Stephen King's 'Mr. Mercedes' is not a conventional horror novel. No ghosts, no vampires, no prune-faced escapees of the graveyard.
Owen King
I went to public schools in Bangor, Maine, and had as normal a childhood as you could imagine someone could, living in an enormous red house and being the son of a millionaire best-selling writer. I mean, I actually had a strangely normal childhood despite all that.
The stock market is for people who live in Manhattan and summer in the Hamptons, for people who can afford fancy cars - a Mercedes, say.
When I was a kid, we used to play this thing called 'the writing game' with our father. My brother and I would play it - where first person writes a sentence, and the second person writes a sentence, and the third person writes a sentence, and so on until you get bored and have to go to bed.
One corollary of the wretchedness of the second trilogy of 'Star Wars' films has been the final, demented sanctification of the first trilogy of films.
I find that I'm extremely unattracted to anything that's humorless. There is writing that is entirely serious, and it doesn't ring true to me, because I think, oftentimes, life is very, very funny. Even the worst, most humiliating, savage disappointments in retrospect have elements of bleak humor.
I grew up watching Cinemax, the late-night Cinemax of the '80s and early '90s.
I didn't want to write a book as Stephen King's son, because all I did was get born, and that's not much of an accomplishment. If that was the reason my book was published, it wouldn't be worth the paper it was printed on. I wanted to do my own thing.
It's hard for me to teach and write my own work at the same time.
I could write about coal miners in Northern Pennsylvania, and people would ask if I was writing about my dad.
A lot of storytelling... you're a bit hypnotized by it, and things just come out in certain ways, and you look at it and try to gather it.
My personal history is strewn with massive errors in judgment. They're all precious to me.
Who wouldn't be depressed living in a society that can't agree on reality, let alone health-care policy?
I suspect that perfect happiness is not possible for me. I suppose if I was ever selected for eternal life - the moment I was informed - that would bring me the closest.
Comic books and films have a lot more in common than, say, comics and books or films and books. The two art forms, to me, seem like pretty close siblings.
I think I always wanna write comedy because that's what feels truest to me; it feels closest to life as I know it, so that's what I want to reproduce.
The questions about my father are inevitable, regardless of the characters I create or the subject matter.
The last thing I want to do is to present something as 'Stephen King, Part II,' and have it be something that's a big disappointment.
My father has been a major force in the popular culture for a long, long time. He's a fascinating person.
I do try to entertain.
For me, the easiest thing to figure out is the story I want to tell, and the hardest thing is to figure out the voice that's gonna tell it. And that's why I finish very little.
I like 'Reanimator,' and I like 'Evil Dead 2.' But I really like the Corman movies from the late '60s and early '70s, and my favorite is 'The Mask of Red Death' with Vincent Price because - spoiler alert - but at the end of the movie, Vincent Price, he's the evil prince, and to kill him, his court just, like, dances at him.
I didn't really get serious about my own writing until I was convinced it was something that I wanted to do, that I wanted to spend that much time alone.
Steve Buscemi is the little black dress of cinema, appropriate for any occasion.
My first job was as a groundskeeper at the local ballpark in the town where I grew up. There was a lot of down time, and I got to drive tractor, so it was pretty good gig. I've also taught creative writing, dabbled in reviewing and journalism, and toiled as a screenwriter.
I was pretty naive about how hard it would be to get out from under the family name. Not that I'm complaining.
It's not easy for me as a writer to suspend my disbelief in a fantastical zone. I can do it. But it's more natural for me to write stories that are comic. Or hopefully comic.
Just because it's physically impossible for Steve Buscemi to be in every movie doesn't mean he's not capable of dramatically improving them all.
Although it's depressing to admit this, more than a handful of post-'Donnie Brasco' Al Pacino roles would have been better served by Steve Buscemi.
I'd love to be able to draw or play guitar or dance. All three at the same time - that's the talent for me.
I wasn't good at the sciences; I wasn't a good enough athlete. The only thing I could do was mow lawns. So I thought that writing or teaching was what I wanted to do.
I'm a very liberal person.
I think the model that I look at is someone like Jakob Dylan, whose dad is obviously every bit if not more famous than mine. He's a guy who sought to build a career on his own, doing something that's a little bit different than what his father does.
Everyday life is pretty funny and pretty ridiculous and occasionally really great, though not all the time, and that's all part of it.
My parents and my brother root for me.
I like some of the B movies that are intentionally funny.
I only finish probably one out of every ten things I start. I give up all the time.
I give my work to my wife first to read. Then, I try to find new people who haven't read my work before, to get a new perspective.
I think it's almost impossible to edit something to death. I think you can make things better almost indefinitely.
