Episode 670: Father's Day w/ Stephen King & Joe Hill

That's one of the cannibals I'm starting to hear. This is a such a, let's just say, o victory, this is a victory for last podcast on the left. Validation. Validation. We got him the white unicorn.

First of all, welcome to last podcast on the left. Ladies and gentleman, my name is Marcus Parks.

I'm here with Henry Zabrowski. Pink unicorn. The pink unicorn. Henry Zabrowski. I filled with shrimp. Yeah. And the Harry unicorn. I was going to say a little right. Just your beard is looking quite nice. I've even trimming. I have a person who trims. It looks great. Thank you. I appreciate it because I was worried it was looking bad, but now it gets another week like this. You really look good in that way like, but the thing is the guy who trims your beard definitely.

“Woman. Wow. But he makes you look like an Iranian Lord. You know what I mean?”

I'll take that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You do look like a Lord of some kind. Hey, you want to get through the straight? You come talk to me. You're right. I get you through the straight. I'll get you through the straight. I'll get you through the straight. I get you through the straight. All right. We are coming here. The big topic that we have today is that okay, we interviewed Joe Hill, author Joe Hill a few months ago. Yeah. Fantastic man. It went so well.

And we never we didn't really even say anything about his dad. Yeah. We didn't say we said nothing about his dad.

We were so cool during that interview. But it went so well that he came back and he brought his father. Stephen King with us. That's right. He was like, I got my dad. You guys are talking about me and I got my dad. Yeah. But then he did a whole thing. You'll see in the interview where he's like, my dad will beat you all up. Yeah. And Stephen King stood up and he was like, come here. You're a little effort words. I mean, I'll have five or six times for you. You'll see. You'll see. It's all there. It's all there.

But this is our father's day special. It is because in many ways, Stephen King raised us. He was definitely a big part of my childhood and a very big part of everything I've ever known about old and novels. Yeah. I've been now. He's one of the cultural voices of the 20th century. He's one of the guys who created the 20th century is culturally. Yeah. It's unbelievable. I watched a documentary called King in movies. And I was like, oh, he's like shaped my thoughts completely. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very excited for this.

But let's just get to it. Let's just get to it. Yeah. Can I finally finally get to ask him about

“shitters. And I did even. I just rewatched Christine. And I was like, oh, yeah, shitter. You should read it.”

In the, they tone it down in the movie. Oh, a lot. Oh, he asked them about it. I look at that book on my shelf all the time. Let's get to it. Let's get to it. I'm your friend. How are you guys? We're doing fantastic. How are y'all doing today? I'm good. First question out the gate doing well. Wow. I just want to say I need to disappoint because honestly our dads really wanted to meet you guys too. And one of the hardest things was us that I noticed when I was bringing them over here. Their

earn was really loose. Yeah. And so I didn't want to spread them all over the stuff. I didn't want to spread them all over my car. Yeah. Well, the earned was loose because when you were paying attention, I actually switched out my dad's ashes with your dad's ashes. And so now I got your dad in my house and

“your dad's my dad's your house. How many ashes have you been presented with as a couple?”

Oh, uh, I know it's giving me their ashes. Yeah. All right. Made an ash in myself once in a while. I was at a, uh, I was at a signing at a library and like Boise. This was years and years ago when a guy came up to me, he was one of the last guys in line sort of a decrepit old fella. And he said, you know, I loved heart shaped box so much and your dad books have meant so much to me. And I just wanted to

give you something to express that. How much those books meant to me. And he lifted up this leather bag. It looked like a doctor's bag. And I, except as a thank you when I opened it in this sting just rolled out like there was, you know, I don't know, like a rotten piece of meat in it or something like that in a chemical odor as well. And I said, what is this? And, uh, he said, my dad involved people for 40 years. And that was his, that was his bag. That was the bag he did for his work. And I was like,

I had him chucked as soon as, like, I loved the thing. I'm not bringing,

“fucking bag like that on an airplane. No, we can't even bring it to the hilton. You can, you know,”

yeah, it's, it's always the last person in line when you're really tired and you just want

to go back your hotel and, oh, just somebody that shows up with, with that. Yes, Steven, what was that? What was something that that sticks out in your mind that a fan brought to you that you were just immediately revolted by? Well, it wasn't so much that, but I was at a place one time signing books and this fat kid comes up to me and says, hey, kid, where's the Nazi books? And so I took it for the Nazi book. I'll tell you a lot. You, you, you just can't tell what people are going to do. One

guy came up to me and said, you know, about Salem's law. He said, you know, you ought to write a squeal in that gender. And I said, yeah, what are you talking about? He said, a sequel in that genre. You know, you know, one thing, speaking of grotesque gifts, you know, disturbing gifts, John Wayne Gacy sent my dad some art back in the day from prison. And actually, I found that

so disturbing, that's in the first paragraph of our cheap box. Yes. You know, that kind of hung in my mind.

