The Stand This was the project that almost never came to fruition. Numerous false starts halted the movie adaptation of Stephen King's master achievement, The Stand, and initially resulted in a general sense of frustration. By 1984, George Romero was ready to direct it, and King himself was interested in portraying handicapped character Tom Cullen. It still didn't happen. M-O-O-N, that spells red tape. A decade later, along comes network television to save the day. ABC picked up The Stand as a miniseries, which would be directed Mick Garris from a teleplay by King. And the job of creating a musical score for this terribly-daunting project fell squarely into the lap of W.G. "Snuffy" Walden. And it all works like magic. For those who aren't familiar with The Stand, an incurable flu virus infects mankind and renders most inhabitated areas dead. There are certain individuals whose DNA happens to be immune to this outbreak, so once everyone else has died, this very small minority of humanity attempts to rise up and rebuild civilization, perhaps even to something better than it had been. And a rag-tag team of individuals, including Stu Redman (Gary Sinise), Frannie Goldman (Molly Ringwald), Larry Underwood (Adam Storke) and Glen Bateman (the late Ray Walston) plus others eventually meet up and ally themselves with an ancient colored woman named Mother Abigail (Ruby Dee), who has visited them each in dreams. This is a horror tale, though, so that means that an enemy wants to decimate this camp of righteousness. The leader is one Randall Flagg (Jamey Sheridan), a swaggering rock-and-roll type who has some supernatural powers and whose subordinates--including one-time jailbird Lloyd Henreid (Miguel Ferrer)--readily give him their trust. The morality tale at work here is this: Life as you know it is gone. You're lucky to be alive. You're even luckier to meet up with people who are also immune to this flu. But your luck will run out unless you ally yourself with those who stand for peace, justice and even altruism. Flagg doesn't just want to set up casinoes in Las Vegas. He wants to make sure nobody else is running an operation on the continent (or perhaps in the world), especially not some grass-roots alliance headed by a spiritual leader with the likes of Mother Abigail. With supernatural powers of his own, this maniac is no anti-moralist; some of his favorite crucifixees are drug users. And if his little plan of post-plague world domination is to work, there's even a Randall Jr. in his vision, since his long-summoned bride (Laura San Giacomo) has conspired with tortured loser Harold Lauder (Corin Nemec) and left the righteous fold for an ultimately fateful rendezvous with Flagg. Enthusiasts of King's novel will doubtless find omissions to complain about, and with the limitations and complexities of the book-to-movie reconfigurations, it is inescapable. The omission of the Rita character--whose actions were re-allocated to Nadine Cross--ultimately hurts Larry Underwood's character development for the movie. And I have a bit of a beef with the fact that Al Kooper's recording of Underwood's fictitious hit single "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man" was not included on either the soundtrack or on Kooper's own commercial album Rekooperation from the same year; the snippets played during the movie sound pretty damned good. What we're left with at the end of the show is this: Humanity has been allowed to re-invent itself. Countless many have died, and a rag-tag team of survivors have bonded to keep it all together. New babies have even been born into this new world, some of them succumbing to the residual plague that had previously claimed their fathers. But, as the local doctor proclaims, the post-plague babies have a future. That is, if there's not another Randall Flagg in their midst. And given humanity's track record, it is a given that one day there will be again. >>Back<< >>Archive Index<<