KC: Night Shift Double Feature

Chris has kindly shared a couple of Kulturecast episodes I guested on in 2022 that relate to a new episode we just recorded. Next up is our discussion about two Stephen King adapations based on stories from his Night Shift collection (Children of the Corn and Maximum Overdrive).

Episode Transcript

(00:29):
You like Stephen King. Unlike me, I read Night Shift. I mean
I've read them. I've read thembefore. I just didn't read them today
because I've said it before. Theysay it again. Stephen kings short stories
are his best stuff. Even thoughI have read it in the last month
and a half, his short storiesare still the best stuff that he's written.

(00:51):
Why is that because he knows howto end them and often they end
on like big time bummers. Ohyeah, they're They're definitely more in that
super downer phase. Yeah, Imean The Mist this, these two movies
all have endings changed for screen thatI again, I think you're kind of

(01:11):
my ledge will vary with you know, these two movies and then The Mist.
But it's funny like The Mist isvery much in the mold of these
two movies in the way that itwas done and the way that they kind
of did the things that they did. Because apparently everybody, everybody thinks Stephen
King doesn't know how to write ashort store or an ending to his stories.
Right after Yeah, I'm trying tothink I read. I think it

(01:36):
starts mainly around the IT time thoughfor me, at least because I was
keeping up from like pet Cemetery onand also being able to go back to
earlier stuff from the previous you know, ten or so years. I don't
think he had as much of atrouble ending things until the mid to late
eighties. Yea, So so wasit it is it where he became unable

(02:00):
to end things because it's like itjust kept going. I mean, that's
the joke, you know. Andyeah, that's my perception of it from
just being at Stephen King reader throughmost of high school, probably started,
if not seventh grade, by seventhgrade at least, if not earlier,

(02:20):
because pet Cemetery came out I thinkin eighty two, and I bought the
hardcover because I was already way intoStephen Kings So that was the first new
release that I was like, oh, snatch that upright, and then bought
all of the hardcovers at least ofthe horror novels through to like like I've
mentioned before, Tommy knocker Is inor Skeleton Crew once we start getting into

(02:43):
the early nineties, and then Istopped. But yeah, so that that's
always been kind of my perception isthat it sort of starts then. And
I remember telling myself, you know, if Tommy Knockers ends like it did,
I may be done. And Ican't remember exactly. I'm sure I
could look it up, but Idon't want to mess up my computer.
If Skeleton Crew came out after Butagain, a lot of those stories were

(03:07):
written, you know, well beforethe book came out, because they were
like the stuff from Night Shift inmagazines, right, exactly, kept submitting
stories to magazines and stuff, evenby that time when he had already made
millions of dollars. So I thinka lot of those stories and that's the

(03:28):
collection that the Mist comes from,if I'm not mistaken, But see from
Skeleton Crew. Yeah, yeah,see the Mist was changed, but it
was changed into a downer, right, which is the weird way. Yeah.
Well, and that's the thing aboutthe Mists that everybody always gets hung
up on is the ending of theMist is strangely positive for a Stephen King's

(03:51):
story. And then because again youhave something like Children of the Corn and
you have something like Trucks the storythat Maximum Overdrive is based on, that
end in such bummers. And what'sfunny is in at least in Maximum obor
Drive, not so much Children ofthe Corn. They show the ending from
the book as like part of thestory, and they and they don't end

(04:12):
the story where the book or thewhere the novella ended. So on this
episode of the Culture Cast, we'regonna be talking. I'm your host,
Chris Tesh. I'm joined by mygood friend, the host of the Wake
Up Heavy podcast All Things Horror Movies, mister Mark Begley, who made who
Chris? Yeah, Hi, I'mStephen King and I'm a huge fan of

(04:32):
ac DC apparently apparently, And onthis episode of the Culture Cast, we're
gonna be talking about two Stephen Kingfilms. Were calling this the Nightshift double
feature. We're talking about Children ofthe Corn and Maximum Overdrive. Every child
is afraid of the dark, theunknown, the nightmare and get them Nebraska.

(04:56):
That lightmare is in the Corn StephenChildren of the Corn from Stephen King,

(05:29):
the author of Carry the Shining theDead Son and Christine An Adult Nightmare,
Children of the Corn Stephen King,Children of the Corps and Adult Nightmare

(06:00):
Coming Suit from New World Pictures.So Children of the Corn was released in
nineteen eighty four. It is directedby Fritz Kirsch. It is based on
the story of the same name byone mister Stephen King, and it stars
Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, JohnFranklin, and Courtney Gaines as adults and
children, adults being the ones thatget murdered and or hunted, children being

(06:25):
the one who are doing it ina shockingly fictional town in Nebraska, of
all places. Yeah, so that'swhere the title of the Corn comes from,
the children being murderous children. So, mister Begley, tell me a
little bit about your experiences with childrenof the Corn. I would have had
to have rented this one probably shortlyafter became available on VHS. I had

(06:49):
the book tie in book, soit's got the poster image, popular poster
image and eight pages of pictures fromthe movie in it, and most likely
got that right around the time themovie came out. I wasn't old enough
to see the movie in the theater, even though I had seen Christine the
year prior. But I think thatwas just a weird situation where we were

(07:13):
with an older kid and he gotus in. But anyway, I rented
this quite a bit because at thattime we didn't have as much of a
Stephen King saturation in media. Andremember enjoying it and It's one of those
ones that I throw on when Igo on Stephen King jags. It's not

(07:33):
one of the better Stephen King adaptations, but it has kind of a nice
little charm to it, and soI'll watch it fairly off and every couple
of years or so, and watchedit this time with my daughter so that
she could experience some more. We'vebeen going through a lot of his movies
over the summer, and these werethe last two King films that we squeezed

(07:56):
in before she went back to school. So I have to ask where you
give where I give you my thoughtsof what did your esteemed daughter, the
budding film critic think about Children ofthe Corn. She enjoyed it. I
think if I were to ask herspecifically where this fell on the ones that
we watched so far'd probably be furtherdown the list. I think she started
to kind of tune out after alittle bit. There's a lot of it's

(08:20):
what we call padded yeah, inmovie parlance. That's a nice way of
putting it. These stories, justto mention real quickly, are fairly short.
In the collection that I have,which is a mass paperback book Children
of the Corn. I think isaround twenty seven pages, and trucks is

(08:41):
twenty or less than twenty around that. So if you relay that and you
can't, I know, it's notan equitable exchange. But when people talk
about movie scripts, you're genuinely lookingat a minute per page. Obviously,
movie scripts don't have detail and backgroundand descriptions of people, land or locations.

(09:03):
It's usually just you know, screendirection, dialogue and so on.
So it's not comparable, but stillI would think maybe double it. Even
so, you're looking at maybe fiftyminutes worth of film here, and it's
at least an hour and a halfif not longer. Say, it doesn't
feel like it feels like a twoand a half hour movie. And so

(09:26):
as you mentioned the kind of Imean the endings of the stories are presented
in the movie. There's so muchmore in the movie that's just padding.
We have additional characters, we haveway more driving, way more exploring the
town, way more this than that. You know, there's a kind of
a cold open that isn't a partof the story. We don't we aren't

(09:50):
told how the kids kill the adultsin the town. It's more implied in
the him searching through the church andthe church scene. It's tolly different that
none of the kids have names,there's nothing. We don't read the names
Isaac or Malachi until the last twoor three pages of the short story.

(10:16):
Right, they are not central charactersin this at all. It's really about
the couple and they're dissolving marriage andthis last gasp attempt to salvage that and
this, you know, this faiththat they meet by going off the main
highway. And again that's even changedin the movie because they're not married.

(10:37):
They're they're a couple and having problems. It's not really a severe it's commitment
issues. It's more are we goingto get married? As opposed to our
marriage is dissolving and we need tofix it, which I think I don't
know. I think it was sortof just because they're both kind of assholes
in the story and that's not necessarilyfun to watch for an hour and a

(11:01):
half, but it would it wouldhave given it a little bit more of
a dynamic feel if they had stuckmore with that from the story. I
don't know the reason to change it, other than to make them both a
little more likable. We have tocare that they're going to get killed,
might get killed. I think thatmust be what it is. They have
to give us a reason to care, because in the short story they both

(11:22):
eat shit like they die. Soagain, you know, if memory serves
me right, in the short story, neither one of them are very like.
No, neither of them are right. Which you can, I mean,
you can do a movie that way, but you're setting yourself up,
in my opinion, for a muchsteeper climb if you do it that way,

(11:43):
as opposed to giving the audience atleast one character to serve as the
kind of audience surrogate. And youknow, I was expecting it to be
Linda Hamilton in this movie. It'snot. It's Peter Horton, who is
Okay, I haven't seen him invery much much else. I never watched
thirty something, which I know iskind of the thing he's done for.

(12:05):
But you know, he's he's agood audience surrogate. But yeah, the
short I remember the one of theshort story. It's like these but again,
like, that's okay. The charactersdon't have to be likable in the
short story because they meet kind ofa fitting end, right. The characters
in the movie, if they're nice, like you don't, you know,
you don't want them to get fuckingcrucified and lit on fire in the cornfield

(12:26):
or whatever the hill happens to themin the short story, because the short
story keeps going after they die,they're they're they're not even present for how
the short story ends, so andend it ends differently than the story as
well. And I think he worksmostly as a director now, Peter Horton.
But I did watch most of thirtysomething, so I'm pretty sure.