Because the other thing is his Gacy wasn't terrible. I mean, he was obviously terrible. He was hit. I can't undeline enough how terrible he was. Who use a funny guy? He was a funny guy. Yeah, he's pretty single that out. You're a screwed. Yeah, that's gotta be the clip to sell this episode. John Wayne Gacy was pretty good. You know, when he did a real much fun guy, you could do a passable. He could do passable like Disney characters and stuff. Well, he used to do paint by numbers. He used to go and

get the, like, he would have a whole system of other serial colors, including one of the, uh,

the guys from the Chicago Rippers. And he also had the guy that killed everybody to avoid the earth

quake in Southern California. Yeah, the Herbert Mullin Herbert Mullin. He had other serial killers working for him on an assembly line painting these paintings for him. That's not true. Yes. Is this true? Yes, because he's, he literally was a job creator. He was a executive manager. He was a project

“runner. That's what he did. He was a project manager. So, they had an art club in prison? It was”

kind of like a chain gang. Like literally, you need to kind of force them to do stuff. And then they would bring in. There's a whole story about how John Wayne Gacy was sort of gameed by this young man that called him and pretended to be really into him. And so this young man sort of arriving to visit with John Wayne Gacy. And then the two of them would talk to the other serial killers like they were his little like crew. Like it was like, like, his little brothers. So don't feel that

honored about the art. Is it like that? It was like here come from men but with art. Yes. Yes. Do you find that in speaking of terms of collaboration? Because you guys worked together because of John Wayne Gacy can really run that type of collaboration. I'm sure you guys really, you guys put some really good stuff together. Like, because in the tall grass, it was a great thing. Like, how do you guys feel like when you're together working? Uh, we go ahead and done it twice. We've only done it twice.

We, we, we wrote in the tall grass when we wrote throttle and you know, I mean, I feel like when I, the times I've written with that, you ever see in like the the Warner Brothers cartoons when while he coyotes climbs on an acne rocket and lights the fuse and then suddenly it takes off

“under him. Yeah. That's what it's like writing with my dad. I feel like I'm just kind of hanging on”

for dear life. You know, I, I'd sort of like sweat, pull my hair out over like three pages or something. And then I'd, I'd email it to him and like 45 minutes later he'd be like, "It was great. Here's five more pages." She's crying. I wrote five out of five and he'd been up. Well, you know, those those are a time when I was chemically assisted by some of those things and the, the books with Peter Straub in the early days, but those days are behind the now.

Yeah, now it's just what Cialis, a lot of, a snap-hole. That's what I do. I crush up my Cialis right into the right into the, I just do it. I do it line by line each day just to get me going to do podcasts. Yeah, and under the lid of those snapples, they got funny little

We had a pretty good movie made out of it in the tall grass. Oh, it was so good, it's so good.

Yeah, that was pretty cool. That was pretty cool. And for a while, for a while, Sevester Stallone was talking about doing throttle behind the scenes. And like as a guy who grew up in the, you know, I mean, me and dad went to go see all those rocky films and everything together. And wow, what a blast that would have been, but it didn't happen. I just want to say right now, so that's just alone as the gunslinger. Can it just like, let's just do an experimental,

make it expendable. I don't think that would really work. I mean, Chuck Norris could have done it. I mean, Chuck Norris could have just wiped that shit out in time. He could have just used his hands.

I always saw a Daniel Day. Daniel, the elusive was my gunslinger in my mind. Do you have a gunslinger

that you wish besides, I mean, I love the address. But you got a gunslinger in your mind, that you wish you could see walking around? Clint Eastwood back in the day. Yeah, back in the day it would have been great. We've been great. I mean, I got the idea for those books in a large part because of those spiritually owning westerns. You know, I saw him in the theater because you know, I'm old and you know, they were just wide screenmen and it was Eastwood was so quiet in those movies.

You know, he wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful, so that was great. Yeah, they didn't give

“him a name. I mean, he was literally the man with the name. I think you respond, Joe. Do you”

are you as big of a fan of the dark towers the rest of us? I'm sorry, Marcus. I'll get you your questions. I'm just sorry. I just started in dark tower. It means it actually means the whole world to me. But you've seen a lot of fact guys and say this to you. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm doing this at you. I'm just. I love those. I love those. I'm a big Stephen King fan. I love all those

books. I mean, the thing about the the gunslinger books is I always think of them as the gunslinger

books, not the dark tower books. And they're kind of like the unified theory of the Stephen King of Stephen King world, you know, and because it picks up so many threads from all the other books and and it's almost like a nervous system running through the whole body of that work. And they're just such great reads. They're just so much fun and such a terrific cast of characters and and it is a little bit in some ways. It is a little bit surprising. There haven't been

at it. You know, well, there was no, there was the interest. There was the interest. But it didn't do very well. It's because it needs to be 25 hours long. It's a good. It's a good. I love to do a little bit. But they talk for a while about how they are by them. That's sexy. That would have

“been great. Yeah. He's sexy. That would have been good. I mean, I think there isn't a”

attempt right now to try to make it five seasons. You know, to try to do a TV thing. But I'm not sure how far along it's gotten. There are many of you guys seen Kate Fierde, the new one where hobby I bought him placed a bad guy. Not yet. Now, you know, I'm very excited for it though. I am too. Is that him too? Right. It looks really great. Harvey, I brought him, scariest hell, man. Let's do it earlier. You mentioned that, you know, the spaghetti westerns were a big influence on

on the dark tower series, right? When, you know, you were writing all those iconic works. How much inspiration did you take from other mediums and other genres for your own stories? Well, I mean, I was a big fan of Western movies period. And I tried to get in a lot of the things that those books and movies were based on, you know, the idea that the guy has to be alone. And he has to be a hero. And although in the early books, Roland isn't very much of a hero,

he's actually kind of a bad guy. Yeah. He is. He is. And then he changes.

“Yeah. Go then. There are other worlds in these. I think about this. I'm so happy that you brought that back.”

I'm so happy you brought the back for the next book. I'm so excited, Mr. King. I'm going to go. I'm going to show up at your house. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, sir. Um, can I? I'm, you know, I won't. I want to. I'm sorry. Um, a joke. I've been watching a lot of interviews to prep for this between between you and your day. And I got to say one thing sorry. Yeah. You know, it's, I'm, I'm, I'm getting a taste for them.

Um, I'm sure there's a joke here somewhere. But I, but I can't find it. You know, um, you know,

“just pretend I'm not here, Joe. Yeah. I know, right. I mean, I don't know how to talk about it.”

