Stephen King and My Father

I waffled back and forth for several weeks before deciding to do this post. After all, who wants to hear some guy on the internet blathering about his father?

I changed my mind after a conversation I had with Dad this weekend about Misery vs. It. I've been fascinated for a while about my father's weird blind spot when it comes to stuff he likes to think of as "popular". It almost seems like anything he perceives as "popular" will not last. In a hundred years, it will be forgotten. A few months back I made a reference to a TV show set in the far future that mentions the Beatles. My father, who loves the Beatles, scoffed at the idea that the Beatles would be remembered that far in the future. I told him that by that time the Beatles would likely be thought of as the Mozarts of their era. He scoffed at that too, and I reminded him of how many "serious musicians" at the time scoffed at Mozart. That didn't phase him. If something is "popular", that means "well-liked by a lot of people right now, but utterly ephemeral, and soon to be forgotten". There is no difference, in his estimation, between AC/DC and Justin Bieber, as far as how history will remember them, which is to say, it won't. No difference between Star Wars and Twilight. No difference between Stephen King and a thousand other popular fiction writers of today.

Suffice it to say that I do not agree with him. As far as I'm concerned, if something is fifty years old is considered by most to be a classic today, then it still will be in a hundred years. Just as the music world of the late 1700's believed Mozart's music was a flash in the pan, only fleetingly popular, today's "serious literati" that tut-tut any idea that Stephen King could be considered classic literature are failing to see just how long this "flash in the pan" has kept flashing. And my father is among them, despite the weird irony that my father is absolutely certain that JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is an undisputed classic that will be remembered for time out of mind. The same literati sneering at King are still sneering at Tolkien today, and Dad can't seem to understand the dichotomy he exists in. He argues that Tolkien is timeless, as Mozart was, while stuff that was just "popular" when he was old enough to remember it is just a reflection of the time it was born in. As if Mozart was not a reflection of changing musical styles (like the Beatles) and Tolkien wasn't a reflection of changing sensibilities toward fantasy.

My father cannot understand how something can be popular and timeless at the same time. He was already an adult by the time Stephen King became a household name, so as far as he's concerned, in maybe another twenty or thirty years, after King has passed on and the "fad" is over, he'll be forgotten. But it's more than just that he doesn't think much of King because he considers him "popular". He also doesn't think there's much to take seriously about Stephen King's writing at all. In that, he's far from alone, and it's primarily that idea that made me want to write this post.

NOT my father

You just about couldn't find two people more diametrically opposed than Stephen King and my father. They both love books, they were both alive when Eisenhower was president, and that's about it. Stephen King is a left-wing aging hippy who battled addiction for a great chunk of his adult life and has a uniquely dark, yet hopeful, outlook on the world. My father is a right-wing Baptist minister. I have spoken about that before, but I'm always a bit hesitant to talk about it because the term "Baptist minister" brings up an image in the heads of a lot of people that couldn't be further from the truth. Mostly. I've met ministers like the ones people like to imagine, but I can safely say my father is not one of them. He's laughed at dirty jokes before, and even told them, depending on who's listening. He's not stridently religious, looking at his faith more as a lifestyle and relationship than as a set of practices. And he doesn't have a problem, strictly speaking, with horror. He has read other writers who go dark and scary, and he's read a few of my horror short stories and he likes them. He's a big reader of Dean Koontz, and when I said that what I've read of Koontz shows him to be a low-rent Stephen King, my father laughed and said "as far as I'm concerned, Stephen King is a low-rent Dean Koontz." I honestly don't think anyone in the world, except maybe Dean Koontz (maybe) would agree with him.

The craziest part of that is that my father has never read a Stephen King novel. All he knows about Stephen King he got from either reading about or hearing about him from some other source. He said he tried to read one once, but it was "just plain nasty" and he gave up after only a few pages. He doesn't remember what novel it was, but he said that it had kids going off together to "talk about gross things like doo-doo, and stuff". Now, I haven't read everything King has ever written (yet!) but I have read most of what would have been released by the time my father first tried reading him, and I'm 90% sure that he's describing the opening scene of It.

If you don't recall, the book opens with Bill and Georgie Denbrough, the entire scene given to us from Georgie's point of view. It's raining, and Bill is sick in bed, but Georgie wants to go outside and play, so Bill has made Georgie a toy boat. The scene is very sweet and touching, and makes me go a little teary-eyed sweaty--I said SWEATY, because real men don't get teary-eyed--because I can really feel the love these two brothers have for each other. Now, because they're little boys, they do start ribbing each other, and start with mock insults, starting with "You're an a-hole", "yeah, well, you're a big brown a-hole", and finally Bill calling Georgie a "big, brown shitty a-hole", which causes Georgie, already giggling, to break down in laughter. This scene of boys being boys translated itself in my father's mind as "boys going off to talk about gross things like doo-doo". That was his take-away from this really sweet scene.

As far as I'm concerned, that's proof right there of confirmation bias on my father's part. He expected to find gross, awful stuff in King's stories, and because he was looking for it, he found it. Well before any of the horror started.

That's the tip of the iceberg. Whenever I have conversations with my father about Stephen King, I can hear a sort of dismissiveness enter his voice. I see him getting ready to roll his eyes at whatever stupid thing he thinks King does. It never occurs to him that he's trying to talk about a writer he's never read.

At this point I should take you back to the olden days when your friendly blogger was a wee lad, anywhere from age five to age 13 (I know that's not all that far back, but I just hit Four Dimes, so I'm feeling my age, here), and I really thought my dad knew, well, not everything, but enough to speak intelligently on any subject. I thought. Then he crossed into my territory.

I was once a big reader of Marvel comics. Today I think I like film and TV adaptations of them better, but at the time I lived and breathed them. Then my father one day my father heard me use the word "mutant" in reference to a Marvel character. He asked me what I meant by calling him a "mutant", and I responded that he was born with the X-gene in his blood and therefore was, as 13-year-old me described it "born with his powers."

"Hmm, no," said my father. I don't think so, Joshua." I didn't understand what he meant. I hadn't asked a question, so he didn't think so about what? "Well," he said. "Think about guys like Spider-Man, who was mutated after he was born." My father didn't know what "mutants" in Marvel Comics were, and he was deigning to try and "educate" me about the one thing I could confidently say I knew far more about than he did. Of course, my father read comics when he was a kid, but he didn't keep reading them into adulthood, and yet still thought he knew more about them than a kid who spent his entire day reading them and/or discussing them with friends. Suddenly I realized that my father often spoke with authority but didn't necessarily always know what he was talking about.

Later in life, I began to notice other evidence of this. He would repeat long-debunked ideas about such diverse subjects as medicine, law, physics, you name it. I don't mean to say that my father is an unintelligent man, or that he's a master bullshitter. He isn't. He's got one of the keenest political minds I've ever seen, and he's a skilled mechanic, knows a lot about guns, aerotech, architecture and a host of other things that I know very little about. It's just that he likes to talk with the same authoritative tone and assurance that he knows his business whether he truly knows something or does not. I also don't think he realizes he's repeating falsehoods or bad assumptions. Many times he'll predict something will happen based solely on his own intuition, but that intuition is often based more on what he thinks is happening verse what actually is. Again, this is not always the case, or even often. Just more times than I ever realized as a kid. Enough that when I hear something first from him, I check other sources.

And he does this about Stephen King. A lot. He constantly talks about all the various and sundry ways that King is a writer of silly fiction that has no literary value or edification. All of King's stuff is overly violent, overly profane and it revels in all things filthy. Other provably false notions I've had to disabuse him of are that King is a militant atheist who unfailingly holds up any Christians portrayed in his works as either evil or stupid. I can kinda understand where he's coming from on that one; King really isn't much on organized religion, but he absolutely believes in God and frequently depicts his heroes as being guided by God. In fact, he's so pro-God that I've heard from some CR's that they're not crazy about The Stand because of how "religious" it can come off. Heh heh...they should read Desperation some time.