(12:48):
I'm not sure if I if itwas out then when when I first saw
the movie, though, so Idon't know if I was all that familiar
with him when I saw it,and even Linda Hamilton, I probably hadn't
seen Terminator yet, even though Ihad come out a couple of years prior.
I don't know if I had evenrented it or not by that time.
But yeah, it's it's one ofthose. Like I said, we

(13:09):
start with the scene of the childrenkilling the adults in town. I thought
was pretty effective. It wasn't toobad, you know, it's it's I
don't know, it's it's unbelievable becausethe only people that could get away with
killing adults would have to be teenagers. Like five year olds can't kill their
parents, you know what I mean. And that's right, that's well,

(13:31):
that's the problem with the Children ofthe Corn, I think as a premise
is when we're talking children, that'sa broad spectrum, and frankly, the
children in the Children of the Cornstory are teenager. They're not even children.
So that's I think that's kind ofalways been my issue with Children of
the Corn. The first scene inthis movie does a pretty good job in
making it seemed believable that this couldhave happened, because for me, the

(13:56):
issue with Children of the Corn alwayswas, at least a short story,
the kids killing the adult is kindof unbelievable, really unbelievable, and like
unless presented in a way where it'slike, yeah, okay, so they're
drugging them and killing and they're poisoningthem, like okay, so they're catching
them off guard, but like,I don't know, believably. I guess
the only way a kid could murdertheir parent is if their parent is sleeping

(14:16):
in bed and a kid comes andstabs them to death, like a six
year old stabbing an adult to death. Like it's just that's unrealistic. Even
for Stephen King. I feel yeah, and I don't think it's really explained
and the story at all. It'shim Bert looking at their diaries in the
church and something happened. They figureout, and it takes it's a much

(14:39):
longer time period like this happened twelveyears ago, right, is basically how
it goes in the story. Andso there's no real clue as to what
happened and who did what to whomit could have been maybe the older kids
going from house to house, whoknows. It's not explained, and all
we really see in the movie isthe one is diner scene. And then

(15:01):
again you can sort of speculate andextrapolate out as too, well the older
kids went around maybe and help theyounger kids, etcetera, etcetera. But
again you're not that's all created wholecloth for the film because and it's good
to do that. It gives youan idea of what's happened. But this
is taking place not They have longerhair later on, so it's been a

(15:26):
while. It's not like immediately thatthat our characters, the adult characters show
up in their town. Three it'sthree years later, which which doesn't make
sense because the kid those neck boydoes not look three years older. It
airs longer. But well, andalso, I mean again, there's this
whole issue of the premise I feellike, and then again, like,

(15:48):
you know, I didn't really givemy thoughts on Children of the Corn,
but I think for me, assomeone who does like Stephen King and goes
to bat for his short stories,this is a bad short story by Stephen
King. And it's a bad premisethat just is dumb. Like, I
have a hard time buying this premisebecause the way the book presents it makes
a little bit more sense the storywith it being twelve years as opposed to

(16:10):
three, that makes a little bitmore sense. But this story would have
to take place realistically in like thetens or the twenties for it to make
sense, for it to be believable. Because let's just put it this way,
this story takes place when the mideighties, so when the movie came
out like eighty four, right,let's just say, right, okay,
let's just say mid eighties is whenChildren are the Corn The story takes place

(16:33):
even then, How could anyone anywhere, for any amount of time go off
the grid as a town completely.It's just like the conceit of the story
is so it's it's hanging on bya thread. It's very wishy washy,
and the moment you start kind ofasking questions, it feels like it falls
apart. And that's unfortunate because StephenKing has a lot of premises that sound

(16:55):
really like they're not gonna work,but then they totally do. And this
one is like, it kind offeels like a slam dunk in a way.
But I think because the conceit ischildren murdering their parents, it's just
and then like this town essentially disappearing. And in the movie they do this
weird thing where they're like going incircles, even because I guess he who

(17:15):
walks behind the roses doing it,maybe it's I don't know, it's a
very weak conceit. I feel likeeven for Stephen King, it's I was
thinking about it after reading the storiesand then looking at the rest of the
stories in the collection, It's like, what what was it that, as
opposed to some of the other storiesin here, what was it about these

(17:36):
two that they thought, oh,let's turn these into feature length right films?
Because there isn't much to this.It's really an afternoon A couple gets
lost, stumbles upon a weird religiouscult and get killed, and obviously you
have to expand on that, butwhat even about that particular their story makes

(18:00):
you think, oh, this wouldbe I think it really is just let's
mind the Stephen King backlog and startgetting movies out, and which I think
is like something that we've kind oftouched on a couple times, but I
think, you know, we cantouch on it now given that I think
this is the first not great StephenKing thing we've watched together. The over

(18:22):
adaptation, the over adapting of StephenKing, I think is a is a
thing worth talking about from the eightiesand nineties, not so much the seventies,
but the eighties and the nineties.Man is just like, we don't
need to adapt every single fucking thing. This guy writes like, we don't
we really not only do we notneed to the fact that we are is

(18:45):
devaluing essentially everything that he does.Because now we have some good things and
then so like so many bad thingsand so many middling things, and this
is one of those. This isthe middle of the road. It's pretty
fun to watch. I think Cleoenjoyed watching it. It's not very gory,

(19:06):
so it doesn't have that going forit. You know, the opening
scene is pretty tame as far aswhen you see somebody's face or neck slip.
There's no Tom Savini esque special effects. It's just it's just the old
trick of you have a little bloodsqueezing out as the knife goes along.
You know, no open wounds there, I mean there are some. When

(19:26):
they run over the kid at thebeginning, he's pretty cruci actually that that
scene, Uh caught Cleo's attention becauseof the dummy being run over and we
always love that and so that it'snice when they you know, edit it
properly and it looks like somebody gothit by a car. Real. It's
real brutal too. Yeah, it'spretty rough and it's you know, it's

(19:48):
a kid. So yeah, thismovie doesn't hesitate to kill kids, right
right, I get them because they'reevil, so right right? Are they
possessed? Are they evil? Well? I interpret it as possessed. Oh
really, I don't know, LikeI guess not like being manipulated. I
guess it's like the woman. It'slike the Marcia gay Harden character. In

(20:10):
the mist, like is she evilor just like miss uh, you know,
misinformed? Misguided? Like is isthe is the what's gonna call him?
Malachi? Is the adult actor playinga child Isaac actually like possessed?
Or is he just preaching the willof He who walks behind the rows?

(20:32):
That's what I couldn't figure out.Not that it matters, right, I
just think it's it's, you know, your typical cult. It just happens
to be run by younger people.Yeah, and it goes toward that.
I mean, clicks and kids thatget real close to each other at school,
even in elementary schools. Sometimes ifone of them is a little bit

(20:53):
off and suggests, you know,we should go do this, Let's go
torture square, you know, bizarrestuff like that, and everybody else is
kind of like, okay, Iguess we'll do that. Right. But
you know, you mentioned the timethe time frame for the story, and
it's it starts in like the midsixties at least, the cataloging of the

(21:15):
kid's birthdays, because in this world, for them, once you turn eighteen
or the day of your nineteenth birthday, you have to sacrifice yourself to He
who walks behind the Rose and that'show Bert and the story kind of figures
out what's going on. Like,okay, so at some point they got
rid of all the adults. That'swhy the town it's abandoned and there's nobody
around. And then oh, what'sthis weird diary of you know, birthdates

(21:40):
and then death dates and the changingof their names to a biblical name,
and oh it's all you know,they're all dying when they're the day of
their nineteenth birthday. So it's itstarts in the mid sixties and goes up
to that twelve years, which takesus into the mid to late seventies.
And even then, like you say, a small town just disappearing scenes unlikely.

(22:06):
I mean in the middle of nowhereNebraska, I don't know. I
mean I live in Nebraska. Ifeel like even to the little the little
bumdill towns I've been to, likethey're still connected to main high I mean
they're still on a main highway.The people were driving and stopped to get
gas. What happened, well,and that's what they broached that in the
movie, though, I have kindof a solution for that with the old

(22:30):
man right Armstrong, But like itdoesn't really make sense. Yeah, I
think he's there for misdirection, andoh, well, go to I can't
remember the name of the other townthat Hemingford, Yeah, that they're trying
to get to when they go throughthat kind of loop the loop. But
yeah, I think he is thereto misdirect people that get too close to

(22:52):
the town. And it's it's theold trope of we're not on the main
highway. We're in the middle ofnowhere, surrounded by hundreds and thousands of
acres of cornfield, So who wouldnotice this town that was barely a dot
on the map in the first place. Isn't really there anymore? Right,

(23:12):
It's still there, but it's notfunctioning like a normal town anymore. Right.
But that it's the part that reallystruck me this time watching it,
is that they drive around for solong or they get into the town and
it's like, come on, guys, this is why you don't take a
story like this and try to turnit into a feature length film. Either

(23:36):
that or you need to even gofurther back. We start with them in
a hotel room again, which isnot in the story at all. Get
some character development. So we havethose two scenes them in the hotel room,
the diner scene, but then youhave this long stretch of them driving
around and finally getting to Gatlin,and then when they get there, it's

(23:56):
walking around and trying to find somebuddyto talk to and then finding these kids
who aren't characters at all in thestory. Nope, they are added into
the movie, and boyd they Ireally love the precocius shitthead child vibe,
don't you. I mean again,I don't know what the point of adding
these characters to the story is.They add nothing other than like the like

(24:19):
cute see little ending. Yeah,and it is a cute see little ending,
the way that they oh, Iguess you could live with us for
a week, Like oh God,come on like that for me? Like
that, for me is like thekind of stuff that I'm I'm talking about
when I say like these kinds ofstories should not be adapted, because the

(24:40):
fact that that is where this storywent is like nuts to me. I
wanted to squeeze in and I didn'tget a chance to, and I forgot
this morning. I wanted to squeezein. A viewing of the Disciples of
the Crow, which I believe wasa dollar baby that came out prior to
this, right right, I sawthat to see how you know it functions
as a short film. It's onYouTube, but when I looked it up

(25:03):
on IMDb, it said thirty minutes, and the one on YouTube was only
eighteen, so I wasn't sure ifwhich one was correct, But I'd still
like to check that out. Someof those dollar babies can be pretty fun,
like the Frank Darabont ones. Well, and that's and that was the
other thing I was going to say, you know, this story has been
adapted one time before this, thenthis time, and then a Sci Fi

(25:26):
Channel version, and then they weredoing another one that's like a loose remake
that was supposed to come out intwenty twenty. I think it did,
I want to say. When Iwas looking on I are on Wikipedia,
I believe there were three titled Childrenof the Corn. But then you know,
let's let's not less we not forgetthere are actually how many of these

(25:48):
movies? Because this spawned a franchiseof movies that were being released up until
twenty twenty. I guess that's theone we were just talking about, but
a sequel was ring released until twentyeighteen. Children of the Corn, Runaway,
Children of the Corn two, TheFinal Sacrifice, three, Urban Harvest,
four, The Gathering, five,Fields of Terror, six six six,

(26:11):
Isaac's Return, Revelation, Genesis,Runaway, and then they did the
old chestnut of just the latest oneis just Children of the Corn. Yeah,
and mindally, I've not seen anyof them. I see people chatting
about them and which ones are kindof fun to watch, and I don't
think there's enough pull for me inthat original film to get me to watch

(26:33):
any of the sequels. Well,and that's the and that is the issue
I think for me with this story, the way it's presented is in this
movie is I did not I didn'tlike this story. So I don't want
to see another adaptation of this storyagain, because they would have to do
something vastly different than couple shows up, finds out the town as all kids,

(26:56):
the kids try to sacrifice them.Two versions of the story their successful
or they're not, and that thatleads to various versions of the story.
I don't if you were to makethis, I think you would have to
have one of the two characters getsacked. That's what makes sense if you
want to split the difference because yeah, people, for whatever reason, cinema
folks feel really cheated when characters ina movie die, all of them.

