Portland's Stephen King Week Wraps Up With Classic '80s Film

Maine's famous author Stephen King had a birthday on September 21, turning 76 years old. King has had a massively successful career with 65 novels and over 200 short stories that he has written and published over nearly 60 years. Many of those stories take place in Maine, whether they be in fictional towns or real ones.

King helped put Maine on the map when his novels became bestsellers. People all over the globe bought them and went to see all the movie adaptations of some of his best works. There are over 60 movies that have been adapted from one of King's novels or short stories, and his favorite of all the movie adaptations is Stand By Me, as it's kind of his autobiography.

All week long, Portland Downtown has been celebrating Stephen King's birthday with, appropriately, Stephen King Week. There have been all kinds of Stephen King events throughout the week including some writing seminars, discussions of King's books, and horror writing workshops. It all wraps up on Friday with a public showing of the movie adaptation of Stephen King's Pet Sematary in Congress Square Park.

Pet Semetary is the Stephen King movie I found most disturbing when I saw it in the late '80s. What happens when you bury a dead body in a pet cemetery? Nothing good. No spoilers if you've never seen it, but I think you can figure out that like a lot of King's stories, they don't have happy endings.