 Hello everybody! E here. Welcome back to Top 5 Friday. Today we're in front of the Stephen King shows. You know what that means. It's a Stephen King themed episode. I talked about doing this last week and I got several people saying yes, please do that. So today we're talking about my Top 5 Favorite Scenes in Stephen King's It. We are going to go through this. I don't think I'm going to do... We all know what number one is going to be. I think if you watch the other videos, you already know what my number one is going to be. I'm going to start with that and then I'm going to talk about the other ones because other than the number one, they're pretty much in no discernible order. I don't think I could put one above the other other than number one. And number one would be spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. Of course, this is the Top 5 discussion of my favorite scene. So of course, spoilers. My favorite scene in it. This last time I'm showing this monstrosity. This big son of a dooh yeah, because it's heavy. My favorite scene in the book is Ben and Pennywise in the winter on the bridge and Pennywise shows to him as a mummy. It's one of the creepiest scenes in the book and I love the mounting dread of it. It's a terrific scene, fantastically written. One of the best scenes King has ever written. I would say it's the best scene because subjectively it's my favorite scene in all of King's work. But jumping from that, we're going to go into another scary scene that is actually fantastically done and one of the only scenes that the original 1990 miniseries did better than the remake and that is Mrs. Kirsch. When Bev goes back to see her father after coming back to the town when she's an adult and finds out that her dad's been dead for a long time and she ends up going, she meets an old woman named Mrs. Kirsch and she invites her in for tea. They have tea and things go very, very badly. I love what they did with the scene in the 90s miniseries where she's slurping the tea and she's like, you need to run, baby, run, run far, far away. That whole sequence is amazingly creepy. All the way up in the 90s version there's a scene where just of course Pennywise would have caught her because she's running out the door and he's like right there behind her. Or the actor that's playing her father is like right there behind her so that was kind of goofy but the scene leading up to that is amazing. In the book, the book is just dripping with dread. That entire sequence, you know something is wrong. You know something is coming and when it finally, the reveal, of course, is that. But it's one of those things that has stuck with me ever since I first read it that the very, very calm you need to run, baby, I'm going to give you a chance. This monster's telling her you need to get the fuck out of here and it was like, what's going on? That's an amazing, amazing scene for me. So let's say that one's at number five. We've already done one, we've already done five. The next one is Stan Yuris' death. In the book, that scene is so well done. You have absolutely no character development whatsoever for Stanley yet. None. And he basically goes through, I believe it's a 30 page scene. I can never, I'm always reading it. I usually read the two to four pages of the night. Sometimes upwards of 10 pages a night. Even as soon as I finish it, I start it all over again. It's one of those books you can do that with, at least I can do that with. But the Stan's suicide is one of those scenes that I have to read all the way through. I can't stop because it's just so well done. And I think it's the longest chapter in the book as far as the page breaks are concerned. There's no breaks in it. It's just continuous backstory. And he builds all this up and you get to know this character and you get to know him through his interactions with his wife. You get to know how they got together, how they met. You get to build up. You get all of that and then he kills himself. And that sequence, that scene, it bothers me because you see him so happy. You see where he's gone in his life. He's grown up. He's doing really well. And Mike calls and Mike just screws everything up. And of course, it's one of the sadder moments when the Loser's Club finds out that Stan is dead. I think that is a very powerful moment in the book and it happens really, really early on, which brings me to, I guess if you want to call that number four, we're going to go to number three. Number three is the opening of the book. The very first chapter is after the flood. I want to say it's after the flood. It could be during the flood. I always forget how, let's see here, yeah, after the flood, 1957 is the first chapter. I read this chapter on stream one night and I did Pennywise's voice, the new Pennywise, Skarsgard's Benwise. Had a lot of fun. I think 16 pages long, fantastic, fantastic opening. It's probably my favorite book opening ever, yes, even more so than the Gunslinger. That opening line, I never thought it as powerful as most people said it was. I always find this single chapter is the most powerful opening of a book. You get all the character development you need for Bill right there. Bill's sick. Bill is making a boat for his brother because he's a good older brother and he's doing the same. He's sick and yes, he's ragging on him the whole time. He's jiving at him. They're going back and forth and you feel these two kids are brothers. You feel the love there even though they are riffing on each other or Bill's riffing on Georgie. And then of course the way the scene ends, you know, Georgie ends up dying. And I love that just for how much King was able to pack into such a short period of time as an opening. It's also written in part in first person omniscient. King gives you, because he says in the book, it's the only time he references himself as I as a storyteller. He says the terror, which would not end for another 28 years if it ever did end, began so far as I know or can tell with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain. Now there's some speculation that Mike, this could be Mike's thoughts as far as Mike, because Mike tells some of this story. He tells about the black spot. He tells about the cabin. He tells about all the things that happened in the Darys past. So it could be thought of, it could be supposed that that's actually Mike writing this opening. I disagree. I think it's King saying, okay, I'm here to tell you a story. So just so you know, I am the narrator and I am telling you the story. But I think the opening of this book is brilliant. Like I said, if we're going to put it somewhere, this is like the third best scene, which brings me to my second favorite scene in the book. I'm going to cheat here and say all of the flashbacks. I'm going to give one above all of them, but all of the flashbacks are great. The axe murders, the black spot, all those are great. But my favorite one is the shootout in Derry. That just one of those scenes that kind of comes out of nowhere and you are shown the insidious nature of the entity that is it and how it has transformed this town and his overbearing nature, the sense of evil that has bled into this town. And I hear jokes all the time. It's like, Derry must be a, you know, Derry is an awful place. All the grown-ups are assholes and all the kids are bullies. Well, yeah. And that's one of the things that King was building up throughout the entire book is letting me know that it has an influence on the majority of the town. Its evil just kind of overflows into people. And fear, fear will make you angry and it's that sense that this town has been in fear, this thing that they had, the fear of the unknown. And that says a lot about small town America, small town anywhere, how the fear of the unknown can force the majority's hand or how it can change the whole feel, the whole morale of an entire town when an outside force comes in, whether it be good, bad or otherwise. The fear of the unknown is very, very strong and that's what you're dealing with here. You're dealing with a town where every 27 years, their kids start dying off. You know, it's one of those things that the town has been poisoned. And that's one of the reasons why the ending worked so well with the town kind of coming apart, the crack running through town and him following the crack, which is an amazing scene also. It's not here on the list, but it's an amazing scene also. You just have to see the town kind of tear itself down before it can rebuild itself after it dies. But those are my top five scenes from Stephen King's It. I would love to hear from you guys down there in the doobly-doo. Your favorite scenes from the book doesn't have to be five of them. You can talk about one. You can talk about 20 for all I care. I would love to read them. I am on hiatus right now. This video was shot earlier in the week. I will be reading the Institute and I'm going to be staying off social media until I am done with the Institute. So if I'm not answering comments or whatever, don't worry about it. I will be back soon and I will try to catch up as much as possible. But I will definitely come back to this video and I will respond to as many of you as I can. Hopefully that means all of you. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U, this has been another top five Friday. I'll talk to you guys next time. Bye-bye!