Michael Wenye Li / Assistant Photography Editor

September 20, 2017

It Screenwriter Chase Palmer To Answer Questions at Schwartz

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Chase Palmer, screenwriter for the 2017 film It, will be holding a question and answer discussion at the Scwhartz Performing Arts Center today.

Back in 2009, when the project to create a new It film began, Andy Muschietti was not set to be the director, but rather Cary Fukunaga who Palmer had worked with previously. Palmer got an offer to write the script and took it. “When it comes to an adaption of anything by Stephen King, you want to jump on board,” Palmer told The Sun. In 2015, Fukunaga dropped out as the director of the film and Andy Muschietti took the reigns.

Surprisingly, the writers did not look to the original 1990 miniseries for inspiration at all. In fact, Chase Palmer has never seen the original It. “I remember it being on and I remember seeing clips of Tim Curry,” he explains. “The book was the source material for this new version,” Palmer adds. Additionally, Palmer mentioned that the focus of this reboot was “things that weren’t in the book but were in the spirit in the book,” such as scenes where the children are swimming in a quarry rather than playing in the junkyard, as written in the book. “Based on our experiences as kids and the fact that we played in quarries, we decided to change that up. it wasn’t in the book but it was in the spirit of the book.” However, the fact that It is an 1138 page novel created “a lot of  pressure to fit in all the character work, history and story from the book into a single movie.” Palmer described the perfect, simple solution: “Split the book into two movies: one will focus on the story when the protagonists are kids, and the other when they are adults.” A sequel to the film has been confirmed, but Palmer is busy working on other major projects.

Palmer is both the creator and writer of Biopunk, a drama based on the book Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life written by Marcus Wohlsen, a Wired magazine writer . The series will be about DIY biohazards and is “based on the emerging subculture of bioengineers working in their garage, and synthetic biology,” Palmer explained. Additionally, Palmer is working on Number 13. Number 13 was meant to be Alfred Hitchcock’s first film, but it was pulled from production and was lost. No one knows what happened to it and with this Number 13, Palmer hopes to set forth a theory as to what happened to the film, but through a “Hitchcockian story… with the same humor and irony a Hitchcock film would have.”

The question and answer session is in the Film Forum at the Schwartz Center starting at 4:30 p.m. It is part of the Department of Performing and Media Arts’ Professional Directions Series.

Viri Garcia is a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be reached at [email protected]