(27:18):
When it's like every character in amovie dies, people feel real cheated.
I don't know why, you knowwhat I mean, I don't know why,
but like mainstream audiences feel that.So I feel like you could get
away with that. Maybe maybe Idon't. I don't know, I don't
know. That's the thing, Like, I just this story is just so
kind of let to me, likeI wouldn't I there are other better Stephen

(27:40):
King stories that need to be adaptedthan just going back to the well again.
I would be curious to see howthe other iterations, not the sequels
so much, but the other iterationsof the story end, yeah, or
even how they kind of tackle thepadding in those as opposed to this one,
where it's mainly just driving around andrunning around, right, and a

(28:02):
couple of the scenes with the kidsto pat it out in their house and
well, and that's the thing,Like there are some fun performances from the
kids, you know. I mentionedIsaac played by John Franklin, totally not
like a thirty year old man atthe pot or anything. Uh, But
I think it's like twenty four.I think he's he's pretty good. Yeah,

(28:22):
he's decent, and he's creepy.I mean, he's this is why
you're here right outland we have Yeah, it's so weird, Like what that
is what that actor is known for? And that's it. Like, I
don't know Courtney Gaines. You know, I looked at his IMDb and it's

(28:42):
like, what what? Like,I swear to God, I thought you
were an other things. Yea,he is, unless I'm confusing him with
someone else. I know he's insome stuff that I've watched, but I'm
older than you. Of course he'sin, isn't he in? Yeah,
he's Can't Buy Me Love. He'sthe creepy kid in the Burbs. He's
barely in Back to the Future,and I think he still pops up from

(29:03):
time to time on a lot ofTV shows. But I guess maybe I'm
confusing him with the actor who playsScott Farcas from The Great Story, Zach
Ward. Yeah, but no,they should play brothers in something. Corney
Gaines has a great voice. Heplays I believe he plays kind of a
nerdy kid and Can't Buy Me Love. So he's got some range. Play

(29:25):
a nerd, I will I willsay. The other thing about the role
that he has is like he hasto be an intimidating kid because that character
in the book is not It's notnot that it's not the same, but
it's he's not being asked to dothe same things that he is in the
story the movie back, I mean, they don't. They barely do anything

(29:45):
in the story. They like literallyyou find out their names in the last
two pages of the of the storywhen they flip the script on their cult
and say, oh, well,now instead of your nineteenth birthday, you
need to sacrifice yourself on your eighteenthbirthday. And there's all these eighteen year

(30:08):
olds there in the crowd going,oh shit, now we're doomed, right,
which, like you say, isoutside of the leads or the protagonists
of the story are already dead.They kill and I can't remember her name
in the story, it's Burton orthe chick's name is Sarah, so I
was gonna call her Sarah Connor.She's been killed, Vicky, Yeah,

(30:30):
she's been killed by them. Hegets killed by he who walks behind the
rose, and then they're a sortof a epilogue to it. That we
finally get to know who Malichi andIsaac are. But I mean, there
really is nothing to any of them. You don't get You don't picture the
Isaac from the movie in this allof the kids where those sort of amish

(30:55):
outfits, and you know, andreally Isaac, I mean, Malachi doesn't
fare any better. It's just likethese two are the ones that Isaac is
the preacher, the one who startedit. Malachi is the one who sort
of does all the dirty work.And then boom, everybody's gone and Malachi's

(31:15):
widow is left. They're pregnant,and then it ends. So none of
that is in the movie. Noagain, it's like a completely different story.
And just I sit here and Isay to myself, if you were
gonna do, just do this story, but don't adapt it as hard,
Like make some more changes then likego outside, I don't know, like

(31:37):
add some more characters in or something. If you're gonna change it, already
change it some more, like makeit an actual interesting narrative, because like
I can't even imagine editing this filmtogether at the end being like, oh
this is fun. The climax ofthe movie, where Peter Horton is taking
the nate like the gasle hall andthrowing it at he who is behind the
rows, like who cares. It'sit's so so poorly edited that you watch

(32:00):
him like throw the moltop cocktail,but he didn't throw it. He tripped.
And then the kid goes and getsit and brings it back and he's
a thrower now and it's like thiswhole thing but it's not throws it but
it doesn't break, right. Yeah, he trips in the throat. It's
pretty. It's a clumsy movie.It's it's very clum It is something that

(32:21):
I know I enjoyed as a teenagerbecause it was Stephen King, because of
the creepy Isaac. I'm it wasfun. I was waiting for him to
show up in that first scene inthe diner outside the window there to kind
of gauge my daughter's reaction because heis I mean, he's has some form
of Dwarfism or something, so helooks unusual and talk has a strange voice,

(32:45):
so she was just kind of like, Oh, what's who's this guy?
What's this all about? And Iwas like, he's the leader,
sort of explains maybe why they wantto keep everybody young. Maybe he's perpetually
young. I don't know, butI think I think he was like twenty
four twenty five at the time.Yeah, he's like an adult. He's

(33:06):
an adult. Yeah, he hasa growth hormone deficiency. And I don't
think that Courtney Gaines was probably allthat much younger either. So Courtney Gaines
would have been nineteen at the time, so close. They killed him on
set because he was nineteen. So, you know, I don't know,
Like you said, it's it's aclumsy movie. It has some it has

(33:28):
some fun parts, but I thinkoverall, you know, I think there
are much better Stephen King's stories thathave been adapted. I think there are
better Stephen Kings stories to adapt tobegin with, like, you know,
just going from the source material,Like I can't believe that they released it
by itself, holy shit, likein a trade paperback like that to me
is wild, you know what Imean, Like that you're sitting in it's

(33:51):
is it just Children of the Cornerin that book and nothing else? Well,
now this is night it just hasthe this is Night shift. Yeah,
so it just kind of okay,like good book. They destroyed a
good book with a terrible cover.Yeah, Yeah. The original mass market
paperback cover of this is awesome withthe hands, the bandaged hands, and
then you open it it's like astep back cover, so the opener and

(34:13):
it's got all these eyeballs in thehand. Yeah. I, like I've
always said before, like Stephen Kingfor me, he is the man when
it comes to short story. ButI'll tell you what, if anybody else
had written this fucking story, theywould never have adapt not in a million
years would they have adapted it ifit wasn't a Stephen King's story. And
there are some Stephen King stories thatthat is totally the case that they're only

(34:37):
doing it because it's Stephen King.I mean he has dollar babies. For
those of you in the audience whodon't know what that is, there are
Stephen King stories that you can optionto adapt for one dollar and there is
a good list of them. Alot of them you may have never heard
of, but they're pretty good.Funny story mister Begley, Father Malone and
I actually had one of those.We did it at the end of twenty

(34:59):
nineteen, and we were to doit in the spring of twenty twenty is
when we were going to do yep, whoopsies. Yeah, so you can
see where that went. Yeah,we did it. I mean I sent
it everything. I sent the dollaroff and had the paperwork, and then
COVID happened, and like we neverheard anything. I think everybody just kind

(35:20):
of assumed, you know, handswashed, all good, whatever. But
yeah, dollar Dollar babies. Ihave a little bit of a I forget
what the one that we picked was, but yeah, we were going to
do one, and then you know, twenty twenty happen. Yeah. I
think a lot of the same storiesget optioned multiple times, so you'll find,
like on YouTube, you'll find someof them, and the Boogeyman is

(35:45):
the Boogeyman is one, and ofcourse now they're making a feature length feature
film of that. From this collection, I talked to a guy who and
I don't know if he ever cameout either, because it might have been
scheduled for around the same time.But I interviewed a guy who optioned Oh
shoot, I can't remember the story, but it's in one of my Stephen

(36:05):
King's series episodes. And I didn'tdive into the night Shift collection except to
mention the ones that I've seen sortof briefly, like children in the corn
and like Maximum Overdrive. But whenI look at we talked about this off
podcast last time, there are actuallya few more that I forgot about.
So Jerusalem's Lot, as you mentioned, has been turned into the Chapel Weight

(36:30):
series on Epics. I believe,and my wife and I started watching that
and we haven't finished it. It'spretty good. Adrian Brody just haven't gotten
around to finishing it up. GraveyardShift, he's a good look for he
has a good look for gothic core. Adrian Brody does yeah and yeah for
that time period. It actually worksreally well. He just has like his

(36:52):
looks crow, yeah, his facialfeatures for sure. I love Adrian Brune.
I'm a fan. So Graveyard Shifthas been turned into a full length
feature film. The Mangler has turnedinto a full length feature film. Sometimes
They Come Back, which is theone I forgot about. That's decent.
Tim Matheson and Brook Adams and Ibelieve that was an HBO original, you

(37:15):
know, from back in the lateeighties, early nineties, and it's pretty
good, pretty good. The Ledgeand Quitter's inc ended up in Cat's Eye,
which they work very well in thatformat of an anthology. They're only
like twenty or thirty minutes long,The lawnmower Man, which bears no resemblance
to the story at all, andKing had his name removed from and Children

(37:39):
of the Corn and Trucks. Somaybe half of the stories from this collection
have been adapted in one way oranother. And a lot of dollar babies
have been made from these stories,like the Boogeyman, like gray Matter and
the Woman in the Room and thatwas the So when you do a dollar

(38:00):
baby like as you know, Chris, you're not supposed to make money off
of it, I think you.I don't think you're allowed to, you
know, I think you can enterthem in festivals, but you have to
give credit. Everything has to becredited to Stephen King. And I believe,
like I said, I believe ifI memory serves me correctly, because
I get I've seen the contract,because I have signed one. I want

(38:22):
to say, yeah, there isthe whole You can't make money, think,
I think you. I think itsays clear as day, you can't
make money off of this right period. So the one exception was there were
two and I never rented them whenI was a kid, but I remember
looking at the covers because they werekind of creepy and surreal. There were

(38:42):
two VHS releases called the Night ShiftCollection. There was a one in two
and I think and you can findthese on YouTube. There were either two
or three stories each. One ofthem might have had two, one of
them might have had three. Butthe Frank Darabont Dollar Babies are on those
elections. He did the Boogeyman,and I want to say the woman in

(39:04):
their own it's not the woman inthe room. It's one of the different
seasons the breathing method. So thestory about the woman who's pregnant, I'm
going to have a baby and sheends up getting decapitated on the way to
the hospital or something like that,but but continues to live until she has
the baby. I think he didthose, and so the Boogeyman is available
on one of those collections, andthere was. However, they worked out

(39:29):
that agreement to release those and StephenKing gave his permission and whatnot. But
anyway, that's probably a better wayto go about a lot of the stories
in the book because they're not complete. First, you know, one,
two, three act kind of structuredstories there. They are like a chunk
of a of an idea, andyou've really got to work at fleshing them

(39:49):
out to make them super interesting welland that and that for me is kind
of the issue again, where youhave I don't know, you know,
you have this story that I thinkis a it's not a great premise in
a book of great premises, andall the other ones get adapted or are
turned into adaptations eventually, and thisis the one that gets kind of left
behind. So maybe it's a goodthing. I've never seen any other franchise

(40:14):
movies. I'm sure they don't haveanything to do with anything, so who
knows. Maybe they're good, Maybemaybe they redeem, maybe they redeem this
summer. I mean, I'm assumingthat most of them maintain the idea of
a religious cult of younger kids.I like that. I think the idea
is interesting and probably why I returnedto it as a teenager. The idea

(40:37):
of a religious cult just in generalis fascinating to me, and one that's
murderous for another thing is interesting yethorrifying. And the fact that they have
made this cutoff date of how longthey can live and none of us ever
explained though, what is the reasonfor why it? At nineteen you know,

