GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #630: HORRIBLE THOUGHTS FROM MY HEAD #1,000,072: IT SURVIVES

 

Imagine, if you will, a world so far into the future that our civilization doesn't exist anymore. No one even remembers it was here. Their archaeologists are digging to find out if there was life on earth before them, or whatever their futuristic name for this planet will be. They only find one artifact, and it's a hardcover copy of IT by Stephen King.

They don't realize it's fiction. They think it's our Bible, that we believed in this crazy creature from outer space that can make itself look like anything a person is afraid of, and that it was our devil figure to some weird turtle god. That our prophet was an ancient king by the name of Stephen, and he was versed in archaic ceremonies like something called the Ritual of Chud, which just doesn't sound possible unless we had extra mouths and tongues. Did we?

And then I wonder what they would think of That Scene. You know what I'm talking about.

Goddammit, my head is horrible sometimes.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #563: STEPHEN KING AND OBSESSION

 

I was in Anderson's not too long ago, and I broke my new rule about not buying any books. I'm moving soon, and I don't want to add to my burden. But I saw the book above on the shelf, and it occurred to me that I haven't read anything about King since, well, probably since he got hit by a van. And this book said it would talk about everything that happened after.

I thought, why not?

I used to obsess over a lot of things, and chief among them was Stephen King. I went out of my way to ravenously read everything he had available and a few things he didn't. I wasn't going to wind up stalking him like that guy from Finders Keepers, and I certainly wouldn't hold him captive like in Misery, but everything within reason? I would do.

I used to do this with a lot of things, and for some reason I stopped doing that. Maybe because there's just so much stuff out there nowadays. It's easy to overdose on stuff now. I blame the internet.

But it was nice to visit with an old friend. Bev Vincent is probably one of the biggest King experts currently on this planet, and he has access to a lot of very interesting things, which he showed us in this book. I very much enjoyed my time in this. It's neat that Fairy Tale was included, and I had my doubts that it would. But then, along the way, there are two mentions of a possible third book in the Jack Sawyer trilogy. It would have been nice, but if it happens, it will have to be without Peter Straub. It could work. King tried imitating Straub while writing The Talisman and Black House, so . . .

It's also interesting to see that King's next book will be about Holly Gibney. Well, a lot of things can change, of course, but it will probably happen. I'll bet it's going to be excellent. He's currently better than he's ever been right now. That will probably stick in a few craws, but I firmly believe that.

Funny story. One score and, like, a bunch of years ago my friend, Rob Tannahill, wrote and illustrated a few Stephen King stories using Beavis and Butt-Head as characters. The first of them was The Dork Half. So I decided to make photocopies and send it to Stephen King. I got a letter back from his assistant at the time saying that he enjoyed it a lot and was a huge Beavis and Butt-Head fan.

Fast forward to his Bag of Bones tour. I got to meet him, and I managed to ask him a couple of questions. First was for a paper I was writing for college. My thesis was essentially: Why is someone like Nathaniel Hawthorne taught to death in schools while current novelists (like King) are strictly ignored. It irritated me that I'd been taught The Scarlet Letter about four times throughout my academic career, and that's why I was writing this thing about canon. King's answer: "Because he's dead."

I'll bet that I'm the only one in that class who got a direct quote from one of his subjects in person.

The second question? I asked him if he remembered The Dork Half. He did. And then he did what I never expected to hear from him. He imitated Beavis and said, "Fire! Fire!"

It's a memory I will treasure for the rest of my life.

Sad story: Not long after I sent The Dork Half to Stephen King, there was a horrible accident that involved the loss of one of those pages. On a lighter note, if King kept his copy, he has the only complete copy in existence.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #537: CLIVER BARKER AND MY MOM'S COMA

 So today is Clive Barker's 70th birthday. It's weird because Stephen King just turned 75 last month, still alive despite struggles with addiction and having gotten brutally hit by a van. I've mentioned it elsewhere, but I'm of the firm belief that King is the best he's ever been now, and considering the beloved classics he gave us once upon a time, that's saying something huge.

But it's hard to think of Barker at 70. I imagine (Imajica?) he's more or less retired from writing, considering his ill-received The Scarlet Gospels. I liked it, but I understand why most everyone despised it. I met him a couple of times and enjoyed both experiences. I know he's had some struggles of late what with the toxic shock incident, but it's good to know that he's still around.

