t, with the best people having to say about him is something along the lines of “well, at least he proved a black man could still make a lot of money back then!!!”

No, this down not seem true to me. As long as I’ve known who he was I’ve seen people have defended him as playing a sly, subversive character who got his way by playing into the boss man’s low expectations of him. Generally the argument against this was too much of the audience consisted of the kinds of people he was supposed to be putting one over on, and they fact that they weren’t in on the joke just reinforced the stereotypes he was playing with (I’d point out this is the same argument against the violence in The Godfather, Goodfellas, Full Metal Jacket, The Wild Bunch, ect.). Also, that’s the persona he crafted for himself. People argue that sometimes he was trying to work against the film to pull it off. That’s probably true, but I mostly know him from the movies he made with John Ford, who was a director who respected him. Also, his humor is just a hard sell for some people, regardless. I’ve definitely seen lots of praise for, and defense of, his work with Ford.

I’ve never seen Good Times, but I’ve seen articles about Fetchit mention Jimmy Walker as someone who both defended Fetchit and was inspired by him, and who was bashed for basically being the 1970s equivalent of Stepin Fetchit.

Here, this is an interview with someone who wrote a biography that is supposed to be very good: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/5005813

Roadside Picnic is a really good book. The plot of the book is alot more complicated than the movie.

I’m reading Stephen King right now too. I mentioned that I wanted to read Salem’s Lot and The Shining, so might sister gave me a box set of Carrie and those two books. I liked Carrie and Salem’s Lot seems promising so far. I’m going to save The Shining for winter.

Doesn’t Tommyknockers have a pretty shaky reputation? I think that’s the most negatively regarded book he published under his own name in the ’70s-80s era. The other day I googled discussions of his best and worst books and that came up alot as one of the worst earlier books. The others from that era that were frequently mentioned were a few of Bachman books like Roadwork (which I’ve only heard of in the sense that I’ve seen it in lists of Stephen King books) and Thinner.

Of the movie versions of the other books you mentioned, I watched Misery for the first time in 25 or 30 years not too long ago and still really like it. I like the Pet Cemetery movie but it’s a guilty pleasure, and haven’t seen it in decades. I liked The Green Mile when it was new, no idea if it holds up. I remember people here slamming it.