(40:59):
I think you have to assume it'sjust to keep the corn their livelihood
going. But why such a youngage. Why? But it is fascinating
to me as like, why whyat nineteen do you get sacrificed? You're
going to run out of people atsome point by you're not pro creating,

(41:20):
you're not letting kids get old enough. Well yeah, I mean they are
that in the book, they arepro creating, but by the time your
kid, you're going to be gonebefore your kid is even of age to
understand. I mean, mother andfather are both going to die. There's
only a short period of time whereyou're able to have kids, so you
know, I mean, let's sayyou can get pregnant. I mean,

(41:44):
I know, you can get pregnantas young as nine years old, but
you still only have ten years then, and so you've got to pass all
that. How does it get passedon? Blah blah. It just doesn't
pan out after a while. You'regonna lose your whole flock basically at some
point. But I do think thatthat idea is interesting. Of a cult
built around kids with bad ideas andtwisted biblical ideas, it's just maybe that's

(42:13):
what they explore more in the sequelsthat whole concept and how wacky it is.
Yeah, well and and that andmay and maybe that is what it
and you know, if that's whatit is, cool, I think I
think for me this one, youknow, I had never seen the movie
before. I had read the shortstory, but I had never seen the
movie. I'm glad. I'm gladthat this movie was one that I had

(42:35):
never seen. I knew the Outlanderthing, but that was it. So
for me, it was like,you know, we're I'm finally watching it.
But the short story didn't jump outat me when I read it originally,
you know, when I was inhigh school. So it's it's not,
you know, not one that anybodywas ever like. You need to
watch it, like The Shining likeit, like so many adaptation. So
but yeah, so let's move onto the staff where we're gonna be talking

(42:58):
about. Let's talk a little bitabout Maximum Overdrive. Hi. My name
is Stephen King. I've written severalmotion pictures, but I want to tell
you about a movie called Maximum Overdrive, which is the first one I've directed.
Why the Dickens are going on arounda lot of people. I've directed

(43:25):
Stephen King novels and stories, andI finally decided, if you want something
done right, you ought to doit yourself. He was driving. I
don't know. It was my firstpicture as a director, and you know

(43:45):
something, I sort of enjoyed it. I don't know. I just wanted
someone to do Stephen King right.I just want to get the hell out
of here. So come and spendsome time with me and my friends at

(44:06):
the Dixie Boy, spend some timein the dark. Yeah, I'm going
to scare the hell out of you. And that's a promise. You're going
to get us an awful lot oftrouble. Man. We already travel maximum

(44:29):
Terror. Jesus coming in is MaximumKing. Maybe tomorrow will be our world
again with me. Dino de Laurentispresents Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive. So Maximum

(44:51):
Overdrive is directed and is directed byon a screenplay by Stephen King based on
his story from his own story.Yeah, Trucks and it's the Emilio Wests,
pat Hingel, Laura Harrington, ChrisMurray, a whole bunch of people.
Frankie Fazon's in there speaking of oursilence of lamb Ricky good Old Yardley
Smith, and yeah, it's abouta bunch of trucks and electronics that come

(45:14):
to life in the wake of acomet. So yeah, well I saw
this in the theater. It wasone of a handful of Stephen King movies
I actually saw in the theater.I think at some point I tried to
get to most of them. Sawa Running Man. This was a time
when again we're mining those smaller motherloadsor not even motherloads, baby loads of

(45:39):
Stephen King stories. And this isalways fascinating to me because it's one of
the day Laurentis Stephen King movies.So he was smart and snatched up the
rights to a ton of King workin the mid eighties. And Dead Zone
is in that group, which Ithink is probably the best of at least

(46:01):
the De Laurentis group. I wasabout to say, I would be inclined
to agree with you on that silverBullet fire starter this one. And I
know that there's others I'm forgetting.But smart guy, smart businessman, bought
up a bunch of Stephen King rights, put a lot of them out around
the same time, and gave usa glut an overabundance of Stephen King.

(46:24):
And again diminishing returns. I thinkas we go on and have already you
know, the big movies, thoseinitial novels that created such a stir are
gone. Now we've done Carrie,we've done the Shining Salem's Lot came out
on TV. You know, you'vegot the Dead Zone. Kujo, alright,

(46:45):
Coujo, I don't. I'm notsure about if that was a De
Laurentis one or not. Fire starter. So these early eighties films are coming
out now faster and faster on topof each other. Those books all came
out in the early eighties, theirmovies came out about a year too later.
Christine the movie and the book cameout the same year because those rights

(47:07):
were optioned before the movie was beforethe book was even published. And so
again, you know, eighty foureighty five, there were just gazillions.
This was what eighties seven or eighteighty six. Okay, So I was
old enough to go see rated ourmovies on my own, went and saw
it and have always enjoyed it.Again, a lesser property. There's not

(47:30):
a whole lot to the story,right, and I would say even less
than with Children of the Corn.It's a shorter story. It is basically
just again a one day, maybeovernight tale where we don't get the reason,
we don't get an explanation, wedon't get character background. I don't

(47:51):
think we get character names in thestory. Everybody's just called that, like
the counterman at the diner, thetruck driver, the young couple, the
salesman, the girlfriend unimportant. Yeah, so it's it's funny in that way
that no one is even we're noteven going to bother giving these people a
name because they're pretty much all gonnadie, right, and so we have

(48:13):
we've got to add all that.For a movie, you have to know
who these people are, what theydo for a living, why they're here.
And it's a lot more successful thanthe Children of the Corn adaptation insomuch.
And I know it's a mess ofa movie. And Stephen King,
you know, derives it to thisday because it was directed by Cocaine.

(48:34):
But so says him, it's it'sfun I think if I ask Cleo,
which one of these two, sincewe watched them over the same weekend,
which one of these two did youenjoy more? It would be this by
a mile. And she even saidat the end, you know, that
was a lot of fun, Soit succeeds on that level. Like I

(48:54):
messaged you, you know, saywhat, say what you will about Maximum
Overdrive. But it's a ton offun. And I think that that is
I had seen this movie before,so this one is not new to me.
I had read the short story before. I didn't reread it now,
but I remember the way it ends, because the way it ends, I
think is the best part of theshort story. And the movie still has

(49:15):
its problems. Uh, it's notgreat. Oh, I didn't know what
he was doing. He had noidea how to make a movie. No,
And like that's it's clear to meas it should be clear to the
any any audience goer that I don'tknow. It's that the conceit of the
story is dumb, and the wayand like the way, the reason the

(49:39):
way things happen the way that theydo isn't made clear enough quick enough,
and I'm not a fan of that, and I wish more was made clearer
sooner. Well, it's that tome. It's as I've told Cleo when
we're watching, I said, they'redoing the same thing they did at the
beginning of the Thing and of thePredator and they're prefacing it with story that

(49:59):
we don't need, Like I don'tneed to see the thing flying into Earth's
atmosphere, you know, tens ofthousands of years ago or whenever it did.
I don't need that. I don'tneed to know why the thing is
here. I don't need to know. They do the exact same thing in
The Predator they open with the shipflying into Earth. I don't want to
need to know that. No,this, I don't need some wacky ass

(50:22):
tail about a comet and its tail. I just wanted to happen, and
it does, and that there's noneof that in the story. It's just
happening. Shit happens in these stories, and you either buy into it or
you don't. I don't need theexplanation that gets like double tracked or backtracked.
At the end of the movie,when they start talking about a UFO

(50:44):
and a Russian satellite and a Russiansatellite blowing up a UFO, it's like,
well, was it fucking Aliens orwas it the comet tail? I
had to stop it and read ittwice, and I still don't understand what
it means. Well, that's what'snot clear to me, and that's what's
not clear that I think to onein the movie version, in the in
the story. In the book,it makes a lot more sense, like

(51:04):
they're they're sentient. And I'm prettysure in the story because this is something
that drives me crazy in the movie. In the story, it's just trucks,
it's not cars, and it's notevery other electrical thing. And in
the movie it's not even just electronicthings. It's any sprinklers that aren't electric

(51:30):
in any way. I guess maybethe sprinklers are on a timer, but
usually those kind of lawn sprinklers aren'tconnected to timers. But I don't know.
Because when the kid is writing downthe street after he's left the baseball
game and is trying to get home, there's set up and it's a cool
visual. I mean, that's whatthat's what I almost say that that's that's

(51:52):
this movie, and it's entire rightthat I was just going to say.
That sort of sums up this wholemovie. It's a cool visual. It's
fun to see as he's driving alongthe sprinklers going on behind him, and
then as he turns his head theyall go off. Okay, so everything
sentient, little tiny electric cars,lawnmowers, soda machines, bridges that yeah,

(52:13):
okay, because of whatever reason,that's great. Fine, everything in
the diner is gonna at some pointturn itself off or on. The story
keeps it simple. I'm pretty sureit's just trucks because all of the people
have arrived in cars, but theircars are all disabled or dismantled. They're
not cars aren't showing up at thediner. Just trucks are, right,

(52:36):
which is why the story is calledtrucks, eighteen wheelers and smaller. You
know, somebody mentions a bus atsome point, so it's yeah, big
automobiles. In the movie, it'severything. Everything that has some electrical component
comes to life, becomes sentient orwhatever you want to call it. So
that's one of the additions to sortof pad things out. But then you

(52:58):
have extra characters, and you havecharacters with actual names and functions and jobs,
and there's a lot more workers atthe diner. There's a love interest
for the lead who again whose namewe never learn, but in the movie,
you know, everybody pretty much worksat the diner, plus all the
people that have somehow made it there. But it is it's a it's a

(53:21):
great, big ball of dumb fun. And even the you know, talk
about Stephen King not knowing what he'sdoing. I think in his book Dan's
macab I know I read it somewhere, and I don't believe it's just a
Wikipedia entry. He talks about hisexperience of doing this and how he got
so much help from the cinematographer,the stunt people, and I think even

(53:44):
the editor had to like come onset and say, hey, you know,
you need coverage for this. Youneed to have something that's going to
connect these two shots. Otherwise it'snot going to make sense this, this,
and that. I mean, it'sI think if they didn't have if
he didn't have all that help,and if the people, the editor and
the cinematographer were just as incompetent ashim, it would be a mess of

(54:07):
a movie. But it's still like, I don't see any glaring holes or
mistakes. It's just kind of ajumbled up mess, but it's done in
such a way that it's still alot of fun. Well, and you
know, the whole thing with thecinematographer getting blinded isn't great. You're talking
yeah, yeah, and you werewell, I mentioned it only because you
mentioned the lawnmower scene, because that'swhen that's when it happened. But I

(54:29):
would be inclined to agree with you. I think if it were all a
bunch of folks who didn't know whatthey were doing, collectively, I think
maybe this movie wouldn't be even fun. I mean, that's the thing.
I think. This movie's fun.I don't know how successful it is outside
of being fun, but it isfun. Yeah, that's my take away
from it. Yeah, it's it'sbecause like the effects are fun, the

