Stephen Kingcalls one morning to set up an interviewand he’s singing.
the best-selling author croons over long distance.
King has a complex relationship withPet Sematary.
Credit: Illustration by Robert Sammelin for EW
It turns out all that is real.
So is a lot of what happened in the book.
That’s why it bothers him.
STEPHEN KING:[Laughs] No, I mean it’s true.
Michael C. Hall [ofDexterandSix Feet Under]did the audiobook.
I was curious about it.
You know, I hadn’t been near it in 20, 25 years.
So I listened to it, and thought, “My God, this is just awful.
It’s just as dark as can be.”
Did you feel that way when you were writing it?
I just had the greatest time writing the book until I was done with it.
And I read it over, and I said to myself, “This is awful.
This is really fing terrible.”
Not that it was badly written, necessarily.
But all that stuff about the death of kids.
It was close to me, because my kids lived on that road.
What else in the book came from your own life?
There was a real misspelled ‘pet sematary’ in the woods, right?
We rented this nice house on the river, and a pet cemetery was in back of it.
There was a path that went up there that kids kept mowed.
They didn’t wear any of those funny masksyou know, with the hooked noses and stuff.
[Laughs] But it was there, and it was really a nice place.
And your family actually lost one of your pets on that road, right?
My daughter’s cat died.
And we buried it in the pet cemetery.
She made a little cross that said “Smuckyhe was obedient.”
And I mean, he was a cat.
He wasn’t fing obedient!
Smucky made it into the book and both movies.
That grave marker is in all of them.
Your daughter would have been around 9 or 10 then.
How did she take this loss?
That night, after we buried it, we heard her out in the garage.
She was jumping up and down on those popper things that they wrap fragile stuff in.
She was shouting, “God can’t have my cat.
That cat is my cat!…
Let him have his own cat.”
Everything in the book up to the point of the supernatural stuff is true.
When did the idea for that it was a book hit you?
When I heard Naomi doing that thing, I got this idea.
That’s what it comes down to.
But you imagined another more ancient burial ground further in the woods that brings things back to life.
I always wondered why you separated them instead of simply having the pet cemetery resurrect them?
I thought, “Well, you’re able to’t do that or they would all come back.
But what if there was another graveyard beyond it?”
But the real parts are why you held off publishing, why it bothered you?
You know, it wasn’t much of a leap.
Was there a real Jud Crandall, an old-timer you were close to?
There was a guy right across the road, and he was the one.
And we went over, and we looked at Smucky, who was on the side of the road.
And he hadn’t been splattered or anything, he looked okay.
He just was… dead.
Then what did you do?
I mean, the discussion is in the book.
Do you say the cat has just gone away, he’s wandering…?
Or do you actually make that the kid’s first lesson in death?
We chose to tell her the truth, which I still think was probably the right thing to do.
And the grown-up says, “Sure.
Everything’s gonna be fine!”
I don’t like that.
It’s not the truth.
You shouldn’t lie to kids.
Sometimes you’ve got to face the worst things.
I think that’s what horror does.
It makes you go down to the basement, and say, “What’s in the dark?
What’s down here?
Let’s confront what we’re afraid of.”
But, in the end, remember Louis can’t face the worst.
He has this option, and he chooses the wrong thing.
Anybody would know that you could’t bury a kid and expect to get the kid back good as new.
I feel likePet Semataryhas meaning.
It felt like it had heart.
It does have a meaning.
Sometimes the desire to live is just a biological thing, and it’s better when it’s over.
Everybodyeverybody’s dealt with that, you know?
And there’s that desire to go back, too.
When you lose somebody, you go through that feeling of, ‘They were just here.
They were here yesterday.
They were here last week.’
You feel that yearning: Couldn’t they just come back?
That’s the other thing aboutPet Sematary.
When I read it over, I thought, “There’s suchgriefin this book.”
That’s what happened!
That’s the reason I published the book.
Otherwise, it would still be in a drawer somewhere.
How did all that go down?
That would’ve been late ’70s, right?
But the money piled up.
That’s a lot of best-sellers.
And [lawyer and agent] Arthur [B.
And by then I was making a lot of money!
I was thinking, “Well, Doubleday can go f' themselves,” you know?
I don’t even want to go there.
They used me very badly.
And they’ll have to pay taxes on money that you haven’t gotten."
But they have to break the investment fund."
And that’s what unleashedPet Semataryon the world.
Well, I laugh about that.
Barnum said something like, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people.”
The funeral, and the expenses, and paying with MasterCard, and all the rest of it.
It always appealed to me.
