Lilja's Library

by Hans-Ake Lilja

  I did not publish another book about King until 1998, when I did The Lost Work of Stephen King, because I felt that this was a truly unique idea and an interesting way of looking at King’s work that had not been done before.

  Around that time the idea for The Essential Stephen King also came to me, and I was fortunate enough to be working with a publisher who thought it was a good idea, and thus before I knew it, the three books of my Stephen King Trilogy were a reality. I feel that The Essential Stephen King is the perfect conclusion to what I want to say about King’s work.

  Lilja: In the book you mention that this is your last King book. Is that really the case? If so, why? Do you feel that all that needs to be said about King and his work has been said? Have you gotten tired of writing about King?

  Stephen Spignesi: I haven’t gotten tired of writing about King, but there are so many other subjects that interest me, I felt the time was right to move on.

  I have ideas for a major book about the American presidency, as well as a book about the Catholic Church and its role in the Inquisition. Plus, I am writing a nonfiction memoir about my father called Time Comes in Colors, which is requiring quite a bit of early twentieth century research.

  With all these interests, I decided I have said pretty much everything I wanted to say about King’s work, and will now focus on other books and original screenplays.

  Lilja: You have written a lot of nonfiction books. Have you ever thought about writing a fiction book? And if you ever did, what type of book would it be? Horror?

  Stephen Spignesi: I have a novel in the works called Shelter Street, which might be described as a contemporary drama with elements of fantasy, plus a couple of original scripts that I have been working on. But, for now, nonfiction pays the bills.

  Lilja: I read in the book that you have your own publishing company, The Stephen John Press. Tell me a bit about it. What have you published? Personally, this was the first time I’d ever heard about it.

  Stephen Spignesi: The Stephen John Press is about five or six years old and is an imprint I started to first, do short print runs of other writers’ books, and second, allow me to self-publish limited editions of my own works more suited for small distribution than trade release.

  The first book the SJP published was a feminist autobiography called Open Windows, which did very well.

  The next confirmed book on the schedule is my own book, The Overnight Hours: Poetry & Prose, which is a collection of my poetry and a couple of short stories and novellas.

  I am also in talks with a couple of other writers about doing their novels, and am also considering putting together a themed anthology with contributions from several writers.

  But The Stephen John Press is something I can only work on in my very limited spare time, and thus there are great periods of time between publications. I enjoy it, though, and do hope to expand its catalog over the next several years.

  Lilja: Since you have now ranked all the stuff King has written, could you rank your five favorite King adaptations for me?

  Stephen Spignesi: Five is too limiting, but I will give you my top ten (in no particular order): The Shawshank Redemption, Misery, Stand By Me, The Dead Zone, The Green Mile, Paranoid, The Shining (Kubrick’s), The Woman in the Room, Dolores Claiborne, oh, and Maximum Overdrive (could not leave that last one out, right?).

  Lilja: Is there anything by King that hasn’t been adapted that you feel really deserves adapting?

  Stephen Spignesi: Absolutely. I would love to see the following works adapted cinematically (again, in no particular order): Rose Madder, Gerald’s Game, “The Wedding Gig,” Rage, “Survivor Type,” “Strawberry Spring,” “Nona,” “Autopsy Room Four,” “The Library Policeman,” “In the Deathroom,” “The End of the Whole Mess,” “The Man Who Loved Flowers,” “The Sun Dog,” Roadwork, Bag of Bones, Insomnia, The Long Walk, “The Road Virus Heads North,” “Umney’s Last Case,” “The Doctor’s Case,” “Uncle Otto’s Truck,” “Squad D,” “The Ten O’Clock People,” “I Know What You Need,” and “Sneakers.”

  Lilja: What is next for you now? I understand there will be a book about cats, right?

  Stephen Spignesi: This Fall (2001) is The Hollywood Book of Lists and The Cat Book of Lists, as well as the “complete & uncut” limited edition of The Essential Stephen King (from George Beahm’s GB Books imprint).

