Kenneth Turan’s film pick of the week: Stephen King’s ‘dollar babies’
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In an act of remarkable generosity, author Stephen King decreed in the late 1970s that any student filmmaker could make a movie out of one of his short stories after paying a permission fee of just $1.
‘I have made the dollar-deal, as I call it,’ King noted in 1996, ‘over my accountant’s moans and head-clutching protests 16 or 17 times as of this writing.’
In an act of remarkable cinematic detective work, Cinefamily head programmer Hadrian Belove has rounded up a dozen or so of these student films, or ‘dollar babies’ as King calls them, and is going to show them in two separate programs. The Saturday night program also features a feature-length dollar baby called ‘Riding the Bullet,’ directed by Mick Garris, who is scheduled to attend.
The shows are free, but given the work involved tracking these down, the suggested $10 donation is more than fair. The programs will be at 10 p.m. Oct. 2 and 2 p.m. Oct. 3 at Cinefamily, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles.
-- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic
