The spooky crushin continues as we head to the library this week and journey down the aisle to find Stephen King. Which, this was a hard one to want to focus on as reading, well, Nick Miller from ‘New Girl’ said it best – I don’t read. I write. This is my reality. Not because I don’t enjoy a good book. It’s just that when you write daily, it’s hard to find time to sit down and actually enjoy something someone else has painstakingly jotted down.
Alas, I wanted to shine a light on King and all he’s done because when it comes to scares and whatnot, he’s the master of arranging those 26 letters of the alphabet into literary wonders that have continued to keep bookworms fed for almost half a century now. So Kasey Box, who you know from An Evening at the Movies and Literature Reapers, is coming through to talk about the impact King has made in the book realm, as well as in horror as a whole. Today though, let’s talk about the one series I thought deserved more love, and that’s ‘The Outsider’ and ‘Castle Rock.’
Fact: You could put Jason Bateman in just about anything and I’d tune in. That’s just a given, and he’s proven to be someone who isn’t one note either. Yes, that sarcastic charm is always present, but there is something about seeing him in a darker hue on shows like ‘Ozark’ and ‘The Outsider’ that really just puts my hormones into hyperdrive. However, while Bateman was the reason I tuned into ‘The Outsider,’ he wasn’t the reason I stayed. I love a good mystery, one where you don’t see the obvious ending coming, and I felt that with these shows. Well, the one season of ‘The Outsider’ and the first of ‘Castle Rock’ because that second one, yeah – no.
Both shows, I remember, were ones that I couldn’t wait to see what happens next, and it’s something Kasey mentioned when we talked all about King and what he does best. That is being able to keep readers guessing until the very end. Of course, King had nothing to really do with the shows as one was an adaptation and the other sort of just took classic characters and ideas from King’s beloved works and pieced them together, but I think that they kept true to what makes the notable author’s work, well, work. Especially that initial season of ‘Castle Rock.’ Every week it was like, umm…what the heck is going on here?! Plus, to toss Bill Skarsgård into the mix was just genius given he’d portrayed one of the most iconic horror characters just a year prior in 2017’s ‘It.’
‘It,’ a movie I’ve actually seen, which is a shocker because there are way more movies I’ve yet to take in than I haven’t; many of which are classified as “classic” and “must-see.” That’s what a lot of movies adapted from King’s work are identified as, and most of which I’ve never seen. That’s because I live for television. It’s the form of entertainment I find most satisfying because you get to know the characters over a period instead of 90-120 minutes, or in the case of Marvel movies – 17 hours. This is why I leaned towards TV when it came to King, but never fear – the love of his books and movies is in the best of hands as later this week Kasey Box will be dropping by to crush on one of his favorite writers.
Crushgasm 