Everybody had been saying, Oh no,The Stand, theyre going to ruin my favorite book.
And, Molly Ringwald, what a terrible choice.
But I signed on to those chat groups and people are going, Wow, are you watchingThe Stand?
Everett Collection
Ive never seen Molly Ringwald better!
It was like, I think it might be connecting with people.
Garris show garnered positive reviews and huge ratings.
ABC
To mark the release, Garris agreed to walk us through the making of his epic adaptation.
They basically just said to King, We want this.
The screenplay came first.
I was hired after he had written it.
So that 460-page behemoth was on my porch when I came home one day.
It was quite a massive document.
Its an epic tale.I think nervous is understating the point.
I had only done films of a rather intimate nature.
For me, my big epic wasCritters 2.
Yeah, it was massive.
It was just huge.
Literally, I was away from home for one year making it.
And then they started going, You know, what about some of the Brat Pack?
Theyre well into their adult years now and it might be interesting.
[I thought,] Okay, here we go.
Molly Ringwald was one of their first suggestions.
Rob Lowe was first offered up as the rock star character that Adam Storke plays.
I said, Well, what about Nick Andros?
What about casting [Lowe] in an unlikely role?
This reminded me of thegrand old lineWhat about acting, boy?
[Laughs] So, cooler minds prevailed and he did it normally.
The big find was Gary Sinise.
And so that ended up working out great.
What was the actual shoot like?The weather was always wrong.
I called Gary Sinise and said, Gary, would you consider directing for the day?
He said, You know what?
Its Friday, your crew will love you if you give them the day off.
We managed to make it up.
An those were real torture.
I just remember feeling like I was pushing the boat up the mountain.
You know, there wasnt light at the end of the tunnel.
We werent even in the tunnel!
It was just massive in scope.
You know, hes 6-foot-5 and stands out in a crowd.
Suddenly, all 600 of them swarmed him.
He got back on the plane and flew back home.
It bordered on dangerous.
I knew we needed something really potent.
The very first edict we got from standards and practices was No open eyes on the corpses.
And so we raised a middle finger to the data pipe.
One of those shots just goes right in on the clouded-over dead eyes of a female lab worker there.
But it was always designed to be sort of balletic and ghostly.
So it was sort of choreographed like a music video, but as an elegy.
What can you tell us about the Blu-ray?I never imagined a Blu-ray would happen.
Like I said, it was shot on 16mm and all of the post-production was done on standard-definition video.
There was no high-def back then and no plan to accommodate for it.
For years, when people said, Whens it coming out on Blu-ray?
Then I read online that they were putting out a Blu-ray.
They went back to the negative, did all of the color corrections.
It looks better than it has ever looked.
They even spruced up some of the visual effects.
Its exciting 25 years after the fact to see it looking better than when we made it.
How do you feel about Josh Boone making another TV version ofThe Stand?Josh is a friend.
Hes been keeping me apprised.
Im really excited to see what theyre going to do.
His budget is four times what our budget was.
Its going to be a 10-part, and Im dying to see it.
I dont feel competitive about it.
We did ours, its a part of history, and Im facscinated to see what theyre doing.
Im enthusaiastic about it.
Watch the video above to see how the original version ofThe Standcompares to the Blu-ray version.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
