning, but I just wanted to throw a quick thing at the front here because we are all saddened by Rob Reiner's death.
And if it wasn't the holidays and we could maneuver something, we probably would have even considered not releasing the episode this week out of fear of it and feeling like it was in bad taste. But as a compromise, we put this intro. Here in the front, our hearts truly go out to the Reiner family. He was and will always be one of the best American directors.
I say it in this episode, but the run that he had from a spinal tap to a few good men is the type of career that every filmmaker dreams to have of just perfect 10 out of 10 films, one after another. And misery is right there in that impressive run. He just always seemed like a genuinely good guy. The film world is much darker with him not here.
Despite all of that, I do hope that you find some joy in listening to this episode. It's not one of our regular episodes in the sense that we don't really die of too deep into the plot. We more just talk about Stephen King adaptations and why this is so great and why we think Rob Reiner was one of the only people that could make this adaptation as great as it ended up being. And if you feel like you're not emotionally ready to listen to this episode, we completely understand we'll be back next week with more of our uplifting goofy stuff.
Thank you for all of the listening and support and please try to enjoy the episode. To another episode of Hard Ruby Night, this week we're talking about 1990s mystery. Misery as picked by Kyle and unfortunately Scott is not able to be here. I think this is the first episode in over 500 episodes that Scott hasn't been here for.
And we're on the street because he heard Eric J Brown was coming and he hates that guy. He doesn't even know. He's devastated he's missing out on you. Eric, welcome back to the show.
I had a feeling that a scary movie about a writer might be the perfect opportunity for you to pop on and talk about your book Better the Devil, which we will get to later on. But hey, it's up for pre-order right now. Go and pre-order Eric J Brown's novel Better the Devil. I've read it.
I've raved about it already on the podcast. Check it out. It's amazing. Let's talk about misery boys.
I need to know two things. First of all, Kyle, you need to tell us why you picked this particular movie. And I want to just talk about our feelings on Stephen King, the writer. Yeah, so I misery celebrating 35 years this year.
And I think that it's a damn near perfect movie is what I what happened to me. Like I've seen this many times and I think that oftentimes we don't pick like full fledged bangers for the show. But there's something about misery that I think also works for the show. I think it's the king of it.
I think it's the Rob Reiner like comedy elements of it. I think it's the goal. I think it actually is maybe a perfect horror movie night pick as far as like horror movie top tier like films go. Right.
Yeah. And that's really solidified it for me on this on this watch. It's winter, you know, it's cold. It's Maine, you know, we lost James Con was it this year, last year, you know, recently I had watched it since we lost him.
Kathy Bates is is doing I'm not a Gruber. What's the Shamat lock? Yeah. She's got a Gruber.
She's got a Gruber. I think I mean, she would kill me. I think it's amazing. But I was like, it's seasonally appropriate, great anniversary and in the year with with some with just an excellent horror flick.
How great that Eric can join us for this as well. But yeah, and then and then Stephen King, I think it's like, I mean, this is one of the best adaptations of one of a great work of his. I admittedly, I don't I don't know where it ranks in my rankings. Um, it's been a while since I've read it, like, and I probably did not read it with the eyes that I would read it with now, you know, but it's just sometimes it gets I feel like sometimes it falls through the cracks because it doesn't.
It's either too good or it just doesn't like fall in line with like some of the other King stuff that comes out. I think that sometimes it gets overlooked when it should. I would also say that sometimes Frank Darabon and now, um, what's his face? The guy might find again, they tend to overshadow like, oh, these are two of the greatest, like people to adapt.
King's works and it's like, yeah, Rob Reiner has a pretty good track record of adapting King's work as well. Honestly, I think he only did two or three movies, but he did them kind of flawlessly. No notes on like any of the adaptations he did. No, no, I think you're talking about time or like, yeah, listen, I've talked about this before.
I'm going to do this one more time because I think it is absolutely worth talking about. You would be hard pressed to find a director who has a more impressive streak of like five out of five star perfect movies than Rob Reiner's career from 1986 until 1992. I don't know. He's going to hell.
He's like, he did this is final tap and he did the short thing, which are both like really good movies, but then you have standby me, the Princess Bride. When Harry Met Sally misery a few good men like that is just home run after that is five home runs in a row with like no notes on any of those movies. Yeah, not really appreciate it. Not all in the same genre.