But the conversation that decided me on whether or not to post this was when I mentioned to him that I'd watched Misery that weekend, and my father replied, "Oh, yeah, I've seen that. It was good." I knew he'd seen it, as it turns out, because many years ago I saw him watching it when it came on TV. I remember him sitting there engrossed in the film, which I didn't stay to watch with him at the time, and later on him telling me about this cool thriller he'd just watched. I told him it was based on a Stephen King book, and suddenly his opinion changed. He suddenly "realized" that there was "something off" about it.

But there was nothing of that this past weekend. He remembered watching it, and remembered liking it. "But that's because the horror in that one is real," he said. "It's an actual threat, not just some stupid clown who can pull you into a sewer."

He reduced a 1000-page book with a dense and layered plot down to "some stupid clown who can pull you into a sewer".

I immediately began to defend It, talking about the themes and symbolism in it, the fact that it's not about a clown at all but about real human beings, and I started to expand on the metaphysical nature of "It", but what I should have said was "you shouldn't make value judgments on books you haven't read" and left it at that. It wouldn't have made any difference; Dad's never going to read It, but it might have shown him that he was behaving just like me when I was younger and didn't want to read stuff he loved.

Lately, I've noticed that Dad isn't against King in general. He loves The Shawshank Redemption and when he learned I'd read "the book" it was based on (actually a novella), he asked me how much of the book was like the movie. I think he was ready for me to tell him that the movie changed a great deal and added more meaning and significance. All I know is that he seemed shocked when I told him that the only real changes were Morgan Freeman playing a character who was white in the books and some characters being amalgamated into each other, like how there were actually three wardens and the prisoner who kept the bird wasn't Brooks, and that Brooks himself was a fairly minor character. It kinda made him think, for the moment, anyway, that King might write stuff of value after all.

But let's talk about Dad's dismissal of It as the story of "some stupid clown who can pull you into a sewer". It is actually representative of a lot of Dad's issues with not just the genre King writes in but also the way King writes. Dad is just fine with violence, blood and guts and gore (as long as the writer doesn't seem to be "reveling" in it) but in the end, he wants it all brought back down to earth, so to speak. If it takes place in "our" world, he wants the story wrapped up with a made-to-order explanation for what happened. He'll accept gods or demons. He'll accept insanity. He'll accept a ghost. He'll accept the idea that perhaps in a story magic can be real, but what he won't accept is something nebulous. He wants to know what exactly "It" is, and why it chose Derry to haunt, and why it manifests primarily as a clown, and why, why, why. The explanation that It is an entity from beyond time and space that we will never fully understand is not satisfactory to him.

Why is Christine evil? Why does the Micmac burying ground re-animate corpses? Where do the monsters in The Mist come from? Who and what is Randall Flagg, and who made him? For what purpose? These are the kinds of questions my father demands answers to. He doesn't want the "explanation" to be that there are things man was not meant to know. He doesn't want "loose ends" or anything left up to the imagination. If a satisfactory explanation was not given, in his words "what was the point?"

Take a look at some of the stuff I've written, he says, shamelessly self-promoting. Dad's read a lot of it, and where there's at least an implied explanation, he praises it to the high heavens. But other stuff, he asks me "so...what was it?" or "what did that mean?" because I left the ending purposefully ambiguous. What's terrifying to me might not be to someone else, and sometimes I don't think my father understand that the purpose of horror is to, well, scare. Or at least to make the reader uneasy, which is usually my goal with my short horror stories.

Let's look at one of King's short stories, Sometimes They Come Back. In that story, three punk teens who murdered the protagonist's brother return from the dead to torment him as an adult. Why? How? Never explained. And it shouldn't be, because that's not the point. In the end, the hero learns some dark arts to banish them back to Hell, but is afraid that he's opened a door for something even worse to come through. Again, just what it is, or how he can close that door, are not the point.

Another, Word Processor of the Gods, has a man realizing a home-made word processor his nephew made can cause whatever he types into it to come true. How does this work? Why does it work? Is any of that really something you want to spend time worrying about when the whole point of the story is "what is he going to do with this godlike power and what consequences will result?" Dad doesn't care; he's already stopped reading wondering how the word processor can even work.

When Dad learned that there was no real explanation for what It was in It, his immediate question was "Then is there any reason for anyone to take this sort of thing seriously?" Forget that classic literature like The Monkey's Paw and The Raven also offers no real explanations for anything happening within them. Why does the monkey's paw grant wishes? Who created it? What even is the Raven? Dad can accept that because both stories/poems (let's face it; The Raven is just as much a story as it is a poem) are accepted as classic literature, so he accepts them as well, much as he accepts Mozart as one of the great composers, even though he's a modern-day Salieri (at least, as modern remembrance likes to cast him), immediately consigning King's works to the ash-heap of history sight unseen merely because he refuses to believe that they're anything more than, as Bill Denbrough's college professor might term them, "pulp crap".

I believe the day will come when some of King's writings will be studied in schools. In fact, though I can't find any direct proof with a 20-second Google search, I think it probably already is. While I got handed Faulkner's A Rose for Emily or O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find or Oates's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, some student right now, or maybe in twenty years, could find himself being assigned to read The Reach or The Last Rung on the Ladder or The Woman in the Room or even Suffer the Little Children, Uncle Otto's Truck, Word Processor of the Gods or Nona. While I was assigned Lord of the Flies to read, perhaps one day a student could be assigned The Long Walk, Roadwork, Needful Things or even Hearts in Atlantis.

Needless to say, my father scoffs at this concept. The idea that they'd study the writings of a guy who wrote about an evil clown or haunted car strikes him as hilarious. It's not as if they presently study a guy who wrote a play bloodier than a thousand Stephen King movies, or a play that literally just ends with a person realizing the resolution to their problem will take over a year to solve, and announces "that's too long for a play", and thus ending it, or a play featuring a man named "Bottom" being turned into an "ass".

And this is the problem with modern liberati, or anyone who automatically thinks of "horror writers" (which I've argued King really isn't; he's a writer who writes in multiple genres) as automatically being somehow "less" than authors of "serious" literature. Very often, said "serious literature" of the age is all but forgotten (remember, not only was Salieri the "serious composer" versus Mozart's "popular music" but Christopher Marlow was considered  a playwright that Shakespeare would be lucky to even aspire to be, whereas today we remember all four of them but hold Mozart and Shakespeare to be "the greats"). In a hundred years, is anyone still going to be reading Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, Hillary Mantell, Cormac McCarthy, James Joyce, John Kennedy Toole? Maybe. Will they still be reading Stephen King? Undoubtedly. (I sincerely doubt anyone will still be reading Dean Koontz.) But try convincing today's "art snobs", all of whom have one thing in common; they've never read Stephen King, or if they have, they've read it with the most jaundiced eye. Either that or they picked stuff at random and judged his entire output on that. I read an article where a guy had a friend that kept poo-pooing King as silly nonsense, and was challenged to actually read something King wrote. He picked Christine, probably knowing that a book about a haunted car probably wasn't about to impress him. He could have picked The Shining or The Stand or Pet Sematary or Different Seasons or any number of others that are very representative of King's ouvre but absolutely modern classics. But he picked the one he could most easily mock.

I doubt my dad will ever rise to the "actually freaking read one of King's books" challenge, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because he really does feel like none of them would be worth his time, or perhaps because he might even be afraid to be proven wrong. It would be like him; my father really doesn't like being proven wrong, and will often insist that he's right even when faced with reality. For many years, he insisted that Jeremy Irons was gay. I don't mean he insisted that Jeremy Irons was in the closet. He thought that Irons was an out-n-proud homosexual, as fabulous in his personal life as Ian McKellen. Until I showed him that Irons has, in fact, been married to two different women, one of whom has been married to him for as long as I've been alive. Dad insisted they had to be his beards, or something, but I wouldn't let him get away with that, as he had started off insisting that Irons was an openly gay man.

