Stephen KIng's "The Stand", particularlyi its television adaptation.

It (the novel) had an ending equally as bonkers as the Stand, but it worked much better

ha ha see i am of exactly the opposite opinion, I read both as teens and the ending of It I was just, I don't even think I thought it was good or bad, I was just WHA-A-A-A-A, for me it was like when Aslan comes back, like "how does that even make any narrative sense"

The narrative doesn't matter as much in It, the cosmic spider battle was entertainingly nuts but is basically just a boss fight; the real ending of It is when Mike is seeing the ink fade from his notebooks and forgetting everything. but I guess you could make that argument for the Stand, it just felt to me like the reverse was the case there, that the narrative in the Stand WAS the bones of the thing vs It where the character arcs were the armature and the plot was just dressing hanging off of that. Why the Stand's ending didn't work. For me anyway, I'm guessing this could boil down to when it read both books and what I was going through at the time.

Oh I assumed you meant the orgy!

that scene would prob be better if it were an orgy, instead of an awkward queueing situation

how did the nuke go off again

everyone fucked it

(god, iirc)

it was an awkward queueing situation to say the least

hahaha, no, I skip the wayfinding orgy part of It

the most unbelievable part of the novel is a rock star named "Larry Underwood" having a hit called "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?"

that always struck me as pitch-perfect 70s pop musician and hit single names!

maybe! i don't know. i guess i always forget SK is a bit normcore in a lot of ways.

That’s the weird thing about the expanded edition- king changed a bunch of cultural references so that it is now set in the 90s for no good reason, making the fact of a smash hit called “baby, can you dig your man” even more unlikely

there's an expanded edition beyond the one published in the 80s?

There’s a really funny review of king’s last book by one of the younger generation of thriller writers where they basically spend the whole review going on about how every character’s frame of reference is all just stuff from 40 years ago

Xp the expanded edition is from 1991 I think

ah you're right it was published in 1991!

I always figured Larry Underwood had an Eddie Money thing going on or at least that is how I imagined "Baby, Can You Dig your Man" as sounding.

i guess part of it is SK had the opportunity to create a debauched rock star character with a massive (iirc) chart-topping hit and he gives him the name of this really good accountant you should see.

lol i didn't realize that he'd updated the timeframe when he did the expansion -- that explains a good bit of strangeness

the first quote in the epigraph is springsteen's jungleland! of course he's normcore

yeah the book is so powerfully 70s I just sorta blanked on any actual year references in it

the most unbelievable part of the novel is a rock star named "Larry Underwood" having a hit called "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?"

he's a righteous man

subtext is obviously "Baby, Can You Dig Your (Trashcan) Man"

DIGYOMAN

you like that happy crappy?

that brown sound sure do get around.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/05/stephen-kings-the-stand-exclusive-first-look

This has been remade, to be released in December. Most of this article just lays out who the characters are. Whoopi Goldberg is playing Mother Abigail and mentions that “I’ve been fighting with not making her the Magic Negro because she’s complicated.” Also, Larry Underwood is portrayed by Jovan Adepo, a black actor. No word yet on how they will update Baby, Can You Dig Your Man.

The timing of this is kind of amazing and I’m actually surprised they didn’t try and bring the release forward a bit - even though the pandemic part fades from the story and is really scene-setting for the supernatural post-apocalyptic stuff, if this is any good at all it could be huge

Oh dear lord no not now.

Whoopi Goldberg is playing Mother Abigail and mentions that “I’ve been fighting with not making her the Magic Negro because she’s complicated.”

Seems hard given this character is almost the purest example of the trope ever put to the page.

No word yet on how they will update Baby, Can You Dig Your Man.

No updates needed, he's a righteous man

Newer adaptations of king’s bid novels are very keen to preempt common complaints and it never seems to result in better films

Speaking of which, king himself has apparently written the last episode and given it a new ending to replace the hated hand of god comes down and pokes a nuke sequence

That scene is hated? I can't deny it comes out of nowhere but it's so much a part of my experience of the novel that I can't imagine a version not having it. Like, I neither hate it nor love it, it just seems like part of what The Stand IS.

It’s one that comes up when people discuss the conventional wisdom that King sucks at endings - there is definitely something very lazy about it, if mother Abigail is the purest example of a magical negro then this is surely the purest example of deus ex machina

I think I simultaneously understand (and even understood reading it as a kid) that it's a cheap ending, while being unable to imagine it any other way. That said, I have a lot of faith in El Rey and if he's writing a new ending I believe he has something that will feel right.

I have a degree of affection for King's 'let's say...Moe' endings. I know what to expect generally and am pleasantly surprised when he sticks the landing.

...and then everyone in The Boulder Free Zone went down into the sewers and had sex with Frannie. The End.

