Hollywood's Stephen
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· HOLLYWOOD'S STEPHEN TONY MAGISTRALE HOLLYWOOD'S STEPHEN KING Copyright © Tony Magistrale, 2003. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission * except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLANTM 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-312-29321-5 ISBN 978-1-4039-8051-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781403980519 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Letra Libre, Inc. First edition: November 2003 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to Digital Printing 2013 Dedicated with great affection to the students at the University of Vermont who have helped to shape my own appreciation ofthe films addressed in this book. CONTENTS List ofIllustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Preface xi 1. Steve's Take: An Interview with Stephen King 1 2. The Lost Children: Carrie, Firestarter, Stand by Me, Silver Bullet, Hearts in Atlantis 21 3. Maternal Archetypes: Cujo, Misery, Dolores Claiborne 51 4. Paternal Archetypes: The Shining, Pet Sematary, Apt Pupil 85 5. Defining Heroic Codes of Survival: The Dead Zone, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile 117 6. Technologies of Fright: Christine, Maximum Overdrive, The Running Man, The Mangler, The Night Flier 147 7. King of the Miniseries: 'Salem's Lot, IT, The Stand, The Shining, Storm ofthe Century, Rose Red 173 Films Cited 219 Works Cited 225 Index 230 About the Author 235 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Christine. The (Plymouth) Fury from hell . xx 2. Dolores Claiborne. Dolores (Kathy Bates) gazes down into the abandoned well where she has just helped to murder her husband. The eclipse, occurring directly behind her, mirrors the circular imagery of the well's opening. 1 3. Carrie. Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is isolated and backed into the corner of a volleyball court in the film's opening scene. Note the "boxed" shadow of a basketball backboard looming directly behind Carrie. 21 4. Cujo. Donna Trenton (Dee Wallace), brandishing a baseball bat, does battle against the rabid dog. 52 5. Misery. Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) has just read that Misery is dead. The camera views her shadowed form framed in the bedroom doorway from an upward angle, helping to increase her threatening pose. 52 6. Kubrick's The Shining. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a white towel from Delbert Grady (Phillip Stone) in the red bathroom scene. 85 7. Pet Sematary. The haunted burial ground. Note the concentric pattern of circles and burial mounds that spiral outward. 116 8. The Green Mile. John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) wears the St. Christopher medal given to him by the warden's wife, Melinda Moores (Patricia Clarkson). 117 9. The Mangler. A shot of a workman lubricating the internal workings of the demonic speed iron machine. 147 10. Stephen King's The Shining. Wendy Torrance (Rebecca De Mornay) attempts to summon the amorous attention of her distracted husband in the made-for-television ABC miniseries. 173 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would never have reached your hands without the invaluable assistance of many people and institutions. Dawn Pelkey, Mary Findley, Eric Rickstad, Liz Paley, Sid Poger, Brian Kent, Bobby Haas, Corey Malanga, Mary Pharr, Allison Kelly, Keith Silva, Michael Stanton, and especially Hilary Neroni each read multiple drafts of successive chapters and supplied me with counsel that was both illuminating and encourag ing. My editors at Palgrave, Kristi Long, Roee Raz, Debra Manette, Donna Cherry, and Erin Chan, were simultaneously nurturing and tough-minded with my writing-an important combination for any edi tor to possess. Early conceptual thinking about the horrors inherent in bathrooms in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining found its initial audience at Cecil Community College in Maryland, where I viewed the film for the first time on a theatrical-size screen and then presented a lecture to the college community; my thanks to Paul Haspel and Polly Binns for ar ranging this opportunity to explore such private places in public. The first half of chapter 5 is an expanded version of "Cronenberg's 'Only Re ally Human Movie': The Dead Zone," an article first published in a spe cial edition dedicated to the films of director David Cronenberg in the journal Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities 15 (1996): 40-45. The Arts and Sciences dean's office of the University of Vermont pro vided me the opportunity to present "The Many Redemptions of The Shawshank Redemption," a lecture based on another section of chapter 5, when I accepted the Dean's Lecture award for 2003.Associate Dean S. Abu Thrab Rizvi also supplied