  Next Fall (2002) is The Disaster 100.

  I am also planning on finishing and publishing my aforementioned book of poetry and prose, The Overnight Hours, within the next year.

  In the talking stages with two different publishers are books about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

  Also making the rounds is a script (best described as a “pop-culture fantasy”) that I co-wrote with my friend and editor Mike Lewis called Pilgrim’s Landing, and Mike and I are currently writing our second screenplay, called The Doctor.

  I have a stalled novel, Shelter Street, that I would like to get back to one of these years, too.

  Lilja: Thanks so much for letting me do this interview. Is there anything you would like to add that you think my readers would be interested in?

  Stephen Spignesi: Only that I think that you, Hans-Åke Lilja, do a terrific job in keeping King fans around the world up-to-the-minute informed, and that your site, Lilja’s Library, is a goldmine of information for all of us fellow King lovers. It is so obvious that your interest in King and your excellent work on your site are a labor of love, and I want you to know that we all appreciate your efforts.

  ****

  Peter Straub

  Posted: July 23, 2001

  Lilja: Can you tell us a bit about Black House? Word is that it’s a darker book than The Talisman. Maybe it’s a stupid question, but did it feel like a natural thing to let Jack Sawyer age with the story? I mean—he was twelve in 1984, and now he’s thirty-one.

  Peter Straub: By now, most people who care about it know the basic premise of Black House: that Jack is a retired detective who is drawn into involvement with a series of child murders. This case connects to the Territories, about which he now has amnesia.

  It felt completely natural to catch up with Jack at the age of thirty-one. In fact, I think it was easier for us than it was for him.

  Lilja: According to King’s official website there will be a lot of connections to The Dark Tower series in Black House. This has been discussed quite a bit on the Internet. Some fans feel that you have sold out and that Black House is more like a Stephen King book than a King/Straub collaboration. How do you feel about this? Have you added any connections to your own stories to balance this connection to King’s Dark Tower?

  Peter Straub: Sold out? Christ, how stupid. Incorporating bits of the Tower mythology was my idea, and Steve, of course, agreed instantly. Partly, I wanted to find out more about that world, and I also knew that almost everything King writes these days is connected to the Tower universe. It’s just a small element in Black House.

  Lilja: In the interview you did for Ténèbres’ Stephen King Issue last year, you said that Black House started with King remembering an idea you had mentioned during the writing of the first book. What was the idea?

  Peter Straub: The idea was a reflection about just how bad a house could be, exactly.

  Lilja: How did you (technically) write Black House? Was it different from the way you wrote The Talisman? We’ve heard about the forty-page “bible,” which sort of included the outline to the story. When did you write this “bible”? Was it only written by King?

  Peter Straub: We cooked up the “bible” together over a week in Florida during February 2000. We talked about the story, then took turns sitting down at the computer and pushing the ideas forward.

  Lilja: When you wrote The Talisman you imitated each other’s writing styles so you came up with a collaborative “voice” (King once said that you should have published the book under the name Chauncey Boogerheart, to stop readers from making a guessing game out of who wrote what in t
he book)—do you feel that this voice (Chauncey Boogerheart, if you want!) is present in Black House, and if that’s the case, was it hard to find that voice again?

  Peter Straub: This time around, Chauncey Boogerheart’s voice is considerably more elevated, riper, plummier than heretofore. The direness of the situation seemed to call for an increase in dignity.

  Lilja: I read how The Talisman came together (meetings in England and the U.S., long drives where you came up with the Territories, “the great Thanksgiving putsch,” etc.). It seems like you had a lot of fun writing the book. King once said, “When Peter said he was going to send something, I would get excited because I was going to get to read some more of the story.” I understand most of the work this time was done electronically—the long drives changed to daily emails for a couple of months, then a meeting in Florida (where the “bible” was written?) and the fifty-page installments back and forth as email attachments. Was it really as fun this time as back in the early 80s when you wrote The Talisman? How many times did you meet and write together this time?

