by George Beahm
Magistrale: Gerald’s Game remains one of my favorite books. I have always presented it to students as an appropriate bookend to Misery: its limited setting, the gender conflicts, and the bedroom as a battlefield.
Stephen King: I had all these things in mind when constructing both these books, and I’ve always thought to myself that Misery was a kind of trick. You have two people fighting it out in a cabin. That’s all it is. Gerald’s Game is kind of a trick on the trick: one person in a room fighting it out with herself. I’ve been telling people that the third book in the trilogy will be called Sofa, and it’s just going to be a sofa in a room.
1 Published as Holywood’s Stephen King (2003)
2 Dreamcatcher, released on March 21, 2003, was directed by Lawrence Kasdan, who also cowrote the screenplay with William Goldman. It starred Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption) and Thomas Jane (The Mist).
3 Needful Things (August 27, 1993) ran 120 minutes; directed by Fraser C. Heston and produced by Jack Cummins, the screenplay was by W. D. Richter; the cast included Max von Sydow, Ed Harris, Bonnie Bedelia, J. T. Walsh, and Amanda Plummer.
4 Directed by David Koepp, who also wrote the screenplay, it starred Johnny Depp as Mort Rainey. Secret Window was released in 2004.
5 As it turned out, King did not write the script for the movie. The script, written by Mike Flanagan and his writing partner Jeff Howard, is the basis of the film Gerald’s Game, directed by Flanagan, produced by Intrepid Pictures.
6 A miniseries, Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital, originally aired in thirteen episodes on ABC (March 3–July 15, 2004).
7 The Mangler (March 3, 1995) was directed by Tobe Hooper; the screenplay was written by Hooper, Stephen David Brooks, and Harry Alan Towers (as Peter Welbeck). It starred Robert Englund, Ted Levine, and Daniel Matmor.
8 It was not to be. Gerald’s Game, currently in production, is being directed by Mike Flanagan, who also cowrote the script.
123
THE KING AND I:
FURTHER ADVENTURES WITH STEPHEN KING
BY SANFORD PHIPPEN
King and Sanford Phippen.
In 1975, I was reviewing books for the now-defunct alternative newspaper, Tuesday Weekly, in Ellsworth, Maine, when I heard about this novel Carrie written by someone named Stephen King. I’ll never forget the face of the young woman clerk in the local bookstore when I asked her if she knew of the book or writer. She left her post to go and get the book for me and handed it to me as if it were the Bible. I knew from her enthusiastic reaction that this guy must be someone very special. I went home and read the book right away. I enjoyed it and I loved the way King wrote about the dark side of Maine.
I first met the Master of Horror in 1978 at a book signing for The Shining in the Bangor Mall, but it wasn’t until 1979 when I met him at a bar at the Marriott Hotel (now the Sheraton) in Bangor that we had our first talk and drink together. “Hi, I’m Stephen King,” he said, and I said, “Yes, I know who you are.” I had my copy of The Dead Zone with me, and he borrowed my Bic pen to sign autographs that night. He was the featured speaker at that occasion, which was a meeting of the Maine Council of English Language Arts, for which he was serving as either secretary or treasurer. He had been an English teacher for two years at Hampden Academy, a local high school, and was in 1979 teaching at the University of Maine English department. Since we both had been students in Orono, we had several of the same teachers, most notably Edward M. “Ted” Holmes, for creative writing, and Carroll F. Terrell, for literature. I had later taught in the department and so worked with the same colleagues.
A few months after our Bangor encounter, I attended the annual NEATE (New England Association of Teachers of English) convention in Providence, Rhode Island, where, once again, Steve was the featured speaker. I met him in the hotel lobby, and he told me he was essentially going to give the same speech he had in Bangor but that he’d try and add some new stuff. I told him I could listen to the same speech again, and I introduced him to my good friend and former college roommate, David Wiggin.
Dave and I sat in the back of the dining room with some snooty English teachers from Greenwich, Connecticut, who were making fun of Steve and putting him down. He wasn’t a very good speaker then, and, sensitive to my own Downeast background, I tried to tell them that they didn’t appreciate where Steve was coming from, what he had to overcome. I had a copy of his latest book, Firestarter, which I let the ladies examine with their noses in the air.
