Where Nobody Knows Your Name

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"Either I am crazy or somebody's going to an awful lot of trouble to blot me out."

David (Richard Long)

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I enjoy Twilight Zone episodes for many reasons, much the way I like the works of Stephen King.

I enjoy good entertainment, and one of the ways I like to be entertained is to see or read something that sends a little chill down my spine. Folks from my parents' generation called it the heebie jeebies, which is still probably the best way to describe it.

It's probably what made the "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" movies so popular — although I have always preferred thrillers that had more going for them than merely shower slasher attacks that shamelessly borrowed the famous shower scene from "Psycho."

Twilight Zone specialized in heebie jeebies. It didn't always achieve heebie jeebie status — neither does King, for that matter — but it came close on many occasions if it didn't hit the bull's eye.

The episode that first aired on this night in 1962, "Person or Persons Unknown," was one of the episodes that hit the bull's eye.

Richard Long, a familiar TV actor from those days (in addition to his many appearances on other programs, he appeared in another Twilight Zone episode two years later), played a character who woke up one morning after a night of heavy partying to discover that no one — not his wife, his mother, his friends, his colleagues at work — knew who he was.

The opening narration observed that he had "just lost his most valuable possession" — his identity. There was no evidence of his existence anywhere.

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For sure that will send a chill down your spine.

And as that fact dawned on him, things began to get worse. He was taken into custody and eventually taken to an asylum.

I suppose it is the kind of thing that most people think will never happen to them, and I'll grant you that it seems pretty far–fetched. But it's been my experience that most people never think really terrible things will happen to them, that they only happen to other people — until something terrible does happen to them or someone they know.

And make no mistake about it — losing your identity is a terrible thing.

Most people in 1962 were probably like Long's character, giving little thought to their identities, simply assuming that when they woke up in the morning everything would be just as it had been when they went to sleep the night before. They might have further assumed that a person like Long was suffering from amnesia, but the only problem with that was that he knew who he was. It was the other people who didn't know who he was.

A person's identity has become a much bigger topic of conversation than it was 55 years ago. Identity theft is a thriving business in the criminal world, and people are becoming increasingly proactive about protecting their identities.

Identity theft may have been a legal issue in 1962 as well, but without things like the personal computer and the internet, it is hard to imagine how it could have been pulled off. Of course, that is 21st–century thinking being applied to the mid–20th century.

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Anyway, Dave Gurney devoutly believed that he could find evidence of his true identity. He believed someone was trying to blot out his existence, and he believed that he could find the one detail that would support his claim. He thought he had found the proof of his identity — a photo of him with his wife from a roll of film he had taken in to be developed. He went to pick up the picture, and the photo he got did, indeed, show him with his wife, the one who now claimed she did not know him.

But when he showed the photo to the psychiatrist who had been treating him and the police who were looking for him, it only showed him. His wife was no longer in the picture.

He slumped to the ground in despair, and in the next second he was seen back in his bedroom. It appeared that the whole thing had been a dream. This time his wife recognized him — but he didn't recognize her.

The nightmare continued. It just took a different turn.

Incidentally, Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling apparently liked this theme so much that he revisited it in an hour–long format the following year.

Hearts on the Line

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"Whenever it wants, the past can come kicking the door down. And you never know where it's going to take you. All you can do is hope it's a place you want to go."

Adult Bobby (David Morse)

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I'm a fan of Stephen King, and I remember reading "Hearts in Atlantis" before I saw the movie, which hit the theaters on this day in 2001. It was not a single story. It was a collection of two novellas and three short stories that involved the same primary characters and were told in roughly chronological order. "Hearts in Atlantis" was merely the title of one of the pieces in the collection — and it wasn't even the title of the story that was told in the movie.

The movie was a dramatization of the first and longest story in the book, "Low Men in Yellow Coats." I suppose "Hearts in Atlantis" was considered a more marketable title — but its meaning had to have been virtually incomprehensible to anyone who saw the movie but had not read the book. In the movie adaptation, Atlantis was casually mentioned a couple of times, justifying the title

Having said that, I was impressed as always with Anthony Hopkins' work. He is already extensively recognized and praised, but I think that, in the future after he is gone, he will be seen in hindsight as one of the best actors of his generation — if not of all time.

Anton Yelchin, who played his young friend, might have been one of the best actors of his generation. Roger Ebert wrote that Yelchin "is not just a cute kid but a smart and wary one." That seems to have accurately described him as he grew and appeared in quite a few other movies. He didn't fall into the self–destructive trap in which so many child stars seem to fall, but tragically he died earlier this year in what can only be described as a freak accident.

The movie, Ebert wrote, "weaves a strange spell, made of nostalgia and fear. Rarely does a movie make you feel so warm and so uneasy at the same time." As he so often did, Ebert made the perfect observation.

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In my life I have learned that the best fiction writers are the ones who can vividly recall what it was like to be a child. The children in this story were living in 1960, which was before my time, but childhood experiences tend to be kind of universal, I guess. As such, I suppose it would be a natural assumption that anyone can write a story about being a child, which is not true. Anyone can feel a personal connection to such a story, but few can write the story. Fewer still can do it well.

I can think of no contemporary writer who is better at that than King, and "Hearts in Atlantis" really may have been one of his best — the best of the best. In the book, the novellas and short stories told the tale of Bobby (Yelchin), and that first story, "Low Men in Yellow Coats," was about an older man who was taken in as a boarder by Bobby's self–absorbed widowed mother (Hope Davis), who constantly complained about her late husband leaving nothing but debts when he died.

