Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (27 page)

Source:
The Dead Zone
novel 

The son of Herb and Vera, a teacher, he was the boyfriend of Sarah Bracknell, whom he intended to marry. On the night of 29 October 1970 he was seriously injured in a car accident and left in a coma. He awoke in May 1975 to find Sarah married to another man. He appeared to have developed a psychic ability with which he could intermittently see things that were happening elsewhere or that would happen. In November 1975, using these powers, he unmasked Frank Dodd as the Cleaves Mills “Destroyer.” In mid-1976 he tutored Chuck Chatsworth. He met Greg Stillson at a 1976 political rally and had a vision of Stillson causing a nuclear war. After grappling with the issue he became determined to kill Stillson and attempted to do so in Timmons, New Hampshire on 12 December 1976 but was shot during the attempt. Stillson was unhurt but disgraced himself and his career was at end. Smith, lying mortally wounded, was able to hold Stillson’s hand and confirm this new future. 

Source:
The Dead Zone
unproduced screenplay 

⁵²
Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide
, Stephen Jones, p.30 

Desperation – Screenplay (Undated) 

King adapted his novel
Desperation
in a screenplay, a copy of which is held in Box 2289 of the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine, Orono. As this Box is available to the public those interested may read the 133-page script at the Library. 

A later version of King’s screenplay was produced for a 23 May 2006 premiere on the US ABC-TV network. King did three feature drafts before Mick Garris put the script into television format. Garris directed the mini-series versions of
The Stand
and
The Shining
and the films
Sleepwalkers
,
Quicksilver Highway
and
Riding the Bullet
. ABC has a long relationship with King, having delivered
The Stand, The Shining, Storm of the Century
,
Rose Red
and
Kingdom Hospital
to viewing audiences. 

The telemovie starred Ron Perlman as Collie Entragian; Tom Skerritt as John Edward Marinville; Steven Weber
⁵³
as Steve Ames; and Charles Durning as Tom Billingsley. It rates below this author’s estimation with members of
www.imdb.com
giving it only 5.3 out of a possible 10. The DVD was released in 2006. 

According to King,
Desperation
addresses, “…the question of why, if there is a God, such terrible things happen” (King also classifies
The Stand
and
The Green Mile
as other of his works on this theme).
⁵⁴
Michael Collings states the novel reflects: 

…King at his best, with incremental horrors, children (and adults) in peril, monsters in human form, and a quintessential quasi-alien entity devoted to evil. It is significant that here King approaches making explicit the spiritual elements implicit in the conclusion to novels such as
Needful Things
; overt horror gives way to an understated sense of restitution and restoration.
⁵⁵
 

Stephen J. Spignesi describes
Desperation
as, “…a sprawling tale of a band of … pilgrims? … who come face to face with a minion of a possibly eternal evil and who must depend on the wisdom and God-centeredness of a young boy who just may have a direct line to the Big Guy himself.”
⁵⁶
 

The screenplay version of this story
⁵⁷
concerns an ancient creature, which is released from its tomb. Desperation was a small mining town in the Nevada Desert and most of the inhabitants had been brutally murdered by the town policeman, whose body had been taken over by the evil entity. In the aftermath the cop, Collie Entragian, arrested and brought passing travelers into town. The victims soon realized that they were nothing more than future hosts for the entity, known as Tak, which had escaped from an old mine shaft accidentally re-opened at the China Pit, a nearby mining site. Tak had to keep new hosts available because it quickly wore out its victims’ bodies. 

In a flashback we learn that Chinese miners had uncovered Tak at the Rattlesnake #2 mine in Desperation in the 1850s. Exposed to Tak, the Chinese turned on and killed their white overseers and each other. A cave-in shortly thereafter trapped Tak once more. 

David Carver, a devoutly religious schoolboy and one of Tak’s modern-day captives escaped from his cell. Carver felt he had direct contact with God following a series of promises he had made after one of his friends was seriously injured in a car accident. David released the other prisoners and the group retrieved weapons, heading to the Chinese Theater to plan their next move. A local, Tom Billingsley, related the history of the mine to the others but was then savaged and mortally wounded by a cougar. Tak, it turned out, had the ability to control all manner of creatures.  

David then led the survivors out to the mine. Meanwhile Tak, having exhausted the body of Entragian, entered the body of David’s mother Ellen but found it quickly failed and next chased Mary Jackson. He failed to secure her body and was forced to enter a buzzard. 

The group reached the China Pit and set explosives. The buzzard attacked and killed David’s father. John Marinville, an author with a checkered past, went into the shaft on a suicide mission and set off the explosion, once again sealing Tak in its rocky tomb. King specifically notes that David Carver’s faith was not destroyed by the deaths of his entire family and the events in Desperation. 

