← Last Podcast On The Left
Last Podcast On The Left
King Sorrow: An Interview with Joe Hill
00:49:53
The boys sit down with modern master of horror, author Joe Hill joins the show to talk about his new horror fantasy novel King Sorrow, his journey as a struggling young writer, how his earlier stories helped shape this latest descent into darkness, and what it’s like to see his nightmares adapted for the screen. From twisted family legacies to haunting childhood tales, this one proves horror runs deep in the blood!
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A
You'll float too. From the director of it comes a.
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B
Horrifying new story set in 1960s dairy.
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A
Maine that explores the origins of Pennywise the clown.
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Get ready to go back to where it all began. The new HBO original series.
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It welcome to Derry premieres Sunday, 9pm on HBO.
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B
Max.
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C
The thought of getting a degree can be straight up terrifying. We get it. But Southern New Hampshire University makes it easier than you'd think. They have over 200 degr can earn online. No. Set class times so your social life stays alive and well. And low online tuition that won't scare your bank account. College doesn't have to be a horror story. Visit snhu. Edu lastpodcast to get started. That's snhu. Edu lastpodcast. Hope I don't screw it up today. It's an important day. We got a nice guy and I can't it up.
- [01:08]
D
Jesus, stop saying you're a mess. Yep, you're a mess. Well, I mean, I'm excited to read to. I read some of this stuff actually.
- [01:16]
C
I actually. For the very first time. Not that we've ever made Eddie read anything before.
- [01:20]
A
No.
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C
But I have a picture of Eddie reading comic books. That is the sweetest thing I've ever seen.
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B
It's incredible.
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C
It looks like. It's just so nice. He looks like an ex con that is rehabilitating himself.
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D
I actually want to finish it.
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C
I know.
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D
That's the crazy thing.
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C
Even like this, there's a gag. Tomorrows tomorrow's books.
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A
Welcome to the last podcast on the left. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Dangerous Minds, Henry Zabrowski.
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C
I'm going to teach you something.
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A
Educating the people. And we have also the man. We're going to send a picture of you reading comic books to your old football buddies. It's Ed Larson.
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B
Ah, go ahead. They hate me anyway. I quit for weeks.
- [02:06]
C
I think that's the smartest thing he ever did.
- [02:09]
B
Oh, man.
- [02:10]
D
But yeah, no, it was a lot of great lock and keys. Awesome. I can't wait to see how it ends. How many books is this thing?
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C
Six. Entirely six graphic novels.
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A
Five or six. Depends on it. Depends on what? It depends on what collection you get. But before we get into that, do.
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D
You think I'll get the gist of it in three?
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B
Yeah.
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A
Today's guest is a legendary author whose works include Heart Shaped Box Horns, Nosferatu the Fireman and his upcoming novel King Sorrow. He's also a fantastic writer of comic books whose works include Basket Full of Heads and a comic that I consider to be one of the best series of the last 20 years, Locke and Key. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Joe Hill.
- [02:57]
B
Hey. That's very kind. That's very kind. I appreciate it.
- [03:00]
C
Now that we've blown you up about your books, what's your body count? How many area. Let's talk about how many ladies you've run through.
- [03:09]
B
Oh, I assume. No, no, I'm a horror guy. When you. When you ask me what my body count is, I assume you. You're asking how many people I've killed in the novels.
- [03:18]
C
Actually, that would be great if you would kind of lay that out. That'd be awesome.
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B
You know, it's quite a few because. Because the fourth novel, the Fireman, is an apocalyptic novel about a pathogen called Dragon Scale. It's like a fungal infection, but it's actually sort of beautiful. You get it on you and it looks like a black tattoo, sort of, you know, suggestive and, you know, pretty swirls and so on. But when you stress out, it starts to smoke. And if you can't control your anxiety and your anger and your fear, you burst into flames and die of spontaneous combustion. And so this is all over the world and the whole cities are going up in smoke and half the country. Country is on fire. I gotta think I killed probably two thirds of the world's population in that one.
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C
That's huge.
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D
That's great.
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A
Billions. Congratulations.
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B
Yeah.
- [04:10]
C
That's amazing.
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B
Still, though. Still, though, not a. I'm not a. Not a touch on my dad, you know.
- [04:17]
C
Oh, well, that was different.
- [04:19]
B
You know, not to get into the elephant in the room, but my dad's a pretty. He's not. He's a. You know, he's also a horror writer.
- [04:26]
C
Yeah, a little bit.
- [04:28]
B
Yeah.
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D
Larry King, great interviewer.
- [04:30]
B
He's done a few books. Done a few books and shows tremendous promise, you know, And I feel like if he keeps at it, who knows? Sky's the limit.
- [04:39]
C
I actually view your father as a musician first.
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B
Wow. You'd be. You'd be the. You'd be the only person that I've ever met who considers him a musician first.
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C
You should have said.
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B
You should have said you consider him a tennis player first. You know.
- [05:01]
C
When you write your books, I honestly, like, I heard you talk about another, like, fantasy series that you were working on. Like, you had an idea that you were kind of like, work. Like an old interview of yours that you were saying a process. Like, do you just start with, like a full idea or people like, is it A hook or is it a.
- [05:22]
B
It's always the hook. It's always the hook. You always start with, you know, you always start with something that makes you laugh or you think, oh, that's weird. I never thought about it that way. I mean, I remember when I was, like, I was probably 30 or 31, and I was thinking about that phrase pop art, and I was thinking, what if you did pop art? And so I wrote a story about a juvenile delinquent who becomes friends with a kid named Arthur Roth, who's made of plastic and filled with air, and he weighs 6 ounces, and if he sat in a sharpened pencil, it would kill him. You know, and that was like. And that was like, some people I. You know, I wrote that. I mean, now we're talking 20. Over 20 years ago. And I still. I still kind of wonder if maybe I peaked early. Maybe that was the best one, you know, but it was sort of like. It was sort of like, what was that film Ryan Gosling did where his date was an inflatable sex doll?