The story took place in the summer of Bobby's 11th year. His constant companions were Carol (Mika Boorem) and Sully (Will Rothhaar), but Ted (Hopkins) became his special friend, sort of a father figure for the fatherless boy.

In the book Ted and Bobby had a conversation about Carol that I was pleased to see was brought to the screen. Ted asked Bobby if he had kissed Carol; upon learning that he had not, Ted observed, "You will, and it will be the kiss by which all others in your life will be judged — and found wanting."

That isn't the sort of thing your typical 11–year–old wants to hear. But it is so true.

Having been an 11–year–old boy once, I know that most 11–year–old boys do like to talk about sports, and Bobby remembered his father telling him about seeing Babe Ruth and Bronko Nagurski. Ted told him about Nagurski's miraculous comeback. Six years after his retirement, Nagurski was persuaded to return to pro football because the NFL's teams had been depleted by World War II. He led the Chicago Bears to the NFL championship, as Ted said in the movie, but the victory he described over the crosstown rival Cardinals occurred on the final day of the regular season. It was not the NFL title game. That came against the Washington Redskins. Nagurski did score a touchdown in that game, but the Bears won that title game by 20 points.

Ted made it sound like Nagurski scored the touchdown that broke open a close game with the Cardinals, but that margin was 11 points. A little poetic license, I presume. Perhaps Ted knew that and just embellished the story a bit for Bobby's sake.

The movie was about the relationship between Ted and Bobby as much as anything — even though the movie began with the adult Bobby going to his old stomping grounds for Sully's funeral.

Ted recruited Bobby to be on the lookout for "low men," strange, mysterious men who wanted to have Ted under their control, apparently because of some kind of psychic ability Ted possessed.

"Some think of it as a gift," Ted told Bobby after confirming that the low men's pursuit of him was connected to the FBI's alleged recruitment of psychics in the war on communism, "but to me it's always been a burden."

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Although it received nary a nomination from the Academy Awards, I liked "Hearts in Atlantis," probably because it reminded me of my own childhood and adolescence.

Every young person should be fortunate enough to have a mentor like Ted. Not every one does, of course. The prisons are filled with folks who didn't have such a positive influence in their formative years. But I did. I called her Aunt Bess — as did everyone in my hometown. We talked about all sorts of things. Sometimes I read to her, much like Bobby did for Ted. And she shared her wisdom with me.

I guess she was sort of like a grandmother to me. My own grandmothers lived more than 300 miles away. I saw them a few times a year, usually around holidays. I could see Aunt Bess every week — and most weeks I did.

Aunt Bess wasn't psychic — probably, although she always seemed to know when I was fudging the truth. Maybe that is something all adults — or at least the ones who have been parents — know or seem to know.

The best ones aren't bothered when their young charges prove fallible. And Ted was one of the best ones. Even after he had been captured by the low men, as he was being taken away, he saw Bobby and told him he wouldn't have missed the experience of being Bobby's friend for anything — even though it was Bobby's mother who had played a key role in his capture.

The Sudden Transformation of a Friendly Pet

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"It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor."

Stephen King, Cujo (1981)

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When I was a child, I grew up in the country on a manmade lake surrounded by hills that may have existed before the lake did but if they did, they were certainly enhanced by the lake's creation.

Homes were scattered in lots along the hillside and for me to visit my friends — usually by bike because it took too long to walk — I had to pass by a house where dwelled a Doberman pinscher. You had to move slowly when you went past that house because if you didn't and that dog happened to be loose on the property, it would come barreling down the hill barking viciously.

I found myself in that position one day. I thought the dog was going to kill me, and I screamed. Fortunately for me the dog's owner came outside and called the dog back, but the experience left its mark on me. I still remembered it years later when I read Stephen King's novel "Cujo," which was published on this day in 1981.

And it sent a chill down my spine.

"Cujo," you see, was about an amiable St. Bernard named Cujo who was bitten by a rabid bat when he was chasing a rabbit one day and, in due course, went mad, attacking and killing people whenever they happened to cross his path. King's descriptions of what Cujo was feeling as the disease gnawed at his brain were incredibly insightful, much like James Michener's descriptions of the thoughts of the dinosaurs and wildlife that lived in the area of Colorado of which he wrote in "Centennial" a few years earlier. Really fascinating stuff that cries out to be told on the big screen.

But, as it has been with so many of King's masterfully written books, it proved extremely challenging to put that on film.

That didn't keep an attempt from being made a couple of years later. Technology has never really been adequate to tell one of King's scary stories in movie form, but a story like "Cujo" — which has no supernatural element at all — requires a director with a cutting–edge vision. The director of that movie didn't possess such a vision, and while the movie was a modest success at the box office, it received mixed reviews from critics.

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Actually, it isn't exactly true that there was no supernatural element in the story (I guess it wouldn't be a Stephen King novel without at least a whisper of the supernatural). There was one, but it was implied and indirect. It was strongly suggested early in the book that what happened to Cujo was due to some supernatural force that made an appearance in that small Maine town every few years or so, but from a broader perspective, animals — and humans — can get rabies in many — frequently unexpected — ways. That's what made the story so scary — the sense that this could easily happen.

And, as King observed, free will would not be a factor.

Most of us realize the chances of the kind of stuff that usually takes place in a Stephen King novel occurring in real life are virtually nil — but "Cujo" was about the kind of thing that really could happen. Many of my friends have dogs. I had one at one time. We always had dogs around our house when I was growing up — and, as I say, I grew up in the country. We allowed our dogs to run loose there all the time.

In hindsight, they could have been bitten by a rabid creature at any time. Or some other unfortunate incident could have occurred.

Most of the dogs in my life have been friendly, but how quickly they could have been changed by a chance encounter with a diseased animal.

