chiller blog

Posted Jan 12, 09 11:19 AM

Kingdom Come

Hmm, so I was trying to figure out who was it who once unthankfully referred to Stephen King as "the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries." Google... Google... Google... (Insert semi-shocked popping of the eyes and bottom lip drop.) Well. How about that?

He did.

As human nature's filing cabinet goes, criticism generally falls before appreciation. Which makes self-deprecation preceding modesty very, very charming. Author. Screenwriter. Playwright. Executive producer. Entertainment Weekly columnist. Emmy nominee. Sometimes actor (ech!). One-time director (ech! ech! ech!). King's not only prolific, his work has proliferated.

Case in point: If I said, right now, name five Stephen King books, stories, movies, etc., you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone hard-pressed.

If I said name ten, a lot of you could rattle 'em off.

How about 15? We'd still have takers.

Twenty? Pool your answers. You'd be surprised, initially, but why should you be? Here's a creative mind whose lifetime has wrought -- and this is only a partial highlight reel -- Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, the fertile Night Shift and Different Seasons collections, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, Cujo, Creepshow, Christine, Pet Sematary, Thinner, It, The Dark Tower series, Misery, Needful Things, Dolores Claiborne, Insomnia, The Green Mile, Desperation, and Storm of the Century. I'm stopping there, but you can imagine hearing people calling out -- defensively! -- other favorite titles that I didn't mention as if space wasn't an issue. Moreso, Stephen King's body of work is so immensely mainstream pop culture that it's spring-boarded into TV series, straight-to-video sequels and now, enters the phase of itself being remade. And he's one of the few contemporary authors to bear that above-the-title, before-the-title, name-becomes-part-of-the-title honor.

But he's the last person to take himself too seriously.

Saturday Night Live once did a parody interview of the writer, typing away as he fielded questions. When asked what he was working on, King's likeness first had to pause and reread what was in the typewriter. Moments later, King's typing halted in dramatic writer's bloc... only to resume two seconds later.

Sometimes, however, even two minutes, two days, or two weeks pause with a give-it-to-him-straight story editor might not be a bad idea. King’s concepts are king (Misery’s “fan holds creator hostage” is pure brilliance), and it’s difficult to question the sheer volume of his output. But one wishes (I being that one) that Stephen King might slooooow down to polish his prose and tobacco-spit dialogue, which at times reads with a rough draft quality. Did Salem’s Lot really need whole page counts devoted to scenery and changing seasons? Doesn’t the illustrated bloodlust in the graphic novellas Cycle of the Werewolf and Creepshow narrow-niche their potential audience? And after reading Donna Trenton’s stop-sign triggered fantasies in Cujo, I would have thrown the book in the garbage had it not been a library return.

True horror is in a slow-burn campfire tone. Deliberate, patient, mounting passages. King’s lesser scare narratives – especially on film -- can be cluttered and busy. His characters, when not spun from a strong theme, are perfunctory and undeveloped. Tension is frequently taken for granted, with King diffusing his material too often with a cloying jokiness – and bad taste. Unlike other genre titles, King’s fiction rarely plays straight and cold.

Yet Stephen King is bankable in and outside of horror, his name always justifying a Barnes & Noble glance or a coming attractions sneak. But the execution runs the gauntlet between the new classics and fodder for Joe Bob Briggs. Carrie is the ultimate high school revenge fantasy, sharply observing ugly duckling pathos and unredemptive cruelty. Graveyard Shift is an undistinguished, forgotten creature feature. The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me were big screen, soul-soaring adaptations of his short stories. Dreamcatcher translated into usually-superb filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan’s own Howard the Duck, an unconscionable coming-of-age/telepathic/shape-shifting/alien invasion mess. It was easily the worst film in a four year period, so sour that poor Morgan Freeman couldn’t contain his visible sadness and frustration.

But how many authors have multiple paperbacks editions of their work on keeper shelves in homes across the country? King has tried, failed, succeeded, succeeded, tried, tried, and succeeded.

In true career retrospective form, it's at last become fashionable to receive King with increasing appreciation -- and seriousness. (He was honored with the 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Book Awards.) He's even contributed On Writing, a superbly-reviewed nonfiction book that rivals E.B. White's teaching tool, Elements of Style. But did anyone notice -- over the last 33 years -- that successful adaptations of Stephen King's work have attracted incredibly blazing directors? Brian De Palma. Tobe Hooper. Stanley Kubrick. George Romero. David Cronenberg. John Carpenter. Rob Reiner. Taylor Hackford. Brian Singer. Frank Darabont.

AND actors? Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie (both Oscar-nominated for Carrie). John Travolta. James Mason. Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall. Ed Harris. Hal Holbrook. E.G. Marshall. Christopher Walken and Colleen Dewhurst. George C. Scott and Drew Barrymore. James Woods. River Phoenix. Richard Dreyfuss. Tim Curry. William Hickey. James Caan and Academy Award-winner Kathy Bates (Misery). Timothy Hutton. Max von Sydow. Gary Sinise. Ian McKellan and Brad Renfro. Tom Hanks and Michael Clark Duncan. Anthony Hopkins. Johnny Depp. Diane Ladd. Marcia Gay Harden.

AND... networks. :) That's right. This Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (January 19), another King comes to Chiller. To toast Stevie Boy the Horror Popcorn-ator, the 24-Hour broadcast of a shivering quartet of his mini's (beginning at 6am ET).

In The Tommyknockers, Jimmy Smits and Marg Helgenberger dig up something long-since-buried in the woods that tends to have an alien-ating effect on their fellow citizens.

In Golden Years -- actually an 8-episode short series repackaged as a whole -- a lab janitor becomes lab rat when a chemical explosion turns him younger. Felicity Huffman co-stars before her own personal golden years on Desperate Housewives.

The Langoliers -- produced through Laurel Entertainment (Richard Rubenstein was also a force behind Tales from the Darkside) -- is helmed by one of my fav'rite unsung horror directors, Tom (Fright Night, Child's Play) Holland, who also scribed the under-appreciated Psycho II. The reliable Dean Stockwell and an exceptionally good David (Disturbia) Morse find themselves onboard an eastbound 747 where most of the passengers disappear in-flight. Too bad the precocious blind girl wasn't one of them. This one has more of a sci-fi shading, so please be a good sport about the Pac-Man visual effects.

But it's The Stand that King purists earmark as being among the upper echelon of the author's literary achievements, and this epic-minded TV sprawler (nominated for 6 Emmys, winner of 2) is the most satisfying. Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Laura San Giacomo, Ray Walston, Rob Lowe and even uncredited Kathy Bates and Ed Harris are left standing when a virus escapes one of King's trademark Top Secret Government Testing Facilities and ravages the Earth. A new civilization emerges -- as a new menace looms. (Fans typically cite this work on par with The Shining in terms of the sheer number of book-to-screen debates.)

It's prime time to stock up on your Stephen King-ology. Or get your cinematic Big Mac and fries fix. Here's to washing it down.