stephen king c/d?

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.

I like the long version of The Stand, there's about 100-150 pages about Mother Abigail halfway through the book that are skippable and boring but the rest is fine.

IT might look focused compared to The Stand, but it's pretty damn rambling. That's part of its charm to some, obviously, but there's definitely more than "cocaine prose" that could be tightened up.

Yeah a lot of the time King's verboseness is actually a strength, e.g. his chatty tone, or his ability to stretch out a single incident to many, many pages to wring out maximum tension (the scene in Salem's Lot where Mark escapes from being tied up comes to mind)

Generally dislike the chatty tone and find it anything but tense but I'm intrigued that you say it works so well in Salem's Lot

Extended Stand is awesome for the trashcan man + kid idyll, but abominable for that new closing chapter, tear that thing out the fuckin book imo.

I really hate that the second version of The Stand updates the setting to 1990

I've only read the expanded Stand so not sure how it compares.

loved it tho. and that Mother Abigail was some kneejerk conservative

doesn't the intro of The Stand incorrectly cite "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" too?

he quotes the lyric as "Mary, take my hand" and it's "baby, take my hand".

I've always thought it was 'Mary'.

Listening back now, it's clearly Mary. I may have been influenced by King's misquote.

clearly BABY I mean. Damn.

Rolling S King rock errata thread 2017

Confession: I'm pretty sure reading SK at an early age is why I became a fan of Springsteen lol

And Dylan for that matter

Revival is the most rocking recent King: "All that shit starts with E."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AxxUTc50C8

I've gone on about this at length in the poll-by-era thread, but 100% agreed that IT could lose a few hundred pages with no loss. He actually straight repeats at least one entire section (the secret of the inhaler contents) and I refuse to believe it's on purpose.

Was It one of the books he later claimed he couldn't remember writing?

Cujo is the one i know of

Pretty sure he said the same thing about The Tommyknockers.

He wrote It from 81-85, his maniac years

just realized that Phil Lynott mention must've been last minute bc he died in early 86

The Tommyknockers came out at the peak of his cocaine and mouthwash phase, and is fairly clearly about his addiction. It's also one of his worst books. But then, Pet Sematary, It and Misery were all written under the influence and I think most fans would regard them as among his best.

Omg no, he drank mouthwash?? I thought it was like 24-packs of beer. Both?

"Tabby asked me if I drank [bottles of Listerine]. I responded ... I most certainly did not. Nor did I. I drank the Scope instead. It was tastier, had that hint of mint.

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/gossip/stephen-king-personal-demons-article-1.936068

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

First time I heard of that was on an episode of Intervention, an alcholic woman was standing on the lawn yelling that all the mouthwash was gone O_o

That episode has stayed with me too, so super sad. I'm really glad King (and hopefully that lady too) has since stopped drinking mouthwash.

There are some pretty colorful/o_O stories about him while he was directing Maximum Overdrive too.

Which is a cocaine movie if I ever saw one. "How about the entire soundtrack... AC/DC!"

it's cool his marriage stayed together even when he was doing so much cocaine he had to keep cotton balls in his nostrils to stem the bleeding

Any of you read any Tabitha King? I haven't. Am curious. My dad just gave me all his Dark Tower books recently though, so after those.

Accidents on set[edit]
When filming the scene where the ice cream truck flips over, the stunt did not go according to plan and resulted in an accident. A telephone pole-size beam of wood was placed inside so it would flip end over end, but it only flipped once and slid on its roof, right into the camera. Gene Poole, dolly grip on the film, pulled the cameraman out of the way at the last second.

A second incident, this time leading to serious injury, occurred on July 31, 1985 while filming in a suburb of Wilmington, North Carolina. A radio-controlled lawnmower used in a scene went out of control and struck a block of wood used as a camera support, shooting out wood splinters which injured the director of photography Armando Nannuzzi. As a result of this incident, Nannuzzi lost an eye. Nannuzzi sued Stephen King, and 17 others, on February 18, 1987 for $18 million in damages due to unsafe working practices.[8] The suit was settled out of court.

That grip's name being gene poole is the best little detail in that first incident

I think the king can't remember writing the Tommyknockers thing was an Onion article

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/i-dont-even-remember-writing-the-tommyknockers-10929

(the Cujo admission is real though)

yeah, the Onion article predated the Cujo admission iirc so I always wondered if King was responding to it.

From his 2014 Rolling Stone interview:

... I mean, The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I've thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, "There's really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back." The book is about 700 pages long, and I'm thinking, "There's probably a good 350-page novel in there."

I'm trying to imagine what drug King would have to be on to cut 350 pages of a manuscript.

Alice Cooper has three albums he recorded and toured behind in a total alcoholic blackout - he has no memory of them at all. And when I interviewed him, he said one time some big redneck sheriff-looking guy came up to him on a golf course and told him that one of them, DaDa, was his favorite Cooper album.

Haha wow

weirdly reminiscent of this post that's always stuck in my brain:

My wife has this friend, and he showed up late to this party last year...I asked him why he'd been late and he said, "Oh well, I wanted to come earlier but I went to the Fine Line cuz my favorite band was playing"

Me: "Oh really? cool...what band?"

Him: "Dada"

His favorite band is Dada. Huh. Didn't see that coming.

-- M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, November 3, 2005 5:35 PM (Thursday, November 3, 2005 5:35 PM)

xposts In that vein, I think Cujo is pretty good (along with some of that Cooper blackout period material).

(Cooper's walking corpse look during that era is scarier than any of his intentional efforts at spookiness.)

Now I'm imagining the nightmarish image of an emaciated, shroud-draped Alice Cooper hovering outside the window in Creepshow and getting the willies.

I'm trying to imagine what drug King would have to be on to cut 350 pages of a manuscript.