(54:51):
idea is kind of fun. Youknow, Emilio Estevez motherfucker, I mean,
and stuff like that's fun. It'sall right. I mean, how
many times is Emilio is going tobe the lead in a movie that's kind
of and again, you know,it's a Steve let me put it this
way. It's a Stephen King adaptationof something that's very King but not at
the same time, like it's verynot Gothic horror. It's not not a

(55:13):
house. It's not not kids fightinga clem, vampires or werewolves. It's
yea an energy, demons, noneof that. Yeah, it's very different
for Stephen King. You can see. I think the good. A good
scene to sort of dissect is thatopening bridge scene where a lot of cool
stuff happens, a lot of greatstunts. Cars toppling on top of each

(55:36):
other, people flying out of theircars, people flying into cars, watermelons
flying all over the place, smashingthrough people. The special effects are pretty
good. We get a bit moregore in this than say Children of the
Corn and they're bloodless R rated movie, but they're you. It's a credit
to the editors that the scene makesas much sense as it does, which

(55:59):
it really doesn't because multiple times thesame cars fall people falling through the bridge
really shouldn't be falling through the bridgeat that point, so on and so
forth. But if you just kindof sit back and let it wash over
you, there's a lot of goingon in that first scene, and it's
I think it's covered by the editingbecause there would be a lot of there

(56:20):
already a lot of goofs. Butit could be a total cluster fucking not
make any sense at all if theeditor wasn't on top of things, gotcha
and made it look like, okay, this is this is the way things
happened, and you get you know, you get an ACDC van in there
for extra fun. Well, Imean why not. That's you know,

(56:40):
we were making that joke before westarted recording. Stephen King massive ACDC fan.
Hey man, he gets he getsa CDC in one movie, he
gets the Ramons in another movie towrite songs for his movies. That's got
to be pretty cool to have thatkind of cachet. Yeah, well to
be the whole score. They dothe whole score for this movie. Have

(57:02):
they ever scored anything else in theirlives? I don't think so. And
it's and it's fine. You know, I'm not the biggest a CDC fan,
but I like a lot of theirmusic and who made Who's a decent
song? They're throwing some old classicsin there. Hell's Bells fits in.
They said Hell's bells at one pointin the movie. There you go.
They said Hell's bells and I waslike, oh my god, they're doing

(57:23):
that thing. They're doing the arresteddevelopment thing. No. Well, and
that's the thing that is the thingabout this movie that I do appreciate is
they don't try to make these nutsa stupid but silly premise because it's a
silly premise. I think that theydon't try to make the silly premise very

(57:43):
serious. They say it's silly,it's over the top, it's completely couca
bananas. It makes no sense,it doesn't need to make sense. And
you know what, here we go, like right, like you said,
the music's by ACDC. They leanpretty hard into they know that this is
a pretty un serious premise that doesn'tneed to be treated seriously either. Right,

(58:07):
yes, it is not taken veryseriously. This isn't it. I
mean, I'm not saying that itis super serious, but like it's more
serious than this. Yeah, Ithink the conceit is more serious in that.
And here sort of have it bothways, where yes, the conceit
is ridiculous, they're not. We'renot playing it for laughs. But we're

(58:30):
going to have a fun time whilewe're making this. Hopefully it's a fun
time while you're watching it. Andthat's really all we're going. If they
were gunning for more than that,they didn't succeed. But if that's all
they were gunning for, they succeededin spades. Well, I best I
can tell you know that in mymind, that's what Stephen King was gunning
was just to make a kind offun lark of a movie. I mean,

(58:52):
you've got pat hingele in there.Just look at the cast and think,
Okay, we're not Carlo Esposito,who doesn't last very long unfortunately,
but very young, yeah, veryyoung. I saw him. He's in
Taps, the movie with Sean Penn, Timothy Hutton, and Tom Cruise.

(59:13):
They're all like super young, andhe was. I was like, oh
my god, I totally forgot.I used to watch that movie all the
time. I was like, Ihad no idea he was in this.
But that was like four or fiveyears before this movie came out, so
he was even younger then. Butthe yard Lee Smith, I mean,
come on, one of the youknow, getting ready to make a career

(59:34):
out of being Lisa Simpson in afew years. And it's just silliness all
around. Well, and that's thething. It's like, I don't need
any more from the movie that itgives me in regards to the way it
approaches the story, Like it almostis a zombie movie in a lot of
ways. Like that's what it reallyis is It's just a zombie movie with

(59:57):
this kind of weird conceit that thezombies can't get in and look, I
think we would both agree the waythe story ends is way better than the
way this ends. But the waythat this ends makes sense for the screen.
Yeah, it's in the story.I like that. It's very like
it's honestly very Simpson's tree House ofHorrors, very twilight Zone. I mean,
it's a twilight Zone story, right, Like it's Stephen King doing a

(01:00:21):
twilight Zone story. The short storythe movie is something else entirely. I
mean, if you want to,if you start to think about the ramifications
of who made who, right,which is the conceit of the movie?
Like we made you? You can'tdo this to us? So what are
we talking about here? Are wetalking about trucks and cars and electronic things

(01:00:45):
or just a matter of we've gonetoo far in the direction of comfort and
ease and so now this stuff controlsus. I mean, this is way
way way before everyone had a computerin their house, way way way before
anyone had internet or smartphones. Butis that the conceit Stephen King himself gets

(01:01:07):
called an asshole by an ATM,you know, is it because we're taking
steps to remove ourselves from these transactionswhere you used to have to walk into
a bank, wait in line andtalk to a teller to get your money.
But now all you have to dois go up to this fancy computer,
punch in a few numbers and getthe money, and then go to

(01:01:28):
the store, go wherever. Imean, you know, if we want
to get into the ideas behind theseis that what we're going for or is
it just Hey, I have anidea. What if cars, the cars
that we rely on, suddenly turnedon us. It doesn't, I mean,
it doesn't have to be any deeperthan that, right, and it
doesn't get any deeper than that.But it's not just the cars. It's

(01:01:51):
everything, right, It's everything,But like that's not explored, and I
in the in the short story,remind me, is it everything in the
short story? No, That's whatI've been saying as far as I could
tell. And I basically read thewhole thing last night, So I may
be forgetting some I got the indicationbecause of the descriptions of how people ended

(01:02:14):
up there. Now, most ofthem are there because their cars are disabled
or got disabled as they showed upto the diner. So it may just
be that their cars can't run anymore. But everything that they're describing are large
vehicles eighteen wheelers. Somebody mentioned seeinga bus going down the highway in the
wrong direction and just taking out carsright and left. A bulldozer does show

(01:02:37):
up, and that's too kind ofsimilar to the movie where it gets into
the diner itself, not really tokill people, but to tell them,
like, hey, you need topump the gas because they're voting on whether
or not they're going to pump thegas for them. Let them just starve.
But what's keeping them from breaking inhere? And which we don't which

(01:03:00):
isn't really explained all that well ineither iteration they mentioned it in the movie.
They say something to the effect oflike if the truck were to come
in here, because it weighs somuch, it would like crash into the
basement and get stuck and then itwouldn't be able to get out, which
like, okay, how does there'sa basement? Though, well, that's

(01:03:23):
I mean, that's my that's mypoint. It's like, okay, sure,
I mean that's the problem with thismovie. And that's kind of the
issue with this movie that I haveis the conceit again in the story,
I can get an I can overlookthe conceit in the story, the written
story, but I can't overlook theconceit in the movie because when you see

(01:03:44):
it visually, it's hard to overlookthe cars just going around like this,
and it's like, why don't theyjust fucking ram through it right right?
And they don't like catch wise tothe fact that they need to pump gas
until much later into the story,so it's not like they're like two minutes
into it they're like, oh mygod, we're gonna have to pump gas
for these fucking things. Like theydon't say that until, like, you
know, three quarters of the waythrough the movie, which is how the

(01:04:04):
story ends in the book. AndI think that's what I always keep in
my head as the reason why theydon't kill everybody is because they know they
need people. They still need peopleto take care of them right right in
the most basic way, which isto pump gas. At some point,
they would need people to repair them. So they can't kill everybody. So

(01:04:28):
that's not really their ultimate goal.It's just to be in charge now.
So you're going, yes, you'regoing to survive if you're not stupid,
but you're here to serve us basically, instead of the other way around.
But yeah, I really think thatin the story it's just supposed to be
trucks. Well that's why it's calledtrucks. Yeah, right, but I

(01:04:48):
don't think that's not as interesting.Well, but they don't do anything with
it though. Oh the turkey carvingknife goes haywire, Like that's not interesting.
I mean, it could be interesting, but they don't do anything with
it. Jim Carlos Bozito dies tothe Arcade machines, which is kind of
neat, but like the whole thingwith the turkey knife or you know,

(01:05:11):
the the obligatory Stephen King cameo asthey called me and I asked whole which
I think is you know, it'sfunny and it's fun that he's the first
thing you see on screen in thismovie from a actor perspective, as you
see the ATM looking up at him, but they don't do anything with it,
and that and that that's you know, that feels like there was an

(01:05:32):
X Files episode where the machines weretelling people to kill it was like an
Exiles episode where the machines are tellingpeople to kill other people, which is
not what this via the ATM,I think, right, not mistaken,
at least in one scene. That'snot what this is, but that's what
this could have been. Well,they definitely explore, at least with the
kid, the other things that aregoing on as he's by writing through town

(01:05:57):
after the baseball practice when his kindof enjoy the soda pop shotgun scene.
So I think this is the firsttime I noticed when their coach gets beamed
in the head with a soda canit actually dents like he was wearing a
prosthetic. Yea, it went in. But the the paver I'm not sure

(01:06:18):
what those machines are called, thatruns over the kid that got cut because
you're supposed to see his top ofhis head pop off. That would have
been cool. I was more surprised, you know, I always forget that
this is in the movie, butman, it's it's a really good scene,
like, yeah, surprise, it'ssurprising. So as he's leaving there

(01:06:38):
and realizing something's up and driving throughthe streets of blue velvet, yeah,
pretty much. Since they were bothfilmed in Willington, North Carolina, and
this one states that explicitly that that'swhere this takes place. Yeah, but
one of the streets, I swearit was like, it's straight out of
the neighborhood, that it looks kindof free and what's her say, what's

(01:07:00):
her name? Walked down at night, but you know, he sees people,
you know, whose cars have wrecked. He sees some girl up in
her window with a cord wrapped aroundher neck from the hair dryer. All
these other indications that this is widespread, it's not just cars, and that
electronic devices are killing people, whichsort of gets left in the dust once

(01:07:26):
you reach the diner and then it'sjust back to trucks and cars and for
the rest of the movie essentially,right, I wouldn't like if it's checked
back in, Yeah, I meanit, it'd be kind of neat to
see more stuff do weird things inthe film. I mean, that's why
I would watch a movie like thisif it weren't. But I feel what
it was about. Yeah, ifI didn't know it was based off of

(01:07:46):
a story solely about trucks, myexpectation would be it's going to have electronics
killing people in inventive and weird ways, and you don't really get that,
So why did they put it inthe movie? That's the real question.
If those are the padding aspects ofthis, like that whole story with the
kid getting trying to get to thediner because that's where his dad works and

(01:08:10):
he knows something's up. He doesn'tgo home, or maybe he does try
to go home. I don't knowif that one house is supposed to be
his or not, but you knowit takes him forever to get there,
so we had That's to me,that's where the padding idea comes out.
It's more interesting padding than that ofchildren at the corn, but it's still

(01:08:30):
how do we fill up the timehere to go from a twenty page short
story to an hour and a halflong movie. Well, it's with these
let's extrapolate out with him who's noteven in the None of those people are
in the story, the kid andthe dad that works here that gets immediately
taken out by the one of thetrucks. Okay, just not listening after
he's had diesel in his eyes andhis red inflamed eyes. I love it.

