People

By Guy D. Garcia

A man is clipped to death by his own power mower. A neighbor has his mind blown by a malfunctioning Walkman, and a waitress is carved up by a knife. Oh well, such is suburbia according to Novelist Stephen King's Overdrive, now filming in North Carolina. The story of everyday machines turning against their human masters marks the directorial debut of King, 37, who quickly learned that filmmaking "is not like writing. You always have a lot of people in your face here." Still, the protean horrorsmith would not have missed a chance to go behind the camera. After all, eleven of his books have been brought to the screen by others. "I had to do this at least once," he says. "This movie is a kind of mechanical Birds. People have been telling me for a long time that I was eventually going to have to bring the visual sense to my work." Does King have a phobia about failure? "You bet I'm frightened," he says. Of course nothing, not even The Shining, is scarier than bombing in Hollywood.

California's Yosemite National Park is not the usual place to track celebrities. But campers in the glacier-carved valley found themselves asking for autographs when Robert Redford showed up along with Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel for the formal dedication of Mount Ansel Adams, an 11,900-ft. peak named for the great wilderness photographer. Redford, 48, talked about his concern for protecting natural areas and the impression Yosemite made on him when he first saw it at age ten. "I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security," he declared. "Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?"