So when I was in high school my mom was in a coma. I know that sounds like an odd transition, but I promise it will make sense soon. She was in a drunk driving accident so severe that she lost a year and a half of her life in the hospital.

I only have a teenager's memories of this, so I might have the details wrong, but she had been partying at a bar and got a ride home from a guy who was also pretty drunk. They wound up crashing into the back of a UPS truck at full speed. I'm told the car looked like an accordion. The driver was OK. Mom was not because she had a lifelong habit of not wearing her seatbelt properly. You know the part that's supposed to go across your chest? She always put that behind her back because it irritated her, she always said.

So instead of protecting her, the seatbelt destroyed her guts to the point that she had to have her belly open for about a year. The doctors had to keep going in for surgeries, and sewing her up would defeat the purpose. She lost a lot of her insides because of this. The nature of her injuries was pretty singular, and the doctors who treated her wrote her case up in medical journals. All in all, it was a pretty grim situation.

I visited her every night with my family. We would spend hours at Loyola, usually in her room, but a lot of times the doctors had to get inside of her, so they asked us to wait elsewhere. The caf was kind of awful, but the waiting room was decent and comfortable enough.

I forget who gave it to me (I want to say my dad's friend, Garth, but I don't recall for sure), but I had a gift card for the local B. Dalton. Remember those? If you don't, they were a chain of bookstores. Not too long after the accident I went into that B. Dalton to cash in the card. They had a bunch of Clive Barker books, and I'd heard a great deal about him and had seen Hellraiser (and possibly Nightbreed, but I can't be certain), so I bought the first three Books of Blood. I would sit in the hospital room and the waiting room and even in the dreaded cafeteria reading those books.

So my earliest memories of Barker's fiction will always be entangled with my mom's coma. See? Toldja I'd wrap it up in a nice bow.

Happy 70th, Clive Barker! And many more!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #527: A MORTAL WOUND

 By now you all know how much I love books. According to my mom, my first word was "book." I don't really consider myself much of a criminal, but I'd probably steal books. And so on.

The problem is, since I'm packing all my shit, I can't buy more books, at least not for now. That would just be something else to pack. I can't tell you how much this hurts me. Whenever I pass a bookstore I feel like I'm dying. I feel like I've been mortally wounded.

But last week I couldn't *not* buy Stephen King's new book. And I tried desperately to not buy any other books when I made the trek to Anderson's in Naperville to do so. But you know me. And you can probably guess that I failed. You'd be right.

I couldn't stop myself! I had to do it! Damn you all!

And damn me, too. And you know that I had to get a few books at Printers Row, too, so . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #325: TABARD INN HAS BEEN ON MY MIND

 So I was thinking about my old magazine TABARD INN tonight. I edited this thing many years ago. Three issues. But it's been on my mind for the last week or two, actually. I have a few ideas about why it was never successful. Maybe the big one was my reluctance to do POD. I printed these fuckin' things first and then tried to sell them. Whoops! I'll go into another reason in a bit. Hold that thought. I'll get to it. Probably. I'm drunk--as usual--but I think I'll remember to get to it.

Regardless, I will never edit a magazine or anthology again. I have many reasons for both. The magazine I'll explain. The anthologies? Nope. You won't get that out of me unless you take me out for drinks. Like, a lot of drinks. Enough to cripple an elephant. And, naturally, off the record.

By the way, I've become friends with a lot of comics creators I'd been a fan of previous. I've interviewed many of them. They all know I was in comic book reporting. I'm out and have been for, what, a decade? And whenever I talk to them as a regular dude, they're still kind of cagey. Sometimes I wonder if I said "off the record" they'd open up a bit more. One of them actually did. Won't say who. If you follow me, you know the name. But this person trusted me, and once sworn to silence, I will forever keep that secret.

As I am unemployed, I have lots and lots of free time. I think maybe that's why I'm writing 10K words a day. Well, more like 8K now that the therapy thing is out of the way. Still better than my self-imposed 2K a day. I think it's also why I'm reading four books at the same time. Hey, I'm down from seven on January 1.

