Stephen King calls one morning to set up an interview — and he’s singing.
“I hear you want to talk about… ‘I don’t wanna be burrrried / in a PET Sem-a-taar-yyy!’” the best-selling author croons over long distance.
The Ramones based that pop-goth song on his 1983 novel, it was featured in the creeptastic cult-favorite 1989 movie, and now — as most things associated with this tale — it gets to live its life again as part of the haunting new version of Pet Sematary hitting theaters April 5.
It stars Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz as parents who move their family to the edge of the Maine woods, where there is a hidden place that resurrects the dead. Lithgow costars as a kindly neighbor, who reveals secrets best left buried, and Jeté Laurence plays their curious daughter, Ellie, who has too much curiosity for her own good.
King has a complex relationship with Pet Sematary. Over the decades, the 71-year-old storyteller has done a lot of monstrous things to a lot of people in his novels, but the rumor persists that he thinks Pet Sematary crossed a line, that it’s too morbid and troubling, and he only published it to escape a book contract.
It turns out all that is real.
So is a lot of what happened in the book. That’s why it bothers him.
Read the entire Entertainment Weekly interview HERE.
