stephen king c/d?

The short stories, Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, Different Seasons, even Four Past Midnight were all really rich grounds for my teenage imagination to go crazy ... I think that was where I really became a deep fan & it was a real training ground for the crazy shit in his novels (plus the novels rarely stayed on the library shelf at school, which is why i had to settle for reading & rereading the short stories until a novel became available)

I remember picturing The Mist happening in my local supermarket

The Mist in 3D sound is second only to The Shining in my favorite King-associated media.

I'll defend Barker any day - maybe my favourite 'pop' author. But King is a great writer; he seems to fall between two stools, in that no one cares about a genre writer repeating themselves, or a literary writer repeating themselves (they're just exploring their preoccupations), but he gets a lot of criticism on that front. But I haven't read any King since I was a teenager, maybe 20 yrs ago, so who knows. I have a copy of his time travel one which I have t read. But teenage does used to read and enjoy Herbert and Koontz, so...

Teenage dowd, that is

I was a teenage Dowd when I read him as well, and shoplifting them from WHSmiths back then was like taking candy from a baby! Sometimes I think a Kubrick adaptation of Pet Sematary would have been one of the most terrifying horror movies ever made.

James Herbert is generally assessed much better than Koontz. But even Richard Laymon, Guy N Smith and Shaun Hutson has more apologists than Koontz.

I guess Garth Marenghi types are just more fun than whatever it is that Koontz does.

The Mist movie is terrific but I sort of blame it for accidentally creating the Walking Dead TV show's miseryguts horror aesthetic, in the same way that Alan Moore accidentally created "grim'n'gritty". (Though perhaps that's unfair and Snyder's shitty Dawn remake is more to blame.)

I'd say that Darabont's involvement in both makes the association more than accidental.

I think darabont is pretty awful but I love the mist. The radio play is also fun if you like people narrating their own deaths in far too much detail

I used to love Koontz & Straub, they were less fun though? More serious in tone somehow idk

Barker I came into later in my 20's but I love him too. Great & Secret Show <3

I just started the first episode of that King Me podcast and then immediately deleted it. Why would you bother doing a king podcast, even a movie one, if you've never read his writing or hate the small amount you have read? Fuck these guys.

Hating things is the new liking things, get with the times.

There was a standup comedian who based his show around straight to video Disney sequels and it sounded really great. Wish I knew who it was and could find recordings.

Are angry mocking reviews as a schtick still so popular?

lol I did say it was from a haters pov

idk why do anything? They've said they started it up for the sole purpose of talking about silver bullet, a film they love. I think a lot of these comedy types who do bad film review shows tend to have pretty terrible opinions about films, it's always more about vibing to the personalities/jokes (I generally don't).

xp that was tom tuck - I saw it and it was surprisingly good

It does seem like a huge waste of time if you're really not into the stuff, unless they really like a lot of the films.

Thanks so much for identifying it as Thom Tuck, didn't think anyone would know it! Seems like it's a consistent gimmick, with straight to video shows on Steven Seagal, Bollywood, Olsen Twins and Faith films.

I think what interests me as well is that most of us itt would agree that the majority of those films are bad (sometimes in a weird and compelling way) but we like the books BUT (imo) pretty much everything that makes the films bad comes directly from the books - the cartoonish characters, corny dialogue &c. This becomes especially apparent the more hands-on King involvement there is. It seems like for those of us on whom it works part of the magic is idk a suspension of taste? that works on the page but rarely onscreen

xp it is absolutely a waste of time, that's part of the joke of these things; I haven't heard it but there's a podcast where the hosts watch & discuss the SAME bad film once a week for a year

I guess it has to be bad in a really interesting or entertaining way, which I think is a real rarity.

Kelly Link says she was a big fan of bad books and would read them out at parties with other writers.
Robin Ince's Bad Book Club sounds pretty interesting. But bad books sound like way more commitment.

I grew up on military bases, so you can imagine what the library was like. I'd go down in the morning, check a book out, then return it the next morning getting something else out. This was a couple of summers for me.

The films of kings books are usually 50-75% good - which is better than most stuff I watch. barker, similarly, has a terrible history with films. Obviously the worst thing it for an author to try to write them themselves, as king has attempted to do. Has anyone read a script aldous Huxley wrote for Hollywood? Ape and essence I remember. Awful. It's just such a different thing.

The first hellraiser works, and I have a soft spot for Nightbreed because I dug it as a kid (the spectrum game was neat, though seldom loading, and the Amiga version is the stuff of legends as far as terrible games go). Are there any Stephen king games?

lol I remember liking ape & essence (although I was like 17 at the time) but I didn't think it was an actual script so much as a novel taking the form of an unproduced (because unfilmable) script?

Good analysis wins.

King brings you with him describing things that usually are just corny af once visualised on screen i think

He is more than plot, though. Something like Carrie has a subtext about blood - menstrual, of Christ, violent, linking back to the OT confusion/identification of those things.

