00:00:02:12 - 00:00:29:16
Stasia Walmsley
Fresh off the red carpet premiere of Night Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin, an adaptation of his novel The Cabin at the End of the World. Today, we welcome writer Paul Tremblay to the Providence College podcast. Paul is a graduate of Providence College, where he was a math major. The award winning author of eight novels now, including national bestsellers Survivor Song and A Head Full of Ghosts, which, by the way, Stephen King famously tweeted, Scared the hell out of him.

00:00:29:26 - 00:00:57:29
Stasia Walmsley
Paul has won the Bram Stoker British Fantasy and Massachusetts Book Awards and currently serves as on the board of directors at the Shirley Jackson Awards. His essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Online and numerous year's best anthologies. He is also an AP calculus teacher at Saint Sebastian's School in NIDA, Mass. His latest novel, The Pallbearers Club, came out last summer.

00:00:58:00 - 00:00:59:13
Stasia Walmsley
Welcome to the podcast, Paul.

00:00:59:22 - 00:01:00:23
Paul Tremblay '93
I'm so happy to be here.

00:01:00:24 - 00:01:25:00
Stasia Walmsley
Great. First of all, I wanted to congratulate you on the success of the Cabin at the End of the World and many of your other novels that have been different been doing very well. But and this week, in fact, we're talking in early February. I understand you saw the full lap deputation of the movie that was based on The Cabin at the End of the World at the premiere earlier this week.

00:01:26:00 - 00:01:31:10
Stasia Walmsley
Can you just explain what what that experience was like for you and your family going to that premiere?

00:01:33:01 - 00:01:50:12
Paul Tremblay '93
It's hard, you know. You know, as a writer, a loss for words. But it was, you know, very surreal, you know, fun experience. You know, like the whole red carpet thing. And just, you know, because as a writer, you know, most of the time you're sort of, you know, on your own, in your own head. It's certainly, you know, it's all a collaborative.

00:01:50:12 - 00:02:10:25
Paul Tremblay '93
Towards the end, when you're working with your editor and perhaps your agent. But just to see the whole sort of Hollywood movie sort of process machinery at work, you know, all the actors, etc.. But no, it was and it was, you know, an absolute joy to be able to, you know, experience it with my family and very grateful that Universal gave us extra two extra tickets, you know, for my daughter and my son.

00:02:11:12 - 00:02:34:13
Paul Tremblay '93
So, yeah, honestly, my head is still spinning. It's it's a lot to process. As you know, people say nowadays. But, yeah, it was a wonderful experience. Strange. Yeah. Especially sitting in the audience and like, you know, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't, like, totally stressed out. Good stress. But, you know, stress is still stress is as I watched the movie, I think I've I felt like I had run ten miles after the movie just totally wrung out.

00:02:35:14 - 00:03:02:14
Stasia Walmsley
Yeah. I can imagine just really one of those experiences, Right? Like, you didn't know you're holding your breath. And then until you start to breathe again, like, of thing. That's very cool. Did I even kind of going full circle? If you think back. I've got to ask, what was that first conversation with Night Shyamalan like when you were thinking about, you know, that this this kind of legendary director was going to use your book as source material?

00:03:03:00 - 00:03:32:22
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah. So it's funny, like to go backwards a little bit like the the novel was actually optioned and what we agreed verbally. Like I say, we Filmnation production company and I like late 2017. So the contract probably was assigned till 20 early 2018. But you know, I was months before the book was published. But then, you know, as typical is the case, you know, it took a few years to even just get like a screenplay going and, you know, and having had a few other books optioned, which is amazing, but, you know, not made like you, you know, in Hollywood, it's pretty typical.

00:03:32:25 - 00:03:49:05
Paul Tremblay '93
Like you hear really exciting names, but it never works out. So you sort of get inured to that a little bit. So I first heard, you know, Nate was, you know, sort of at the edges, like interested in maybe being a, you know, producer. I was excited, but also was like, yeah, you know, MHL along the way it's going to happen then.

00:03:49:05 - 00:04:08:02
Paul Tremblay '93
But like once things started happening, which was the second half of 2021 and once I had my first phone call with him, that was when that was the first of the, Oh, this is really happening moments. Yeah. So I had like a, a 20 minute phone conversation with him in November. You know, it was really nice. He was super friendly and complimentary about the novel.

