If it's gonna get bitched up, I want to do the bitching up.
 I don't want to let somebody else do it.
STEPHEN KING, 1980

THE RISE

"The Stand" has always been considered author Stephen King's alltime masterpiece.
  A mammoth book of biblical proportions (in more ways than one), it tells the all-
too-believable story of an unstoppable virus that almost completely wipes out the
earth's population.  The survivors (who seem to have a kind of cosmically-granted
immunity to the germ) are drawn through prophetic dreams to choose between an
old black woman (good) and a demonic, grinning boogeyman (evil), as the battle
between the two extremes winds it's way toward a final showdown on the plains
of Armageddon (aka Las Vegas).    Along the way, King creates some of the
most memorable and realistic characters in the history of written fiction.

Everyone can find someone to identify with in "The Stand" (often multiple characters),
and just like those characters, the book has garnered a wide ranging cult fan base, from
devout Christians (who admire it's religious subtext) to goth vampires (who get off on
Randall Flagg).   To call it King's greatest book is an understatement.   It's one of the
greatest books every written, period.  To this day, it remains my alltime favorite book.
 From the beginning, the story cried out for an equally epic cinematic adaption.

  Predictably, adapting it into a releasable 2-3 hour format would be like trying to
turn the Encyclopedia Britannica into a pocket paperback.  But when Stephen King
met George Romero (director of the infamous "Living Dead" horror films), it seemed
like the perfect match, and they both had a great enthusiasm to collaborate on
several projects.  But the one they were most enthusiastic about was "The Stand":

I'm very excited about The Stand.  We're going to try to produce that with
or without a studio's involvement.  There might be some studio involvement
up front, but it's a lot different when you go to a studio and say, "This movie's
going to cost $10 million," and you already have six.  And getting that
first six doesn't involved the studios at all.   (George Romero, 1980)

King and Romero decided that their first project
together would be a horror anthology film:

Basically, he took an option that's kind of open ended.  First we're doing another
project, called Creepshow.  Our idea here is simply to do something original that
we can do on a low budget, get it out there and hopefully make a profit.  It will
show people that we're for real.  Then we can go ahead and make a deal with one
of the majors for the production money for The Stand.   The money to do The Stand
would be there right now, actually; the question is one of how much control over the
project we can get, so that George, in particular, can do the kind of film he wants to
do.  We  want to give it every chance; if no one likes the picture, at least it won't be
a result of studio interference.  On the other side of that, if we make a good picture
and people like it,I'd hate to see some vice-president in charge of ass-scratching
at one of the majors come out at the end saying how this wonderful idea was
all his simply because  he controlled the money.  So basically, we're doing
Creepshow as one step up to doing The Stand.  (Stephen King, 1980)

One would think that studio executives would have had enough sense to see the true
potential of the King/Romero partnership, but then again, we are talking about studio
executives (aka clueless talentless vultures).   King made it clear that he wouldnt
consider handing the task of adapting the book into a screenplay over to another writer:

 I wouldn't trust it to anybody else.  In fact, I've been offered option deals
on The Stand before and I've turned them down.  Some of them have been for
pretty good money.  But this is maybe the one thing I've done where I want as much
creative control over the movie as I can get.  If it's gonna get bitched up, I want to
do the bitching up.  I don't want to let somebody else do it.  (Stephen King, 1980)

But the monumental task of trimming his epic into a workable
length for a theatrical film proved beyond King's grasp:

Length is a problem.  Again, it's a problem because like the last time George
and I talked about it, I said, "Okay, this is what we've got.  It's been through two
drafts now and now it's down to a length of what would probably be in shooting
time about four hours."  In other words, 40 minutes longer than Godfather II.
 So I say, "Okay, we're at this point where we gotta lighten this boat, George.
 We gotta throw some people overboard.  Who's expendable?"   And he says,
"Well, let me think about it."  So he thought about it and I thought about it and
I came back to him.  And there's this little kid in the book who ... pals around
with one of the characters ... I said, "Well, Joe can go."  And George kind of says,
"Well, I like him."  We tried to get rid of a couple of people and they didn't
want to stay down.  So that's where we are and we're trying to decide what
to do next.  We've got some places to go now with it.  (Stephen King, 1983)

By the mid 80s, a final screenplay still proved elusive
to King, and Romero's "Laurel Entertainment"
(co-owned with his producer partner Richard
Rubenstein) continued to hold on to the option:

Let me run this down as well as I can.  When I met George Romero, I really liked him.
 We came to an agreement that we would try to do this thing, so I wrote a draft.   The
original draft was half as long as the book, which means that instead of 800 or 900
pages of novel, I had 400 pages of screenplay.  The rule of thumb for screenplays
is that one page equals one minute of screen time.  A 400 page  screenplay comes
out to be something like six hours and forty minutes on the screen.  Can't be done.

