King had the idea for It when looking at an old wooden walking bridge in 1978 near his home in Boulder, Colorado. King explored a retelling of the "Three Billy Goats Gruff" as a novel and used his studies of the sewer system in Bangor, Maine to develop his settings and concept.
Derry is a fictional town in the U.S. state of Maine that has served as the setting for a number of Stephen King's novels, novellas, and short stories, notably It.
As Stephen King has a lot of roots in the state of Maine, the majority of his books are set there albeit in fictional towns. For IT, the setting is the fictional town of Derry, Maine which is supposed to be relatively close to Bangor, Maine, which obviously actually exists.
1957–1958. During a rainstorm in Derry, Maine, a six-year-old boy named Georgie Denbrough sails a paper boat along the rainy streets before it washes down into a storm drain.
Derry, Maine is a fictional town based on Stephen King's long-time hometown of Bangor, Maine, and has been mentioned in various books and short stories, including IT, Insomnia, 11/22/63, and Bag of Bones. With the exception of a few name changes, the maps of Derry and Bangor are quite similar.
The fictional town of Derry, that appears in so many of his stories, is based on Bangor, a couple of hours up the interstate from Portland. “Derry is Bangor,” King has said. He moved his family there in 1979 for the schools and small-town community – and because it inspired him.
Although only one of the creatures' countless forms, Pennywise became its most infamous identity, having successfully lured in countless prey around the town of Derry, Maine where It resided.
Almost certainly the most well-known evil clown (save for Batman¹s archnemesis, the Joker; more on him later), Pennywise is modeled after real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy, aka Pogo the Clown, a.k.a. "The Clown Killer." Gacy was convicted of sexually assaulting and killing 33 boys in 1980; he posed as a clown ...
Pennywise is just a mask, an act that It uses when convenient. It is the real monster behind the monster. If you want to get technical, It is an alien, but It's origin goes well beyond that. It is actually an ancient cosmic deity.
Like many other works by King, It is set in Derry, Maine, and follows a group of kids self-named “The Losers Club” who come across an evil, shape-shifting entity that lives in the sewers.
Originally Answered: Is the clown in “It” real? Nowhere in the original novel, the miniseries or the movies is it suggestioned that IT's form as Pennywise is based on a real clown, in fact intrbiews for the movies specify that “Pennywise” is only what IT thinks clowns are like.
However, it turns out that they found their equivalent of Derry in the municipality of Port Hope, near Toronto, Canada. We'll share some of the more iconic scenes from the movie so you know where to explore in Port Hope.
In the IT novel, the house on Neibolt Street is a small, rundown house but in the movie, but it looks more gothic and outwardly creepy. The house is built over the well house where Pennywise resides, with the sewer tunnels giving him easy access to the entire town.
In The Dark Tower, Derry is mentioned to exist in a thin spot, which would explain why the town seems to be cursed and thus doomed to all types of tragedies.
The residents of Derry, Maine are visited by Pennywise every 27 years, exploiting the greatest fears of his victims who tend to be the youngest and most vulnerable citizens of the cursed town. The two-part IT movie further cemented Pennywise as an iconic horror movie villain while exposing more of his dark beginnings.
Readers of the 1986 novel will know that Pennywise — who is also an inter-dimensional, Lovecraftian entity that awakens every 27 years to eat — crashed to Earth eons ago, settling deep below the spot that would later be founded as Derry.
It describes that it prefers to kill and devour children, not by nature, rather because children's fears are easier to interpret in a physical form and thus children are easier to fill with terror, which It says is akin to marinating the meat.
At some point in the novel, King explained part of IT's backstory but left enough of it untold to raise many questions about it, and everything about Pennywise's origins is a bit confusing, as it's connected to the macroverse and the turtle Maturin, who's the only being IT is afraid of.
Pennywise is female. In Stephen King's book, in the end, Pennywise's true form is a spider that lays eggs to reproduce itself. Throughout the book, It is generally referred to as male due to usually appearing as Pennywise.
Long answer: Pennywise is just another form used by the real creature. IT is the Deadlights, which are a sentinent, soul consuming energy. Very little is revealed about IT's true origins, even in the novel, as most information is either speculation from the Losers Club or a lie IT told to frighten them.
The novel explains that IT landed on Earth during an asteroid impact and established itself under the land Derry would be later built on, and initially preyed on indigenous tribes. From that point of view, IT/Pennywise would be billions of years old, but his clown shape wouldn't be that old.
In the novel, It's origins are nebulous. He took the form of a clown most frequently, Mr. Bob Gray or Pennywise, but his true form is an ancient eldritch entity from another universe who landed in the town that would become Derry by way of an asteroid and first awoke in 1715.
Pennywise pretty much made Derry the perfect place for a creature like itself to live, and with the whole town under its control and with a lot of children (and adults) to feed from, IT didn't really have reasons to leave Derry.
Instead of living in the sewers, IT uses these as access points as it makes it easier for it to travel through town and go after its victims. IT's lair is described in the novel as a deep cavern beneath Derry and the sewers built around it.