Still, one day I hope he actually reads something of King's, if only so we can talk about it afterward. Maybe some of you can recommend the novel you think will turn his opinion right around?

The Doctor's Case

I kinda can't believe what I'm casting, here.

On a Stephen King blog, I'm casting a Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Make no mistake, this is not Sherlock Holmes meets the Haunter of the Dark or Randall Flagg showing up as the villain or anything supernatural at all. He's not called upon to solve a particularly grisly or horrifying murder, or at least, no worse a murder than he's worked before.

He doesn't find himself in Maine, trying to solve a mystery in Jerusalem's Lot or Derry or Castle Rock. It's really just a very standard Sherlock Holmes mystery. In this case, a Locked Room Mystery that Inspector Lestrade thinks would be the "perfect" mystery for Mr. Holmes.

So what's the twist? What kind of Holmes mystery took Stephen King to write it? Simple; this time it's Watson who solves the case.

This story first appeared in a collection called The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which featured numerous new Holmes and Watson stories written by modern day authors such as Michael Gilbert, John Lutz, Edward D. Hoch, John Gardner and others, but I have a feeling most people who picked this up did so because they thought "Oh, I have got to see what a Sherlock Holmes story by Stephen King looks like!" The answer is...it looks like a Sherlock Holmes story. It would fit quite neatly into the actual canon.

Oh, there's the occasional odd word choice or sentence structure that Arthur Conan Doyle might not have used, and a few winks at the audience, such as Lestrade openly stating that Watson can't have solved the case because his role is to announce a possible solution and be utterly wrong because of a vital clue he missed that makes his answer impossible. It's true that Watson often did this, mostly to show that he was quite a smart man himself, but then show that Holmes's unique ability to immediately scan a room, compartmentalize everything he sees and arrive at a deduction in seconds is a gift unique to only a few, and while Watson may be a smart man himself, he, like most people, isn't Sherlock Holmes.

But this time, he arrives at the answer before Holmes. Possibly because Holmes is allergic to cats, and thus is distracted by the persistent presence of a feline, or possibly simply because Watson saw the vital clue first, and managed to do what Holmes usually does: come to the full realization within seconds.

Don't misunderstand; he doesn't immediately understand all he sees, and some of the implications of the crime escape him, and Holmes (and to some degree, Lestrade!) fill those in.

But I'm just really tickled that on this blog we're doing a Sherlock Holmes story! Imagine, a Holmes Story within the SKCU! This Holmes could encounter the Club, or Pennywise or Flagg! He doesn't, but how cool would that be? Somewhere within this story, an evil entity is corrupting a Maine town, and a demonic man is walking worlds like we walk streets.

I do understand that this isn't the first time King has attempted to add his own touch to existing literary universes. He wanted to write a novel about Lord Peter Wimsey and he wrote an episode of The X-Files once, plus I think he talked about writing for Marvel Comics, but I'm not the guy to ask about stuff he was going to do then didn't do.

It's tough to know when this one is set. I'd like it to be after most of Holmes's cases, after The Final Problem and The Empty House, but before the later ones where Watson re-marries and well before His Last Bow. Maybe around 1900 or so, after the whole Moriarty issue, when the two of them are in their mid-40's and back to being roommates. Perhaps it could open with Holmes working on the Black Pearl of the Borgias case, so around or just after The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.

Now, on the one hand, the market is flooded with Holmes stories. There's the BBC's Sherlock, CBS's Elementary, the Guy Ritchie movies with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, and now I understand a comedic version is coming starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. There's also Sherlock Gnomes because apparently there are worse ideas than that being pitched. So why do this one as well?

Simple. Because the idea of a Sherlock Holmes story written by Stephen King will sell itself. Will this work as a movie? I think so. Just give us an intro where Holmes is wrapping up a case, and give us the bits with the Hull family in real time, rather than having the whole thing be explained in a long handsome-cab ride by Lestrade.

All my actors will be Brits because I just don't care for the idea of Americans playing such quintessentially British characters.

As Watson is the nominal "true" star of this, let's cast him first. Way too many people seem to think that Watson is older, plump, doltish, clumsy, etc. Curse that Nigel Bruce for solidifying Watson as the fat dumb one in our collective consciousness. King suffers no delusions there; while he doesn't describe what Watson looks like (as he's the narrator, as per the norm), he seems to realize that Watson is a man with a keen mind. I chose Paul Bettany, who easily became Watson in my mind. I couldn't find any shots of him with just a mustache and not a full beard (I think we all picture Watson with a mustache), but here's a quasi-Victorian look for him:

And what would a Holmes story be without Holmes himself? Though he takes something of a back seat this time, he's still very present and generally in the same role we're used to him as. I picked Matthew Macfayden to slip into this classic role.

Inspector Lestrade is another character who's often unfairly remembered as an idiot, who constantly has to call Holmes in to do his job for him, and gets everything wrong all the time. In fact, Lestrade is a competent police officer who has respect for Holmes, and calls him in only on the toughest cases or the cases Holmes is most likely to be intrigued and/or stumped by. The classic image of him is as a ruddy red-head, so I picked Kevin McKidd.

Now we come to the characters unique to this story (Mrs. Hudson is briefly mentioned, but has no bearing on the story). These would be the murder victim and the four suspects, who happen to be his wife and three sons. I will not be discussing the plot or how it's resolved for the same reason I wouldn't describe any other Holmes story; reading it is essential in order to appreciate it. Suffice it to say that King does set up a compelling mystery, solves it appropriately and actually does include a nice twist on the matter.

The murder victim is Lord Hull, a nasty older man who maintained an iron grip on his family, which they bore because he was in bad health and once he died they would all get a share of his fortune. That's all I'll say about that. David Suchet can play nasty older men.

Lord Hull's wife is supposed to be significantly younger than him, but still able to have children in their 30's. I picked Miranda Richardson.

The three sons are described, but really only one of them's description is important. They are William, the oldest and a bit of a brute, Jory, the middle child who, thanks to a birth defect is no more than five feet tall, and bowlegged, and finally Stephen, the young, handsome "good son". I chose, respectively, Toby Stephens, Devon Murray and Richard Madden.

Toby Stephens

Devon Murray

Richard Madden

I know this isn't a very Kingian post, and feels more like something I probably should have skipped, but really, this is a neat little story that I think would be enjoyable to watch. The idea of a Holmes tale told by Stephen King will get people talking, and the fact that it's enjoyable and very much classic Holmes and Watson, and not an attempt to subvert them (it may have Watson solving the case, but it's still very much a Holmes and Watson story in the classic vein) will make this one a pretty talked-about little film.

It may be a while before my next post, or at least my next casting, due to just how freakin' long the next book is. Of those I've already covered, only The Stand, It and The Talisman are longer, and The Talisman not by much. I don't have enough material for a Skipped Stories post because of the short stories I've read since returning, I'm only skipping one so far, plus one novel. But I do have some ideas for a couple of essay-style posts I'm mulling over, so I'll probably be back with one of them by next week.

Up Next: The Tommyknockers!

Deal With It

I didn't think at first that I'd be doing a post on the not-even-twenty-page short story Popsy, a corker of a tale that was collected in Nightmares and Dreamscapes.

But then I read it.

There is a movie here, but probably not the same kind of movie as the short story. The story itself is over and done with pretty quick and if you already know who and what Popsy is, which you will if you keep reading (oh yeah, spoilers), you can kinda see the ending coming.

The movie I see out of this one isn't called Popsy because it's not about Popsy. It's about a man who wants to think of himself as good but finds himself doing something horrible when he finds himself in dire straits.