I have a great relationship with my dad. We love a lot of the same things. You know, Owen and dad and myself, my, my brother, Owen, Owen is a wonderful writer. He wrote, yes, we commute to use with that and, uh, Owen's last novel, the curators and

absolute, you know, stunner. The first two pages is the curator of better than anything I've written

in my whole life. That's great. Um, you know, in the three of us have, have both a playlist and a message thread. And we talked to each other every day. And mostly what we talk about is rock and roll. And sometimes what we're watching on on TV and you know, this and Bob Dylan and me love. We talk about meatloaf a lot. We talk about meat. A lot. So we really did. And you know, it loves meatloaf. One time meat and and Jim Steinman showed up at some place where I was shooting a commercial or something

like that. And they were wearing these white clothes, man. Like, like, like, Disney characters, you know, and, uh, now they're, they're both dead. But I didn't have anything to do with that. The white glove should have been a sign of the afterlife. It should have been, yeah.

“But Joe, you say that you and your dad, uh, love a lot of the same things. Did you have to”

watch the shining in a friend's house or something? Or could you watch that at home? I saw dad took me to a screening of it before the film was theatrically released, like a day or two before. Oh, maybe it was the premiere night when it opened in Bangor. And I was just like, uh, six or something. And when I came out, I was gripping his hand and I said, I know, I know, I know, but it was the 70s. It was different. Yeah. Yeah. No, we're the same. We're all the same. We

like, you know, um, and when I came out, I said, who wrote all the great dialogue? And my

dad said, me. I just thought that was that thought I had never crossed my mind. That was kind

of like this unbelievable realization. Um, you know, that my, that my dad was a guy who invented

“fictional people and then put them into terrible situations and stuff. Somehow I hadn't really”

realized his connection to that material. Yeah. Um, I mean, I also saw, I also, he also watched him a lot together when I was way too young. What? Which window? Oh, they're this, a Salem slot. Yeah. But you know, Joe played a part in, in creep show. You know, he was a little kid. Yeah. Who, who stuck, pins into the doll. And his father was kind of an abuser and beat him up. It was not on the screen, but it was off screen. So that when he shows up,

uh, they had done makeup so that there were a couple of bruises on his face. And one night, the shooting wrapped, made, and Joe said, could we get a hamburger? Could we, like, drive through McDonald's? And so we drove through McDonald's and he was this little kid that's, that's up at 11 o'clock at night. And he looks, got all these bruises all over his face. And, uh, I mean, he drives through, call the cops. Yeah. That's so funny. It's like, that old, like,

isn't, is because of creep show is father's day of thing in your home. Like, because of that, like, is there a, where's my cake? Like, is that, does that come from your own personal experience, Mr. King? Like, is that the, did you not receive your cake? Well, yes, but I didn't get my cake, but nobody came out of the grave. You know what, brought me the cake. So, you know, that, that didn't happen. That was neat belief. Okay.

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. You made documentaries. You're ruining my life, Mr. King. You're ruining my life. So you were also in creep show, the loan, some death of Jordy Varyl. Um, now your performance in that was that intentional, or we won't even talk about that. Right. No, you were terrific. It's a terrific,

comic turn. I want that. Thank you. When I, when I watched that, the first time is a little kid,

I got Terry. Oh, yeah. You were so sad what happened to what happened to Jody Varyl. Or you just come up because you were a better actor than your father.

"Slave media shit." Yeah, yeah, I agree. Honestly, I just watched sleepwalkers the other day. And

“as a comedian, your commitment to that awful joke, is it bombed in onscreen over and over again?”

I, I do, I love a comedian that really sticks by a bad joke. So I appreciate you, man. The, the mother and son relationship in sleepwalkers, is that anything similar to what you experienced in real life? Oh, yeah, I was just like my dad. Yeah, yeah. Did you, Mr. King, did you get with Tabitha to breed authors? Is the goal was for you guys to get together? Was this like a program that you, was like a King-based program to install? I just want to, I just want to remind

you guys that I'm sitting here. Yeah, I just want to know. Why did you just ask for what? Steve, did you get together with your wife and breed? What's your career? That question is golden.

“It's already gone someplace. I don't want to think. It's science.”

Well, we're talking about Southern Freud chicken here. Yeah. But still, you know, the thing is my wife is a writer and I'm met her in a poetry seminar. And so we come by it quite naturally with both writers. And she's, she's as good as I am or better in some ways. No, she's, my,

what, five, Joe, five books. Seven, six. Every one of the family takes the manuscript to her first.

Yeah, you know, and I'll tell you a story about my mom. I, um, my third novel, Nostvaratu had a really bleak ending, dark and dark, ugly ending, you know, where, you know, hopeless. And I'm like, and I'm not changing a word because I'm a fucking artist, man. And I came here and just rub their face in the hopelessness and futility of life. You know, when I was dead, set, like I'm staying with it. And the first person I sent the book to was

Mom. And she blasted through and, and she called me up, you know, a week later. And she said, Joe, I, I finished the book and it's just so wonderful. But that ending really won't do. And I said,

“okay, Mom, I'll change it. So that's how long my artistic integrity helped. And you know,”

the other thing about Mom, and it's, I think it's given us everyone in the family sort of

tough skin when it comes to reviews and stuff. And she writes all the bad reviews first.