No timelines are given for the modern day action in the screenplay but the “flashback” section is set in the 1850s. In the novel the modern timeline is July of 1995 and the events with the Chinese miners occurred on 21 September 1859. 

We are treated with a number of links to King’s other fictional works. For instance, Collie Entragian had writer John Marinville sign an autograph for him as “Your Number One Fan.” This is, of course, how Annie Wilkes described herself to
her
captive Paul Sheldon in
Misery
. And, when Steve Ames saw the dead bodies in the mining company lab he stopped, “…rubbing his mouth like Jack Torrance.” Of course this reference is to the lead character of
The Shining
. Torrance is also a character in
Before the Play
, the prequel to the classic haunted hotel novel. 

Cynthia Smith, one of those terrorized by Tak in Desperation, also appears in
Rose Madder
, in which Norman Daniels attacked her at the Daughters and Sisters picnic. The screenplay also notes that Cynthia reads Dean Koontz. Koontz is a best-selling horror writer and is sometimes described as “the poor man’s Stephen King.” 

Of course, both the novel and screenplay versions of
Desperation
link with the altered reality novel
The Regulators
, in which 40-50 Chinese miners were killed when the Rattlesnake Number One mine in Desperation, Nevada collapsed. The term, “can tah,” important in this story is repeated by the Manni in
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
. 

One point of interest in both the novel and screenplay is that the writer, John Marinville (played by
The Dead Zone
star Tom Skerritt), was a great Harley fan and was traveling cross-country on one when Entragian captured him. King is known to be a Harley fan and owner. In 1997, shortly after
Desperation
was published, King traveled across Australia on a Harley. A picture of him with the Harley was once proudly displayed in the foyer of his office in Bangor. He followed up with a similar trip in 2006. 

Overall the screenplay is faithful to the novel. There are few changes and most of those are minor. For instance, in the novel Peter Jackson was shot dead by Entragian but in the screenplay Entragian broke his neck.  

It is unlikely that the screenplay will be published in book format, as was
Storm of the Century
, as the story itself exists in the form of the novel. In the meantime readers can enjoy that novel and also the audiobook version, read by
Misery
and
Dolores Claiborne
actress Kathy Bates.
⁵⁸
 

Tak: An Eternal Evil 

An ancient Evil that lived in an ini* in the old China Pit near Desperation, Nevada. It could inhabit the bodies of people and animals and cause them to do its bidding. Its influence also caused people to grow and degenerate rapidly, causing death in a matter of hours or days. John Marinville may have killed it when he blew up the ini in July 1995. 

Source:
Desperation
(Novel) 

A creature that took over the bodies of an assay crew member, Entragian (using him to kill most of the inhabitants of Desperation), and Ellen Carver; intended to take over Mary Jackson but was foiled; and lastly took over a buzzard. It spoke the Language of the Unformed and controlled animals by using can tahs. Tom Billingsley speculated it was a “waisin” or earth spirit that had nearly escaped 150 years earlier, during mining of the China Pit near Desperation, Nevada. At that time, when it sensed the outside world within its reach, it projected reddish smoke that drove those who came in contact crazy. John Marinville trapped it forever by blowing up the ini. 

Source:
Desperation
(Unproduced Screenplay) 

An evil entity, it took over an autistic boy, Seth Garin in the small town of Wentworth, Ohio. It fed on death and hurt the people around it. Seth eventually outsmarted it and it died on 15 July 1996 because it had no host. 

Source:
The Regulators 

*ini: A cupped hole in the floor of an isolated part of the China Pit in front of the pirin moh (“a weird Lovecraftian building”), it is lined with hooks of protruding stone and can tahs (stone statues of animals) are littered around it. Tak lived there and David Carver thought it went through into another dimension. The hole at the bottom of the ini is no more than an inch across. 

⁵³
Weber has made quite a career in King adaptations, also appearing as Clark Rivingham (in the
You Know They Got a Hell of a Band
episode of
Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King
); 8x10 Man (in the
Revelations of Becka Paulson
episode of
The Outer Limits
); and Jack Torrance (in the mini-series of
The Shining
) 

⁵⁴
On Writing
, Stephen King, in part 10 of the ‘On Writing’ section 

⁵⁵
Horror Plum’d
, Michael Collings, p.378 

⁵⁶
The Essential Stephen King: The Complete and Uncut Edition
. Stephen J. Spignesi, p.92 

⁵⁷
All detail in this section is from the screenplay held at the Fogler Library 

⁵⁸
Desperation
, Penguin Audiobooks, 1996
 

Dolan’s Cadillac – Unproduced Screenplay (Undated)
 

Box 1012 at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine, Orono contains five pages of a screenplay by Stephen King, adapting his short story
Dolan’s Cadillac
. It is unclear when this screenplay was written and there are only five pages, representing the initial action in the story, a montage marking the passage of seven years and the very beginning of the aftermath to that initial action. As Box 1012 is a public box those interested may read these few pages at the Library. 

