My Tenuous Connection to Firestarter That Still Burns Bright

Monday is about movies. And sometimes TV. Today, Drew Barrymore the child star, the movie Firestarter, and those crazy stories of fleeting celebrity connection

Last night we were watching Firestarter, the 1984 film adaptation of the 1980 Stephen King novel of the same name. It’s the first King film I ever saw — watching it more as “a Drew Barrymore movie” than as anything to do with Stephen King; watching it for the incredible stunt work of the performers set on fire (still blows my mind, still some of the best bits in the film). And though I didn’t know it at the time, the Tangerine Dream score would be a huge reason to reconnect with the film — and what a highlight last year, seeing Tangerine Dream live in San Francisco almost by fluke (bought a ticket on the night) while on holiday. And they played one of the key cues from that film score.

I’ve seen Firestarter a few times — and obviously this time I’m rewatching it in prep for our Stephen King podcast, as it’ll be the next episode. We’ve just released our Dead Zone ep by the way.

So it was cool noticing Martin Sheen in pretty much back-to-back King adaptations (he’s in the Dead Zone film and Firestarter), which is something I hadn’t quite clocked previously.

But my favourite connection to Firestarter, for years, has been the fact that someone I knew at university lived in the house next door to where they filmed the classic farm scene where baby Drew (Charlie) and her dad (Andy) played by David Keith, hide out briefly, having been taken in by a sweet old geezer Irv (the legendary Art Carney) and his slightly more skeptical wife, Norma (Louise Fletcher). Geez it’s a stacked cast by the way! (Add George C. Scott and Heather Locklear…) Anyway, someone I knew many moons ago just dropped this story on me out of nowhere that she’d met Drew Barrymore. And how it had happened was they lived in small town America as a kid, and Hollywood came to town to shoot a movie, and wee Drew would cross the fence and go and bounce on the trampoline with the kid neighbour between takes.

This was information that blew my mind — before the Lord of the Rings films were made in New Zealand the closest we came to Hollywood was things like Shaker Run, and the more dubious Stephen King adaptations (The Tommyknockers). By the way, someone I went to school with was apparently an extra in The Tommyknockers. We also thought that was very cool, even though the TV movie/mini-series was not.

I thought about all of this because a comment on our Dead Zone podcast from someone told us their mother was an extra in the shooting scene in the film (a classic sniper bit near the very end). They got to meet Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen. And in 1982/83 this would have been everything really!

That’s why that Drew Barrymore story blew me away, when I was still attempting to turn up to classes at university during some of the days of each week.

Between E.T., Firestarter, and then Cat’s Eye (more King), Drew Barrymore was the child star of my childhood. It would move on to Macaulay Culkin within a few years (Uncle Buck, Home Alone, My Girl in 1989, 1990, 1991 — what a run). But in the early/mid 80s it was Drew. And back then, Hollywood was a magical place. Not just a set of underwhelming streets you can breeze through. The thought of standing in the same restaurant with the cast of King Kong or hearing about all of the sightings all around the city you’ve almost always lived in — “Elijah Wood was just buying records at Slow Boat!” / “Liv Tyler was denied entry at that bar you always go to for a late night drink” — was nowhere near even likely way back then. Now, Jeff Goldblum or Jack Black or Elizabeth Banks blows through town, or whoever else. And you find out about it after.

So I always think about that when I think about the Firestarter movie. The person I knew that shared her family trampoline with Drew Barrymore, was probably asked that dumb Kiwi question by almost everyone she told the story to… “So, did you keep in touch?”

Sometimes a movie that doesn’t blow your mind but is absolutely fine (Firestarter is faithful to the text, solid, kinda charming, and almost directly responsible for the brief phenomenon that was Stranger Things) has something special about it that makes you want to stay connected.

For me it’s the music, the cast, the mood — the fact that the book is an absolute banger (something I only confirmed a couple of years back, by the way) but mostly it’s that story about Drew Barrymore wandering next door to connect with someone roughly her age. Someone that looked a little more like her than all of the people wearing headphones and winding cables, or being touched up by a makeup brush, or stepping into fire-retardant suits.

I don’t know why, but to me that is the epitome of the ideal that the movies are (or were) magical — something that happens somewhere else. Now, every second person you meet, or know, has a story about serving a celebrity in their store, or working, briefly, for a rock-star or film actor; maybe they were the driver on set, or just the person that bumped into someone they thought they recognised at a bar, only to discover that, yes, it is actually the celebrity from that movie. Fleeting stories about fleeting encounters. And don’t get me wrong, I do love these stories!

Through interviewing people for my attempts at journalism over the years, I’ve obviously met and talked to some of the people that were once just a part of my record collection. I remember blowing my son’s mind when we sat down last year to watch yet another Stephen King adaptation, and I thought to mention that, yeah, actually, I’d had a phone call with the star of The Shawshank Redemption, and though it was mostly about his fairly uninspiring musical career/side-gig, I’d been able to lob a question or two about Shaswshank, Dead Man Walking, and even Cadillac Man, because why wouldn’t you…

Anyway, I guess, the point of all of this is to say that I love Firestarter for what it symbolises as much as for it being any sort of ‘good’ movie. And I’m human, so of course I love hearing stories of ordinary people meeting famous people in the most mundane and ordinary ways.

Got any you want to share? Who have you met as part of your job, or while minding your own business? Or who did you know at university or school or some other job, or in some other life, that spent a few days, briefly, in the orbit of one of the most famous people on the planet?

Oh, and here’s my (true) story about the first time I saw the Firestarter film: