Lewiston at center of new King film Director to simulate Maine city in Canada

LEWISTON – Filmmakers in British Columbia will try to simulate the look of this central Maine city 35 years ago when they begin shooting a movie next week based on Stephen King’s “Riding the Bullet.”

The story, which King published as an Internet e-book in 1999, tells of a University of Maine student who hitchhikes from Orono to Lewiston’s Central Maine Medical Center, where his mother lies dying.

Along the way, the hitchhiker gets a ride with a creepy figure who forces him into a kind of “Sophie’s Choice,” forcing him to decide whether he or his mother dies, said Mick Garris, the movie’s director.

“Riding the Bullet” will star Erika Christensen, Jonathan Jackson and David Arquette, an actor from the “Scream” movies. Although the filming will be in suburban Vancouver, the movie includes scenes in Lewiston, particularly at Central Maine Medical Center.

“We would love to have shot our movie there,” Garris told the Sun Journal in Lewiston. “But our money goes 25 percent further by coming to Canada.”

Garris co-wrote the screenplay with King. Together, they moved the story’s events to 1969, the same period when King was a student in Orono. King wrote the original story while he was recuperating from his 1999 accident in which he was struck by a van while walking near his home in Lovell. That recuperation began at the same Lewiston hospital in the story.

“It’s going to be CMMC in the movie,” said Garris. “I don’t even know if it existed back then.” (It did, but it was then called Central Maine General Hospital).

The hospital has become popular in King’s fiction. The Durham native is working on a TV series due out in January called “Kingdom Hospital.” Also shot in British Columbia and set in Lewiston, the series is about a haunted hospital.

Garris, who directed TV versions of King’s “The Stand” and “The Shining,” said the Northwest is a good stand-in for Maine. The climate, the foliage and much of the architecture can pass for Maine, he said.

“People in Lewiston are going to recognize the difference,” he added.

Dean Barker, the property master on the film, hopes to recreate much of Maine in 1969 with the use of yearbooks and other artifacts of the period.

“It’s the small things that sell a setting,” Barker said. “Maine in 1969 wasn’t like California. It wasn’t all beads and hippies.”

“Riding the Bullet” is tentatively scheduled for theatrical release next October, Garris said.