- [06:20]
C
Oh. Oh, my. It was like My Life With Doll or something like that.
- [06:24]
B
It was like that, but. But about 80% less pervy, which is my failing. But I was a young writer, and I didn't know, you know, I still had a lot to learn. So, I mean, if the, you know, if that short story was too timid, it's on me.
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D
Yeah.
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A
Why? I find it really interesting that you said that the first thing you mentioned as a horror writer is something that makes you laugh. Is that, like. Because. Because, you know, we all. We know that, you know, horror and comedy are, you know, intertwined cousins. Yeah, Very kissing cousins. Is that something that you kind of keep in mind?
- [07:00]
B
Well, you know. You know, the thing is, is both comedy and horror are trying to get part past the part of the brain that thinks and into the reptile brain, you know, where you just react. So. So if you're, you know, if you're watching the Three Stooges and Mo picks up a mallet and bashes Larry over the head, you laugh. If you're watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Leatherface takes a mallet, you know, to a teenager and bashes her brains in and blood splatters in the camera, you scream.
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C
But crucial, you could say you laugh.
- [07:34]
B
Well, if you're me, you laugh.
- [07:37]
A
Convulsions can be funny.
- [07:39]
B
We know this at times. You know. You know, the thing is, is it's the same scene. It's fundamentally the same scene. And your response to it is. Is a is a nonverbal vocalization. Know, it's that shout of laughter or that shout of horror. And certainly as a writer, that's what I'm always going for. And if I can't get one, I'll get the other, you know, and there's a lot of. In the books and the stories and stuff, there's a lot of swerving between shit that I thought was funny, you know, and stuff that I'm hoping will horrify you. And you know, you know, I notice.
- [08:13]
C
I notice that in your work all the time, I think that that's one of the coolest parts of your work is the moments of levity mixed with true horror. Like, and it swings back and forth. I love that. You don't really know what' ever going to happen. You're so good at that, dude. You're so good at taking the audience on an individual path. I wonder now though, do you think that the audience has so much information that it's almost hard to scare them originally?
- [08:39]
B
Well, it's almost kind of like an arms race, you know, because the audience has seen a lot and they've seen a lot of the same movies you've seen, they've read a lot of the same books. And so the question is always, what am I going to, how am I going to, how am I gonna fuck with them this time? What am I gonna do this time that they've never seen before, actually? So I wrote a short story years and years ago called the Cape. And it's about this burnout. He's in his late 20s, he just lost his girlfriend, he just lost his job, he's got his court case coming up, you know, it's all really bad. And he's living and he's gone back to live in his mother's basement. And he's down there, it's really cold one night and he's fumbling around for a blanket and he finds the cape he used to wear as a child when he was preten to be a superhero, only it really makes him fly. And, and it sounds heartwarming and sort of, you know, uplifting, no pun intended, but actually not everyone should have superpowers. That's really the point of the story. Yeah. And this guy goes on to misuse his power. You know, we already knew he was not a good guy. And it gets worse. And it was adapted into a pretty well liked comic book by a buddy of mine named Jason Chiramella. And that first issue just straight adapted the short story and it got nominated for an Eisner Award, which is like the industry's Oscar. But then people wanted more. And so Jason began to build it out into a continuing story. And in the third issue, you know, Eric, who is our anti hero, you know, the cops have started to get onto him because he's done some. He's killed some people and they're hanging out in front of his house and he decides he's gotta deal with them. So he flies to a nearby zoo with a log ch. And because the bear, the cape sort of gives him superpower. So he uses the log chain to pick up a bear and he flies over the car and he drops the bear into their convertible. And then he lands and he's walking down the street and he's talking on his cell phone and behind him you can see the car shaking back and forth and like the guy screaming and bullets going off and, you know, bear claws swiping. And like when that issue came out, the online response just exploded. And ever since then, Jason and I and some other guys who worked on the comic have always a shorthand, which is that every once in a while you have to drop the bear. You know, you have to. That's what people are paying for. They're paying for the moment you're going to drop the bear and they're going to see some crazy shit they've never seen before. And it's going to, you know, and that's what they're going to talk about later. If you can do that. You know, if you can do that, that's. That's like 85% of the job. And then, I don't know, Maybe the other 15% is trying to touch the human heart, but really, who really cares? I mean, the bear comes first.
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C
And we agree.
- [11:21]
D
Absolutely.
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A
Well, I mean, in the realm of comics, like, like your career went from short stories to a novel and then straight into lock and key. Like, you know, it's like, boom, boom, boom.
- [11:32]
B
You almost got it. I was actually a failed. I was short stories. And then. And then I got into comic books first. So I was a failed novelist and a working comic book writer before I ever sold a novel length story. I wrote, I wrote three novels that I couldn't sell to save my life. And then I spent three years writing a fourth book, this massive epic fantasy that became an enormous international bestseller in my imagination. But in real life, it was turned down by every editor in New York City. It was turned down by every editor in London. And then for a final humiliating kick in the crotch, it was turned down by every publisher in Canada, which is like, no matter how low you've dropped, drop further to fall. You gotta go to France, right? You know, actually, actually it's a joke, but I'm pretty sure that James Cain, the great noir writer of the Postman Always Rings Twice and stuff like that, or maybe it was Jim Thompson, one of those noir guys, actually was. Couldn't get published in America anymore, but the French loved that. You know, it was really nihilistic and dark and sexy and, you know, terrible. And they loved that. So he was getting public anyway, you know, but. But I had written some short stories. A few of them have gotten in best of collections or won prizes. And on the basis of that, I won the chance to write a comic book from Marvel about Spider Man. And that was my big break was an 11 page Spider man story called Fanboys, which was about three pretty sordid and disreputable comedians who have a podcast. You'd relate. And they get their kicks pretending to be superheroes without powers and screwing themselves up. Actually, it was kind of a riff on Jackass. And so that was what my comic was about. And Spider man is only sort of tangentially in it, but that was it. And so I was. And I had sold Lock and Key, although the issues hadn't come out. I sold Lock and Key to IDW before Heart Shaped Box, my first novel, came out. And I sold it to IDW by telling them the whole thing was gonna be six issues long.