me with funds to travel to Bangor, Maine, to interview Stephen King. My appreciation to Steve King for taking time from his recuperation and busy schedule to indulge my request for this insightful interview, published for the first time in chapter 1. My re spect for Stephen King as an artist and human being has been steadily enriched over the years because of similar examples of his immense gen erosity. Dear friends and family members-Larry Bennett, Ken Wagner, Annalee Curtis, Lynn Bessette, Kay and Norman Tederous, and Jennifer, Daniel, and Christopher Magistrale-reminded me consistently that there is life beyond the computer screen , and these inimitable excur sions, in turn, allowed me to return reinvigorated to the task of writing this book. One of the great joys of attaining tenure in academe is the freedom to teach courses that reflect a scholar's area of interest and ca pacity for imaginative design. In twenty years of teaching untraditional courses offered through the English department such as "The Films of Stephen King," "Poe's Children," "The Horror Film," and "The Literary Vampire," undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Vermont provided critical insights that have indelibly shaped, confirmed, challenged, and altered my understanding of Stephen King's films. My only regret is that I cannot thank all these students personally-there are just too many-but their sensitive and intelligent voices from class room discussions and writing assignments most definitely resonate throughout these pages. x I HOLLYWOOD'S STEPHEN KING PREFACE Several years ago, when I first began seriously thinking about authoring a book on the films made from Stephen King's fiction, I mentioned my intentions to a colleague in the English department. His initial response was an unenthusiastic "Why would you want to write about Stephen King's films? Especially when there have been so many unremarkable movies made from his fiction." Any volume entitled Hollywood's Stephen King must at least acknowledge the partial truth inherent in this negative opinion . After all, Children of the Corn in all its unnecessary permutations is a persuasive case in point. However, what is truly re markable about the extensive body of celluloid work interpreted from King's novels, novellas, short stories, and teleplays-at this writing, an oeuvre that contains over seventy titles and is still growing-is just how many of these productions have turned out to be excellent films.For the sake of my skeptical colleague, even if we adopt a cruelly conservative estimate that only 25 percent of these movies are worthy of the special ized attention that a book such as this one seeks to provide, how many novelists, screenwriters, directors, or production companies would not be ecstatic with seventeen films that have proven to be both financially and artistically successful? There is little doubt about Stephen King's marketability in Holly wood. When his name is connected with a film-either a theatrical release or a television miniseries-the production is virtually guaranteed to make money. New Line Cinema sought to capitalize on this nexus while adver tising The Lawnmower Man (1992),a film that contained so little of King's original short story from which it was adapted that the author filed a law suit demanding that his name be removed from the credits. Bob Shayne, New Line Cinema's CEO, defended his company's position by insisting "that's what we paid for. King's name was the most important thing we were buying [in purchasing the rights to the short story]" (Jones 75). In spite of the obvious marketability associated with King's name, and ironically,sometimes because of it, the vast majority of films adapted from his fiction have failed to gamer much formal critical attention over the years. In 1986 Michael R. Collings published The Films of Stephen King, the only book-length scholarly analysis ever published on King's movies. Collings's work, now out of print, is, of course, restricted to films released prior to 1986.Four other magazine-books, oversized and lavishly illustrated with movie stills, have been published since the Collings vol ume appeared: Jessie Horsting 's Stephen King at the Movies (1986), Jeff Conner's Stephen King Goes to Hollywood (1987),Ann Lloyd's The Films ofStephen King (1993), and Stephen Jones's Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide (2002). Each of these texts is primarily con cerned with satisfying the average fan's curiosity about the making of King's movies---cataloging technical data, plot line evolution, credits, budgets, on-location gossip, King's own evaluation of the finished prod uct-essentially, the data behind the production history of each film.While certainly valuable and interesting on their own terms, none of these recent publications offers much by way of serious film interpretation.