Like I feel like anybody now that has a run like that like I can't I can't even think of anybody off the top of my head that has had so many like hits, but I think the only people that I could even think of is like, what is it? Denny the guy did a dude that Danny Villeneuve is that is like he has it's all been sci-fi. It was like a rival and then it's it's all sci-fi and then the guy who does all of the the movies with Emma Stone now all of his movies just seem weird kind of horror adjacent, but like still in real life kind of mixed up. Yeah, like a sort of service real life somehow hybrid like I don't know how you stretch real.
They don't know how you stretch reality so thin to still make it acceptable, but it is. Well, I also think that like we as audiences and like I do put part of the blame on us like God forbid if your first hit is a horror movie and you feel like you followed up with a second horror movie. You're kind of trapped like I look at Ari Aster who like I'm not like the I'm not here like defending Bo is afraid as a masterpiece, but like the biggest complaint that I hear about that movie is like well, it wasn't horror enough like like people want him to just make hereditary and Midsomar over and over and over again. And like to me it's like that's that's a boring filmmaker to me if they just find the one thing that works and then just like fully lean inside which is like even someone like Jordan Peele I do appreciate that like people weren't as in love with nope as I was but I like that he was like, hey, I'm walking away from psychological horror and I'm doing a full blown like mid 70s Spielberg like action film that that has horror elements in it.
It's got some really good scares in it. Good ones dude. Like I haunt you and are not like jump scares. I love that.
I think nope is his best movie. I think nope is his most rewatchable movie. I think I think get out is the best one, but nope is the one that I keep wanting to rewatch over and over again because it is very Spielbergian. Like I watch it and it makes me think about watching Poltergeist.
It makes me think about watching E.T. It makes me think about watching Jaws like he he got what made those movies infinitely rewatchable but people rejected the shit out of nope when it came out because it wasn't us or get out. Like yeah, yeah, I think it's hard not to have that conversation or like to talk about that in that way. But you're said that's so interesting to talk about it in regards to like Rob Reiner who is genre not genre specific, but then also like the like the scale of the stories that he's telling are all relatively the same and I guess like there's this basis in reality and it's kind of crazy that you can have these just really solid like character based movies that are just hit after hit.
I think some people would get tired of it or some people would like latch on to like pitfall of them and they I don't know man. They're all really good. I wonder why King. I wonder why and I don't know misery.
I think as a story from King lends itself to that. Maybe the best. Maybe something like Kerry and maybe something like the Dead Zone could fall into that but lots of other stories of his don't feel as like maybe so grounded, you know, and then the time filmmakers just like not do well with like Firestarter like when Mark Lester did Firestarter in the 80s like it was just a fucking web fart of a movie which was a bomb. I love that.
I love that book. And I like Mark Lester like like a class of 1984 but Firestarter was really was really bad. I'm remembering even when we watched Christine a couple years ago and like how all three of us were like I kind of remembered not liking Christine and then rewatching it being like wow. Carpenter took what is like a kind of a middle of the road, Stephen King book and made it really good like a really like that is an also a really fun adaptation of like not one of my favorites.
I didn't hate reading Christine but like misery was the second King book I ever read. There was my my next door neighbor gave me a box of all of the books he was getting rid of and he only had two Stephen King books in there was Pet Cemetery and Misery and it was my freshman year at Penn State actually I was I needed some side money and you could make some cash at the school gym even though it was a commuter campus and you just sat there at the gym and people just give you their student ID card and work out and then pick up their student ID card but like for a three hour shift you'd maybe have like two people come in. So I that was like the beginning of my writing knocking out like a book every two to three days and I was like I finally read these Stephen King books and I went Pet Cemetery and followed it with misery and that was right at the start of Netflix. So I was like I remember I finished Pet Cemetery and then immediately had the movie shipped to me in the mail the next day so I could watch the movie and then I finished misery and I had the movie shipped to me so I could watch that like immediately after with the book fresh my head and I mean both great adaptations but this was one where I'm like oh they got so much of this perfect and similar to the miss I feel like the changes that they did make are improvements not they're not detrimental changes.