Isn't that what makes a story truly scary — the belief that it really could happen to you — and without warning? The truly great writers, and I believe King is one of the great writers of this or any era, can make it seem as if something like the topic of a story could happen in real life — even if the topic was as unlikely as they come — but if it is a plausible story to the reader, that makes all the difference.

I liked the book, and apparently so did King, who confessed he could hardly remember writing it, having done so during a time when he was drinking heavily.

Like many of King's stories, this one took place in Maine and centered on two families, one a longtime resident of the town, the other a newcomer. The family with the local roots was the one that owned Cujo. The newcomers frequented the home auto repair business run by the first family. The mother and child from the newcomers were trapped in their car when they took it in for some work, not knowing that a now–mad Cujo had killed the man of the house and was all alone on the property.

A novel can be made more dramatic by the introduction of angles that might not be present in a real–life scenario like the one I have described, and so it was with "Cujo." There were several examples of unsavory adult behavior that certainly exacerbated the conditions.

But the fact remained that being trapped by a rabid dog — or rabid animal of any kind — would be a terrifying experience — and hardly one that anybody, regardless of behavior, deserved.

Stephen King's Favorite Novel

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"... the Lot's knowledge of the country's torment was academic. Time went on a different schedule there. Nothing too nasty could happen in such a nice little town. Not there."

Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot (1975)

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On this day in 1975, Stephen King published his second novel — "'Salem's Lot." It was his first novel since the phenomenally successful "Carrie," which may have been in its movie production by this time.

King has frequently said that, of all his novels, "'Salem's Lot" was his favorite. "In a way it is my favorite story, mostly because of what it says about small towns," he said.

Having grown up in a small town, I have a pretty good idea what he meant by that.

The protagonist was returning to his hometown, Jerusalem's Lot, a fictional town in Maine, after being away for 25 years. He planned to write a novel — and, in the process, exorcise a few demons of his own — inspired by a spooky old house that had been the scene of an unpleasant childhood experience for him.

Things went pretty well for him initially. He struck up a friendship with a high school teacher and a romantic relationship with a young recent college graduate.

He discovered that the house had been purchased by an Austrian immigrant, who intended to open a business. He wasn't home when the protagonist arrived in town. He was on a buying trip. His business partner was in town.

About the time they showed up, a young boy disappeared, and his brother died — and became the town's first vampire. Within just a few weeks, he had turned several townspeople into vampires.

It began to dawn on the protagonist that something sinister was afoot.

King said he was inspired to write the book when he was teaching a high school course in fantasy and science fiction, and the class was reading and discussing Bram Stoker's "Dracula." King began to ponder what Dracula's story would be like if he came back to 20th–century America. His wife suggested that he would probably be run over by a taxi, and King had to agree she probably was right — if Dracula came to New York City.

But what if he came to a "sleepy little country town" instead? What would happen?

"I decided I wanted to find out, so I wrote ''Salem's Lot,'" King said.

King also said he was influenced by the politics of the time. "I wrote 'Salem's Lot' during the period when the Ervin committee was sitting," he said. "That was also the period when we first learned of the Ellsberg break–in, the White House tapes, the connection between Gordon Liddy and the CIA, the news of enemies lists and other fearful intelligence. During the spring, summer and fall of 1973, it seemed that the federal government had been involved in so much subterfuge and so many covert operations that, like the bodies of the faceless wetbacks that Juan Corona was convicted of slaughtering in California, the horror would never end. ... Every novel is to some extent an inadvertent psychological portrait of the novelist, and I think that the unspeakable obscenity in 'Salem's Lot' has to do with my own disillusionment and consequent fear for the future."

There's no mistaking the political influence on "'Salem's Lot." It has been adapted for television twice, and its message seems just as appropriate for audiences 40 years later as it was in 1975.

To Catch the Style of a Thief

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Francie (Grace Kelly): I called the police from your room and told them who you are and everything you've been doing tonight.

Robie (Cary Grant): Everything? The boys must have really enjoyed that at headquarters.

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Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King had a lot in common — primarily the fact that each was/is misunderstood. People like to give labels to others, but King and Hitchcock really defied being pigeonholed. As a result, people who had little, if any, exposure to their work labeled them based on a vague comprehension of that work.

For example, while he is far more talented as a writer than labeling gives him credit for, Stephen King has been known as a master of the horror genre for decades. There is some truth to that, just as there is in most stereotypes, but King's skills really are more diverse. Dismissing him as only a horror writer does him a disservice.

Likewise, Hitchcock has been known for directing scary movies — probably the legacy of 1960's "Psycho," which may be his best known movie among non–devotees of Hitchcock's work. But even if the speaker has more familiarity with Hitchcock's movies than that, the speaker is still likely to think of Hitchcock as the director of scary movies.

I take issue with that. His movies weren't scary. They were electrifying. There is a difference.

Hitchcock himself regarded his movies as thrillers, suspense flicks even, not horror movies. It is true that most of his movies had a certain whodunnit quality to them because someone usually wound up dead at the hands of another; if that happened, the audience either saw it from a distance or after the fact. It wasn't explicit. But there were exceptions. Sometimes no one died at all, and such a movie, "To Catch a Thief," premiered on this day in 1955.

There were certain themes that Hitchcock explored frequently in his movies, one of which was mistaken identity. Those movies are among the most gripping that Hitchcock ever made — and "To Catch a Thief" was one of the best from that particular subset of Hitchcock movies.

It was also made smack dab in the middle of what could — arguably — be regarded as Hitchcock's peak period — the 1950s.

