Ira Levin

It's just like so...

And I, okay, so written by Ira Levin-

Sure

... a wonderful novelist who also wrote The Stepford Wives, also about men being horribly controlling and gaslighting to their wives for their own evil, venal purposes.

It's called The Bramford.

But-

And did you know that Ira Levin, he didn't call it, and made up the name The Branford based on Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula?

Excuse me, sir.

you

know, William Peter Blatty, I think is still, he's still the one that has left most of an impression on me in terms of the written word, not only his horror, but like his comedy is, And same thing with, like, Ira Levin.

Like, it's a lot of these older guys.

I

...

this is the year this movie was made, uh, uh, based on an Ira Levin play Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Do you know this one? Starring Dyan Cannon.

... [laughs] but it's the kind of movie where you go, "I know exactly what is going on in this film."

Right.

'Cause it's Ira Levin as well, who's a really good writer.

Yes.

Well, Stepford Wives, I've seen it like, oh my God, like four or five times now because I watched it in the infamous 25 movies in six days marathon leading up to our Raiders of the Lost podcast thing, which really, you know, changed my life.

that movie marathon changed my life in so many ways but this was another one that stood out to me I was like holy fucking shit but now I've seen it so many times and it does not stop making me feel horrible every single time that I watch it and what I thought was so fascinating which I did not clock the first time I watched this even though it says it real big on the screen in the opening title card this is also written by Ira Levin Who did Rosemary's Baby.

Who wrote Rosemary's Baby.

This is his follow-up from Rosemary's Baby.

But one thing I do want to share, I know that I was adamant about not spoiling Annihilation, the book version versus the movie, but I don't care for this one because they are so similar.

It is a very faithful adaptation.

Some of the... dialogue is even exactly the same um it obviously diverges a little bit here and there but the big diversion is the ending and i thought it's an interesting talking point again i didn't read it yet but i googled it because you can do that too um and i'm gonna finish it later because i want to hear how it's written because i do actually really like um ira levin's like voice Right when he writes it.

I remember really enjoying Rosemary's baby as well But the way that it ends if she ends up Cornered in the woods by like all the dudes Joanna does and then they bring up don't don't worry don't worry don't worry and then they instead of it being her robot that kills her it's Bobby and Yeah.

yeah

the author ira levin never like actually said that

okay

but sources that were close to ira at the time that he was writing this

Because of those similarities, later writers have sometimes claimed that the Hall House devil baby helped inspire Rosemary's baby.

But

as I just mentioned at the top of this episode, Ira Levin never said that, who wrote the book.

Yeah.

Always.

We begin this section with Ira Levin's 1967 novel, Rosemary's Baby.

Our source material describes Levin's writing style as lean and pitiless.

Pitiless, I love that word for this.

This is obviously it was directed by Roman Polanski, written by Roman Polanski.

It was based on a novel novel by Ira Levin.

And from everything I've heard, watching a lot of documentaries and reading, reading about the movies is extremely faithful adaptation of the novel, like almost really, you know, filming the novel almost word for word.

There's a little bit of variances.

But for as far as Ira Levin says, he'd never seen a movie that was so faithful to the book.

And as far as, you know, it was released June 12th of 1968.

And I think you have to put 1968, much like we talked about in Night of the Living Dead, our episode of Night of the Living Dead, you put 68 in kind of the lens of this was a shitty time.

So I listen to podcasts in the morning and I listen to a book on the way back.

Lavenda is want to do.

He jumps around once again, and he starts writing about Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby.

And, you know, because if you didn't know already, before it was a Roman Polanski film, it was a very popular novel.

And...

I mean...

the story itself could have purposely been placed exactly 10 years after Rosemary's Baby in the same place, because Rosemary's Baby would have been an incredibly popular book in recent history, and Since nothing in this book is independently verifiable, the hostage to the devil book, I don't see any reason at all to not just assume that this was intentionally put there by the author.

It wasn't like he did not have any awareness of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby.

And then he spent some time connecting Kenneth Anger and his films with Charles Manson, primarily through Bobby Bousselet.