- [13:50]
A
Exactly.
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B
And they believed me. And I was only off by about 30 issues and seven years. And, you know, but I didn't really know anything. I was kind of clueless. And so I guess I had this idea I could fit all this story into six issues. And I remember thinking by issue, midway through issue three, I was thinking, whoa, I'm. Fuck. I'm not gonna get. I'm gonna get like 8% of this into the first six issues. What am I gonna do? You know, when I was ready to grovel to get six more issues if the series was a flop, because I thought, all right, I got a lousy ending, but I can. I can wrap it up in 12 issues if I have to. But fortunately, fortunately it took off and. And you know, and we had the TV series and we had a TV show and we had a comic book and we had a, you know, a TV show and. And we had. Actually, we secretly had three TV shows, which is kind of weird, but, you know, and it all worked out. Yeah, we had. We had. It was the lock and Key they filmed three different pilots across five years before we finally sold our show to Netflix.
- [14:56]
A
Wow.
- [14:56]
C
Show show business is a wonderful, reasonable place.
- [15:01]
B
Yeah, totally. You know. You know, actually the second pilot, the thing which still amazes me is the second pilot didn't get on tv. And it was amazing. Just no one's ever made any. Just incredible. It was directed by Andy Muschietti right after he directed it, Chapter one. And it was just unrelentingly frightening and full of heart and stuff. And we did it for Hulu and, and everyone loved it. And then Hulu decided not to make it. And Carlton Cuse, who was the producer, said to a production guy at Hulu, well, what kind of shows do you want to make? And the production guy, he didn't understand why they weren't going forward either. He said, I'd make this all over again. What was happening was one of these giant corporate things where Disney was buying Hulu and so they didn't kind of know how to make anything because Disney was kind of like, you know, we.
- [15:59]
C
Don'T know what we're going to do with you. Yes.
- [16:01]
B
We haven't decided. Right, exactly. So we got lost in the corporate shuffle.
- [16:05]
A
Wow.
- [16:05]
D
Now you talk about your first three books that you written for with including a long fantasy, one that never, that never. That never got released. Is this a well that you could, that you reach back into or you just like fudge it? I hate this now.
- [16:19]
B
So the new book is called King Sarah. Right. And it's, and it's, it's a doorstop. It's my first book in almost 10 years.
- [16:26]
C
You know, that's a thick ass book. I can't wait. I can't wait.
- [16:32]
B
Like, well, if you, if you drop it on your foot, I can't be responsible for broken. You know, I hope you have health care. The, you know, I, I got married again in 2018 and I knew I was gonna, I was gonna dedicate the book to my wife and I wanted to impress her and you, you know, the trouble a guy can get into when he wants to impress his best girl, you know, and, and so I like, you know, it got bigger and bigger. I thought it would just be like essentially the first 200 pages. And then I just thought, well, and what if this happens? And then what if this happened? So I wound up writing almost like four books of material as one single novel. And it's got, you know, it's got a dragon fighting F16s. It's got, you know, an Indiana Jones style plunge into a Trolls Trap filled cave.
- [17:27]
C
We can't wait.
- [17:28]
B
It's got, it's got a drunken brawl on roller skates. I mean, I packed just about everything I could think of into it. And also because it is 900 pages long, you know, in a short story you can be sort of introspective and people don't because it's only, you know, it's like 7,000, 8,000 words. You give people 900 pages, you got to mash the pedal to the floor right away and keep it there because you know, the worst thing you can do to a reader is make it a really slow burn. And they get 150 pages in and they lose hope because they just think, oh man, there's like 750 pages left to go. I don't think I could do it. So what you want them to do is you want the pages to fly so quickly they're hardly aware of how fast they're moving through the book.
- [18:09]
A
All this.
- [18:09]
B
But I haven't forgotten your question. So I said all this because part one of the book is called the Briars. And the Briars was the third unpublished novel. And I. And the setting is a house, a manor, you know, sort of big estate called the Briars, you know, that's walled off from the rest of its main community that's on the ocean. And so I thought, I'm just going to. When I was working with the book, I thought, I'm just going to stick the location from the Briars into King Sorrow. Why not use it? I always, I always liked it. Other stuff from other failed novels found its way into King Sorrow. So I wrote a book in between Heart shaped box and horns. I wrote a disastrous novel called the Surrealist Glass. But it had one really cool idea idea, and it was the glass itself. And the glass is in King Sorrow. So I finally found a story for it. So I kind of feel like. I kind of feel like no work is wasted, you know, I mean, I mean, how many podcasts have you guys done at this point?
- [19:20]
C
Thousands.
- [19:21]
A
Thousands.
- [19:21]
C
Yeah.
- [19:23]
B
Let's face it, most of them sucked, right? But it didn't matter. It didn't matter.
- [19:28]
C
This is our best show yet. This is the number one that we've done.
- [19:33]
B
Eventually it would all come to fruition in this conversation with me, you know, and so that's. So it wasn't wasted. It wasn't wasted time. It probably felt meaningless. Yeah.
- [19:43]
C
No, no, no, no. Yeah, of course.
- [19:45]
B
Pointless.
- [19:45]
A
And.
- [19:48]
B
Probably stewing an existential despair for.
- [19:50]
C
Well, that's true. That is actually true. Yeah.
- [19:53]
B
You know, and, and, but now staring into the dishwasher together, and your lives have meaning.
- [19:59]
C
Thank you, Mr. Hill.