Of course, it starred Cary Grant, which had a lot to do with its success. I do think Grant did star in the best of Hitchcock's mistaken identity movies, but it wasn't "To Catch a Thief." It was "North by Northwest."

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But that doesn't take anything away from "To Catch a Thief." It was a stylish movie. With Grant as its star, though, could it possibly be anything other than stylish?

Grant's co–star was the incomparable Grace Kelly. She had a brief career (11 movies in six years), but she made three of those movies with Hitchcock in the director's chair. You could always tell Hitchcock's favorites among the actors with whom he worked, too. They were the ones who were in more than one movie that he directed.

Grant was a favorite of Hitchcock's, too, appearing in four of Hitch's movies. Reportedly, Hitchcock said Grant was "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life." Read into that what one will.

Grant played a retired jewel thief known as "The Cat," who was leading a quiet life tending his vineyards on the French Riviera — nice work if you can get it, right? Out of the blue, burglaries bearing The Cat's signature began happening, and the police naturally suspected Grant's character was involved. He sought a sanctuary of sorts with his old gang from his French Resistance days, but they all suspected him of pulling off the crimes while they were under suspicion.

Grant decided that the way to prove that he was innocent was to catch the actual burglar in the act — and enlisted several people to help him, including Kelly, who still harbored suspicions of her own.

Nevertheless, Kelly became something of a rival for Grant's attention with a young French girl (played by Brigitte Auber), the daughter of one of Grant's old buddies and something of a love interest at one time. Based on her apparent age, one suspected that she may have had a schoolgirl crush on Grant. Right now, I don't recall what, if anything, was said about that. My memory is that it was mostly implied. But there was something there between them — or there had been at one time.

One–sided it may have been, but there was something there.

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In a memorable scene in which the two women were introduced to each other while in the waters of the Riviera, Grant (Robie) said to Auber, "Say something nice to her, Danielle."

Auber replied in her distinctive French accent, "She looks a lot older up close."

Kelly remarked, "To a mere child, anything over 20 might seem old."

I've always thought Auber's response was one of the most classic of Hitchcock lines: "A child? Shall we stand in shallower water and discuss that?"

As beautiful as Kelly was, I have a hunch that, if she had accepted that challenge from the 27–year–old Auber (who was more than a year older than Kelly), it would have been a very close contest. Clearly, Auber did not have the figure of a child. Hers was a voluptuous figure compared to Kelly's. But Kelly was regal in her beauty — fitting, considering that she married the prince of Monaco less than a year later.

Many years after that, when Kelly suffered a stroke while driving her car in the hills of Monaco, it was said that her car went out of control along the same stretch of winding mountainside road where her character terrified Grant in "To Catch a Thief." I never found out if there was any truth to that.

Hitchcock, of course, liked having beautiful women in his movies, and he really hit the jackpot in "To Catch a Thief." Not only were the women beautiful, but one of them played a significant role in the story. Auber, it turned out, was the copycat Cat.

Oh, shoot, I've given away the ending, haven't I? Well, it's still an enjoyable movie, one that everyone should see once.

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"To Catch a Thief" received Oscar nominations for Best Color Art Direction and Best Color Costume Design — and won for Best Color Cinematography.

Making the Case for the Short Story

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"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."

Stephen King

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I guess you could say I am a fan of Stephen King.

I haven't liked all of his books — full disclosure: I haven't read them all, not even close, but I've read enough to know that he's going to be good most of the time. As such, I figure he is worthy of my admiration.

I consider myself a writer, but I'm a slacker compared to King. Do you think he has written a lot of novels over the years? You're right. He has. Dozens of 'em. He's also written several collections of short stories, which is what "Skeleton Crew," which was published on this date in 1985, was — a collection of short stories. He has published about a dozen of those.

"Skeleton Crew" was his second collection of short stories. I prefer his early collections because they really are short stories. His later collections are more like a handful of novellas in a single volume. In that sense, I guess "Skeleton Crew" was a bit deceptive if you started reading without glancing at the Table of Contents. The first story truly was novella–like, but the rest really were short stories. There were roughly 20 stories in that book and a couple of poems; the poems were only a few pages long, and some of the stories weren't much longer than that.

Actually, that first story would have made the book worthwhile all by itself. I wasn't terribly impressed with the poems, but the legitimate short stories ranged from entertaining to astonishing.

I got interested in reading "Skeleton Crew" when I saw one of the short stories, "Gramma," dramatized on the second–generation Twilight Zone TV series in the '80s, but I suppose I was already predisposed to like the short story format. When I was in elementary school, I remember reading a series of short story collections that leaned heavily to the horror genre. Just the sort of thing a 9– or 10–year–old boy loves to read — you know, with plenty of zombies and such — and my buddies and I passed them around.

Those weren't single–author collections, though. In that respect, I guess they were more like anthologies, although not as voluminous as the ones I used to slog through in college.

As a writer, I found King's introduction to be the most satisfying I have read. It was a discussion of the art of writing, why writers write, that kind of thing. Near the end, he said he hoped the readers would enjoy the collection. "I suspect you won't like it as well as you would a novel," King wrote, "because most of you have forgotten the real pleasures of the short story.

"Reading a good long novel is, in many ways, like having a long and satisfying affair. ... A short story is a different thing altogether — a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger. That is not, of course, the same thing as an affair or a marriage, but kisses can be sweet, and their very brevity forms their own attraction."

I hope "Skeleton Crew" reminded readers of "the real pleasures of the short story." It certainly reminded me, and it is a lesson that has stayed with me all these years.

In his introduction, King told readers that the collection spanned much of his life, from early in his writing career (the late '60s) to the time the collection was published. Trust me when I tell you there are treasures for every taste.

Each of the short stories is rewarding in its own way. People who avoid King because they aren't fans of the horror genre should read "The Reach," a charming tale about a great–grandmother who was born on an island off the coast of Maine and had been there her entire life. It's the kind of thing that King's fans share with non–King fans as evidence of his range as a storyteller.

Much of it, though, is the kind of King writing you've been conditioned to expect — although I would argue that he, like Alfred Hitchcock, is misunderstood. He doesn't write horror stories so much as he writes suspense stories, thrillers. That's a lot more difficult to achieve in the pages of a short story, and King did a great job of it in "Skeleton Crew."

If you read "Skeleton Crew," don't skip King's notes at the end. They're possibly the best observations on books and writing that I have read:

"Not everyone is interested in where short stories come from," King wrote, "and that is perfectly proper — you don't have to understand the internal combustion engine to drive a car, and you don't need to know the circumstances which surrounded the making of a story to get a bit of pleasure from it."

As I said earlier in this post, I am a writer. I like to think I'm a good writer — although I suppose that is a matter of opinion — but I don't think I am so good that I cannot learn from others, and King really is one of the best — if not the best — of his generation. So I enjoyed reading what he had to say about writing 30 years ago, realizing how successful he has been since he wrote those notes.

For King's part, he seemed almost apologetic — and appeared to encourage some readers to skip his notes altogether. "I've included a few notes here on a few of the stories — such things as I thought might interest the casual reader," he wrote. "But if you're even more casual than that, I assure you that you can close the book without a qualm — you won't be missing much."

With all due respect, yes, you will be missing much.

Forty Years Since Stephen King's First Published Novel

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"People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it."

Stephen King
"Carrie" (1974)

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My guess is that relatively few teenagers have not fantasized about doing something at least similar to what Carrie White did to her classmates in Stephen King's first published novel, "Carrie," which was published 40 years ago today.

The book was faithfully dramatized in the 1976 movie starring Sissy Spacek, although it left out quite a bit, as most movies do.

Anyway, Carrie (short for Carietta) was a very reserved high school girl who happened to have a special gift — telekinetic powers. That fact was unknown to her classmates, as was her struggle to control those powers. Actually, Carrie didn't know about them By her senior year, when the book opened, Carrie was losing that struggle.

In everyone's childhood, I suppose, there was the odd kid, the social outcast who was tormented by everyone else practically from the first day of first grade. Kids always seem to instinctively know who among them is the odd kid, and they gang up on him/her.

For many people, it is their first exposure to bullying. That must be why the book struck such a nerve. If you weren't the child who had been singled out — and I am sure most people were secretly thankful that they were not that singularly unfortunate child — the sight of the kind of cruelty of which nearly everyone is capable ushered in the end of innocence for nearly everyone long before the traditionally accepted innocence–taking events in one's life, like one's first beer or first cigarette.

(I have long wondered why those kinds of events, along with losing one's virginity, are always so important to adults who, on some sort of level, must wish their children would remain children forever — and who need shorter memories than their elders to recall the circumstances under which they lost their own innocence.

(If the truth is known, it must surely have been in the elementary school playground, not the family car, where just about everyone really lost their innocence. That probably was where they first saw how someone who differs from the rest of the group is treated. Shamefully, in most cases.

(I have also thought that, in a culture like this one that obsesses about bullying, "Carrie" might be a good cautionary tale for parents to share with their children. Unfortunately, most adults these days seem to prefer to watch a movie than read, which doesn't set much of an example for their youngsters.

(But I digress.)

Carrie was the odd kid in her school, always had been. As she became aware of her gift, she also became aware that she had less and less control of it. On prom night, when the tormenting went over the line, she permitted those powers to wreak havoc on her tormenters.

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"Late at night I keep thinking: if I had only reached to that girl, if only, if only."

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While it was King's first published novel, it was the fourth he had written. I became a fan the first time I read that book — yes, I have read it more than once. I haven't read all his books, but I have read many of them over the years.

King had no faith in "Carrie," I hear. In fact, he originally wanted to scrap the scene in the school shower where the overly protected Carrie first learned of menstruation. He threw those rough draft pages away, but his wife retrieved them and urged him to finish it.

He followed her advice — and popular fiction is better off for it.

'The Stand' Against Evil

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Thirty–five years ago this month, Stephen King published his lengthy novel, "The Stand," which was almost immediately proclaimed, by just about everyone I knew, to be his best.

I'll grant you, the list of his published works wasn't too long in 1978. "The Stand" was his fifth novel — the last count I heard indicated he has now published 50. Obviously, there is a lot more competition now than there was.

But, even 35 years later, I still hear people say it is his best. I haven't read all of his books, but I've read quite a few, and I, too, say — as I have been saying for 35 years — that it is his best.

Of course, what I read 35 years ago was the abridged version. In 1990, he published the original, uncut edition. I read that one, too.

The plot was deceptively simple. At an Army base, a deadly strain of the flu that has been created to be used as a weapon gets loose. Most of the people who become infected will die — but a handful will prove to be immune to it.

The survivors migrate into two camps — one dedicated to evil, the other mostly dedicated to good — and an apocalyptic confrontation is inevitable.

I remember thinking when the book came out — as I always do when I read a Stephen King book — that it would make a splendid movie.

And, eventually, it did. It was a four–part TV movie in 1994.

But the problem always has been that King's narratives seem to spend a lot of time inside the characters' heads.

The plot of "The Stand" was easy enough to follow. The American military had developed a weaponized strain of the flu, which was informally known as Captain Trips. It was released accidentally, causing an epidemic that killed more than 99% of the world's population.

