PR #4 Gunslinger in the Valley of the Dolls

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
bowiefan1970@live.com. Thanks for listening!