When Adam finished it, she said, the critics are going to say, you left off two letters. James, and when he finished in Sony, she said, oh, I can see the reviews already. Stephen King's in Somia. Kira's in. We talked a lot about misery too. She said, the critics will say, the whole review is written in that one word, misery. Well, I mean, was she the one who came up with the phrase, it sounds like it

came up with the phrase, kill your darlings? Because for me, that is one of the best pieces of writing advice that you've given is, you know, kill your darlings. It's so difficult. Is there like a darling that you have like something that you felt was just so beautiful, but just didn't quite fit the was, you know, that you had to kill that sits out in your mind? Yeah, I went back to Tavi again. I wrote a book, it was published last year called NeverFrench. And there were three

main stories in it. There was a dog napping, which I finally got in another book, which is forthcoming. And there was a serial killer, and there was a dope thing. And Tavi came to me and said, this dope thing has all been done before. You know, this is no fucking boring. Well, I mean, I thought for it. I thought for it, but in the end, she was right. She usually is. I've seen that a few times too. I've

seen that Nash is teeth for 48 hours because Mom said something didn't work. But then he always makes

the changes. You know, you've really never, you've really always felt in the end that actually she was probably right, and that was the right direction to take stuff in. So there's been a, there's been a 50-year collaboration of ideas there, you know. Yeah, she, she changed the whole ending of other worlds in these. In fact, there was a point where I thought to myself,

But she said, you know, somehow you have to bring it back around to the kid that he was, you know, because Jack saw your starts in the talisman all those years ago. And, you know,

what a great opening that first book had to do. The talisman in the beach, I was just running in.

It's a very favorite. It's one of my, the first times I ever cried in a book was reading the talisman when the, I'm not, how do you feel? Like, because you've said this, like you don't know what's going to happen. I'm like, do you guys are both kind of said similar things where you don't quite know what's going to happen to the characters you create when you start to kind of go in a way. But when you write something like that, like in the talisman, when you kill somebody beloved,

like, do you laugh? Like, do you laugh to yourself? Like, are you like, I got these fuckers, or are you like, or are you sad? How twisted do you think I am? Sure, I think you might be. I don't laugh. Joe, do you think a head? Do you know then characters are going to die? Or does it sometimes I know when working towards a big scene? Sometimes I, sometimes I have like a set piece in my mind and so I'm working towards that. A few characters

died in the last one, King Sorrow. And when one of them died, it took me by surprise. I didn't realize that was going to happen. And I felt a little bit shaken up by it. What's funny is when Ryan

my 22 year old read the book. He said, oh, I knew that character was going to be the first one to die.

You, you really gave that one away, playing advanced. And I thought I did, because I had no clue. Now, fascinating. How, how far along in the writing career did you get when it was like that?

“Or is it a thing that you have to have? Like, the idea that you get to the point where the”

characters just live, where you create the characters and they just live in your, is that just natural? Or is there a thing? Or is there a craft in that way that you'd learn? I know you guys went to school. But it's like, how do you guys get to that point? Where you could just be like, yeah, I don't know what the character's going to do. How do you write books? How, how write books? One of the things that, you know, he talked about characters that that died,

a little boy died at the end of, of Kujo, you know, in the novel in the movie, >> He's a spoiler. >> [LAUGH] Joe, the bonus. >> No, no. >> 15 years old, almost. >> Go read Kujo. >> Anyway, the little boy dies at the end of the book. But in the movie, he lives, but he got met by the rabbit dog.

“So I think he died horribly of rabies after the gray dog.”

But the thing is, when children die or adult die in books, that's one thing. Don't let a dog die. I have heard more about that. I mean, Greg Stillson kicks a dog to death at the beginning of the dead zone.

I've never heard the end of it.

>> That's an automatic one star after a good retraining. I killed a cat in a story called Jackknife, and I have eaten so much shit about it online. >> My mother's dog, who I took in, Tutsi, she actually passed away yesterday at a complete randomness. She was only 19 years old. So, you know, why don't you get almost by a beer.

>> What did I go so young? >> But we did a wonderful thing with her. We took her up and we put her up, we brought her body up a hill and then, you know, we put her in the ground and there was a beautiful rock structure on the ground. It was like, it was as gorgeous and then we were putting her in the ground and it was thin

soil, it was sour and so I'm hoping when I get home, she'll be there waiting for me. >> That cemetery, yes.

“>> I don't think that's better than you, I'm sorry, was that your junk cram dog?”

>> Sometimes, that's better than ever. >> I hope that your routine doesn't depend on the quality of your impersonation. >> He was pretty, yeah, he was great.

I have to ask about Pennsylvania because like you, I am a massive romance fan, massive

romance fan and in the story goes that's been told that, you invited them over to your house when, you know, before Pet Semitary was being made and Dee Dee Ramone took a copy of Pet Semitary disappeared for an hour and came back with the song "Fully Written." Did that, did it actually happen that way? >> No.

>> Okay. >> Great. >> How did it actually happen? >> Yeah, I love getting a past of business and stories. I said, I said, would they write, you know, my idea was that they would do the soundtrack

for Pet Semitary and that didn't fly, but they did do that song.

I don't want to be buried in a Pet Semitary and that was, what, you talk about a great

line, buried in a living cemetery. >> I don't want to live my life again, that's such a sad little, sad little, you know. And every blanky nerd boy knows that feeling, they're all just like I don't want to go

“through junior high again, that's what it's about.”

>> Yeah, we just get a whole amount of ACDC. >> Yeah. >> Oh yeah. >> You know, they did not, they did the whole soundtrack to Maxim overdrive. >> I just saw that movie to prep for this.

Do you remember directing any of that, Mr. King? >> Yeah. >> I remember too much of it. >> Yeah. >> You know, this thing is, I didn't know, Dino said, Stephen, this is Dino, Dino Renus.

He said, Stephen, I think what we want to do is make a movie and you're going to direct it.

Well, I'd never done anything before, I hadn't been in film school or anything.

I learned, as I went along, I could actually do a pretty good job the next time. But it was a blast, I haven't seen it. >> I also feel a lot of it because you have such a deep understanding of movies, because you guys watch a lot of movies, when you guys are writing novels versus screenplays, like easier than a novel, or is it like, because sometimes you're retrofitting from one

of your other previous words, what's the hardest thing that you do? What's the thing besides getting up in the goddamn morning?

“That's what I mean, going to the dentist, I think, and we're having a proctological”

exam. >> Those are, I mean, is it easier to write script or books? Which one is, I mean, books, I'd want to write books any day of the week over writing screenplays, but I do write screenplays because that's how I get my healthcare. So I'd write at least one script every year.

If you've had a lot, you've done a lot more in that space, you've written whole TV shows, you know, like not just like the pilot or something, but like every, literally every episode. I think you wrote every episode of golden years, you wrote every episode of Lucy's story, you wrote every episode of story of the century. >> But does it suck to go from being able to be Lord and creator in your own world of writing

a novel to like having to go talk to a bunch of suits that are building and trying to tell them what your ideas are? You just, you're just not care, or they just like, oh, whatever you want, Mr. King. >> No, I mean, it isn't that way, really, but what I do because I have this wonderful cushion that I don't have to write for the rent every month and that's a big fucking deal

as you guys probably know, the thing is, I can write a script on, on spec, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, I get a series of scripts for a show called Storm of the Century. >> Yeah. >> And that's my favorite one, really, you know, that really turned out well.

>> Because I had a good relationship with director, you know. >> Well, it's also really glad, I'm glad to hear that the only fans is really working out for you guys.

“And then the bad is really paying the bills and I just really, I think that that's really”

great for you guys. >> It's regular, I've noticed that you have the same director do your stories, you know, like you multiple movies. Is there a certain director you think that understands your stories better than anyone else? >> Mike Flanagan.

>> Yeah. >> Life a shock. >> He's good, he's good, but who's the other guy? I want to say he's got like a name like Jack Holden or something or like maybe he directed the head to the head to the head to the head to the head to the head to the head to the head.

You're talking about Jack, Jack Bender. >> Jack Bender was that meant to thank you, you just saved us. >> Jack Bender is terrific. And he's somebody who can do things that are just wonderful on a low budget and short time.

And it doesn't look phone dead, you know, that's great.

>> Let's see, like speaking of things that you've written for the screen, like one of the massive influence on me was the TV mini series for the stand that came back in 1994, like that, it blew my mind when I saw that when I was a kid. You know, with writing that and also writing the novel, which is also, of course, incredible, when COVID came around in 2020, were you surprised by how people acted or were you pretty

much like, okay, this is what I expected to happen when a plague hits. >> Well, one thing that did happen, this is horrible to say, but the book went through the roof again.

“>> That story, like, other than that, Mr. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

>> Yeah, yeah. >> I mean, we did a whole series in 2021 on the Black Plague, like the history of the Black Plague in Europe. And one of the things that really struck us was how similarly people acted back then, how they reacted to the Black Plague and medieval Europe as people reacted in, you know, 2020 to COVID.

Do you think that people are basically the same always?

>> In the days of the Black Plague, did they have, like, arrows in the supermarket? So that people would only go one way. >> Yeah, that was a huge thing, there was a huge thing and they had, it was a lot of zooms. >> Yeah, a lot of zooms. >> There's a Dutch researcher named Matthias Klassen, who wrote one of the best non-fiction books

about horror as a genre, it's called "Why Horror Seduces." And he's really the sharpest, you know, the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to, you know, talking about the genre. He co-authored a fairly famous paper that showed that horror fans dealt with COVID psychologically and emotionally better than people who don't enjoy horror.

You know, that if you consume a lot of horror films and read a lot of horror novels, that you absorb the emotional shock of the COVID years at a higher level, at better. And like, to me, that makes sense, because we've all read the stand, and so we've already got our action plan for when Captain Trips hits. >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. >> And you guys seem back rooms or on our way, right away, we're on our way to see that tickets to see it tonight. I'm very excited. I've seen plenty of the, the YouTube videos, so we spoke to the boy himself.

We spoke to Kane. >> I almost, I came this close to going to see obsession last night, but Gillian's got a sore throat, and I didn't want to, I didn't want to dump the kids on her when she wasn't feeling well, so I stayed home.

“>> Obsession is amazing because obsession does a great, which is what I think you guys”

have just destroyed, you guys have this ability to do, which is take a simple idea, like a kind of like a flattery, and then explode it out, like Joe, I was just, you guys haven't maybe, like, as a scene in obsession where the girl smiles for about 20 seconds. >> So good, it's so machine, so frightening. >> I mean, so it just seems like it seems like you still keep up on pretty much every horror

movie that comes out, still. >> There's so much good stuff out there right now, right? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> That's, like, I mean, cars of a horror scene had that great novel coffin moon last

year, and that Cassidy had, when the wolf comes home, that was incredible.

Widow's Bay is great, I love that movie weapons, and I feel thrilled by all this stuff, but also a little bit challenged and stressed out, like of course, kind of got to step up my game to keep up with someone, what's coming out now, because there's just so much great stuff.