They're their step-ups honestly like I think watching James Kahn's legs snap to a completely different direction way more horrifying than it getting sold off like I know that the long term issues are deeper if he gets his foot cut off but the visual of that that snap is like brutal. You actually didn't read any Stephen King until college. Well as a kid I try I went to big like I loved the it mini series so I kept getting that book out of the library. And then I would get like intimidated by it and then but that was what happens.
The other job that I had Eric will know what I'm talking about Kyle might not my college job was at a place called Habitat in the mall which was like just an incense and head shop and I worked weekdays there and again maybe eight customers a day but we were like right next door to the Barnes and Noble basically so I would just or borders I would literally buy I would buy a book a day and just read the entire book during my like eight hour shift and then turn and say I changed my mind. No I was not. But I did I went on I don't even know if Wikipedia was out of that whatever Internet thing had a list of every Stephen King book and I just started at Kerry and worked my way through his entire catalog in order and I was until like maybe 15 years ago I had read everything and then his output just somehow got even more intensive than I was and I wasn't like loving the newer books the way I like was gobbling up some of those like eighties and early nineties books of his so I just kind of said I think I think I'm done everyone's a while I'd hear like oh this one's great like under the dome or the job was great not no I was thinking the wrong book I was thinking it's a good book it's a good book it's still over a thousand pages and the ending of wet. What's the JFK one where he goes back in time that was 2063 that is the one everyone was reading about that so I did go and buy a copy of that to read and I loved it.
I think his best book I think I mean I have a favorite it's the shining but I think 11 to 63 is and will always be his best book I think that's what was your first king. The shining I was in third grade. No I read it because I was a I have ADHD and I was a little bit of a problem child at an elementary school I just got really bored with everything so like my guidance counselor at our elementary school they had this system where you basically you have a sheet that every single day during every single subject my teacher had to give me a score between zero and five and at the end of the week if I was I think if I got like a certain threshold I would get something that my mom and I would talk about the beginning of the week that it would be like my eyes kind of thing and the first time I did it I was like I want to go out to lunch and I want you to buy me a book and she's like okay so we went to club rockers I had a hot dog and then we went next door to our to bar to nobles and it was whenever the miniseries for the shining had come out. Oh yeah.
Me there is another director who is going to be the king quite a bit I never watched the miniseries. That's not the best of the time. It's okay. It's long but it's good.
King refers it over the movie. I know that. Wow. I was like I want to read that book.
He's probably not going to read this and then I did and it was fucking. You showed her. I loved it and then I got in trouble because I got another one for I think my birthday and I was reading it in class we had something called Rivet. Matt what's Rivet.
Do you remember? Oh my god I can't remember what it stands for but I do remember Rivet. He's saying similar every time R.I.B.E.T. That's right.
I knew basically it was like a 30 minute period where we would read in class and I just even came book with me and the kid next to me did not like reading and he was just looking over and saw inappropriate stuff and told the teacher that their effort was an upload. You just can't be re-encycled a werewolf in. Oh is it awkward okay. I just like bring my hand illustrations just by that kid.
I mean I know you're in third grade but I'd be like so torn as a teacher in that moment of like you know this kid is reading like adult books at an adult level and comprehending it like who am I to be like no put that down and pick up this Dr. Seuss book that you. Up like a teacher. She tried very hard to find a different book that I could like I was it was four past midnight and I was reading the Langoliers and so I had explained to her what it was about like the people wake up on a plane and they don't know where everybody else went and she tried her hard is she's like well here why don't you read this instead and it was hatchet.
She's like it's a kid who his plane crashes and he's stuck in the woods and he has to survive and I was like are there monsters she's like I don't know read the book and find out they're wearing but I mean I. That's that is that is effort and that's ever suggestion and I appreciate it. She didn't go with goosebumps is the thing that shocks me it's like oh you're reading Stephen King here's a goosebumps. I think she already saw me reading goosebumps all the time she's like well you know I think it's kind of YA kind of feeling.
