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Home , Danny Lloyd, The Shining (novel)

Illustrated with a fabulous array of familiar and unusual iconography, this is a complete account of the films and television series adapted from the work of — the literary Steven Spielberg. Including fresh A Complete History of the Film and Television Adaptations critical analysis, interviews, making of stories and biographical elements, from the Master of Horror is a King completist’s dream and a set text for any movie fan.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY PUBLICATION Autumn 2020 Ian Nathan, who lives and works in London, is one of ILLUSTRATIONS 200 full-colour the UK’s best-known writers on fi lm. He is the best-selling PRICE £25 author of nine books, including Alien Vault, the best-selling EXTENT 240pp history of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, biographies on FORMAT 275 x 215mm Tim Burton, The Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino, and BINDING Hardback Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of TERRITORIES UK Commonwealth Middle-earth. He is the former editor and executive editor of Empire, still the world’s biggest movie magazine, where he remains a contributing editor. He was also creative For further information, please contact: director of the Empire Awards for fi fteen years, as well as Palazzo Editions Limited producing television documentaries, events, and launching 15 Church Road Empire Online. He also regularly contributes to The Times, London SW13 9HE The Independent, The Mail on Sunday, Cahiers Du Cinema, Tel +44 (0)208 878 8747 Talk Radio and the Discovering Film documentary series Email [email protected] on Sky Arts. www.palazzoeditions.com

STEPHENKING_BLAD_COVER.indd 1 19/03/2018 18:04 What do you consider is the best fi lm adaptation of your work? ‘Probably Stand by Me. I thought it was true to the book, and because it had the emotional gradient of the story. It was moving. I think I scared the shit out of Rob Reiner. He showed it to me in the screening room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. You have to remember that the movie was made on a shoestring. It was supposed to be one of those things that opened in six theatres and then maybe disappeared. And instead it went viral. When the movie was over, I hugged him because I was moved to tears, because it was so autobiographical. But Stand by Me, Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile are all really great ones. is a great fi lm. Delores Claiborne is a really, really good fi lm. is terrifi c.’ Stephen King, 2014

Long ago (well, 2003) in a Los Angeles hotel regularly than King. There are sixty-fi ve existing room, I sat before the esteemed screenwriter and movies, thirty television shows, and seven Hollywood sage William Goldman. He was there individual episodes (of multi-author anthology to offer pearls on his forthcoming adaptation of shows like The Twilight Zone) based on his work. Stephen King’s – a typically unusual This is partly a matter of the sheer volume and approach to the alien invasion saga that fritters popularity of his output over the years, but it goes away its primal beginnings, pedigree fi lmmakers deeper than that. and fi ne cast (as well as Goldman, it was directed There is an industry that surrounds King, one by Lawrence Kasdan, and featured Damien Lewis, that embodies the very nature of Hollywood, Morgan Freeman and Thomas Jane), departing the strange allure of the horror genre, and the from the book and throwing its lot in with some accessibility of his folkloric depiction of mundane, studio-mandated spectacle. If this was America. The concept of the King adaptation a miss, Goldman had, of course, adapted Misery lies at the core of what we understand as and Stand by Me. He was, and remains, one of the screen entertainment. most respected voices on the subject of King, and And yet there has never been a book that has ABOVE caption text goes here spoke with the soft, smoky, amused tones of the even attempted to encompass the world of the ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as fi nely tuned mind making the best of selling an King adaptation. est, qui dis alicit veles ent omnimaxim evident car crash as was contractually obliged. To cut to the chase, I plan to watch and re- voluptatem eniminv endipsapicid What stays with me was the stone-clad watch every single professional adaptation of conviction with which he informed me that, his work with the intention of accumulating a ‘Stephen King is as important to American complete history of King adaptations: the good, folklore as Mark Twain.’ the bad, the ugly and the demented. From the No single author has been adapted more glow of classics like , Misery, Stand by Me,

2 STEPHEN KING AT THE MOVIES

STEPHENKING_PRESENTATION_01.indd 2 19/03/2018 18:05 ‘Stephen King is as important to American folklore as Mark Twain.’ William Goldman

