So me and a bunch of fellow film/comic/comic-film/film-comic nerds were out to dinner, and up came the topic of Stephen King.
It soon became apparent that we were all huge nerds for Stephen King.
I attempted to correct random_tangent’s assertion that Randall Flagg was in The Dark Tower series (which I have not read; and by all was quickly set aright. AVD began a story from On Writing, which I finished. We spoke of Dreamcatcher‘s film ending, Olyphant and the s***weasels; how much the movie rights to The Gunslinger were sold for (and to whom); how drunk King was when he wrote Cujo; Secret Window‘s self-justifying final frame; and all Four Seasons
It was an incredible revelatory nerdsplosion of Stephen King knowledge.
I totally forgot that I read tens of thousands of Stephen King pages in high school. Totally. Forgot. It was like stumbling into your uncle at a family reunion and realizing oh my God you paid my college tuition and I haven’t even sent you a Christmas card in ten years.
I submit that, for better or worse, Stephen King’s work makes up an unspoken nerd infrastructure upon which all other pop culture consumption is based.
Sure, you read “Deadpool,” but many more of your hours went into “Thinner.”
Sure, you remember who shot Mr. Burns, but even sharper you remember that dude standing in the corner in Gerald’s Game.
Sure, you quote South Park without even knowing it, but you remember The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon so vividly and where you were when you read it that it’s like you remember it as the weekend YOU went for a real bad walk in the woods.
Stephen King is more “Simpsons did it” than The Simpsons.
I also submit that King’s style, with his italicized asides, deadpan approach to sex and gore, and aversion to adverbs has done more to shape my own writerly objectives than anyone but Douglas Adams.
Yes… yes… I will become a hybrid of both… in a basement lab… yes…
This will be my greatest triumph.