(01:08:56):
I mean, it's just the otherthing is this movie also really benefits
from having poorly written characters. LikeI get that they had to create the
characters for the movie, but thenthey're not even very well written, like
tell me what Emilio esteve as hischaracter is like, he's a parolee who's
working at the diner, and that'sabout it. It's taken advantage of by
his boss because he is a paroleand will have to work over time without

(01:09:21):
extra pay. And that's it.That's the beginning and middle and end of
his character essentially. Yeah. Yeah, which is weird because King is not
one to King is not one whopoorly writes characters. He's not. I
think the problem with Stephen King ishe needs a long runway to really do
it right. Yes, I thinkthat's and that's why the short stories are

(01:09:43):
so good, because it's like ifhe's if he knows he's doing a short
story, that means he can makechanges to the way he writes to lean
into or lean on, you know, quick character creation, which would essentially
just be characters without names or charactersthat are very broadly written. But then
you have something like it where ittakes a thousand pages to tell the story

(01:10:03):
because he's describing everything and giving youthe most in depth character creation humanly possible.
Yeah. Yeah, but he needsa long runway for it, like
his long stories are long for thatreason. His in depth character stories are
fucking long, right, because youget twenty pages of background on one minor

(01:10:23):
character here. Like I mentioned,none of these characters even have names.
The lead, which is supposed tobe I guess in the movie, the
Emilio Esteva's character. He doesn't workat the diner, he doesn't have a
love interest. He's just another guythat ended up there because his car got
taken out, right. And he'sjust the lead because the story is told

(01:10:46):
in first person narrative and he's theone telling it, and no idea what
his name is, what he does. He's not a parolee, he's not
working at the diner. Nothing,nothing, nothing. They are really just
pawns in this little short chess gamebetween people and trucks. And that's the
problem with this movie is instead ofsaying, okay, well, the source

(01:11:09):
material really doesn't have characters, sowe are essentially given carte blanche to create
these characters the way we want.Let's do something interesting with them, and
they don't. And that's the problem. And this all, I mean,
the failures of this movie almost solelysit on the shoulders of Stephen King in
a lot of ways. And youknow what, when you're the one who's
writing and directing the film, Ithink you need to be the one to

(01:11:32):
shoulder that blame. And I understandwhy he's disowned it. Yeah, I
think he I think he owns it. I think I mean, as far
as the failure of it, he'sbeen asked, you know, how can
you never directed anything else? Andhe said, go watch Maximum Overdrive.
Right, But that's the thing,Like, I'm sure it's he sees it
as like a massive failure for him. But even in it being not great,

(01:11:57):
it's still pretty good for Stephen.It's a weird Stephen King short story
adaptation, it is, and itcame out around again around some of the
weirder ones like Running Man, whichwhich is a Bachman totally diverts from the
original, right, I mean theoriginal Schwarzenegger action movie. No, Yeah,
no, it's it's very different andfor my money, a lot more

(01:12:23):
interesting in the story. It's thenovel itself is more interesting. I would
like to see that one redone actuallyand be more faithful to the story.
I think it could be a reallycool concept. The things that it's inspired
by is not what the movie isinspired by. Yeah, I mean,
I mean I don't even know whatthe movie is inspired by. But all
that again, all that stuff iscoming out late eighties, when things are

(01:12:47):
changing in the in what we expectfrom movies. So let's throw all that
garbage in to these really simple,stripped down stories. I mean, even
The Running Man the novel is astripped down right, it's a novella.
It's a novella. Yeah, Imean it was released as a mass market
paperback, so I don't know howlong it is on its own. I

(01:13:09):
only have the collection, but youknow, they were all quote unquote books.
But the Yeah, I think heowns up to the failure of it.
And you're right, it is solelyhis because he's writing a script based
on his own story and then directingthat. So even though he had help
kind of technically speaking on set,all of that stuff, it's all the

(01:13:31):
script. Poor character development, poordialogue, poor character motivation, that's all
on him. Yeah. The onlycharacter in this kind of going back to
you know, no one being namedor anything, is the salesman. The
salesman and the story suffers the samefate basically of getting knocked into the ditch.

(01:13:53):
But it's it's not even utilized inthe story as anything other than he
chimes up a little while later likehe does in the movie and then just
ends up dying in the ditch.They don't go try to save him,
which in this case in the inthe movie leads them to rescuing the kid
they need up at the same spotwhere the salesman is, and they're able

(01:14:14):
to take him back to the diner, where unfortunately his dad is dead.
But he helps move the story alongby being the one who knows Morse code,
which becomes a big part of themovie, and helping them understand what
the trucks want from them. Andthat is pretty much the same in the
story, except it's our lead guywho knows Morse code because he was a

(01:14:38):
boy scout. It's a broom.I'm curious as to how a truck would
know Morse code. Well, again, is it a truck or is it
an alien? Yeah? Well,and it's an alien and they're using it
to like clear off the earth andthen eat all the resources, which like,

(01:15:00):
yeah, okay, like we've seenthis story a million times, but
that doesn't make it any less interestingthat yeah, in the end, in
the story, it's not a itmakes more sense in the movie because it's
that little military thing, the gunholder car. It's like a it's like
a like a what are they called. It's a jeep, but it's like

(01:15:21):
a kind of jeep, a wilyjeep. Yeah, it's a little flatbid
thing, but it does carry arounda gun like in the center, and
so it shoots them up. Yeah, which I guess makes sense, But
it sort of makes sense that somethingfrom the military would know Morse code.
But in the story it's just oneof the diesel trucks that's blasting it out

(01:15:43):
on its horn, and it's like, how do you know Morse code?
That's man made? Did your truckdriver tap it out on the steering wheel?
I that's again and again that's forme. The issue with this movie
is similarly to Children of the Corn, when you start to think about the
premise and really like spending more timethan spending more time than the movie would

(01:16:04):
like for you to spend. Sothat's the thing. Maximum Overdrive does a
good job of holding your attention.Children of the Corn doesn't, and that's
probably I think both of the premisesare pretty tenuous. I think they have
different problems. This movie. Theissue is why don't the trucks just fucking
run them over? And also,why don't the trucks you're telling me that

(01:16:26):
the pump that's electronic couldn't figure outhow to get over to the trucks somehow,
like somehow somehow. But again,I'm not trying to be cinemason's guy.
But like, again, the movieis spending a lot of time doing
all these other things, and specificallyin the movie it's not just trucks.
In the book, it makes sensebecause it is just trucks, but the

(01:16:46):
moment it's like electronics and stuff.It's like, well, why don't they
just filled the up themselves? Anyways, all of that aside, Yeah,
all of that aside. It keepsyour attention better than Children of the Corn.
But they're both immensely flawed premises outof the gate, and I think
rather weak premises out of the gate, this one less so than Children at

(01:17:08):
the Corn. Yeah, they're whenyou read the stories, you really understand.
Okay, this was these things werewritten to send off to mainly Men's
Magazine, right, Cavalier, stufflike that Cavalier, and then he moved
up to Penthouse and Playboy, andthen he ended up getting into Cosmo and
other magazines that actually had lit sections, you know, the big name writers

(01:17:31):
got into. But he was payingthe bills with these stories. And yes,
they're fun and they have interesting ideas, but it wasn't I can't imagine
that any of these took that longto write initially. I mean a lot
of his early novels didn't take longto write, and a lot of the
Bachman books didn't take long to write, and he was writing them when he

(01:17:55):
was getting out of high school andgoing into college. I mean, the
guy had all the knack and talentfor writing early on to be able to
spit stuff out so quickly yet stillstill be a decent storyteller. So I
think it isn't sort of important tolook at the reason that these were written.
They were to help pay the bills. He got him into places that

(01:18:15):
probably paid a decent amount of moneyand found food on his table, and
they weren't really you know, theeditors of those men's magazines probably weren't using
the red pin a lot on thestories, probably just taking what they got.
I mean, I knew that theycould sell. If it's a long
story, it takes up more spacein the magazine they could sell a few

(01:18:36):
more copies with the Stephen King storyinside. Yes, So not to be
overly cynical about this, but thesearen't great works of literature. Well,
they're not meant to be adapted.I mean that's the other thing. Like,
I don't think Stephen King when hewrote the story, was like I
can't wait for them to adapt trucks. It's like and again, like you
know, he's the one who adaptsit. So maybe he was just like,

(01:18:58):
I'm gonna app the thing nobody wouldexpect me to adapt, which I
kind of also really admire that he'sjust like, I'm gonna adapt something of
mine that's really weird. I'm sureit came in a package deal with De
Laurentus, like, right, okay, by all these let me direct one
of them. Okay, do youdirect this one about the cars and you'll

(01:19:21):
get this much money and don't spendit all on cocaine. Yeah, but
he did apparently, and that's that'sand that's I think the ultimate issue,
you know, his issues with cocaineand substance abuse aside and him not liking
this movie and kind of you know, feeling like this movie was a failure.
I still think this movie's all right. He directed a better adaptation of

(01:19:42):
his own story than other people havemost most of most of the bad Stephen
King things are worse than this bya country mile. This is at least
fun. Like you said, it'sfun. That is Its biggest benefit is
it does not take itself at allseriously. And frankly, children are the
one probably could have done better bybeing a little less serious on its own

(01:20:03):
as well. It's just, youknow, starkly angry as a story,
right, And even though they softenthe characters and that one, it still
has that Like I think as akid, I didn't really pick up on
that, that bickering and stuff betweenthe leads even though I had read the
story, and they're even worse toeach other and that. But the softening

(01:20:25):
of that is what makes it asdigestible as it is, which isn't you
know. It's going to get stuckin your crap for a little bit,
but not as bad as the storyitself. But you know, it's I
think again, it is just amatter of let's just keep cranking out Stephen
King stuff. And there's a plethora, you know, from the things that

(01:20:47):
have been adapted from this collection.It's for me, one of the more
enjoyable I'm not going to say better, but it's one of the more enjoyable
adaptations Graveyard Shifting, the Mangler arerough. Mangler is a weird one to
adapt, and sometimes they come backis pretty good. Like I've said,