The Shining and to the greater stock. The fi rst chapter of It (itself the regrettable attempts at Cat’s Eye or The Running second adaptation of King’s small-town epic Man. Along the way unearthing hidden gems like after the 1990 miniseries) made a gargantuan or Gerald’s Game. Then doing $700 million worldwide (off a paltry budget of the same with the output of television miniseries $35 million), putting into motion a sequel that such as Salem’s Lot (both 1979 and 2004 will be with us towards the end of 2019. The versions) or or , and young director of Gerald’s Game, Mike Flanagan, compilation series like Nightmares has been commissioned to make , and Dreamscapes. King’s recently published sequel to . This is not a book about King and his writing, Whether it will follow in Kubrick’s footsteps or not directly. It is a book about what King has stick to the author’s chosen path is yet to be seen. given fi lmmakers (and by that I include television This year also sees the arrival of the J.J. Abrams- makers) willingly or otherwise. As is often the produced series Castle Rock, a love song to King, case — and Dreamcatcher paid witness — surrounding a melting pot of his favourite small- adapting King can be fraught with peril. The town Maine setting, characters and bloody motifs. Dark Tower promised sequels and television There is an unprecedented thirty-eight offshoots, a whole fantasy universe based around potential adaptions in the works. Not all will his epic crossover saga, but fi zzled out, both make it to the screen, but many will. overcomplicated and undercooked. It takes great skill to capture the essence of King’s stories. As Kubrick proved this is not always a matter of blindly keeping faith with the text. Never has the horror maestro’s brand held

INTRODUCTION 3

STEPHENKING_PRESENTATION_01.indd 3 19/03/2018 18:05 The King Pitch , a struggling writer, takes a job overwintering at the isolated Overlook Hotel, along with his wife and son. Slowly he begins to succumb to a psychosis that might also be resident at the hotel.

DIRECTOR: ‘Obviously people absolutely love it, and they don’t understand why I don’t. The book is SCREENWRITERS: , hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fi re, and the movie in ice. In the book, there’s Stanley Kubrick an actual arc where you see this guy, Jack Torrance, trying to be good, and little by little he STARRING: , Shelly moves over to this place where he’s crazy. And as far as I was concerned, when I saw the Duvall, , Scatman movie, Jack was crazy from the fi rst scene.’ Crothers FORMAT: Feature film Stephen King’s public hostility toward Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his third novel LENGTH: Release cut 144 mins.; has shown few signs of thawing with age. So what if it is now been consecrated as a American cut 146 mins masterpiece? He still can’t countenance Kubrick ‘hedging’ his bets with the supernatural, BASED ON: The Shining (novel, 1977) particularly the removal of the living topiary (Kubrick despaired the animal shapes would resemble animated Brillo) and the boiler erupting at the end, consuming the hotel in fl ames. I confess The Shining is the King adaptation I know better than any other. Or at least the one I have watched more than any other. I have studied it, pondered it, written about it at length, and listened to the abundant theories of Shining obsessives (of which there is an worrying industry), but with every revisit I seem to know it less. It may not the best King adaptation in a straight book-to-fi lm comparison; but it is the most extraordinary transmutation of the bones of any of his novels into, I’ll say it, a work of art. With disputes long past and Kubrick gone too, I struggle to see why King still won’t cut the movie any slack. Such is the metaphorical toothache he suffers over the fi lm’s adulation, he set about producing a remake, or rather a second, far more adaptation at miniseries length (whose frail qualities are discussed elsewhere). King is a very smart man. And arguably more attuned to the horror genre than any person alive. Surely, he can’t be immune to the sheer after-effect of the Kubrickian method? It is a fi lm that is impossible to shake. Could it be that what we have here is the gulf between storytelling opposites, where King is hot and Kubrick cold? To put things simply, I have sided with Stanley. As much as he deviates from the text (or maybe because he does) he has conjured up a monumental study in madness. Then

4 STEPHEN KING AT THE MOVIES

STEPHENKING_PRESENTATION_01.indd 4 19/03/2018 18:05 ‘Obviously people absolutely love it, and they don’t understand why I don’t. The book is hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fire, and the movie in ice.‘ Stephen King

