In an interview with The Daily Beast, famed author Stephen King talked 9/11, #OscarsSoWhite, and the GOP primary.
King co-produced, with J.J. Abrams, the Hulu original series “11.22.63,” based on his book of the same name, about a high school English teacher tasked with going back in time to stop the the JFK assassination and subsequent historical catastrophes (i.e. the Vietnam War, assassination of Bobby Kennedy).
Asked what more current event, if prevented, would alter the course of history to a similar extent, King pointed to 9/11.
“If someone could go back and make one phone call and say, ‘There are bad people getting on airplanes right now and here’s where it’s happening,’ there would have been huge changes,” King said, citing “the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, the lives that have been lost, the amount of blood and treasure that’s been spent” as collateral tragedies.
King changed course to offer his perspective--as something of an insider--on the issue of diversity in Hollywood and, by extension, the Academy Awards.
“It’s really strange about the Academy Awards two years in a row coming out with these vanilla ice cream nominations,” King said of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. “Especially when you think that there were a couple of really great performances,” he added, noting Michael B. Jordan in “Creed” and Idris Elba in “Beasts of No Nation.”
Expounding on Elba’s snub, King said he wondered “if part of the reason that (Elba) was ignored—and (‘Beasts of No Nation’) was ignored—was because of the synergy with Netflix. I think that a lot of movie people really don’t like the idea of people muscling in on their playing field. They see it as a threat.”
That said, King predicted “a major course-correction” on issue of diversity in Hollywood. “I think the Academy Awards are going to be very interesting this year because this is on a lot of people’s minds, and a lot of people are going to speak out about it.”
Regarding the GOP candidate’s mounting legitimacy, King admitted, “Trump leaves me speechless.”
“When he came down that escalator to announce that he was going to run for president, I thought to myself that it was a smart joke,” King said. “I figured he would run for a while, then drop out, and that would be the end of it. And instead, you talk about media-savvy, but he’s really the anti-media-savvy candidate.”
“I actually think Trump, in the end, would be more electable than Cruz because Cruz is a fundamentalist Christian,” King added, equating Cruz to an Imam—“someone whose first guiding principle would be the scripture rather than the Constitution. But I don’t think he could get elected. And, even if he was able to govern without blowing up the world, could we look at a guy who resembles a cable game show host for four years? He has that awful plastered-down hair and everything."
Read the full interview here.
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