(01:21:09):
but you're not You're not dealing withthe cream of the crop here. Even
in its collection that probably sold millionsand millions of copies and it has some
fun stories in it, it's nottop tier king material. And that's the
thing. I mean, this isthe guy who has dollar Babies, So
even he kind of admits some ofhis own stuff isn't top tier. So

(01:21:30):
again, like I don't maybe he'slike, I'm not going to adapt something
of mine that's big time because Idon't want the pressure of fucking it up.
So he went and did the mostobscure thing possible, which I totally
get. So story saying he madehis own dollar baby kind of feels like
it in a way, just withlike a kind of big cast. And
again, Amlio Estevez, there isa version of the film of the story

(01:21:56):
out there called Trucks, and Iwatched it years ago. On Prime and
I remember absolutely nothing from it.I don't remember. If it's more loyal
to the story, it might bestripped down and less. I mean,
the main image from this movie,from the advertising and from everything else.
If you think a maximum r wouldyou think about that huge joker face on
that truck, you know, andgreen goblin face. But it's but it

(01:22:23):
is, but it is like butagain, like if not for the fact
that it's Marvel, it would justbe like a generic clown face. Yeah.
Like, and it's supposedly the logofor this toy store, yeah,
which is weird Marvel's green Goblin's Marvelstuff and probably not pay all that much
for it. Yeah, I lovethat that. I love that. That

(01:22:44):
is the villain of quote villain ofthe movie unquote is a green goblin writs
and licensing use questionable, but ourvan I guess eighteen wheeler. I love
that because it's so it's so suchan iconic part of the movie, Like
it's the thing you remember if youremember. It's almost more memorable than anything

(01:23:04):
else. The design of that truckis so memorable that the movie, like
everything else, is kind of almostoutshined by it. Yeah, it's a.
It's a head scratcher. Like evenback then, I remember thinking why
is this the truck? Why isthis the main truck? Wird and it's
weird now it's weird now in apost MCU universe, it's very weird.

(01:23:27):
Now it would make more sense thatit was some kind of clown face and
mighty even be scarier, to behonest with you, right, yeah,
I mean again, that's the thing. I end up focusing on the face
more than I should, but likeit's just so it's so striking and weird.
And then the eyes light up too. Yeah, the eyeslight up.
Read they do it mostly during theday, which is ineffective, but it's

(01:23:47):
still kind of cool. Yeah,I you know again, I'm I can't
fault I can't fault King for thevisual as the visuals of his movie.
I can fault him. Honestly.It's kind of funny, is for someone
who's good at writing the script reallyfailed him because honestly, like his directions
not that bad. Maybe maybe itwas pure dogshit when it got into the

(01:24:10):
editing bay. Right, That's that'skind of my question. Is you know,
Evan A. Lattman is the guywho ends up editing the film,
and he edited The Exorcist, Soyeah, I don't think the guy who
edited this movie is not good atediting. Just put it that way.
Yeah, I think the people behindthe scenes really helped a lot. And

(01:24:31):
that's where it could have been aneven bigger mess, as if competent people
who couldn't figure out how to puttogether the bridge scene or some of the
other more action e scenes to wherethey made a lot of sense because he
probably wasn't thinking about how shots needto connect to each other to tell a

(01:24:53):
coherent and cohesive story. You know, the one eighty rule. He had
to be told about, the oneeighty rule. He had to be told
about this, this and that coverage, you know, all this kind of
basic film language stuff, which isfine. Like again, like that is
that, I mean any one ofus would need to learn that, but
like, yeah, we I meanfilmmakers take it for granted, just like

(01:25:14):
just like podcasters take certain things thatwe talk about and or do for granted,
like audio editing stuff Like I can'tsit here and tell you I don't
take it for granted, so Ican only imagine, like I've had I've
had anxiety and tacks about like tryingto edit video before because I'm like so
outside of my depth. So yeah, you know, and like you and
you get it too as someone whodoesn't primarily audio editing, it feels like

(01:25:36):
the deep end of the pool.Yes, exactly, So yeah, you
can understand the fear of trying todo that as well as not only figure
out how you're going to shoot something, but then to direct the actors to
act out your dialogue and all thatother stuff. So and you know,

(01:25:59):
the cast does fine there. It'snot like this is Shakespeare, so we
don't need right, they work wellenough. I always every time I start
watching this, I'm like, whois the girl? And I remember mainly
what I know from as What's eatonGilbert Grape. She's one of the sister,
one of his sisters. And that'sabout it. I mean, I
can't really think of her being inmuch else. I mean, the other

(01:26:21):
the other faces, Frankie fazon Man, Frankie's in there, not not very
much, but he's in there.Pat Hingele, I mean pat Hingle has
been around forever, and mainly knowhim from Clint Eastwood stuff. They worked
together quite often. He's a greatcharacter actor. Yeah, he's a shit
heel in this, but that's okay. I think he kind of always plays

(01:26:43):
a shit heel. He gets blowedup by that weird military gun turret.
I mainly know him as a CommissionerGordon. Yeah, he's the bad sort
of told Cleo. I'm like,he's Commissioner Gordon in the Tim Burton Batman
movies and all the way through Batmanand Robin, which is def which is
it? He's no, he's He'sin it, and he's in Batman Forever
too. Yeah. Yeah, athat was early comic book movie money.

(01:27:08):
Yeah, I hope he made abank. It just I don't know why
I'm bringing this up, but itjust always makes me laugh. That one
of the characters in Suspiria is namedpat Hingle. Time I hear it mentioned,
I'm like, wait a minute,real person pat Hingle? What?
No, that the character's named patHinges. It's supposed to be Patricia Hingele,
but they call her pat Hingle AndI'm like, wait a minute,

(01:27:29):
I know that name from somewhere.That's a real person. Yeah. I
think my other, I think myother kind of my biggest issue maybe with
this movie is the way it endsThey're like, it's like a very Pucci
on the Simpsons ending, right,it kind of is like, holy shit,
the way this movie ends is describedin a title card, right,
like an end credit card. It'slike those yeah, and then six days

(01:27:54):
later it was gone the end,like what like what? Wait? What
for real? Like that that's it? Okay? Like yeah, I think
that wraparound stuff was an add onby De Laurentis himself for somebody involved in
the productions, saying, you,you've got to explain kind of what's happening

(01:28:15):
here, and then you've got toI don't think you have to the right
right, Well, you don't have, do you You don't do you think
they have to? No, LikeI said at the beginning, and that
kind of stuff drives me crazy.I don't need to know where the thing
came from. I don't need toknow they're there. The thing is there,
predator is there. It's a modernaudience thing. Trucks start moving on

(01:28:38):
their own. Why nobody knows.Don't explain it because I'm pretty sure they
had to add in that stuff withthe green sky too. I mean,
they mentioned it, the characters mentionedit, but you know, I think
at some point somebody said, hey, you got to do this stuff so
that people understand why these why thisis happening? Right, it's always scarier

(01:28:58):
to me, not that this isscary movie, but the idea is supposed
to be scary when things aren't explained. Why is this happening? Nobody knows.
Even in Romero's zombie movies, whenthey try to explain why things are
happening, it's like, why bother? Just who cares? For some reason?
Corpses are reanimating? You liken thisto a zombie movie. For some

(01:29:23):
reason, electronic devices are fed upwith being used as tools for us,
so they're going to flip the scriptand make us their tools. Okay,
why don't ask Just fucking go alongwith it. Right, We only have
to buy into this for an hourand thirty minutes. Right, You don't
need to explain the hierarchy of thetrucks and how everything works. It's unneeded.

(01:29:46):
And if you're and if it's writtenwell enough, it's implied, and
you pick it up at some point, Right, you can drop a dialogue
line or two and get away withit, which they do in plenty of
zombie movies and other things. Justhorror in general, where you don't need
to explain everything. Oh my nudefucking thing, It's like it doesn't need

(01:30:08):
it. Sometimes the best way isto just say less, less is more,
show don't tell yeah, and lessis more With this movie, like
this movie, this movie could havebeen. I think if this movie had
just trimmed some of the stuff out, really narrowed the narrative down to it's
just the trucks. There you go. You're gonna have to work work within

(01:30:29):
the constraints of it's just the trucks. Don't make it more complicated for yourself
by all of a sudden saying well, it's also the other electronics. It's
like, Nope, it's either justthe trucks or it's something else entirely.
And I think for me that's theissue, is like, the promise of
the other thing is so good.The fact that they don't do it feels
like a missed opportunity. But thenin the movie that it's supposed to be
where it is just the trucks,the fact that they give something else opportunity

(01:30:51):
on screen in that interesting premise isalso a missed opportunity. Can't win either
way, Yeah, do they Iknow? We see a plane crashed into
a vehicle at some point, Butdo they ever explore like planes being a
threat in this I don't really doingthe story, right. They kind of
in the they remade the story inthat sci fi thing, and I was

(01:31:15):
reading about it, and I guessthey kind of lean into that where it's
like they get into a helicopter andthere's nobody in it, and it's like,
okay, so you're answering the onethat's called trucks, Yeah, the
one that's more of a face.I don't remember any of it. Yeah,
but again that's again when you openup, when you open up the
box of it could be things otherthan trucks. Then you have questions that

(01:31:41):
need to be asked and things thatneed to be answered. I don't know
if they thought maybe that that wastoo easy of a way to escape,
like just go out the back there. There's tunnels obviously that they can access,
right, they all could have escapedout through the tunnels and into that
ditch. Yeah, they went oneby one or two by two. Trucks
wouldn't have realized it very quickly.It's just some of the conceits in the

(01:32:03):
story are just too much again,that was the whole thing. It's like,
when you read it on the page, you don't ask some of those
questions because it's not a question worthasking, because the movie doesn't, because
the book doesn't present it as aquestion. But then the movie goes,
well, they're in the building,but there's sewers beneath it, and it's
like, oh my god, likeyou're now you're just going way too far.