What I liked about this short tale is how the entire thing takes place from the point of view of Briggs Sheridan, who seems to at one point have been an average joe whose one big problem is that he can't stay away from a good card game, whereupon he almost always ends up losing his shirt. And his pants. And his job. And his house.

He's a shitty gambler, in other words.

When he finds himself in unimaginable debt to a gangster, he pleads for a chance to make good. The gangster then puts him in touch with a man named Mr. Wizard, who might have some work for him. That work?

Human goddam trafficking.

Now, there's just about not a lower profession to be in, but Sheridan now finds himself in a position where, in order to survive with all arms and legs intact, he makes his living abducting children. And the worst part is, he gets good at it. Gets to a point where it's practically second nature to him. And all the while keeps trying to convince himself that he's not a bad guy.

This is the story I think the movie should focus on. It's a horrible story about a horrible guy who knows he's doing horrible things but figures it still makes him something less than horrible. I'd like to see a movie that tells us where Sheridan started. Maybe start it with him inheriting his mother's home, and planning to move into it with his longtime girlfriend, who he hopes to propose to. She agrees, but only if he promises to stay out of gambling dens, and he makes that promise. Then he breaks it.

We see him struggling to keep everything together as more money goes down the tubes and eventually his secret is uncovered. His girlfriend tries to get him into counseling, but by then he's already lost his job and incurred his crazy huge debt. Knowing he's about to lose his house and his girl, he agrees to work with Mr. Wizard. Before he can pay off his mortgage, he does lose his home, and things are looking grim for his relationship. Finally, he discovers what he's been doing to make money, and that's the last straw.

But he knows she will go to the police, so he ends up having to kill her, but what's murder to someone already delivering children to a horrible fate?

And then, maybe 45 minutes in, comes the main plot of the story. Sheridan sees a kid at the mall, obviously lost, who can't find his Popsy. There's something off about this kid, Sheridan can't quite put his finger on it, but it doesn't matter. He takes the kid anyway, but is warned that Popsy will find him and he'll be sorry. And now, the spoiler. Popsy, and his grandson, are both vampires, you see.

Now, of course, we'll have to drop some pretty big hints early on that Popsy and his breed actually exist, and I'm not sure what the best way is to go about that. Maybe have a subplot where the criminal scum of the city are suddenly worried about a stalker that makes them disappear. Have this told to us in background events; a news report, someone in Sheridan's profession telling him to watch his back, etc.

Another thing I like about this is that Popsy and his grandson are not shown as evil. If anything, they're absolutely justified in all they do. I especially like how the reason they're at the mall together is the kid wants some Ninja Turtle figures. I just...I don't even know how to say this. That line almost made me tear up a little. It's got to be kept in!

Back to the business of creating and marketing; I didn't want to call this movie "Popsy" because the way I want to do it, we'll be spending most of the movie wondering why it's called that. I chose the title Deal With It because it's mostly about a man who can't stay away from cards (deal, get it?) and who continually has to accept a new layer of horrible (losing his job, his house, his girl, being threatened with broken arms and legs, doing something about as morally reprehensible as it's possible to do) and with each new problem, he just keeps telling himself to "deal with it". I figure that can even be his final words, when he realizes what's happening to him.

On to casting!

Sheridan is described as a "big" man, but really, it's a nondescript role. I picked a large actor for it, who can absolutely do the whole underdog-down-on-his-luck part, as well as make us kinda, sorta, almost understand why he starts doing what he does. Sheridan will be played by Vince Vaughn.

His girlfriend will be played by an actress who seems to excel at playing white trash: Robyn Lively.

Mr. Reggie, the gangster, will be played by that character actor of character actors: Peter Gerety.

Mr. Wizard, described as a "greasy Turk" in the book, will be more of an aged Baltic in this one. The accent is really the important part. I pictured Rade Sherbegia.

Now, Popsy himself is barely described in the book, but you get the feeling he's supposed to look a lot like our classic image of Dracula. I pictured him a bit less stereotypical, more like a pale, frightening man with piercing eyes. Danish actor Ingvar Sigurdssen is our Popsy.

I'm not casting the child, who is never named, due to the rules of this blog.

Not much to update on the reading front. I'm nearly finished Misery and after that is a short story called The Doctor's Case which I REALLY want to do an adaptation for. We'll see if there's one to be made. After that, it's The Tommyknockers, one of King's longer novels and also one of those his readers didn't care for. I tried to read it years ago, got about 50 pages in and quit. We'll see what I think this time.

The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three

Time to resume the quest. On your feet, Gunslingers, the journey is still ongoing.

So much has changed since my initial casting post on The Dark Tower, much of which I detailed in my last post. The Ron Howard-Produced The Dark Tower was released this past summer, bombed and will hopefully be forgotten in just a couple of years' time.

What this means is, should my TV series ever actually happen (it won't), the actors I cast here will probably be too old by that time. I've expressed concern in the past that my actors are going to age out of their roles (one of the reasons I don't cast child characters), so shouldn't I be worried about this one? Not really, because like I said, I'm proceeding as if this most recent movie never happened.

The Drawing of the Three is really where the story of Roland and his quest drew (ha ha) readers in. If they thought The Gunslinger was slow-moving and boring, this one was the far more kinetic. It was also far more King-like, whereas the first volume of this series was a decidedly different outing than usual. Oddly enough, the first time I read it, I was full of mixed emotions. It moved at a good clip and was never boring, but it also was so different I wasn't sure that I liked it. See, I'm one of those who actually enjoyed the first volume (though I totally get the complaints about it) and when I read the very first scene of this one, it felt so much like a betrayal that I thought it just had to be a dream sequence. Nope. Sorry, spoilers for the first scene; what Roland goes through right off the bat is very real.

I also wasn't sure I liked how each of those Roland "draws" were from our own world (maybe!) and were just humans. The fantasy reader in me kinda wanted his companions to be a mixed bag, maybe one a dragon or something. Also, even after I made peace with that (and today wouldn't trade these characters for the world), I kept thinking "this is Roland's story and yet Roland is the least focused on here!"

That wasn't entirely fair. Yes, this book is very different from the first one, but it  does set the tone for the rest, and it introduces two characters that by the end of it all felt like family. 2018 me feels that it is entirely appropriate that a bulk of this book is spent developing the characters of Eddie and Odetta/Detta because I know today that it's as much their story as it is Roland's.

Which brings me to my problem with how to adapt this. The Dark Tower is ultimately Roland's story, but his Ka-Tet (a term you either know or need to read the books to learn about) are just as big, give or take, a part of it as he is. As the books go on, long chapters of face-time are given to each. But they're not even mentioned by name in the first book. Just hints are given of who they are.

So, how do you handle this in a TV series? Book One is very short, and takes place entirely within Roland's world (All-World, it's usually called). Jake's flashbacks show glimpses of the known world but Roland never goes there. Book Two's plot is literally just Roland walking along a beach, coming to three magic doors, inside which are people from New York who he is supposed to "draw" into his world. Each one brings their own set of problems but each one of them is apparently crucial to his quest.

To add a sense of immediacy, there's also the fact that Roland is slowly dying of a venom that's coursing through his veins, which would be curable if he was anywhere near any medicine. But in that other world...

My answer to this is incorporate elements of this book into the first season. This would require some changes to how the characters react upon learning there's another world and a Tower to seek. Throughout Season One, give us occasional visits to New York of the 80's and 60's, and let us get to know Eddie, Odetta, Henry, Balazar, maybe even Jack Mort, who will remain just a guest star, but his mentality, wherein he plans his horrible murders by referring to good murderers who don't get caught as "Do-Bee's" and bad murderers who do stupid things and let themselves get caught are "Don't-Bee's", is just too awesome and must be shown in the series. My Kindergarten teacher used the "Do-Bee" and "Don't-Bee" system to reward/punish us kids.

