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

Hell I watched the first part last night and enjoyed it more than I expected to. I'm starting the second part now. Seems like most everyone's dead, save the folks who appeared immune in the first episode. Which was obviously gonna be the case--but surely there is more coming. I like this a lot so far.

No spoilerz please, at least not til I finish (next few nights?)

xoxo
Ian

Pretty entertaining to see Agent Rosenfeld as a psychotic inmate.

Whoa I loved this television adaptation when it first aired, but like anything King-related, my parents deemed it taboo & I only got to see parts. But cool parts that made it seem like some intense & crazy shit! About two years ago I saw part of it again on cable. The part I saw was the Kingster himself + the lady who played Maya Gallo in "Just Shoot Me" with a lot of Halloween grey steaks combed into her long pretty hair, in a seemingly endless truck-driving scene.

I tried to read it in high school, too, but my mom confiscated the book from me. TBH I was slightly relieved as I was a bit daunted by its size.

I have never read a single Stephen King novel. But I am easily taken in by govt engineered plague scenarios.

easily the best stephen king book, but I remember finding the adaptation pretty cheesy in parts

there sure are a lot of characters.

"you have fun getting raped and murdered back on seventh avenue, sweatheart!"

It's a good book, but whoever his editor was at Doubleday edited it with a chainsaw. King published a "complete and uncut edition" when what he really should have published was a "much better-edited edition".

this is streaming on netflix fwiw.

i hope this gets more complicated than 'old black woman with the guitar is good and crepey magicking demon guy is bad.'

Hate to break it to ya...

aw hell

i want more abt the govt conspiracy and shit but i guess that's not gonna happen cuz they're all dead?

IT is way better than this, book or TV series.

i want more abt the govt conspiracy and shit but i guess that's not gonna happen cuz they're all dead?

Yeah, never was much into King's "dark man"/Dark Tower BS, so there wasn't much left in this for me in the second half. Love some of the book's vignettes about the end of the world in microcosmic form, tho.

the chapters about the "second" plague, the "no great loss" stuff are super-grim and fun to read.

Yes, those were the best part of the book for me.

Was this book as good as The Shining? (or as bad, if you please)

not as good (scary) as the shining, which avoided steve's fatal flaw -- shitty endings. like with it, i loved the stand until the final part, which just seemed tacked on and a huge letdown. still, bonus points for flagg's debut (i think)

the shining novel really didnt avoid the shitty ending imo

But then i loved insomnia so..........

I've only read the uncut version; never seen the miniseries though now that it's on WI that'll change pronto.

The orig novel and (i have to assume) the TV mini both omit The Kid, who for me is the best thing in the book. His love scene is U & K.

Ian if u have today or tomorrow off you should come to MoCCA fest and say hi! I'll give a free copy of Klagen.

I'm thinking about MoCCA tomorrow! My friend L@uR4 is in town, so i will be going to visit her too. You are a treat JCL.

cool hope you make it! I don't remember our table # but we are next to Pizza Island and Center For Cartoon Studies.

Is L@uR4 a cartoonist?

M.O.O.N

Spells moon.

laura is a writer about comics.

started reading the 'uncut' version

after 5 pages i knew everyone was gonna die

after 100 pages i knew which of the way-too-many not-terribly-interesting characters were going to survive, at least initially

after 200 pages the dying has barely even begun and i've had enough

the not dying is the best part im told

i read the long version but The Fans tend to prefer the shorter one, i believe

there are about 200 skippable pages in the middle (backstory for mother abigail and some trashcan man nonsense) but the rest is pretty good! no one likes the ending but parts of it are really powerful

if you don't like it after 200 pages, you should prob stop reading though.

"112263", a recent very long one, is better

The "short" one blew my mind as a kid way more than any other King novel, and I read them all. Read the longer one when it came out, liked it just because I liked the chance to read hundreds of pages of 70s King I hadn't read, but I would recommend the original to all but completists. Loved the ending, didn't know others didn't!

OK looking around the internet it seems like there are lots of people who didn't like the ending because they would have preferred a big ol' battle royale between the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil which feels to me like a really stupid way for that novel to end so SK 1 Internet 0 as far as I'm concerned

the ending was dumb because it's an infantile depiction of good vs evil, which is weird because his character vignettes are way more illustrative of a more complex view of the same theme.

