Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (54 page)

Stephen King played the role of Teddy Weizak. It is interesting to note that this character lived the whole way through this version, whereas he died as a result of the Lauder/Cross bombing of the Free Zone Committee in both the books and the unproduced screenplay. It seems the power of the author to give life or death can come into stark focus when that same author is given the role of acting out the character’s existence! 

Bates, Harris and King appeared in cameo roles. In his
Creepshows
Stephen Jones says director Garris has a “predilection for guest appearances.” Others to appear were King’s favorite drive-in movie critic, Joe Bob Briggs; basketballer Kareem Adbul-Jabbar as the Monster Shouter; and directors Tom Holland (Carl Hough), John Landis (Russ Dorr) and Sam Raimi (Bob Terry), as well as Garris himself. The Russ Dorr character played by Landis appears to be King’s nod to Russell Dorr (P.A.) of the Bridgton Family Medical Center, one of two clinicians King credits in the
Author’s Note
to
The Stand
with answering his questions about the flu and “…its peculiar way of mutating every two years or so.” King also credits Dorr in
Pet Sematary
and
Misery
. 

Readers will have noted that this cast has an outstanding resume in other film and television work and it is therefore no surprise that the overall acting in this mini-series is some of the best seen in a television adaptation of a King work. With a cast this fine and a screenplay by King of one of his most outstanding tales it is no surprise the resulting production is so highly regarded. 

Gary Sinise was Oscar nominated for
Forrest Gump
and won an Emmy for
George Wallace
, a Golden Globe for
Truman
and a Screen Actors Guild Award for
Apollo 13
. Laura San Giacomo appeared in the long-running
Just Shoot Me
as well as in the ground-breaking
Sex, Lies and Videotape
; Ruby Dee is an Emmy Award winning actress; Miguel Ferrer also appeared in
Night Flier
and the cult series
Twin Peaks
; Ray Walston was loved by the audiences of
My Favorite Martian
and
Picket Fences
, for which he won two Emmys; the controversial Rob Lowe has also won two Emmys, for
The West Wing
; Kathy Bates won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for her portrayal of Annie Wilkes in
Misery
and took the title role in
Dolores Claiborne
; and Golden Globe winner Ed Harris won the Best Actor Award from the Screen Actors Guild for
Apollo 13
and has already garnered four Academy Award nominations. 

The mini-series was issued on DVD in 1999, with audio commentary by King and selected actors; and includes a “making of” featurette. It was also boxed with other titles as the
Stephen King Horror DVD Collection
that same year. 

We are not given a year in which the mini-series is set but it must be no earlier than 1990 as the schematic used by Harold Lauder to create his bomb won 3rd prize in the 1990 National Science Fair. In this version the superflu outbreak begins in Arnette on 17 June and the nuclear explosion in Las Vegas occurs at the relatively early date of 21 September 1985. 

King was also very true in this screenplay to the storyline in the book versions. As the story is substantially the same as the unproduced screenplay, so there is no need to summarize it again. However, there are a number of changes from the books. 

In one interesting change King again does not give “The Trashcan Man” a real name. He also changes the sex of Fran Goldsmith’s baby from a boy, Peter, in each of the earlier versions, to the very sentimental choice of a girl named Abagail in this offering. In the books the child’s father is Jess Rider but in this version we do not learn Jess’ surname. There is no mention of Goldsmith and Redman returning to Maine with their child. 

The character known only as “Poke” in this version is Andrew “Poke” Freeman. The man who took the superflu to the world, Charles Campion, is an Army officer in this script but was only a “government employee” in the books. 

To allow for Kathy Bates’ appearance as the DJ murdered by the Army at KLFT during the epidemic, the final screenplay included a sex change for the character and a change of the name from Ray Flowers to Rae Flowers. 

The facility in which Redman was held for examination and from which he escaped execution changes from being the Stovington Plague Control Center in the books to the Vermont Disease Center in this script. 

In addition to the standard links from
The Stand
to other King fiction (
see the feature panel
) King took the opportunity in this script to make a few other subtle references. In the screenplay Tom Cullen was sent west from the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. This is, of course, the hotel at which King conceived
The Shining
and at which the mini-series of
The Shining
was filmed. While in Mother Abagail Freemantle’s cornfield, Randall Flagg is described as being “dim.” This is a skill Raymond Fiegler (most serious King students believe this is but a pseudonym for Randall Flagg) taught Carol Gerber in the
Hearts in Atlantis
version of
Blind Willie
. 

Serious King students and fans will find great interest in the minor changes King made to his own mythology in these scripts. But their greatest value lies in King’s determination to see the story produced under his own terms. He initially wrote at least four drafts of the movie screenplay and followed it up with the mini-series screenplay for ABC-TV. By writing his own screenplay he avoided the pitfalls of allowing another writer to be introduced. It is amazing how often these writers are tempted to “improve” on King’s already superb tales. 