00:04:08:02 - 00:04:20:28
Paul Tremblay '93
And, you know, I really appreciated, you know, he was upfront with like, what changes he was going to make, most of them toward the end of the of the movie. No. So that was like, whoa, this is I think this is really happening the first of like a couple of those moments.

00:04:22:03 - 00:04:48:27
Stasia Walmsley
Yeah. And stepping back for a minute, just for those of us who aren't as familiar with it, what what is the process for optioning a novel? You know, Is that that's it. It sounds like that decision was made even before it was published. And so, you know, is that is that something that you think about even while you're when you get a nugget of an idea or the or during the writing process itself or how does that kind of come about?

00:04:49:28 - 00:05:08:04
Paul Tremblay '93
Yes. I mean, I definitely think about, you know, oh, this is going to be a movie when I'm writing the book. I mean, it's hard enough to write the book, never mind putting other pressures like that on it. So I you know, I'm super fortunate, you know, with the success of a head full of ghosts, too, you know, by the time Cabin was about to be published, you know, that book had cause a little bit of a stir.

00:05:08:04 - 00:05:21:26
Paul Tremblay '93
And a buzz in that book could have been optioned. So, you know, I have a as well as a literary agent. I have film representatives as well. So basically the film reps take the book out, you know, and pitch it to producers and other people. Yeah. So I don't have to do anything other than write the book, which is great.

00:05:22:18 - 00:05:43:03
Paul Tremblay '93
That's all I know how to do. Yeah. So when they optioned, it's essentially they're renting usually 18 months exclusive access to the to the story meaning like only they can try to get it developed and then if they outright purchase the rights, that typically doesn't happen until like the day they start filming, you know, And that's the big that's the big check.

00:05:43:03 - 00:06:01:24
Paul Tremblay '93
That's the big deal is when they Yeah, yeah. You know, options are nice. It's like free money, you know, like they're renting the book for 18 months. So, you know, the optioning stuff is exciting. But like I said, you know, it's a fine line because you do want to, you know, and I have, you know, celebrated the potentials of, hey, this has been an option.

00:06:01:24 - 00:06:16:23
Paul Tremblay '93
This is great. Maybe, you know, because if you wait until something is made, you're probably never going to get a chance to celebrate. As much as there's so many shows and movies out there, it seems a minor miracle to me that anything it's made just based on my experience and the experience of other writer friends who've had things option in it.

00:06:16:27 - 00:06:27:06
Paul Tremblay '93
You know, it just everything has to go right at every step of the way for something to, you know, to actually make it to the screen. Yeah, I think I answer the question, I get rambling. Oh.

00:06:28:01 - 00:06:43:16
Stasia Walmsley
Oh, no, don't play the love hearing about it. And so with the so this the film's screenwriters, Stephen Desmond, Michael Sherman, how much interaction did you have with them during that development phase?

00:06:44:07 - 00:07:15:22
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah. So like when I signed the contract, you know, I had no and have no contractual say on like getting to make comments on things. But Filmnation was really cool, especially in the beginning, saying, Hey, you know, we want your input on things. So I, I actually, I met, I met the screenwriters the summer I forget which summer it was, but I did meet them in person, you know, super nice guys, you know, enjoyed talking with them and then the following spring, I got to read like their second draft because, you know, their first draft was just went to the producers and the producers gave them notes.

00:07:17:02 - 00:07:39:29
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah. So I got to read their screenplay and I, you know, they did ask for my opinion. So I sent some notes and just about like so that was 2019, I think I would say. And actually they had a couple, they had a director team hired or attached previous to tonight, but that that was going to be a hard thing to do because those directors had another movie they're trying to do.

00:07:40:12 - 00:07:55:06
Paul Tremblay '93
So like timewise was going to be like trying to thread a needle. So, you know, toward the summer 2019, it became pretty clear that those two directors weren't going to be able to do the movie. But that was when I sort of swooped in and said, Oh, you know, he's sort of interested in, you know, maybe producing it.

00:07:55:06 - 00:08:11:21
Paul Tremblay '93
And I was like, you know, whatever. We'll see, you know? But yeah, but that's also a typical of my Hollywood experience with a head full of ghosts, have had multiple directors attached and it come really close to happening in the not happening. So I was just sort of used to that pattern. But obviously Nate broke the pattern.

