Every spring, my old home state of Vermont shuts down for Town Meeting Day. This a day for the populace to practice democracy by directly by debating, discussing and voting on various ordinances. It is a tradition that goes back to the 17th century. On Town Meeting Day in 1999, Vermont Public Radio broadcast a brief interview with author Stephen King about the new mini-series based on his novel Storm of the Century. The timing was no coincidence since the climax of Storm takes place at what is probably one of the saddest Town Meetings in literature. I cannot remember his exact words (and if anyone can find them-you'll earn a place of honor in my heart), King started the interview by saying that there was nothing scarier to him than a group of ordinary citizens gathered together in terrible circumstances. This theme returns time and again in many of his works and their various sized screen adaptations but one of the best is Frank Darabont's 2007 version of King's novella The Mist. Huddled together for survival in a New England grocery store the morning after a storm, this collection of concerned citizens gleefully shed their silly man suits and willfully start biting the heads off their neighbors for the singular pleasure of shitting down their necks almost as soon as the blood from the first victims starts to fly.
