If you have been following "The Charbor Chronicles" for a decent length of time, or happen to have scrolled through some of the titles of the blog entries, or even more so, if you know me personally, then you know that I am a big Stephen King fan.
Well, here is some news regarding the upcoming new adaptation of a film based on Stephen King's lengthiest novel to date (and that's saying something!): "The Stand".
This also happens to be probably my favorite work by King. I remember enjoying reading this work back in the late spring/early summer of 1998, just before I was going to take off for a six week trip to Paris, to visit my brother, who was living there at the time. It was my first trip back to France specifically, and Europe in general, in around nine years, so I was excited.
That was a good time in my life, and I felt very good. Perhaps reading a book like that helped me to feel even better, because I remember enjoying it immensely. It was the first really, really, long novel from King that I had read, but it was also the beginning of an understanding that King seems to be at his very best when he has enough room in novel in which to operate. And with over 1,200 pages, he definitely has room to operate in this book!
King's greatest strength as a writer, to me at least, is in his character building. You begin to feel a connection with the characters, you care about them, and you want to keep reading about them. You want the best for them (although with Stephen King, you know that the best doesn't always happen to his characters).
"The Stand" is an excellent novel, and it was the first apocalyptic themed book that I really, really got into, and could imagine the end of the world happening more or less the way it did in the book. It captivated me, and I was able to read the entire book in around two or so weeks.
Do the math, and you realize that that means I was reading more or less one hundred pages each day. That, while in school full-time, and working full-time (plus some additional, overnight hours at a lovely place either on, or just off of, the Fairleigh Dickinson University campus in Hackensack. There were a couple of nights, at least, where I was at that job doing the overnights, and I began and ended the shift by reading that book, and doing little else. Nothing else was required of me but to sit in the lobby. No tours or anything, and so I brought a very good book with me, and read basically straight through. There were at least two nights like that, where combined, I probably knocked out several hundreds of pages between them!
What it comes down to for me is that this particularly King novel meant something a little extra to me as a fan, for multiple reasons, I guess you can say. So, that is why the film adaptation is so important.
I do not hate the 1994, made for TV version, although it falls far short of doing the novel justice. But I am looking very much forward to the upcoming movie version, and hope that it is an improvement from that last one - the novel definitely deserves more!
In any case, here is the article about the film getting a new director:
'Captain Phillips' director Paul Greengrass is said to take over the adaptation of Stephen King's 'The Stand' by Nicole Oran (nicole.oran@gmail.com) , Mstarz reporter | Nov 29, 2013:
http://www.mstarz.com/articles/22464/20131129/captain-phillips-director-paul-greengrass-said-to-take-over-the-adaptation-stephen-king-the-stand.htm
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