The Stephen King movie that couldn’t have happened without Dee Dee Ramone: “That sealed the deal”
Thanks to Hollywood’s never-ending obsession with adapting as many of the author’s works as possible, the next movie or TV series based on a Stephen King story is never too far away. However, only one of them owes a direct debt of gratitude to one of the horror icon’s favourite bands.
It’s no secret that King is a massive fan of the Ramones and has been for decades, but what’s less well-known is that Dee Dee inadvertently became a key conduit between page and screen, which also ended several years of the project being lodged firmly in the deepest recesses of development hell.
King’s novel Pet Sematary was published in 1983, and as tends to be the case, the rights were quickly snapped up. It was zombie godfather George A Romero who shelled out $10,000 to secure it, but scheduling conflicts ruled him out before the production passed through several studios.
In 1988, the prospect of a looming writers’ strike made Pet Sematary a viable proposition for Paramount, which faced a potential shortage of releases for the following year. However, the supernatural chiller still needed a director, and King’s contract stipulated that he had approval over who wielded the megaphone.
Long before cameras had even started rolling, King had dinner with the Ramones and handed a copy of Pet Sematary over to Dee Dee, informing the band he’d love for them to write a song for the film. Of course, that’s exactly what they did, but there was still the small matter of finding a filmmaker suitable for steering the ship.
As fate would have it, the very first person King met with to discuss the directing job on Pet Sematary was Mary Harron. Not only that, but they had a coincidental friend in common. “I think it’s because I was very good friends with Dee Dee Ramone,” the filmmaker admitted to The Hollywood Reporter of how she got the gig. “And that sealed the deal.”
“And he knew I loved the book. I’ve read all of his books. It’s pretty hard to fake being a really authentic fan, and I was a huge authentic fan,” she continued. “I loved the material, and I think he knew that I respected it and didn’t want to change it or make it my own movie. You know, reimagine it as something that it wasn’t.”
By the time Harron and King had even met, the Ramones were already on board to pen the title track for Pet Sematary. That said, the identity of the person sitting in the director’s chair was entirely at the author’s discretion, and having Dee Dee as a mutual acquaintance quickly convinced King that the stars were aligning perfectly and he didn’t even need to consider anyone else for the position.
