In the new movie Secret Window, Johnny Depp plays horror writer Mort Rainey, but every time I've seen the trailer over the past week or so, it sounds like the announcer is saying Mark Rainey.
Writers, especially horror writers, tuckerize others to an alarming extent ("tuckerizing" being the practice of using a form of a real person's name, usually a friend, in a story). One of the book dealers that regularly picked up
Deathrealm, which I edited from 1987-1997, was a friend of Stephen King's and told me that King periodically got copies of the magazine. So when, in the early 90s, "Secret Window, Secret Garden" came out in
Four Past Midnight featuring Mort Rainey, I wrote King and jokingly asked if the name was a pure coincidence or did he have it out for me. He wrote back, and I quote:
"No, the name is not a coincidence. In fact, I expect John Shooter may show up on your doorstep with a chainsaw in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other!"
So it looks like I've been tuckerized by King.
I've got the letter framed over my desk (although I might want to take it down for safekeeping, since I'm told a signed letter from Stephen King is worth a couple of hundred bucks). I've been tuckerized by several other writers, and my favorite is Wayne Allen Sallee's: The Rainey-Marklyn House, an insane asylum in Chicago. Friends, you have not been tuckerized at all until you have been made into an asylum.
In regard to
Secret Window, my friend and fellow writer James Robert (BOB) Smith asked how come, if Mort Rainey is based on me, how come he's played by Johnny Depp instead of someone like Danny DeVito?
I think John Shooter might need to show up on BOB's doorstep.