Back at Orono, there was a party at English professor Nancy MacKnight’s house and Steve and Tabby were there. We were all imbibing when at one point, I said to Steve, “Steve, you’ve got to beat Poe!” And he said, “Shut up!” Later I told him that I had learned that in the nineteenth century Edgar Allan Poe’s literary executor had married a girl from Bangor and had stored Poe’s manuscripts in an old mansion on Broadway across from what is now John Bapst Memorial High School. Part of the fun of knowing Steve is finding one’s name in his books. In Misery, for instance, he has two cops with the surnames of MacKnight and Wicks, the latter being Ulrich Wicks, one of Steve’s colleagues in the University of Maine at Orono English department.
One day I was walking in the Bangor Mall and ran into Steve with his two sons, Joe and Owen, when they were small, and all three were eating ice cream cones from Baskin-Robbins. When Steve spotted me, he yelled, “Look, boys! It’s Sanford Phippen, the famous Maine author!” And he grabbed me and bounced me up and down. Steve was much bigger than he is now, and I was much thinner.
In the summer of 1982, I invited both Steve and Tabby down to the Hancock Point Library, which is on the coast, and where I was the librarian, for a fund-raiser to fix the library’s roof. Tabby read from her novel Caretakers and Steve premiered his short story “Uncle Otto’s Truck.” When I asked Steve if he wanted a pitcher of water for his reading, he said he preferred Molson, so I found a white opaque pitcher in the library’s kitchen and filled it full of beer. Because the reading was to be in the Hancock Point Chapel, I thought some might object to his drinking beer in a church, especially a beloved institution where Booker T. Washington had spoken in 1905.
When they arrived in their fancy van in the afternoon, Steve came in the library, and when we were talking, I told him I knew that he had written some early novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. He said, “How did you know that?” I said, “Ted Holmes.” I also had the Signet paperback of The Long Walk, by Bachman, which was dedicated to Steve’s favorite University of Maine teachers: Jim Bishop, Burt Hatlen, and Ted Holmes. Later in 1984, when Thinner came out, how I laughed at the photo of “Richard Bachman” and at the dedication “to My Wife Claudia Inez Bachman”! The movie version was made in Camden, and my late cousin Delmont Clarke, of Brooks, bought the bullet-riddled Cadillac used in the film to display on his lawn.
Before the readings that night, I took Steve and Tabby around Hancock Point, originally an old Bangor summer resort, in my friend Alice Janick’s Pontiac, to show them the summer cottages of famous people, like the late Frederick Jackson Turner, the Harvard historian whose famous essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” advanced what became known as the “frontier thesis.” We also visited the once-secluded Sunset Beach area, where in 1944 two Nazi spies landed from a German U-boat, intent on making it to Bangor and then New York City, where they were to commit terrorist acts; they were, however, apprehended before they had a chance.
Following the tour, we went for cocktails on the western shore of the Point and then had supper on the eastern shore at the Stanleys’ cottage, which was built by Dr. Daniel Robinson, of Bangor, in the nineteenth century. Ben Stanley was the president of the library, and his wife, Joanne, made a delicious crabmeat casserole, and Tabby asked her for the recipe.
When we arrived at the chapel, the place was packed with standing room only. My niece Julie Clark was taking tickets. I introduced the Kings and the readings went very well. Steve stayed until every book had been signed
. It was quite late when they left for Bangor. I gave Steve twenty dollars for gas and a copy of my first book, The Police Know Everything. He said, “Probably Tabby will read this before I get to it, but I will.”
We made several hundred dollars that night, enough to patch up the roof. Back in Orono, I was invited by Burt Hatlen, Steve’s beloved teacher and friend, to take part in a panel discussion on writing sponsored by the English department. Both Steve and Tabby were there, too, along with this other young visiting writer, whose name escapes me. But what was most memorable, especially perhaps for the students, was our talk about the difficulty of writing about sex, and Steve’s outburst at the visitor when he said, “You are great! I’m going to vote for you for president!”