That's Eren Kindergarten shit he's waiting on a goosebumps. Oh boy I don't feel like this is you know usually it falls on one of us to like walk people through the plot line but it's like if you're listening to our movie now you fucking seen misery you don't need us to hold your hand if you haven't I there is there is no fat on this movie so if I were to have to relay it to you I would have to also tell you every detail because it's really there is no there is no fat in this movie like I really don't think so. And also so much of the movie is the performances and there's a lot we can convey while talking about the plot beats but none of those convey like just the incredible range that Kathy Pete shows in this movie where it's like a combination of sometimes she's like the most sugary sweet lame Midwestern woman other times she's an unhinged psychopath and at her scariest she's both simultaneously like she's got a crazy look in her eye but she's still talking like a normal boring Midwestern woman like it's it's pretty impressive like well well deserved Academy Award win on Kathy Bates for this one something I did not think about until this second because I wrote down a single note while watching this movie and then I just got sucked into the movie and forgot to write down but the very beginning of this movie James Kahn is driving listening to Motown music and he's listening to the song Shotgun and it did not dawn on me until this moment but the only piece of music you hear in this entire movie is a song named after the only thing used to kill the only person in this movie yeah yeah that's hysterical I never thought about that and also I do have to say I'll pass the beat without a doubt like you know without a doubt like every every little detail is so good and also so I don't know it's like one of those things where yes that's kind of a simple but also easily passed over thing that doesn't you don't lose out by not knowing that or not realizing it until the very second like you know it just makes it better but it doesn't you know distract I will say that that death that you're referring to buster who is just so good probably the most devastating death of a law enforcement agent in that I've ever seen I've never affected by the death of the police but man when buster fucking gets it it is so I was upset I was like oh maybe all cops aren't buster yeah I really changed my heart and the the blue line is only for buster so I digress but it's not kind of gory too y'all that kill is shockingly gory when it happens and that's part of um I think that comes from the fact that this movie has it's like one of my favorite things about well or not my favorite things it's one of the things that it makes me really love a horror movie is when the characters are not stupid none of the characters in this movie are stupid they don't make the wrong decisions because they're they're normal human beings they're not making decisions that will make them fit into plot points like james con does not sit there and just freak out at an 11 the entire time he actually is like okay this woman is insane yeah I can't piss her off because that is a detriment to me I need to figure out how to do this and they manage to show him have this internal monologue with himself and then deliver it only in dialogue because that's one of the things about the book it's all in his head it's all from his point of view so he's thinking all of that but the movie lets the audience know it's like he's not he's not letting this woman do these things he's not trying to like just sit there and do nothing he thinks this is the only way he can actually survive the situation and everybody gets up yeah it's such a cool balance of of that dialogue and then they like and then just watching him figure out those next steps they would hurt like I mean it's like it is like a western level it's really really crazy it's it's interesting I'm like looking at the um I'm looking at a couple little factoids and tips on the IMDB trivia page which of which there is I mean I think it's like over 100 pieces of trivia and what I'm finding really interesting is first of all do you know who was originally offered the role of Annie Wilkin uh offered the role of Annie but turned it down because she thought the role was too violent I think I thought I did at some point but now I don't remember anymore I'm gonna say it was it like a somebody who was a kind of a bigger name in the 90s um I would say that this is a character actress I would say that this is a famous actress definitely throughout the 80s into the 90s and part of Halloween Halloween for 90s kids would be empty without her in it oh not that middler that middler really that middler was offered the role of Annie and turned it down because it was too violent and then she said it was one of the dumbest that decision she's ever made was turning it down I don't know because I'm not sure if I don't think you would have done it I'm all there but I think that Kathy Bates the reason it worked for her is what was this Kathy Bates first movie or was it like her first starring role because I know it was like her first movie but this like really put her on the map I think she was a directorist and I think that's why she did well is because she's like I know how to kind of have these ebbs and flows where it's not just I'm constantly a psychopath I 11 and everybody needs to know well that's what I was gonna say I think that bedmiddler wouldn't have and I love that mother but I think that middler plays almost two camp sometimes and I think she would have went too far with the insane and not not subtle enough for like the first you know obviously you're watching this or you know it's based on Stephen King book you've read it but like for the first 20 30 minutes of this movie it is