The mini-series of
The Stand
ranks as one of the best TV and one of the superior visual adaptations of a King work and this should be credited directly to King’s teleplay. 

Links From
The Stand
To Other King Fiction 

As one of King’s major works, in which the history of our world takes a rather radical turn, an entire “Reality” is allocated to
The Stand
’s varying storylines. Many of the characters and places link to other King works of fiction, and the Dark Tower, Maine Street Horror, New Worlds and America Under Siege “Realities.” The links are summarized here. 

Randall Flagg
Eyes of the Dragon, The Dark Tower
cycle
, The Dark Man 

Abagail Freemantle
The Dark Tower IV, The Dark Tower VI 

The Trashcan Man
The Dark Tower III 

Bobbi Anderson
¹¹⁹
The Tommyknockers 

Arnette, Texas
Desperation, The Monkey 

Castle Rock, Maine
¹²⁰
Bag of Bones, The Body, Creepshow, Cujo, The Dark Half, The Dead Zone, Dreamcatcher, Gerald’s Game, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Gramma, It Grows on You (Nightmares and Dreamscapes
version only)
, The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, The Man in the Black Suit, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, Needful Things, Nona (Skeleton Crew
version only)
, Premium Harmony
,
Riding the Bullet, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Squad D, The Sun Dog, Uncle Otto’s Truck
,
Under the Dome
and
Untitled (The Huffman Story) 

Hemingford Home,
Children of the Corn
(Screenplay only),
It, The Last Rung on  

Nebraska
the Ladder
 

Stovington, Vermont
The Shining, Everything’s Eventual 

Captain Trips
Night Surf, The Dark Tower IV, Golden Years, The Dark Tower VI
¹²¹
 

The Shine
¹²²
The Shining 

Overlooked
¹²³
The Shining
 

Legion
¹²⁴
Black House, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
(Revised),
It Storm of the Century 

Ka
¹²⁵
The Dark Tower
cycle 

The Shop
96
Firestarter, Golden Years, The Langoliers, The Tommyknockers
 

¹¹⁹
She is referred to but not named in the Uncut book version only. The exact quote is ‘
Rimfire Christmas
…written by a woman who lived up north in Haven.’ 

¹²⁰
In the Uncut book version only 

¹²¹
Mentioned only as the superflu 

¹²²
Mentioned only in the book versions. In the original Mother Abagail says, “I’ve always dreamed, and sometimes my dreams have come true. Prophecy is the gift of God and everyone has a smidge of it. My own grandmother used to call it the shining lamp of God, sometimes just the shine.”  

¹²³
In the Uncut book version only. Brad Kitchner is addressing the Free Zone Committee in Chapter 58, Section 3, “We had two of the generators going yesterday, and as you know, one of them overloaded and blew its cookies. So to speak. What I mean is that it overlooked. Overloaded rather. Well … you know what I mean.” 

¹²⁴
Mentioned only in the book versions 

¹²⁵
In the Uncut book version only. When Judge Farris saw a crow tapping on his motel room window it came to him that this was “…the dark man, his soul, his ka, somehow projected into this rain-drenched grinning crow …” 

The Star Invaders (1964)
 

King expert Tyson Blue kindly provided a copy of this story to the author, allowing this detailed description and analysis. King apparently owns the only printed copy of this 17 page, slightly less than 3000 word chapbook. Two of the other very few King outsiders to have read it since King reached the best-seller lists are Blue and Dr. Michael R. Collings.  

The front cover reads, “AA GAS-LIGHT BOOK 20¢ / The STAR INVADERS / By Steve King.” A handwritten “Triad” with the “T” appearing as a triangle and capital T superimposed appears in the bottom right corner of the cover. “STAR INVADERS” appears as in a cross-word puzzle, with the word “STAR” running down the page to meet the “R” of “INVADERS” running across the page. A stylized and hand-drawn star appears to the left of the word “Star.” The inside front cover reads, “The Star Invaders, Copyright 1964 by Triad, Inc., and Gaslight Books / FIRST PRINTING / June, 1964 / To Johnny, Who wanted one like this / All characters herein are fictitious.” The chapbook which measures 8 ½ inches by 5 ½ inches was self-published by King. 

The tale is clearly under the heavy, and heady, influence of King’s beloved 1950s science-fiction films and television episodes, radio drama and graphic comic books, most particularly the classic 1956 movie
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
. 

The first two King experts to reveal parts of this story were Blue and Collings. Blue presents a detailed survey of this New Worlds story in his
The Unseen King
¹²⁶
. There he revealed that the aliens, who have clawed hands, dressed in “iridescent uniforms that made them look like robots.” Collings revealed
¹²⁷
that each alien’s hand comprises “three curved claws.”  