Dolan’s Cadillac
was originally serialized in the
Castle Rock
newsletter (edited initially by Stephanie Leonard and later by Christopher Spruce) over five issues, from February to June 1985. King revised it for publication in a Limited Edition by Lord John Press in 1989 and that revision appeared in the 1993 collection,
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
. 

The following is a short summary of the partial screenplay. In this America Under Siege tale a woman starts her vehicle and is instantly killed by a car bomb. It is 1968 and Elizabeth Robinson, who had previously seen something (just what is not revealed), had been interviewed by the police. Shortly afterward a mobster, Jim Dolan, had her killed. 

By 1975 Elizabeth’s widower Dave had spent seven years focussed on the man he rightly thought responsible for his wife’s death. Although he lived in Las Vegas he had taken another apartment in Los Angeles for his frequent visits there researching Dolan and had also purchased a truck, which he left in that city. The script ends with Dave attending the 1975 Nevada Teachers’ Convention with Dana, Dean and Steve. 

Not surprisingly, as most of the five pages cover a rolling montage conveying the passage of the seven years, there is only limited information to present. The original story did not specify years for the events; but the gap between Elizabeth’s death and Dolan’s demise was nine years. For whatever reason King deliberately chose in the screenplay to set the killing in 1968 and there may well have been two more years of movie action before Dolan and his Cadillac reached their demise! 

In the montage Dolan is shown with different women in 1968, 1970, 1972 and 1974,
with the clear intent of comparing Dolan’s continued life, and “love” life, to Dave Robinson’s life without Elizabeth. In 1968 Dolan had black hair but it had turned silvery-white by 1974. Dolan’s cars in the montage also change with the years, from a 1968 Cadillac DeVille sedan to a 1970 Fleetwood Brougham, a 1972 Fleetwood Limousine and finally to a 1974 silver-white short stretch limo. 

Noted King expert Stephen J. Spignesi states
Dolan’s Cadillac
is “…King’s modern update of Poe’s 1846 short story ‘The Cask of Amontillado’.”
⁵⁹
The leading King academic, Michael Collings also acknowledges King’s debt to Edgar Allen Poe saying, “King updates his story, amplifying his protagonist’s motivation and suffering.”
⁶⁰
Tyson Blue, another leading King critic, wrote a particularly incisive review of the story in his
The Unseen King
⁶¹
. While readers will find this out-of-print book difficult to find that particular criticism alone would make the effort worthwhile. 

For those whose memory of the original short story has dimmed the following is a summary of the
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
version.  

In which a man takes revenge for the death of his wife. Elizabeth Robinson, a first grade teacher was in the wrong place at the wrong time and witnessed a crime committed by James Dolan. She agreed to testify against him but before she could was killed when her car was blown up. Her husband then began watching Dolan’s movements in Las Vegas and California and planning his revenge. Nine years after Elizabeth’s death, he got the opportunity to deliver on a plan. He secured a summer job working with a highway repair gang. On a long weekend when the roadworks were halted for the holiday, Robinson dug a large hole and created a false detour. Dolan, on one of his regular trips to the West Coast in his Cadillac, crashed into the hole. Robinson then filled the hole, complete with Dolan and Cadillac, but not before taunting Dolan with the possibility that he might just let him out. Robinson returns to his normal life. 

The key change from King’s original story is the acquisition of a first name by Robinson (“Dave”). In both versions of the short story King does not provide it, although Harvey Blocker, his foreman at the Las Vegas Streets and Highway Department gave him the nickname “Bubba.” 

Elizabeth’s car in the script was a 1965 Chevrolet, whereas in the stories it was a 1968 Chevrolet. This change is presumably because it was unlikely a teacher would have a brand new model car in the 1968 setting of the movie.  

There are no links from this screenplay, or indeed the other versions of
Dolan’s Cadillac
to any other King work of fiction. In many ways this is a relatively unusual piece of King fiction, a tale of cold revenge in the crime genre into which King delves but rarely (for instance,
The Fifth Quarter
,
The Wedding Gig
and
Man with a Belly
.) However,
Full Dark, No Stars
(2010) is a collection of stories about retribution. 

Dolan’s Cadillac
was finally adapted as a direct-to-video release in 2009 (2010 in the United States), starring Christian Slater and produced from Richard Dooling’s screenplay. Dooling also wrote
Kingdom Hospital
. It received poor reviews and a rating of 5.7 out of a possible 10 from members of
www.imdb.com
.  

⁵⁹
The Essential Stephen King: The Complete and Uncut Edition
, Stephen J. Spignesi, p.189-191 

⁶⁰
Horror Plum’d
, Michael Collings, p.211 

⁶¹
The Unseen King
, Tyson Blue, p.120-123