Word: formulaic
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...normal number of fears and superstitions. King was unnerved by spiders, elevators, closed-in places, the dark, sewers, funerals, the idea of being buried alive, cancer, heart attacks, the number 13, black cats and walking under ladders. In the process of merchandising his own terrors, he developed an infallible formula: "First you create people that you want to live, then you put them into the cooker." Carrie, the paranormal adolescent, was succeeded by the vampires of 'Salem's Lot (1975), the haunted hotel of The Shining (1977), the deadly superflu of The Stand (1978). The clairvoyant young...
...says president of Pudding Theatricals W. Nicholas Weir '87. "But when he got involved in the Pudding he fit in well and really enjoyed it. Then when he went on to writing scripts, he captured the essence of the Pudding show, understanding Pudding convention and idiom and pushing the formula to its limits...
...attempt to satirize Dirty Harry-type heroes. CBS's Designing Women features a quartet of single friends in Atlanta who run a decorating business together, a sort of pre-mid-life Golden Girls. The show has a good cast (including Annie Potts and Dixie Carter) but an overload of formula gag writing ("Suzanne, if sex were fast food, there'd be an arch over your...
...other forums, U.S. negotiators, on Reagan's orders, offered concessions to keep arms-control bargaining going. At the 35-nation Stockholm conference on ways to prevent accidental war in Europe, the U.S. accepted a Soviet formula for aerial and ground inspection of military maneuvers. An agreement in Stockholm would be the first security deal negotiated by the Reagan Administration. When far more important bilateral talks on nuclear arms resumed last Thursday in Geneva, the U.S. indicated it would make a new "interim" proposal that would reduce the total of long-range strategic weapons by 30%. The new offer would allow...
...them, Steven Bochco, was the co- creator (with Michael Kozoll) of Hill Street Blues, the police drama that brought the genre a gritty new look, bustling narratives and a recognition that police officers are adults, not cartoon heroes. The other, Michael Mann, gave the formula another new twist a few seasons later with Miami Vice, which used flashy visuals and a thumping rock sound track to transform familiar cops-and-robbers tales into moody morality plays...