But I thought about the ridiculously difficult time I had getting someone to print the fucking thing. Issue one was so fucking offensive that no one wanted to print it. I even got someone to do it, and the young workers were happy to get it out there. They even took my money! And then the owner read it and said to give me back my money and files. I found someone who would print it! After a fucking age! They did all three!

So since I was thinking about TABARD INN, and I had the time, I wondered if maybe the printers were still around. I drove out in that direction to drive down the road to see if they were. I won't name them, just in case they're somewhere else and might get hate mail over the offensive shit, but they were on the same road as Victory Auto Wreckers. If you ever lived in my area (Chicago, if you don't know), you know them and their ancient commercial. In my opinion, there should be a really sleazy strip club in that neighborhood. Maybe down the road a bit further, as there is a police station near there.

Side note: sleazy strip clubs are my favorite. They're the places where you might get a decent handjob if you paid enough, and you might buy narcotics off a dancer or you might even get the clap from a lapdance that got a little too close. I miss the one at the end of I-290 that eventually got shut down for shady reasons.

In fact, now that I think about it, if you drove past my printers, turned right, went down a while, then turned left on Grand, there used to be a strip club there. I remember my writing partner when I was a journalist and I tried to get into the club to interview strippers to find out what they did for Easter. Bet you were thinking Valentine's Day, huh? Wrong, silly goose. We were, uh, refused service. I also drove a friend who also was an ex there once so she could fill out an application. It was called All Stars. It's a trucking company now, but for some perverse reason they left the sign up. I wonder how many dudes go in there to get lapdances only to be sold on truck storage.

So I drove by, looking for the printer, and sadly they're gone. Too bad. They helped me when no one else would. Some metal works company is there now. Ah well.

I stand by everything I published in that magazine, even the Anthony Haversham stories about Bobby Yandell, Private Investigator. Yeah, I wrote those. And that one by Jack Graves, the one about the guy who wants to fuck his dead mom and she turns out to be alive still. I wrote that one, too. I think it's in Tales of Questionable Taste, but I'm too lazy to look it up now.

What I don't stand by is how I acted as the host, the Crypt-Keeper of TABARD INN, if you will. It wasn't me. Well, it was more or less me . . . if I was an edgy and possibly alcoholic rock DJ. Not those shock jocks in the morning. Those are actually called "radio personalities." Isn't it weird that we had that shock jock period? I enjoyed it at the time, but looking back? *collar pull* But some part of my mind thought it would be a great idea to come off as a rock station DJ. This is why I don't trust my instincts. They are always wrong. I look back on that with a great deal of regret. It came off as kind of disgusting, especially the bumper sticker contests. I'm sorry about that. That was my mistake, and I own it 100%. This, by the way, is the other reason I thought the magazine failed. See? I'm not that drunk, am I? Well, maybe.

Another side note: offensive stories. I'm not talking about offensive-offensive. I'm talking about creatively offensive. Any asshole and fuckface and prickcunt can come along and sling the n-word around like they had practice. Same with the other f-word. And so on and so forth. That shit is just offensive-offensive. I have put awful words in awful characters' mouths, but it's to prove something about their moral shortcomings. To use it just to use it is just showing you're a piece of shit.

I'm talking about writing transgressive shit that pushes the envelope but does so creatively. Like, say, a dude you thought was making a video to show he can suck his own dick but it's really because he wants to video him biting it off. Who wrote that one? Oh . . . maybe it's in a book named after the title of a certain blog. Thanks to M for publishing it first!

Here are a few other reasons I regret the magazine.

I got a lot of letters from mental patients. Nothing wrong with that. I'd be a hypocrite if I talked shit about that, especially after the psych ward. But some would go a bit too far off the beam. Like the guy who decided I was his agent, and he said I should pay Google a bunch of money to make sure that anytime someone looked up science fiction, his name would be the first to come up. I had to explain to him that I was not the guy he thought I was. I lived more or less in my grandmother's basement at the time. When I sent that to him, I never heard from him again. So yeah. If you get a stalker, and he was borderline stalker, tell them something pathetic about you. They'll go away.

Which reminds me, I regretted not getting that PO Box. I stupidly used my own address, which everyone tried to talk me out of. I figured I could handle anyone who came after me, but then I remembered that I have relatives. Awkward at least. Possibly borderline criminal at most. I thought I was saving money. Again, whoops!