Another problem is what one Warner Brothers executive referred to as "spill and fill",
which is one of the ugliest phrases I've ever heard.  What it means is that a picture
cannot make money unless it can be turned over enough times in one day, and particu-
larly during that time period when there's someone other than people using Golden Age
passes, JDs skipping school, and people who have come from their bowling league in the
afternoon to see the picture.  You've got to be able to get in two evening shows, and
sometimes three in the big cities.  I heard from one Warner Brothers guy that the
reason The Shining  didn't get into the black until release abroad was that it was
two hours  and fifteen minutes long, so in a lot of cities the last show was cut.
After eleven pm, the babysitter goes on double time, and it becomes a problem.

So I did a second draft of the screenplay, and it came out about 300 pages long.
This was better.  We also talked a little about the way to go with it, the novel-for-
television idea.  But the networks don't want to see the end of the world, particularly
in prime time.  Advertisers don't want to sponsor the end of the world.   Cable didn't
have enough money.  For a long time I pushed for doing it in two sections -- Stand I
and Stand II.   I thought it would be possible to build a big artificial climax in the
middle that would satisfy audiences for the time being.  If it was all shot at once,
the films could be released maybe three months or a season apart.   The final decision
was to go for a very long feature film.  I have to cut my 300 pages of screenplay in half.
  I think I know how to do it now, but I don't relish the idea because I know that some
of the characters will get squeezed.  The film is going to happen.   (Stephen King, 1985)

After several failed attempts at a workable draft,
King finally relented and allowed consideration of an-
other writer to give it a try.   Enter screenwriter Rospo
Pallenberg, who was hired to write his own adaption
based directly on the novel and not on King's drafts.

We spoke to more than one screenwriter.  But ultimately we decided on Rospo
because he appeared to have the best grasp of the problems of adapting the book.
 He was an out-and-out fan of the book.  In fact, when Rospo walked into the
first meeting, he was carrying with him the original paperback edition.
He said he was a fan and he had proof in his hands.  (Richard Rubenstein)

Pallenberg, who is still best known for his incredible screenplay
to John Boorman's brilliant "Excalibur", used his enthusiasm for
the source material to good advantage, but went at the project
in a much different way than King had attempted:

I think in '82 or '81 I had read The Stand and thought it would make an excellent
film.  I read it on my own recognizance, and I actually mentioned it to Dino De
Laurentiis with whom I worked at the time screenwriting.  Nothing panned out
from that.  Then I  was a bit surprised that quite a few years later I was approached
by Warner Brothers. I felt that most of the King films had been badly adapted.
I personally like The Stand  because I had read it own my own, without anybody
asking me to look at it's movie potential, and I thought it had movie potential.
It is a spiritual quest telling  of the strangeness about the world in which we enter.

You collapse and reinvent, and sparks fly...  I had to do some reinvention in the
stitchery.  In other words, it's like taking strings out of a tapestry.  You bunch it
together and you see that you have to make certain changes to make it work.  I
think you have to reinvent for the cinema form, and if you don't, you're doomed.
 People are not willing, or maybe slightly afraid, to change his work.   (Rospo Pallenberg)

Pallenberg came up with a screenplay that would clock the film in at close
to three hours, but which was lean, trim, and which actually managed to contain
many of the book's most memorable sequences (and inventing a few new ones),
while trimming out a lot of excess material that King couldn't bear to part with:

The point is, I think Rospo was successful where Steve wasn't in terms of being able
to get some distance on the material and make those decisions that needed to be
made, in terms of what stays in the movie and what gets left out ... Basically what
I'm looking to do, and I think Rospo has been successful in doing, is not being
literal in the translation but reproducing the feel.   (Richard Rubenstein)

Pallenberg was happy.  Warner's was happy.  Steve was happy.  Rospo had
successfully made the tough decisions to make it into a manageable screenplay.
 We were in a fine tuning stage, which was great after 10 years.  (Richard Rubenstein)

Unfortunately, the studio backing the project was Warner Brothers.   And,
showing the normal cluelessness of that film company's brain-dead "suits",
they backed out on the project, just as it was about to finally come together.