The few who survived — and usually showed no symptoms — gravitated to two camps in the Western United States, and the story evolved into a battle between good and evil.

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All of which set up a final confrontation between the two sides.

The first version I read ended on a suitably ambiguous note. A baby was born to two of the survivors who lived in the good camp. One asked if humanity had learned from its experience. The other replied, "I don't know."

The longer version had a different ending, much darker. The antagonist, who somehow survived the apocalyptic battle, awakened with a case of amnesia and began to recruit new followers among an illiterate race of people who treated him like a god.

The clear implication was that another stand would be necessary.

The TV movie was pretty faithful to the story, but there were a few differences. If you've only seen the TV movie, you owe it to yourself to read the book.

Shining On

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"We all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah, we all shine on
C'mon and on and on, on, on."

John Lennon

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Stephen King has been one of my favorite writers since I was in my teens.

And I always thought his stories would make splendid movies.

But even when I was a teenager I knew that it was almost impossible — given the technology that existed at the time — to transfer his stories from the printed page to the big screen.

Nothing illustrated that better, I think, than the film version of "The Shining" that came out in 1980. It was a spine–tingling horror movie with a great cast (Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers) and a great director (Stanley Kubrick) — and King was a fan of Kubrick's work — but ultimately King was disappointed in the results, as well he should have been.

I have often said that so much of what happens in a King novel seems to happen in the characters' minds. Sure, there are genuinely spooky things that happen in King's books. It's just hard for a filmmaker to re–create many of them, even with all the developments there have been since "The Shining" was published 35 years ago this month.

Twenty years after the book was published, a three–part TV miniseries was aired. King, whose dissatisfaction with Kubrick's version was behind the remake, was deeply involved in the teleplay.

It may well have been that King made such a personal investment in the project because he had gone to such great lengths to write the book in the first place. It was early in his writing career, and his first two books had been set in his native Maine. King apparently felt it was necessary to have a change of scenery.

He randomly chose Boulder, Colo., and relocated his family there. He was inspired to write "The Shining" during a family trip to a resort hotel in nearby Estes Park.

Later, King acknowledged that the story was, in part, a confession. The protagonist of the story, Jack Torrance, has seriously injured his young son in the past while under the influence of alcohol and desperately wants to make amends.

King, who struggled with his addictions to tobacco, alcohol and both prescription and street drugs until about 10 years after "The Shining" was published, admitted to "occasional feelings of real antagonism toward my children." I don't think King ever injured his own children; perhaps "The Shining" provided him with a creative outlet that helped him let off some steam before it became destructive.

But his ability to empathize with his characters, even the ones his readers find repugnant, is the trait that makes King's books so special.

And, while there was a lot more about "The Shining" that made it King's first hardback bestseller, that factor always stood out for me.

Several years later, I learned the inspiration for the title. It came from a line from John Lennon's "Instant Karma," which was one of my favorite songs before the book was published.

I didn't know, when the book was published 35 years ago this month, that it inspired the name. But the thought did cross my mind.

And now you know the rest of that story.

When the Past Kicks the Door Down

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"Whenever it wants, the past can come kicking the door down. And you never know where it's going to take you. All you can do is hope it's a place you want to go."

Bobby as an adult
Hearts in Atlantis

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I'm a fan of Stephen King's writings, and, a few years ago, I read "Hearts in Atlantis," mostly during my lunch hours at work.

I would pack a lunch — usually a couple of sandwiches — and go out to my car and read my book for about an hour. It was good, but it wasn't a single novel, like many of the King books I have read. It was one of his collections — some short stories and novellas that were linked (modestly and, to a great extent, chronologically) via some recurring characters.

And it wasn't the best of King's works that I have read. If I had to recommend any of his books — even a collection of his short stories — to someone else, I would never choose "Hearts in Atlantis."

The general theme of the stories in the collection is summed up by Peter Fonda's line from "Easy Rider" — "We blew it" — which is how King (or, at least, the narrator) opens the first story — and apparently feels about the postwar generation (also known as the "baby boomers") and its perceived failure to live up to expectations.

In a sense, I guess, that was a good simile for the movie, which was released 10 years ago today. It's kind of a Reader's Digest condensed version, emphasizing one story but trying to link elements of the others in the process — usualy without much context. At least the stories in the book were linked in ways that the reader could see clearly.

It was hardly clear in the movie, which was told as something of a flashback, with a now–grown man returning to his childhood home for the funeral of one of his childhood friends.

The title was explained in the movie only through a somewhat contrived comment that must have been created specifically for the movie. It actually comes from the name of the second story in the published collection, which takes place on a college campus, but the only story that was told in the movie, really, was the first, which was titled "Low Men in Yellow Coats." In that story, a young boy befriends an older man who moves in a couple of floors above the boy and his mother.

The man and the boy spend a great deal of time discussing books, and the man eventually works out an arrangement to pay the boy to read the newspaper to him, supposedly because his vision is not as good as it once was. As the two develop a bond, the man confides in the boy that he is being stalked by "low men in yellow coats," and he man tells the boy of the signs that warn of their presence.

Well, I don't want to give away the rest of the story, but it is a Stephen King coming–of–age story, in the mold of "Stand By Me" with some elements of some of his novels — and kind of a supernatural twist.

(The way King frequently focuses on childhood has often made me wonder if there was something traumatic in King's own childhood that perhaps the rest of us should know about.

(Well, he does what he does so well that perhaps we should be grateful that we don't know all the details ...)

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Anthony Hopkins was wonderful, as always, as the older man who comes to live above the boy and his mother. Sometimes I think Hopkins was born to play the older man roles, even though he has been appearing in movies since he was in his 20s.

