stephen king c/d?

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.

Haven't read anything since Under The Dome, which I enjoyed a lot even though it was silly and felt pretty redundant after the ~8 or so other King books I've read. Is anything since then worthwhile, or are they all just kinda "well, if you need something to read you could do worse" books?

Revival is good
the Kennedy one too

Yep, both of those are good, and I liked Duma Key (can't remember if that was pre- or post-Dome).

huh never even heard of Revival

The Kennedy one is that one that sounded most interesting to me, since it seemed maybe most like a departure from the usual "huge cast of town people/misfits/kids/villains comes together under adversity" thing a lot of his books fall into

I think King's been on a mostly-good streak since Under the Dome, which was the first book of his in a while that I (a) enjoyed, and (b) read through quickly when it came out, despite the last few chapters being a bit disappointing. The only exceptions (of what I've read) are Dr Sleep and Bazaar of Bad Dreams, a so-so short story collection. 11/22/63 was great and Revival may be a top ten King book for me.

Full Dark, No Stars is another good one. Joyland is a decent, small-stakes book.

Avoid the 2nd and 3rd detective books and burn all copies of Dr Sleep.

saw that as "Full Dank, No Stars" at first

I've just been reminded of this slightly incongruous reference (one of many tbf) in Riverdale

https://68.media.tumblr.com/a8543fdacb5d4752db7a9cb8c0ba8d02/tumblr_ol78cdHPxj1w5ugijo1_400.gif

I guess the kids are down with the King these days

BTW, Joe Hill's most recent novel, The Fireman, is the most like his dad's work of all his stuff, but it's also really good.

Spike TV is launching a series version of The Mist on June 22.

1) The Mist was actually a really good movie.
2) Remember Under the Dome? Remember how fast it turned to shit? (like, episode 2)
3) Spike TV still exists?

http://io9.gizmodo.com/stephen-kings-firestarter-is-getting-a-movie-remake-1794740863

Lots of Firestarter in Stranger Things.

One of my favorite Stephen King anecdotes was from Dana Gould iirc. He was at a screening of the Descent and noticed that King was also in the audience. Near the end when the hero's hand comes shooting up from out of the earth, Gould said he cringed because it was such a rip-off of the end of Carrie, and King was sitting right there. After the movie he saw King in the lobby and was enthusing to his friend, "And her hand shot out of the ground, just like in Carrie. That was awesome!"

ugh, Firestarter. read that a couple months ago. not nearly enough firestarting imo. pretty boring book with no a lot of payoff.

that's a great story president keyes

Firestarter is the most forgettable King book I've read. I don't understand why it warrants a single adaptation, let alone two.

It's like he was reading Claremont's X-Men and wanted to try his hand at it and didn't realize that it was really not at all his forte.

they just spend so much time locked up in that facility, i'm serious when i say there is very little firestarting or excitement. i'm deep into Cujo now and it's fucking wild - the prose is pulpier and dirtier than the novels surrounding it, he really sounds like a madman.

Haha I just watched Firestarter last week and was startled to realize it is primarily a movie about people being imprisoned in a dumb government facility, and George C. Scott playing this completely bizarre and creepy guy who works there. It was cool whenever she was starting a fire, and decent when the dad guy grimaced and mind-controlled people, but otherwise quite an oddly-structured and sluggish movie.

It's not even a good t dream score for that era

The Dark Tower trailer tomorrow, two snippets up:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-gunslinger-and-the-man-in-black-reveal-the-first-tw-1794842076

idgi They're doing the Dark Tower as a movie rather than as a tv series?

that's how i feel about IT... even though they wrapped principal photography before Stranger Things dropped, i get the vibe that it's going to be very much that, I know it's rated R but still

I read IT twice when I was maybe 13/14, and watched the TV miniseries, and that's all I'll ever need of it. (Now the Dark Tower, on the other hand...)

They're doing Dark Tower as both a movie AND a TV series. I think the series is going to be set in the past (adapting Wizard and Glass, I believe).

One of my favorite Stephen King anecdotes was from Dana Gould iirc. He was at a screening of the Descent and noticed that King was also in the audience. Near the end when the hero's hand comes shooting up from out of the earth, Gould said he cringed because it was such a rip-off of the end of Carrie, and King was sitting right there. After the movie he saw King in the lobby and was enthusing to his friend, "And her hand shot out of the ground, just like in Carrie. That was awesome!"

― duped and used by my worst Miss U (President Keyes), Friday, April 28, 2017 5:47 PM (four days ago)

this story is amazing, not least b/c i'm pretty sure that scene from carrie is only in the movie!

They're doing Dark Tower as both a movie AND a TV series. I think the series is going to be set in the past (adapting Wizard and Glass, I believe).

Isn't the TV series vaporware?

I dunno, I thought it was just a forgotten artifact from when Ron Howard was planning to direct, but I read something about it in a recent news item about the movie.

IT really, really calls for like a ten- or twelve-episode streaming season. Suspect a lot of King would really work in that format since he writes so long that movies tend to boil out so much of what makes them feel King-like, or spend so much time cramming in plot points that actually building up the suspense and creepiness of any given scene, or the sense of wrongness about a bend in the path in the woods or whatever, is just impossible.

Dark Tower is probably unfilmable in any format as written since it just careens around so much in terms of genre and tone, and huge portions of it need a profound rethink (almost everything to do with Susannah IIRC). I mean how do you make a series where the first act is a lone silent Clint Eastwood spooky postapocalyptic western plus succubi, then it becomes a merry group adventure on the road from genre exercise to genre exercise, doubles back to Clint Eastwood for a book-length flashback of the olden days, and then turns abruptly into a barrage of fanservice and shoutouts alternating with the characters saving Stephen King from a car crash, and on and on... I mean you could massage some of that out I guess? It's just, like, barely a 'story,' it's not really about anything, just he told some stories and built up affection for the characters so people wanted to see the journey through.

(That said the idea of doing just a single film that's a reinterpretation or heavily altered retelling of some portion or episode of Dark Tower seems like a totally fine idea, just another parallel narrative intersecting King's sprawling metaverse. Plus I love the casting of Elba as Roland so who am I kidding I'll go and see this for sure.)

And here ya go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjwfqXTebIY