“THE BLACK PHONE” WRITER JOE HILL EXPLAINS A CHANGE FROM HIS SHORT STORY

By Staff Writer

Sometimes a single word can be the difference between making a movie or not. Writer Joe Hill knows the power of the single word that separates the movie adaptation of The Black Phone and the unsettling short story that inspired it. Otherwise, both versions tell the story of a young boy named Finney, who is kidnapped and imprisoned in a basement where a mysterious old telephone allows him to hear the voices of the serial killer’s previous victims.

Hill has had several novels and comic books adapted before. Among them, Netflix’s Locke & Key, the Daniel Radcliffe movie Horns, and the AMC series NOS4A2, so he knows changes are inevitable. “I think most of the stuff that’s been made has stayed true to the characters and the situations. If I particularly love The Black Phone, I think it’s because everything that’s in the story is in the film.”

The Black Phone director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter C. Robert Cargill do expand upon Hill’s original story, adding more victims to the mysterious calls to fill out the narrative, but they really only altered one thing from his original text. This one thing pertains to the madman, known as “The Grabber,” played by Ethan Hawke.

“He’s totally the same character. He has all the same lines and does all the same things,” Hill says. “The big change is that in the movie he says, ‘I’m a part-time magician.’ But in the short story, he says, ‘I’m a part-time clown.’”

Hill lets that distinction sit for moment. “It isn’t that hard to understand why we made that change.”  The answer is one word: It. For those that don’t know, Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King, and it was obvious to everyone, including Hill himself, that it would be best if The Black Phone did not appear to be riding the coattails of Pennywise the Clown.