ROB LOWE CASTS HIS LOT WITH STEPHEN KING
Mark Dawidziak
Plain Dealer Television Critic
June 20, 2004
The combination of special effects, spectacular stunts, and supernatural storytelling can be downright scary
for the actors, that is. All right, you expect to hear a horror story or two about on-set injuries when
bodies are flying around as much as they are in Salem's Lot, TNT's two-part adaptation of Stephen King's
1975 vampire novel.
But even jaded Hollywood types were intrigued by the curious terror tale Rob Lowe told after working on
Salem's Lot. He returned from location filming in agony. It was his right wrist giving him trouble.
Shaking hands was excruciatingly painful.
There had been no bad fall during the location work in Melbourne, Australia. He couldn't remember any
special-effects explosion going wrong. Why was he in so much pain?
The mystery was solved when Lowe looked at scenes from Salem's Lot, which TNT will premiere at 8 tonight
and 8 p.m. Monday. There was his character, writer Ben Mears, driving one stake after another into the undead
things all around him.
It suddenly dawned on him like the morning sun hitting a vampire out of his coffin.
"I realized it was from staking people", Lowe told TV critics in Hollywood. "You got staking elbow?"
Staking Elbow? "It's like tennis elbow, but it's vampire elbow. Because I would actually stake into
these sort of really heavy bags of sand, so it was like a body. And I think it just wore me out. But I
played injured.
Written under the mighty writer who returns to his small Maine hometown. Ben recalls how, as children, he
and his friends would dare each other to go near the creepy and deserted Marsten house. It's a memory that
still haunts him. The house has a tragic history, and it's about to build on that legacy. The new occupants
are powerful vampire Kurt Barlow and his equally evil human partner, Richard Straker. The town soon is crawling
with vampires, so Ben teams with waitress Susan Norton, Catholic priest Donald Callahan and his former grade
school teacher, Matt Burke, to battle the forces of the undead.
This is the second TV go-around for Salem's Lot, first made as a two-part drama in 1979. That CBS
version starred David Soul, James Mason, and Bonnie Bedelia. Why remake it 25 years The CBS adaptation "was the very
first thing I ever taped off of TV on my Betamax, so it has a special place in my heart, "Lowe said. "But the truth
of it is that you couldn't deal with the horror and the intensity in 1979. You couldn't push the envelope in terms
of special effects."
"Also, in the themes that Stephen deals with in the book, they didn't deal with any of that in the early
version, because TV wouldn't let them. So this is a really true adaptation of
the book, which wasn't done the first time because they couldn't do it."
King had no direct involvement with the TNT remake, but he was impressed by the cast, which
features Mathis as Susan, Andre Braugher as Matt, James Cromwell as Donald,
Rutger Hauer as Barlow, Donald Sutherland as Straker, and Dan Byrd as young Mark
Petrie. The 1979 version tossed aside King's description of the handsome, elegant Barlow.
Instead, actor Reggie Nadler's vampire was made up to resemble Max Schreck in director F.W. Murnau's
1922 version of the Dracula story, Nosferatu. TNT director Mikael Salomon
and writer Peter Filardi have restored the book's concept of Barlow.
Still, purists beware, some changes have been made to update the story and add twists to
the character. Ben, for instance, has been given considerably more baggage than bad dreams about the
Marsten house.
"He's only the hero by virtue of the journey he goes on through this piece," said Lowe, who played
idealistic Sam Seaborn on The West Wing. "When you meet him, he's
disillusioned. He's cynical. He's jaded. He sells people out to write tell-alls
about them. . . . So he has to find redemption throughout this piece."
Having starred in the ABC miniseries version of The Stand, Lowe already has staked his claim on the
horror genre in general and King territory in particular. Adding the TNT project
to his resume was gratifying because he considers Salem's Lot, The Stand, and
The Shining to be the cornerstone of the frightmeister's work.
"I love Stephen King," said Lowe. "When he's adapted well, and this is a really
great adaptation, and when the filmmakers spend time on the characters and don't
rush right into the horror, I think he's one of the greatest writers for the
screen."
Hollywood actor Rob Lowe plays a journalist in his latest film but yesterday he wouldn't have a bar of them.
But apparently he can pick a good horse. The star recently signed on to shoot the spooky $US15 million ($A24.4 million) television mini-series Salem's Lot, in Australia.
Hobnobbing it with Sydney's social set at Royal Randwick racecourse yesterday, Lowe briefly posed for photographs with his co-star Samantha Mathis, but knocked back several requests for a chat.
Lowe, 39, was a teen idol in the 1980s after starring in films like St Elmo's Fire and Youngblood. In recent years he was one of the leads in the US TV series The West Wing but the actor left the show last year.
Closely watched by two bodyguards today, Lowe enjoyed all the swanky
trimmings of the third day of the San Miguel Australian Jockey Club (AJC) Autumn
Carnival, sipping on champagne and having an occasional punt.
Just before race number five, Georgette Jackson, a Qantas Lounge hospitality worker was one of the few people to briefly chat with Lowe, a fellow guest in the Emirates marquee.
Ms. Jackson walked away financially better for it.
"I just happened to be there and I didn't have my glasses and couldn't read the guide," she told AAP.
"He (Lowe) said 'I'd back Pentastic' so I went back to the betting counter, drooling, dribbling ... and put five bucks on it."
She said the $24 windfall wasn't a big win, but more than she started with.
The Australian film industry, suffering from a lack of big-budget US television movies, has its fingers crossed the Salem's Lot mini-series will spark similar American TV shoots down-under.
Production on Salem's Lot began in Melbourne this month.
US cable TV network, TNT, is funding the mini-series based on author Stephen King's best-selling novel.
In Salem's Lot, Lowe will play a journalist who returns to his home town and discovers it has been taken over by vampires.