Collings, writing in
Castle Rock
for August 1989
¹²⁸
, says
The Star Invaders
“…is an account of human encounters with hostile aliens intent on taking over the Earth, a dastardly plan foiled only by the strength of character and purpose of the hero, Jed Pierce.” He delivers two quotes from the story in his article. In the first Hiken is, “subjected to the ultimate torture, to that which he fears more than anything else …”: 

Lord they had locked him in a small room! It seemed even smaller than before. Jerry felt a cold sweat break out on his brow. He remembered back thirty years. He had been a kid then, a really small kid. His father had been a bear on discipline, and every time he’d done something wrong, he was locked in a closet to meditate … He had gotten to hate that closet. It was small and stuffed with clothes. The acrid smell of moth-balls made him cough, and to his terrified four-year-old mind, it always seemed that a tiger crouched in the corner.  

Now, the room grows smaller and smaller, until the walls touch Hiken and he promises to tell the aliens all. After the walls are withdrawn Hiken again refuses to speak.  

Quoting Collings:  

In the face of this new evidence of human defiance, the alien says (“implacably,” as King specifies in the text): (
the next quote is from the story
) “We can lock you in again … Only this time the walls will squeeze until the blood runs from your ears and your nose and even from the little black holes in the center of your eyes. It can squeeze you into just a blob of shrieking protoplasm, if we so desire.”  

After revealing the location of Jed Pierce to avoid his ultimate torture Hiken killed himself by beating “his head in on the bulkhead of the floor.” 

Blue tells us more of this incident, revealing this quote from an alien as Hiken is locked in the small room, “You see, earth creature, each being has his own devils … things that have horrified him always. We shall find yours, never fear … And then Jed Pierce will be ours!” Apart from the clunky and contradictory dialogue (we’ll find your innermost fears, never fear?) this one line reveals much about King and his entire body of work. In the forty odd years since a teenage boy typed that line Stephen King has dedicated an entire career to finding our innermost fears and feeding them relentlessly into the myth pool.  

Collings’ assessment in
Castle Rock
is that the story itself is not particularly noteworthy.  

The characterization is flat, the aliens stereotypic, the story itself derivative – nothing unexpected in the writings of a 16-year-old storyteller. But, if one looks closely at the episode, especially in the light of King’s subsequent productions, something more than a story-as-story unfolds. Through the clarity of hindsight, the torture-room becomes recognizable as a prototype of Margaret White’s punishment closet in
Carrie
…  

Of course, another terrifying closet, albeit from the view of a little boy
outside
it, appears in
The Monster in the Closet
section of
Cujo
, and a similar concept is the basis for
The Boogeyman
; and, in our assessment, is a closer match to those closets (reflecting as they do Jerry Hiken’s childhood fears – and, perhaps, King’s). 

In
The Shorter Works of Stephen King
Collings stated:  

The story is not a culmination, but a beginning, showing King struggling with the form and structure of the short story. He succeeds in places but fails elsewhere, as when he devotes half the story to Hiken’s treachery, then barely refers to the episode in the second part. The writing is serviceable, his style based on hackneyed expressions and trite phrasing … The errors one might expect in a neophyte work appear: misspellings, faulty modification, subject-verb agreement problems, word choice. In “The Star Invaders” he attempts to write science fiction. What he produces – what rises above the stereotypic and the conventional – is horror. 

Spignesi states
¹²⁹
the story “is rough and ends abruptly, but it clearly manifests the storytelling abilities King would soon perfect.” Collings wrote in Spignesi’s masterwork:
¹³⁰
 

“The Star Invaders” is highly abstracted; there are few specific references to people, places or things – certainly nothing to suggest King’s later “brand name” approach to creating verisimilitude. References to the nuclear reactor are equally vague, and the resolution to the story … is abrupt and unconvincing. The great strength of this story is its nascent characterisation, coupled with an occasional image that would resonate through much of King’s fiction. 

Tyson Blue, in a kinder review, says the story:  

…although overwritten and derivative, nevertheless makes interesting and entertaining reading, and offers a few clues to the developing talent of King … a tale with lots of fast-paced action, thrills, dangers and the blood-and-thunder that so appeals to young adolescent boys … King was giving his young audience what it wanted – lots of action and a fast-paced yarn bursting with excitement, and this was enough to overcome any shortcomings in style, plot, grammar or originality. 

King has guarded the story from release for so long that there can be no other belief than that it will
never
be published or released in any form. Even though it is extremely unlikely readers will ever be able to examine this tale, Blue points out “…it remains a fascinating study for those who are interested in tracing the evolution of his writing and the themes with which he has worked throughout his career.” This is certainly the case – an early attempt by a young man, who in only a decade would strike out on a highly successful career, to do what he would prove to do best – tell a story. 

¹²⁶
The Unseen King
, Tyson Blue, p.13-17 

¹²⁷
The Shorter Works of Stephen King
, Michael Collings, p.10-12 

¹²⁸
Explorations of Theme, Image, and Character In the Early Works of Stephen King
, Michael Collings 

¹²⁹
The Lost Work of Stephen King
, Stephen J. Spignesi, p.20-22 

¹³⁰
The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia
, Stephen J. Spignesi