Stephen King creates ''The Stand'' miniseries

In a control room at the Utah Power & Light Company in Salt Lake City, labels like main generator 1 and primary fuel pump 10 mark panels of dials and flashing lights. But shock god Stephen King is the most powerful force in the gleaming chamber, which this Monday morning in March 1993 serves as the set for the ABC miniseries based on his doomsday novel, The Stand.

''Wanna hear a joke I made up?'' the megamillion-selling author asks.

Sure, Steve.

''What do you call canned fruit in Jell-O?''

He pauses and grins puckishly. ''Mormon soul food.'' He shambles off, chuckling and sipping his coffee.

Welcome to Salt Lake City, one of the blandest places on earth. ''The first day I was in Salt Lake City, I was wandering in a mall and found myself moving in time to 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head,' and I knew that I was in trouble,'' says Matt Frewer (Max Headroom), who plays a schizoid pyromaniac known as Trashcan Man. ''Everybody had this benign smile on their faces, but if you looked a little beyond that, you could see that my-brother's-my-cousin thing going on.''

Salt Lake City may seem too genial a setting for horrormonger King, but The Stand, airing May 8-12, is no mundane tale of terror. It's the eight-hour saga of a ''superflu'' virus that wipes out most of the world's population. The survivors split into two camps: the good folks, who congregate with 106-year-old Mother Abagail (Ruby Dee) in Boulder, Colo. (which Salt Lake City subs for), and the evil ones, who are drawn to devilish despot Randall Flagg (Jamey Sheridan) in Las Vegas.

The $28 million production includes 125 speaking roles-Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe, Gary Sinise, and Laura San Giacomo are featured-and hundreds more extras, and was shot in 225 locations over 100 days. ''There hasn't been a miniseries of this size and scope since War and Remembrance,'' says co- executive producer Richard Rubinstein. ''Lonesome Dove was eight hours, but it's a lot easier to have horses and cattle as extras.''

Committing so much money, talent, and network time to an undeniably grim story smacks of risky business, but King thinks The Stand has universal appeal. ''It's about the end of the world, and that's always a relief,'' he says. ''Everybody who watches it imagines they would survive. And then the world opens up for you-the watches, the jewels, the cars. Your boss, who's such a f -- -head, is dead.'' There must be an abundance of those bosses-the book, which many fans consider King's masterpiece, has sold about 10 million copies. As for the miniseries, King followers needn't worry: The soothing environment of Salt Lake City hasn't dulled his macabre imagination. ''We shot a scene in a church yesterday where we trucked in 50 extremely gruesome decomposed (dummy) corpses and set them in pews,'' he says. ''I'm here to testify that it works like a bandit. It's scary stuff.''

Not to mention stuff that scares network censors. ''There's a fairly gruesome scene in the Lincoln Tunnel where there are a lot of dead people in cars. When it was submitted to the standards and practices trolls at ABC, one said, 'We can't do this. We'd scare people,''' King says. ''And our attitude is, come on, you guys-that's what we're here to do!''

Though both the church scene and the tunnel scene made ABC's final cut, this disturbing material kept The Stand from coming to network TV for 16 years after its publication. Developed by Rubinstein as a feature for director George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead), King's mammoth novel-published at 600-plus pages in 1978 and reissued in 1990 with 500 more-proved impossible to condense into a two-hour movie. ''I don't know how they'd do it if they didn't have this kind of time,'' says Sinise (Of Mice and Men), who plays lead nice guy Stu Redman. ''It would be''-he searches for the proper words-''really cheesy.''

A TV miniseries seemed to be the answer-except for two problems. ''First the miniseries shrank to four hours, and four hours wasn't enough,'' says King, referring to the post-Sh-ogun, early-'80s era of downsizing. ''Number two, you couldn't have the end of the world brought to you by (sponsors like) Charmin toilet tissue.''

In time, the obstacles collapsed. CBS' smash 1989 Western Lonesome Dove brought back the long mini. And, as Rubinstein puts it, ''TV grew up. The kind of material you can handle changed. There's a lot more latitude now.''

Tragically, the plot also became more relevant. ''Even though it was written pre-AIDS, you can't deny the similarities,'' says Ringwald, who plays Fran Goldsmith, a pregnant woman immune to the flu plague. ''There are resonances in the way people react, how they're affected by it, and how they try to reconnect.''

Finally, King found a director he could trust with his magnum opus in Mick Garris, who filmed his screenplay Sleepwalkers in 1992. ''Our minds are in the same gutter, I guess,'' says Garris.

Though multiparters are usually split up among several directors, Garris tackled the entire project by himself. But he received plenty of guidance from King. Between writing the teleplay, executive- producing with Rubinstein, and taking a small acting role, King was more involved with The Stand than he had been with any adaptation of his work except for the 1986 movie Maximum Overdrive, which he directed. It's not just a matter of protecting his words. King is also exorcising his demons.

''The Stand is like a vampire that has never wanted to lie down and be dead. And if I can live through the (production), it will be done,'' he says. ''People may like it, people may not like it, but it's going to be done. I think a lot of the real fans of the book are going to like it a lot. And I don't make that statement lightly.''