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Turn Your Obsession into a Party Game with The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Trivia Book

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:11 AM +0000

Scene from The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Trivia Book

“I remember rummaging in the basement and liked the scary stuff on the covers. At first, I stuck to the stories in Night Shift but soon picked up The Bachman Books. It was comforting for me to know that there were other people out there with weird ideas in their heads. And of course, then I read it and became a fan for life.”

That’s Kevin Quigley, writer and die-hard Stephen King fan. Since discovering the literary genius of King in the early ‘80s, Quigley has dedicated his writing life to studying King’s craft and has most recently joined fellow authors Brian James Freeman and Hans-Åke Lilja to release The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Trivia Book, a testament to all of King’s movie work and one guaranteed to make your head spin.

Author Stephen King

Stephen King’s writing career has spanned decades and includes 49 novels and 350 million copies sold (and counting). Early on, he earned his “King of Horror” status by taking classic horror tropes and combining them with very recognizable, very flawed, and very real characters.

“Stephen King is responsible for the horror boom of the 1980’s,” Quigley said. “There was some precedent, of course – things like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby – but Carrie changed the horror game and Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and to some degree, The Stand solidified it. And in Danse Macabre, King not only highlighted contemporary horror authors like Peter Straub and Anne Rivers Siddons, but also introduced the public to his influences, Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson.”

And when horror became a mass commodity and more accessible to the public, for better or for worse, King worked to strengthen that. Quigley also credits the mainstream success of the supernatural crime novel The Dead Zone.

“It was King’s first number one hardcover bestseller. And I’ve always found it fascinating that this accessible, human, (mostly) gentle story gets lumped in with the ‘King of Horror’ mentality. But since a lot of people read it and found it palatable, it changed the concept of what horror could be,” Quigley said.

But this trivia book isn’t about King’s literature, it’s about the screen adaptations of his work. Between the movies, short films, TV shows, and miniseries, there are over 75 and counting. Some are good, and some are bad... really bad.

“Oh boy, are some bad! I can’t believe I sat through The Mangler. And you know how people say that once you get to a certain level of rich, none of it starts being real anymore? That’s how it is with the level of bad in Children of the Corn. And I will reluctantly say that Children of the Corn II actually isn’t terrible. Or as terrible,” Quigley said.

Whether it’s Misery or Children of the Corn, it’s sure to be covered in The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Trivia Book chock full of over1,000 questions, including special illustration-based ones from graphic artist Glenn Chadbourne.

“I don’t like number or date questions – trivia is more fun if you can make your way to the answer by thinking about the movie rather than reciting rote facts. It’s such a cool book, “ Quigley said.

The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Trivia Bookwill be released nationwide this fall, and includes a forward from director Mick Garris (The Stand, The Shining, Riding the Bullet, Desperation, Bag of Bones).

You can pre-order your copy on Amazon.com or cemeterydance .com, also home to Quigley’s other literary works: Chart of Darkness, Blood In Your Ears, Drawn Into Darkness, Wetware, and Ink In the Veins, all about, you guessed it: Stephen King.

How Three Minutes Changed a Father's Life

Fri, 18 May 2012 14:00 PM +0000

May 18, 2012

Author Buzz Bissinger visited the WGBH studios to talk about his new memoir, Father's Day: A Journey into the Heart and Mind of My Extraordinary Son, chronicling a road trip he took with his special-needs son, Zach. (Photo: Annie Shreffler)

BOSTON — Buzz Bissinger knew from the minute his son Zach was born, the second of twin boys to be born prematurely and weighing in at just over a pound, that he was faced with the challenge of getting to know the kind of son he never expected or wanted.

"In some ways this book is about three minutes," Bissinger said, explaining that because Zach was deprived of oxygen and suffered brain damage, his family's life was changed instantly.

It was after years of struggling and difficulty with marriage as well as how to be a father to these boys that Bissinger got the idea to take a road trip with Zach and get to know him better, one-on-one. But Bissinger is the first to admit he's not easy to travel with.

"I can be volatile. I get lost a lot," he said. Along the way he discovered that Zach's unflappable demeanor and talent for reading maps had a soothing effect and gave Bissinger the empathy he needed to find a way to talk with, and about, his son.

Bissinger's style in his memoir is to be blunt and state the whole range of emotions he experiences as a parent of a child with special needs. He feels rage and a sense of being cheated when faced with "really feeling stuck" in a situation he can't change. He decided the voice he would take on was one that could voice those frustrations that other parents might feel unable to express.

