Andy Muschietti (director of ''
It'' and ''
It Chapter Two
''It Chapter Two'' is a 2019 American supernatural horror film directed by Andy Muschietti, with a screenplay by Gary Dauberman. A follow-up to '' It'' (2017), it is the second of a two-part adaptation of the 1986 novel '' It'' by Stephen King ...
'') and
Barbara Muschietti
Bárbara Muschietti (born December 22, 1971) is an Argentine film producer and screenwriter, best known for producing the 2013 horror film ''Mama'' and the 2017 and 2019 adaptations of Stephen King's '' It'', all of which were directed by her bro ...
as producers.
Plot
During a
news interview in August 1972, an unnamed man (later identified as Barton George Dawes) gives his angry opinion of a new highway extension project. The narrative then jumps forward to November 1973, with Dawes, seemingly unaware of the underlying motivations of his actions, visiting a gun shop and purchasing two high-powered firearms: a
.44 Magnum revolver and a
hunting rifle
A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves (rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with bo ...
chambered for
.460 Weatherby Magnum
The .460 Weatherby Magnum is a belted, bottlenecked rifle cartridge, developed by Roy Weatherby in 1957. The cartridge is based on the .378 Weatherby Magnum necked up to accept the bullet. The original .378 Weatherby Magnum parent case was ...
cartridges. The story gradually reveals that Dawes' son Charlie had died of
brain cancer three years earlier, and that Dawes is unable or unwilling to sever his emotional ties to both the industrial laundry where he works and the house in which Charlie grew up. The laundry and his entire neighborhood are to be demolished as part of the project.
Dawes resigns his
middle management job at the laundry after sabotaging the purchase of its new facility, and his wife Mary leaves him once she learns of both these actions and his failure to find a new house for the couple. Dawes then approaches Salvatore "Sal" Magliore, the owner of a local used-car dealership with ties to
organized crime
Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...
, in an attempt to obtain explosives. Magliore initially dismisses him as a crackpot, so Dawes assembles a load of
Molotov cocktails
A Molotov cocktail (among several other names – ''see other names'') is a hand thrown incendiary weapon constructed from a frangible container filled with flammable substances equipped with a fuse (typically a glass bottle filled with flammab ...
and uses them to damage the highway construction equipment. He is not caught, but his actions cause only a brief delay in the project. Dawes initially refuses to accept the money being offered by the city for the house under the
eminent domain
Eminent domain (United States, Philippines), land acquisition (India, Malaysia, Singapore), compulsory purchase/acquisition (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom), resumption (Hong Kong, Uganda), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Austr ...
statute, but changes his mind after the city's attorney threatens to publicize his brief tryst with Olivia Brenner, a young hitchhiker who had previously taken shelter at the house. Magliore has Dawes' house checked for listening devices planted by the city and later agrees to sell him a load of explosives. Dawes gives half the money from the house sale to Mary, gives $5,000 to a homeless man in a coffee shop, and has Magliore invest most of the remainder on behalf of Olivia after paying for the explosives.
In January 1974, with only hours remaining before he is required to leave the property, Dawes wires the whole house with the explosives and barricades himself inside. When the police arrive to forcibly evict him, he shoots at them, killing no one but forcing them to take cover and attracting the attention of the media. Dawes coerces the police into letting a reporter - the same one who interviewed him in 1972, though neither recognizes the other - enter and speak to him. Once the reporter has left, Dawes tosses his guns out the window and sets off his explosives, destroying the house and killing himself.
A short epilogue reveals that the reporter and his team ultimately won a
Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the incident and uncovered the truth about the extension project: there was no real reason for it. Unless the city built a certain number of miles of road per year, it would become ineligible for federal funding of interstate construction projects. The city quietly began preparing to sue Mary for her share of the eminent domain payout, but dropped the suit in the wake of public outcry.
Author's comments
In the introduction to ''The Bachman Books'', King stated: "I think it was an effort to make some sense of my mother's painful death the year before – a lingering
cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
had taken her off inch by painful inch. Following this death I was left both grieving and shaken by the apparent senselessness of it all... ''Roadwork'' tries so hard to be good and find some answers to the conundrum of human pain."
King also described his disappointment with the work, and stated that he was of two minds about having it reprinted, but decided to proceed, in order to give readers an insight into his personality at the time. In a new introduction to the second edition of ''The Bachman Books'', King stated that he had changed his mind and that ''Roadwork'' had become his favorite of the early books.
Connections to other King works
The
mangle in the laundromat where Dawes works is nicknamed "The Mangler", because of "what would happen to you if you ever got caught in it." King had previously published a short story called "
The Mangler" (1972), in which a
demon-possessed mangle kills workers in an industrial laundry facility.
''Roadwork'' relates a story about a
.22 caliber .22 caliber, or 5.6 mm caliber, refers to a common firearms bore diameter of 0.22 inch (5.6 mm).
Cartridges in this caliber include the very widely used .22 Long Rifle and .223 Remington / 5.56×45mm NATO.
.22 inch is also a popular ...
,
single-shot rifle
Single-shot firearms are firearms that hold only a single round of ammunition, and must be reloaded manually after every shot. The history of firearms began with single-shot designs, then multi-barreled designs appeared, and eventually many cent ...
that Barton Dawes had bought as a boy:
In ''
Apt Pupil
''Apt Pupil'' (1982) is a novella by Stephen King, originally published in the 1982 novella collection ''Different Seasons'', subtitled "Summer of Corruption".
Format of the story
''Apt Pupil'' consists of 30 chapters, many of which are headed by ...
'' (1982), Todd Bowden sees an injured blue jay on the ground while cycling; the bird's beak opens and closes slowly.
In ''
Desperation'' (1996), the character Audrey Wyler recalls:
References
{{Authority control
1981 American novels
Novels by Richard Bachman
Fiction set in 1973
Fiction set in 1974
Signet Books books