For those of you who are unaware, Stephen King’s novel, IT, has some pretty graphic content in it. And when we say graphic, we mean graphic, as it features a child orgy scene.
The fact that it wasn’t in the movie has caused people to talk a great deal about it, and now Stephen King himself has responded. In an interview with Vulture, the author said:
“To it I’d just add that it’s fascinating to me that there has been so much comment about that single sex scene and so little about the multiple child murders. That must mean something, but I’m not sure what.”
It’s not really a surprise that some of the content wasn’t featured in the film, though original writer/director Cary Fukunaga tried. Ultimately, when he felt the studio was going to interfere with his film too much he left, saying:
“I was trying to make an unconventional horror film. It didn’t fit into the algorithm of what they knew they could spend and make money back on based on not offending their standard genre audience.”
Before adding:
“They didn’t want any characters. They wanted archetypes and scares. I wrote the script. They wanted me to make a much more inoffensive, conventional script. But I don’t think you can do proper Stephen King and make it inoffensive.”
After reading the Fukanaga’s script (it’s been online for some time now) I can definitely say that while some of the things he wanted to include in the film were pretty cool, it’s sometimes better to just imply certain things as opposed to showing them – in my opinion, anyway.
IT is currently playing in theaters everywhere.