‘The Stand’: Tracing the Stephen King Epic Through Its Many Mutations
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘The Stand’: Tracing the Stephen King Epic Through Its Many MutationsKing’s post-apocalyptic novel about the aftermath of a deadly pandemic has been adapted into a new mini-series for CBS All Access. But the story has a complex history of its own.Jovan Adepo and Heather Graham star in the new CBS All Access adaptation of “The Stand,” the second time the Stephen King novel has been made into a TV mini-series.Credit…CBSDec. 17, 2020Take a pandemic. Add the paranormal. Make it a uniquely American story of survival horror. The result: “The Stand,” Stephen King’s epic post-apocalyptic novel from 1978, a new mini-series adaptation of which debuted Thursday on CBS All Access.Conceived in the pre-Covid era, the show has taken on new resonance since, telling the story of a weaponized virus that wipes out 99 percent of the population. But that’s only the beginning. The real battle happens afterward as supernatural forces of darkness and light — embodied by the demonic dictator Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgard) and the holy woman Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg) — duel for the souls of the plague’s survivors.Since the original novel’s original release, King’s saga has entered the pop-culture consciousness in many different incarnations, including an expanded edition of the book and an earlier mini-series adaptation. In anticipation of the show’s arrival, we’re tracing the story from its point of origin to its latest mutation.The AllegoryThe opening act of King’s novel is an eerily plausible account of the complete collapse of human society after the “Captain Trips” superflu is unleashed upon the world. That aspect has found relevance across the decades since the novel’s publication, in the Cold War nuclear arms race, through the peak of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, to the events of 2020.But that’s only the first part. Flagg is presented as an even worse plague upon the living — a grinning dictator who builds a new society based on human drivers like greed, pride, lust and wrath and who exploits the virus for the sake of his own power. Are there lessons to be applied in the real world? Successive generations have thought so.Alexander Skarsgard as the villain Randall Flagg, who was originally inspired in part by the Symbionese Liberation Army leader Donald DeFreeze. Credit…Robert Falconer/CBSThe InspirationKing has written extensively about the inspiration behind “The Stand” and its evolution over time, namely in his 1981 nonfiction book on horror writing, “Danse Macabre”; in the preface to the expanded 1990 edition of “The Stand”; and in a post about the novel on his website.“The Stand,” as he has explained it, arose from two disappointments. The first was an unfinished novel about the kidnapping and brainwashing of the heiress Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army and its leader Donald DeFreeze. The second was a longstanding desire to write an American answer to “The Lord of the Rings” — a desire he had never found a way to fulfill. “The Stand” is, in part, a synthesis of these divergent ideas.Two news stories jump-started the book for King, one a “60 Minutes” segment on chemical and biological warfare and the other a report he recalled about a chemical spill in Utah that had killed a flock of sheep. Had the wind blown the other way, King has written, “the good people of Salt Lake City might have gotten a very nasty surprise.”Thinking about what the earth might be like after humanity, King, who was living in Boulder, Colo. (where much of the novel is set), pulled inspiration from George R. Stewart’s post-apocalyptic novel “Earth Abides” and from the fire-and-brimstone intonations of a preacher on a local radio station, who spoke ominously of plagues. King became fascinated, meanwhile, with a ghostly F.B.I. photo of DeFreeze taken in the middle of a bank robbery, in which the ringleader’s face was blurred. He wrote down the lines that would serve as the foundation of the novel: “A season of rest,” “A dark man with no face” and, quoting the preacher, “Once in every generation a plague will fall among them.”“And that was that,” King recalls in “Danse Macabre.” “I spent the next two years writing an apparently endless book called ‘The Stand.’”The EvolutionThe roots of “The Stand” run even deeper than the novel’s two-year writing time would suggest. His 1969 story “Night Surf” (a revised version of which was published in early 1978 as part of the short story collection “Night Shift”) had introduced the concept of the flulike virus nicknamed Captain Trips, in dubious homage to the Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia. King’s 1969 poem “The Dark Man” has been seen as an anticipatory exploration of the character traits that would be poured into Flagg, himself nicknamed “The Dark Man,” in the novel.King spent two years writing “The Stand,” published in 1978, but its earliest seeds can be traced back to a story from 1969. Credit…DoubledayWhen “The Stand” finally arrived in October 1978, it was 400 pages shy of the version King originally turned in to his publisher. The edits were a consequence of publishing logistics rather than of quality control, King writes in the preface to the 1990 version of the novel: Based on his sales history, his publisher arrived at a price for the book that necessitated heavy edits to reduce the page count and make the book financially feasible. King made the cuts himself.By the ’90s, however, King was, well, the king of horror. In response to popular demand, a new expanded edition hit the stands, restoring much of what King had previously taken out and updating the material for the new decade. This is the most widely read version, and it’s the version upon which the new television adaptation is based.The AdaptationsMatt Frewer played the Trashcan Man in the 1994 TV mini-series on ABC, adapted by King himself and regarded by many fans as one of the better King adaptations. Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesThis isn’t the first time “The Stand” has been adapted for another medium. In 1994, ABC aired a four-part mini-series based on the 1990 edition of the book, written by King and directed by his frequent collaborator Mick Garris. With a strong cast led by Gary Sinise as the Texas everyman Stu Redman and Jamey Sheridan as the denim-clad demon Flagg, it stands out as one of the better King adaptations — not at the level of “The Shining” (which King famously hated), “Carrie” and “The Dead Zone,” but well worth a weekend binge. (Unlike the 1994 version, which showed the apocalypse unfolding, the new version will begin after the superflu has already struck, with flashbacks to the pre-plague lives of its characters.)And from 2008 to 2012, Marvel Comics serialized a 31-issue comic-book adaptation, written by the future “Riverdale” showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and illustrated by Mike Perkins. The comics have been collected in a series of hardcovers and a huge, now out-of-print omnibus edition.King has also adapted some of the characters and concepts from “The Stand” into other novels. Most notably, the arch-villain Flagg appears, in various guises and interdimensional iterations, as the heavy in other King works, from the fantasy novel “The Eyes of the Dragon” to the epic “Dark Tower” series, which ties much of King’s oeuvre into a single expanded universe. It’s this latter incarnation that Matthew McConaughey portrayed (though the character is named Walter Padick) in the 2017 feature film “The Dark Tower.”Matthew McConaughey (left, with Idris Elba) in “The Dark Tower” as the character Walter Padick, a later incarnation of the arch-villain Randall Flagg. Credit…Columbia PicturesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
