So many people my age have memories of a sleepover, usually around Halloween, where we watched It (1990) with our friends. Someone’s mom or dad had rented It with a couple of other horror tapes to help the kids scare themselves in that typical Halloween tradition. It, for those of us who were just kids in the early nineties, became a right of passage, a cultural touchstone for our generation.
It’s this connection between that two-tape movie and its audience that has ensured It‘s place in our popular culture and motivated documentarians John Campopiano and Chris Griffiths to make Pennywise: The Story Of IT (2021). First this impulse revived It for a two part theatrical remake and then a behind the scenes documentary about the making of the landmark television film. And this is just the cinematic aspect of It‘s longevity, setting aside all of the merchandise, re-printings, and NECCA figures that reiterate the cultural relevancy of the first adaptation of Stephen King’s notorious novel. Obviously It matters to people, but does the story behind the television event?
The making of Tommy Lee Wallace’s It is not the kind of tumultuous story of production mayhem one finds in Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991) or They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (2018) that is just as captivating as the films the documentaries are about. Nor is Pennywise: The Story Of IT the intimate portrait of creativity and artistry that makes I’m Almost Not Crazy (1984) and Notes From “Under The Volcano” (1984) as informative as they are poetic. Pennywise: The Story Of IT is essentially a superbly polished take on the DVD special feature.
This isn’t inherently bad. Pennywise: The Story Of IT conveys the story of a production from beginning to end quite effectively with enough spicy anecdotes to draw the viewer in. But all this does is tell a story and communicate information to the viewer and either that viewer is interested in that story or they are not. There is no sense of formalist ingenuity or aesthetic collaboration between the filmmakers and the subject that marks the great film documentaries. Pennywise: The Story Of IT is just a brisk survey of a film’s history, nothing more or less.
So to recommend Pennywise: The Story Of IT to anyone who isn’t already invested in Wallace’s It would be a complete waste of time. Even then it could be a gamble because, like myself, many viewers expect more from a documentary than what Pennywise: The Story Of IT on a formal level. Pennywise: The Story Of IT is a film for the most diehard fans of that television event. A new fetish object to put on the shelf beside King’s novel, a creepy clown mask, and a plastic figure of Tim Curry.