Eddie and Henry have a dynamic that's later expanded upon in flashbacks and in Eddie's imagination. Odetta has a whole history of issues and Jack is the cold killer who made her what she is. But King's literary presentation of how we learn all this wouldn't work in filmed format. It would be too odd that Season One is a short season of maybe six episodes setting up a Gunslinger in an alternate world searching for the Man in Black to find answers about how he can find a Dark Tower that haunts his dreams, and season two is literally just him walking along a beach, finding a series of three doors, and behind each door is a person from New York that he must Draw into his world. We can't stop in, say, the second episode to explain who Eddie is and why we should care, and then have Roland Draw him. We should already know him. Already be invested in who he is and what's going on in his world.

We need to know what kind of relationship he has with his brother, and how much his addiction is starting to control him. We need to see him starting to work for Balazar, all working up to the first time he mules for him. This can all play out during the first season while Roland and Jake are crossing that desert heading for the mountains.

But it can't just be random. My advice would be that after the scene where the Oracle tells Roland of the Three that he will Draw, the scene where Eddie is introduced will harken back to that.

An episode will open up with a flashback to the Oracle whispering "The first whom you will draw is The Prisoner..." and then cut to Eddie waking up in bed and wondering why he was dreaming of a woman calling him the Prisoner. Perhaps he could even be shown to have dreamed about the Tower before. I can picture it now; when Roland tells him of the mission to find the Tower, Eddie's reaction will be to be stunned, wondering how Roland knows about that. Same thing could happen to Odetta; the Oracle starts an episode whispering "The second you will draw will be the Lady of Shadows" and then we cut to Odetta waking up and wondering why she lost time. Since she has two personalities, Odetta will dream of the Tower and long to go there while Detta will be afraid of it and want to stay away.

The actual acts of Drawing might take two episodes of Season Two. That way we don't spend too much time literally in one place doing one thing before moving on to find the path of the Beam, and reunite with a certain kid.

Now for the cast:

Langley Kirkwood is of course going to return as Roland, and honestly I'm not sure why I was so uncertain the first time I posted about this as to which of my choices was correct. Honestly, he's just so Roland.

Walter, the Man in Black, does not appear in bodily form in this book, but that has to change for the series. We will need to cut back to Walter from time to time, and the Gunslinger does occasionally hallucinate him. Come on back, Lee Pace.

Now to the new characters. Eddie Dean is a young junkie from 80's Brooklyn. When we first meet him, he's muling cocaine for a drug lord and about to pass through customs. But that's just the beginning of his character. Over the next several books, he grows into a well-developed, often funny, often tragic figure, and a very important character. Frequently Roland thinks to himself how much Eddie reminds him of Cuthbert from his first Ka-Tet, and Eddie has a lot to do with Roland learning to love again. I'll be honest, Eddie has changed many times in my head over the years. The initial actors I picked are all too old now (as is Aaron Paul, a fan favorite for this role, but probably only because of how similar Eddie can be to Paul's best-known role, Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad), but I was having a hard time settling on one this time. Oddly enough it was while re-watching the now-cancelled NetFlix series Hemlock Grove (where Bill Skarsgaard co-starred) that led me to my choice: Landon Liboiron, who can embody every aspect of Eddie's personality. At 26 he's a bit older than Eddie is described in the books (he starts off at 23) but not old enough to count.

The next role was also somewhat hard to cast and the actress has changed a lot in my mind over the years. Odetta Holmes is a Civil Rights activist in the 1960's who was involved in the protest at Oxford Town. She's also an amputee, missing the lower half of both legs. Despite this, Odetta is a strong, intelligent and willful woman, who doesn't spook easily and is probably the most healthy, physically and mentally, of the three (which is ironic, as you'll see in a moment). The problem is she's also a pacifist, doesn't trust Roland mainly because he carries guns, and her intellect will not allow her, at first, to accept that the situation she's in is real. Now, I said she was mentally healthy, and I meant it, but only about Odetta Holmes. The other personality in her body, however, is not. Detta Walker is one seriously messed-up individual, full of hate and loathing for nearly everything and everyone, believing that literally every white person she encounters wants her dead, and determined to take them out first. The good side to her is that she's fearless and made of total iron, utterly willing to face down any foe. As I said, the two of them inhabit the same body, and are utterly unaware of each other. If only there were some way to balance Odetta's goodness and morality with Detta's will and determination to act. The actress I chose is Rutina Wesley, who often exhibited both traits of the pair on True Blood.

Rutina Wesley as Odetta Holmes

Rutina Wesley as Detta Walker, Ma-Fah!

The third drawn is named "Death" and Roland realizes fairly quickly that this person on the other side is a means to an end, not the newest member of his Ka-Tet. Jack Mort is, quite simply, a monster. A successful tax attorney, Mort is thin, nebbishy and creepy (at least to a degree). And in his spare time, he pushes people into subway trains or drops bricks on them from the tops of buildings. And while Roland had believed up until now that Jake Chambers had been killed by the Man in Black, it turns out that in fact, Jack Mort was Jake's murderer. The Man in Black had only been using him. I wanted a guy who could play creepy very easily but could also play harmless pathetic nerds. I chose Adam Godley (who, strangely enough, appeared on Breaking Bad).

Eddie's brother, Henry Dean, doesn't have a lot to do in the main "present" scenes in this book, but his influence on Eddie is strongly felt for the rest of the series. Eddie is constantly reminded of the "wisdom" his brother shared with him, and keeps thinking how Henry would have handled almost every situation. In the third book in particular, there are many scenes that could be translated on film as Henry's "ghost" haunting Eddie. So, he will need to be cast, absolutely. I ended up picking a guy I'd considered for Eddie, only to toss him for being too old (Henry is about 8 years Eddie's senior). Zack McGowan of Shameless and Black Sails fame, because, well, he kinda has the face of a junkie.

There are two more characters I'm casting, because while they're fairly small in this book, they won't stay that way. Enrico Balazar is Eddie's "boss", which is kind of a laugh because this is Eddie's frist real job for him. He's a Brooklyn drug lord who enjoys building houses of cards. He's described as a Sicilian who is older and overweight, but I had a hard time buying that image of him. For one thing, Enrico Balazar is not a Sicilian name, and I don't see a problem with keeping that name but making him Columbian or something, instead. It's not like all New Yawk crime bosses are Italian, even if most of his men are (clearly not all). I pictured him played by David Zayas.

Balazar's right-hand man is Jack Andolini, otherwise known as Old Double-Ugly, but never to his face. Also, whatever else you think of him, he's definitely not old Double-Stupid, as he serves as both muscle and council to Balazar. He's described as huge and utterly intimidating, and I picked Matthew Willig, who stands about 6'5" but's actually capable of acting.

I'm headed into what is uncharted territory for Yours Truly. Like I said, I have not read much of what King was putting out in the early 90's. Misery is the next full novel (I'm reading it right now) but I won't be doing a casting for reasons that should be obvious. After that we have a few short stories and The Tommyknockers, which I think probably will be getting its own post, we'll see.

But the next post's title might throw you a bit.

Next Up: Deal With It!

A Review of The Grey Castle

Admittedly, that's a very cool poster

Well, I saw it.

Call it The Grey Castle, call it The Dark Bomb, call it Ramblin' Joe and his Magnificent Bumbershoot, if you want, but don't call it The Dark Tower. Because it ain't that.

I tried. I tried so hard to see this as just a movie. To evaluate it as only a movie. But there's so little here as a movie that I could not help but see this the only way that mattered to me; as an adaptation of a series that I love.

As a movie, this is one big nothingburger. No substance. No style of its own. It looked like a million other sci-fi dramas of recent years. If I wasn't familiar with The Dark Tower, you could probably convince me that this was another chapter in some teen-centric sci-fi series like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner or Divergent. Only it's not even as engaging as those three, and I don't really find the others engaging at all.