00:08:12:15 - 00:08:34:01
Stasia Walmsley
Thankfully very good and without giving too much away so the novel is an apocalyptic thriller about a group of doomsday heirs who kind of descend on a family at their vacation cabin where did this idea stem from? Are you a fan of apocalyptic fiction? Does this kind of weave through your your other novels as well?

00:08:35:11 - 00:08:58:23
Paul Tremblay '93
So, like, I don't know, as a child who grew up in the eighties, you know, I graduated from PC in 89. You know, for me, when I especially my younger person fears was always like dying in a nuclear war. So a lot of my early writing short stories that I wrote in the 2000 dealt with apocalyptic stuff, not post-apocalyptic, but really like pre apocalypse or, you know, or during it kind of thing.

00:08:59:21 - 00:09:21:22
Paul Tremblay '93
So this was the first novel length. Where were that sort of looms over the story, as you mentioned? But really the idea started with its start with a little sketch in a notebook like I was I was trying to brainstorm for ideas because my agent, I mean, my editor actually just rejected a novel proposal I had sent. I wasn't too crushed because I even she sense I wasn't too wild.

00:09:21:22 - 00:09:51:08
Paul Tremblay '93
Like I tried writing like a 30 page summary, which is way too long for this other novel idea. She's like, Now, you know, set me something else. It's like, okay, So anyway, I drew this little cabin I can't draw. So it was like a rectangle with a triangle on top of it. But, you know, thinking in terms of a horror story, I looked at that and was like, Oh, that made me think of, you know, a home invasion story because people alone in a cabin, sort of a stereotypical set up and home invasion is is kind of like my least favorite subgenre of horror, you know, partly because it's so scary and icky to me,

00:09:51:08 - 00:10:05:26
Paul Tremblay '93
you know, because it's so realistic, you know, And there are home invasion movies I think are great. But there are other ones I think that wallow too much and then the violence and stuff like that from it for my tastes. So I was actually weirdly excited by the challenge, like, okay, Mr. Big Mouth, how would you write a home invasion story?

00:10:06:07 - 00:10:14:06
Paul Tremblay '93
You know, that you would want to sit through? And that was really, you know, how I sort of started thinking about it and eventually wound its way into what it became?

00:10:15:00 - 00:10:30:29
Stasia Walmsley
Oh, that's very cool. And so I also understand that you got to go on set for a couple of days. How is it going to that cabin that you started out as a sketch and a, you know, essentially walking into your novel?

00:10:31:24 - 00:10:56:06
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah. So, I mean, if the phone call was like the first oh, this is real moments. That was like the seconds. This is real. And the biggest, you know, probably most like mind spinning was, you know, going to so I went to like a it was like a warehouse slash production studio place on the outskirts of Philadelphia where they built this cabin in the inside of this warehouse.

00:10:56:06 - 00:11:16:15
Paul Tremblay '93
And they used that cabin for the interior shots, and they had a different cabin that was outside somewhere in the woods, you know. So I didn't go to that set. My two days were spent in the warehouse in this cabin, and in that in the interior, the cabin, they built a full cabin. It's beautiful. I was actually kind of as someone who prefers, like lake vacations over ocean ones, it's like me.

00:11:16:15 - 00:11:35:17
Paul Tremblay '93
And I was kind of bumming. I was like, Is there any way we can put this cabin, like somewhere on a lake? Because it was like beautiful hardwood floors. I know that's sort of beside the point, but yeah, so like, when I literally when I got there, a producer brought me in and walked me through some of the offices briefly and I thought, like, the cabin might be somewhere else because this is our big giant tent outside.

00:11:35:17 - 00:11:56:09
Paul Tremblay '93
But no, it was in the warehouse. We walked in. Yes, walked in through the front door right before. I think they're going to start shooting. And they were you know, Ben and Jonathan Groff, like, tied to chairs and there's Tim Batiste and the other actors. And they came over and gave me a hug. And that was the most like strange part that was like whisked off to a bedroom of the cabin, you know, to watch on the monitor what they were shooting.

00:11:56:09 - 00:12:17:21
Paul Tremblay '93
So, yeah, that was it didn't feel like I was walking. It's never felt like, oh, this is what was in my head because, you know, I lived in that book for 18 months when I was writing it, and I have imagined different things. However, it did feel like, wow, this is a really cool version of the story. This is, you know, the actors especially, I think, really get the emotional connected with the emotional core of the story and the characters.