guided by unknowable forces if you are of that persuasion). He and his wife booked into on the eve of the mountain retreat shutting up shop for the season. They were the only guests in the yawning hotel. A single table had been set for dinner, with all the others stacked away, chairs resting on tables in the shadows. After his wife went to bed, King roamed the empty corridors (that gift to Kubrick’s silken tracking shots), eventually to discover a bar. He was still a drinker back then, and the barman went by the name of Grady. By the time he went to bed, he recalled, ‘I had the whole book in my mind.’ Danny’s powers — his ‘Shining’ — had migrated from a stalled novel named Darkshine about a psychic boy visiting a psychic amusement park. Kubrick had also been in the market for a change OPPOSITE caption text goes here Kubrick hardly considered The Shining a horror of pace. Okay, if not pace exactly — the glacial ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as movie at all, ‘just the story of one man’s family quietly poise of his fi lms was by now a matter of course est, qui dis alicit veles ent omnimaxim going insane together. — then certainly genre. He was depressed that for As with 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), he all its grandeur his recent (achingly slow) period ABOVE caption text goes here was using the dressing of genre to interpret the piece Barry Lyndon had made few ripples at the box ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as vicissitudes of reality, and The Shining strikes an offi ce. King tells the story that Kubrick had instructed est, qui dis alicit veles ent omnimaxim elusive, ever-ponderable equipoise between a study his staff to bring him a stack of novels that might in psychopathic delusion (anything weird is invented translate into a commercial fi lm. BELOW caption text goes here by Jack’s twisted mind) and an evidently fantastical Sitting outside his offi ce, Kubrick’s secretary was ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as tale (the hotel takes possession of a wannabe startled by a regular thump as the director, having est, qui dis alicit veles ent omnimaxim writer, despite the warnings of his son’s paranormal read the fi rst few pages, fl ung the dire paperback prescience). toward the growing reject pile. She had almost When he came to write his third novel, King was become used to this exasperated backbeat, when looking for a change of pace. He wanted to get away there came an abrupt silence. This stirred her to from the Maine setting of Carrie and Salem’s Lot. This check in on the director. She found him, in King’s meant quite literally getting out of Maine. He picked word, ‘engrossed’ in The Shining. Boulder, entirely at random (or perhaps It is a great story slightly contradicted by the fact

THE SHINING (1981) 5

STEPHENKING_PRESENTATION_01.indd 5 19/03/2018 18:11 that then Warner Brothers CEO John Calley had sent over the galleys of King’s third novel before it was even published. Back in 1966, Kubrick had made it known to friends he would, ‘like to make the world’s scariest movie, involving a series of episodes that would play upon the nightmare fears of the audience.’ As was the case with 2001: A Space Odyssey and science fi ction, he was drawn to interrogate horror because of the accumulated mass of plot ideas and visual clichés. Much the same could be said of King. Kubrick had been offered The Exorcist and its inclement sequel in a futile attempt by Warner to bring a pre-packaged project to their great artist. But it was The Shining that had piqued that tectonic intellect. That setting: a remote hotel in the Rockies, with its labyrinth of corridors. The intensity of the idea: a family cut off from the world, quietly going insane. ‘One of Stanley’s conditions was total freedom to change the story,’ recalled Christiane Kubrick, the late director’s wife. ‘It was in the contract, Stephen King agreed to it and that was the end of it.’ However, King’s deal with Warner stipulated that he got to write the fi rst draft screenplay, even for Kubrick. That the director rejected the author’s script, and any subsequent collaboration, hints at an ulterior source of the writer’s bitterness. Rather than King’s postmodern spooks, Kubrick was pursuing a classical view of horror, drawing upon Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Edgar Allen Poe — that great literary marriage of mental breakdown and whispers of ephemeral evil. ‘ stories are only really frightening if the tellers are convinced they saw it, but have no proof,’ noted Christiane. Explanations were never Kubrick’s bag. He aspired to elevate fi lm to the level of abstraction — as if it ABOVE caption text goes here were music (a fugue in this case). There are those ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as who have dared read an element of autobiography est, qui dis alicit veles ent omnimaxim in this story of a tortured artist isolating himself, and his family, in a remote mansion. Then again, you could BELOW caption text goes here easily level that at King who was in the full bloom of ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as his alcoholism as he wrote the book. est, qui dis alicit veles ent omnimaxim That it was King’s most autobiographical novel to date might signal another reason the author found it so hard to relinquish ownership. He was giving something of himself away, with the writer-sinking- into-madness Torrance serving as an avatar of King’s own paranoia. While he’s averse to the critical habit of sifting about in the author’s psyche in search of the keys to the novel, there is no missing the fact that the disappearance of King’s father Don when the writer was barely a toddler maps itself across his