Man, I gotta disagree, given that Trashcan Man (who plays for the "evil" side but is obviously more complicated than that) is the vehicle of deliverance

Trashcan man being the one who brings the nuke is a great bit of plotting, it’s how the nuke gets set off that ppl object to

And as someone who will usually argue that king’s endings are actually good I agree

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

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

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

Oh I assumed you meant the orgy!

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

how did the nuke go off again

everyone fucked it

(god, iirc)

it was an awkward queueing situation to say the least

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I remember being distinctly underwhelmed by the OG Stand miniseries but I recently bought a three-fer Stephen King Television Craptacular set (that, The Langoliers, and Golden Years) so maybe I'll waste my time rewatching Captain Dan instead.

xpost TBF, I don't condone King writing his own screenplays (Creepshow and Silver Bullet excepted).

you definitely have to turn off critical parts of your brain and return to a teenage enthusiast mindset for it... but it's definitely not the total washout some are describing it as.

It’s funny because “fucking around with the structure” is probably the least egregious thing you could do with the avg sk thing but it does seem like it would be v point-missing in this case and it certainly was with It - the conventional wisdom that “the adult bits are the worst” I’m convinced comes from the adaptations cause in the book the adult & kids bits aren’t really separable which is a big part of the bleak horror!

Mike Flanagan's version of Gerald's Game was decent but makes the mistake of being _too_ faithful to King (specifically with that godawful ending)

Just caught up with this thread and, wow, even this year I'm not watching this if it doesn't spend at least half its running time on the plague. "People sitting around planning a strategy for a town hall meeting" is a devastatingly accurate way to describe the latter half of the book and why I never ranked it among his greats.

I don't think those parts of the book are bad - but they kind of require you having been on the journey with teh characters first, so you don't see it as 'just a board meeting', but them looking to restart society.

otherwise, who gives a fuck about them? the plague spreading bits were fascinating in the way they depicted the slow societal breakdown and its impact on the specific characters who would wind up making "The Stand", and the details like the dying family driving into Hap's gas pumps, the government trying to infect Stu with Captain Trips without telling him, Frannie burying her father in their backyard, these were devastating details, really the height of the book.

might as well be 9 hours of the slow descent of a huge hand from the sky

Just scanning through early reviews, I keep seeing 'mess' and 'messy' and then I saw 'Lost-like structure' and...yeah, nope. Just fucken nope.

IT'S NOT A GODDAMN MYSTERY TO BE DOLED OUT IN BITE-SIZE CHUNKS AND SLOWLY SOLVED, YOU DUMBSHITS.

fuck it, making my own The Stand miniseries.

if you all would like to audition, please have a one-minute monologue prepared - dramatic or comedic/dramatic. No "original" monologues - must be from a produced movie, television show, or play.

Also - no cowboy hats allowed, we will not let you in the door.

Sign-up sheet below:

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I don't think those parts of the book are bad - but they kind of require you having been on the journey with teh characters first, so you don't see it as 'just a board meeting', but them looking to restart society.

This is very very otm. Without that first half, I'd have no interest in following through them in the second half. This "restructuring" sounds like a terrible idea.

Neanderthal, might I suggest a bold new reimagining wherein you pick up right after the book ends and never mention or even allude to the events that occurred previously? If so, I'd like to audition for the role of the adult version of Stu and Franny's baby from the multitude of flashforwards your film will contain.

This is like making a movie about the mundane life of a boy named Pinocchio as he occasionally reflects upon the wild adventures he had when he was still a puppet.

Larry Underwood's 'journey' was one of the most fascinating things of the book for me, and what, now he's just going to be portrayed as an aging rockstar stuck in a municipal center talking about intrastate commerce?

might as well rename him "Sonny Bono"

Kind of wish Jovan Adepo and Marsden has switched roles. Adepo could make Stuart less of a boring leading man role, and Larry Underwood would give Marsden more chance to be funny

I am simultaneously hyped for this AND setting a low bar. Really don't want to know anything about structure, casting, or anything else so I'm not opening this thread again for a while. (Don't tell me, I'll tell you! You believe that happy crappy?) Meet you in the Boulder Free Zone.

This is like making a movie about the mundane life of a boy named Pinocchio as he occasionally reflects upon the wild adventures he had when he was still a puppet.

