Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 24, 1993 TAG: 9304240415
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KRISTEN MOULTON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The king of the horror novel is co-producing "The Stand," an eight-hour TV miniseries from a book early in his career about the ultimate conflict of good and evil.
"The Stand," being filmed in Utah, offers an apocalyptic story line. Human error allows a government-made "doomsday" virus to escape its desert bunker and kill almost everyone in the world. The survivors fall into two camps, the good and the evil.
King wrote "The Stand" in 1975, and republished it with 250 more pages in 1990. As the end of a millennium looms, he sees the story dovetailing with doomsday prophecies afoot in the land.
"One of the central ideas is that we've really sort of made our bed. End of the millennium or not, we're going to have to lie down in it," he said. "Basically, we're going to have to come to terms with our technology. And that our technology erased our morality."
The other main points of his book and miniseries come straight from the Bible.
"There never has been, ever, on network TV, a movie that talked about God and Christianity," King said. "That's a lot of what this is about."
The good survivors rally behind an old woman, Mother Abigail, who embodies purity of spirit and is played by Ruby Dee. They follow her into the desert to confront evil.
King, 45, sees those "good" characters, including Stu Redman, played by Gary Sinise, and Nick Andros, played by Rob Lowe, as American saints.
"Without pressing any of these things, or trying to wave tracts or suggest that Christianity is the answer, I sort of in an opportunistic, carpetbagging way, took all this mythology and put it into the work," he said.
"It's powerful stuff. It's wonderful stuff, the idea that there should be such a thing as brotherly love - that it might be possible to turn the other cheek."
In the film, none of the characters is purely good, but one, Randall Flagg (Jamey Sheridan), is unalloyed evil.
Many of King's fans consider "The Stand" their favorite among his more than 30 books, but it isn't the author's. "When I remember `The Stand,' I just remember a lot of hard work, and that goes for all the screenplays," he said.
King wrote four drafts of the screenplay, which has 120 speaking parts and 40 major characters. It is based on the 1990 version of the book - all 1,141 pages of it - but its ending will differ.
One of three possible endings for "The Stand" is being filmed here, as are several scenes with actress Molly Ringwald, who plays Frannie, one of the good survivors.
King and his co-executive producer, Richard P. Rubinstein, president of Laurel Entertainment Inc., began talking about making a movie of "The Stand" in 1979, but weren't able to condense the story into a 2 1/2-hour script.
The miniseries has a $28 million budget and is to air on ABC in November. Filming began Feb. 19 and will continue until early June. The film crew then will move on to Las Vegas and Pittsburgh.
King said he first got the idea for the "The Stand" after reading of U.S. Army aerial nerve gas experiments that killed 6,000 sheep in Utah in 1968.
The nerve gas was unleashed by a plane from Dugway Proving Ground, not 25 miles from the film set. The irony does not escape King.
"We're right where we ought to be," he said.
by CNB