Idris Elba wandering through a desert with a fucked up sky, shooting crazy mutant guys and pissed off brainwashed townsfolk in the dust and dirt? Who WOULDN'T want to see that movie?

Hearts in Atlantis, the title story, is the card game one. And it's a great little straight fiction story, although of course one of Randall Flagg's aliases shows up in a newspaper clipping at the end.

Awww, I liked the one about the guys in college squandering away their potential and draft deferments. On the other hand, it was pretty fucking depressing.

Book 6 makes a passing reference to it, internal thoughts of Eddie upon meeting Stephen King. Says he really has to squint but there is a ghost of a resemblance. Not that that matters for the film series.

My first thought was, he lied in every word.

I was gonna say Dennis Hopper in Texas Chainsaw Massacre II

hmmm, not bad at all!

Fuck, you guys are pretty good at this.

Ed Harris is so perfect for a story like The Stand off the top of my head I could see him as perfect casting for at least 4 or 5 characters. Randall Flagg, Stu Redman, Lloyd Henreid, Tom Cullen, Ralph Brentner, hell, even The Judge.

It's from the Robert Browning poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"

please don't give him any ideas. I don't want a Drawing of the Three Special Edition, only this time Eddie is addicted to Oxycontin instead of Heroin, for the new generation.

It's only a slog if you go in used to reading stuff like The Shining and It. To a casual fan it's probably easier to boogie to the strange, stop and start pacing.

Take a sad song and make it better! (Hmmm, I think I can pinpoint exactly when Stephen King started writing this, considering calling it an Old Standard isn't that far off 50 years later)

I thought it was when I saw the Jake stuff in a tv ad out of context.

Exactly! If Stephen King hadn't created the character in college and written the first novel in the 70's I'd swear the character is specifically based on Will Munny, not the Man with No Name.

The beginning of the series really is all about atmosphere, about world building. And making you uneasy about having to follow this grim murder machine through the desert towards a guy who is supposed to be EVEN worse.

Anybody know why your comment got flagged? Was it the spoilers, or did they misinterpret what you were saying?

I guess I'd come up with a lot of garbage if I decided to swim in a sewer, that's for sure. Funny enough, since I basically only look up entertainment news here, usually complaints about reddit dickheads outnumber my actual contact with reddit dickheads 20 to 1.

Oscar Isaac playing a prick yet still likeable? Sounds like a stretch…

Tom Cruise for Randall Flagg now that Matty Mick already had his shot as The Man in Black.