00:12:18:21 - 00:12:48:04
Stasia Walmsley
Yeah. So I wanted to ask a little bit about that because you talk about Dave Bautista and his character Leonard in the book. Most people would know the actor from Drax in the Marvel movie, right? Many other things. But that character is written with an enormous amount of empathy and is what is struck me in reading the book, that the character himself has a lot of empathy for the others, other characters, and then the reader.

00:12:48:13 - 00:13:15:12
Stasia Walmsley
The way you've written him I think has a lot of empathy for that character. And so I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how you weave empathy into writing books that are scary thrillers. I think. I think that that you know, how that plays into writing these these characters who may be a little outside of the box.

00:13:15:12 - 00:13:22:04
Stasia Walmsley
Yeah, they must be it must be part of the calculation. So I'm just wondering if you talk a little bit about that.

00:13:22:17 - 00:13:44:21
Paul Tremblay '93
Sure. I mean, I think I tend to try to approach all my characters from a point of empathy. And so that's different than sympathy. You know, empathy is the watch to understand why why they're acting like they're acting or why they're you know what? Why are they making these decisions? You know, Redman, I would say, is probably the only character in any of my books that I've written without sort of empathic approach to him.

00:13:45:03 - 00:14:13:06
Paul Tremblay '93
You know, he was definitely of the foreign invaders. I think he was the most like, mustache twisting, villainous kind of character. Yeah, But so it's a hard line to walk for, for Leonard, because I obviously the biggest stars with the family experience. But I did think that for some of the invaders, their experience was a horror too. And the idea that, you know, they are believing that they have no choice, that they, you know, they know they're doing and presenting terrible things, but they felt like they had no choice.

00:14:13:06 - 00:14:35:01
Paul Tremblay '93
So I thought that that part of it was really interesting to get a little bit of that from their point of view. Just the idea of of of believing you have no choice can be very seductive. Right. Because it abdicates you of responsibility. Like if you believe you have no choice, that you have to do something. It's almost like, oh, okay, then that what I do is not my fault because I had no choice.

00:14:36:13 - 00:14:54:27
Paul Tremblay '93
You know, obviously things like that have happened in horrible, you know, real circumstances throughout the history of the world. You know, to me, that's, you know, believing You have no choice. Are you going to do something that's that that breaks the social compact, Right? Everyone has a choice. You know, in deciding to not to choose is a choice kind of thing.

00:14:54:27 - 00:15:01:06
Paul Tremblay '93
So I did want to explore that a little bit with Leonard and Sabrina in particular, you know, in the latter half of the novel.

00:15:02:16 - 00:15:26:11
Stasia Walmsley
Sure. And I do reading the novel. And I'm interested to see how this translates in the movie. Certainly choices as a choice is a big part of kind of the the theme that that runs through this. I had read and I'm wondering now that you've seen the movie, that that the kind of the first two acts of the movie follow the pretty closely.

00:15:26:11 - 00:15:43:18
Stasia Walmsley
Yeah. But then there are some things that the towards the end of the movie that that diverge from from what you had originally written. So now having seen the movie, can you talk a little bit about that divergence, how you feel about it and then how, you know, fans of the novel may feel about it when they when they see it?

00:15:44:09 - 00:16:17:11
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah, I mean, I have no idea what fans of the novel are going to think. I mean, I think what I can say for 100% from my point of view is that the movie is beautifully composed and shot and directed and the performances are amazing, you know? So the ending, it's hard because, you know, I'm so biased that like, you know, the story is a story in my head are, you know, any sort of fairly drastic change to the ending, even though the movie is is very sort of I mean, the movie itself, there's a lot that there's a lot from the book that makes it to the movie.

00:16:17:11 - 00:16:38:11
Paul Tremblay '93
And I can't speak all of a sudden. So, yeah, the ending, I'm still frankly kind of mulling, you know, I think yeah, that like if I was to be objective and or as objective as I could be, you know, I would say that, you know, I definitely wear my personal beliefs on my sleeve with the novel, you know, And I think, you know, Ammonite is doing the same with the movie in terms of, you know, why he went in a certain way.

