“No one mentioned a clown”. Despite many attempts to read Stephen King’s thousand-plus-page novel, It, over the years, this sentence from very early in the book always stops me in my tracks. King’s encapsulation of unthinkable nightmares and sprawling small-town conspiracy unsettles me more than all the “good parts” I’ve skimmed, or the 1990 TV adaptation, or even Andy Muschietti’s new blockbuster film. The big-screen It compensates for a lack of scares with a dynamic young cast (as well as Bill Skarsgård, whose insatiable harlequin-monster, Pennywise, is sufficiently eerie when he’s not a sped-up-and-screaming CGI puppet). In updating Derry, Maine’s “Loser’s Club” to a pack of late-80s middle-school misfits, the screenwriters retain King’s sense of adolescent teen dread of the world and devotion to one another. I wouldn’t be surprised if, twenty-seven years from now, people remember It as a beautiful coming-of-age story first and forget to mention the clown.
Welcome to Kicking the Seat!
Ian Simmons launched Kicking the Seat in 2009, one week after seeing Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia. His wife proposed blogging as a healthier outlet for his anger than red-faced, twenty-minute tirades (Ian is no longer allowed to drive home from the movies).
The Kicking the Seat Podcast followed three years later and, despite its “undiscovered gem” status, Ian thoroughly enjoys hosting film critic discussions, creating themed shows, and interviewing such luminaries as Gaspar Noé, Rachel Brosnahan, Amy Seimetz, and Richard Dreyfuss.
Ian is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. He also has a family, a day job, and conflicted feelings about referring to himself in the third person.