Stephen King. The man responsible for such dramatically moving films as The Shawshank Redemption, such schlocky films as Thinner, and such truly bone-chilling masterpieces as Carrie, Misery, and countless others. King’s novels and short stories – both old and new – are constantly being optioned at Hollywood conference tables, and he has even gone so far as to create what he calls the “Dollar Baby”: an arrangement in which he allows students and fledgling filmmakers to create movies based on his work for the cool sum of $1. While the only real notable name to be born from this practice is that of Frank Darabont, who directed and provided the screenplay for Shawshank, it’s a cool thing, and a good way to give back to a form of media in which he has seen undeniably prolific success, both on the big screen and the small (I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Castle Rock, which I reviewed the first season of here, and which just got a great-looking Season 2 trailer). As an ardent King fan (thanks to an amazing girlfriend, I own hard copies of every one of King’s novels, though I certainly haven’t yet read all of them), I want to take this week’s post to discuss my experience with King’s work both on the page and screen and maybe try to determine in the process what makes his shit smell sweeter than most, to quote one of my favorite characters of his.
Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’. That’s goddamn right.
All told, I’ve seen 11 movies adapted from King’s work: The Shawshank Redemption, IT (2017), The Shining, Carrie (1976), The Mist, 1408, Pet Sematary (2019), The Dead Zone, Misery, Secret Window, and Thinner. This may sound like a fair few, but given that a quick Google tells me that his work is responsible for at least 81 movies, I’m barely scratching the surface, and better yet I haven’t seen some of his more recent contributions, IT Chapter Two and The Dark Tower (which was reportedly pretty rough for being the kickoff of one of his most beloved series) among them. In the interest of superlatives, the best on that list is probably The Shawshank Redemption, and Thinner is undoubtedly the worst. Scariest award goes to IT (followed closely by Misery: the Kathy Bates spook factor is insane), while Johnny Depp‘s Secret Window probably owns the title of least memorable. As for my favorite story among them, it has to be The Dead Zone, and while the movie wasn’t exactly my favorite (Christopher Walken as the lead is quite a choice, though I do love Martin Sheen as the antagonist), that may have been because it’s definitely my favorite of King’s novels that I’ve read so far (a quick count shows that I’ve read 12, though I’m in the middle of the monstrous IT to make it an ominous thirteen) and so I feel quite the connection to the source material.
Martin Sheen’s political tyrant in The Dead Zone – a far cry from the soothing tones of Jed Bartlett.
I feel like I need to devote a solid paragraph to The Shining, simply because it’s one of King’s best-known works, best-known films, and is complex enough to probably be deserving of its own standalone post. To me, Stanley Kubrick‘s 1981 film, which in most circles is lauded as something of a cerebral masterpiece, is wildly overrated, and serves as a cautionary tale about placing style over substance more than anything else. Visually it’s fantastic in a lot of ways, and Jack Nicholson is no doubt fabulous as the deeply troubled Jack Torrance, but Stanley Kubrick’s seeming insistence on changing major plotlines, completely omitting critical setpieces and subplots, and overall just failing to scratch the surface of the Overlook’s menace and the devilish cocktail it brews with Torrance’s alcoholic psychosis is nothing short of maddening, especially considering that the novel itself – while admittedly involving quite a lot of internal conflict, which is at times hard to put on-screen – doesn’t seem so hard to adapt, especially for someone of the acclaimed director’s talent. Instead, what we get is a product that’s at times scary, sure, but could in actuality be a lot scarier, especially psychologically, taking its main female character and dumbing her down beyond recognition and reportedly also driving her bananas during production. Perhaps Kubrick’s eschewing of King’s thematic intentions with the novel is why King himself has reportedly always disliked the film, and I don’t think that’s about an artist refusing to see beyond himself.
Hello, Danny!
One thing The Shining does get largely right, though, is its portrayal of a fatally flawed character, and to me, this is the key to King’s greatness as a storyteller. Anyone who has read more than a few King novels or novellas will tell you that in most of his stories, the scares – while certainly potent in their own right – are secondary to what they bring out in the characters experiencing them. King’s heroes lie well beyond imperfect, his villains often have surprisingly soft centers, and his monsters are human, and the unifying factor binding them all together is that readers (or viewers) can relate to them at at least one point in the story – and when we can relate to the people being creeped out, we’re more likely to get creeped out ourselves. Maybe it’s not that simple, and maybe King isn’t even as good at creating everyday-human-seeming characters inhabiting strange worlds as he could be, but I’m not sure how many times I’ve read the work of an author who does it better. Indeed, this is probably what makes IT so long; I’m already almost a hundred pages in and all we’ve really spent time on is how many pill bottles Eddie Kaspbrak has in his medicine cabinet. His verbosity – no doubt present in such imposing tomes as 11/22/63 and The Stand, in spite of the fact that one his main mantras in On Writing was to not use too many words when a few will do – may turn people off, sure, but I’m of the mind that it’s all serving a purpose. After all, how hard can we really root for a guy like Andy Dufresne – one of my favorite movie protagonists of all time – without feeling like we know him first, or even feeling like we’ve known him for years?
My ankle bones hurt when I look at this picture.
Stephen King isn’t a god, and he has a number of missteps in all facets of his career that prove that, but as an aspiring storyteller, he serves as a role model for me (though maybe without all that drug use in the 80s that gave us Cujo and The Tommyknockers). How he manages to consistently shine a light into such deep and dark depths of the world, humanity, and the recesses of his own mind is beyond me, but it seems to hit the page in a way that more often than not lends itself equally well to the film reel. With Doctor Sleep due out a month from now, and with IT Chapter Two still active in theaters, it appears that his reign of terror is far from over.
You’ll float too.
Author’s Footnote: One of my motivations for writing this post, besides the obvious fact that we’re now entering the height of spooky movie season, was the King-related contest that USDish is sponsoring, in which you can be paid $1,300 to watch 13 King movies and report on your experience. I’m looking to hone the statement for my entry, and if this sounds like your cup of tea, I’d encourage all reading this to do the same, though I’ll admit I hardly relish the added competition.
Tuesdays with Cory 