As an adaptation, this fails on all fronts. I mean, we're just a few steps up from The Lawnmower Man. My first words to my wife when I finished watching was "Well, that was an abomination." Years we've been waiting for this. So many false starts, so many promises...and this is what we got. This whole thing felt like Fant4stic, a rush job meant solely to hold on to the rights.

As I'm sure you all remember, I was not happy that Roland was being played by Idris Elba, but not
because I don't like Idris Elba. I think Idris Elba is an amazing actor, and one of those guys who's always watchable no matter how bad the film is they're acting in. That's probably why they hired him. In fact, that's absolutely why they hired him. And it's only thanks to him that I wasn't bored to the point of playing with my phone whenever his scenes were being shown. Because holy Gan, they were so generic.

So, while I think Elba did a fine job (that was never in question), the fact remains that this was not Roland. And I don't mean Roland is white, therefore Elba didn't look like Roland. I mean this wasn't Roland. This Roland isn't seeking the Tower. He hardly has any interest in it. He just wants to stop Walter, in the most run-of-the-mill good-guy-vs-bad-guy plot I've ever seen. This Roland has no quest. He has no purpose. And really, this isn't even his movie.

It's Jake's. Jake is the central focus of the movie. We see pretty much all of it through his eyes. And that wouldn't be so bad, I guess, if this was actually Jake and not some random kid. This Jake is the son of a firefighter killed on 9/11 (not a terrible idea in and of itself, really) and he's being hunted by Walter's agents (the Taheen) because he has an incredible psychic power that makes him the ultimate Breaker. I'm not describing what all this means. It's in the books and though I know there are some readers here who haven't read The Dark Tower series, it would take too long and I'm not interested in rehashing it all. Long story short is that this Jake has pretty much fuck all to do with Jake of the books, who has no psychic abilities and who didn't find All-World thanks to a machine but in a permanent way that means he can't go back home (which in this film is all he wants to do).

This all plays out in the most boring of ways, again saved only by the fact that Elba has that magnetism that makes you want to watch him. Tom Taylor, who plays Jake, doesn't, which doesn't mean I think he's a bad actor, just that he's not the kind of riveting actor that makes boring scenes seem less so. And unfortunately we spend most of our time following him, with Roland not even appearing for probably 20 minutes.

There's all these little touches that show the creators of this film (at least some of them) have read the books, but that just makes me more angry. The more little Easter eggs, like Roland muttering "the world has moved on", a very brief shot of Charlie the Choo-Choo, references to Roland's guns being forged from the sword of Arthur Eld, Walter using Black Thirteen to communicate with Roland, and even psychic powers being called "shine" (more a reference to King's works in general, and more specifically, The Shining, but I'll take it), the more I realized that whoever included these was an actual fan, and yet still this is the movie they produced. A movie designed to please everyone, that pleases no one.

If there was an unexpected bright spot to this, it's that I was actually a bit impressed with Matthew McConaughey as Walter Padick, the Man in Black. Walter is Stephen King's most oft-used villain, the same being (if not the same persona) as Randall Flagg of The Stand, Flagg of The Eyes of the Dragon and probably some others besides. The Man in Black of the books starts off feeling more like an evil wizard from a faerie story, but Roland ultimately meets him in many guises, including ones that are more like Flagg from The Stand. McConaughey is kinda like Flagg but in a dark suit, and he suppresses his southern accent to the point where it's not quite gone but has him speaking in an evil purr that's just right. I almost do want to see him take on Flagg in a Stand adaptation, but I'm not re-working my SKCU to fit him in. It just means I was more impressed than I thought I'd be at his performance. I actually bought him as a villain, and he does appear to have more layers than I initially thought of him.

But ultimately, this is one big fail of a movie. It fails to engage (critics were merciless) and it fails as an adaptation. It made some money (not even its budget plus half, making it nowhere near the massive hit it needed to be), but audiences ultimately gave it a low score themselves, and I'm all but positive that the planned sequel won't happen.

That doesn't mean the people behind it have taken the hint. I hear they're still going ahead with a planned TV series that will focus on Roland as a younger man. Initially it was meant to be a prequel to the movie, but now King himself is saying it will not be related at all, and will be "more faithful". Frankly, I don't trust these producers. I hope the TV series that is currently in the works fails to be picked up, and that a series actually based on the damn books (what is so hard about that?) can be made.

Because, really, this series needs to be a TV series. I'm not sure why I ever thought it could work as a movie.

Jackie Earle Haley as Sayre

I bring this up now because I'm about halfway through the second Dark Tower novel, The Drawing of the Three, and while it's still a very good book, I understand that a lot of changes will be necessary, not just to the way the story in this book is told, but to the story in general. That said, as I've said repeatedly before, change is not bad. Not by itself. Andy Muscietti's It changed a lot. But damn if it wasn't one fine movie, and a fine adaptation. It understood the source material, and it respected it. If Ron Howard, Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen and Nikolaj Ayrcel had any respect for the source material, it wasn't evident in the film they produced. Sure, at least two of those five have probably read the books, but it's clear they didn't understand what made them what they were. In fact, it often felt like they'd read Wikipedia summaries or maybe even just clicked at random through the Wiki. The Taheen are there, including Richard Sayre and Pimli, but they're just random mooks now. A truck used to capture Jake has the words "Sombra Corporation" on the side, but who and what the Sombra Corporation is isn't even touched on. The Dixie Pig is there briefly, but again, without context. Twice we see "All Hail the Crimson King" spray-painted on a wall, but his name is never spoken on screen, nor is it hinted that Walter has a boss.

Honestly, it's like the creators just read the first book (or skimmed it) and the last three. Most of the obvious references are from the last three books, when the series kinda went off the rails and introduced so much that wasn't part of the series at all up until then. As much as I liked seeing the House Demon, the stuff that made me come to love this series was nowhere. Roland's backstory doesn't even get a brief mention (Dennis Haysbert cameos as his father, but his one scene is far from relevatory), nor is Roland told about the Three that he will Draw, and in fact the end of the film seems to suggest that the story is wrapped up. Roland never even sees the Tower. In fact, the Tower is in all of three or four shots. And they even get the Tower wrong; it looks okay, but it's apparently here to "protect us from darkness". No. Just no. The Tower is here as the lynchpin of reality. What kind of nebulous bullshit is this mission to "protect us from darkness"? This is the kind of lack of respect I'm talking about.

So, yeah, the slate needs to be wiped clean and re-done, and by different people. I will continue to make my Dark Tower casting posts as if this movie never happened, and as if this new TV series that's in the works gets scrapped. I don't mind exploring Roland's past in the TV series, I mean, hell, it's going to be 100% necessary. But I want the story from the books filmed, or at least as close to it as we can. I want to see the Drawing, and have Eddie and Susannah show up. I want Shardik. I want Lud. I want Blaine the Pain. Hell, I even want Father Callahan to show up. Will there be a ton of changes, even in my version? Yes, of course there will be. But the respect for the source material will also be there, and until Hollywood can get someone working on this who brings that respect, Howard, Goldsman and company need to just quit while they're waaaaay behind.

The Eyes of the Dragon

Well, gang, it was a year and a half ago that I typed the words "Next Up: Eyes of the Dragon!" And finally, finally, here we are.

The Eyes of the Dragon is generally considered one of the lesser works of King's canon by Constant Readers, and I can kinda understand why. It's his only out-and-out High Fantasy effort (or, perhaps I should say, his only published high fantasy effort, as I think some of the unpublished material we've learned about over the years have been other attempts at the same) and yet, it's too Stephen King for fans of fantasy and too fantasy for fans of Stephen King. I'm tempted to say that as a major fan of both fantasy and King, I enjoyed it on both levels, but the fact is that this really isn't any more of a fantasy novel than, say, The Stand, aside from the rather standard fantasy setting. Sure, there are kings and princes, castles and towers, an evil wizard, and as the title implies, a dragon. But it's still very much a King story, just not one that we're used to.