Interesting that one of his best Big Book Endings, 11-22-63, came from a suggestion from Joe Hill

Good casting - I always like Marsden, the John Barrowman Who Can Act, Kinnear and Skarsgard both seem like good fits for their roles too. Plus bonus points for not casting Michael Sheen, who must never play an American again

“We love old people. We just do,” said Goldberg. “On top of everything else they have been, and seen, and have different ideas and are probably trying to lead us in a good way.

hm this has not been my experience of the last 6 months.

Everyone sure looks well-dressed for this apocalypse.

I am really attached to Jamey Sheridan's denim-clad, grinning Boomer Flagg, but I'll try my best to accept Skarsgard, who is ofc a good actor.

Sheridans face is enormous

Like they make this latex demon face for him later and it just looks like his face

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d2/fe/14/d2fe143bbf358271a6f11ee8519ac594.jpg

How is this not a makeup effect

Seriously! Dude's face is inherently demonic

i have too much hope invested in this.

I bet "Baby can You Dig Your Man" will be a JOhn Mayer-esque piece

Yeah, I’m probably too stoked for this as well. I just started rereading the book for the third time in anticipation, but I’m not sure I’ll finish it.

I only ever got through it the once in full, but it was worthwhile. I was screaming for a retry at the miniseries for years after I couldn't take Parker Lewis and Molly Ringwald in their roles. please don't fuggitup.

the version I read was the expanded version, so I never had the experience of reading the original edit to compare it to.

My one read was the expanded. If I get around to rereading it it’s gonna be the standard text (which one is currently in print?)

Yea although they changed it up and also sorta seemed to combine it with another bit (the zoo) - didn’t really work for me

Honestly don't think that scene can possibly translate to film and have the same impact.

The Baby Can You Dig Your Man in this series sounds way more like what i expected in the book

From the 12 seconds i heard

Guess I’ll retype this here: I am still enjoying this! It is often silly (like the book) but incredibly well cast. Glen & stu broing out over a post apocalypse cold one is the most Stephen king scene ever - unlike stu glen went to college which you can tell cause he is listening to “so what” by miles lol

Tom Cullen is still 😬😬😬😬 that spells 😒 tho I like this actor (coover from justified s2!)

I am enjoying all the actors. This nick is dreamy. Skarsgård is looking more like his dad than I remember. Between Owen Teague and some latter J Gylenhaal performances I’m seeing a bit of a re-mainstreaming of crispin glover’s vibe

I did like this episode as well.

Lol i commented on Miles Davis too.

I like who they got for Andros

xp should I bother watching this, or is it just “good for a Stephen King adaptation”?

Worth it for Harold alone imo

Maybe my expectations have been worn down by how bad this “prestige king” era has been but I am enjoying it way more than I expected to! I think most of the decisions being made are otm

glen: would you like to come back to mine for some caviar
stu: (extremely good ol boy voice) cavi-what?

But lol if this line isn’t from the book I can guarantee you Stephen’s idiot son wrote it

That doesn't read like an SK original to me, but I am fully ready to be corrected if I'm wrong about this.

Hmm i'm 5 long hours into this now (not really had the enthusiasm to keep up to date week by week) and feel like I know/like all these characters far less than I did in the 6 hour miniseries... I just don't know how they managed to make this so long given so far they've missed tons of things I would have expected them to include? Especially when the new additions have been pretty unnecessary. Almost all of the Vegas/lloyd stuff from episode 5 was tonally just terrible, particularly the acting. It's quite something when Cyclops is one of the most charismatic cast members in your show. not a fan of new Harold either, the guy is totally unable to seem even in a tiny bit normal, and again his tone just contrasts so heavily from the (yes slightly boring) naturalism of everyone else in boulder that the idea they seem not to really notice is just laughable.

meh.

the fact that nobody else posted for 3 weeks maybe means others are also unimpressed?

I don't hate it, I don't love it, I appreciate it, but I get frustrated with the time jumps, which I think is part of why it feels like it's missing so much.

I decided to watch The Expanse instead, I'll come back to it eventually

just finished this

oof

this (1994 version anyway) is on Horror Channel UK at 1 tomorrow afternoon, boxing day, for ~8 hours

When the 2020 series came out I signed up for a trial Paramount subscription, watched two episodes and didn’t care for them. Currently have access again so I finished the series. I really didn’t end up liking this much.

Some of the casting didn’t work as we well for me as the old TV version. Didn’t like Whoopi as Mother A, and Harold was okay but too one-note psycho as noted above. Hard to know what to do with Tom Cullen, but that wasn’t it. Others were bland and uninteresting.

Agree that the non-linear storyline in the first episodes hinders way more than it helps. Also disliked Vegas; Lloyd, Julie Lawry and Ratwoman were hammy and horrible. New epilogue was pretty meh.

Overall I give it C-.