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B
Thank you, Mr. Hill. I'm glad to, I'm glad to. I'm glad I could, you know.
- [20:05]
A
Well, I use the word disastrous when, when we were talking.
- [20:12]
B
Yeah. No, hey. Oh, no, no. That's enough.
- [20:18]
A
With novels. Like, with something like a novel, like with us, you know, it's, we're, you know, things are somewhat disposable. We come in and out. We do this every single week. We do this a couple times a week. But with like a novel, it takes so much time, so much effort. At what point do you realize that.
- [20:34]
B
A novel is disastrous? Well, I haven't been in that situation in a while. Exactly. You know, it's been a while since I wrote A Real Smoke and Turd.
- [20:47]
C
When was your last big piece of shit?
- [20:54]
B
You know, I mean, sometimes I worked on, you know, between the Fireman, which was my novel in 2016, and King Sorrow. I did fool around with a novel called up the Chimney down that was sort of like a romantic. It was kind of like a rom com almost, but sort of like one of the. Don't make that face. Okay?
- [21:19]
C
You're allowed. You're allowed.
- [21:22]
B
I wasn't stepping that far out of my comfort zone. It was kind of, it had kind of a rom com quality, but it was also like a Hitchcockian suspense story. So Hitchcock did a lot of, like, thrillers that were really scary, but they also had a kind of fizzy romance at the center of them. Like Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart and, and Grace Kelly, I think, I can't remember. It was, I think it was, you.
- [21:48]
A
Know, and, and Vertigo and so on and so forth.
- [21:51]
B
Yeah, yeah, there's usually, there's, there's usually, you know, a kind of sparkle of romance in those stories, but then they can also be incredibly chilling. And so I thought I was, I thought I would do something like that. And in the course of working on it, I discovered I'm not Hitchcock, you know, that, that I, I, it didn't technically, it was polished. I felt like it all sort of worked on a technical level, but it just didn't really feel like me, you know.
- [22:16]
C
Do you think about genre like, before you start writing? Like, because, you know, they say in movies, they, they say directors, they always kind of think about the idea that they need to know their genre. Whatever the audience thinks, they need to know what the genre is. Well, do you think like that or no?
- [22:30]
B
Well, when I was a kid, okay, so, like, when I was a kid, I used to read Fangoria magazine. I don't know if you guys. So you guys know Fango?
- [22:38]
A
You know, we've been in Vanguard.
- [22:42]
B
Okay. All right. So I'm, you know, I'm. I'm preaching to the faithful. It was like, you know, when I was like 13, I had friends who were jocks who never missed an issue with Sports Illustrated, and I had pals who were rockers who always read Rolling Stone cover to cover. But, like, for me, Fango was my life magazine, you know, Like, I read it obsessively. And you remember. Do you remember that Fango used to have centerfolds like Playboy, but instead of like some girl in soft focus just wearing her bobby socks, like, Fango would have, like some guy getting a hatchet to the head and his eyeball flying out, you know, I loved those centerfolds and I used to stick them up on my wall. And in an interesting sort of related note, I held onto my virginity for a really surprisingly long period of time.
- [23:31]
C
Get a hotel room believe.
- [23:34]
B
You know, I used to read Fango. The thing that used to really piss me off was you'd have some director say, I don't really think of myself as a horror director. You know, I'm really, you know, making films about the human condition. I'd be thinking it's Sleep away, Camp Massacre 5. You're not Fellini dude, You know, come to grips with your reality.
- [23:58]
A
Yeah.
- [24:00]
B
As far as my own take on genre, for me, the odd numbered books are straight down the middle. Horror novels. So Heart Shaped Box, Nosferatu and King Sorrow are meat and potatoes. Horror novels, I love that kind of thing, I guess. John Carpenter's the Thing, John Carpenter's the Fog, Nightmare in Elm Street. My favorite film is Jaws. I grew up Stephen King fan. Like so many children of the 80s, you know, my favorite TV show was the X Files. You know, there's really no hiding the things that I care about. And so I do love to write straight horror, but I also like to play, you know, I like to goof off a little bit. And so the even numbered novels are sort of like horror adjacent or like one step, one step to the left or right into a kind of different genre. So horns. The second novel was a horror, but it was also kind of a satire and also kind of a romance. The fourth novel is an apocalyptic science fiction story. So it's like it's near future and there's like, there's like a whole kind of medical explanation for what's going on and even sort of like. So there's some biology in there, and.
- [25:16]
C
It kind of felt Crichton y. It has, like, a little bit of that into it.
- [25:19]
B
Yeah, I was totally thinking of the kind of stuff that Crichton did, you know, and, you know, the next book, which maybe we'll talk about, but after King Sorrow, the next book out next year is a ghost story, but it's also a historical novel set in 1776 during the siege of Boston and, you know, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. That sounds great. Oh, thanks. Thanks. You know. Well, we're nerds. Yeah. Yeah.
- [25:48]
A
Context is our favorite word. We love historical context.
- [25:51]
D
We're very.
- [25:52]
A
We love historical context, you know?
- [25:55]
B
You know, so. So I. I had an idea for a story set in the Revolutionary War supernatural horror story. And. And I had this idea seven years ago, and that's when I started researching it. And for the book, I've also hired a research assistant who's, like, studying for his PhD in American history. And so it's like, I'm a big boy writer now, you know, like, I have, like, my own research assistant and stuff. And so I've taken the history pretty seriously. I was, I was saying the odd numbered novels, the straight horror novels, the even numbered novel novels are kind of playing a little bit with genre. And, and actually, in some ways, Hunger is my most horror horror novel. The last 120 pages play like, you know, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a tricorn hat. You know, it's really, it's. It's really, you know, like a slasher movie is really brutal, and I've never really written anything that went there, so that's, that's fun. 2026. It's, it's. It's not too early to begin bugging your bookseller to make sure they stock up on it. Kids, no, you need.
- [26:56]
C
And every time you're in Uber, just pre order it, take their phone, pre order it, Just grab the guy and just do that. That's a way to do it.
- [27:02]
B
Yeah, yeah. Then give him his phone back.
- [27:03]
D
Have you timing for the 250th anniversary of our country?
- [27:07]
B
It is. So I started working. I started researching seven years ago. I want to say I started writing it three years ago. There had. There was some urgency to finish because I'm not totally, you know, closed off to the marketing side of things. And I thought, you know, if you're going to sell a book that has a musket on the COVID it would be nice to have it at the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And at one time, we were aiming for July, but I actually think the book, you know, I think the book is going to be in October 2026, because people like to buy scary stories around Halloween.
- [27:43]
C
They do. Do you have any interest in creating a video game or writing a video game?
- [27:51]
B
You know, so. So I've been asked a couple times.
- [27:55]
C
I bet.
- [27:59]
B
And I timidly avoided it because I thought this could turn out to be a huge time suck. And video games take a lot longer to make than novels, and sometimes they don't. And sometimes they don't even get released. And I thought. I just. I'm very conscious. With every passing year, I get more and more conscious of my limitations, how short my day is, how little I can do in a week, and how much less Runway I have ahead of me to do the projects I want to do. And so, you know, if you want to know why I've never worked on a video game, fear, you know, an awareness of my own mortality is what's kept me out of, you know, and I don't really. I mostly stopped playing them. About the last game I really fell into hard was Beatles Rock Band. You know, I killed. I absolutely killed, you know.
- [28:52]
C
Oh, yeah, I was very good at ma. Maxwell Silver Hammer. I just did that thing.
- [29:00]
B
Have you guys ever talked to. Or is Ed Brubaker on your radar? The crime.
- [29:06]
A
I'm a massive. I'm the. I'm the comic book nerd here amongst us. I'm a massive Ed Brubaker fan.
- [29:12]
B
So Ed Brubaker did Gotham Central, which I think wasn't our TV show that basically spun off his work for Gotham called Gotham or something that was like.
- [29:20]
A
It was called Gotham. It wasn't got. It wasn't as good as Gotham.
- [29:23]
B
Gotham Central.
- [29:24]
A
I mean, Gotham Central is incredible.
- [29:26]
C
Were you talking about the Gotham show? The Batman, Muppet Babies?
- [29:30]
A
Is that what that is?
- [29:31]
C
Yeah, that's okay.
- [29:32]
A
Yeah. Because Gotham.
- [29:33]
B
Yeah.
- [29:33]
A
Because Gotham said. Yeah. The Gotham Central is the procedural. Yeah. Gotham is Batman. Muppet Babies. Yeah.
- [29:38]
B
You know, Ed Brubaker is great, but I have to say, and he's. He's a stud. He's a great writer. He's done terrific work. He's got a TV show based on his comic Criminal coming out in Amazon next year. And I think he's terrific.
- [29:51]
D
But.
- [29:52]
B
But I just absolutely stomped his ass in Rock Band. We were out in Portland, Oregon. We said hello, and Rock Band was sitting in the corner and he's like, we should pick up the keytars and go for it. I'm like, dude, you don't want to do it, let's just. Let's just not. I've got, you know, I've got an 11 year old, a 13 year old and a 15 year old at home, and all we do is play Rock Band and I'll fucking destroy you. And, you know, and Ed Brubaker, you know, he had to learn the hard way, you know. You want to know why his fiction is so bitter? There's so much permeated with this sense of defeat. Me.
- [30:31]
A
Me.
- [30:31]
B
He took revenge, actually. He took revenge. Sean Phillips, the artist who works with him on all his big projects, drew me into one of the comics, made me a huge prick, and then shot me in the head, which is fine. I'm a big boy. I could take it. We know, we know. You know, when it was time to play Mississippi Queen on Rock Band, we know who was still standing at the end of the song and who wasn't.
- [30:57]
A
Well, but sticking with comics for a bit, like, I. I absolutely adored Rain.
- [31:02]
B
The.
- [31:02]
A
The adaptation and the story and the adaptation that Zoe Thoroger did. Like, it was just an incredibly beautiful book. Like, it was just so fucking beautiful.
- [31:12]
B
It really was. And she's a huge star. I think she got nominated, you know, like, like for like five Eisner's in a single year or something. She's absolutely extraordinary. But fortunately, she's still moderately young and naive, unaware of her own talent. She was willing to work for us, you know, and so, like, she wasn't. I don't think she knew yet what a big deal she was. And so she was like, oh, yeah, that would be great. I'll work on Rain. Without realizing that, like, you know, like, she was leaving us behind in the dust and stuff like that. And so. Yeah. Yeah, so we're buying Facebook stock at the beginning. We got in early, before it was like, you know, too expensive to buy.
- [31:52]
A
Yeah, So I guess. So when your work is adapted like that, like, how. How involved are you with the. Because your work's been adapted a number of times at this point. Yeah.
- [32:03]
B
I mean, and if it was really great, I was closely adapted and did most of it. But if it sounded, you know, I have to say I was really removed from the whole project.
- [32:13]
C
Something of yours, though, like, honestly. I know, like, you don't name one. You ever watched one of them, you're like, oh, well, that's not really what.
- [32:20]
B
I thought they were gonna do, you know. You know, all Bullshit aside, I. I've been super lucky. My, The. The. The. You know, there. Every single one of the films or TV shows that's been adapted to my stuff had the virtues of not sucking, you know, it was all really good. Yeah.
- [32:38]
C
Black Phone ruled.
- [32:40]
B
Black Phone is awesome. I mean, Black Phone's really. Black Phone is the best of them, you know? You know, and we've got the sequels coming out this October, and the script is great. I haven't seen the film yet, but the script is great.
- [32:52]
C
And did you help expand that at all, like for Black Phone, or do they take it and run it?
