The
Green Miles
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My Favorite
Martian versus Garth Brooks.
by
Jon Dunmore © 9 Jun 2005.
This
story should have stayed in our heads. Reading the daunting 1000+ page The
Stand (restored version, of course), nothing "visual" could intercept
our imagination driving onto the wastelands of a dead earth, seeing an unseeable
being (Flagg) in our mind's eye, envisioning the disturbing horrors of the Lincoln
Tunnel gridlock, the appendix operation, the suicides and rapes and mean killings.
To the
chagrin of a billion readers, director Mick Garris and the tome's author himself,
Stephen King (as executive producer, screenwriter, and actor), offer us a vapid
tv visualization of the book, diminishing all its epic impact. A
super-flu has decimated the bulk of humanity and two camps (one Good, led by Mother
Abigail in Colorado, one Eeevil, led by Randall Flagg in - where else? - Vegas)
amass devotees to stage a Final Battle. Aided
by a clutch of talent-challenged aspirin-ad veterans and phone-in cameos (Ed Harris
and Kathy Bates), this six-hour mini-series, a direly obvious television production,
gives us an intelligent A-Lister as Stu Redman, the tacit leader of the group
(Gary Sinise, working his Mini-Eastwood Method), Ray Walston (who still can't
shake that My Favorite Martian Method), Miguel Ferrer (great in anything,
here Flagg's right-hand man), two Brat Packers right at home in TV Land (Rob Lowe
and Molly Ringwald's Lips), and Stephen King himself (playing against type, as
a character with an IQ greater than his shoe size, doing a very passable imitation
of an actor). And the bad guy? The incarnation of hell-on-earth whose visage people
could not cast their gaze upon? - a country singer with a mullet! Maybe
King made a mistake in naming his menace "Randall Flagg." Who could
tremble before a villain who answers to "Randy"? If Jeff Goldblum (as
rumored) had accepted the role of Flagg, we might have had a respectable screen-demon
on our hands - instead, the movie miscasts Jamey Sheridan as the Dark Man of our
nightmares: a toe-tappin' redneck with a Def-Leppard-roadie hairdo. The only thing
more sinful than Sheridan's Huey Lewis mullet-palooza was his 80s fashion sense. Leaning
heavily on the delusional proselytizing of their matriarch, Mother Abigail (Ruby
Dee), no one seemed to notice that the "epic quest" she entreats four
characters to undertake "to make a Stand!" against Flagg's evil achieves
nothing that wasn't going to transpire anyway. Flagg's downfall was precipitated
by inefficient management, insubordination and bad judgment in recruiting a loose
cannon like Trashcan Man (a compulsive arsonist, played with lunatic scene-chewing
by Matt Frewer), who delivers a nuclear weapon into the heart of Flagg's congregation,
only to have it set off by none other than the Hand Of God (whadaya know - a deus
ex machina as a deus ex machina!). All these events had nothing to
do with our rose-mouthed do-gooders and their half-assed jibes at Flagg, ultimately
getting crucified for their troubles… Well, trusting to the wigged-out soothsaying
of a raving old woman hallucinating from her mixture of Demerol, Cyclizine and
down-home moonshine and traveling to The Dark Man's lair with no plan, no resources,
nothing but "the shirts on their backs" was bound to lead to the business
end of a crucifix. Even
in the book, simply laughing in the face of the Bad Guy in order to cause empire-crumbling
dissension was an obtuse disconnect; a tale so wonderfully kinetic and operatic
- brick-walled when one realizes that the author himself had no clear notion on
how to wrap that beargarden with any serious impact. Ultimately,
the actual "Stand" spoken of so reverently comprised of interminable
walking scenes which amounted to padding, with Stu breaking his leg and sitting
out the key plot scenes in a ditch. No one was allowed to drive, with no rational
reasons given, other than "Mother Abigail said so." And after all that
meaningless walking - once the Old Testament God of Wrath goes Gomorrah on Vegas
with His old-fashioned tabula rasa idealism - Stu boosts a car and drives
back to Colorado! Mother
Abigail's wholly erroneous precognition is surprisingly not even questioned by
now and we surmise the townsfolk just want to cut their losses and move on, whilst
retiring the old bat to a sanitarium. With her amorphous auguring and everyone
else in the cast displaying bursts of psychic linkage whenever required to enhance
the plot, the actual "boundaries" of these psychic powers is never delineated. For
example, Stu can "sense" when a character fatally crashes his bike,
yet he couldn't sense that same character building a bomb, premeditating destroying
their community. In another case, after two of Flagg's henchmen kill a Judge whom
Flagg wanted alive, Flagg himself suddenly appears and flogs them to death - why
didn't he simply appear two minutes earlier and acquire the Judge himself?
King is justifiably proud of this work; what were once simply motes of his
imagination, transferred to typewriter keys, now walking, breathing townsfolk.
In a late scene, his joy at seeing "Stu!" and "Tom Cullen!"
was heartfelt as their Creator, as well as his character happy for their safe
return.
The
book is more forgiving in its plot holes and inconsistencies, but that is more
telling on the genius of the writer than the content of the tale itself.
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