15 Things You Didn’t Know About The Stand

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Erik van Rheenen and Mental_Floss have posted 15 Things You Didn’t Know About The Stand.  As is our tradition, here are three of my favorites…

6. Christian Radio Made a Contribution As Well

King revealed a third inspiration for The Stand in Danse Macabre: A single line he heard in a radio broadcast of a sermon when he was living in Colorado. The line “Once in every generation the plague will fall among them” made such an impression on King that he wrote it down and pinned it over his typewriter. Later, when the author was struggling to write a fictionalized account of the Patty Hearst kidnapping (the unpublished The House on Value Street), he saw the gloomy quote and found the inspiration to start a new project that became The Stand.

8. The Extreme Length Led to Logistical Problems

The 1,200-page novel presented a serious problem – King’s publisher, Doubleday, couldn’t print a novel that long. Literally. In addition to whatever qualms the publisher might have had about trying to sell such a hefty book, its printing presses couldn’t create it. As King explained to Time in 2009, “Doubleday had a physically limiting factor in those days because they used a glue binding instead of a cloth binding, and the way it was explained to me was that they had so much of a thickness they could do before the glue just fell apart.”

10. The Cut Pages Weren’t Lost

Of course, when your fans are as rabid as King’s, it’s hard for lost pages to stay lost. In 1990 King restored the text he had hacked away to create The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition. King didn’t just slip all the cut pages back into the original manuscript, though – he retyped each one. He told Time he “had the manuscript on one side of an IBM Selectric typewriter and I had the pages of a book that I had torn out of the binding on the other side.” The restored edition had another quirk – King also updated the setting of the novel to the then-present day and included references to cultural touchstones like Freddy Krueger that had not existed in 1978.

21 Facts About the Movie “Goodfellas” You Never Knew

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Corey Mahoney and Hollywood.com present 21 Facts About the Movie Goodfellas You Never Knew.  Here are three of my favorites…

5. When Joe Pesci was younger, he told a mobster that he was funny. The gangster’s ensuing anger was never forgotten and ended up inspiring Pesci to ask Scorsese to include it.
The director allowed Pesci and Liotta to improvise the now iconic “funny how?” scene. The other actors weren’t aware of the plan, so their reactions are genuine.

6. The now legendary Steadicam shot through the kitchen of the nightclub was unplanned.
Scorsese was denied permission to use the front entrance, and the alternative is now film history.

9. And while filming Spider’s death scene, actor Michael Imperioli had to be rushed to the hospital for breaking a glass in his hand; the doctors, however, attempted to treat what appeared to be a gunshot wound to his chest. 
When they learned the real reason behind his hospital visit, he was forced to wait three hours before he was treated. Scorsese told Imperioli that he would one day share the story on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and, ten years after the film’s release, in 2000, Imperioli did just that.

MegaCon 2015 Report

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Yesterday was a good day.  I spent it hanging out at MegaCon with my best bud, John Beatty.  That’s John in the photo above trying out some Star Man shades.

MegaCon started out as a comic book convention but has morphed into a comic book / celebrity / cosplay convention that gets bigger and bigger with each new year.  Reportedly 30,000 people came through the doors yesterday.

My goals for the show were to get Darwyn Cooke to sign two Parker novels, pick up Chuck Dixon’s Winter World novel, try to get sketches from a few artists, meet Lee Weeks and hang out with Big Beatty.  I had Friday and Saturday budgeted to get everything done.

The drive to Orlando went smoothly.  Big J and I loaded up and headed to the convention.  We had a couple of hours before the show opened which gave us additional time to catch up.  I walked the convention floor (which was HUGE) to get the lay of the land.

Justin Orr was there, but hadn’t brought sketchbooks — he’s doing a Kickstarter for a new huge sketchbook later this year — and he wasn’t able to take sketch requests.  Jason Walker was just getting to his table.  I set up a sketch with Elliott Fernandez. I got to speak with Gene Gonzales, Joe Pekar and Frank aka The Voice of MegaCon briefly.  Mitch Hyman gave me a couple DVDs (one for Beatty) of his movie, Bubba the Redneck Werewolf.  I got Darwyn Cooke to sign my two Stark novels and picked up Chuck Dixon’s Winter World novel.  Everything I planned to do over the course of two days was done in one!

I then spent the rest of the day hanging with Big John and Lee Weeks (who is such an amazing talent and cool guy who even does magic tricks).  John Higashi invited Beatty and I to join him, Jason Walker and James Howell for dinner at Logan Steak House after the show and we did.  It was a great meal with friends I don’t get to see near enough.

