Lawrence D. Cohen

Directed by Brian De Palma.

Screenplay by Lawrence D. Cohen.

Based on Carrie by Stephen King.

Music by Pino D'Onozio.

Well, since you asked so nicely.

"Carrie" is written by Lawrence D. Cohen based on the novel by Stephen King, who'd have thunk it? And directed by Brian De Palma.

It stars Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen, John Travolta, Betty Buckley, P.J. Soles, and Piper Laurie.

"Carrie" was actually King's first published novel.

... alive and well in this version of Carrie

But I'm glad that you pointed out screenwriter, though, because while, yes, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa does have a screenwriting credit on this, the other screenwriting credit is for Lawrence D. Cohen, AKA the screenwriter of the 1976 film.

Yeah.

So this is like, oh, we took that script and Aguirre-Sacasa just did, like, a once-over on it.

I mean, this was two years after the movie comes out two years after the book is is written.

King actually wrote the first script for the movie that that actually got onto the desk of Lawrence Cohen, who ended up writing the full screenplay.

Lawrence Cohen, this wouldn't be his last Stephen King adaptation because he actually did the screenplay for

the 1998 miniseries, which was

our first episode of the season.

George Lucas was sitting back and being so quiet when Mark Hamill came in and auditioned he thought George Lucas was like a director's assistant because he wasn't talking at all in the audition room interesting that's amazing

being sneaky

So the screenplay was done by Lawrence Cohen, who we talked about.

Matt, this movie was written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.

It was, uh, Lawrence D. Cohen also got a writing credit, who was the writer of the '76 version of the film.

And I couldn't figure out if, like, that's because it, it, it was the, it was the and.

It was not an ampersand.

It really does.

They brought back Lawrence D. Cohen, right? The screenwriter who masterminded the 1976 film.

Yep.

They brought back Betty Buckley, who played the sympathetic gym teacher in the movie, Miss Collins, but they elevated her to the role of the terrifying mother, Margaret.

It didn't just pay homage.

It actively copied the structural beats, the camera setups, and massive chunks of the dialogue.

It was so derivative that Lawrence D. Cohen received a co-writing credit on the 2013 script despite having zero involvement in the actual production simply because they reused so much of his 1976 screenplay.

That is just wild.

Keep your tits on.

As much as De Palma and writer Lawrence Cohen are really running with the most broadly candy-colored version of Stephen King's original novel of the same name, and this story does have a crazily single-minded momentum towards its now iconic climax, you can also tell that De Palma is doing the R-rated teenage version of his idol, Hitchcock, Albert Hitchcock, by milking every bit of tension and dread from the presence of that bucket, the aforementioned bucket of pig's blood.

For easily at least 40% of this film's runtime, he is clearly using that bucket as Hitch's proverbial bomb-under-the-table metaphor.

And it works.