  Peter Straub: Actually, this was more fun than the first time around. We got together only once, in Florida, and did the rest by e-mail or in telephone conversations. Everything flew by. Everything fell into place.

  Lilja: Oddly, it seems like this method of writing was really effective since you finished the script six weeks before deadline! Did this surprise you or is it a common thing?

  Peter Straub: I have to say, it was a very happy surprise.

  Lilja: We’ve read that The Talisman should have originally been a “Go-get-it-and-bring-it-back” book, but you decided to cut the outline in half since the book had become way too long (you have said something about a four thousand page novel). What about this time? Did you write an outline that you knew would be enough for the length of the novel or did you have to cut it this time as well?

  Peter Straub: Nope, this time we simply expanded on the outline. The first two pages of the outline took up about fifty pages of manuscript. The book wound up being longer than we had anticipated. It is almost exactly as long as The Talisman.

  Lilja: Going back to the outline for The Talisman, do you remember anything from the part that was cut that you really wanted to write? A “kill your darlings,” so to speak.

  Peter Straub: I always liked the massacre in a farmhouse that was never written. It was inspired by the murders Capote wrote about in In Cold Blood.

  Lilja: How do you feel about Mick Garris turning The Talisman into a miniseries? Is this something you look forward to? Do you have any power over the script? One script, written by Richard Lagravenese, was very strange and not true to the book, but we know that Garris is writing his own script and that he will stay true to the book.

  Peter Straub: Sounds pretty good to me.

  Lilja: It’s taken almost twenty years to turn The Talisman into a film (although the rights were sold before the book was published, according to the rumors, that is)—do you have any hopes for Black House turning into a movie? Seeing the trailer for the book on the Internet gave us the impression that a movie was already made!

  Peter Straub: The book has been sent to the various relevant parties, and we should have some information before long.

  Lilja: We understand that there will be a special e-book version of Black House, one that will contain notes from you, King and the editor. Do you see this as a twentieth-century version of a limited edition of the book?

  Peter Straub: Well, there will be a limited, too, of course. I guess this added stuff is only an inducement, a sales tool, for the e-book. Me, I don’t know why anybody would want to read Black House in the e-book format.

  Lilja: Early on there was some talk that King should write, what he called, a “bridge” between The Talisman and Black House, and publish this as an e-book. The book would update us on Jack Sawyer’s life during the last twenty years (roughly). This information came from King’s agent Ralph Vincinanza in an interview in Publishers Weekly, but when we asked you about this, you didn’t know anything about it. Do you know something about this now? Will there be a “bridge”? Are you involved at all?

  Peter Straub: The “bridge” story is still completely up in the air. If it happens at all, I’ll start it, and King will finish it. (If Steve reads this, he’ll be surprised, because we haven’t even discussed the matter. My editor thought I might begin it, then pass it along to Steve.)

  Lilja: How do you feel about publishing on the Internet? We know King has published some stuff exclusively on the Internet (Riding the Bullet and The Plant). Do you have any plans to publish on the Internet?

  Peter Straub: I don’t really write enough material to experiment with the Internet.

  Lilja: Black House has already been promoted a lot—advertisements almost a year ahead of the release, websites, trailers, etc. Do you have any thoughts on this? Is this the future of promoting a new book?

  Peter Straub: It may be the future of promoting a book considered highly marketable by its publishers.

  Lilja: Will you and King do a signing tour for the book? If so, do you know any of the dates?

  Peter Straub: No, there will not be a tour.

  Lilja: Do you surf the Internet to see what your fans think of your work?

  Peter Straub: Now and again, I use Google/Deja to find out if anyone’s been talking about me.

  Lilja: One reader once pointed out the similarities between King’s IT and your Floating Dragon (how catastrophes with supernatural elements strike an American town in intervals, how it all ends with a struggle against a beast underground and how a group of selected people fight against the evil)—any idea how this happened, being you wrote the books more or less at the same time?