The story is actually kind of straight-foward. It's set in the kingdom of Delain, ruled by the well-meaning but oafish King Roland (and yes, it's the same name as King's most famous hero, but there are absolutely zero other common elements; this is emphatically not the same character). I don't know what Roland's family name is, but I like to think it's Flakfizer. When we meet Roland, he's reluctantly getting married despite still having child-like feelings toward the idea of women.

Roland is not a very smart man, and most of the major decisions in his rule are decided by his chief council, the wizard Flagg. If that name sounds familiar to CR's, it should. And yes, this is very much the same man. King's favorite demonic figure, already having walked through a version of our Earth, and the Gunslinger's Mohaine Desert, and now here he is, whispering in Roland's ear and taking control of Delain. It is through Flagg's influence that Roland ends up marrying a quiet, soft-spoken young woman named Sasha.

Flagg's chief problem is, more or less, that evil cannot comprehend good. He thinks Sasha will be as  easy to manipulate as Roland, due to her quiet nature. However, she's anything but, and over time, Flagg begins to realize she has to go, but only once heirs are produced. The first heir, Peter, is born after Roland kills the last dragon in his kingdom (for all his flaws, Roland is a superb huntsman) and Peter begins to grow up a polite, yet very kingly, young man who takes after his mother. His younger brother, Thomas, born of what is essentially drunken rape when Flagg decides Peter won't do for his plans at all, is more like his befuddled old dad.

What are Flagg's plans? Why, to utterly take over, then destabilize and ultimately topple the kingdom. Why? That we're not really told. He's evil and that's all you need to know. I'd be more dissatisfied by that if we didn't already know that Flagg walks through many worlds, taking on many identities and that he does a lot of things we don't know the reason for, all for his master the Crimson King. That's not touched on in this book, but having read King's other stuff, I already know Flagg and know that he's a bad guy with mysterious plans.

But Flagg can be defeated, and it doesn't necessarily take a wizard of equal power. Sometimes all it takes is a person with some form of power who won't take your bullshit. Peter is that person, so if he becomes king after Roland, he'll cause problems for Flagg. So, Flagg hatches a brilliant plan to get rid of Roland and Peter at once, and ingratiate himself with Thomas in the meanwhile, so that once Thomas takes the throne, Flagg will be his most trusted advisor.

And that's all I'll say about the plot, to avoid spoilers, but I will say more about this book, the kind of book it is, and its place in King's canon.

First, and this should be obvious by now, but this is very much a chapter in the saga of King's multiverse and the Dark Man's attempts to bring it down. It might not be a super-important chapter, but the references here are impossible to miss for those CR's who have read and enjoyed the Dark Tower series. Considering that series touches umpteen different seemingly non-related King books and stories, I seriously recommend reading that series just to see the myriad ways it ties everything together.

This book contains the first references to the kingdom of Garlan and Rhea of the Cöos (known here as Rhiannon of the Coos) and also makes clear that in Flagg's wanderings, he's visited HP Lovecraft's world and stolen the Necronomicon. These references to a larger universe that we can read about in King's other books are, I will confess, a major part of why I enjoyed this book.

But I also just simply enjoyed reading it. I can't really explain why; the story is quite standard and the characters are nothing we haven't seen before. But I couldn't put this down, either the first or second time I read this. The first time was back in my mid-twenties and I was again surprised at how little I had forgotten. It's a very pleasant read, with a narrative style King would grow to use more often, which is that the narrator seems to be an actual character, rather than just a function. Often he gives us his opinion and even at one point wishes us goodnight when a character goes to sleep, as if King knew that many of us would be reading this before bed. Which, as it turns out, I was. More on the narrator later.

Is this really a good book? That's hard to say. I know the geekier half of me truly loved the connections with The Dark Tower and the story actually was engaging enough to keep me turning those pages. What probably gets this story a bad rap is that it's thought of as High Fantasy from the master of horror, so really, King could have gone absolutely crazy with this, but instead he's given us a relatively tame and tidy story that one could almost read to their kids.

And, really, that's what it is, and what it was supposed to be. King wrote this for his daughter Naomi, apparently because she liked faerie tales. And that's what this is; it's a faerie tale. Think of it like a modern take on the Brothers Grimm. Do that, and suddenly it becomes a sterling example of the genre!

The question is whether or not this could make a good movie. I think it can, because the story is very straightforward and would require little to slim it down to a coherent 100-minute film. But it has to be marketed correctly. It can't be sold as a High Fantasy story because then people will be expecting swordfights, orcs, magic battles, et al. There's very little of that. It definitely can't be sold as a horror story because it's very much not a horror story. I think it should be somewhere in the middle, like make it look like a costume drama with a trailer focusing on a wrongfully accused prince and the evil sorcerer trying to bring a kingdom down. A tagline could be "A Dark Magic...An Imprisoned Prince...A Kingdom in Peril!" This also might be a good film to keep King's name in small print among the credits, rather than right in the title or prominent on the poster.

I'm gonna select Kenneth Branagh and his team to script/direct this, because he knows how to make this kind of thing and make it very good. This will be one Branagh himself will not star in, although I flirted with him playing King Roland. But Branagh is not known for taking supporting roles in his films; he either doesn't act in them at all or he's in the lead. Odd, but true.

I'm gonna start with Flagg, despite him being the villain of the piece and not the central role. Again, this is the same man as Randall Flagg from The Stand, and Walter/Marten/Etc. from The Dark Tower series. There are rumors he's also He Who Walks Behind the Rows from Children of the Corn and King has openly written in The Stand that one of his names is Nyarlathotep from Lovecraft's mythos (probably how he got ahold of the Necronomicon). I've heard some readers say that this Flagg is nothing like the character from The Stand or The Dark Tower and thus, it almost seems like King just thrust the name on this unrelated character. I can't agree. This Flagg is implied to be several millennia old, he has a habit of coming to, leaving, then returning to, kingdoms and large cities and ingratiating himself with its rulers, sometimes taking different names and sometimes keeping his name the same, working to either bring the various places down or at least secure his control over them, he wears a dark cloak with a hood over his face, he can make himself "dim", he's got the Necronomicon...honestly I don't see how this character isn't reconcilable as the same man from those other books. Sure, it sorta implies that this Flagg can be hurt by conventional means (at one point he catches a cold), but that's always been part of Walter/Flagg is that he's often more human than he wishes he were, but less human than he seems. He even does the same thing he will later do (earlier do? we really aren't told when this takes place compared to The Gunslinger) with Roland Deschaine, and try to get rid of him as a child because he sees him as a threat to his plans. So, yeah, our regular Flagg is back, none other than Lee Pace, that actor who can go from charming to frightening with ease. I will have all of this character's humanoid guises played by him, but with different clothes, hair, possibly make-up, et al, as a way of showing the viewer that he's the same person. This time, let's give him Snape hair.

Then there's Peter, the wronged prince. This character is a natural leader and generally good man, but he spends a majority of the story locked in a tower plotting his escape. In a way he's almost not the lead but merely the most central plot device. That's one of the strange things about the story; the two characters most often regarded as the leads don't actually do much for the majority of the story. We come to know them as people and we like them, but on film, it's hard to know how that will translate. In Peter's case, adding more scenes where he gets to talk to someone might help. In the book he has a lady love we never meet (and thus, I won't be casting her). Maybe in the film she can come to the tower. In the novel Peter isn't allowed visitors, but that can be changed for the film. In the novel, he ages from 16 at the time of his imprisonment to 21 by the time of his escape. I'm aging him up so that the passage of time won't require quite so many different actors to play him. I chose Douglas Booth, who really is a better actor than he's usually given credit for.

