assembling itself. It's risky to assume too much too soon (remember the old newspaper headline 'DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN'), but based on early returns, I'd say that what you're about to read bears an eerie resemblance to what you will see when ABC telecasts Storm of the Century. My fingers are still crossed, but I think it works. I think it may even be extraordinary. I hope so, but it's best to be realistic. Huge amounts of work go into the making of most films, including those made for television, and very few are extraordinary; given the number of people involved, I suppose it's amazing that any of them work at all. Still, you can't shoot me for hoping, can you?
The teleplay of Storm was written between December of 1996 and February of 1997. By March of 1997, Mark and Craig and I were sitting at dinner in my daughter Naomi's restaurant (closed now, alas; she's studying for the ministry). By June I was looking at sketches of Andre Linoge's wolfs head cane, and by July I was looking at storyboards. See what I mean about TV people wanting to make shows instead of lunch reservations?
Exteriors were filmed in Southwest Harbor, Maine, and in San Francisco. Exteriors were also filmed in Canada, about twenty miles north of Toronto, where Little Tall Island's main street was re-created inside an abandoned sugar-refining factory. For a month or two that factory in the town of Oshawa became one of the world's largest soundstages. Little Tail's studio main street went through three
carefully designed stages of snow-dressing, from a few inches to total burial.* When a group of Southwest Harbor natives on a bus trip visited the Oshawa stage, they were visibly staggered by what they saw when they were escorted through the defunct factory's tall metal doors. It must have been like going home again in the blink of an eye. There are days when making movies has all the glamour of bolting together the rides at a county fair . . . but there are other days when the magic is so rich it dazzles you. The day the people from Southwest Harbor visited the set was one of those days.
Filming commenced in late February of 1998, on a snowy day in Down East Maine. It finished in San Francisco about eighty shooting days later. As I write this in mid-July, the cutting and editing processes what's known as postproduction has just begun. Optical effects and CGI (computer graphic imaging) effects are being built up one layer at a time. I'm looking at footage with temporary music tracks (many of them lifted from Frank Darabont's film The Shaw-shank Redemption), and so is composer Gary Chang, who will do the show's actual score. Mark Carliner is jousting with ABC in the matter of telecast dates February of 1999, a sweeps period, seems the most probable and I'm watching the cut footage with a contentment that is very rare for me.
The script that follows makes a complete story, one that's been overlaid with marks we call them 'scenes' and 'fades' and 'inserts' showing the director where to cut the whole into pieces . .
. because, unless you're Alfred Hitchcock filming Rope, films are always piecework. Between March and June of this year, Craig Baxley filmed the script as scripts are usually filmed out of sequence, often with tired actors working in the middle of the night, always under pressure and finished up with a box of pieces called 'the dailies.' I can turn from where I'm sitting and look at my own set of those dailies roughly sixty cassettes in red cardboard cases. But here is the odd thing: putting the dailies back together again to create the finished show isn't like putting a jigsaw puzzle back together. It
*Our snow consisted of potato flakes and shredded plastic blown in front of giant fans. The effect isn't perfect . . . but it's the best I've ever seen during my time in the film business. It should look good, dammit; the total cost of the snow was two million dollars.
should be, but it isn't . . . because, like most books, most movies are living things with breath and a heartbeat. Usually the putting-together results in something less than the sum of the parts. In rare and wonderful cases it results in more. This time it might be more. I hope it will be.
One final matter: what about people who say movies (especially TV movies) are a lesser medium than books, as instantly disposable as Kleenex? Well, that's no longer exactly true, is it? The script, thanks to the good people at Pocket Books, is here anytime you want to take it down and look at it.
And the show itself, I'd guess, will eventually be available on videotape or videodisc, just as many hardcover books are eventually available in paperback. You'll be able to buy it or rent it when (and if) you choose. And, as with a book, you will be able to leaf back to check on things you may have 6
missed or to savor something you particularly enjoyed; you will use the REWIND button on your remote control instead of your finger, that's all. (And if you're one of those awful people who have to peek ahead to the end, there is always FAST FORWARD or SEARCH, I suppose . . . although I tell you, you will be damned for doing such a thing).
I won't argue, either pro or con, that a novel for television is the equal of a novel in a book; I will just say that, once you subtract the distractions (ads for Tampax, ads for Ford cars and trucks, local newsbreaks, and so on), I myself think that is possible. And I would remind you that the man most students of literature believe to be the greatest of English writers worked in an oral and visual medium, and not (at least primarily) in the medium of print. I'm not trying to compare myself to Shakespeare that would be bizarre but I think it entirely possible that he would be writing for the movies or for television as well as for Off Broadway if he were alive today. Even possibly calling up Standards and Practices at ABC to try to persuade them that the violence in Act V of Julius Caesar is necessary . . . not to mention tastefully done.
In addition to the folks at Pocket Books who undertook to publish this project, I'd like to thank Chuck Verrill, who agented the deal and served as liaison between Pocket Books and ABC-TV. At ABC I'd like to thank Bob Iger, who put such amazing trust in me; also Maura Dunbar, Judd Parkin, and Mark Pedowitz. Also the folks at Standards
and Practices, who really aren't that bad (in fact I think it would be fair to say they did one mother of a job on this).
Thanks are due to Craig Baxley for taking on one of the largest film projects ever attempted for network TV; also to Mark Carliner and Tom Brodek, who put it all together. Mark, who won just about all the TV awards there are for Wallace, is a great guy to have on your team. I'd also like to thank my wife, Tabby, who has been so supportive over the years. As a writer herself, she understands my foolishness pretty well.
Stephen King
Bangor, Maine 04401 July 18, 1998PART 1 Linoge
Act 1
FADE IN ON:
1 EXTERIOR: MAIN STREET, LITTLE TALL ISLAND LATE AFTERNOON.
SNOW is flying past the lens of THE CAMERA, at first so fast and so hard we can't see anything at all. THE WIND IS SHRIEKING. THE CAMERA starts to MOVE FORWARD, and we see a STUTTERY
ORANGE LIGHT. It's the blinker at the corner of Main Street and Atlantic Street Little Tail's only town intersection. The blinker is DANCING WILDLY in the wind. Both streets are deserted, and why not? This is a full- throated blizzard. We can see some dim lights in the buildings, but no human beings. The snow is drifted halfway up the shop windows.
MIKE ANDERSON speaks with a light Maine accent.