In 1985, I was editing The Best Maine Stories, and I wanted one of Steve’s stories for the collection. I was told he was an early riser, so I called him in the morning, and I woke him up! (About the same time I did the same thing with E. B. White. I assume I’m the only person who has awakened both our finest essayist and our bestselling horror writer.) Steve refused to give me a story because he said he didn’t believe in Maine literature. I asked him if he believed in French literature? Our argument didn’t go anywhere, but in 1989 he did consent to having his haunting story “The Reach” published in Maine Speaks, another anthology on which I worked.
In 1986, Steve agreed to an interview with Elaine Landa, one of my journalism students who worked on Inside, the Orono High School newspaper. Elaine, accompanied by her mother, did the interview at the Kings’ “bat mansion” in Bangor. That interview was later published in Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King, edited by Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller.
Throughout the ‘80s, I worked with Shirley Sonderegger, Steve’s former secretary, who told me that he would sign books if I brought them to his office and picked them up later. I did this quite a lot, and I especially remember when Orono High School hosted fourteen Spanish exchange students, all of whom brought Spanish editions of King books to have signed. Both Steve and Tabby were gracious enough to visit my high school classes, as well as other teachers’ classes in the Bangor area. When King’s movies Storm of the Century, Graveyard Shift, and The Langoliers were being filmed in Maine, a number of my students visited the sets and even got jobs as extras or some kind of assistants. My Orono students were always telling me stories about spying Steve on the city bus and at sports events.
In 1987–88, Pet Sematary was filmed in my hometown of Hancock, Maine; it was fun to visit the set, especially the gray cats that were used in the movie. Steve visited the set from time to time. In a local TV news story about the making of the movie, they interviewed me as the town librarian, and the piece was edited so that my head suddenly turned into Steve’s.
In the early ‘90s at Bangor’s best independent bookstore, BookMarcs, I ran into Steve one day, and he told me how much he liked my books of short stories, but he also told me I had to write a novel if I wanted to get published in New York. I did write one, Kitchen Boy, and Steve offered to send it to his editor. A few weeks later, he called me when I was teaching at Orono High School. I went into the teachers’ room to answer the phone, and this man’s voice said, “You are about to receive a call from Stephen King!” Then Steve came on to tell me the bad news. His New York editor said that if they were to publish my book, it would only sell around three thousand copies out of ten thousand for a first printing. Steve said he’d give me a blurb to use, which was “Sanford Phippen is a New England treasure, and Kitchen Boy is his most impressive work to date. If you love Maine, you will love this book.” I’m pleased to note that my novel has by now sold well over thirty thousand copies.
In 1998, Steve and Tabby both showed up at my talk about my new book, The Messiah in the Memorial Gym, at the Orono Public Library. Steve wanted to buy three copies at discount! I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t.
Then there was the time with the late poet Leo Connellan, who was a Maine native but who was then the poet laureate of Connecticut. He was always having financial troubles, and he called me about trying to get a new car to replace his old one that had died. I called Steve, because in those days, you could, and he and Tabby were wonderfully generous to everyone. Leo had told me he could get a good used car for $1,500, and I told Steve that. Steve sent a check for $2,000, saying, “He’s got to register it, hasn’t he?”
With the publication of his last book, The Maine Poems, Leo returned to Maine for readings and sales. I drove him to Steve’s Bangor office without knowing if Steve would be there or not, but he was. When he saw it was Leo getting out of my car, Steve hollered out the window, “Leo, you old bastard! Get in here!”
Sitting across from both Steve and Leo, who were on the couch in the office, I wished I had had a camera. Two Maine legends, two of the best writers this state has produced. It was a great visit, but in the car afterward, Leo said, “He probably thought I was going to ask him for money.” I said, “Yes, that probably did cross his mind.”
That night Leo was reading at BookMarcs and Steve and his son Owen showed up. There was a good crowd, and I think for about five minutes Leo was enjoying himself. In 2000, I interviewed Leo for A Good Read, my TV series for the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. He died in 2001.
