Just out of boredom I watched most of the The Green Mile the other day. It is a well made film but it is also based on a novel by Stephen King and that always struck me as odd. For fun I downloaded the novel while making sure the pinko author didn’t profit from it and read it over the course of a couple of days.
In general, when I read the book first and then watch the movie it is almost always a disappointment (not in the case of the Lord of the Rings trilogy but definitely the case for The Hobbit fiasco) but when I see the movie first and then read the book, it often is a more pleasant experience. The Green Mile was no different. For all of his many, many personal flaws Stephen King used to be an excellent writer. It is an easy, engaging read even though the paperback clocks in around 550 pages. It was published as a serial novel in six installments but King does a good job of tying the segments together with flashbacks to when Paul Edgecombe is writing of current day in the nursing home.
The book itself as a novel is quite good although you have to get past the clumsy “The giant black man is really innocent and a mystical healer and the real bad buy is White” underlying theme. Like most older people in the North, King assumes that almost every White person in the south is a violent racist looking for an excuse to lynch a black. King is also a degenerate and that comes out in everything he writes. In the movie the wife of the warden, Melinda Moores, is suffering from a brain tumor that John Coffey heals but before he heals her the tumor makes he swear and she does a little in the movie. In the book? Her dialogue is like this:
As if in answer, the old woman’s voice rose again, querulous and certain and utterly lost: ‘Come in here and poke my mudhole, you son of a bitch! Bring your asshole friends, too! Let them all have a turn!’…
…’Oh, so big!’ she cried. She sounded like a little girl just coming down with a bad throat infection. She took her hands – as spongy-white as her face – out from under the counterpane and patted them together. ‘Pull down your pants! I’ve heard about nigger-cocks my whole life but never seen one!’
Pretty standard stuff from King, he can’t help but let his degeneracy show while going after the shock value. In the movie you get the sense of how this once gentle and proper lady is turned inside out by the tumor with a more modest amount of foul language, in the novel King goes overboard as he often does.
I can only handle so much Stephen King as I find him an insufferable, pompous ass but I also don’t spend any money on his books. I love that avowed lefty King says stuff like this about Trump…:
“Because the rise of a political candidate who deliberately appeals to the basest and most violent elements in society, who encourages aggression among his followers, shouts down opponents, intimidates dissenters, and denigrates women and minorities, demands, from each of us, an immediate and forceful response; For all these reasons, we, the undersigned, as a matter of conscience, oppose, unequivocally, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States.”
…when King writes novels that are full of the most violent, horrifying stuff imaginable. Like actors screeching about gun violence while becoming insanely wealthy by making movies about gun violence, King ought to stay in his lane and STFU about politics.
Anyway, if you enjoyed the movie you will find the book engaging but as always I would recommend finding ways to read it if you choose to without financially supporting King.
Next up, False Gods, the second book in the Horus Heresy series set in the Warhammer 40k universe. I really enjoyed the first book, Horus Rising, so I have high hopes for the rest of the series. I have been staying clear of Warhammer 40k because I don’t need a new, expensive hobby but my boys are really into it and I figured it was time to learn the universe.
King, being from Maine, may well have made it all the way into adulthood without ever or hardly ever seeing a black person. I had a Navy buddy from Maine who told me the first black person he ever saw was in the Navy.
My take is this makes it easier for them to buy into the “magic negro” concept, when they don’t have real life negros spoiling the fantasy for them.
Yep, until recently Maine was essentially all White other than Indians until they started moving Somalis into the state.
King is just like the rest of his ilk.
“you have to get past the clumsy “The giant black man is really innocent and a mystical healer and the real bad buy is White” underlying theme.”
That’s so often a theme in not just his works but many mainstream writers that it’s easy to toss all modern and relatively modern shit aside. I’ve already had enough antiwhite books I was forced to read as a student. There is no reason for me to force more down my gullet when there is plenty of other good material out there, like some history (have to be picky there too or run into the usual kvetching).
Oh as for lore for wh40k, there is a lot just in the codices old and new from that faction’s perspective (though some have changed over time). Plenty of pdfs our there of the old stuff.
King had another magic negro sage in “The Shining”. All of his writings display the warped approach of a deviant shitlib. New Englanders in general always struck me as a bunch of haughty douchebags.
I am not sure I have ever seen The Shining all the way through and haven’t read it either.