Driving across the country gave Bissinger the opportunity to ask a lot of direct questions. "My brain isn't right, I can't go to school like my brother does," Zach said to his father in answer to whether or not he knew what brain damage was. But he also told his father that the endless questions along their journey were upsetting and he couldn't answer them all. That gave Bissinger the understanding that his son was actually maturing. The trip drew them closer and helped a father understand how to accept his relationship with his son, wherever it goes next.

Watch Bissinger's interview with Emily Rooney on Greater Boston.

A Conversation with Author Gish Jen

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:29 PM +0000

Author Gish Jen read from her fifth novel World And Town, recently republished in paperback, at the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA on October 26, 2011. ArtSceNE contributor Bridgit Brown sat down with her after the reading.

Gish Jen’s fifth novel, World and Town, centers on Hattie Kong, a 63-year old, retired widow, and a descendant of Confucius. When very little seems to be happening in Riverlake, the small New England town that the narrator calls “American before America became American,” the Chhungs, an immigrant Cambodian family moves in right next door to Hattie in a trailer. With their arrival also come the rest of the world and an awakening of something in Hattie that had long been asleep. She takes an interest in the teenage Sophy Chhung, the oldest daughter in the family and a first generation Cambodian-American. Through their conversations, history intersects with the present, and what it means to be American is both refined and redefined.

For more about Gish Jen and her previous works, visit http://www.gishjen.com/home.

The Fallacy of Helping

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:07 PM +0000

My grandmother washed white people's clothing for a living but she would never call herself "the help." The movie The Help, made me think about her. Out of all of the characters in this film, Minnie (played by Octavia Spencer) comes close - outspoken and charming, though she would never bake and serve her poop. The author of the book, Kathryn Stockett, said she based Minnie on Spencer, a very good friend hers. The man who made the movie, Tate Taylor, said that Spencer was his former roommate.
My grandmother never brought her work issues home despite the clear indication that Kathryn Stockett makes in her fiction. The lives of the white people that my grandmother worked for and the children that might have been in her care were not central to her life at all. The women and men that work for white people are more complex than what we see in the movie and read in the book.
Taylor was at the screening of the movie when I saw it. He spoke afterwards, calling Stockett one of his best friends. He said that a black woman raised him too. They clearly want people to know that there is something about being raised by a black woman that distinguishes one type of white person from the next. I get the sense that it’s about people helping people. This explains why Taylor said in an interview that he “peppered” the movie with friends and family, including his dad who played Sissy Spacek’s boyfriend or his mom, who had a one-liner. I wondered if the five black men in the film, each doing “domestic” work, were friends of Taylor’s too.
I hated The Help and Spencer should have her racial credentials lifted for helping her friends craft a big FAT lie.

For Colored Girls

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:46 PM +0000

Well, I saw it. Lots of reaction. Short version: not as terrible as I feared (and yes, I hate to admit that). But I walked out of the theater feeling as if I had been bludgeoned for two hours. What redeemed it was the astonishing language (Ntozake's) and the performances (which were terrific, almost-uniformly great). I was happy to pay my little 'leven-fifty to support so many beautiful black actresses on the screen. And Perry is definitely growing as a filmmaker, getting all fancy with his shots. Clearly he means well, and wants to celebrate black women (especially Janet Jackson. Can he get off his teenage crush already? The woman cannot act! What was with the Kabuki makeup? And why did Loretta's wig look so awful? Why did she look so bad in general? Poor Loretta ....)

Still I found myself wishing, wishing, wishing someone else had made it, someone who didn't seem to see black womanhood as one, long, joyless, relentless slog of bad choices and victimhood (self-inflicted, to be sure) and abuse. Someone who would not have missed the ultimate joy and affirmation in the original, nor completely denied the frank celebration of a black woman's sexual power in the original (in the movie, sex=death. Period). Someone who didn't think drama=melodrama. I mean, good Lord -- I really did feel beat up by the end. I kept thinking "She didn't mean for the audience to consider suicide, yo!" That was not the feeling I think the play left people with. At least not me.

I think the movie probably stands up better for those who don't know the original, which is legitimate. And, as the bookseller I saw the movie with said, this will drive people to the text (though probably not the folks in the audience howling at every word out of Whoopi's mouth). So, all in all, go on Tyler, with your bold self. Next time, though, please, let someone else write it while you direct?