ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to the director and writer of Netflix’s Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. Acclaimed director John Lee Hancock handled the Stephen King adaptation, which arrives on the streamer on Wednesday, October 5.
“When Craig, a young boy living in a small town (Jaeden Martell) befriends Mr. Harrigan, an older, reclusive billionaire (Donald Sutherland), the two begin to form an unlikely bond over their love of books and reading,” says the synopsis. “But when Mr. Harrigan sadly passes away, Craig discovers that not everything is dead and gone and strangely finds himself able to communicate with his friend from the grave through the iPhone in this supernatural coming-of-age story that shows that certain connections are never lost.”
Tyler Treese: Obviously it has to be a thrill adapting a Stephen King story, but what about the original novella of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone really stood out to you and made you want to expand upon it?
John Lee Hancock: It was first and foremost, I really loved it. It was 80-something pages, so I thought this was going to be a challenge to beef up a little bit to make it into a movie, which is a completely different medium. But I love so many things about it.
At the start when I read it, I hadn’t figured anything out and I told him I confessed that to him. I said that there’s lots of things I want to explore here. I don’t have the answers yet, but hopefully, I will with your help. But I loved the paranormal coming of age that reminds me in some ways of something like The Body that became Stand By Me. That’s part of King’s work. He has a whole kind of coming-of-age thing happening. There are a lot of my favorites, but so yeah, I don’t know. I just thought this would be a challenge and I’m terrified because Stephen King will eventually read it.
The film explores so many great themes and I thought just the tackling of smartphones and the flow of information online was so interesting. So I was curious if working on this art so closely if it made you kind of reexamine your own habits of going online or using your smartphone.
Yeah, I think it’s just a reminder. We all hear that all the time and obviously, you know, we have tons of stories or things we see in everyday life with everybody with their head down on their phone. And you think, that’s not me, until all of a sudden you realize, oh, today that was me.
I like the idea that it wasn’t just all the young people in the movie at high school all staring at their phones, but that you could take an 80-something-year-old billionaire who had never held a smartphone in his life, put a phone in his hand, and how quickly he could become addicted. So it’s not just something that teenagers do. It’s a powerful, powerful tool. It can be a tool or it can be a weapon and it can be both.
Jaeden Martell is such a talented young actor. What convinced you that he was the right person to play Craig?
I’ve been a big Jaeden fan ever since St. Vincent, I mean, which is a long while back, but I needed also knew I needed an actor that could play between 15 and 19. And there was something about Jaeden I thought was 1) I thought he was the best actor for the job, but 2) I thought he could accomplish that without us having to do a lot with his hair or anything else. But it’s mostly because he’s such a fine actor and from a physicality standpoint, the way he walks. Daniel Orlandi and the clothes he wears kind of age him up.
But he was really helpful to me with dialogue sometimes saying, “I know what you’re trying to say here, but this sounds like a 15-year-old and I’m 18 now.” Or sometimes the reverse, “I’m supposed to be 15 here and this sounds like I’m 18.” So, we were constantly adjusting that to fit his journey as Craig.
I love the character of Mr. Harrigan, and he’s clearly wise, as mentioned in the film he predicts a lot of what’s to come, but he’s also this kind of miserable, lonely old man. So how do you just view this character because it shows there’s good sides and obviously the bad?
Well, I think that both these two characters have something in common, which is grief. They have loss, and they carry that around and it leads to a certain bit of isolation for both of them. I mean, Craig in kind of a lonely house with his father who’s trying hard, and Mr. Harrigan in an empty house where he is not trying that hard. But I think that that’s the trait they share and the fact that they become best friends. I think Craig is probably Mr. Harrigan’s only friend, and I think it helps you lean into Mr. Harrigan who can be tough and brutal and plays for keeps as we find out. And to see underneath and you go, “He’s a hurt little boy.”