At such times, I can't help but think the first 20 or 30 years of his career — as loaded with praise and award nominations as they were — were merely prologue for this phase.

And I thought 12–year–old Anton Yelchin did a good job as Bobby, the boy who finds himself torn between his mother and his friend, but I wasn't overly impressed with Hope Davis as the mother.

I rarely have been, I guess. I mean, I wasn't impressed with her supporting performance in "About Schmidt" as Jack Nicholson's daughter, and I guess that was her most noteworthy role after "Hearts in Atlantis." To be honest, I can't recall seeing her in anything, even though I know I have seen movies in which she appeared. Perhaps that will tell you how little of an impression she has left on me.

But, to be fair, Davis' character was not as developed in the movie as it was in King's original story, and that really isn't surprising. King was able to explore many of her fears, her motivations, her reactions to her experiences in ways that a movie never really could — especially if the director (Scott Hicks) showed no real interest in making the attempt, which, apparently, he did not.

That is odd, too, because screenwriter William Goldman was responsible for the adaptation of King's "Misery" in 1990 — and "Misery" was one of the better (although, like the rest, far from ideal) adaptations of King's work.

Davis' character was self–absorbed and bitter about her relationship with her late husband, for reasons that became less clear as the story unfolded. But, in spite of her seeming disinterest in her child, she did show her maternal instincts in both the book and, to a less obvious extent, the film when she fretted about whether Hopkins' character might be molestiing her son.

But King, as I recall, left some gaps in the readers' knowledge of the mother that might have been helpful in understanding why she jumped to the conclusions she did.

Her concern was unfounded, of course, and it appeared to be mostly based on her own experience of sexual harassment by her employer (an angle that was explored in more depth in the story than in the film), not on anything Hopkins' character had ever said or done in her presence. Although Hopkins' character was courteous when they met, Davis' character clearly did not like him from the start.

Maybe there was more to it than met the eye..

It's been several years since I read "Hearts in Atlantis," but it seems to me that Bobby's mother may have had issues with men in general that predated her relationship with her husband. Perhaps she had been abused as a child. Perhaps she had been raped even before her boss assaulted her. I could be wrong, but I don't think King ever got into that much detail.

I suppose you could debate whether it was wise to tell readers and viewers so little about what influenced Bobby's mother to make the decisions she did. But the story really wasn't about her. It was about Bobby, his childhood friends and his special older friend.

"I wouldn't have missed a single minute of it," Hopkins told Bobby when the low men finally caught up to him and took him away. "Not for the whole world."

I'm glad I didn't miss the book — or the movie.

The Story of It

For some reason, my favorite authors tend to be rather wordy.

Most of my reading preferences were inherited from my parents, I suppose. From my father, I got my appreciation for the works of James Michener — and if you have ever picked up even one of his novels, you know that they were usually more than 1,000 pages long.

My mother leaned to somewhat shorter — although still lengthy by many people's standards — works by the likes of Mark Twain and Allen Drury.

Mom and I discovered the books by Stephen King at about the same time. For awhile, we would read King's books and exchange them when we had finished, getting double mileage from each paperback.

I forget which of us read which books first; I only know that we both read "The Shining," "The Stand" and "Carrie" — and others — over the course of the same summer. I still have those books on my bookshelf.

By 1986, I was living on my own, and I don't know if Mom ever read King's book that was published on this day that year, "It," but I did.

A friend of mine was a big fan of King's work and always got his books in hardback. I borrowed "It" from her a month or two after it came out. I enjoyed it, savored it, as I did every Stephen King book.

The book was typical Stephen King fare, I suppose, but with a unique plot — one that was probably a little better than most. It told the story of a group of seven friends who bonded as children to battle a malevolent creature known mostly as "It" who terrorized a small town in Maine.

It preyed mostly on children and seemed to go into hibernation for decades at a time, but, when not hibernating, It frequently appeared to people in the form of a seemingly benevolent clown named Pennywise. And Pennywise had razor–sharp teeth.

In spite of that, the seven faced down the creature and made a pledge to return to Maine if It was ever aroused again. They reunited as adults to intervene again when It awakened from its slumber so two stories were being told simultaneously.

Many people knew little about the book until four years later, when ABC aired a two–part adaptation that starred, among others, Tim Curry, John Ritter, Richard Thomas and Annette O'Toole. Curry, incidentally, played Pennywise.

I thought the adaptation was good, but it couldn't match the book, which was understandable for several reasons.

For one thing, you simply couldn't dramatize everything, even in a three–hour made–for–TV movie.

And that was for the same reason that most adaptations of King's works eventually fall short of his fans' expectations: so much of what takes place in a Stephen King novel is mental — often a person's perceptions of what might be real and what might not.

I learned long ago that Stephen King likes to play with your head — and it's probably for the best to allow him to do so because he's going to take you on an exciting ride, whether someone brings it to the screen or not.

And "It" was a pretty good ride, indeed.

Not to be Overlooked ...

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There was a lot of anxiety in America at this time 30 years ago.

The eruption of Mount St. Helens was still in the news. So was the battle between President Carter and Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination. And the hype was steadily building for the June 1 debut of Cable News Network.

Speaking of hype, I don't know if there had ever been as much hype as there was for the sequel to "Star Wars," but "The Empire Strikes Back" actually lived up to the hype — and may have exceeded it — when it was released to the theaters on May 21, 1980.

And then things really began to heat up — literally.

At some point in June, a devastating heat wave settled in over North America and stayed until September. I spent part of that summer in Dallas, where temperatures way over 100 became the daily norm.