Richard Linklater will 100% make this someday

I’m around halfway through the 1st ep and this is pretty much exactly as good as I expected it to be. So far the things that are bad are nothing to do with the things you guys are worried about.

like, and the details like the dying family driving into Hap's gas pumps, the government trying to infect Stu with Captain Trips without telling him, Frannie burying her father in their backyard, these were devastating details, really the height of the book. — the entire first episode is basically what’s described here and nothing else! (so far anyway)

The non-linearity feels sorta in unnecessary but isn’t much of a hindrance from what I’ve watched, also given everyone’s opinion that the plague stuff is so much stronger than the good v evil material it might even help to have the former spread throughout instead of relegated to the first third of the series

anyway so far it’s decent king-nostalgia comfort viewing and also plague-schlock that is taking me back to the distant days of lockdown 1 and watching stuff like outbreak — connoisseurs of day players going BIG with the foreboding sneeze will enjoy. Kid who plays Harold is great.

(so far)

that's reassuring. ok, I'll give it a whirl!

Just finished the ep - don’t want to oversell it, it is really ropy in places!

right now my father and I are watching this, and he read the book as well as I, and I suddenly don't care if it sucks. glad we can see this together

lot of vomiting in this ep

the flu gives people Jabba the Hutt neck too

I liked this ep, but there are flaws. a lot of the ep is dedicated to the outbreak, but the time jumps around arbitrarily with no aim or purpose, and would probably have confused me if I didn't know the story.

managed to capture the dread of a society slowly rotting, and a bit of time during the naive period where they thought it was just a bad flu they would outlast.

Presidential address was pretty chilling.

Overreliance on "coughing to make it obvious I'm fatally sick", like Eazy E in Straight OUtta Compton

having Harold be totally crazy incel with a manifesto maniac from the start seems like a mistake - it leaves out any room for character development, proper story arc or any tension as to how things will play out? I feel like the original mini series did that storyline fairly well, because Franny did sympathise with him somewhat and the audience could too despite him being a total dork. With the new version we know he's going to try to kill them from episode 1, and we know Franny and Stu will be a couple... just feels weird.
Overall despite totally not liking how they're going back and forth in the timeline, which wrecks so much of what makes the book great, I thought it wasn't too bad and i'm curious to see all the characters they left out of Ep 1

also they must have spent a shit ton on sync rights for the music on this

Yes, those are weird choices that I do not like the sound of.

I’m all in on this Harold. I thought I recognised him from somewhere - same guy who played Patrick hockstetter in crappy It adaptation (talk about a waste!)

The more I think about it the more I like this opening ep but worry about how it’s going to play out. I didn’t watch lost but I don’t get the sense they are trying to make a puzzle, felt more like what gerwig did with little women - telling a familiar story non-linearly gives a sense of simultaneity, everything happening all at once, that adds some immediacy (also maybe they’re trying to supply the missing Yeats line). And it is a familiar story, even if you haven’t read it or seen the old series - it’s no work at all to fill in the gaps from everyone is sick —> everyone is dead.

Obv it’s less assured than gerwig and I think going forward it may fuck with the momentum a bit but I didn’t mind the structure at all, my main problems were with how some of the scenes themselves were realised (I expected that tho). Not convinced by marsden yet, I know redman is kind of a boring stoic hero type but he didn’t react much at all to the actual end of the world/other scary stuff happening.

Supernatural side of things feels like where it could really go off the rails, it may not be possible - or even desirable - to do the dreams in a non-cheesy way (and they certainly haven’t) but the glimpses we have so far are p bad

Second ep much more jarring with the time jumps. Nadine and Joe show up in present day without explanation about how they met Larry. Why not....just show that first?

It was ok. Got bored.

Lloyd Heinreid and Poke appear. As does Rita.

lol I’m still waiting to be annoyed by this

They attempted a version of the scariest scene in the book (+ one of the most disturbing) and kinda flubbed it but a lot of other big moments from the novel - larrys mum dying, Larry meeting Harold, Lloyd in prison were well done

Casting is good, I really like this Lloyd

It’s definitely following a modern tv formula - I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see too much of mother Abigail and then midway through a whole episode just about her

I will feel cheated if we don’t actually get to hear baby can you dig your man

I definitely liked the Lloyd/Flagg scene.

They're showing more of the outbreak times than people feared. In alarming visual detail.

They really went for it with the swollen neck, it’s gross

They attempted a version of the scariest scene in the book (+ one of the most disturbing) and kinda flubbed it

The tunnel?

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

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

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

From the 12 seconds i heard

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

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

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

I did like this episode as well.

Lol i commented on Miles Davis too.

I like who they got for Andros

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

Worth it for Harold alone imo

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

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

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

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

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

meh.

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

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

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

just finished this

oof

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

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

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

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

Overall I give it C-.