If you do ever watch the shining, skip the stanley kubrik piece of shit and watch the mini-series. It actually follow the book fairly decently. Plus you’re not rooting for Wendy to get hacked into tiny pieces every time she opens opens her mouth.
I read The Shining many years ago, and thought that it was a pretty cheesy novel, but sounded like a great screenplay. And as much as I like Jack Nicholson movies, I never have seen that one.
I’ll say that was a great movie. Enjoyable for multiple viewings.
Sido is wrong. The book isn’t “always” better (but usually it is).
The Dan Abnett trilogy is the next WH40K series to consider, if you like Horus. Xenos, Malleus, Hereticus.
I have been told Horus is mostly great through the first four books, I am not sure I am up to reading 52 of them,
“The book vs the movie” In “‘Salem’s Lot”, the vampire, Mr Barlow is a cultured erudite gentleman.
In the movie? His vocalization is basically “Narrr!”
Stephen King has a high wrought iron fence around his mansion/estate, how disinviting!
On usa.com were these demographic stats:
White: 93.46 % 30,654
Black: 1.66% 544
Hispanic: 2.07 % 680
Asian: 2.26 % 741
Since Bangor, Me, USA is ‘magic dirt’, I say they need more ‘cultural enrichment’.
The southern border is wide open, illegals are being bussed in, I’d say they need to send the Haitians and other
blessed dark brothers to King’s neighborhood.
He dare not refuse them.
King is a lunatic, it makes for amusing writing but one should never take him seriously in any real life setting.
Let us not forget Shawshank Redemption and the blatant melaninization of ‘Red’, the story’s narrator and noble co-hero, for the movie. Would King have allowed the director to switch the race of Byron Hadley, the sadistic head of guards, to bleckity-bleck? Dint think so.
Tell ya what. If I were in King’s situation, the very last thing that I would be is a negrophile liberal/leftist, knowing full well that my fan base is as White as mayo on Wonder bread in a Maine snow squall. But it’s a luxury that far too many guilt-wracked wealthy Whites indulge. I’ll bet you can count the number of blecks who waded through those 550 pages of The Green Mile on the skinny, claw-like fingers of King’s left hand.
One more bit of Green Mile cinematic license that no one else but me seems to have caught is switching of the sex of the parent who demands that the executioner “Kill him twice!” as the gentle giant awaits his fate. In the movie it is the White redneck father (played by the same actor who was Haywood in Shawshank (and ‘Death’ in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey) William Sadler). In the book, it is the little girls’ mother who exhorts the executioner, while her devastated husband remains mute by her side. Apparently, even back in 1994 the director did not think that audiences could stomach the sight of a White woman clamoring for the death of a bleck man who is convicted of killing her children.
For whatever reason a lot of Whites seem to take weird pleasure in that sort of thing. James Petterson’s immensely popular Alex Cross series features a black detective and lots of White villains, with Cross beating up racist White guys and banging White women, while Patterson himself is as White as mayo on white bread. It is a weird ethno-masochism that I just don’t get
Goodfellas was on Friday encore.
I love that scene in Casino where Pesci threatens the banker and FIB lands on the golf course.
James Woods plays the skeevy pimp Lester Diamond (honk!) in an underrated performance.
The Slaughterhouse Five movie is actually pretty good with laugh out loud and surreal scenes.
A classic case of the book is better than the movie is “Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein. What Hollyweird did to that is obscene.
it’s been a long time since I read that book, nut that does not sound familiar at all..I wonder if that is the additional woke topping to the download…because they can.
I don’t have a copy anymore so I can’t check.
Here y’go …
https://archive.org/details/StarshipTroopersRobertHeinlein
did I accidentally reply to your post? I meant arthursidos ( the green mile)
King is a hack, albeit one who was better at writing when he was all coked up.
he stole much from Lovecraft
^^This.
Like any large IP Warhammer has good and bad authors. Saw a commenter recommend Abbnets works and heartily agree. Ravenor is very good and you might like the Gotrek and Felix series if you enjoy fantasy or Ciaphas Cain back in the 40k realm.
The very worst movie adaptation of a good book is the Matt Helm movies starring Dean Martin.
The series of books is fantastic and would have made great movies. The Dean Martin movies absolutely butchered the books.
Donald Hamilton, the author, was a serious gun guy and competitive shooter so the shooting action as well as physical fights were always realistic.