King: "The Dark Tower"
https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=34661
General Information
Source:
Creator:
NBC Today Show
Matt Lauer
Resource Type:
Copyright:
Event Date:
Air/Publish Date:
02/28/2003
02/28/2003
Copyright Date:
Clip Length
Video News Report
NBCUniversal Media,
LLC.
2003
00:03:10
Description
Stephen King, known for writing horror thrillers, talks about how a near-fatal car accident prompted him
to finish the multi-volume, 4,000-page epic fantasy "Dark Tower" he'd worked on for over 30 years.
Keywords
Stephen King, Fantasy, Epic, Quest, Series, "The Dark Tower", "Gunslinger", "Center of the Universe",
"Lord of the Rings, " Robert Browning, Poem, "Childe Rolande Into the Dark Tower Came",
Procrastination, Cars, Driving, Accident, Writing, Writers' Lives, Sergio Leone, Movies, Italian, Novel,
Books, Woodstock, Frodo, Writers Speak
Citation
MLA
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 1 of 3
"King: "The Dark Tower" ." Matt Lauer, correspondent. NBC Today Show. NBCUniversal Media. 28 Feb.
2003. NBC Learn. Web. 30 March 2015
APA
Lauer, M. (Reporter). 2003, February 28. King: "The Dark Tower" . [Television series episode]. NBC
Today Show. Retrieved from https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=34661
CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE
"King: "The Dark Tower" " NBC Today Show, New York, NY: NBC Universal, 02/28/2003. Accessed
Mon Mar 30 2015 from NBC Learn: https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k12/browse/?cuecard=34661
Transcript
King: "The Dark Tower"
MATT LAUER, co-host:
In 1970, then 22-year-old writer Stephen King started a novel called "The Gunslinger", an epic fantasy
about one man's quest for his so-called "Dark Tower". Now, more than 30 years later, King has finished
the final three installments of his Dark Tower series, which will come out this fall. So to reacquaint old
readers, and perhaps welcome a few new ones, he's re-releasing book one through four: "The
Gunslinger", "The Drawing of the Three", "The Waste Lands", and "Wizard and Glass". 22 years old, and
from what I've been reading, you decided back then you wanted this to be one story and perhaps the
longest novel in history.
Mr. STEPHEN KING (“The Dark Tower”): Yeah, I wanted it--I--when you're 22, you just have tiny
ambitions, you know. My idea was to write the longest popular novel of all time. And I'd been wowed by
the "Lord of the Rings". This was the--the days when people turned up at Woodstock with names like
Mary and Pippin and Frodo and Gandalf, you know. And we all loved the "Lord of the Rings". There are
people today that wouldn't believe that series had a life before the movies.
LAUER: What was it about this world of fantasy? Because let's remind people right now, these aren't
horror stories.
Mr. KING: No, they're--they're fantasy. They've got some scary things in them, but there's also a lot of
romance in these. And I was sort of taken by the Sergio Leone Italian westerns. I liked the scope of
them, how big they were how if somebody turned the gun toward the camera, it looked like the Holland
Tunnel. It didn't look like a gun at all. And I thought, `I would like to get something that big.' And then I
found the Robert Browning poem, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." And I didn't really
understand what it meant, but I loved the gorgeous mystery of it.
LAUER: Can you give me a two-sentence description of what "The Dark Tower" is?
Mr. KING: I'm not sure I can do that, Matt. But basically there's a gunslinger whose name is Roland
Deschain who knows that there's something wrong with the world, the universe, there's something wrong
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 2 of 3
at the center of the universe where this--this dark tower. He has to get there and fix it. So basically it's a
quest novel.
LAUER: And I guess the question is, why finish it now? And there's an anecdote going around that after
had you your accident in 1999 some of your real diehard fans said, you know, `I was so afraid you were
going to die...
Mr. KING: That's right.
LAUER: ...and I was never going to know what--how this thing wrapped up.'
Mr. KING: When I woke up in that ditch after that accident, one of the things that I thought of was we go
along and we assume we're going to have time to do this, we're going to do that. And I'm just thinking, I
finish these books and anybody that's out there who's saying, `I'm going to take the fishing trip, I'm going
to do the bowling tour, I'm going to do this or that,' do it, because you don't know what's going to happen.
LAUER: But it's curious, because we have a 30-year span here since you first started in these--writing
these books. So if you were to go back and read, how many pages are we talking about now in this series
by the time seven's done?
Mr. KING: We're talking about 4,000 pages.
LAUER: So if you were to go back and read these 4000-plus pages, how has Stephen King changed as a
writer throughout those 4000 pages?
Mr. KING: Well, I think that I've probably got rid of a lot of the pretension in the writing seminar stuff
along the way.
LAUER: More natural these days?
Mr. KING: I'm--I'm a little bit more natural. And I think that I've learned a few things about life. I think
I've learned a few things about writing along the way. But I'm still here, and the things that buzzed me
when I was young still turn me on.
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 3 of 3