Shabcast 27 – 2016 US Presidential Election Special
Sorry about missing Thursday, but here it is (better late than never).
This time, I’m joined by Kit Power to chat about two Stephen King novels, The Dead Zone and The Running Man, and their respective film adaptations.
Kit and I think these stories have some application to issues of the day. See what you think.
November 7, 2016 @ 11:40 pm
Enjoyable chat, guys. I’m not really sure Trump fits the Stillson mould all that well. Trump is inherited wealth and, like you said, a terrible public speaker, but he has a weird charisma about him that attracts the hateful, the downtrodden, and the stupid. Now, the people behind Trump… those are the real Stillsons out here. Pence is a scary motherfucker, and the main rivals looking to head the party after Trump loses and goes away are also pretty much werewolves.
The only thing that would have made this better is if you had included the “Running Man” main theme somewhere in there.
November 10, 2016 @ 7:18 pm
This probably betrays a massive lack of perspective, but the only thing that irked me about the Dead Zone film was how it had Johnny and Sarah go on a rollercoaster during their trip to the fairground instead of playing the wheel of fortune. It’s not subtle, but I thought the novel’s willingness to literalise its themes up-front within its prologue really added to the story’s feeling of mythic, overpowering inexorability, and interacted interestingly with the “one bad day” quality of regular old Johnny Smith’s predicament. The Dark Tower series, with all its talk of “the wheel of Ka”, often feels like an extended meditation on the same subject.