“>> Well, I honestly wonder if that's a question you're going to ask your dad, because”

like, think about that, like, you have changed format, too, Mr. King. You also do, like, you write some crime, you write some drama, and you're like, obviously Joe, you're in the same way, you go, you go into fantasy, you go into sci-fi, you go into horror. One of my favorite stories you ever wrote, Joe, was the one where the guy's trapped on

the cloud. >> Oh, a lot. >> Yeah. >> That just scared the fucking shit out of me, just because it's so simple. Like, how do you take an idea that might be, like, as you say this, so it's like an idea

I listened to your anecdote about the ladies' room story you were working on, Mr. King,

“where you talking about how you, you spent 90 pages, you never figured out what happened”

inside that fucking bathroom, right? When does the idea tip? How do you know when the idea is going to tip to become a novel versus I've just spent a hundred, I've just spent a hundred pages doing nothing. Joe, I mean, I don't know, I mean, when I have a really great concept, I can usually

write on that for a couple of days, but if I don't have a great character after a couple days, there's got to be someone I give a shit about, you know, there's got to be a character who I want to spend a few weeks or a month or a couple of years with, you know, someone

“who's got some stuff inside them that seems like it would be interesting to explore”

and who's way of interacting with trouble, seems interesting in a little bit different. You know, if I can latch into a good character, I feel like I'm off and running. Then I'm really excited to see where the story goes, when stories die on me, you know, usually there was a good concept there that was some, it had a clever hook, but I just couldn't find anyone interesting to write about it, didn't seem to, you know, I don't know.

What about you, dad? I mean, you know, what, I mean, I start with an idea, something that's, that's interesting to me, sometimes it's just an image, but it has to connect with something else.

“I mean, it's like an engine without a transmission, it's got to be who parts, you know,”

it's got to be an idea and then it's got to be some nuts and bolts that connect it all together and then man, I just go and I hope that everything's going to turn out pretty good in the end, you know, it's like shooting off an intercontinental ballistic missile. If the warhead is big enough, it doesn't matter if you really hit exactly the spot. Everything blows up in the end, so I just try to do the best I can and, and you know,

you gotta try to be honest with the characters and you can't, you can't bullshit, you know, like you say, oh, guess what, it was all a dream, I hate it, you know, like the other

thing though is like, dad's first drafts are so clean, you know, he, he, I came across

something I was cleaning out the basement, I came across an entertainment weekly where he had written a book review for entertainment weekly, but he had written it, he was in New York at the time and he, he wrote the review on a role in yellow legal pad, long hand and then it sent over to the entertainment weekly offices by courier and entertainment weekly was so shocked to receive the manuscript that way that they actually printed the review, but they

also printed a scan, I hear the wagon wheels, there's no strikeouts, there's no every sentence is clean and first draft, there's no corrections or edits or anything, it was just, it was just this sort of perfect, you know, straight from straight from your mind onto the page and maybe he's it, maybe he's a demon, maybe he's a demon and he needs to be exercised, I don't know man, because that scares me, hearing you say that Joe scares

me, yeah, I'm certainly need exercise, I could, but something like that, when you get back a manuscript or review or something like that with no strike throughs, nobody is giving you any notes, do you ever ask yourself like, is this good because it's good or is this good

because I'm Stephen King, you know, I always think that and you know what I always think

is, I'm going to send this manuscript into the publisher and they're going to call me up and say, Steve, this doesn't say anything, it's just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, if you haven't had that, you don't know that it's not good that it's, no. I always figure it, I wrote it so it must be pretty great, every word delicious. Yeah, it's so nice to have that confidence, I love it too, I never doubt, I'm just like

everything I walk out of, I go, man, I was fantastic, I know, what are the things that

to do the recording of that and the director in the book who's a stand up comedian, who is kidnapped into this other world, so I don't think that I can't wait to hear that. Are you guys both big, are you a stand up, guys? Do you guys watch stand up, do you guys

“are you into stand up, like, do you have you go to comedy clubs?”

No, not really, I, you know, I had some of the, you know, some soul fashion, I had some comedy records.

Oh wow, yeah, yeah, I love my Milton Merrill, I always have my own favorite, Burns

and Allen. Yeah, I am old enough to remember him, oh, my, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I like, I like comedy, particularly, I, I like, lame jokes, I like jokes that make you go, oh, shit. You know, you know, it's interesting to think that stand up comedians are also writers,

that they, you know, that they spend time writing and they're building up material, and it's, it is, it is the same process as, you know, writing essay or short story or piece of fiction. My dick is so small and does not work. That's in a basket.

Dick is so small.

Yeah, by the way, basketball ahead was always ahead, yeah, yeah, I had such a good

time with that. And I got it.

“Now, do you have to talk, do you talk to your dad about referencing Shawshank and dairy”

and stuff like that, or does it all live in the same world or is that just you thrown in the motion there, um, someone asked me about that online and I said, I just thought it was like, you know, dad, me and go in the backyard to throw the ball around, not that we ever really did that because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not much of the baseball player. I like to watch it.

Owen was the one, Owen's little, we team went all the way to the players. There's other balls, you know, you can do it. We've got the ball around, but we play games and we did a whole bunch of shit, you know.

We had good first B, I guess we throw the first B around.

So it's like that. So it's just, it's just, you know, I mean, we did have one thing, when he was working on Dr. Sleep and I was working on Nostra to at some point we both realized we were writing, books about vampires that steal energy from people, steal their souls. The basically his antagonist and my antagonist operating along the same lines.

And when you realize something like that has happened and there are two things you can do. You can either run from it and try to obscure the similarity or you can run towards it and kind of embrace it and just, I just think it's, yeah, we're just better to embrace it. So, so he stuck my bad guy and Dr. Sleep. He stuck Charlie Banks and Dr. Sleep, and I stuck the true knot and Nostra to get all of them.

I just seem like sort of a way to, you know, big knowledge, you know, sort of a knowledge and passing that there was a similarity there. Yeah, was there like one horrible person that both of you met at the same time that made you

“think like I need to write something about energy vampires?”

It was an, let me guess, an editor or a publisher. Well, but, you know, I, I remarried in 2018 and my wife and I had twins, you know. And around about that time, dad wrote a story about a haunted frame. And I wrote a story about a haunted frame, everyone called the frame, what was the one you wrote, rattlesnake, rattlesnake was it called, you know, and, and, and neither of us knew what the

other one was doing and then we found out. I remember saying they're doing, what are the odds that we both write that the two of us would both write stories about, you know, haunted baby strollers at the same time. And she's pushed the baby stroller back and forth with one hand to keep the twins asleep, which is like, what inspires you, I can't imagine what you guys go up with your parents.

How scared are you two of cars? What is the deal? Yeah, what, you guys, that is the truth, in your work, there's a lot of scary cars. A lot of haunted cars, trucks, evil cars. The cars are part of our lives, you know, they're just everywhere, and you know that if

you're going to get into an accident, a serious accident, it's probably going to be an car. Yeah. Of course, I didn't have an accident while driving a car. I just had an accident when I was walking along the road and I got hit by a car.

But, you know, they have a for that.

The cars were there before. Yeah.

“Oh, cars are a part of our lives, you know, so that's it.”

I want somebody to do a good story about a good haunted GPS story, haunted GPS story. Think about that, guys. Oh, yeah. It just keeps leading you to John Wayne Gasey's house. Yeah.

Got to see that. It's not a bad idea. It's obviously, because it comes from Mr. Stephen King. Guys, got his pretty good, you know, every time, you know, you program the GPS, and you think it's taking you one place, but it keeps taking you back to the same place, and

it's some place you didn't want to go, or there's something that's a signal there. Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah.

I like writing about cars because it's like a shortcut to letting you know something about the character. Yeah. Because when you think about it, the biggest purchase a lot of people make in their lives is their automobile, you know, after the end, and it's such a reflection of, you know,

the things you think are cool, or will make you look cool, or will meet a set of objectives. Yeah. Cars and personalities, right, Joe? Yeah. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I mean, that was the whole thing, you know, with Christine, the car makes the man. And I loved Christine, but I, for some reason, I, I became obsessed for some reason with the insult shatters that was used, and I got, I have to ask, man, like, shatters, what's up with shatters?

Because I, you're so good at co-winning a curse word.

“I, I do, I remember that the best line in that movie was the guy said, so I'm going to sell”

this shit hole in Bio-Combedo. I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more.

I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more.

I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more.

I'm going to have to have a little more. I'm going to have to have a little more. Something that you guys want to do, do you guys want to do together? Yeah. That's something that you've ever thought, like if you really thought about putting your

strength towards crime, I'd be scared to go to jail. No. That's all in my imagination. You don't think you do well in jail. For a guy, I have to tell you, for a guy that writes fiction for a living too, I'm a terrible

liar. I think I just can fast whatever it was, I wouldn't be able to, I wouldn't be able to get away with it. I just blab everything the first time a police officer looked at me sideways.

“That's the best way to leave the murders on the page.”

I understand. Lightly story. You guys are also creators, because this is a part of why we had this.

I want to say thank you guys in incredible amount for doing this with us.

Part of this was because it was about, it's Father's Day. Father's Day is coming up and you have created some of the scariest fathers that have ever existed. Are you guys of both together, create some very scary fathers? Who is your favorite Father figure in media?

If there's like a visit, like, leave their look up to a dad or you don't want to be that guy? I said to my dad once when I was a young dad, I said, I just wanted to be like Gregory Pat playing Atticus Finch into Killah Mockingbird and I'm just so not able to rise to that level and dad seemed very perplexed by that and he said, Joe, you know, Gregory, Pat

had a script. Did you tell scary stories to your children? Yeah, I did, but I told him funny stories too because I didn't funny to go to bed with you know, a scary thought in mind, I mean, funny story would be, you know, Goldilocks and the three bears, but at the end Goldilocks doesn't get away, she's eaten by the bears.

That is what I mean.

What did you never threaten him with, like, Pennywise, you know, I made up Pennywise.

Pennywise is right here, I got Pennywise, like, you know, Henry's dad used to say, like, I got Santa Claus's number, did you ever say, I got Pennywise's number, I got Pennywise. No, I mean Pennywise now is out there, he's not in my head anymore, so, you know,

used to say when I was little, he would sometimes say, if we were just being crazy and, you

know, the house was in chaos and stuffy, say, hey, don't let me go, put my ass kicking boots on.

“And I remember looking in the closet trying to find them, you know, shoes and boots, you know,”

sort of speculating about which were the ask kicking pair, you know what, but one, come after me, I'm very ticklish and he would go, seller do ever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

He noticed when he hit this like furry hand and he grabbed my baseball bat and hit my window in the middle of the night with it. It scared the shit out of me. So thanks.

- Yeah. - It's wonderful.

- We had time for one more question,

and this one, it's a little large, but it's kind of a question that I've been asking myself a lot lately. It's like, you know, you're one of the most prolific and influential cultural voices of the 20th century. But, you know, like, I'm not the only one

that's noticed that American culture,

“we keep dipping back into the 20th century”

for our stories, for our music, for our movies. Like, do you think that, you know, like, as one of those voices, do you think over the last 20, 25 years that American culture has become sort of stuck?

And if it has, how do we get on stuck? Man, I don't really know because it's even like, we have this thread, me and my two boys, and a lot of them are about music, for instance, music and movies and TV, all of that,

that the cultural things that are, you know, kind of like pop culture, yeah. And I don't follow on matter what they say, because I kind of like have lost the beat in some ways. And I don't wanna be one of those people

who gets into their mid or late 70s and say,

“well, I'm hip, you know, it's like Donald Trump”

when he tries to dance, you know. Don't do that. I love seeing you dance, though.

It is never seeing you move like that.

It's great to see it. - You know, man, you know. - Good, I don't think that we're culturally stuck. When we were just talking about, I mean, you know, and especially John or horror,

we just head back rooms and obsession open up, you know, to enormous, you know, and they're being directed by 20 somethings. And, you know, and there's, you know, there are all these, you know, terrific.

