By WILLIAM J. WRIGHT
Speaking with Adam Cesare is like talking to an old friend who’s just as obsessed with all things horror as you are. From his Something Weird Video T-shirt to the floor-to-rafters wall of DVDs, Blu-rays, collectibles and posters that served as a backdrop to our recent chat, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author unashamedly wears his rabid fandom on his sleeve, and his enthusiasm for the genre is infectious. Knowledgeable and creative, he is a horror fanboy in the best of all possible ways. And with CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD, adapted from his popular 2020 YA novel of the same title, hitting cinemas on May 9, Cesare is a little more excited than usual.
Set in Kettle Springs, Missouri, CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD is the story of newcomer Quinn Maybrook (played by Katie Douglas in the film) and her friends as they face the murderous mayhem wrought by Frendo, the clown mascot of the small town’s recently burned-down corn syrup factory. Thus far, Cesare has continued Quinn and her cadre of teen protagonists’ efforts to fend off Frendo’s evil in two follow-up novels: Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives and Clown in a Cornfield 3: The Church of Frendo, with a fourth book in the works.
In this exclusive interview, Cesare opens up to RUE MORGUE about novel-to-screen adaptations, his surprisingly collaborative relationship with filmmaker Eli Craig and screenwriter Carter Blanchard, YA horror, and, of course, killer clowns.
Many authors, Stephen King, for example, often have contentious relationships with film adaptations of their work. What do you think of the film, and how well does it match your vision?
CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD creator Adam Cesare, author and horror fan
King doesn’t like Kubrick’s The Shining! Seriously, what the hell? I’ve heard his arguments. He does make a good argument, but I do love The Shining.
Well, I love CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD. It’s so interesting because I’ve been a movie person online for 20 years now. I talk about movies on the internet, not as a professional person, but for a long time. I have always had the opinion that I think the people who jump to the book-is-better-than-the-movie argument are usually predominantly readers. They’re usually not film people. I don’t believe that. I don’t think that holds true. I’m not saying I think CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD, the book and the movie are equally great, although I’ll say they tie.
I think some people get so hung up on the act of adaptation as transliteration. I think there are people who are super big fans of books that get made into movies, and then, you can’t talk to ’em about the movie. Just the other day, I was talking to someone about Killers of the Flower Moon, and they hated the movie. They hated Scorsese’s movie. That’s probably my favorite late-career Scorsese [film]. They didn’t like how different it is from the book, and that it focuses on different characters. I feel bad [for them]. I had a transcendent film experience with that movie. If you can get around the fact that it’s not what you’re hoping for, what you’re thinking, not that CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD is that at all, but I just think this is the general conversation we have around film adaptation. I don’t think good adaptation is transliteration. I think good adaptation is taking the story and characters and soul and letting them live in a different medium. I do believe books are books and movies or movies, and I think when books are not as good is when they’re pitches for movies or when they’re pitches for TV shows. They don’t feel like books to me. So, I think things have to exist separately.
After years of just being a dummy online, I now have to practice what I preach because I’ve had a book adapted into a film, and thank God that I’m justified because Eli Craig’s movie is my story and my characters done in a very done very Eli Craig style. It feels like my book. And yet, it feels like an Eli Craig movie, which to me is the perfect case scenario. It works as a movie because a director and his team of very talented craftspeople have a vision, and they articulate that vision, and it lives differently from the book. It does a different thing than the book to an extent. Even the thematics are all there from the book, which is amazing. A lot of stuff is intact. It is a very visual adaptation, and yet, it does feel like an auteur film, which feels weird to say about a movie called CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD, a 96-minute lean, teen slasher movie, but it’s true.
Verity Marks, Cassandra Potenza, and Katie Douglas in Eli Craig’s CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD. Courtesy of RLJE Films & Shudder. An RLJE Films & Shudder Release
What’s it like seeing these characters that originally lived in your head in flesh and blood on the screen?
It’s odd. The best way I can describe it, and I’ve been describing it in interviews, and I don’t think I’ve given the proper context for it because not every Stephen King reader and horror fan has read The Dark Tower, but I love the Dark Tower books, and there’s this concept of it’s another turn of the wheel of almost alternate dimensions. Before the Multiverse of Madness, there was The Dark Tower and this idea of fate and history repeating itself in interesting ways, with these same characters put into situations where things are slightly different, or things are slightly changed. That’s the way I feel about it. I am a King fan, so maybe that’s the way I see it. I see my CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD universe very much as its own sealed universe of these books. I’m almost toying with that idea in Clown on A Cornfield 4, which I’m writing right now. What if it were a little bit more like the movie universe?
So, I feel a certain step back from it. I feel a certain “that’s their thing and this is my thing,” but I also feel a good bit of ownership over the parts that I’m more sensitive about. Quinn Maybrook is a good example of that. I’ve lived with that character for so long that I’ve met people who’ve named their kids after her, which is an odd thing to say, but it’s true. There’s a certain weight of responsibility to me on how that character is portrayed. Same with Rust and Cole, so how they translate to the screen is important to me, but I also want to stick to my guns on adaptation and let them do their thing.
But watching the film and going to the set and seeing Katie Douglas and Vincent Muller and Carson MacCormac and the way that they inhabit those roles put me at ease. It’s so respectful towards these characters that I’ve been living with for a very long time, as you said, and it’s going on seven or eight years now, and by the time I’m done with copy edits on Cown 4, it will be closer to ten years – which is wild to think – but they’re an important part of my life and an important part of my career, so I want them to be done right, and I’m just very grateful that they are.