6 STEPHEN KING AT THE MOVIES

STEPHENKING_PRESENTATION_01.indd 6 19/03/2018 18:11 ‘In Jack Nicholson, Stanley found somebody who can, almost on a knife-edge, be charming and terrifying,’ Jan Harlen

ABOVE LEFT caption text goes here fi ction in the succession of bad dads and lonely sons. Lovejoy was amazed how Kubrick chose the most ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as Yet, the Overlook is otherworldly. This cursed extreme of Nicholson’s many takes. place is inveigling itself upon an already cracked In Nicholson the effect reached a towering ABOVE RIGHT caption text goes here mind. ‘You’ve always been the caretaker,’ declares fruition. He is named Torrance, and his performance ommollore que ne lab inctae labor the spectre of axe-murderer Delbert Grady. Shelley is almost a pun — a torrent of verbal and physical Duvall’s Wendy, staggering through the corridors, effect, part rabid animal, part circus clown (is BELOW caption text goes here her own mind fraying, experiences her own visions he actually possessed?): grinning, snarling, and ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as (sneering guests, a torrent of blood pouring out of commandeering the screen with every sandpapered est, qui dis alicit veles ent omnimaxim the elevator). Danny (Danny Lloyd)’s ‘shining’ is ever utterance. There were real external factors at present, his eyes bright marbles of inner sight (the work. Nicholson drew upon psychopath Charles hewn bodies of the Grady twins, that same ocean Manson — the slaughter of Sharon Tate still fresh of blood). in Hollywood . The actor was in a strange There is something in the sparseness of the place, shaken over family revelations (he had recently fi lm that, in every sense, is haunting — Kubrick’s learned his mother was in fact his grandmother), and restraint forces us to project our own terrors into arrived touting a reputation as a party animal and an this looming space. It is such a creepy experience artist who invited his roles to stay. because its evils remain visions and ghosts: those ‘Nicholson was very much crazier than Kubrick twin girls, the rotting witch in , that envisioned,’ declared screenwriter Diane Johnson. uncanny barkeep Grady (the longer American cut What Nicholson granted the fi lm is a streak of black features a more conventional vision of cobwebbed comedy. The Shining is wickedly funny, and scary: in skeletons in the lobby). With Danny and his extra every sense hysterical. The fi lm (and King’s book) sensory talents as our cypher, we witness how the is a joke about nutcase artists, even as Kubrick was Overlook takes command of Jack. driving all his actors to insanity. He directed the The Shining’s many fears coalesce in its leading scenes in the Overlook’s frozen maze, a metaphor of man. ‘In Jack Nicholson, Stanley found somebody Torrance’s psychosis that had replaced those Brillo who can, almost on a knife-edge, be charming bushes, by loudspeaker. Between the impenetrable and terrifying,’ said executive producer Jan Harlan. fog and ten-foot hedges, you couldn’t tell where this ‘Nicholson had something, a quality to him as an booming, disembodied voice was coming from. It actor that was fearsome.’ Even then, editor Ray might as well have been inside your head.

THE SHINING (1981) 7

STEPHENKING_PRESENTATION_01.indd 7 19/03/2018 18:11 The King Pitch When Gerald keels over in the middle of a sex game, his wife Jessie is left trapped, handcuffed to the bed, miles from help, with only her demons for company.

