10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About "Carrie" (But Should)

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Stephen King had the idea to write a short story about a woman with telekinetic powers, but abandoned the project after just three pages. When his wife, Tabitha, found the pages in the trash, she uncrumpled them and encouraged her husband to keep writing—but suggested that he expand the story into a novel. Which makes the book’s dedication—“This is for Tabby, who got me into it—and then bailed me out of it”—all the more apropos.

Though it dropped off the American Library Association’s most recent list, Carrie was ranked No. 77 on the organization’s list of The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000, wedged in between Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes (No. 78) and Peter Mayle’s Where Did I Come From? (No. 76). The difference between a “challenged” book and a “banned” one is that challenging a book is an attempt to make access to it restricted to a certain age group, not removed from a library completely.

Friends and fellow filmmakers Brian De Palma and George Lucas were both casting for new films at the same time—De Palma for Carrie, Lucas for Star Wars—so they decided to streamline the process and turn it into a collaborative affair. Actors wanting to audition for either movie were in reality reading for both films, after which the directors would discuss whether Carrie or Star Wars was a better fit. A quick YouTube search will find Amy Irving’s audition for Princess Leia.

And we do mean “creeping.” In a 2010 interview with the A.V. Club, actress P.J. Soles talked about the casting process for Carrie and how, while Amy Irving lost the lead role to Sissy Spacek, she gained a husband in Steven Spielberg. “Brian said, ‘There’s a lot of cute girls down here. Come down to the set,’” recalled Soles. “And he’d hang out and he’d ask us all out and none of us said yes, except for Amy. So she ended up marrying him.”

In 1988, Carrie screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen created Carrie: The Musical, which debuted at the Royal Shakespeare Company, with choreography courtesy of Debbie Allen before moving across the pond to Broadway for five performances, igniting a cult-like interest in the play. Carrie: The Musical was revived off-Broadway in early 2012 and the first-ever cast recording was released a few months later. The show is scheduled to make its Los Angeles debut, courtesy of The Transfer Group.

At least that’s what The Rage: Carrie 2, a sequel released in 1999, wanted us to believe. It supposed that Carrie’s father had engaged in romantic liaisons with a variety of women, resulting in at least one more illegitimate daughter with the same, destructive powers as Carrie.

Hitting theaters on Oct. 18, the upcoming reimagining of Carrie is said to be more of a fresh adaptation of King’s original novel than an update of De Palma’s classic film. And it’s certainly got the pedigree to breathe new life into the franchise, with a script written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lawrence D. Cohen, direction by Boys Don’t Cry’s Kimberly Peirce, and starring roles from Chloë Grace Moretz as Carrie White and four-time Oscar nominee Julianne Moore as Margaret White.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Peirce admitted that her first move after being offered Carrie was to call her longtime friend, Brian De Palma, who told her she had to do it. Among the changes they discussed was that she would need to cast the lead role younger, be sure that Carrie didn’t seem like a calculated killer and delve deeper into Carrie’s relationship with her mother. “I wanted to get inside this girl’s journey,” said Peirce of her approach. “And particularly her bond with her mother, which was huge for me.”

Julianne Moore was equally fascinated by the maternal relationship at the center of Carrie. “This woman has clearly had a psychotic break, perhaps several,” Moore told Entertainment Weekly of her character, Margaret. “But what’s sad about it for me is that she’s clearly sick and here’s this poor child in the thrall of this person who is seriously ill. And on top of that, they have this mother-daughter relationship. So we want to make that relationship as meaningful as possible.”

At the suggestion of Peirce, part of Chloë Grace Moretz’s research process included spending time at a homeless shelter. “I talked to these women who have been sexually abused and physically abused and verbally abused, and they’re so strong,” Moretz told Collider. “Carrie doesn’t speak much in this movie at all, she has virtually no lines, so it’s all looking at her and trying to figure out what everyone else is doing to her from what she’s conveying to you through her eyes and her mannerisms, and through her smile or her tears, and that’s how these women were.”