the setup to a hallmark romantic comedy you know what I mean like it it's it is like woman saves the life of romance author whose lost love in writing romance and like nurses him back to health and like you know usually by the end of that movie they both discover their love of christmas and moving together and he starts like writing new romance novels well maybe what if it's called misery loves company exactly there we go um but the other thing I read which I think is really telling is William Goldman who we also can't forget wrote this amazing screenplay writer um he revealed that very few actors wanted to play the role of Paul because Annie overshadowed the character so much and said that they had offered the movie role to Warren Beatty and he declined it because he said after the hobbling scene Paul is nothing but a loser for the rest of the movie um and Goldman just was like no I'm not taking that out that's important like we're we're pushing it that far and James Connell's one of the people that was like no I think I think I can make this work and to his credit his character whatever Warren Beatty thinks happens after that hobbling scene like I think James Conne shines as the guy fighting for survival at that point yeah he's used he's figured out how to use all his tools while he's down and out to then like uh not I do think that like Annie still I mean just the performance is still so top tier I don't think it's overshadowing it definitely still is strong in that moment but James Conne has now used all of his like life experience or all of that experience within that house to then have this final moment and it's like all of it comes together so well I thought it's great because he does play it I mean he has subtle Jimmy Conne doesn't have like he's not like a huge range at least as Paul Sheldon it's not like enormous in the same way that any Wilkes is but I think that that works for him he's like he's a seasoned writer who has that court side of the Knicks like who has been in situations that he's had to like schmooze or like finagle or like figure out how to do these things kind of slickly um and he has to apply that here too which I think works really great I think it's not I really fucking love this movie all right I think you're the biggest Stephen King uh fan and probably the largest wealth of knowledge here I know that the dark half is very much about him being unmasked as Richard Bachmann anytime that he's writing a character a character that is an author dealing with something like this I have to wonder is there some autobiographical element that's tied to misery that we're that we might be missing here this was I think um I forget what book came out but uh his wife came home from from running errands one day and somebody who had been stalking Stephen King had broken into their house and so he kind of wrote it based on that like he didn't do anything she just showed up and I think she kind of talked to this guy down they called the police and he got taken away and they were like okay he's obviously mentally ill and they he was like he got help or something um so that's what started him writing this is because like oh I want to write about an author who is kind of held captive by his biggest fan but he what he didn't realize is the whole thing is a metaphor for cocaine and this is one of those things where it's like when you're writing a book a lot of stuff in your subconscious starts to come out in it and I think he even mentioned something later in life when looking back on if he was rereading it he's like I didn't realize this was about me on cocaine for so long for so much of his career in the 80s and basically Annie Wilkes is cocaine to him that like basically forcing him to write these books that he may not even feel like wanting to write and kind of hobbling him and keeping him trapped there and just like it's like I think that's the most fascinating thing about this whole movie end book is that he wrote it doing all of these drugs and everything and did not realize until it was over that oh this is I need to get help because I think he's doing this came out well this was 87 and I'm on the Wikipedia page for the book right now and this is another interesting thing it goes all the way back to what we were talking about in the first five minutes of this episode but King said one of the other inspirations of misery was the reaction fans had to his 1984 novel The Eyes of the Dragon many fans rejected it because it was simply an epic fantasy book with no horror and that hit Paul's feelings of being chained to the misery books by his fans were an expression of his feelings about being chained to horror fiction oh my god when she shouts misery lives misery lives I was that the hardest I've ever had it hit for me because I think I'm like realizing what Matt is asking about you're talking about Eric is Stephen King as a writer which is so apparent in a lot of what he does whether he knows it or not as he you know what he's doing is like the autobiographical portion of it and just having the response of the cocaine and he looks just yelling misery lives I don't know it just it just really hit me this time build up to that where she tells the story about going to the movies for the serialized action stories and like the car blowing up with a person inside of it and going back the next week and it revealing that the person had rolled out of the car and her just being like but that's not what you should like it's because we've all had those I mean they've made jokes about that on The Simpsons even where it's like you'd watch you watch those like 1950 serialized things and they would do that shit all the time constantly and like yeah a psychotic fan who's obsessed with like every might like every single detail is a that is not going to