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Stephen King Fans discussion
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Nightmares and Dreamscapes
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My Pretty Pony-N&D
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(view spoiler)
Its nice to see him creating a scene like this where there's these little ruminations about the way the world works as we get older and how different things were when we were kids. I can't help but want to have a look at the overall novel he had done and see how it all related to this bit.
I totally didn't understand this one at all.
(view spoiler)[An elderly man, his death rapidly approaching, takes his young grandson up onto a hill behind his house and gives the boy his pocket watch. Then, standing among falling apple blossoms, the man also "gives instruction" on the nature of time: how when you grow up, it begins to move faster and faster, slipping away from you in great chunks if you don't hold tightly onto it. Time is a pretty pony, with a wicked heart.
In his note on the story in Nightmares and Dreamscapes, King says the piece was originally a flashback scene included in a full-length novel-in-progress in which the grandson was now a brutal hitman reflecting on his childhood. The novel was intended to be published under King's Richard Bachman pseudonym, but the author grew disenchanted with the work, and finally scrapped it entirely.
King references this concept again in the "Sorry, Right Number" screenplay (also collected in Nightmares and Dreamscapes) where a direction states that a character's "pretty pony has done its fair share of running" (indicating that they have aged relatively rapidly).
"My Pretty Pony" is also the name of a fictional indie rock band in "Debasement Tapes", an episode of the TV series Veronica Mars.
"My Pretty Pony" (2009) is also a Dollar Baby short film, based on the Stephen King short story, directed by Mikhail Tank and starring Paul Marin (HD/SAG/4.4 minutes). (hide spoiler)]