As if It wasn’t creepy enough, everybody and anybody connected with the movie seems intent on making the experience of actually watching it all the more unsettling. The Alamo Drafthouse, for instance, hosted “Clown Only” screenings of the film, where all attendees, like the film’s titular monster, had to attend in full clown regalia. Now even the actors are getting in on the fun.
Nine-Year-Old actor Jackson Robert Scott, who played the at-times menacing Georgie in the film, attended a screening of the R-rated horror movie in Phoenix in full costume. He arrived in his now-iconic yellow raincoat, galoshes and red balloon. The theater even supplied him with a little sailboat made out of newspapers, a reference to the S. S. Georgie that the murderous clown uses to lure him into the sewers (and his ultimate doom).
The theater even managed to get a photo of the young actor in the empty theater before the movie started. They shared the photo on social media with the caption “we floated with Georgie last night!”
While Pennywise the Dancing Clown might be the chief antagonist of It, Georgie was the one that set the events of the film fully into motion. The younger brother of the film’s chief protagonist, Bill Denbrough, he was killed by Pennywise on a rainy afternoon. Chasing the paper boat that he and his brother made through the water-choked streets of Derry, Maine, it fell into a sewer drain, only to be picked up by the thoroughly unsettling Pennywise. After using the promise of returning the boat to lure the child closer, Pennywise ripped his arm off before dragging him into the sewers to finish off.
Despite that early and abrupt death, Georgie appears frequently throughout the movie: a nightmarish vision used to torment his older brother while trying to solve the mystery of Georgie’s disappearance. He is variously seen skulking playfully through the darkened halls of their middle class home and lying in wait in their flooded basement. He promises his older brother that he’ll “float too,” referencing what Pennywise tells him about what happens in the sewers.
Whether this was a calculated publicity stunt on Warner Bros’ part or the seriously messed up idea of a particularly playful kid, it’s safe to say that it worked as intended. Like the twin sisters from The Shining, Georgie is one of the creepiest child characters ever written. And seeing that come to life in the real world is just a little more than I feel inclined to handle.
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