A Long Long Winter

By Fearless Young Orphan The Shining (1997) Directed by Mick Garris

We all know that Stephen King didn’t like Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of his novel. Thus King was heavily involved in this 1997 teleplay, for which he wrote the screenplay. I write books too, and I wonder if I would be pissed off if someone took one of my books and made it into a controversial masterpiece at the expense of my personal “vision.” Granted I don’t have King’s pedigree, or sales, or much of anything else, but I think I’d be pretty happy about it. That’s just me. But sure, he has a right to remake the film the way he wanted it made. It’s his story; why not?

It’s just too bad that the story then had to be dragged across a television format which means two things: it had to be significantly cleaned up, and it had to be filled to the brim with time-wasting in order to make it a miniseries that would bring in viewers over the course of three nights. What we have as a result is a movie that is Stephen-King-approved but which is not scary, and far worse, is often exceedingly dull.

I rented the DVDs from Netflix so at least I didn’t have to deal with commercials, but it was four-and-a-half hours of miniseries (ate up my whole Sunday afternoon) when it easily could have been half that long without anything of significance removed. The padding is extensive and obvious. By god, if I were going to take a story and drag it out to twice its necessary length, I would at least try to put something of interest into the mix. A subplot. A conversation that gives insight. Stupid pet tricks, or videos of cats playing pianos. Anything that wasn’t boring.

What we get instead is this kind of nonsense: repeating scenes and pointless screwing around. A frightened Wendy searches the Overlook Hotel for Jack. She searches for ten minutes of real movie time, experiencing mild jump scares and sights that make her go, “hmm”; none of these things add to our understanding or appreciation of anything that happens, and ten minutes of real-time searching is like movie purgatory. Or how about this? Danny Torrance sets about entering the seriously haunted “Room 237” (which is 217 in this version) not once nor twice nor even three times but FOUR goddamn times and during one of these times has a conversation with a fire hose. And is chased by said fire hose. TWICE, a full-blown crazy Jack Torrance has Wendy at the mercy of his croquet mallet – all he has to do is swing and kill her, and he is called away to do something else both times. Like the impatient ghosts couldn’t even give him twenty seconds to bash her brains in? Jack and Wendy have the same conversations over and over (You’re an alcoholic! You’re a judgmental bitch!). Everybody hovers over Danny and says, “Are you all right, Danny, are you all right?” I think the Overlook Hotel might have descended into ghostly shenanigans for the mere sake of something to do rather than watch its godawful boring tenants.

I’ve gotten ahead of myself, rather assuming that everybody knows the story already. Maybe that is not so? The Torrance family is going to spend the winter caretaking the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Mountains; it is an unfortunate choice because their son is psychic, the place is haunted, and Dad is a man fighting the alcoholism demon. This time out we have Steven Weber as Jack Torrance, Rebecca De Mornay as Wendy Torrance, Melvin Van Peebles as Dick Halloran and Courtland Mead as Danny. The performances are not bad and the actors aren’t at fault. Van “Before we hire you, Mr. Torrance, I’d like to discuss our hotel’s policy on killing your fam—I mean health insurance. Oh, and all Peebles is rather benefits are off the table when you kill your family. If. If you kill charming in fact. These your family. Which would be wrong.” people, De Mornay in particular, look more like we’d expect the book’s characters to look. King’s teleplay emphasizes the struggling alcoholism of Jack Torrance and the way this addiction has all but wrecked his marriage and life. That’s compelling and is one notable improvement over the Kubrick film: the Torrances are a troubled but mending family and they love each other. Kubrick’s Jack Torrance looks like he’d happily kill both his wife and son before the family ever sets foot in the Overlook – all the hotel does is provide him an axe and a handy excuse. To see a good family go wrong should be deeply scary.

But it’s not, really. Not the way it’s served to us, which is with excruciating pokiness. I was watching that clock, kids. An hour into the miniseries, the Torrances were just then being left alone at the Overlook. An hour in. We got an hour of backstory and ominous portents (which were not ominous). Can we just –

Look I need to pause here and bitch about a couple things. There were all these little “scary” touches in place meant to fill us with dread, I guess. The Torrances, being given their endless tour of the hotel and they pass by Room 237 (217) and after everyone is gone, the door’s peephole lights up, accompanied by a mild stinger note. This implies that there’s a ghost in there! Since we already knew there was a ghost, this fails to be astonishing, and I stopped finding this kind of touch scary after I saw it in syndicated Twilight Zone episodes when I was nine. The movie is full of these things. The Overlook Hotel carries on its merry way having parties and flipping switches all hours of the day and night. We’re not surprised. We’re barely interested. We are wondering how the Torrances seem to be missing these things. I know it’s a big hotel but do they really not hear the jukebox playing in the middle of the night in the otherwise silent mountains? Maybe not.

The other thing is Courtland Mead. He was a fairly good child actor; this is not his fault. But he’s got this bee-stung lip look, he can never fully close his mouth, and he speaks like he’s got a raging head cold. I wanted to strap him to an IV drip of antibiotics and put some ice on that lip to take the swelling down. I think he was supposed to be cute. He’s the focus of the movie and I couldn’t stand to look at him or listen to him. It really was not much better with Kubrick’s choice for Danny, to be fair. That Danny on a good day looked like he’d been breathing a little too much pot smoke, on a bad day seemed catatonic, had mush-mouth, and wasn’t a great actor either, but at least that Danny shared the movie’s aura of supreme creepiness.

Okay, enough of picking on the kids. Let’s go back to picking on the movie because it was not scary and was twice as long as necessary, and because it made the Overlook feel like a small, claustrophobic ski lodge rather than a historic hotel. I was spoiled by Kubrick’s work, I realize that; it’s just not scary when it’s extended beyond human endurance, repetitive and then slashed apart with obvious commercial breaks. The dialog is corny. The ghosts are wildly incompetent. The family drama is maudlin. “Kissin’, kissin’, that’s what I’ve been missin’!” Well, that kind of thing is just embarrassing, and Steven Weber should get some kind of endurance award for saying it. I can’t quite see Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance saying that line without it sounding like a threat.

On a positive note, however, this might be quite interesting to people who loved the book and disliked Kubrick’s version – you can hardly argue that King gets it “wrong” after all. Or maybe you can; I don’t really know how much of a griper you might be. There were some moments a bit more unnerving than one might expect. For example the topiary creatures were actually quite effective until they were CGI’d into actual movement. Guys, guys – not showing is almost always scarier than showing. The performances aren’t bad except when the script makes demands it shouldn’t. Poor Steven Weber is often forced to have stupid conversations with thin air or to turn “evil” on a dime. Or what about Jack and Wendy Torrance – troubled enough without any help – allowing Danny to keep a wasp nest in his room? Oh, it’s okay, Jack says. It’s a perfectly safe wasp nest. He bug- bombed it only that morning and, I don’t know, x-rayed it or something to make sure all the wasps were dead, and then gave it to his son as a gift. Great! Put it right next to your bed! What a shock when the poor little shit gets stung. Oh wait, no it isn’t. You’re idiot parents operating under an idiot script. I don’t even know what the wasp nest had to do with the haunted hotel. That was just a stupid mistake. The hotel is another matter. It wants Danny’s psychic energy. If I were Danny, saddled with those parents, I’d probably stick with the hotel.

I wanted to like this King-approved version; I have room in my heart for both Kubrick’s interpretation and the author’s preference. I liked some things about the miniseries, but was too exasperated with its length and mental retardation to really enjoy it. I’m sorry. Besides, book or no book, an axe is always scarier than a croquet mallet.