I love Stephen King as well.  I used to read some of his stuff out of whack until someone strongly recommended that I check his work out in chronological order so as not to spoil other things that he has written - like, for instance, I had read Needful Things before The Dark Half and Cujo, which really ruined the experience of the latter two.

I haven't had a problem with anything of his from the 90's (not yet) - which is when I hear he started to take a dump - except for Gerald's Game.  That one was terrible, and I hate to say it.  This was about the time my friend made that strong recommendation - I stopped half way through Gerald's Game (and was glad to) and started from the very beginning with Carrie.  

And from 1974 on, I have loved everything the man did, except for Tommyknockers (Dark Tower II didn't do it for me, either, but it still wasn't bad).  There was just something about that one that was 'off.'  Like he was sitting at the typewriter and daydreaming about getting hammered instead of paying attention to what he was writing.  There were occasional moments of brilliance, I thought, and the ending started to pick up, but overall, it was a rather hugely disappointing effort by King.

Anyway, speaking of unrealistic stories...technically, most of King's stories are unrealistic.  Killer clowns who hang out in the sewers and kill children.  Men who can read the future.  Etc etc.  None of this shit ever happens in life - but I get the sense that you were really talking about realistic decisions made by characters.  I can't really check out your entire first post because I haven't read Mr.  Mercedes yet.  I'm not even close to it.

On a side note, someone needs to make another Langoliers movie and do it right this time.  I just got done reading that and it has everything I love - goals, stakes, urgency, mystery, great characters, edge of your seat entertainment...

I have a love/hate relationship with King.

He's brilliant, and has written so many great stories, but some of the endings are so terrible that they have made me angry. Makes it worse that his books are long.

IT is probably the scariest thing ever put to paper, but by God..I wanetd to kill him the way it turned out.

Still, anyone who wrote The Stand is alright by me.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films I have a love/hate relationship with King. He's brilliant, and has written so many great stories, but some of the endings are so terrible that they have made me angry. Makes it worse that his books are long. IT is probably the scariest thing ever put to paper, but by God..I wanetd to kill him the way it turned out..

I wouldn't say the endings are terrible, but they could be better.

I will disagree on IT - I thought it was perfect from front to back.  Scariest thing I ever read.  Makes my hair stand up on end every time.

Quoted from dead by dawn I will disagree on IT - I thought it was perfect from front to back.

Isn't It the one where the middle school kids defeat the It monster then randomly all have sex with the girl?
Yeah...
SK,  at his classic finest.  

In fairness to King, it may well be that the weakness in some of his endings is an intrinsic, and unfortunate, part of the nature of horror as a genre, rather than due to any deficiencies as a writer.

He has no difficulty finishing non-supernatural stories.

There is a fundamental problem with horror. It is always frightening when you don't know what is causing everything. The Fear of the Unknown.

At some point you have to go from that abstract to the specific of what it actually is...and it's always anti-climatic...and an attempt to avoid the anti-climax is most likely lead to absurdity.

Good topic.

I'm not going to comment on novels per se - even though they're obviously source material for much of what we see on the screen - but instead focus on film.

QT is a great example. I don't even think it's his writing that ultimately makes his work work. Yes, his dialogue and plotting is great, but what sets him apart is his direction. He reminds me of Kubrick in the sense that he has total control over all the elements of the films. Everything fits. Everything has been lovingly crafted, meticulously planned and fused together with a vision that has been fully bought into by the creative team. We should also never discount the amount of changes that get made during development / pre prod for a variety of reasons (creative, practical or financial) that shift the story from its original form.

If a story is bad, sometimes there's no resuscitating it, but a great director will add 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% and enrich a great script to make it something wonderful, or bring an OK script into the excellent territory.

I think that's why we see many of the best working today operating as writer / director. Tarantino is on record as disliking Jackie Brown - the only one he didn't write from scratch, precisely because he struggled to create a singular vision for it. I actually really like the film, but his perfectionist tendencies are what make him so special.

The contemporary anomaly that I can think of right now to that writer / director idea is David Fincher. Finch is able to synthesise others' work and still craft something that results in an indelibly David Fincher film. But he's also supposed to be a control freak, so you know, if you have a vision, perhaps the best thing is to fight for it and not compromise to the point of diluting or indeed taking realism too far and losing a suspension of disbelief.

Quoted from Grandma Bear So, question is, what can we get away with as far as unrealistic goes in our scripts and what can we not?

A lot depends on how you set up the world and how well you maintain the level of unrealism. If it's consistent, no one will mind.

The Harry Potter movies were all unbelievable but they were enjoyable because a world was created full of wizards and magical beasties.  Anything goes (or went) in these stories because the levels of realism were maintained.  If, at the end, Harry made an uzi appear and shot Voldemort to death, the story would've been ruined.  Producing the gun would've changed the level of believability, going from fantasy to hardcore realism.

Last Sunday on The Walking Dead we learned what was behind the z-virus and how that socially-retarded doctor is going to fix things.  The levels of realism has stayed balanced.  If the nerd-doctor said that he knew of a witch in Salem who could cast a spell and save the day, there would be rioting in the streets.

Can you make a movie that is too unrealistic?  Sure.  But that doesn't mean it would fail.


Phil