be an acceptable explanation so like the idea of starting with just like hey misery didn't die in childbirth and she's like no you wrote that she did we can't lie we you have to figure out a way to bring her back I feel like anything that happened with the grace of God you know and so I was we've come to find out with with Annie Wilkes that God gave God prevails and God can change these things and make them happen I think that's another thing that makes Annie Wilkes kind of a relatable character hopefully I'm not you guys aren't like what are you talking about she is not but it's like no I do has that where they have seen some kind of form of media or something where it's like why did you make this mistake it's like I know that this isn't right how did you do this why would you do this do you not care and it's like you do they do it's just there's a lot more going on than that there's yeah listen Eric when you first like talks her not talks are down but like when he first addresses that it's so and he plays it just so like matter of fact like it's not it's not a battle like the answer is there it's like that's just not what how it goes but she's taking it so so hard Eric don't feel bad for relating to Annie because next week's movie I relate to the main character and he is a psychopath who stems a lot of people so like you know there's a lot of good too he does a lot of good no that's that is what I think is always going to be more interesting about an empathetic villain than just a completely off the deep end villain the scotium momentum visa infinite plus card gives me 15% cashback for the first three months up to 300 dollars with cash like that I can stream at free because I've got enough distractions conditions apply scotium bank you're richer than you think if you want a 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it's the kind of drink that turns in every day moment into something a little more special right refreshing and crafted for people who appreciate the real thing is at the chill jusile in your local grocery store today and say yes to simple my name is Peter but i'm also spider man this july with a threat to anyone the world may have forgotten peter parker i'm just a neighbor family neighbor he hasn't forgotten them sometimes spider man has to do the hard thing yeah it's my responsibility dr. banner i didn't know you could get that big spider man brand new day in theaters july 31st i just want to apologize i'm sorry to everyone i was very naive and very stupid and i shouldn't have put other people in danger i am so sorry for everything that has happened because in spite of what joshua says it's now all my fault i insisted our listeners subscribe to frights school on apple podcasts i insisted they leave us reviews i insisted that they give us a five star rating and it's all because of me that we're here now and we're being hunted only wanted to make good content for our listeners i'm so scared joshua is that you great chat everybody uh Kyle if you were showing if you had friends over and you all were watching misery what's the what's the second feature going to be after you turn off misery in the mouth of madness you're doing not yeah yeah it's you know not well not about a writer as specifically i do think that it vibes really well and it's going to be a good B picture like it's going to be a lot of fun uh that's my that's my pick how about you Eric do you want to go next or do you need a little more time um i you go through you an ex i'm torn between so um i this is a heavy ass movie so i'm gonna lighten the mood but i'm gonna stick with another rob ryaner steven king collab and i'm gonna watch stand by me after this and just perk up my spirits a bit because that is a beautiful movie might be i mean that arpens is brighter pretty tightly juggle in for best uh rob ryaner movie for me so so i'm i'm torn between i was gonna say the hate plate but i don't really want it because like for me that was like oh you're trapped in one location snow yeah it's kind of like this psychological thriller thing that would be cool yeah that's a long night yeah that's like that's like a five hour sit down watch i don't know uh they also turn that into like a tv show on netflix where i think they literally re-edited the movie to be a tv series i don't think they've reached out to be vlogs long yeah like include everything i was like i watched two episodes of it and i was like this is still just the first two hours of the movie i was like i don't know if i can't show so i saw the other thing um the other thing i was trying to find i think of uh just a movie that has another psychopath of that people kind of can enjoy you know that they're but also like oh i kind of i do like you and it is sad when you die even though you do have to die for this but yeah sounds a lance of the easy one but i don't i don't really want to love the two of them i feel like so i guess i'm gonna go need to lay it's a long way it is all right well you can always let us know what your double features are by hitting us up on any of our socials we are hmn and podcasts on both instagram facebook and letterbox you can check out our patreon patreon.com backslash hmn podcast to get some bonus episodes get early releases get videos of us uh go on hmnpodcast.dashery.com to buy some merch visit our website hmnpodcast.com where you can see our entire back catalog shoot us an email at hmnpodcast.com and join our newsletter and hey if i'm saying these ways too fast all the links are in the show notes so just go there and find them now we're at the last portion of the show but we're going to do it very differently Kyle you and i are just very quickly gonna say something we watched that we think people should check out and then we are just gonna let eric talk all about better than