(There will be a special place in cinematic Hell for the pathetic idiots
that run Warners, count on it.  Witness their moronic "digital censorship" of
Stanley Kubrick's last film for undeniable proof that they have no souls.)

At that point, it looked like the film might never be made (you would think a King
project would have more "juice" than that, especially one as long anticipated as
"The Stand") ... and then, ABC offered King the chance to make it into a 6-hour mini-
series for television.   Pallenberg's trim and effective screenplay was put aside, and
King took all of four months to construct a brand new screenplay (freshly watered down
for television standards), and Mick Garris was hired to direct.  This irritated many fans
of the book (me included), who had been waiting for over a decade, anticipating a
Romero version of the tale.   The director of the dead answered the controversy thusly:

Anyone who said it was going to be my next film was wrong to begin with.
I mean, we had the rights to the book.  And when I first met Steve, he gave me
a copy of The Stand, and he wrote on it  'Maybe we'll get to work together
some day and maybe on this.'  Ever since that I always thought it would be
somehow proper to direct The Stand.  And I'd love it, but it's gotten real difficult.

The reason for not having Romero direct the film was cited as a "scheduling
conflict", the same excuse used earlier when he passed on directing "Pet
Semetary", although fortunately that turned out well, since Mary Lambert's
version was great.  Ironically, when asked what he would have done differently
had he directed "Pet", Romero was quoted as having replied with a sarcastic
laugh:  "I would have done it better."   I wonder what his response would be if
asked the same question about "The Stand", and if he would be so blunt in his
critique of King's squeaky clean mega-dud.  Something tells me he wouldnt go there,
for fear of offending his good pal Steve.  Sometimes silence is better, eh George?

  So, with one fateful and unfortunate decision, "The Stand" switched paths and
headed towards its sad destiny ... to become a wishy-washy miniseries, instead of
the graphic R-rated horror epic it deserved to be, and would have been, if they
had stuck it out a little longer, and stuck with the far superior Pallenberg version.

THE FALL

I had always thought that the logical move in adapting "The Stand" into a
film would be to work a deal with HBO or Showtime to make it into a 6-12 hour
miniseries (directed by Romero, of course) so that it could be told in the same
horrific fashion as the book, with enough time to tell the whole story properly.
A virus wiping out everyone you know is not a pretty thing, and the first section
of the film (dealing with the plague decimating the populace) should have been
every bit as emotionally shattering as the missiles firing off while the masses
watched in stunned silence in the great 80s TV film, "The Day After".  It should
capture the emptiness of the world, the deadly silence ... the REAL horror ...

But instead, King "jumped like a hungry trout" when ABC waved 6 hours at him,
and was more than happy to knuckle under to Standards and Practices and water
the film down as much as they demanded.  Unfortunately, whether on purpose
or accidentally, the film took on a cheesy TV series look that completely shattered
any sense of "reality" that might have been achieved:  It was "The Stand - Lite".

And then there were the numerous uncredited cameos and star turns, as if King
were trying to do his own version of "The Greatest Story Ever Told".  When you
see Kareem Abdul Jabbar as the Monster Shouter, you think about a basketball
player playing a role, not about a man in the real world, broadcasting doom
(like the religious wackos in Richard Sandler's "The Gods of Times Square".)  After
a while, the cameos overshadowed the story and you're waiting for the next surprise
celeb to pop his head into the scene (although Sam Raimi was a great Bobby Terry).
  For the most part though, the cameos further emphasized the film's shallowness.

What's unforgivable is how many scenes that could (and should) have been great were
brought down by (to be blunt) truly terrible acting.   For example, take one of the worst
scenes in the show (please!), the Rae Flowers radio program.   Now, this happened to
be one of my favorite scenes in the book, when it was RAY Flowers (King neutered him
in the miniseries for some silly reason).   As the stormtroopers barge in, our valiant Ray
indignantly refused to stop broadcast, yelling out "I think not!" until they blew him away.
It's a highpoint of the book, and I had hoped it would be adapted well in the film.   I had
always pictured the Brit-accented talk radio host Michael Jackson in the role (though lately
Ive thought that Alan Colmes could do it too, with that Ichabod Crane-ish face).  Instead,
King gave the part to Kathy Bates, who proceeded to chain-smoke as she took callers
in a deadpan fashion (maybe it was her weak attempt to mimic "Barry Champlain").
This was ridiculous enough, but to make matters worse, King/Garris chose to cut to
Frannie (Molly Ringwald, the 80's bratpack's most overrated actress) and her father
as they sat listening in "horror" to the broadcast.   The problem is, Molly Ringwald
apparently couldnt convey a look of horror if she had a gun held to her head ... she
opened her eyes (and lips) wide, but her face remained bland and unconvincing, as
did the "action" in the studio.   Ed Wood couldn't have flubbed the scene any worse.