- [32:57]
B
So, first of all, I wrote the short story around the same time I wrote Pop Art and the Cape. So I think if this podcast has revealed anything, it's that I did all my best work 23 years ago and 23 years ago, and I've just been riding the fumes ever since.
- [33:13]
C
Same.
- [33:14]
B
I know, exactly.
- [33:15]
A
Right.
- [33:18]
B
No, I. You know, I wrote this story called the black phone 23 years ago and got paid 35 bucks for it. The Black Phone, at the time, almost became a novel. I had ideas for it.
- [33:32]
C
It.
- [33:32]
B
I had. I had scenes. I actually wound up writing something like 50 or 60 pages of material. But in the end, I. I didn't have the nerve to write a novel because I'd been turned down too many times. Someone just blew by with their Trans Am or something like that. No. Muffler, glass pack. And the muffler. The.
- [33:50]
C
Hey, that guy's got a huge dick. We should be super envious.
- [34:00]
B
No. So anyway, I had like 60 pages of material, but I lacked nerve. And, you know, because I had so many books turned down, I just thought this one will just get turned down too. But if I can keep it 30 pages long, I know a magazine where they'll buy it, you know, and so Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, who were the co writers of the film, and Scott directed it. Amazing director. He did Doctor Strange and. And Sinister, which has been scientifically proven to be the scariest film ever made.
- [34:33]
C
You know, it's the. The. I love the home movies and Sinisters. That's like my favorite.
- [34:38]
B
Yeah, yeah, the stuff films are amazing. And I mean, if you folks listening at home, if you. If you doubt me, Google it. Google, Google and find out what is the scientifically proven scariest film ever made. It's Sinister. They. They recheck every year, and every year it's sinister.
- [34:52]
D
Just so you know, we're gonna clip out where you said the snuff film.
- [35:00]
B
Yeah, I Definitely think that's in the. In the promo for this episode.
- [35:04]
C
Oh, is you relaxing watching all the footage from Abu Ghraib.
- [35:10]
B
Are awesome. No, you know, so they made this great picture and they expanded on the material and are really interested. Everything in the short story is in the film, but that's only, like, one third of the film. And so the film, also, like, a third of the film is, you know, an autobiographical reflection on Scott Derrickson's own life growing up in dirty north Denver in the 1970s. And then C. Robert Cargill is a terrific genre writer and thriller writer, and he engineered this whole escape room tactic that was sort of crucial to making the film work. So everyone added something, and it was, you know, that's what you hope for, is that everyone will click and there'll be this collaborative success. Sometimes a team, three guys will come together and make something wonderful. You guys haven't experienced that yet, but there's. There's still hope.
- [36:00]
D
One day.
- [36:00]
A
One day. Yeah, one day.
- [36:01]
C
We had a younger group that's watching. There's training. We have a couple Zoomers are going to fill in.
- [36:06]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:07]
D
After my first heart attack, when I.
- [36:09]
B
Watched the film, I thought, the first thing is, when I saw the film the first time and I saw the mask that Ethan Hawks wears, I thought, oh, there's going to be like, nine of these pictures. Because the mask is like Jason's hockey mask or Freddy's glove. It's instantly iconic. It's the kind of thing that chases you into your nightmares. And I just thought, people are going to want more of this guy, you know, they're going to want to see this guy again in. In more stories. So then the question is, are there any stories worth telling, or do you just sort of have to go full leprechaun and send the Grabber to space, you know, for like, the second movie, the Grabber. And space. Black phone in space, you know.
- [36:48]
C
Well, you got to get him in the hood.
- [36:50]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:50]
C
But then you got to get him to space.
- [36:52]
D
And then Vegas, probably.
- [36:54]
A
Yeah, Vegas first.
- [36:55]
B
Yeah, so. So when I watched the first film, the other thing is, there was this one little scene, and I thought, oh, there's a trap door in that scene into the whole second movie. I wonder if Scott and Cargill know that. They just put in this little piece, this one little piece, and you've got, like, your whole second movie right there. And so I. I worked up a pitch for him and I said, I think this is what the second Mo movie should be about, because Scott and Cargo Weren't sure they wanted to do another one. They were really happy with the first one. They saw the pitch. They loved it. And then it was the same kind of thing where Scott was able to bring in some stuff from his childhood and. And Cargo was able to think like, all right, how are we going to engineer this for maximum peril? You know, and. And that's where we got to the second film. And hopefully people dig it. You know, I can't wait.
- [37:42]
D
Black Phone two looks incredible.
- [37:44]
B
If it's a. If it's. It. If it bombs, I'd like to remind people that I. I really contributed next to nothing you disavow. Yeah, it's mostly them. Yeah.
- [37:53]
D
You wanted to call it Gray Phone.
- [37:55]
C
Right. Can I ask just straight up, this takes. King Sorrow takes place in Maine. Obviously, you guys have long roots in Maine, you and your family. What's so scary about Maine?
- [38:06]
B
Have you ever been there?
- [38:08]
D
No.
- [38:09]
B
No.
- [38:09]
A
Yeah, we have.
- [38:10]
C
Well, wait, what?
- [38:10]
A
We were in and out. We did a show in Portland once.
- [38:13]
C
We were in and out.
- [38:13]
A
My. My hotel room was frighteningly cold.
- [38:19]
C
What's so frightening about Maine?
- [38:21]
B
Well, so. So at least in the case of my dad and in my own case, you know, it's not that Maine is frightening. It's the. It's what we know. I've lived in New England my whole life, and I know how the people talk. I know what it's like to work there. I know what the winners are like. You know, I know what it's like to raise children. There's. And, you know, if you're gonna write about something like, you know, a road vampire or a man slowly turning into a devil or some friends pulling a dragon through into our world that requires. You're asking your readers for a big suspension of disbelief, you know, that you're asking them to go along with something pretty crazy. So what you do is, you know, by. What I do by anchoring it, New England is, you know, I convince you the world is real with concrete details about the. And the people. And if you believe me about the place and the people, you might also believe me about the dragon. You know, so it's sort of like. It's almost like evidence in a case. Every book is like you're arguing a case in front of the jury. And so you begin by giving them unquestionable evidence. But then, you know, then you bring in the rest of the story, which, you know, might be less evidence based. I don't know, maybe that's not such a good analogy.