  Peter Straub: I seem to remember that we each read the other’s manuscript when we were about halfway along, and that’s probably how it happened.

  Lilja: Do you think you and King will work together again? Can we look forward to The Talisman 3 in fifteen years?

  Peter Straub: I’d say the chances for a third volume look pretty good.

  Lilja: On that interesting note we would like to thank Peter for the interview. It was great to talk to you!

  ****

  Michael Piller

  Posted: June 10, 2002

  Here is an interview I did with Michael Piller, the writer, executive producer and creator of the new TV series The Dead Zone.

  Piller’s credits as a writer-producer include the series Simon & Simon, Cagney & Lacey, Miami Vice, Probe and Hard Time on Planet Earth. He is also known to television viewers around the world as the executive producer and co-creator of more than five hundred hours of Star Trek. In 1998 he wrote and co-produced Star Trek: Insurrection, the ninth installment in the enormously successful Star Trek feature film franchise for Paramount Pictures.

  Previously, Piller served as executive producer & head writer on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1989-1994). He also co-created and executive produced Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1992-1999) and Star Trek: Voyager (1994-2001). During the 1994-95 television season, Piller also co-created and executive produced the UPN series Legend.

  More information about Michael Piller can be found at http://www.piller2.com.

  Lilja: Why was it The Dead Zone (of all Stephen King’s books) that you chose to turn into a series? Was it your decision or the network’s?

  Michael Piller: The network bought the series from a pitch by producer Lloyd Segan and then they hired me. I was attracted to the project after I read the book. I felt it would give me an opportunity to explore the world we live in through Johnny Smith’s eyes.

  Lilja: After watching the pilot, I must say that I’m positively surprised. The show looks really professional (not that it shouldn’t) and the parts where Johnny has his visions are really well done. Was it a big problem for you to come up with ideas on how to do the look of Johnny’s visions? I guess you had some to choose from, right?

  Michael Piller: First of all, director Rob Lieberman de
serves enormous credit for what you see in the pilot. As far as ideas, I can only say that I try to watch the movie as I write it and try to see what I would like to see as a viewer—and ideas come (or not, sometimes).

  Lilja: I also noticed that there are some additional characters in the series that aren’t in King’s book. I’m thinking of Bruce Lewis (played by John L. Adams) and Reverend Gene Purdy (played by David Ogden Stiers). How did you come up with these characters and why were they given a bigger part in the series?

  Michael Piller: Bruce was created because the network and studios felt that Johnny needed someone to talk to, to express his intimate thoughts to, besides Sarah. John Adams has turned what was originally envisioned as a small role into a major regular—there’s real chemistry between the two guys, as you’ll see.

  Purdy was my son Shawn’s idea. He felt we needed an antagonist in the series to provide conflict for Johnny. I wanted to continue to explore the spiritual themes in the novel, but in a contemporary way. Purdy allows us to do that. He’s a mutli-faceted character, however, not your typical moustache-twirling villain.

  Lilja: I also think you did a great job with the casting of the show. I especially like Anthony Michael Hall as Johnny, but both Nicole deBoer (as Sarah Bannerman) and Chris Bruno (as Walt Bannerman) are great. Who did the casting? I guess you must have been nervous in casting Johnny’s role since Christopher Walken did such a great job in the movie version.

  Michael Piller: Casting Johnny was our first and most important challenge for the very reason you point out—we had to find someone who could fill Chris Walken’s shoes. Because of Walken, I didn’t want to cast a leading-man type in the role. I wanted someone off center. When I saw Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates in Pirates of Silicon Valley, I knew he was our guy. He was my first choice for the role.

  Ellie Kanner cast our pilot.

  Lilja: In the pilot, the King feeling is present, but as a Stephen King fan I’m a bit worried that King’s feeling will get lost (as it does in so many of the adaptations of his work). How are you planning to keep the King feeling in the series?