Looking at nothing but his extensive back catalogue of scary stories, it’s clear that Stephen King knows more than the average layman about superstitions, and he’s created a fair few along the way, too.
On the other side of the coin, though, it turns out that an undervalued crime story that’s widely-regarded as a stone-cold classic by anyone to have seen it instilled the titan of terror with one of his own. Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy was hardly a runaway success when it first released in October of 1989, but it’s long since been established as one of the most intimate, powerful, and phenomenal noirs of its era.
Matt Dillon headlines as the erstwhile patriarch of a drug-addled clan, who keep their habits topped up by robbing drugstores nationwide. Deciding to go straight, moving away from his addictive past proves much harder than expected, especially when an old acquaintance arrives on the scene seeking a score.
King’s superstition doesn’t have anything to do with the film’s subject matter in the grandest scheme of things, but it’s advice worth abiding by nonetheless after he shared it with his millions of social media followers.
There’s no doubt a huge number of Drugstore Cowboy supporters out there who haven’t put a hat anywhere near a bed in over 33 years, and that volume may have been steadily increasing as each new generation discovers the staggering slice of cinematic excellence’s merits for themselves. For those of you who keep headwear within close proximity of where the pillows are and have experienced bad luck, maybe this is the explanation you’ve been searching for.