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ELA Drills, Intermediate: Main Idea 1. Which of the statements is best supported by the passage?
ELA Drills, Intermediate: Point of View. Is the statement in the video true or false?
ELA Drills, Intermediate: Textual Analysis 3. Which of the following best summarizes the author's feelings about welfare?
ELA 6: All Hail The King 17 Views
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Description:
With more than 350 million books sold, Stephen King is one of the biggest names in horror writing. He used to write happy stories, but a few years as a high school English teacher fixed that
Transcript
- 00:03
There are plenty of great horror writers out there, like Bram Stoker, the man behind Dracula…
- 00:08
…and Mary Shelley, the woman behind Frankenstein. [Dracula and Mary Shelley as Frankensteins monster appears]
- 00:11
We can understand why they were always behind the monsters…those guys were scary…
- 00:17
But great as they were, neither could boast sales of 350 million copies of their books.
- 00:23
For that, we need to look to the king: Stephen King. [A crown and Stephen King appears]
Full Transcript
- 00:27
Stephen was born on September 21st, 1947 in Portland, Maine.
- 00:32
When he was eleven years old, he and his older brother, David, started publishing their own [Newspaper printing]
- 00:35
local newspaper.
- 00:36
They called it "Dave's Rag," and sold it for five cents per issue.
- 00:40
Not exactly enough to retire on, but hey, it was a start.
- 00:44
Stephen managed to publish his first short story in a real-life magazine when he was
- 00:47
still in high school.
- 00:49
In 1965, the magazine Comics Review published his story "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber."
- 00:56
And he didn't do any first-hand research to write it. [Stephen King stood in a graveyard]
- 00:58
…We hope..
- 01:00
After graduating from the University of Maine in 1970 with a B.A. in English… [Stephen King graduating from Maine University]
- 01:05
…and marrying Tabitha Spruce in 1971…
- 01:09
…Stephen headed back to school, where he taught high school English. [Stephen King teaching English class]
- 01:13
We're going to be that was the scariest thing he's faced in his entire career…
- 01:18
high schoolers….
- 01:20
But teaching high school didn't break King's spirit. [School kids playing]
- 01:22
He continued writing during the evenings and on weekends, working on short stories and
- 01:27
novels.
- 01:28
Things really started to pick up for Stephen when he started working on a short story about [Stephen King working on a story in an office]
- 01:31
a girl named Carietta.
- 01:33
After three pages, King decided he wasn't happy with it, and threw it in the trash.
- 01:37
Luckily for Stephen, he married a big ol' snoop. [Woman looks in the trash]
- 01:40
Tabitha saw it in the trash, went, "I guess I'll read this thing that my husband clearly
- 01:46
didn't want me to read," and was impressed by what she saw. [Tabitha reading Stephen's novel]
- 01:50
She encouraged Stephen to finish it.
- 01:51
We hope Stephen was like, "why were you fishing around in the trash can, you lunatic…?"
- 01:57
Possibly crazy wife aside, these three pages would become Stephen's first novel, Carrie. [Tabitha stood in a kitchen]
- 02:03
Carrie was also adapted into a feature film that earned tens of millions of dollars and
- 02:07
two Academy Award nominations.
- 02:09
For those of you keeping score at home, that makes those three pages some of the most valuable [Hand keeping scores on a board]
- 02:13
things found in the trash since a lady in the Midwest found an egg with three yolks [Woman looking in the trash and finds an egg with 3 yolks]
- 02:18
in her compost.
- 02:20
That was an exciting day.
- 02:21
And Carrie was just the beginning.
- 02:23
Stephen King's novels have been published in over 35 countries in 33 languages… [Selection of Stephen Kings novels]
- 02:28
…and more than 100 adaptations of his works have been made in movies and TV serials.
- 02:34
That said, he did also write and direct a movie about killer trucks... [Green monster on the front of a truck]
- 02:38
Hey, nobody's perfect.
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