00:16:38:11 - 00:16:54:25
Paul Tremblay '93
And there is I don't want to spoil things, but there's an event in the novel that doesn't appear in the movie. And I think that both the event happening in the novel and the event not happening in the movie are both like the fulcrum of where the the choices that are presented sort of go in different directions.

00:16:55:08 - 00:16:55:26
Stasia Walmsley
Sure. Okay.

00:16:56:15 - 00:17:21:01
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah. I mean, so I mean, this is in a book and maybe a tiny spoiler, but, you know, I miss it. You know, the movie is ambiguous for a while, but I miss that ambiguous, not lasting throughout the whole thing or the ambiguity not lasting throughout the whole thing. But at the same time, I also know for a large commercial movie, that's probably something that boardrooms full of people would be like, No, you can't have an ambiguous ending.

00:17:23:03 - 00:17:32:19
Paul Tremblay '93
So yeah, I mean, I prefer my ending better just because it's such a personal thing to me. But at the same time, you know, you know, I enjoyed the movie. I think it's really good.

00:17:33:16 - 00:17:59:28
Stasia Walmsley
And thinking about that ambiguity, I think it plays into what I wanted to ask about too, is that you approach the novel with shifting perspectives so you're different. Scenes in the novel are told from different points of view of the of the characters in the book. So I think that plays into helping with the ambiguity because you're not seeing everything from one right or one one perspective.

00:17:59:28 - 00:18:04:25
Stasia Walmsley
So did you know you were going to approach the book that way right off the bat?

00:18:05:03 - 00:18:22:09
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah, I think early on and mainly the driver for that was I knew the opening chapter was going be from Wen's point of view and when is seven going on? Eight years old. So I was like, I can't do that first person that would, you know, that would be really hard to do a 78 year old person have it being readable, not like cutesy kind of thing.

00:18:22:21 - 00:18:36:00
Paul Tremblay '93
So I pretty much knew I was going to be versions of third person for most of the for most of the book, although there are a couple of instances where there's like a third person plural chapter in the very last chapter actually goes.

00:18:36:00 - 00:18:36:16
Stasia Walmsley
To read.

00:18:36:29 - 00:18:58:23
Paul Tremblay '93
For first person, plural. So I did bounced around a little bit, but it was never ever like a like so never first person. Yeah. I mean, there are certain points in the book that I felt like it was important to have different perspectives on sort of the same event that happens, you know, just to help sort of with the ambiguity of the story.

00:18:58:23 - 00:19:22:17
Paul Tremblay '93
And, you know, part of the way I wanted to present the ambiguity, which is very similar to how I did it, and a handful of ghost as well as I never wanted to feel like I was withholding information, although I'm sure a lot of people think I am. At the end of this book, I wanted it to be more like, know that you have like this all this information, this glut of information coming at you, then it becomes difficult to discern what's really happening or not.

00:19:23:07 - 00:19:38:06
Paul Tremblay '93
And to me, that mirrors like our 21st century lives, right? Like in the age of misinformation, you know, how do we find the truth out of all this noise, out of all this stuff that's continually thrown at us? That's kind of how I, you know, in particular, this book, I wanted it to feel that way.

00:19:38:06 - 00:20:03:09
Stasia Walmsley
Yeah. That's so interesting. The kind of how it serves as a metaphor for for that and the choices you make within that context. Right. That's really interesting. I'm going to switch gears for a short little bit about about your other career, which is as a math teacher at St Sebastian's School in Needham, Mass. You've been in there for 25 years.

00:20:03:09 - 00:20:26:07
Stasia Walmsley
More than 25. Yeah, right. Yep. So in that path you set in motion here at Providence College with you, you know, getting your math degree and continuing on at UVM with for your master's. So, you know, what is your do doing it for 25 years. You must, you must love it. I'll make that assumption. Yeah. And so what do you love most about being a teacher?

00:20:26:07 - 00:20:31:29
Stasia Walmsley
What you know, what does that bring to your life in a way that that helps complement what you do for your writing?

00:20:32:08 - 00:20:51:14
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah. Excuse me. I think you know what? I. You know, one of the things I enjoy the most is just the social aspect of it. You know, getting to meet the students and, you know, and working with the other teachers. I mean, that's something that is, you know, obviously more collaborative, especially in the math department or, you know, we have awesome teachers and, you know, we'll give extra help to each other, students and stuff like that.