Gerald’s Game DIRECTOR: Mike Flanagan Salem-born director Mike Flanagan’s canny take on the tricky proposition of SCREENWRITERS: Jeff Howard, was made directly for Netfl ix. By the late 2010s, the streaming giant offered a King-friendly Mike Flanagan venue for some of the author’s lesser-known bedevilments. The kind of stuff studios couldn’t STARRING: Carla Gugino, Bruce get their heads around. Not that there was any of the fl at television movie about it. Wonky Greenwood, Henry Thomas ending aside (and that was half the book’s fault), this is an energized, sophisticated take on FORMAT: Television film LENGTH: 103 mins King’s genius for the perfect set up. How is it only he thinks up BASED ON: Gerald’s Game this stuff? (novel, 1995) Jessie, her misgivings etched into Carla Gugino’s face, and her older husband Gerald, Bruce Greenwood’s relish bordering on victimisation, have come to their remote lake house in Maine (naturally) to spice up a faltering marriage. They are there to play out Gerald’s rape fantasy, and Jessie is going along with it — just. Tension is already tightening in the air between them. Cue: the twist. When Gerald drops dead, Jessie is left handcuffed to the headboard, beyond of help and prey to predators of a different stripe to her husband. The plot boils down essentially to one woman trapped on a bed in a negligee. With the addition of some fading phone battery, it couldn’t have felt more modern. Externally, there is a wild dog to deal with: another maddened mutt to add to King’s recurrent need to drive a wedge between man and his best friend (in an in-joke littered script Gerald even references Cujo). To be fair, he only chows down on an already deceased Gerald. The homonymous title reduces the poor man to just that — game. And there is the small problem of how she is going to free herself. Jessie’s eked-out exit strategy is an object lesson in concentrated gore. Utilising a shard of broken glass, Gugino’s term was ‘de-gloving’. When the fi lm premiered at Fantasy Fest in Austin, a grown man passed out in the cinema. Flanagan liked to think of it as the best review he’d ever got. Yet the director’s inspiration was to pluck Jessie’s torment out from her head and put it in the room. Where in the book she holds conversations with a fl eet of old acquaintances, in the fi lm she hallucinates a three-way discussion with a liberated version of herself and a magically revived Gerald — despite the corpse at the bottom of the bed. You could say this is a story.

8 STEPHEN KING AT THE MOVIES

STEPHENKING_PRESENTATION_01.indd 8 19/03/2018 18:22 ‘You’ve still got a lot of issues that have to do with how society treats women. I mean, you can’t get anymore on-the-nose than a woman in handcuffs, can you?’ Stephen King

OPPOSITE caption text goes here ‘That was kind of the thing that turned it all around trapped in a dubious marriage. ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as for me,’ said Flanagan; he needed to turn thoughts Carried by two remarkable performances, Gerald’s into dialogue. He had an image of Gerald getting Game is a fi erce examination of the male-female ABOVE LEFT caption text goes here back up off the fl oor, ‘that really blew it wide open.’ sexual dynamic. Is Gerald another subtle animal like ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as The heart of the fi lm was this conversation Jessie was her father? Perhaps the scariest thing about the fi lm is having with herself. A device ingeniously embodied that we never fi nd out what was going on in Gerald’s ABOVE RIGHT caption text goes here by this doubling-up of Gugino and Greenwood’s head. ommollore que ne lab inctae labor performances (they ostensibly play two versions King was impressed. of their characters). The camera also becomes an ‘The themes of the book — repressed memories, BELOW caption text goes here extension of her state of mind, pushing in as she and the way women are treated and abused — ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as retreats inside, going wide when she confronts the they’re important today, and you’ve still got a lot of est, qui dis alicit veles ent omnimaxim prison cell of her bedroom. issues that have to do with how society treats women. For all the dehydration-born delusions that swirl I mean, you can’t get anymore on-the-nose than a and montage through Jessie’s head, this is King in woman in handcuffs, can you?’ non-supernatural mode. The fi lm is located in the There is a downside. Flanagan keeps faith with the psychological torments of Misery (bedbound victims) book’s problematic ending. Once Jessie fi gures a way and Secret Room (imaginary visitors). But its closest tie out of her predicament, the fi lm defl ates. King’s answer is with Dolores Claiborne. A King nut, Flanagan thought was an extended epilogue where we learn that one of his fi lm as directly connected to the Kathy Bates of her weirdest delusions, a visitation by death in the shocker of 1995. The eclipse that casts a nuclear guise of a hideous deformed man cast in moonlight, orange glow across Jessie’s childhood recollections is turns out to be a real serial killer who had dropped by the very same eclipse beneath which Dolores murders and thought her a delusion. her husband (both stories feature child abuse). ‘I thought that we needed to have her confronting Before Jessie can physically escape, she must a physical embodiment of all the male perversion exorcise the buried memories of sexual abuse meted that she has dealt with in various forms from various out by another trusted man — her father. Here is people throughout her life,’ said Flanagan, well aware it King’s storytelling guile transferring smoothly onto was polarising. screen. Jessie is trapped metaphorically as well as Rare indeed in a King adaptation, the fi lm suffered literally: trapped in the past and, up until recently, from too much explanation.

GERALD’S GAME 9

STEPHENKING_PRESENTATION_01.indd 9 19/03/2018 18:22