The Stand may be Stephen King’s best novel according to all of his fans and critics. The novel was published so early in his career as a published novelist that such a massive book could’ve very easily ended his career if it wasn’t so well-received. Set mostly in an apocalyptic world where a superflu called “Captain’s Trips” wipes out most of the world’s population along with many species of animals.
King had to cut about 400 pages out of his submitted novel to Doubleday to get it published. But knowing now how he was treated at Doubleday during this period, it’s a shame he wasn’t able to printed the massive novel back in 1978. After he became a popular and best-selling writer in the 1980s, Doubleday allowed him to update it with the material he had cut. However, it was more like 300 as it clocks in at 1,153 pages, beating IT by just 15 pages.
When King published the novel, there was a lot of political turmoil following Watergate and the Vietnam War and most sci-fi movies of the era were dark and depressing. That was until Star Wars came out and made people appreciate sci-fi as fun. The novel, which I’ve I read in its longer entirety, is one of his best. However, adapting such a body of work to a live-action production would be difficult. There’s multiple characters with speaking roles and multiple character arcs with their appearances changing over the months when the novel is set. And there’s that ending where it might look good on paper but it’s hard to imagine on the screen.
For what it’s worth, the 1994 four-part miniseries released in May of that year on ABC came heavily marketed. However, despite good reviews, it felt short of its true potential. ABC would only give the production $6 million per part. This resulted in some strange casting, cheap special effects and sets and just overall meh quality. It doesn’t help that Mick Garris is given the duties of directing the six-hour miniseries. However, it may just be his best work and that’s saying a lot.
The series opens with a military police officer John Campion (Ray McKinnon) taking his wife and daughter off a military base in the southwest upon hearing an alert. The base was composed of scientists working on a new strain of flu but they all die quickly when it spreads. I’ve often wondered how it was able to spread to Campion’s family so quickly because the facilities look like they’re underground. Campion doesn’t follow protocol which would close the gates (even though they could easily be climbed over), thus taking the virus with him.
He makes it all the way to eastern Texas where he crashes into the gas pumps of a small station where Stu Redman (Gary Sinise) a local of the town Arnette is visiting the owner and some friends. Campion is barely alive but dies shortly after impact. Word spreads to military higher-ups who attempt to quarantine the town. But the damage has already been done as Gen. Bill Starkey (Ed Harris) states, Campion probably already infected some people along the way to Texas.
And the virus quickly spreads over the course of a couple of weeks leading to riots and pandemonium as the government denies there’s a problem as people lie deathly sick in their beds. I give King and Garris a lot of credit. The first part of the series is probably the best. As the opening credits roll, we witness the numerous rooms of the base as people are dead from the disease. An Army man is double-over on a ping-pong table. People are keeled over at their desks. A man lies slumped next to a coffee machine. All of this is shown while Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” plays on the soundtrack. For those who heard the song before Will Ferrell and Saturday Night Live turned it into one of those memorable sketches, it has a haunting tone to kick off the miniseries.
And as we’re introduced to all the characters, they’re presented in a nice way. Sinise was just a character actor at the time before his Oscar-nominated role in Forrest Gump later that summer. He fits in perfectly with the role of Stu as he tells officials “Country don’t mean dumb.” Rob Lowe plays Nick Andros, a deaf-mute, who is attacked while walking through western Arkansas. His performance is best when he’s not trying to pantomine so much. Miquel Ferrer is perfectly cast as Lloyd Henreid, a career criminal who finds himself in jail during the outbreak and the only one left alive.
Some other performances are noteworthy such as Bill Fagerbakke as the simple-minded Tom Cullen who befriends Nick. It’s basically a variation of his role as Michael “Dauber” Dybinski off the TV show Coach. And Ruby Dee is good as the role of Mother Abigail whenever she isn’t trying to hard to enunciate the word “stand.” And then there’s Matt Frewer as the psychotic pyromaniac Trashcan Man. He basically steals the scene whenever he’s present.