00:20:52:16 - 00:21:10:06
Paul Tremblay '93
I know. I felt like, you know, teaching helps keep me young. Like just being around young people, like, and being exposed to, you know, their opinions and their hopes and and their dreams and, you know, their emotions. It helps me remember what I felt like, you know, as a teenager and as a young adult, which I've used in my books.

00:21:10:08 - 00:21:31:11
Paul Tremblay '93
I've definitely put my students to work. I mean, from a writer's perspective, it's always been like this daily amazing lesson in voice because, you know, the kids will have we'll have slang in our school that's, you know, a mix of sort of, you know, country cultural wide. But, you know, things are definitely Boston specific. And then there are things that are school specific.

00:21:31:17 - 00:21:46:06
Paul Tremblay '93
And then three or four years later, there'll be like new sets of words that may be built off the old ones because the younger kids are going to have sort of their own sort of, you know, in language with each other. So it's, you know, it's fun to see that morph and change, you know, from the writer's perspective.

00:21:46:27 - 00:22:07:15
Paul Tremblay '93
You know, otherwise, you know, the school has been so supportive and, you know, of of my writing endeavors never once pushed back on it. In fact, like, you know, there was a time where, like, I went to a book festival in Los Angeles and they help pay for it and stuff like that. So, you know, they've been, you know, you know, part of things that the school talks about is, you know, is to encourage lifelong learning.

00:22:07:15 - 00:22:16:24
Paul Tremblay '93
So, you know, it's you know, they you know, they often pay for faculty to get, you know, advanced degrees. And, you know, it's really good to see them. You know, it's not just words for them. They really encourage that part of it.

00:22:16:27 - 00:22:43:02
Stasia Walmsley
That's cool. It's great that you found a place like that landed there and have Yeah. To to be there for so long. I would say that, you know, in some ways that seems like it plays into the the mission of Providence College in terms of this idea. You know, when I think about, you know, the Venn diagram maybe of those people who are AP algebra teachers and bestselling novelists.

00:22:43:02 - 00:23:06:14
Stasia Walmsley
Yeah, probably that that calculation is, you know, somewhere in the middle of that is there's probably not too many people there, you know. So you're very distinctive in that way. Yeah. So I wonder if you could talk about, you know, your time at PC, your PC education and maybe what helped to encourage you or to inspire you to to pursue these two career paths.

00:23:06:16 - 00:23:24:01
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah. So I mean, I definitely sort of blossomed, became who I was a PC, Like I didn't have a great high school experience. I went to a big public school, you know, was, you know, super skinny and small and very awkward and not like, very confident. So like going the province calls was a chance for me to it, you know, to really start over.

00:23:25:00 - 00:23:54:22
Paul Tremblay '93
So and it was amazing four years I really enjoyed it and have you know, lifelong friends And I you know, I met my you know, my wife, Lisa Carroll, at the time and, you know, Lisa Carroll Tremblay now at the school, you know, so, so many more memories and and really that the start the earliest starting of of me thinking about writing you know, started with my last one of my last classes that I took a Providence college which was so I ended up weirdly like a math humanities double major because that kind of screwed up the education part of it.

00:23:55:13 - 00:24:11:24
Paul Tremblay '93
But as a second semester senior, I took basically English 1 to 1 or went to one. So I was in there with mostly freshmen, but the professor, Professor McLaughlin, was amazing. It was like one of those, you know, almost like a stereotype of like, you know, an English teacher, you know, really connecting with the student because he was a big punk music fan.

00:24:11:25 - 00:24:32:07
Paul Tremblay '93
So it was I and he was able to draw that out of me into, you know, and enjoyment of reading. So I remember in that class we read Joyce Carol Oates is Where are you going? Where have you been? And another story called Greasy Lake by TC Boyle. You and I wrote a an essay comparing those stories to something that happens in a Jane's Addiction song or something, you know, or something like that.

00:24:32:15 - 00:24:57:21
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah. You know, So he encouraged, like, the love of music. So I remember that class specific stories. I was like, Oh, I didn't know people wrote things like this, like a really excited me. Yeah. And shortly after that, my graduate at least bought me Stephen King's a stand. And then when I went away to UVM for two years for a long distance relationship, you know, I fell in love with reading first and that's but you know, it started with, you know, Professor McLaughlin's English class.

