IT (1990) Mike’s Album Behind The Scenes

The idea of the carnival scene is straight out of the book, a hand that reaches right out of the photo album and grabs at them. Come on, it's just a drawing. The photo book was built by two people, Mike Steffi and Bob Comer. Both of them had this amazing mechanical ability to build what we call tabletop gags, really intricate things. That was my favorite thing, that you see a photograph and I come alive. Such a great idea. I have never seen so many cables attached to something that operated those pages to turn. It was a complex push-me-pull-me cable system. They had to hit their marks, so they had to have individual cables for individual pages. It took them weeks to build it. When they operated it, it was one of those how-do-you-hide-all-that stuff. Visual effects just didn't have the money. What I really, really wanted to emphasize was that I think I see Pennywise back there in the background somewhere, but he's just not bothering anybody. And I picked up the book, and the first thing we saw was just a big hole in it. And he's like, all right, I want you guys to act like you guys are reading this book, like Pennywise is dancing down the street. He jumps on the pole. Remember the pull-up. Don't watch the clown back there. I'm doing your own stuff. And then here comes... Oh, ----, he's right in your face, just like that. And I need you guys to react. It was Tommy's hand that kind of came up through there. I remember later seeing the completed scene and being blown away. I thought that was a good, powerful moment.