I regretted the sense that because I was a publisher, I could do things for people. That was absolutely not true. I couldn't. But people thought I could. One guy asked me for Stephen King's number. Granted, now that I'm a lot older and I have more experience, I have discovered that if you're in my business, we all know each other. Or if we don't, we at least know of each other.

Full disclosure: I met Stephen King once. He was on his Bag of Bones tour at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago on Congress Pkwy and State St. Previously I'd sent him some artwork my friend did. His name is Rob Tannahill, and for mostly my amusement he would do King parodies and replace the characters with Beavis and Butt-Head. Like, this was comic book level stuff. For example, here are a couple of titles. THE DORK HALF. THE STUPID DEATH OF BEAVIS VERRILL. THE SCAMMED. So three titles, then. I even got to be in his parody of The Shawshank Redemption. So with Rob's permission I copied them and sent them to King. When I got through the line and shook King's hand, I told him that I was the one who sent the Beavis and Butt-Head parodies that my friend had made. And let me tell you, you have NEVER lived your life until you've heard King do his Beavis impression. (I seem to be thinking about impressions lately, too, I guess.) He got this demented look on his face and said, with his Maine twang, "FIRE! FIRE!"

Does he know who I am? Probably not. I was a guest twice on The Horror Show, which I've heard he listens to, so maybe? I've been mentioned a few times without me being on, so maybe? Chet Williamson, whom I worship, once did a live read for Dong of Frankenstein, which might stand out to King, so maybe? But I'm certain he doesn't remember the exchange. When you're Stephen King, you meet a lot of people. A LOT.

So no. I don't have his phone number.

I also got a lot of submissions from prisoners. I got to publish one of them, even. I couldn't pay him because the prison system forbade it. I loved those letters because I believe that any prisoner who submits a story to a publication is trying to redeem themselves. A lot of them were even good stories, just not right for what I had in mind. But then there was this one letter I got from a prisoner who wanted to pay me to write stories for him. It would have been a huge payday, actually, if I had done it. I have still never made as much money for one story that he would have paid me for one story. But I said no. Sometimes you can't take the money and keep your integrity. That's the shit you've got to turn down. I needed the money at the time. Desperately. I'm not lying to you when I say that I would be a lot better off financially speaking if I'd taken the money. I said no. What he wanted was time travel porn. He wanted mind control porn. He wanted racially charged porn that was essentially rape porn. In addition to that, he requested just plain old rape porn.

I look up all the prisoners who sent me stuff. Sometimes the crime is understandable. Sometimes it's really bad, but the person genuinely regrets it and wants to redeem themselves and maybe contribute to society. But this guy? He's going to be in prison long after I die. Long after he dies. I shit you not, he might get out a hundred and twenty years from now. Since he's not a Highlander, I'm guessing he won't see the streets again any time in his life. He's got a lot of rape charges. Manslaughter charges. FUCKING KIDNAPPING CHARGES. If I remember right, he even robbed a bank. Some of those rapes were not committed against adults.

So no. I'm going to turn down that money. I'd like to be rich someday, but there are routes I am not willing to go down. Hell, I might not even be able.

Sometimes, you morally have to turn down the money. You HAVE TO.

Yet another side note: I actually know someone who did time for a bank robbery. He got kicked out of the Navy for doing it. Again, no names. He's suffered enough.

So yeah. You'll never see issue four, as I predicted in issue three. You'll never see another anthology I've edited. For vastly different reasons, I've turned down four editing jobs for other authors in the last three months. Paying jobs. In one case, a very good paying job. I mostly did it to focus on my own shit, especially since I was going to start that new job soon. But the job keeps getting delayed. It's something I'm reconsidering. It's going into that lizard brain conversation I'm going to have soon, maybe tomorrow or the next day.

So yeah. I guess if you want copies, I have boxes of them still cluttering up my living room. I've taken to giving them away as a three-issue package for anyone who buys my books at conventions. Since conventions are canceled until the plague finally dies, what the hell? You don't even have to buy anything from me. If you want a single issue, Paypal me a dollar for shipping. If you want all three, make it five for shipping. If I actually published you in any one of them, and you want me to send you copies, you won't even have to pay for shipping. Unless you're ordering like ten or twenty or something. We'll talk. The issues will be free, but the shipping might get crazy. Contact me in the comments or social media or wherever you know me from. Hell, if I can hand deliver them, I'll do it for free.

