Stephen King

Judging by the ratings, the viewers who tried "The Stand" liked "The Stand." ABC's four-part adaptation of the Stephen King novel attracted almost exactly the same-sized audience each night--about 19 million homes, enough to take the top three spots on the A.C. Nielsen Co. list released Tuesday. (Part 1 was included in the previous week's ratings.

You idiots can worry about outsourcing to India and China. I know where our jobs are really going. To celebrities. Two years ago, I lost a job writing a weekly column on the back page of Entertainment Weekly to Stephen King. Sure, writing a column isn't all that hard, but I thought I was better at it than King, if only because he covers movies when they open in Maine. Still, I think his columns are more interesting than mine because he gets to report the thoughts of Stephen King.

A movie based on a Stephen King work is a little like Kathy Bates in "Misery"--always unpredictable, and occasionally like a sledgehammer to the ankles. For every "Carrie," "Stand by Me" and "Shawshank Redemption" there's been a "Mangler," "Sleepwalkers" and "Lawnmower Man." The secret is getting King's particular brand of dread and humor in the right proportions. It isn't easy.

Stephen King's novels have sent a shiver up readers' spines for more than 20 years. His new book deal may have a similar effect on publishers. Viacom Inc.-owned Simon & Schuster said Thursday that it had struck an unprecedented deal with King, whereby he will take a smaller-than-expected advance in exchange for sharing half the profit generated by his next three books.

Stand by Stephen King. Although hardly the sentimental treatise on life after 70 suggested by its title, "Golden Years" is evidence anew that King needn't be terrifying to be good. Very, very good, in fact. That's exactly what this suspenseful, shadowy CBS summer series promises to be, based on its two-hour premiere airing at 9 tonight on Channels 2 and 8. It returns at 10 p.m. Thursday, the regular time slot for the duration of its seven-episode run.

It's not that Stephen King dislikes New Line Cinema's "The Lawnmower Man." "I think it's pretty good," he says. But he's got a problem with the ads that trumpets it as "Stephen King's Lawnmower Man." "I hate it that New Line's got my name plastered all over the place," King said in an interview from his home in Bangor, Me. "It's the biggest rip-off that you could imagine because there's nothing of me in there. It just makes me furious."

Last week it was a gentle relationship movie, "Fried Green Tomatoes," that helped propel NBC to the top of the TV ratings. This week, viewers turned instead to Stephen King and sent ABC to the front of the pack. According to figures released Tuesday by the A.C. Nielsen Co., the initial installment of ABC's two-part adaptation of King's "The Tommyknockers," starring Marg Helgenberger, Jimmy Smits and Joanna Cassidy, on Sunday night ranked fourth in the prime-time ratings for the week.

Horror author Stephen King was seriously injured when he was struck by a van while walking near his home Saturday, police said. King was walking south on the shoulder of Route 5 in North Lovell, where he owns a home, about 4:30 p.m. EDT when a motorist approaching from behind swerved because a dog that was loose inside his Dodge Caravan, Oxford County Sheriff's Deputy Matt Baker said. Officials at Central Maine Medical Center said that King, 51, was in serious but stable condition.

A week after Stephen King ended a busy guessing game by picking a new publisher from a group of suitors, a lingering question is whether he also has introduced a new way for top authors and their publishers to do business. In leaving Viking after nearly 20 years and joining Simon & Schuster, the horror writer agreed to a highly unusual deal that will pay him less upfront than he has commanded in the past while offering him the prospect of far greater riches through a profit-sharing arrangement.

I saw the movie "Carrie" one evening in 1976. I was drawn to the troubled teen with parental problems, no friends and the longing to be accepted. I identified with the meanness of her peers, the thoughtlessness of the immature and the enraged impulse to strike out against those who hurt us. The fact that the young lady happened to have the ability to move objects with her mind was almost incidental to the story--until the end.