All of that charged by the idea of losing a pet, then losing a child.
I don’t think you have to be a parent to even feel that.
I don’t know, I think it’s a really wonderful book, Steve.
I hate to disagree with you.
No, no, I accept that.
But I do think too that people come because there’s the allure of the forbidden.
There’s the idea that this thing is really, really scary.
It also depends on what you’re taught.
I’m not sure Jud is such a great stand-in dad.
His guidance causes the horror to unfold…
Jud and Louis bond.
They drink together, they sit on the porch, they talk about stuff.
And women need women.
You find somebody, you like ‘em, and Jud kind of falls in love with the family.
And of course, that’s the way that the evil part of the pet cemetery works on you.
As John Coffey inThe Green Milesays, “He killed them with their love.”
And what Jud does, he does out of love.
Is there also a malevolent side to what he does?
He also knows better.
It feels like you kind of want to put this book at arm’s distance.
So I went in and I wrote it.
The more you work on a thing, the more numb you get to it.
You get to the effect that it has on other people.
It was George first.
I wrote a script, and then George couldn’t [direct].
And Mary Lambert came on board.
I really liked her.
I thought that she was cool and had good ideas about it.
I loved Richard then, and I love him now.
He’s a great guy, but he’s tight with the purse strings.
He has to be.
So, I just wanted to do the best job.
He’s the world’s worst driver, too.
What memory sticks out at you from the set, apart from your cameo as the preacher?
I figured ifsomebody’sgonna f this up, it’s gonna beme!
One of the stand-outs of that film, I think, is Fred Gwynne.
That’s a great performance as Jud.
Were you pleased with how he played that?
I kind of think he stole the movie in a lot of ways.
He and Miko Hughes, as the little boy Gage.
Did you have much interaction with him?
We hung out a little bit.
I thought he did as good of a Maine accent as you could possibly do.
He had the right look.
He had a New England look to him, and I just thought, “He’s pretty good.
He has thegravitas.”
He’s the old guy who knows stuff.
So yeah, I liked him a lot in that part.
And I liked the movie.
I thought they did a good job.
And they worked their asses off on that movie.
How do you feel about the newPet Sematary?
It’s fing great!
It’s a really good movie.
It’s a grown-up, adult kind of movie.
It’s not like 12 semi-clad teens get killed in a summer camp.
In this particular time frame, you know, there’ve been several movies that have been successful.
Horror movies like Jordan Peele’sGet Outlast year.
And then I think whenUsopens, I think it’s gonna be big.
I think it’s gonna be huge.
[Note: He was right.Ushadthe biggest opening weekend in historyfor an original horror film.]
Those are like adult-jot down fantasies.
It’s something different.
They did a good job.
But both times, you’re gonna come out at Tampa!
[Laughs] You know what I’m saying?
It didn’t change anything for me.
Some filmmakers can go too far with changes, though.
I’m really kind of mercenary about all this.
My idea is, “If it works, it’s golden.
If it doesn’t work, you know, Jesus Christ, why did you change it?”
Why did you do that?
You had a book.
You had a blueprint you could’ve gone by."
Do they ever launch the changes by you if you’re not already involved in the film?
He’s probably gonna kick us out."
[Note: The next paragraph has a spoiler for both theCujobook and movie.]
They said, “What would you think if the little boy lived?”
So go ahead, see how it works out."
We’ll hold off revealing specifics now, but the newPet Semataryisn’t afraid to go bleak.
And more power to him, man!
More power to him.
I really liked it.
I was cool with Ellie being the resurrected child.
Kind of like Joe Cocker singing “A Little Help From My Friends.”
Why do it the same way if you already have the Beatles version?
Let’s hear a different flavor to the cover, you know?
But only if it’s agoodcover.
The success of 2017’sIthas galvanized a new wave of adaptations.
Now we’re seeing second screen versions of some of your work.
Why do you think that’s happening?
I don’t know what to make of it, really.
Every day I get another contract, another option, word that somebody is making this or that.
Let’s put it this way, I’m in a seller’s market right now.
There’s a huge hunger for story, because there’s so many different platforms now.
It isn’t just the movies.
[Laughs]
So, a lot of the old stuff, maybe, is gonna get remade.
I think that was a factor inThe Stand, with CBS All Access.
How does that feel, seeing all these new adaptations?
It’s a little bit like being tied to the hood of a car that’s going really fast.
I’ve got books to write, and that’s the important thing to me.
There’s so much appetite now for stories, and Idohave stories to tell.
This Q&A has been edited and some questions added or expanded to provide context.