- [39:39]
C
No, it's fine. It's how the Diddy trial went down. So. Yeah, it makes sense.
- [39:43]
A
You know.
- [39:46]
C
So it makes sense. Wow. That is actually a great piece of advice. So I think it's an amazing piece of advice.
- [39:52]
A
Yeah.
- [39:52]
C
Because we just came back from James Gunn, Superman, and the first thing in my head is that idea of James Gunn understands that this is a world filled with superheroes. And that's not crazy. That, that it's just a point blank that is the beginning of the world. And that if there's something about the. The gravitas of it or like literally just being like a matter of fact, these are the details of this world. You buy it and then you're into it.
- [40:20]
B
I'm, I'm. I'm pretty stoked to see Superman myself, but I don't get out of the movies all that much, you know, you're.
- [40:27]
C
Yeah, you're an indoor. You're an indoor cat.
- [40:30]
B
Well, pretty much. I mean, the movies are indoors. I had, I had kids when I was a kid myself. So I got three 20 somethings. But I remarried in 2018. I have three sons. And then when I remarried in 2018, I. And I said to my wife, you're not, not too old yet. I could do one more kid. I want us to have everything we could have in a family. You know, I don't want to feel like, you know, and not. It's all on the table. So I could have one more kid and maybe I'll have a girl and find out what that's like. Well, we had twins and it was two more boys.
- [41:03]
C
Wow.
- [41:04]
B
So I got five boys.
- [41:06]
C
Dude, that's in the batter, man. That's. That's a batter thing.
- [41:09]
A
That's you.
- [41:10]
B
Yeah, it might be. I don't know. There is some. I don't know. There is. I don't know, there is some biology there or something, but something.
- [41:19]
D
You got a basketball team, but they're all probably nerds.
- [41:22]
B
I'm afraid so. I mean, I said at the beginning, you probably think that, you know, my dad's great talent is tennis. You know, the New Yorker did a profile on him years and years ago and at one point, point during the profile, because I spent a day with my dad, my dad went up and played tennis with my younger brother. And the profile writer said one of them was terrible at tennis, the other was worse.
- [41:51]
C
Like you. What else am I gonna do?
- [41:54]
D
He's reporting it.
- [41:57]
B
You know. Yeah. We're not the most athletic folk you've ever met.
- [42:02]
C
Can I. I don't want to ask too many questions about your dad. But there's one question I. I can't leave here without. Ask, sir.
- [42:08]
B
Okay.
- [42:09]
C
Circumstance Father made your father great. No, of course. Yep. Yes, your father's made. Your father's made many controversial statements over the years, but one rings TR1. That just kind of keeps bouncing around in my head. And I've been. I've been scared to even think about this. And I'm sorry to even bring this up. Mambo Number five is Stephen King mentioned that his wife threatened to leave him because of his love of the song Mambo Number five.
- [42:37]
B
Yeah.
- [42:38]
C
Were you affected by this as well?
- [42:40]
B
I was, yeah. Yeah.
- [42:42]
C
So that is real. So the Mambo Number five scenario is real. Now he is not.
- [42:48]
B
He played it a thousand times.
- [42:49]
C
Okay.
- [42:50]
A
Okay.
- [42:50]
B
And it.
- [42:51]
C
Was it just about the lore or is it just imagining the ladies?
- [42:54]
B
I have scars. I have scars all over my body because I left through a window naked. I just ran from the shower through the window because I had to get away. I couldn't take another minute of this. The thing is, is I get that. I understand that completely. Sometimes when you're working on a story, you get a playlist, and then the playlist always gets you right in the right spot. You start hearing those songs again, but with a short story, you know, if you're working on a short story, a lot of times it's not a playlist. It's just three songs or two songs or something. It's one song, you know, and you find yourself, you know, you sit down to write and you find yourself hitting that. So song again. You get a little. Things start to slow down. You play the song again. You know, it's weird, but it's sort of like, you know what? You know, all the Internet scams are like, this one weird trick will make you productive. You know, this one weird trick will sort of make you productive. If you can sync your imaginary output to one particular set of songs, then in a Pavlovian way, every time you play the tune, the story is there. So I presume he was working on something, and that song was the theme song on. And so he had to play it.
- [44:04]
C
Because, unfortunately, the first thing that comes to my CR. My mind is, of course, mambo number 666. But I'm not a writer, Joe. Like, I don't write like you. Right? I don't do that. That's not what I do.
- [44:17]
D
Apparently, you're not a comedian either.
- [44:18]
C
No, I'm garbage.
- [44:23]
A
The only question that I have about.
- [44:25]
B
I was gonna ask You. Who was your. Who are your. Each of you, who are your comic inspirations? Who did you look up to?
- [44:31]
C
Chris Farley and Bill Cosby, unfortunately, back in the day, it was a big D. Back in the day, it was a big deal in our house.
- [44:41]
B
I'm a Rodney Dangerfield, so I thought Kevin Spacey was so funny.
- [44:45]
C
Favorite actor, Woody Allen, and he's a good friend. It's really something.
- [44:51]
B
I'll tell you something about. I tell you something about my dad. My dad grew up in a single parent household. Old, was raised by his mom. His dad went out to get the milk, never came back. When my dad was 2 years old, you know, and after all the stuff came up with Cosby and Cosby went to jail. And I asked my dad how he felt about it, and he said, I feel fucking rotten. I love the Cosby Show. I watched it to learn how to be a dad. I thought that I didn't know how to do it. I had no idea. And so I trusted that man to teach me all the skills that I never got when I was growing up. And he's like, I, I hard. I don't know if I'll ever sort out my feelings about it. And I was kind of. I was kind of, you know, stunned by that. I kind of felt so. Yeah, I know, right? I just felt so bad. No.