But there are some casting choices that don’t hold up. Molly Ringwald plays Frannie Goldsmith, a young woman from Maine who is pregnant. She eventually becomes Stu’s love interest much to the anger of Harold Lauder (Corin Nemec). In the novel, Harold is obese at the beginning and then loses weight over the months. Nemec overacts too much. It’s like he decided to be the exact opposite of Parker Lewis and failed. Ringwald does what she can with the role but she mostly do much in the second half of the program except react.
Ray Walston seems to fit nicely into the role of Glen Bateman, a retired professor who befriends Stu and becomes one of the four people Mother Abigail orders to go to Las Vegas. However, the casting of Adam Storke as the musician Larry Underworld and Peter Van Norden as Ralph Brentner seems to be a casualty of the budget. That’s not to criticize the actors. Storke was Julia Roberts’ beau in Mystic Pizza and Van Norden had played one of the defense attorneys in The Accused, so they’re not lightweights.
Yet considering how Sinise and Walston handle the roles of such importance, Storke and Van Norden don’t bring as much to the role as they should. Jamey Sheridan is also a problem as the mysterious Randall Flagg, a personification of evil. Sheridan brings a creepiness to the role whenever he flashes his grin. Yet, whenever he changes to a devil-like face, it just looks comical. (Incidentally, the make-up team did win a Primetime Emmy.) Shawnee Smith brings the same type of overacting as the psychotic Julie Lawry as she did in the Saw movies. And then there’s Laura San Giacomo who works best when she tries to play a femme fatale role of Nadine Cross.
Mostly the series works as we see the craziness spread as well as the survivors all try to search for each other. Yet, when they finally create a new civilization in Boulder, Colo., the third part drags at time. King admitted in his novel On Writing, he had some problems with this part of the novel and would’ve abandoned it if he hadn’t wrote so many hundreds of pages. I get it’s to set up how Harold and Nadine plot to double-cross the rest of the survivors, but there’s a lot that it focuses on that’s extraneous. Do we really need to see people at a town hall singing The National Anthem or everyone standing around a power company building hoping the juice works? Worse, the fate of Mother Abigail is reduced to something that happens off screen. It doesn’t help that Nemec is wrongly cast as Harold.
I feel this section of the miniseries could’ve greatly been reduced or at least intercut with scenes of Flagg setting up the his regime in Las Vegas, but that’s reduced to a few scenes of people cleaning up a street in Sin City. Again, I think this had to do with the budget as most of the Vegas scenes are interiors and it’s easier to film in a neighborhood in Utah, which doubled for a lot for many settings.
This comes about five years after Lonesome Dove helped save the miniseries format by making it look more epic. And Garris and King do what they can with the story. There’s actually some great cinematography for which Edward J. Pei was nominated for an Primetime Emmy. Ang with the “Don’t Fear the Reaper” opening, there’s a great opening of the second as Crowded Houses’ “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” plays after the plague has wiped out everyone and the bodies are lying everywhere.
While the series was something big when it came out, now, it can’t shake the look and feel of low-budget thriller. That being said, the 2020-2021 limited series didn’t fare better with the critics and the fans. Maybe it’s because King, himself, knew he would have to kill his darlings to make it work. And like a lot of King’s works, the endings don’t seem to work as good as they should.
It’s still an impressive undertaking even if parts don’t work as well. Garris and King had collaborated prior on the feature movie Sleepwalkers. They would work together again on the 1997 miniseries adaptation of The Shining which King made more faithful than the 1980 movie version. Then, there was the adaptation of the short story Riding the Bullet in 2004 which came so quick and fast, it’s almost forgotten.
But nothing is more forgotten (and for good reason) than the 2006 TV adaptation of Desperation. Intended as a two-part miniseries, it was aired on May 23 of that year as a TV movie. ABC scheduled it against Fox’s American Idol and it got bad ratings, something King publicly blasted. But the 2011 Bag of Bones adaptation was a little better, mainly because King didn’t write the teleplay even though Garris directed.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 