When the film Desperation was about to debut on ABC-TV, the Tampa, Florida, TV station sent a crew to the University of Maine to interview Burt Hatlen and others. Burt was not feeling well, so he asked me to talk with them and take them on a tour of the campus. Besides Neville Hall, where the English department is, I took them to Gannett Hall, where Steve had lived his freshman year in room 203 and where I lived for my last two college years in room 201. I showed them, too, around the Fogler Library, where both Steve and I had worked as undergraduates on scholarships. I asked the interviewer if I could get a copy of her story. She said yes, but I never received it.
In 2007, Lisa Rogak, a prolific biographer of famous people, called me from Hanover, New Hampshire, to see if she could meet with me when she came to Bangor to possibly interview Stephen King. I did meet her, and I drove her to Steve’s office, where Marsha DeFilippo, Steve’s current secretary, agreed to meet with her. As it turned out, Steve was there sneaking around (I saw him in the hall), but he didn’t want to talk with Lisa. Her biography is called Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King.
To be honest, it has been frustrating at times trying to have something of a literary career all these years under the monstrous cloud of Stephen King. When I got to have a reading at the Yale University bookstore a few years ago as part of a series of lesser-known New England writers, I was irked at this woman in the first row who kept asking me, because I was from Maine, if I knew Stephen King. When I said yes, she kept asking me about Steve and his books. It used to be when I first started going out of state, people would ask about lobsters, Bar Harbor, and L.L. Bean, but now it’s inevitably about Steve. I did say once, “You know, his wife writes books, too!”
A few years ago, I attended an afternoon luncheon on the University of Maine at Orono campus in honor of Tabitha King, and I was amused, and so were a lot of other people, when she said, “You know, some people think I’m a better writer than he is.” Tabby got some well-deserved applause for that.
Probably the most entertaining time I’ve had while celebrating the achievements of Stephen King was in 1996 when the College of Education at the University of Maine held a worldwide conference, Reading Stephen King: Issues of Censorship, Student Choice, and Popular Literature. It was great fun to meet and observe so many of Steve’s groupies from all over, many of them dressed as his characters. I enjoyed a number of the programs offered throughout the day, the evening dinner, and the show held at the Hauck Auditorium with Steve himself.
Over the past few years, Steve and I seem to meet mostly at memorial services and funerals. The first was for Winthrop Libby, who had been president of the University of Maine when Steve was a student. In his retirement, Libby wrote a popular c
olumn for my local newspaper, the Ellsworth American, called “Thoughts While Shaving,” in which he reviewed some of my books most favorably. He also used to visit me at the Hancock Point Library, where we shared lovely talks about Maine, the university, and our common heritage.
When our teacher Carroll F. Terrell was dying in Orono, his nurse, Pam Peddie, told me how he talked all the time about Stephen King and me. “He seemed obsessed by the two of you,” she said, “and kept reminding me: ‘I taught both Steve and Sandy, you know.’”
In 1990, Terrell even published a book called Stephen King: Man and Artist, a critical, philosophical, and intellectual treatise on the importance of Steve’s work.
Burt Hatlen died in 2008, and both Steve and I spoke at his memorial service in Orono, along with a number of others. Burt had hired me to teach in the English department, and our last project together was planning the literary-history maps of Maine, one of which was devoted to Steve’s work. It was one of the joys of my professional life to work with Burt on those maps.
After Burt’s death, Steve had English classroom 416 in Neville Hall refurbished with air-conditioning and plush appointments and named The Burt Hatlen Room (complete with a handsome portrait of Bert) to be used as a seminar room for English majors and grad students.
In 2010, our writing teacher, Edward M. “Ted” Holmes, died at ninety-nine. Both Steve and I were mentioned in his obituary, and I spoke at his funeral.
For the past three and a half years, I have worked with two wonderful young filmmakers who are also great Stephen King fans, John Campopiano and Justin White. They have just premiered their documentary film Unearthed and Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary, and which is now making the rounds at film festivals.
