In this episode, I talk about being bitten by a weenie dog on Thanksgiving. I ordered a new microphone, a Heil PR 40, which I’m looking forward to.
I start out with a book review of “The Gunslinger”, the first book of “The Dark Tower” series by Stephen King. Stylistically, it was different, because it was concisely written compared to some of his longer novels. The protagonist is modeled after Clint Eastwood, and knowing that I pictured Clint in my mind during the audiobook. The dialogue was similar to his spaghetti westerns. It was like fan fiction, which is when a writer uses character from another work. “Fifty Shades of Grey” was fan fiction of “Twilight”. The beginning was the best writing of Stephen King’s I’ve read. It was comparable to Hemingway, and I think the fan fiction angle allowed the author to lose himself. Just like a songwriter writing a ballad, the entire work should have a cohesive feel from start to finish.
The hero is named Roland, and he is not described much. His motivations become clear through some interesting flashbacks. He comes from a line of gunslingers in a village where the young men get trained by teachers. Either they beat their teacher in the end to become a gunslinger, or they return to normal society. Roland uses a falcon to hunt dove and later to defeat his teacher. He is the youngest to ever do so.
This all takes place in a parallel reality. Roland comes across a boy named Jake from modern day Manhattan. He was hit by a car there, which allowed him to be drawn into this other world by the Man in Black, the antagonist. “Hey Jude” is referenced a number of times. The gunslinger is trailing the Man in Black. They reach some mountains and Roland interacts with an oracle. Jake ends up disappearing or being killed. After that, the gunslinger and the Man in Black have a very wordy interaction that involves a discussion of the microcosm and the macrocosm. The Man in Black foretells Roland’s fate through the reading of tarot cards. We are left in a place ready to start the next leg of the journey. I predict that the gunslinger will enter a modern day setting in the next book. The ending reminded me of Judas Priest’s song, “Some Heads Are Gonna Roll”. I used to ride around on a Huffy listening to the “Defenders of the Faith” album on a crappy cassette player strapped to my wrist.
Next, I talk about the movie, “The Valley of the Dolls”. I thought the movie was about medicated robotic housewives. I read about some of the symbolism on Wiki. The “dolls” refers to pills and the women in the novel who are played as mere toys in our cruel world. I think the book probably is better than the movie, which was a mess. The pills aren’t focused on until the last fifteen minutes of the movie. There are three women in the movie. The first is a girl from New England who goes to New York and gets a job with an entertainment law firm. She is sent with a contract to the rehearsals for a Broadway show and there are a few musical numbers, which are terrible, including some night club acts that are terribly out of style. The people are “squares” and the movie is very simple. The first girl is given a role as the ‘face’ of a cosmetics line.
The next girl is played by Patty Duke, who is doing her Miley Cyrus star turn in a shocking role. She is kicked out of the Broadway show and becomes a temperamental star. She gets addicted to dolls, but mainly she drinks a lot.
The third girl is played by Sharon Tate, and she is a talentless wannabe actress. The movie uses tons of gay slang words to refer to her husband. There is a lot of male chauvinism, too. Her mom says that she is “just a body and nothing else”. She ends up in a French film, if you know what I mean. Her husband becomes a drooling invalid in one day. The movie is scattershot. The invalid ends up in a ward with the Patty Duke character and she sees him. She sings a duet with him, which is ridiculous! He comes out of his stupor, then returns to it after the number.
She cleans up and gets back into show biz, then goes nuts in the alleys of Broadway in a “Sunset Boulevard” type manner, to make a long story short. She also hits Haight Ashbury, which is ludicrous.
Sharon Tate gets breast cancer and kills herself with the dolls. The first girl returns to New England to become an old maid. I have no idea what happened to Patty Duke’s character. She probably went crazy. The whole thing was a trainwreck. There were terrible montages with old school camera tricks like split screen.
I hope this episode didn’t suck talking about this terrible movie.
My website is www.PaperbackRocker.com. You can find the podcast archives there. Find my books on Amazon by searching my name, Matt Syverson. Follow me on Twitter @PaperbackRocker. Email me at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!