Desperation
Short description
A small group of travellers is driving through the Nevada desert when a local police officer stops them and takes them into custody. He brings them to Desperation, a nearly abandoned mining town where he holds them in the jail. As the prisoners try to understand what is happening around them, they come to realise that the officer has become the instrument of a malevolent force and that the town itself has become a trap. They are left to work out how to survive and escape.
Mick Garris directed this adaptation of a Stephen King novel, which aired as a television film in 2006 and runs well over two hours. It followed several earlier King adaptations by the same director, including The Stand and Riding the Bullet. The cast is led by Tom Skerritt as the writer John Edward Marinville, alongside Steven Weber, Annabeth Gish, Charles Durning, Matt Frewer and Henry Thomas.
Made on a budget of around 12 million dollars, the television production earned modest audience scores: 5.3 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 12,000 votes, and 5.5 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller pool of a few hundred. The two figures are close, indicating that viewers rated the film similarly regardless of where they recorded their opinion.
What's left behind the scenes
- The sets for filming the mine collapse scenes were built at the Tucson Convention Center (Tucson, Arizona).
- On December 10, 2004, a large fire broke out on the film set at the Tucson Convention Center. The cause of the fire was a gross error by the pyrotechnics special effects department. The fire completely destroyed everything: the sets, production equipment, and filming equipment. There were no fatalities, but five people were injured, two of whom were hospitalized in critical condition. The Tucson Convention Center building sustained serious damage both from the fire itself and from the firefighting process.
- At the 28th minute, when Collie chases away a wild dog, one of the crew members can be seen in the background on the right.
- Before the film's television premiere on May 23, 2006, it was advertised as "the film that set Tucson on fire."
- The theater where Johnny Marinville sees his younger self in Vietnam is the Fox Tucson Theatre, a historic Tucson landmark built in 1929.
- In the flashback episode in Vietnam, the set of the club from which young Johnny Marinville runs just before it explodes was built into the empty storefront of a building on Congress Street in Tucson. It is located directly across from the Congress Hotel, where John Dillinger and his gang were based during their time in Tucson. As of September 2006, the storefront remained empty and boarded up.
- The film being shown in the cinema is Anatole Litvak's "All This and Heaven Too" (1940).
- One of the characters, upon seeing something strange, quotes the opening lines of the television series "The Twilight Zone" (1959-64).
- The phrase “When you have a choice between history and legend, print the legend” is a quote from John Ford’s film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962).
- Mr. Magoo, mentioned in the film, is a popular character from the animated television series “The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo” (1964) and “What’s New, Mr. Magoo?” (1977).
- The phrase “At your feet, Lord Jim!” is a quote from Richard Brooks’ film “Lord Jim” (1965).
- The phrase “Don’t worry, little Nell, for I shall save you!” is a quote from the animated television series “The Dudley Do-Right Show” (1969-70).
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