Write or Die By Christina Harlin, your Fearless Young Orphan Misery (1990) Directed by Rob Reiner One of the relatively few highly-praised King adaptations, this one even won Kathy Bates an Oscar for her portrayal of the mentally ill nurse Annie Wilkes. Thanks to a little stalking and some fortunate happenstance (for her), she is able to take her favorite writer hostage. Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is the author of the wildly popular series of romance novels based on the character of Misery Chastain – ah, but he never meant for Misery to be his livelihood, and he would love to finally be taken seriously as an artist. Problem is, Misery is what Annie Wilkes wants and what she is going to have, too, and woe unto Paul when Annie discovers that Paul has killed off his heroine in what is meant to be the final book in the series. The book itself is a fascinating read, and not just because it is one of King’s intense, intelligent “enclosed space” stories. He loves to tell tales of people trapped in tiny places with restricted movement, and forced to cope or die. Paul Sheldon is not only crippled by the car accident that allowed Annie to abduct him, but he’s tied down, locked in, and kept secret. Even when he manages to painfully drag himself out of bed, he can’t get out of her secluded country home. The movie is fairly good, though I think it’s showing its age a bit. The music is too much, overpowering the acting at times, and Kathy Bates’ performance waivered for me between brilliant and over-the-top. Annie Wilkes is at her most frightening when she’s being sweet as pie because she’s so convincingly kind- hearted and warm – and we know that every word is a crapshoot with her. Will this be the thing that drives her into a frenzy, or will she laugh it off and continue on her merry, delusional way? Maybe over-the-top is the only way to go with this, as Annie descends into the hilarious, terrifying madness of a maniacally devoted fan-girl. On the other hand, the movie largely ignores Paul Sheldon. Oh, I don’t mean in a literal way. Obviously he is the one crippled and captured and forced to write Misery’s stories the way Annie wants them to be. James Caan has a tough job, to suffer and suffer and suffer while also humoring the loony and then reaching the end of his humor, when he has to look at Annie like, “Holy shit, bitch be crazy.” The book, however, covers a couple areas that the movie either doesn’t have time to convey or doesn’t convey very well at all. The first is drug addiction, because in the novel, Annie gets Paul addicted to pain pills. It’s no secret that King wrote this book using his own experience with alcohol addiction. If you want, you can look at Annie as the symbol of addiction itself: destructive, insane, clearly something you’d wish to escape but you simply cannot and then, oh my, the pills are soooo good. Paul is in terrible To discourage sassy behavior, the Physicians’ Desk Reference pain and needs those pills, recommends roping your patients like steers. and Annie can use them to punish and reward him, effectively enough that even months after he has escaped her, he still craves the sight of her appearing with his sweet, sweet medicine. There is also the writer Paul, who in the movie translation loses one of book-Paul’s more ironic discoveries. Paul longs to be a serious writer and, having killed off Misery in his (supposedly) last installment, he has written a semi-autobiographical book about kids living in the midst of poverty and crime. He knows it’s good, and he’s so proud of it that his face glows when he looks at it. In one of her cruelest gestures (yes, probably as cruel as her breaking the poor man’s ankles) Annie forces him to burn the only copy, and Caan’s face shows us the grief of a man who has lost a dear friend. It’s not simply that a manuscript has burned. He can always type it again, a pain in the ass, but not impossible. It’s his image of himself as a writer that is burning before his eyes. That’s his soul he’s just ignited, that Annie just took away from him. That aspect, the burning, is handled well by the film in one of its most powerful scenes (in fact, the only one that chilled my heart more was when Annie Wilkes, in a depressive downswing, shows Paul her gun). What happens next is that Annie Wilkes forces Paul to write a new Misery novel, one that brings Misery back to life, fair and square. Whatever he writes in the film, we are not privy to it – the fact that he’s writing it and Annie’s loving it is all that matters. However, in the novel, Paul realizes with some self-deprecating amazement that this stressed-out, desperate Misery novel is one of the best things he’s ever written. It’s coming out of him as a book can only when your life depends on it (and sometimes, as my fellow writers will know, it does feel like a life-or-death matter, though I doubt many of us have ever been in Paul’s situation). Following his escape, he actually goes on to publish not only his beloved personal story but the new Misery novel and it is, as expected, an enormous success. That’s not in the movie, and it’s too bad. It’s a resonating nod to authors and their public, and something that King has doubtless dealt with a hundred times over. He wants to be taken seriously. He is now, and well he should be – he’s written some fantastic books. Remember, though, that this book was published in the late 1980s, when King was still considered the master of the schlocky horror novel. Personally I don’t think his schlocky horror novels are anything to be ashamed of – they all have their appeal. But I’ve been in a similar boat (a much, much smaller boat) and dealt with this feeling. “I can write what I love, or I can write what will actually sell, and these are not the same things.” In summary, Misery is a suspenseful, entertaining film with impressive performances that is starting to show its age, the style and the sound of it are so 25- years-ago. To be more succinct, the film lacks much in the way of subtlety. Subtlety is my personal preference, oh well. If you haven’t seen it in a long time, you might want to pay it another visit, if only to enjoy the sweetness-to-terror craziness of Bates’ Annie Wilkes – some of her lines are laugh-aloud funny. We don’t get a full picture of Paul’s dilemma (his hatred for but dependency on Annie Original editions of the book came with this and her drugs; his baffled discovery that cover just behind the real one –making this he can write brilliantly under duress) but my favorite book cover ever. (That’s King himself in the picture, in case you don’t get it.) for that, you can seek out the book and enjoy. .