Just know that I kind of come off like a dick as the host. Sorry.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #317: THOSE WHO WOULD WASTE THEIR TALENTS AND THOSE WHO DON'T GIVE A FUCK

 

I want you to take a look at that picture above. It's one of my favorites. Do you know who these two are? It's OK if you don't. I'll name them in a little bit. But I love this picture. Well and truly.

So I read the kinda-sorta autobiography of Maynard James Keenan recently, and I discovered that he and I share a lot of traits. The most important one was a bewildered response to people who have a very obvious talent and just don't use it. Keenan would browbeat people he knew who had talent and weren't using it. I do the same. I have a friend who is a great writer, but for the longest time he ignored it. Granted, he has a very unusual style. He had no faith in it. I fucking loved it. I told him so many times that he should do something with it, but he ignored me until recently. He actually got a book out there, and he's working on the next one. I won't name him. He doesn't go by his real name, anyway.

I can't tell you how many talented people I know. Most of them use it. Some don't have the courage of their convictions, and I'm the guy who gets angry with them. I try to talk (or maybe argue) them into doing something with what they have. I fail more often than I succeed. It irritates me to no end that there are people who have amazing talents. Talents that would burn your eyebrows off. And they let it stagnate. I feel happy that they share it with me, but I want the world to know their talent. Their names, if they so choose to be identified as such.

Here's the thing: we creators are more or less afraid that we are phonies. That our work is not as good as we think. It's impostor syndrome. And I totally get why most don't get over it. Regardless of what you think of your own work, it should be fun, yes? Creation is an amazing adrenaline booster. When I was a kid, I'd create these elaborate stories with my Transformers and GI Joes. But even before that I would create these mysteries about the Detective Boys. They were my five-year-old ripoff of The Hardy Boys.

Whatever your art is, when you sit down to create it, it should be fun. I've said in the past that editing sucks. That trying to sell your shit to a publisher sucks. That marketing sucks. But I was wrong. I learned that lesson the hard way. We'll use me as an example.

When I was a kid all I wanted to do was write stories. A high school teacher of mine showed me that I could actually make money from that kind of thing, and he introduced me to The Writer's Market. And when I was a mere sophomore in high school, I submitted my first stories to magazines.

Still using me as an example, I thought that being a writer was a solitary thing. I was wrong. The first part, the creation and editing, is solitary. But when you try to get it published, you have to be a social creature. And if someone does, indeed, pay you for your work, you have to be even more social. And it becomes really social when you start doing signings and readings. That was a hard lesson for me to learn, but I learned it.

It's hard to write the shit on the back of the book. I used to hate it. Now, I love it. But so many writers don't want to do the social part. I get it, I really do. But it's kind of necessary to the job. I can't tell you how happy I am to have met so many authors I love, from the NYT bestsellers to the folks who publish on Amazon and Lulu. They're great. I rejoice in the friends I have made through this process.

But there is one author who fucking despises the whole business. Don't worry. If you're reading this, I'm not talking about you. The guy I'm talking about is a bestseller, and I can't figure out why.

Rewind to my first job. I worked at the Elmhurst Public Library (which was the library from my Tales from the Library bits from Tabard Inn). I worked there almost 10 years. At one point I was assigned to do periodicals every Friday night. My job would be to first reshelve the magazines and newspapers perused by our patrons. After that, if someone actually used the microfilm or microfiche, I would put them back where they belonged. After that, I had to make sure the magazines and newspapers were in order. After that, I had to go through the new issues of magazines in the red binders because there was this scumbag religious zealot in town who liked hiding their bullshit tracts in new releases. After that, if there were damaged periodicals, I would repair them. After that, there was nothing. So I'd pretend to do work in the back room. That's because they kept their copies of The Writer's Digest back there. (For magazines, it was essentially P-Z.)

I should mention that our periodicals section was supposedly haunted. I never saw anything, but others claimed to have.

I found an interview with a certain author in one issue of TWD. This bestseller's name was John Grisham.

