Movie Reviews for Writers: Salem’s Lot

Stephen King is perhaps the writer most guilty (not that it’s a bad thing) of using writers as his main characters. You’ll find them everywhere in his work. 

Secret Window. The Shining. Misery. But this wonderful vampire flick is often forgotten among King’s writer stories. 

David Soul (Starsky and Hutch) is Ben Mears, a successful novelist who has returned to the town in which he grew up so he can be near the old Marsten house, a building that has haunted him since he was a kid and that he wants to write about in his newest novel. Only, the house is soon to become a nest of creatures of the night that plan to take over the town of Salem’s Lot. While most of the movie’s plot is focused on the action of trying to fight the vamps as they grow in number and become an increasingly dangerous infestation in town, there are several moments when Ben gets to demonstrate the way being a writer affects his life. 

For starters, perhaps the most common stereotype of a writer is based in the need to be valued as an author, to have been read, and to be appreciated for what he or she or they contributed to the world. When Mears goes into the local property rental company to see about renting the Marsten house, he is confronted by the owner Larry Crockett, played with subtle comedic panache by Fred Willard.

Crockett: Are you a writer?

Mears: Yes.

Crockett: What do you write?

Mears: Books.

Crockett: Have I read any?

Mears: Have you read any books?

Crockett: Your books.

Mears: I don’t know.

I remember when I visited the library in the town I grew up in a few after I had become a published author, and particularly after having several books on the shelves in Barnes & Noble, and even one in Wal-Mart. I had a conversation very similar to this with the librarian when I dropped off a few of my books. While I was reminiscing about looking up “wrong” books and making out with my then girlfriend in one of the nonfiction aisles back in my younger days at that very library, she was gazing through me, ready to ask the question: “Anything I might have read?”

It’s the question that sounds an awful lot like “Are you a New York Times best-seller or do you have a movie based on one of your books? If not, why would I care?”

It can hurt the first time you hear it. Then it becomes a sort of expected inside joke between you and every other writer you know. 

Read the full review:

https://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2022/04/movie-reviews-for-writers-salems-lot.html