I drove Beatty back to his motel and decided to avoid the morning traffic and head home.  MegaCon 2015 goes into the books as the year I was able to get everything done in one good day.

 

“Please Come to Boston” by Dave Loggins

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Midday Music Day 34.  Please Come to Boston  by Dave Loggins.

Please Come to Boston was popular the summer after my ninth grade year.  I was back in Terre Haute alternating staying with my dad and my grandparents.  The previous summer we [mom, my brother and sisters] had moved to Daytona Beach.  It was strange visiting my old friends/home town after a year away.

I didn’t get a haircut all summer.  It was funny seeing the reaction of my friends when I returned to Daytona.  When I went to our first football practice, my coach took to calling me “Chief” until I got my hair cut.

A Few More Things About Abraham Lincoln

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Eddie Deezen at Neatorama posts A Few More Things About Abraham Lincoln.  Here are three of my favorites…

  • When Lincoln was nine, a horse kicked him in the forehead while he was in the middle of a sentence. He fell unconscious for several hours and when he awoke, his first words were the completion of the sentence he had been saying when the horse kicked him.
  • The tall, black stovepipe hat that Lincoln used to wear was more than just a hat. Lincoln used it as a portable filing cabinet and kept notes, money and letters in it.
  • Lincoln once left the stage during a political rally because he spotted one of his supporters being beaten. He picked up the assailant by his trousers and physically hurled him twelve feet away.

15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About “Predator”

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Sean Hutchinson at Mental_Floss is back with 15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Predator.   Here are three of my favorites…

2. THE PITCH FOR THE MOVIE NAME-DROPPED SOME RECOGNIZABLE MOVIE HITS.
The screenwriters pitched Predator to studios as “Rocky meets Alien.”

4. SHANE BLACK WAS CAST FOR HIS SCRIPT EXPERTISE, NOT HIS ACTING CHOPS.
Black, who plays Hawkins, had previously written the screenplay for Lethal Weapon; he was covertly cast in the film so that he would be available to make on-the-fly and uncredited script changes while on set. Most famously, Black would later write and direct Iron Man 3.

6. THE LOOK OF THE COMMANDOS WAS BASED ON THE SGT. ROCK COMICS.
Hawkins can be seen reading a Sgt. Rock comic in the end credits.

“Mr. Bojangles” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

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Midday Music Day 32.  Mr. Bojangles by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

I’ve always loved this song.  There’s a happy – sadness to it.  The line that always gets me is…

“He spoke through tears of 15 years, how his dog and him traveled about.
The dog up and died.  He upped and died.  After 20 years he still grieves.”

This song reminds me of the end of elementary school and the start of junior high, my paper route and of course fun times.

15 Things You Didn’t Know About “The Godfather”

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Sean Hutchinson at Mental_Floss presents 15 Things You Didn’t Know About The Godfather.   My three favorites are…

9. HE [Coppola] ALSO TOOK ADVANTAGE OF MISTAKES.
Lenny Montana, who played Luca Brasi, was a professional wrestler before becoming an actor. He was so nervous delivering his lines to a legend like Brando during the scene in the Godfather’s study that he didn’t give one good take during an entire day’s shoot. Because he didn’t have time to reshoot the scene, Coppola added a new scene of Luca Brasi rehearsing his lines before seeing the Godfather to make Montana’s bad takes seem like Brasi was simply nervous to talk to the Godfather.

14. THE “TAKE THE CANNOLI” LINE WAS IMPROVISED.
The line in the script only had actor Richard Castellano as Clemenza say “Leave the gun” after the hit on the mobster who ratted on the Corleones. He was inspired to make the sweet addition after Coppola inserted a line in which the character’s wife asks him to buy cannoli for dessert.

1. COPPOLA WAS AT RISK OF BEING FIRED DURING PRODUCTION.
Coppola (who got the job because of his previous movie, The Rain People) wasn’t the first director Paramount Pictures had in mind for The Godfather (Elia Kazan, Arthur Penn, Richard Brooks, and Costa-Gavras all turned the job down), and after filming began, executives didn’t like the brooding, talky drama that Coppola was shooting.

The studio wanted a more salacious gangster movie, so it constantly threatened to fire Coppola (even going so far as to have stand-in directors waiting on set). Coppola was reportedly getting the ax until he shot the scene where Michael kills Solozzo and McCluskey, which the executives saw and loved.