that so Kyle you pick this one what's something you want to promote fast i um i saw frankenstein i saw frankenstein i saw frankenstein it's great i really loved it i did see it in the theater i do think that that has an effect uh but i don't know because i also didn't watch it on nefflex or my home yet so i don't know and i kind of plan to re-watch it i thought it was great very immersive uh you know i think that del torogate's a lot of flack for being um i don't know uh for romansizing uh the monsters the way that he does i think sometimes that like really irks people and i thought that this sure didn't irk me so uh frankenstein's great all right um i uh watched a documentary on pcock called downy wrote that uh it is about jim downy who was a writer at saturday night live on and off from 1977 until 2013 um he's one of the longest tenured writers at s&l his main thing was weekend update um it's a fascinating watch about a fascinating mind uh really dives into how he kind of shaped the politics of s&l during his time like he wrote he wrote the first debate sketch the like al gore george bush in vamish debate sketch and from that point he has basically come on to do every single presidential debate even if he's no longer in the writing room they bring him in for those debate sketches because he just knows how to watch something happening on television and go all right here's all the funny things that we can kind of bring up from from that moment um if you don't recognize the name jim downy you might remember him from billy madison where he uh tells billy that all of us are dumber for having heard him give an answer uh which they would say reveal is he made that line up on the day like that entire response he made up on the day and sandler's like showed up and made the most quoted line in the entire movie um so yeah it's a really cool dive into a great comedic mind now i want to talk about a great writing mind and that is eric j-brown there the devil gonna be out next month because this is coming out in december gonna come out next month but people can still pre-order it uh this is this is you stepping away from the from the post-apocalyptic romances and workplace romances and just going for a straight old-fashioned you know lifetime movie thriller right on tell me more uh so it's a uh psychological thriller about a homeless teen who gets arrested and when he's waiting at the police station he's where they're gonna send him back to his parents and he looks over and sees a board of missing children posters and there's one kid who disappeared ten years ago but his age progress picture looks a lot like him so he takes that kid's identity thinking that cops will be like oh well you're a missing kid we'll take off the handcuffs and he'll be able to run away but before he can do any of that the parents show up and go and take him home and so now he has to lie to these people and find a way to escape them but what he does not realize is that kid just didn't disappear he was most likely murdered and the lead suspects are this entire family that he is now trapped with um so he and the next door neighbor who's like a true crime obsessed podcaster um are kind of investigating the disappearance of trying to figure out who it was before whoever maybe killed this kid finishes the job on him now right on dude so where did any of that where did those like aspects of traits come from why the shift uh is somebody after you is somebody gonna make you write post-apocalyptic romance after this like what is what is he's here if i know uh yeah all the emails i got from people are just like hey can you write another one i know that guys i finished it i gave you the happy ending the second one do you really want to be a torture these poor kids for any more time also there are adults now it's not even the genre there are the age category i write in so i get the agents themselves out yeah they're gone so i want to be i want to be careful because it's like if anybody keeps asking me for them and you i have been thinking of some ideas i'm always kind of thinking but since they're the adults they aren't the main characters anymore which means they could go it'll be a little easier to do at any time yeah you should just respond if people ask anymore you should this is so much of a waste of time you should uh write a fake first chapter to an extremely boring uninteresting prequel before the virus where it's just about their life before then and anyone who asks me like oh here's a sneak peek at what i'm working on so one of the things whenever the first it's dual point POV so uh there's like it goes back and forth between each of the characters POVs um that's hard to do because you have to if you if somebody gets the rear puts the book down in the middle of the chapter and then picks it up later they have to go back to the beginning of the chapter to see who they're like reading and i had to like my agent and i before we went to instabinnate it to a publisher we were working on just making sure that they sounded as realistic and different as possible and one of the ways i did that was i actually wrote this i guess it would be like alternate universe fan fiction where the two of them meet in college and the world doesn't end and everything and like how they hate each other at first and then slowly start to like each other um so i could do that i could send that one over because the first thing the first chapter is like the bird that gets the bird flew that wipes out the world and then it runs into a window and then dot course in fact anybody and then because that's what you already have it you already have it ready to go okay i do i could start setting that out but then everybody like i love this because it is cute it was my exercise of like i think it's maybe 20 000 words of