(L-R) Co-Writer/Director Eli Craig, Novelist Adam Cesare and Frendo at The Overlook Film Festival for the screening of CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD. Courtesy of RLJE Films and Shudder.
Did Eli Craig and Carter Blanchard consult with you on any aspects of their screenplay?
I was in the loop so much more than other authors I’ve talked to who’ve had film adaptations made of their work. I read Carter’s first script, and I was able to give notes. I don’t think this is talking out of school, but that was before Eli’s involvement. Eli came in based on the strength of Carter’s script, and then he read the book, and then we had to talk. He called me after he got the job and was very open with me, even during pre-production, which is a hectic time. You don’t have a ton of pieces. You’re fighting the weather. You’re fighting a lot of things. And he was doing Zoom meetings with me in the production office, and I could see concept art behind him and stuff like that, and then they brought me to set. So honestly, I can’t say enough about how open they were about the process and how involved they let me be. At the same time, I was kind of like, not my monkey’s, not my circus.
But it was cool that they let me. It was cool that they involved me to that extent when they didn’t have to. Contractually, they did not have to. In some cases, I’m sure it’s actually easier not to talk to the author, but it felt like the right choice here, especially when you see the finished product and you see how close it is to the spirit of the book. Whether you like the book or not, I think people will like the movie because it’s 90 minutes and fast, like a punk song. It has this great cadence to it. It’s got great slasher vibes from beginning to end, and it lets you have your cake and eat it in a little bit of a way because, not to spoil it, the book and the movie are structured in similar ways in that there’s this side of the pyramid and this side of the pyramid and they go towards this big inflection point where everything on this side of the pyramid is stock characters and stock tropes and stock ideas of almost what you expect from a slasher. And then you have something big that happens in the middle, and then it’s time to start turning over the cards, and we’re flipping all these [tropes]. And that part of it feels fun and kind of new. I love that they kept that from the book. That was very much part and parcel of how I wanted to write the book, and it’s cool. It’s cool to see.
This is a question I also asked Eli Craig. From IT to Terrifier and so many other films and books, scary clowns are ubiquitous in the horror genre. Did you ever have any reservations about going down a well-worn path? Why can’t people get enough of scary clowns?
It’s almost like a challenge. I’m a fan of this stuff, but I look at the kind of multiplicity of clowns, and I think you’ll get a lot of people who are resistant or somewhat hostile to the idea of the film. There’s no knock on Damien Leone or his films. I love the Terrifier films, especially Terrifier 2. This idea of putting Frendo against Art? If you’re going to do that, put Frendo against the complete panopoly of cinematic clowns because I love the Chiodo Brothers more than anything. I love Killer Clowns from Outer Space. There are so many of them that it’s okay. You can have another one. There are all these smaller movies that have clowns in them, too. Look at Clown, the body horror clown movie. They all do different things.
What I think this film and the book do is set up an expectation. We are using the Stephen King font on the cover, and we’re telling you, “clown in a cornfield.” And what does that make you think? That makes you think of Pennywise. That makes you think Children of the Corn., That makes you think something inherently supernatural. And then, within the first ten pages of the book, it’s like, no, it’s a whodunnit slasher. It’s a mass slasher story. So, you’re already starting that flipping of expectations. Just from the title and concept, you get like, Oh, it’s not exactly what I thought it was. I like the almost inviting underestimation.
I get a lot of people who try to compliment me that these are not teen novels, but I don’t take that as a compliment. And they mean it in the sense that it’s so violent and in the sense that they feel R-rated. And to me, and I am not obnoxious about it, but I do try to make it a slightly teachable moment of like, no, these are teen horror novels. They’re written for a teen audience. I’m just not condescending to a teen audience. YA fiction is in a place where we can have these R-rated themes. YA doesn’t mean PG-13. That’s your preconception of what teen entertainment is. It’s not what it actually is or what I’m trying to do.
I love my adult readers. I like that there are adult readers who connect with the books, but they’re by no means my target audience. I am happy to be a cross-audience author and that I’m able to do these books because teens read ’em and adults read ’em, and they sell enough because of that. But the teen comes first with this stuff.
Cassandra Potenza, Verity Marks, and Carson MacCormac in Eli Craig’s CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD. Courtesy of RLJE Films & Shudder. An RLJE Films & Shudder Release.
If you look at a sort of Wikipedia definition of YA fiction, it seems that everything from Catcher in the Rye to IT could fit.
Oh yeah, for sure. Your central characters have to be teenagers, and the book more broadly has to speak to teen concerns. It’s all a matter of marketing. It’s all a matter of what shelf you put a book on and what kind of cover you give. That dictates whether or not something can be in the YA genre – if we even want to call it a genre. So yeah, I agree with you. That’s such a broad definition, but it’s also intentionality. It’s like Catcher in the Rye is not a YA novel because Holden Caulfield is not a YA protagonist. Holden Caulfield and Katniss Everdeen are pretty far apart on certain things. Holden Caulfield might be able to come to Kettle Springs and hang with the CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD kids, but maybe not. [Laughs]
I guess we’ll leave it up to Lloyd Kaufman to combine those two at some point!
I would love that! I was just able to announce that I’m writing the novelization to the new Toxic Avenger movie. I’m a huge TROMA fan. I’ve got Class of Nuke ‘Em High on my wall there. I’m a huge Toxie fan, so when I got to do that, I was able to put in a lot of Easter eggs for TROMA fans in there.