In another sequence, Frannie and Harold (Corin Nemec, who was a passable Harold)
were making plans on where to go, and they played a record.   The song, "Don't Dream
It's Over" by Crowded House, is one of the most heartbreakingly powerful rock-pop
songs of all time.   It's words and mood were perfect for the scene, and it was the only
point in the film where you got a sense of the true emotional horror of the terrible
events being portrayed, and it did inspire tears.  In fact, it could have been a truly
shattering sequence, except that Ringwald leaned her head over wistfully ... and, again,
her face remained blank and passive.   Mind you, this is a girl who had just buried her
beloved father, who was secretly pregnant, and who was now one of the few people
left alive in the entire world (not to mention that she didn't know if she might contract
the virus herself at any time, or pass it on to her baby) ... I think she would be just a
wee bit more emotionally disturbed than that, eh?   What would have been much better
would be for her to listen to the song's lyrics, realize their ironic meaning, and then ...
suddenly burst into tears (with Harold trying to comfort her with a shaking hand, and
fumbling it, of course).  A beautiful moment was lost (though recovered a moment later,
when the scene switched to a teddy bear on an ocean shore at twilight, a wonderful
and haunting image).  I would give King credit for the brilliance of the song choice, but
according to the DVD commentary track, it was Mick Garris' idea.   King was going to
back the scene with ... "Fun Fun Fun" by the Beach Boys ... it truly boggles the mind ...

Another thing that floored me was how little understanding King seemed
to have about the song in the book, written by Larry Underwood, called
"Baby Can You Dig Your Man?"   The impression in the novel was that it was
a soulful, Neil-Diamond-esque ballad that probably had a really good hook, the
kind that sticks in your brain for days.   You got the idea that Larry did have
some talent and might have been a star if the plague hadn't struck (and if he
could curb his self-destructive streak).  Couldn't they have spent a LITTLE bit
more money, and gotten a REAL composer to write a REAL song that was GOOD?
Imagine if Springsteen or Dylan or Robbie Robertson (or even Neil Diamond)
had been hired to take the lyrics and right a great song to it?   In a logical
world, maybe ... instead, King/Garris chose to have it made into a plastic,
vacuous, and completely forgettable piece of disco-esque fluff that wouldn't
even make the top 100, much less number 1.  It played for about 10 seconds
as he crossed the Brooklyn Bridge.    How can one incorporate rock music into
his writing so brilliantly, and then flub it so completely when adapting it
to the screen?   I just dont understand it.  Stephen King, you should be
ashamed of yourself.  The song deserved MUCH better than that.
(Pallenberg conveyed Larry's love of music extremely well ... see below)

And then we come to the most unforgivable goof of all:  Randall Flagg.
Now, I know that King had him pictured as "every man" and what not, but
he seemed to have forgotten one very vital thing:  he was supposed to be
SCARY.  My choices:  Michael Madsen, Willem Dafoe, or even Robert Duvall
(who was the earlier choice, and who might very well have played him in
the Romero film).   Jamey Sheridan's Flagg couldn't scare a rabbit.  In fact,
he was so supremely UN-frightening that they had to resort to transforming
him into a literal demon in the last episode (nice makeup job, but the Flagg
of the book didnt need that, his grin was enough to freeze your heart, and
that COULD have been conveyed if they had put a good actor in the part).
In a film almost completely devoid of fright, Sheridan's weak performance
almost totally negated the few good things that I could say about the film.

Consider this quote from makeup artist Steve Johnson considering the
initial difficulty they had with short-haired Sheridan's clean-cut image:

 He's so used to playing good guys.  He's always the father.
It was like what were we going to do to make him evil?
One suggestion I had on the outset was to give him more
hair, at least.  That's not necessarily an evil attribute;
but, I thought it would take some of the soft edge off
of him.  So he always appears with a really nice wig
we had made.  On top of that, he appears in several
different versions of a demon.  (Steve Johnson, 1994)

First off, what was it about Sheridan that got him the part?   Was he given the role,
and then someone suddenly realized they had just hired Pat Boone to play the
"Walkin' Dude"?   So they slapped a "really nice wig" on his head, and made him up
as "several different versions of a demon", in a weak attempt to make Sheridan
scary.   The Flagg in the book was evil personified, he glowed with it,  he was
a shadow-man with an evil leer, not a Sunday School teacher with a shaggy wig.