Thomas, the younger prince who becomes King after Peter's imprisonment, is a character that absolutely has to be played by someone we naturally feel sympathetic toward. In the book, Thomas spends most of his on-page action time either drunk off his ass (Flagg keeps him that way on purpose) or bitter and angry that his father seems to love Peter more. He's described as sullen and sour-faced, and at one point beats a dog to death because he's angry at his brother. But, as the narrator keeps insisting, he is not a bad boy, and I certainly did see him as a sympathetic character. There's a scene, for instance, involving a toy boat that makes me weep for him. I think it would be a good idea to have a scene shortly after he's crowned where he openly disagrees with Flagg about a new tax or law in front of the other court officials, which causes Flagg to start plying him with drugs and alcohol, as a way of showing that Thomas wants to do good, but Flagg makes him his creature. Who's more sympathetic than Spider-Man? Tom Holland will be my Thomas.

Anders Peyna is the kingdom's Judge-General, a layered character who believes utmost in the process of the law, and he judges Peter wrongly to be guilty, only to later understand the truth. I wanted a proud, stern older actor who conveys absolute authority. And no one does it better than a starship captain. Patrick Stewart is our Anders Peyna.

The role of King Roland is larger than you might expect given that he spends a majority of the story dead. Roland is described as short, squat and bow-legged, though a description of his chest as "scrawny" makes me think he isn't supposed to be fat, just kinda dumpy-looking. He's not the most handsome of men, and he's actually a bit childlike. Again, he should be sympathetic, even if he's a bit of a dullard and kinda mean sometimes without meaning to be. It was hard to think of a suitable actor for him, but I eventually settled on Timothy Spall. Roland, in the story, ages from mid-50's to early 70's, and Spall could play all those ages convincingly.

Another character from the prologue is Sasha, the young queen who is responsible for the kind of boy Peter turns out to be. She has a few very important scenes, and we need someone who can communicate her power in an understated way that might be mistaken for meekness. Also she'll need to go from quite young to somewhere in her late twenties, and that sounds like a job for Jenna Coleman!

Dennis Brandon is Peter's butler, who eventually becomes Thomas's butler, and through whose eyes a major truth is uncovered. A major truth, for that matter, that gives the novel its title. He's young, but I think he's meant to be older than Peter, and he's very much a salt-of-the-earth working class feller. For some reason, I pictured him with a Scottish accent, and that led me to Dunkirk's Jack Lowden, a Scot who is probably the tallest and sturdiest of the young men in that film.

Peter's best friend is Ben Staad, a lower noble who never believes in Peter's guilt and sets out to free him. The role isn't very proactive, but he does have a lot to do in the finale, so a few more scenes establishing their friendship will probably be called for. I chose Luke Bracey, mainly because he's young, handsome and blonde, like Ben.

Ben is aided by a farm girl who keeps sled dogs named Naomi. Her part isn't large, either, but she's the character King named after his own daughter, and she's one of the few active female roles in this story. So I chose Kaya Scoledario, for no other reason than that she's beautiful and still young while being believable as a tough girl of action.

Those are the main roles, but there is one more pretty sizable role I want to cast, namely the narrator. This is the first time I've ever decided that the narrator needs to actually be present for the film version, but this narrator, like I said, is pretty much a character. He doesn't need to be there for all scenes, but there are some lines and quotes of his I'd really like to keep. Who is the narrator? He's clearly not one of the characters in the story, as he knows things he could not possibly know, but he isn't just a passive storyteller, either, but someone as invested in the goings-on as we are. That needs to be included as it was one of the reasons I greatly enjoyed reading this. Could this narrator be...Gan? Maturin, even? I don't know, but I want his narration here with us. Christopher Lee and Peter O'Toole are dead, but Ian McKellen is still with us, and I haven't used him yet, so he's our narrator.

Another small role I'm casting is the royal stabler, Yosef, mainly because actor Rab Affleck would fit the part like a glove.

Finally, two minor roles I'm adding will be played by two actors Branagh nearly always uses, composer Patrick Doyle and character actor Jimmy Yuill.

Doyle can play the small but memorable part of Peyna's butler, Arlen.

Yuill can play Beson, the tower-keeper:

Man, it feels good to be doing this again! I'm glad to welcome you back to the SKCU and now it's on to taller and darker things as we rejoin the last Gunslinger at the edge of the ocean. But fore-warning you now, before I do a post on that story, I think I have some things to say about the recent Dark Tower movie that may very well require its own post. So that will be next, but as far as castings go...

Next Up: The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three!

A Picture of Things Past...and Things to Come

This is my "King Shelf". I had to expand the shelving on it recently.

If you see it here, it's on my list to be read for the blog (or already has been). Obviously the reading order vs. the order on my self isn't perfect, as the collections are shown in publishing order, while the individual stories themselves are being read in initial publishing order. That means I've already read everything in Skeleton Crew despite it being the next book on my shelf after The Eyes of the Dragon. I've also read several stories from Nightmares and Dreamscapes and one story from Just After Sunset. The one exception on this shelf is obviously On Writing, which, while I'm glad I own and will likely read when I get there, can't be adapted as it's not a story. There is a lot of Kingian non-fiction that I don't own, and really am not sure I want to. After all, unlike Bryant over at The Truth Inside the Lie, I don't consider myself a King scholar, just a fan, and thus, while I'm reading all his fiction, no matter if I already have or think it might make a good film/TV series, I'm not out to read literally every word he's ever written.

If you don't see it here, and Stephen King or Joe Hill wrote it, I probably have it as an ebook, and some I have as Word documents! I don't have The Plant and there are three Joe Hill short works, The Lady Rests, The Collaborators and The Devil on the Staircase that don't appear to be available anywhere, and there are a couple of comics of his I don't have, but for the most part, if it got published, I have it. And it's getting read for the Blog. If I don't adapt it, I will continue explaining why with Skipped Stories posts (honestly those are some of my favorites to re-read, and I don't know why).

Since getting Sleeping Beauties for Christmas, I have been struggling with the question of whether or not to include Owen King's other works on this blog. Ultimately I decided against it, even though I probably will read his other stuff at some point, if only Double Feature, which sounds quirky and cool. I decided against it for several reasons:

1) The purpose of this blog is to "create" the Stephen King Cinematic Universe. It is not to literally collect and expound upon everything everyone related to King wrote. After all, that would mean I'd have to track down Tabitha's stuff as well and then, well, where does it end? What if Joe's or Owen's kids start writing!?

2) The only reason I even wondered for a moment about including Owen's stuff is that I've already decided to include Joe Hill's stuff. But I didn't do so just because Hill is Stephen King's son. I did it because both men have stated that most (if not all) of Hill's stories are absolutely part of the same mythos that most (if not all) of King's works are part of. I think they've even started referencing each other, though as I haven't gotten to Hill's stuff yet (I read half of Heart-Shaped Box a few years ago and all of Locke & Key, and yes, that is all six volumes of Locke & Key you see there and yes, it's being included) I'm not sure how much they do that. Owen King's material is apparently entirely his own, doing his best not to follow in his dad's footsteps, and even though he's now collaborated with Daddy, I doubt he'll want his books to be thought of as part of a grand mythos his father created.

3) I'm spreading myself thin as it is. Having committed myself to reading all of King's and Hill's output, and realizing that there's more to come from both and that I'll be buying them well before I get to reading them, I just can't add another author. Not yet. Maybe once I've caught up with Daddy and Junior, I'll get to Owen's stuff. I would like to read it, so we'll see. But not now.

As things stand, I'll probably be finished with The Eyes of the Dragon in a couple of days, or perhaps sooner. After that we return to the Tower for a while and then we enter a period where I've strangely read very little in the past. The early 90's is a period I've only read scattershot, so it will be an experience!

Stay tuned!