(01:32:25):
Like, yeah, it wasn't thatpart of it, not so much
getting trapped, although that is apart, but also that they would end
up blowing the whole place up ifthey did that, right, I think,
so again, how would they know? How would they know this particular
diner? Well? And why notwell? And why not just go to
the next diner or the next dineror the next diner or the next diner
or the next diner. Because again, that's the other that's the other issue

(01:32:46):
with this premise is why just thisdiner, Like there are millions of Loves
truck stops all over this country,even in nineteen eighty six. Yeah,
And I think at some point,at least in the story, he kind
of has the idea this is happeningall over every world, everywhere, And
I guess that's what they are showingus at the beginning with the kids bike

(01:33:06):
right through the town. Is it'snot just right this diner, it's this
whole town, which you can thenspeculate outward is happening everywhere. They get
some news reports that indicate that aswell. Yeah, all right, Like
you said, if you start thinkingtoo much about it, it all falls
apart like a house of cards.But don't think about it. Just sit

(01:33:30):
there for an hour and a halfand be entertained by a pretty fun movie.
Yeah, I mean that's the thing. It and Children of the Corn
have a lot in common, butit is fun. Children of the Corn
is not, and it is good, and Children of the Corn is.
It's okay. This movie is betterthan Children of the Corn. And it
holds my attention throughout, which meansI'm not going, well, why did

(01:33:50):
they? Why did they? Justit's just why don't the pumps just pump
it automatically? Yeah? Electric?Right? Like, I don't ask that
when the movie is entertaining, butwhen the movie is like Children of the
Corn. So, I mean,if if a soda machine has enough sense
to fire soda cans at people,then I think you can assume that a

(01:34:14):
gas pump has enough sense to stretchout the hose. The thing with the
can is my whole thank Yes,maybe they can't get the caps off their
gas tanks. That's the only thingthey can't do. Maybe again, change
they can't change the oil either.Well, I will say I will.
I will say that while the questionsthat this movie has me asking are less,

(01:34:36):
they're less narrative based with this movie, as in child, Children,
Child of the Corn, but Children, Children of the Corn. It's like
I'm asking all sorts of narrative questionsbecause the movie is just dragging and grinding
to a halt when certain actors andcharacters are on screen. This movie just
it goes at a nice clip.It's really something else. The script is

(01:34:59):
not great. If you want tobe mad about something, Stephen King,
be mad that you, a writer, failed at writing a script for your
own movie. Don't be disappointed withyour directing, because his directing is pretty
good. It's not like the mostcompetently directed film ever made, but it's
it's pretty workman. Like you're notgoing, oh what you know? Like
right? People are in Frame followsthe basic rules for the most part.

(01:35:23):
He does up his game, atleast in this scriptwriting department with pet Cemetery,
so you know, things get ButI'm trying to think some of the
other scripts that he's written for adaptationsdoesn't do it a lot. For one
thing, right, oh, wejust watched one, but then gets angry
when movies are made the way thathe doesn't like the shining. Yeah,

(01:35:44):
not too many of them, butthat one for sure. I mean,
that's that's in his craw right,Yeah. And I have a theory about
that, and I think I talkabout it on my Stephen King series episodes.
But so I won't go into ithere, but because well I will
go into it a little bit.Why yeah, go for it. I
think this is total just me spitballon here. But that story, the

(01:36:09):
characters of that story are so closeto his real life writer, you know,
teacher trying to become a writer.He ended up doing it pretty quickly
and successfully, but trouble with alcohol. He admits that he hurt his son
kind of in the similar manner asthis probably wasn't the greatest husband in the

(01:36:29):
world at the time to his wifeand father to his son. I think
a lot of him is wrapped upin that Torrance family. And I don't
think that he liked it being portrayedas psychotically as Jack Nicholson does in that
film. I think there's a it'smore of a personal thing that that's my

(01:36:49):
little sort of just at reading stuffabout who he thinks should have played it
and his complaints about specific thickly,that characterization just leads me to believe he
sort of takes it personally. Hetakes it personally that Stanley Kubrick was like,
he's just a crazy writer. He'sjust yeah, he's just a crazy

(01:37:11):
asshole drunk, which I mean that'sthe character though in the book as well.
Yeah, like, well, andthat takes them a little longer to
get there, but he gets therejust the same. You have a lot
more time to do that in abook than in a movie. So I
don't know, I mean, itjust all speculation. I don't disagree with
you. It's a It's a plausibletheory as any, just as plausible as
there's a minotaur and that one posterin that movie, you know what I'm

(01:37:32):
talking. I mean Room two threeseven stuff. There's a minotaur in that
poster. Yeah, yeah, great, What does that have to do with
anything. Your explanation makes more senseas to why the movie is the way
that it is more than their explanations. It's about Native American land grabs or
something. Well, I mean,as far as his reason for disliking the

(01:37:53):
movie so much, I think it'sthe one that sticks in his craw the
most, any adaptation, also becauseit's the one that's like the movie adaptation.
It's the one that broke free ofeverything else, you know, you
know what the actual problem is.I'm not sure anything Stephen King has written
is as like important as The Shiningis to filmmaking. Like he's written a

(01:38:17):
lot of stuff, but Stephen Kingdidn't reinvent anything. Like I'm not saying
Stanley Kubrick did, but Stanley Kubrick'sfilmmaking prowess. I mean that The Shining
has influenced a lot of things.And that might be a hot take or
controversial opinion, but like, Idon't know, it's two two it's two
greats. Two greats never worked welltogether. That's the other thing. Like

(01:38:41):
it's just interesting to me that that'sthe one that he has the biggest issues
with when, like you say,there are plenty of adaptations that are a
lot less. Yeah, well made. You know, what's your issue with
the Mangler? What's your issue withGraveyard Shift? What's your issue with Because
you don't. I think he's oneof those type that understands the director and

(01:39:01):
the writer are going to do somethingdifferent by nature of the two medium and
they should be allowed to it.You shouldn't feel like I Yeah, I
don't think he has an issue withthat, with changes in story and things
like that. Right, So it, like I said, it's just curious
that this is the one that hehas seems to have the biggest issues with.

(01:39:24):
He and and again it's like,you have a big issue with this
movie. And I have never evenheard Stephen King like concede it's a good
movie. He just like outright refuses. He's like he will never let it
go proud, Right, I meanit broke free of it's the Stephen King's
story that it doesn't even matter thatit was written by Stephen King. That's

(01:39:45):
how important of a movie it is, right, Like, it doesn't even
matter that's a Stephen King's story.Yeah, And you know what, ultimately
the movie is nothing like the book. From everything that I've heard, I've
been told not to read the book. I've been told that the book is
a slog in a lot of ways. But I'm maybe I'll read it.
But I know it's not like thebook. I know the movie and the
book are very different, so maybeit's also just a little bit of that.

(01:40:08):
Like Stephen King is a big name. Stephen King is like the pre
eminent American horror author, and somehowStanley Kobrick was like, I'm gonna make
my own thing. It doesn't evenmatter that you wrote it. Like they're
they're vastly different but also very similar. I mean, I don't know.
I read it fairly recently and hadn'tprobably read it in a long time,

(01:40:28):
and it's I mean, it's stillthe same basic story thing. I think
most of the changes are just becauseyou can't do this stuff on film the
way you can write it. RightWell, that's I mean, that's one
of my favorite. Don't think it'sfundamentally I don't think they're fundamentally different,
right well, And I mean Idon't, you know, I don't even

(01:40:49):
know what that movie looks like.You know, a lot of a lot
of movies that I really like,like say, No Country, for Old
Men. The book in the movieare very different. The book works on
one level, the movie works onanother level. Like I think, I
think that's the way I look atthe Shining is like you can work separately.
They right, and they need to, like they don't devalue one another.

(01:41:09):
I have always said that about thosetwo in general, anything really like
you can and you can. Youshould be able to enjoy both for what
they are and not have to picksides on an adaptation. And we still
have one. It's like Heather Drainesays this. You know Heather, you
know you know she She always sayslike, no, I still have the
original, right, And that's thething, like you still have the book.

(01:41:31):
Like the adaptation is never going tobe what you the watcher wants or
what you the creator of the sourcematerial want, unless you're the one writing
the script cough cough, Mario Puzzo. But even then, like I read
The Godfather earlier this year, ifyou're Mario Puzzo and you don't say like,

(01:41:53):
okay, yeah, like do whatyou want with it, whatever,
I bet you're Mario Puzzo and you'repissed that way that movie turned out,
because the book is nothing like themovie. That Godfather book is fun and
upbeat and crass and fucking weird andmade by I mean, the movie is
made by Italian guy, but thebook is definitely written by someone who's Italian.
He gets the Italian inner family workingthing as an Italian, he gets

(01:42:16):
it really well. But if hewatched Godfather the same way Stephen King watched
The Shining, he would hate it, like he would fucking hate it.
And that's the problem here with StephenKing. It's like, dude, you
at some point you maybe do needto get over yourself, like and just
concede that, like someone took yoursource material and did something with it that
maybe even you couldn't have contemplated theywere gonna it's It's again one of the

(01:42:41):
few that he actively tried to takeback by writing the NW you know,
the the TV version and have someonedirected who really does adhere to what's on
the page. For Rris is someonethat really takes tries to stick with what

(01:43:04):
the story isn't and I think it'sa detriment to a lot of his adaptations.
But again this is my opinion personallyon the things that I've watched of
his based on Stephen King material becausewe know mc garris is a good director
on his own. It sticks tooclose because as much as I like Stephen

(01:43:25):
King, a lot of his dialogueand his books is really corny and cheesy,
and that stuff stays in mcgarris adaptationsand this stuff that falls flat as
dialogue in a movie. But it'sinteresting to me again that that's the one
He's like, I'm going to writeit the way I see it and have
my friend directed who sticks close tomy vision, and this is what you're

(01:43:49):
gonna get, which is what elseis he doing that for? Right?
Like, it's fine that Stephen Kingand mcgarri's worked well together, but yeah,
Mick rris is rather workman like atleast with Stephen king stuff, and
that shows a great respect. Hehas a respect for the material, and
that's fine. I think you canstill respect the original material and go into
a different direction. But ultimately,when you've had as many things adapted as

(01:44:13):
Stephen King has, you're gonna havegood, you're gonna have bad, and
you're gonna have middle of the road. And I think maximum overdrive hughes closer
to better. Children of the Cornhughes closer to middle of the road,
if not on the lower end.I mean there are real bad Stephen King
adaptations. I even I don't thinkChildren of the Corn is that bad.
No, I don't think either ofthose fall under that category. For me,
at least, I enjoy I'm withyou. I'm with you. So,

(01:44:35):
mister, mister Begley, if you'renot here, where can people find
you? What's going on over theWake Up Heavy podcast? Well, let's
see, don't really have anything officialcoming up soon. I'm laying the groundwork
for a bunch of episodes to comeout later this year and at the beginning

(01:44:56):
of the next year. My daughteris back in school, so I'm home
alone and I have a little bitmore time to think of some stuff,
So maybe something will pop up.But you can keep track of my movie
watching and news and notes on ourmonthly episodes that come out at the beginning
of every month, and they canfind all that at wikipheavy dot com.

(01:45:19):
I don't know what I'm talking abouttoday, Well you plugged it well enough.
As for me. See stash dotcom, cstac hiw dot com.
That's my link tree. Go therefor all the things that I work on
with Mark, with Mike White withall kinds of people. As for this
show, culturecast dot com, Patreondot com, slash culture cast, all
the places you can go to supportus monetarily or if you want us,

(01:45:41):
rate and review on iTunes, becauseyou know, that's really all that matters.
Mister Begley, thank you so muchfor joining me. This was These
movies were kind of, I guess, pull of our ideas, so yeah,
yeah it's fun. I'd never youknow, never seen children in the
car and so I'm glad we watchedit. So yeah, end up catch
on the next episode.