00:24:59:01 - 00:25:02:29
Stasia Walmsley
That's great. Do you have any other favorite PC stories from the time you were here?

00:25:03:04 - 00:25:31:14
Paul Tremblay '93
Oh, you know, I, I mean, so, like, my love of punk music really started at Providence College, you know, You know, working at home was a ton of fun and I mean, that's sort of actually been my first sort of passion really was music. Like, honestly, like if I started messing around with a guitar, my senior year in Providence, I had friends teaching me stuff and, you know, I tried teaching myself and I see if I had a time machine and someone said, Hey, you could be like a semi-successful punk, musician or writer.

00:25:31:14 - 00:25:52:00
Paul Tremblay '93
I'd probably choose the music. But I found out I was a better writer than a musician. Unfortunately, nonetheless, I guess Providence was where I sort of discovered myself. It was in might sound corny, but like the idea that you after in high school where it's uncool to try hard and uncool, you know, which is still the case like you watch, it's just part of growing up and figuring out who you are.

00:25:52:14 - 00:26:09:19
Paul Tremblay '93
But a providence was like, Oh, okay. You know, I took a very wide range of courses, you know, math and philosophy, etc. And it was like, okay, I sort of figured out it's okay to be passionate about things, you know, specifically in the arts, and it's okay to, you know, to want to try those things, which I did for both music and writing and writing.

00:26:09:19 - 00:26:14:13
Stasia Walmsley
Stuck Yeah, that's great. Has PC worked into any of your novels.

00:26:16:26 - 00:26:39:00
Paul Tremblay '93
With the Paul Bears Club? Definitely. Which just came out. Which came out, you know, this past summer. You know, there's a big chunk of the book that takes place in Providence, specifically, but the book is essentially a very fictionalized autobiographical autobiography. But it imagines like a different path I might have taken if I dropped out of Providence College when I was a junior to try to become like a punk musician.

00:26:39:12 - 00:26:53:26
Paul Tremblay '93
So, yeah, there's definitely parts that mentioned PC and and a lot of Providence talk, you know, particularly Thayer Street and all the clubs like Club Baby Head that I used to go to when I was at Providence. Yeah. So there's a big Providence connection to the Pallbearers club.

00:26:54:10 - 00:27:02:11
Stasia Walmsley
You mentioned the pallbearers Club and you said hardcover came out last year, but I think is paperback releasing in a couple of months.

00:27:02:16 - 00:27:22:03
Paul Tremblay '93
Yeah. So the paperback will be releasing in March. Yeah. The hardcover still out there? The hardcover is kind of fun because I mentioned it's like a found memoir, autobiography. So the character was essentially me writes it, but this other character who found the found memoir, like she makes comments in the margins and crosses words out and stuff like that.

00:27:22:09 - 00:27:39:14
Paul Tremblay '93
And then the hardcover that's printed as red ink. So those two, like her comments are red ink and the regular as black ink in the paperback. You know, that's an expense. So the paperback, everything will just be black ink and it'll still be cool. But yeah, the hardcover is like just a nice physical artifact. It's a fun and hopefully a fun, fun read.

00:27:40:08 - 00:27:56:04
Stasia Walmsley
Yeah, that's great. So I know you've been so busy this year, but it's actually a reunion year for you, right? Yeah, if you're aware of that. Oh, I am. Maybe. Yeah, maybe Will for you and your class. Maybe we'll see you back on campus.

00:27:56:17 - 00:28:02:18
Paul Tremblay '93
Or definitely planning. Oh, no. You know, my wife and friends are all excited already talking about booking hotel rooms.

00:28:03:18 - 00:28:16:06
Stasia Walmsley
Oh, excellent. That's great. So look forward to seeing you then. And just wanted to thank you so much for for talking to us today and being part of the PC podcast in the part of the PC family. For our family.

00:28:16:11 - 00:28:18:12
Paul Tremblay '93
No, thank you. This this is wonderful. I really appreciate it.

00:28:19:09 - 00:28:36:22
Stasia Walmsley
Thank you for listening to the Providence College podcast. I'm Stasia Wamsley with producer Chris Judge, a member of the Class of 2005 who has produced more than 300 episodes of the PC pod. Thanks, Chris. Check in on Mondays for new episodes available wherever you get your podcasts.