just their first interaction and then how they become friends and then eventually it but i mean i could do that alas yeah i think did you did you approach this differently than how you so and you were just talking about that being a funny exercise and but i make me curious about approaching this style of for the new book uh definitely then you then you did those other ones did you switch anything around did you um how many not any sort of practices for this i don't think i changed well i mean the other things i changed was um this one's a little bit dialed back i guess i would have to say um more than i was originally going to do they there's two things that my publisher asked of me uh and one was that i was going to do this as a dual deal v and i wasn't able to because it was going to be for the main character's point of view and uh the villains point of view and my publisher was like oh you can't do that for all of these reasons but also it may be underlendingly dark and we're too scared about that i was like okay fine oh so i think i got a way to kind of make these moments hit a little harder because it's um things are happening when this kid is at the house where it's just small things at first um but then like they get bigger and progressively more dangerous and uh i was i had to figure out a way to still keep that interesting when like if a if an alarm goes off in the middle of the night because there's a gas leak that's not really that scary once you're like oh we probably just left the gas on when you're making two whatever but i had to figure out different ways to kind of increase tension elsewhere other than this one specific story and then um at the end the other thing may have you change uh the last i want to say maybe 50 to 60 pages of the book are all one or like one location is the climax and uh they were concerned that not the readers who had picked up my other books it may be too intense for them so i'm always asked i write books about queer kids and i'm always saying oh is your publisher ever gonna it's like telling you oh you can't write this because you'll get banned or whatever and nobody has ever my publishers have never told me to change anything until this book and it was hey can you dial back the intensity just a little bit it's a little too much we think for the yeah that's it so i mean then they asked me to do it four times too there's four different edits where it's one by the fourth time like i was cutting out like lines of of pros of descriptions and stuff but they were like oh this is a little too intense and like certain dialogue and everything and so finally on the fourth time i just see their notes it was the uk my five two different publishers in the u.s and uk they both give me notes but the u.s.
publisher usually is the one that combines everything this time she just kind of left it in she's like hey there's some notes in at the end uh that the uk would like you to see and i go and look and it's just highlighted like cut this cut this cut this please cut this please cut this i cut most of it but no yeah there was one thing that they told me to cut and i was like that's gonna stay in there because i'm at least hinting i'm not telling you what is actually happening and i'm letting the reader fill in all of the blanks and i think that one little piece is what you what they need to kind of make it even creepier so nice nice that's hard to do that i feel like that's challenging there's so many uh rounds of that especially for that last moment but good for you for keeping the thing in that's gonna make them think looking exactly okay yeah it may have been too intense because even the reviews now are like oh my god the ending is so intense but it's like they're saying it isn't like an exciting way so i was i'm thinking if it was as intense people may have been like oh at the ending was a little too dark for me i didn't like it i think it's also one of the things where i got to give you kudos because i know what the scene is and it is pretty horrific for a while a novel like it's really quite different but then there's also on the page horror that's pretty fucked up too but like i feel like what they were it felt like the what they were asking was could this character do anything else to torture these characters besides this decision that you've made and you like actively were just like you actively were like well i'm not going to remove this because this is what's going to happen but i will make it less i will cut sentences from this so that it's not as uh as kinder trauma levels of horrifying when when the teenagers are reading it in their own time um so it i couldn't do anything else because it is the most appropriate thing i'm sorry i couldn't think of anything else that would have been as appropriate listen you're you're getting into a little bit of like queer history that people don't talk about in there as well so i think like yeah you had to keep that in there um eric thank you as always for joining us sitting here and chatting misery with us everybody go uh pre-order your copy right now of better the devil and also why you're out at subscribe to the yay okay podcast eric uh hosts it with alissa lube and every once in a while i show up so stay tuned for that and we will be back next week with our our christmas episode of horror movie night one is the rewards go further now a shell scene plus members can fill up on points at the pump on snacks car wash and more plus scotia van contangerine car holders can get up to 10 cents per liter in value with a linked card new rewards partners new ways to save and earn a shell get more go further participating shell locations conditions and limits apply actual value may be lower visit shell dot c a slash loyalty for full details you're listening to the geeksy network