There were a few things I thought were done well:  Gary Sinise was incredible,
I can't imagine them finding a better Stu Redman.   Ditto Matt Frewer as Trashy.
Miguel Ferrer was a great Lloyd Henreid (though I had him pictured more along the
lines of a Vincent Gallo, with the haunted eyes and pale face), and Hap and the
boys were perfectly cast.  In fact, the first 10 minutes (Campion's escape, "Don't
Fear the Reaper", and Hap's Station) were so good that you really hoped it was
going to deliver on the promise. Even ole Joe Bob Briggs showed up (on his way to
his best known role to date, as the "fucking Momo" in Martin Scorsese's "Casino").

Unfortunately, that hope started fading fast, and except for a scene here
and there, it got worse and worse.  At (long) last, the final scene took place
outside a baby nursery, with Mother Abigail's beatific smiling face floating
in midair as she said something "profound" and everyone cried and Snuffy
Walden's low-budget Ry Cooder guitar strings tugged at your heart strings
(and my stomach strings) ... I almost expected E.T. to trot out, with Tiny Tim
following, saying "God Bless Us, Everyone" while handing out Zuzu's petals.
  It's a painfully bad and overwrought ending, not even good as "camp".

At that point (once I got the massive nausea under control), the truth became
undeniable, and I'll say it flat out:  King/Garris had their heads planted firmly in
their asses when they did this miniseries.   King blew it to such an extreme degree
that he should have been banned from any movie set where his work was being
adapted.   But alas, he went on to rework "The Shining" into an ABC miniseries
a couple of years later (since he had always whined about how Kubrick "ruined" it,
even though that version is now considered one of the great horror masterpieces
of all time).  And sure enough, he cast Danny with a goofy-looking, buck-toothed
and extremely irritating kid (ironically, he looked more like he would be Shelley
Duvall's offspring, while Danny Lloyd looked more like Rebecca DeMornay's son!)
 While he did stick closer to the book, the miniseries was dull and non-scary, and,
amazingly, it ended with a scene at a graduation that was even more cloying and
nauseating than the nursery scene in "The Stand"!  That was when I swore I would
never watch another film adapted by King for TV.  No "Storm of the Century", no
"Rose Red", no no NO.  For all I know, they got even worse.  I'll never find out.

THE UNRELEASED

Which brings us to all the proof you will need to convince you of how criminally
BAD the miniseries was, and how much better the Romero version would have
been.   I was going to critique the screenplay here, but I dont want to spoil
it for you, and I also want everyone to form their own opinions (pro or con).

Suffice to say that I loved at least 95% of it, and that admiration only wavered
in the last few pages of the screenplay, where the incidents with Tom's hair and
Nadine's baby strained credulity (to say the least).  However, maybe that would
have been changed during production.   It wouldn't have mattered really, because
the power of what had come before was so great that I would have forgiven it's
faults.  Just the fact that Pallenberg was able to trim this epic into such a lean,
mean machine (and to portray Flagg as he was in the book, as a very scary Walkin'
Dude) merits him some kind of Oscar for lost screenplays.   It's a work of art, and a
pleasure to read, and I'm glad I was able to imagine what "The Stand - The Movie"
would have been like if worthless Warner Brothers hadn't dropped the project.

Also, pay close attention to Pallenberg's treatment of Larry's music ... when he
gently teaches Leo how to put his fingers on the frets of the guitar and play,
and the kid turns out to be a prodigy ... then imagine it with "Bound for Glory"
type photography, and a spare acoustic guitar on the soundtrack very quietly,
as quietly and delicately as a light breeze (even Snuffy Walden's dull score
would have worked here).  Music is the universal language, and it's how Larry
connects with Leo, who is mute (until he meets the Mother).  Larry has a
true love of music in this version, and his sad longing for it is quite touching.
(I can imagine Peter Weller or Peter Greene in the part.)

That is the kind of approach that could have elevated the Romero/Pallenberg
version far above the bloodless (literally) TV version, and in fact into an artistic
realm rarely touched in "horror" films.  There are many other sequences that had
me thinking "yes, EXACTLY, he nailed it!!"  But I'll leave them for you to discover.

So, enjoy the screenplay, and mourn the loss of a classic horror film.

 Then, go play frisbee with your "Stand" DVD,
as you'll never look at it the same way again.

 BACK TO:

THE STAND: THE PALLENBERG VERSION

 SUBTERRANEAN CINEMA