I saw The Firm, and I more or less liked it. It was fun, and it depicted one of the greatest moments of depression I've ever seen. It's when actor Terry Kinney is so full of grief he is sitting in the backyard while a sprinkler constantly sprays his legs, and he just doesn't care. But then I read the book, and it fuckin' blew. It sucked. Hands down, no questions.

So I read this Grisham piece, and he said that he hated writing. I get it, his main job is being a lawyer. But he hates writing? Fuck you, asshole.

Grisham hates writing, and it comes through in his books. I read two more, and that was enough for me. Three strikes, you're out. Yet somehow he's on that bestsellers list when at least fifty more authors in the world should have taken his place.

If you're a writer, and you hate writing, you're in the wrong business. Writing is supposed to be fun. Even the less fun parts are still pretty fun. If you have this talent (or any other talent for that matter), don't waste it. Don't throw it away. Do something.

The day writing is no longer fun for me is the day I'm no longer myself. I've had some writing problems in 2020, and I bitched about them, but I saw it as a problem that needed solving. And I figured it out. And I made it fun, because I like figuring out puzzles. It's a bit awkward when I'm trying to figure out my own shortcomings, but it's still fun, at least in retrospect. Don't waste your talents. Have fun with them. And if you can make a living at it, do so. Or at least try.

Oh yeah. Those two guys in the picture just rocking out and having fun? They're rock stars right now. This is just them having fun with their art as kids. But one of them is Adam Jones, the guitarist for Tool (and the art director for their very disturbing videos). The other is maybe one of the greatest guitarists alive, Tom Morello. He's been in a lot of bands, but you'll probably know him from Rage Against the Machine.

If you're an artist who is burned out on the whole thing, I advise you to think about what drew you to this in the first place. Remember how fun it was,. Then recreate that fun. Don't be cynical. Don't be negative. Just put your fingers on the home keys. Or on the frets. Or on the paint brush. To quote a Romero film of a King book, "Give it the car keys and let it ride!"

PS: Tom Morello has a great show on Lithium (if you get XM) called One Man Revolution. Sometimes he has his activist mom cohosting, which are my favorite episodes. Here is a song he wrote about her, and it's fucking great. And he and Maynard used to play around with music before either one was well known. One of my favorite products of this is Maynard guesting on RATM's "Know Your Enemy."

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #308: NEEDFUL THINGS

 

[So I used to write horror movie reviews for a site called Forced Viewing. It is no longer there. I owed a review a month. This was originally published on the site leading up to the 2016 US election for a very good reason, which will be very clear by the time you're done with this. So with the 2020 election on deck, here is a reprint. I hope it finds you well.]

NEEDFUL THINGS 

Directed by Fraser C. Heston 

1993, 183 min. 

Two stars 

 

 

“EVERYONE is insane EVERYWHERE!” 

 

 

(Warning. This review contains spoilers. Tread with caution if you haven’t seen this movie.) 

 

I remember going to see the movie, NEEDFUL THINGS, in the theater. I couldn’t see how Hollywood could make a good movie out of that awesome book. It was impossible. Sure enough, I was right. At the time I considered it absolute garbage. Fast forward a few years, and TBS is showing the extended cut of the movie. I thought, hey. With more time they could fit more stuff into the movie. It had to be better, right? 

 

Wrong. This movie is an even bigger mess. It makes the theatrical version (which has grown slightly on me) look like a tightly plotted film. 

 

Forgive me. This cut has never been officially released. I reviewed this thing off a VHS recording I made about twenty years ago. The listed time above is an estimation on IMDB. The quality, obviously, wasn’t great. I’m not going to comment on that kind of thing. It can’t be helped. 

 

(On a side note, I just realized this is the second review of an Ed Harris movie in which I refer to myself. I don’t usually do that. Maybe I should just start doing that for Ed Harris movies.) [For the record, the first was THE ABYSS.]

 

Director Fraser C. Heston fucks up from scene one. While I did enjoy the majestic sweep of the opening, the first scene pissed me off. Thankfully it was cut for theaters. Anyway, Ed Harris as Alan Pangborn is helping Norris Ridgewick (Ray McKinnon in his finest performance in a Stephen King movie) with his broken down car. And then a creepy car comes out of nowhere and crashes into them. This leads to a fucking car chase! No. That’s not right. It makes no sense. There is no point to it. It’s certainly not in the book. The only reason I can think of for this scene is so we can meet the hero, Pangborn, sooner. Sorry, Heston. I can wait for that. 

