The Stephen King Collaboration We NEED To See

As part of the media blitz surrounding CBS's "limited series" Under The Dome (which, by the way, seems to be working pretty okay), Stephen King, author of the source material, will be visiting with Anthony Mason this weekend on CBS Sunday Morning. The press release promises that they'll get into his process of writing the novel, but not whether he'll admit that he stole the premise from The Simpsons Movie.

On my old site, Fametracker, I used to write a lot about King's EW column, The Pop Of King, which I read like some people read The Family Circus: incredulously, furiously, and self-harmingly, like poking a bruise. I know King is a famous writer and that the magazine must have gotten readers into the metaphorical door of his column on name recognition alone, but the idea that he ever had anything compelling to say about pop culture on the basis that he consumes it -- far more than anyone else his age, according to...himself -- was never borne out in the actual column. Furthermore, in the style of books of humorous essays written by people who are not actually humour-essayists, King turned out to have about four decent column ideas, and then just filled up space. I mean, best movie quotes? Jesus. But since I am still fascinated by King's wrong-headed folksiness and curious to see what forms it's taken since his EW column ended, I will certainly watch this weekend, and eagerly devoured this teaser clip.

And as I delighted in King's self-congratulation for (according to himself) being the only person he knew who recognized that kids are scared of clowns, and for responding to a question about real evil by citing both the World Trade Center hijackers and Hitler (edgy!), I had an epiphany. Now that King has -- quite successfully -- gotten back into TV production,

he

needs

to

write an episode of The Newsroom.

If you'd asked me yesterday what real-life person comes close to matching the pomposity of Jeff Daniels's Will McAvoy, I would have said Aaron Sorkin (duh-hoy), but this tiny snippet of Stephen King's Sunday Morning interview shows me that there is another.

Stephen King is perfect for The Newsroom: not only is he self-important enough to put words in Will McAvoy's mouth, he's already taken a novel-length crack at rewriting actual news events so they conform to the way he'd like them to have gone. Hell, give him the episode about the Russian meteor -- that's bound to come up in, like, Season 5 -- and he can give one of the dumber characters a King-esque supernatural conspiracy theory plotline. It will be perfect.