I remember at school my English teachers told the class that they shouldn't pick King for their RPR (an English essay exam thing) - not because he isn't good, but it will be considered sub-literary. One guy in my class did his on the novelisation of Braveheart.

lmao

yeah I had an English teacher who told kids off for reading Stephen King - "it'll rot your brain" like the dad at the start of creepshow

I ended up doing mine on Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, so I think there was plenty of bad judgement involved.

there was a Lawnmower Man game (based on the film) on the SNES

can't think of anything else off the top of my head

Half-Life was partly inspired by The Mist though

Oh! Lawnmower man is a good call!

There's loads of games based on lovecraftian, though...

Didn't he get in on the interactive cd-rom thing it seemed like everyone was doing around the turn of the millennium?

There's perhaps a sense that twin peaks wouldn't have existed without king. But I'm as drunk as an owl, so that's it for now.

I can see that

I remember a late '80s or early '90s King PC game that had a map of Castle Rock included.

that reminds me, someone told me about a King focused podcast called The Losers' Club where they talk about/analyze his books. haven't checked it out yet, waiting til i finish IT. reading this thread has been a bit treacherous in that regard

― flappy bird, Friday, March 31, 2017 2:08 PM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've been listening to this and it's very good and thoughtful, although I can't imagine how they're going to make it through his entire oeuvre. One thing that might put some people off is that the episodes are SUPER-long for podcasts, sometimes approaching the 3 hour mark. The two Night Shift eps combined are over 5.

The episodes on Night Shift were run ballot-poll style which felt very fun and ilxian.

I totally disagree with their negative opinions on the use of black magic as a trope in stories like Sometimes They Come Back and the Mangler though. I love these parts and the library sleuthing that accompanies them. A similar scene features pretty prominently in IT, where Bill describes going to the library and learning about glamours and the Ritual of Chud. I feel like there have to be other scenes like this in King, but can't think of them off the top of my head this morning.

Isn't there something similar in "The Dark Half," where Tad has to do research on psychopomps?

Did this appear on here
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/01/stephen-king-on-donald-trump-fictional-voters-truth-about-us-election
not read it yet cos the Weekend Guardian had the glossy sections missing from the copy i bought on Saturday.
Then of course I found out that the closest newsagent actually sold the paper with all sections as I was heading home. Drag.

xp:

You're right!

https://books.google.com/books?id=rIOMCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA449&ots=g1LRc7vPul&dq=the%20dark%20half%20psychopomps&pg=PA397#v=onepage&q=the%20dark%20half%20psychopomps&f=false

There is another King podcast that's already made it through almost all the books:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/stephen-king-cast/id908092216?mt=2

I prefer The Loser's Club, better production and the group discussion works better for me. That guy's reviews are pretty good though.

lol i got to the part in It last night where Pennywise taunts Richie with a lineup for a band of dead musicians, he misspelled Phil Lynott as "Linott"... how has this not been fixed in 31 years?

I noticed that the last time I read through the book. And you have a recent version? Someone has to take care of that.

I noticed that the last time I read through the book. And you have a recent version? Someone has to take care of that.

It's not the most recent one, although I did buy it new. Looks like this

http://i43.tower.com/images/mm100316468/it-stephen-king-paperback-cover-art.jpg

Yeah, that's pretty recent. Crazy.

In the meantime, the Loser's Club dropped a THIRD episode about Night Shift, this one solely dealing with the film adaptations. This brings the total podcast time spent on the collection to over 8 hours.

https://consequenceofsound.net/podcast-episode/episode-8-night-shift-pt-3/

I'm curious about King's choices about what he goes back and changes. I generally hear that the second version of The Stand is not an improvement and the first Dark Tower book used to have more hallucinatory images that people missed when they were taken out. Was he trying to tighten it up? Do you agree that these changes harmed the books? Why did he never go back and tighten up IT?

Loser's Club sounds cool. I like exhaustive discussions, as there are too many podcasts that are like "We're going to talk about a season of this tv show in the next 45 minutes, 20 of which will be banter about snacks."

And Squarespace. Don't forget Squarespace.

yeah maybe I need to check out Losers Club. Long episodes are my jam.

I'm curious about King's choices about what he goes back and changes. I generally hear that the second version of The Stand is not an improvement and the first Dark Tower book used to have more hallucinatory images that people missed when they were taken out. Was he trying to tighten it up? Do you agree that these changes harmed the books? Why did he never go back and tighten up IT?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, April 7, 2017 9:28 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

IT is a lot more focused than The Stand- not nearly as many characters or subplots or locations. Any tightening up would be with his cocaine prose, just getting a better economy of words.

I thought the second version of the Stand was the version that put back in the stuff his editor cut out?

I think IT could be 1/3 of its length.