 

We also get treated to a peek at gossipy small town New England long before the actual story starts. It’s cute and quaint, but it slows down the story. It was cut from the theatrical version. Rightfully so. In fact, just about everything they cut from the extended version was the right stuff to cut. Good job, guys. 

 

But the extended cut. It’s insane how fucked up it is. It’s impossible to get a time frame for events. It looks like it’s the end of the day in one scene, but then it’s rush hour in the next, and it’s all treated like it’s the same day. The order of scenes in the theatrical version is also rearranged, adding to the chaos of the extended version. 

 

Want more proof? In the theatrical version a character buys a first edition copy of TREASURE ISLAND signed by Robert Louis Stevenson. For some ungodly reason it is later switched to THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain. No shit. In the theatrical version it’s dubbed over, so you can clearly see him saying HUCK FINN, but you hear TREASURE ISLAND. They didn’t bother to fix this for the extended version. 

 

There were a few good things about the extended version, though. There are a lot of characters in both versions, and the smaller roles don’t get a lot to do in the theatrical cut. In this one they get to explore their stories a bit more. One side story that was fun was Cora Rusk and her love of Elvis. Her needful thing was a bust of the King with a pair of his sunglasses. She serenades it. She wears the glasses. She, uh, sleeps with it. In one scene she makes out with it. I know why they cut it, but it’s just such a bizarre touch that I couldn’t help but like it. 

 

Buster Keeton is being audited by the IRS. This is a great side story, and it is mentioned in the theatrical version, but it doesn’t go deep, as it does here. There’s a great scene in which he tries to bribe Pangborn, and to watch Harris and JT Walsh go at it is really fun. 

 

Enough about the differences. Let’s talk about how awesome every actor is in this. McKinnon plays Norris like King intended: he upped the Barney Fife-ishness dial all the way. Amanda Plummer plays Nettie Cobb insanely well. Vulnerable. Scared. And absolutely insane. JT Walsh plays Buster as an endlessly persecuted, angry, self-entitled asshole with a gambling problem. He’s always sweaty and ranting. It’s great. William Morgan Sheppard is great as the Irish Catholic priest who is always battling with Don S. Davis as a Baptist reverend. There’s an awkward scene between the two of them as they’re each reading, simultaneously, last rites to two women who murdered each other. Frank C. Turner is hilarious as Pete Jerzyck. His reactions to everything are so casually blasé. Just about every line of dialogue he gets is, “Ayuh.” Duncan Fraser plays Hugh Priest exactly as I envisioned from the book: drunk, angry and missing the good ol’ days when he mattered. 

 

And then there’s Lochlyn Munro as John LaPointe. I gotta say, I’ve seen this guy for years in movies, and I could swear his real name is Chip. Google him. He just looks like a Chip. I refuse to believe his name is Lochlyn. 

 

But the best performances come from Harris, Max von Sydow and Bonnie Bedelia. Harris is one of those actors who always does a great job, and this is no exception. He’s a regular guy who gets tough when he needs to be. In an early scene he has to step between Buster and Norris. He talks about how he thought moving here from the big city would be relaxing, that he wouldn’t have to deal with crazy people anymore. That the worst of his job would be getting cats out of trees, but no. “Everyone is insane everywhere!” There’s another scene where Father Meehan is reading to him a threatening letter he received from the Baptists. It’s just so funny that Pangborn can’t help but laugh. He apologizes for it, but it’s clear he’s not taking this seriously. And then there’s the greatest scene in the movie. I’ll get to that later. 

 

Von Sydow plays Leland Gaunt, an antiques dealer who is new to town. He’s from Akron, OH, despite the obvious British accent. Oh yeah, and he’s the devil. His store is full of things that people have wanted their entire lives, and he sells to them . . . for a fee. The monetary cost is always paltry, but he always asks for a favor, and that’s where things get crazy. Von Sydow plays him with demented glee. He’s menacing and cunning. You can sense the evil wafting off of him. And when he’s alone, he has wretched teeth and devilishly long fingernails. He has a habit of holding his hands together, just like Bela Lugosi in WHITE ZOMBIE, when he’s trying to get people to do things he wants them to do. And then there’s this lovely little speech: “The young carpenter from Nazareth? I knew him well. Promising young man. He died badly.” 

 

Bedelia plays Polly Chalmers, the owner of a diner who has awful arthritis. She’s insistent on doing things on her own, and she’s Pangborn’s fiancée. She does a great job of showing a strong small town woman, but the best thing she does in this movie happens later. Her needful thing is an ancient Egyptian amulet that cures her arthritis just so long as she wears on her skin. When she realizes how evil Gaunt is, she takes it off, and you can hear crackling as her hands get gnarled up. There is a look on her face that will give you goosebumps. It’s a horrible sensation that will go through you. It’s equal parts pain and fear. She knows how bad it’s going to get, and it shows on her face as it gets just that bad and worse. It’s so bad that she lets Gaunt put the amulet back on her, knowing everything she knows. 

 

Now, there’s a reason I chose this movie to review this month, and that I’m posting it so close to Election Day. It’s because of the ending. Everyone has gone crazy. They hate those those they believe have wronged them. They’re running mad through the streets of Castle Rock, killing each other and blowing shit up. That’s mostly because Gaunt started selling them guns. As he says himself, “When I started out I was just a peddler moving across the blind face of a distant land. Moving, always moving. Always gone. And in the end I’d always offer weapons. And they’d always take them.” 

 

It culminates when Father Meehan and Rev. Rose are squaring off against each other, ready to fight to the death. Pangborn points his gun at them, demanding that they stop. They won’t; they’re dead set on killing each other. Finally Pangborn empties his gun into the air, screaming like in POINT BREAK. And he delivers a wonderful speech that should be etched into the minds of everyone who goes out into the world to vote in this election. As Gaunt sits calmly on his porch, smoking, Pangborn tells the town about how Gaunt came here to destroy them. He runs on hate. He’s used it to turn them against each other with their hatred and their greed and their prejudice. And Harris puts his all into this speech. It’s a beautiful thing to behold. 

 

Well. Does that remind you of someone, America? I swear, I feel like Ed Harris at the end of this movie. I want to grab you all and scream in your faces about how these asshole politicians are manipulating you with your own views. 

 

There’s a lot of other great stuff in this movie. Nettie vs. Wilma (poor Raider!). Norris vs. Buster (NA-NA-NA-NA-NAAAAAH-NA!). Hugh vs. Henry (should have fixed that juke box, dude). Buster vs. Myrtle (hey, these things happen). Buster vs. Gaunt (shouldn’t have called him Buster). And so on. One thing I was hoping for from the extended version was the appearance of Kiefer Sutherland reprising his role as Ace Merrill per the book, but ah well. The movie was very different from the book, anyway. [I've tried to keep this review free of edits that would make me sound better. I've only fixed typos so far. But I have to say, I think Kiefer returning as Ace would very much be a Stephen King version of Cobra Kai, and I really wish that would happen.]

 

The thing to remember is that this is a comedy. Once you realize that and make peace with it, you can recognize yourself. We all want things. We’re greedy. We’re selfish. I believe that someone could do what Gaunt did in this movie. People would go for it. Then again, my view of the human race has always been pessimistic. 

 

Think of it as Ray Bradbury writing THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. Demented is the proper word to describe this movie. It is very dark and very funny. I’ll give you one last thought, and it’s from Leland Gaunt himself. This is just after Buster sacrificed himself to blow up Gaunt. That didn’t work out so well, of course. 

 

Gaunt drags himself out of the ruins of his shop, dusting himself off. He sees Pangborn and Polly staring at him. Gaunt says, “You know, there are days I really hate this job. This is not my best work, not by a long shot. Oh sure, a few murders and a couple of rather lovely explosions. I would hardly call it a rousing success, but what the hell? I’ll be back. In the meantime you and Polly, you are two terrific kids, and you’ll marry her. Trust me. She’s a lovely girl, Alan. You’ll have a wonderful family. Oh, by the way, give my regards to your grandson. Bob will be his name. International Trade his game. I’ll see him in Jakarta, 2053. August 14th. Ten am. A nice sunny day. We’ll make headlines.” 

 

“Terrific?” “Trust me?” Does that indeed sound familiar, America? File under O for “oh fuck.” Caution: You are now leaving the Twilight Zone . . .