There's been just, you know, an avalanche of great books in the genre written at a really high level. - Well, but that opens up another interesting questions that like, it's, I do agree that like horror is, you know, across media is where like,

all the best comic books coming out right now, horror, the best movies, the best TV, like, it's all like horror seems to be the one thing that's doing new stuff. Why is it that the scene's like the 21st century

is chosen horror? - 'Cause it's a scary time to, you know, I think, in a lot of ways, because the media, you know, to get clicks, you want to get something that's really horrible.

Don't you agree, I mean-- - Yeah, I mean, it's like in the '50s when there were all those great horror movies about nuclear war, you know, about like giant ants being created by, you know, the nuclear test blasts

and stuff like that, you know, people have these feelings. I mean, maybe it's cathartic to go scream in the dark, you know, especially when the times are really stressful and, you know, you can go to a movie and sort of let it out.

- Yeah, and, you know, audiences, go to two movies, that this is the great thing about movies when they really work, you know, somebody screamed behind me and, in back rooms last night, that was really good.

And it just brings you together, you know,

You remember, three of me, those, Joe,

how much fun we had at that? - Yeah, even for Martin. Martin wrote on the XCAP.

“- We go Montoya, all right, it's time for you to die.”

What is that being written? - Pretend it was written. - Right, which was so great. I mean, the thing about the thing about the horror film, you know, going to a horror film is,

we're so politically divided these days, but when we're on the dark and something that's a really good scare, nothing brings everyone together like that because we're all frightened together, at the same time.

- Oh, that's horrible. - Yeah, also, I'll say, you guys, you said something, Joe, about your dad's work and I'll say it about yours too, where you tell you about how people are saying, "Oh, the work's so frightening."

And you were said something along lines of like,

"My dad's work's about bravery."

It's about standing up two things, despite insurmountable challenges. And I actually think that what we're finding ourselves now is almost like, we sci-fied our way in eighties to stop you, sci-fi, we sort of sci-fied our way into this reality.

And now it's up to sort of like us to create the next version of the future, which seems, which we need to hero, and we need the works of you guys, 'cause you're making heroes and putting them into the world. When you do, when you write what you do,

you do put heroes in there. - That's a beautiful thing, yeah, you said it well. - So thank you. - Yeah, thank you, hey, thank you all so much for joining us today.

This has been a true honor and just a lot of fun. And thanks for, let me talk about shit for a second. - And remember, next time you see me, none of that Mr. King's shit, I'm Steve.

- Yes, Steve, you got it, Steve, you got it, Steve.

- You got it, Steve. - I'm Northland. - And how wonderful was that? - Oh, I hope it was okay. - I hope so. - I'm still, I still am scared.

- Yeah, should we do a boner check? - No, no. (laughing) - And there's at least I'll say it. - If you watch this on Netflix, you can obviously see we're all wearing different clothes.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. It is a different day, but he deserved an outro. - I came, yes. (laughing) - I'm looking at you when I go. - Oh man, oh wow.

- Can't believe we got him to do the obsession face. Well, we actually didn't even have to get him to do the obsession face. He volunteered. - Yeah, what he wanted to. - You wanted to so bad.

- I'm angry, I didn't see it at the time because I would have loved to have talked with him about obsession. And honestly, he did a great obsession. - He really did.

- Pitjorn.com/lastpodcast on the left is where you can go to support us monetarily and get ad free episodes.

“If you want to watch, last podcast on the left,”

if you want to see that obsession face, that Stephen King made, you can go watch it on Netflix.com - Is that no, no, no, no. - I think we'll watch it on TV. I don't know why I felt compelled to put the dot comment there.

- Can I just sitting at your computer, you would have to write it that way? - You would have to write it that way. - Yeah, for the bus station, you're on your phone. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're even your phone as a map.

- Yeah, yeah, and don't forget to follow us on all of the socials at LP on the left. TikTok and Instagram, that's where you could find us. And all the live shows, we got coming up, we got Grand Rapids coming up,

we got Tulsa and Oklahoma City coming up. Those are on our website, last podcast on the left.com, the JK Ultra Tour is winding up. - Yeah, and we're working on like a live stream situation for one of those, right?

- Tulsa, Tulsa, so we can say that it will be live streams. - We are working on it and we don't know how. - Yeah. - We're saying right now, there it's in the works, but we don't have any general information

and our manager told us to run with that. - Yeah, right, yeah. - But if you are in that area, come see the show live, come actually check it out in person.

“If you have to see it on the live stream, that's great.”

But if you can't see it live, make the drive, make the drive new Mexico, make the drive in the panhandle. - Let's drive anywhere. - Let's just get out.

- Get out of there, get out of the dust bowl, leave the farmers daughters alone, let them have a break. Come to the big city, Tulsa. - Yeah, your air conditioner is in your car, getting your car where it's cold, come on show.

- I bet you'll find food closer to where the places in Tulsa than you will wherever you live. - Tulsa's got food. - Tulsa's got food. - Tulsa's got food.

- Tulsa's got food. - Tulsa's got food. - Tulsa's got it. - Yeah. - And if you drive to Tulsa, you can take I-40,

you can stop at the largest cross in the western hemisphere. They have a fantastic statue of Jesus holding an aborted baby. - Oh, that is nice, and we like to have to find the largest man in the nail to it. (laughing)

- Oh, I wanna go, how do you like up screaming?

- Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

- How do you like your aborted baby?

I like mine sunny side up.

- Oh, see, I like mine rare.

As in, I don't like them around. - Whoa, in the toilet. - I like mine bronzed, permanent.

“- It's bad on your teeth, but it's delicious.”

- Well, enjoy. I hope you enjoyed our interview with Stephen King. Thank you. - All right.