Movie theaters provided a cool oasis, as they always do in the summer, but "The Empire Strikes Back" wouldn't give you that delicious chill down your spine that a real suspense/horror flick would.

And that is where "The Shining" — which made its theatrical debut 30 years ago yesterday — comes in.

Now, at this point in the ongoing cultural conversation, it probably goes without saying that a lot of things have changed in 30 years.

These days, some movies are barely in theaters a few days before they're yanked and redistributed to make more money via video tape and DVD sales and rentals. But in 1980, much of the emphasis still was on theaters. DVD technology was many years in the future; heck, home VCRs were still rare so there was no rush to cash in on video sales.

Sure, there were premium movie channels from which some money could be made, but cable television was not as widespread in 1980 as it became only a few years later.

So, in 1980, I guess most of a movie's revenue came from the box office. And, in that category, "The Empire Strikes Back" certainly dwarfed everything else.

(That was probably to be expected. It received that family friendly PG rating, and, weeks before "Empire" hit the big screens, toy stores all over America were selling little Luke, Leia, Darth Vader and Han Solo action figures. I don't remember if Yoda was included in the line before the movie came out, since his character hadn't been introduced in the story yet. But, let me tell you, after "Empire" made its debut, that puppet was a real stud.)

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Anyway, the point I was leading up to is this: Both "The Empire Strikes Back" and "The Shining" were released to theaters in late May — and you could still see them in theaters a couple of months later. And, as I recall, it was sometime in late June that my mother and I went to see "The Shining."

At the time, I was living with my parents and my brother in Fayetteville, Ark., in a house on a hill with a spectacular view of the valley below. The city's elevation (1,400 feet) isn't nearly what it is in Denver (5,280), but it's high enough. And, speaking as one who grew up in the lowlands of Arkansas, I can assure you the elevation of Fayetteville worked in its favor during the summer months.

Usually.

Hundred–degree days were rare in Fayetteville that summer, but what you have to understand is that typical summer days in Fayetteville are in the mid– to upper 80s — warm but not unpleasantly so. Once in awhile, it might get up around 90 — but the nights ordinarily were mild enough that you could sleep with your windows open.

That summer, though, the daily highs were frequently 10 degrees warmer — and temperatures in that range in the thin atmosphere of Fayetteville were as tough to handle as the 110° days that became routine in Dallas (elevation 430) and my hometown in central Arkansas (elevation 312).

For that reason more than any other, I suppose, I really enjoyed going to movies that summer. It's the last summer I can remember when I could enjoy one of the simple summer pleasures of my childhood — feeling the perspiration disappear in an icy cold theater on a hot summer day.

And, sometimes, if the movie was especially suspenseful, the sweat would be replaced by goose bumps.

"The Shining" was especially suspenseful.

I don't remember why I hadn't yet seen "The Shining." It seems like I had seen most of the hits that came out earlier that summer — "Airplane!" "Urban Cowboy," "The Blues Brothers" — along with some of the lesser known flicks. Maybe "The Shining" hadn't been showing long in Fayetteville.

We may have gone at Mom's suggestion. She was in her Stephen King phase, and, as I recall, she had just finished reading the book on which the film was based.

I had been reading some of Stephen King's books by that time, too, but I had not yet read "The Shining." Still, Mom insisted on pointing out to me where the book and the movie differed.

Granted, there were variations. There always were when Stanley Kubrick adapted a story to the big screen. He always did things his way.

And so much of a Stephen King plot seems to be cerebral. Until the fairly recent maturation of film animation and computer–generated graphics, there were always variations in film adaptations of King's stories. I was aware of the difficulties posed by attempts to make movies of King's tales long before "The Shining" hit the big screen.

In keeping with the hype surrounding "The Empire Strikes Back," "The Shining" had hype of its own. No action figures or lunch boxes or anything else — but cover articles on the major news magazines, which were still thriving in 1980 in that pre–CNN, pre–internet time.

Anyway, whatever the reason, I hadn't yet seen it so, on a late June evening in 1980, I sat next to my mother, and we watched "The Shining" in a cold (and crowded) movie theater in Fayetteville, Ark.

Mom had a distinctive habit. Whenever she went to a suspenseful movie, she would latch her hands like claws around the upper arm of anyone who was sitting next to her during the most suspenseful parts — and she would release her grip only when the suspense subsided.

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But, in typical Stephen King fashion, the suspense just got more and more intense — and, by the time we left the theater, I had bruises on my arm.

I guess I should have known better than to see that movie with Mom. I had seen "Alien" with her the summer before!

Mom was really taken by the film account of the possessed Overlook Hotel and decided to give that name to our home in Fayetteville that summer. When old friends visited around the Fourth of July, Mom took them on a tour of the "Overlook," which concluded at the room in which they would be sleeping.

As an inside joke, Mom taped a piece of paper on the door labeling it "Room 237" (if you don't know the significance of that number, you need to see the movie).

Well, May 23, 1980, was a big day for Kubrick and his cast and crew, which notably included Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall — but it also happened to be the 70th birthday of co–star Scatman Crothers.

Consequently, yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Scatman's birth.

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I guess he's mostly remembered today for his work in the movies and on TV, but he was, first and foremost, an entertainer who sang and danced through most of his life and only began making movie and TV appearances in his 40s.

He died nearly a quarter of a century ago, but he continues to influence children whenever his voiceovers in cartoons like "Hong Kong Phooey" are shown. He can still be seen in reruns of popular television shows, like Bewitched, Dragnet, Charlie's Angels and Sanford and Son.

And, of course, as Dick Hallorann, the chef at the Overlook Hotel.