- [45:41]
C
My parents used to watch Bill Cosby himself when they were pregnant. When my mom was pregnant with me, it was the only thing. And it was like. And then when I got out, when I emerged, they did. It was just the same thing. As a child, they would put it on. As a toddler, they'd put it on. I'd laugh at just the sounds of it. So it's like. And then I started in elementary school.
- [45:58]
B
Your mom in the delivery ward and the cop show is like, oh, right there. Oh, yeah.
- [46:05]
C
When I was, When I was unemployed, hitting.
- [46:08]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [46:09]
C
Very much the third season.
- [46:12]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [46:13]
C
I saw his secret, Felicia Rashad, my met. She was lovely, you know, nice.
- [46:19]
A
Well, the only question that I have about your father, or I guess it's not even necessarily about your father, it's more about your. Your childhood. Were you around when the Ramones came to Wright Pet Cemetery?
- [46:33]
B
No. No. But my dad did do a movie called Maximum Overdrive in the early 1980s, and he wanted AC DC to do the soundtrack. And they came to the house and, you know, I was about, I want to say 9, 10 or something, and the whole crew, Brian Johnson and Angus and Malcolm, they were all my dad's study. And my mom came in and she had like a, you know, midriff bearing shirt, was kind of wearing like a tight pair of Wranglers. And she. She brought them a tray of drinks and walked. And Brian Johnson's eyes followed her. And after she walked out, he went a ginger. So, anyway. Anyway, I got into therapy in 2011. I still occasionally get food routine checkups with my therapist. Because you don't really come back from something like that.
- [47:40]
C
No, no, no. Knowing that the man who wrote a whole lot of Rosies looking at your mother.
- [47:47]
B
I wish I hadn't. I wish. I don't know if he did the tongue thing like Hannibal Lecter, but I kind of remember it a little bit, you know, Fava beans.
- [47:58]
C
Well, this is. This is amazing. Mr. Hill, thank you so much for being here with us, man.
- [48:02]
A
Thank you.
- [48:04]
B
You guys were great to have me on and, you know, I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors. You know, it's all downhill from here, but, yeah, I mean, you know, carry on in the best possible spirits.
- [48:15]
A
We'll try.
- [48:15]
C
I hope that whatever you up next is one of the best things possible.
- [48:25]
B
Guys, rock on. Thanks a lot. Have fun.
- [48:28]
C
Thank you so much.
- [48:30]
B
It was a good time.
- [48:31]
C
Thank you, guys. Thank you so much.
- [48:33]
B
From your grave.
- [48:35]
C
That was great.
- [48:36]
A
That was so much fun, man.
- [48:37]
C
It's just nice to meet you. Meet guys that you really look up to. Like, I. I hope the audience cannot kind of even understand. Like, he dropped some great tips.
- [48:47]
A
Incredible tips.
- [48:48]
B
Yeah.
- [48:48]
C
He really was like, that's. That's somebody especially, like. Because him and his dad are workhorse artists.
- [48:54]
A
Yeah.
- [48:54]
C
And they show up every day and they view it like a craft and they have an exact brain about what they want to do. They're so inspiring.
- [49:01]
A
Funny thing is, we've not said once who his father. Stephen King.
- [49:05]
B
Yeah.
- [49:05]
A
We didn't say once who his father was.
- [49:07]
C
I didn't want to do the thing.
- [49:08]
A
No, I didn't want to do a thing. But I'm gonna guess if there's any listeners out there, the whole time they've been wondering, like, who's the father is. It's Stephen King.
- [49:14]
D
I wouldn't have known unless we told someone to. Thank you.
- [49:19]
B
We should.
- [49:20]
C
We have. The one question I forgot to ask is who's Harrier?
- [49:22]
B
Oh, that's right.
- [49:24]
C
Yeah.
- [49:24]
D
What are you going to do?
- [49:25]
A
Well, he gave us his email address.
- [49:26]
C
We'll send him an email.
- [49:27]
D
Yeah, send him an email, Rob.
- [49:28]
B
Yeah.
- [49:28]
D
Thank you so much. Well, that was a lot of fun, man. But you know, now I got to say I'm over the hill.
- [49:35]
C
You I'm glad he wasn't on I'm glad he wasn't on for that.
- [49:40]
A
We gotta go patreon.com lastpodcast on the left if you want to see Joe Hill making the tongue noise, making the actual tongue movement.
- [49:51]
D
Didn't put his fingers up, unfortunately. But it still was good.
- [49:54]
A
It's still pretty good. You can go watch video episodes of all of our podcasts there, as well as watch Last Stream on the left every Tuesday at 6pm PST. You can also interact with us live on the chat as we do the stream. And don't forget to come see us on tour. We're all over the United States in the coming months to go to last podcast on the left.com to see if we are coming to a city near you.
- [50:19]
B
We cannot wait to be inside of your family.
- [50:22]
A
Portland, Milwaukee, all sorts of shit inside your family, inside your home without your permission.
- [50:29]
C
Pregnant with excitement.
- [50:32]
D
Pregnant with it.
- [50:33]
C
It's pushing against p against the bottom of my uterus. Hail Satan everyone.
- [50:39]
A
Oh hell G Hail Joe Hill.
- [50:41]
C
Seriously in here?
- [50:42]
A
Yeah.
- [50:46]
E
Imagine relying on a dozen different software programs to run your business, none of which are connected, and each one more.
- [50:52]
C
Expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful.
- [50:56]
E
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- [51:42]
C
Exclusions like taxes and fees applies to exclusions and details@t mobile.com.