Alright, we need to talk about / unravel one of modern Hollywood’s weirdest mysteries, here.
We need to talk The Lawnmower Man.
I know, I know. WTH is “The Lawnmower Man”?
Alright, time for some backstory.
First, please read the following link: https://thespool.net/features/fotm/the-lawnmower-man-stephen-king/
It gives a backstory for this odd, forgotten movie that is relevant to what I need to talk about and unravel here.
Basically, the story goes like this: Stephen King wrote a short story called The Lawnmower Man. It was about supernatural stuff- demons, and demonic possesions, etc. New Line Cinema got the rights to the story, didn’t like anything about it except the name, and so rewrote everything about it, changing the plot, characters, setting, and… everything, basically, to make a film about some developmentally disabled blonde guy taking over the internet with his mind and ruling the world thereafter as some kind of God.
King absolutely loathed what was done to his story and sued to have his name removed from the credits. He won, and the movie was thus removed from King’s official cinematic oeuvre.
The movie seemed to do alright in theaters, I guess. It got a sequel.
I didn’t see it in theaters, since too young. I did find the commercials interesting, with their old timey 90’s CGI VR graphics. When I was at a friend’s house I saw the first sequence of the film from his VCR copy. You know, the sequence with the monkey? I mean, I thought it was stupid (because it was, lol), but I was young enough to think it kind of unnerving regardless, and stopped it after that to watch something else, or something. I don’t remember what exactly, lol. Though I guess that that isn’t important.
So, anyhow. I was young back then, and I mean like really young. I was 12 back in 1992.
So… on a whim I decided to see what I had missed 30 years ago, so I saw it online last week and have been processing since.
Uhm… hmnn. Yeah. Well.
You know, Katherine McNamara told me something in her recent adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand. In the fourth episode (I think it was the fourth episode at least, lol), she pointed out to me that one of my alters was developmentally disabled, and even functionally illiterate, I guess. Which… kinda took me be surprise, but I thought about it for awhile, and yeah, holy cow, I think she’s right.
I mean, wow. Suddenly, some other stuff in my life started to make sense, lol.
I’ve had a weird, weird life. Like very, super weird.
Back in… 1st grade(?) I was stuffed into a class for a few weeks for LD kids. Or was that kindergarden? I don’t remember. After a while though the teachers realized what a mistake that was, lol.
Or… was it? IDK. My life is really, really weird, lol.
But, back to the movie.
The film was of particular interest to me because of the overarching plot of some guy taking over the world with his mind and the internet, which is of course basically me, yadda yadda. I mean, you know.
But beyond that, while watching our titular hero I was getting weird flashbacks to my own youth, particularly those scenes of him mowing the lawn like I used to do at that age and… yeah, I’m sure you can see where I’m going, here.
I mean, I was kinda like… oh no, lol. Like, noooooo, lol. But I mean, there it was, kinda. I mean the hair (obviously), but also the comic book and the kid who kinda seems kinda like me, too(?) who would walk with our hero and talk with him as he mowed and some other stuff, etc. etc.
The clincher to me was the gas station scene with the interaction between our hero “Jobe” and a bully “Jake”, which plays out near word for word like a memorable interaction that I had when I was young. And then… the scene ending, which shows “Jobe” in frame by himself, with another character shouting “Jake, Jake!” while he just stands there dumbly. And I was like… okay… does “Jake” mean “Jake-obsen”? I.E. me? I mean, are they giving the audience (or someone, or me) some kind of clue, here?
I mean, think of it like the Legally Blonde reference to “Tom” in that one scene, which was admittedly more obvious and direct. But, I was a lot older then, too.
Keep in mind that developmentally disabled or not, “Jobe” acted quite a bit like me, back then. I was just a kid after all.
I mean, all of this would be just a coincidence of course without literally the rest of the movie, where Jobe unlocks his latent telepathic abilities kinda-sorta-ish like I did (while in doing so coming to many of the same conclusions that I did as well, natch), which cumulates in him doing what I did, and taking over the world’s computer networks with his fantasies and thoughts and such.
I mean… I don’t know. But the coincidences are there, again. And there’s at least four of five scenes in the beginning of this film that really strike me as eerily familiar to myself, personally.
Really weird. And I mean it, this is all so very strange. I mean, I obviously had outrageous psychic abilities from a young age, it seems. But I mean… WTH? I was literally like 10 years old when they were making this movie, and the whole thing is pre-internet. I don’t get it.
And I won’t even get into the other stuff I noticed from this film, mostly because I know my legion of girlfriends or whomever gives them their marching orders would get mad at me if I did, lol. But I mean, it’s just nuts, all of it.
I guess that what I’m ultimately getting at is that I need really come to grips with this whole “AntiChrist” thing. I mean, this is very, very difficult. I mean, of all the hobbies to have, lol.
But I mean, this is just exceptionally tough, all around. I really wish that someone had pointed out to me what was going on when I was younger, just so my life would have make some kind of sense before now. I mean, all of this stuff in combination is like a lot, and I mean it. Like a lot a lot.
So… I don’t know. It’s just… baffling.
I don’t get it.
But, back to the movie. The story. There’s that old question again- that one I posed in my dissection of Serial Experiments Lain. Where did this story come from, if not from Stephen King? Who or what was the inspiration, then?
Was it actually me?
I don’t know, I really don’t.
Does anyone else?