Movie: The Shining (1997)

After 1979's Salem's Lot, Stephen King on television went on hiatus until 1990. Although production standards and television's prominence relative to the movie theater had grown considerably over the intervening decade, there was still considerable room for improvement. The 1990's television adaptations are primarily network TV miniseries, and the novels tackled are typically the big (and not necessarily best!) ones: The Stand, IT, and The Tommyknockers, typically shown during sweeps-time. Did this inflate their sense of importance? No idea, but ABC kept coming back for more, almost annually from 1990, and finally, by 1997 Stephen King was ready to put forth the "authoritative" version of The Shining. This version would take full advantage of the miniseries format, presenting the saga of the Torrance family at the Overlook in six hours, including commercial breaks. It would use the real Stanley Hotel, and restore the dynamics among the characters that were stripped from the Kubrick version.

That was the idea, anyway. Unfortunately, this undoubtedly more faithful version would end up being painfully dull, and, ultimately, it too would end up breaking ranks with the source material. Plot-wise, this version is around 75% faithful. Even at six hours, some things would need to be removed. For instance, Hallorann has little difficulty getting back to the Overlook, and the flashbacks to the Torrances in Vermont are short and few. Other things were probably scrapped for budget reasons, so you don't get the huge hedge animal battle at the end, just some minimal shots to establish there are "living" hedge animals that don't do much more than move a little bit. Another twist from the book is the frequent and prominent references to Alcoholics Anonymous. While mid-1970's Stephen King never gave AA much thought, mid-1990's King was all about his sobriety and made a big point of building this into the screenplay. Finally, the big plot change sweeps in right at the end. In the novel, Danny and Wendy are staying at Hallorann's new gig in Maine, still recuperating from their ordeal. In this version, it jumps ahead ten years to Danny's graduation from Stovington Prep in Vermont (Jack's old gig), where it is revealed (GASP) that Tony was actually future Danny, turning a slight a-ha! moment in the book into a heavy-handed faux-shock scene. Also, did Danny graduate at age 15???

Let's talk setting. Last year, my wife and I visited the Stanley and quickly learned that although it inspired the novel, it appears nowhere in the 1980 movie. Well, the 1997 movie works fast to remedy that little problem, using the "real" hotel as much as possible. We probably should have figured that out, given the 1997 version was the only movie they were selling there, except for Dumb & Dumber, which also used the Stanley for some scenes. For what's it's worth, the trip there was worthwhile, but don't expect anything from the Kubrick edition except for the hedge maze, which was recently planted because they were tired of people asking where it was. As for being a great shooting location for the movie, that is debatable, as the Stanley is way smaller than the Overlook as depicted in the Kubrick film. It seemed like they were moving around a very confined space, compared to the vastness of the 1980 Overlook.

Finally comes the inevitable comparison of the casts. Watching this only reaffirmed how powerful the cast of the original movie was. Okay, so they didn't play it by the book, which upset Stephen King, but if you accept the movie for what it was, you really got into the heads of Jack, Wendy, and Danny. Steven Weber play a reasonable Jack, much more by the book as a loving father consumed by the demonic hotel, and even pulls off both sides fairly well. All the AA stuff added to the movie generally supported a Jack that was committed to getting better before the Overlook made him its pawn. Wendy is much stronger character in this one, but Rebecca De Mornay also didn't have to compete with Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers. And then we get Danny. Courtland Mead was no novice to acting when he stepped into the role. He was ten when the miniseries aired, but perhaps due to some measure of development hell he looks a bit younger, but probably older than Danny Lloyd in 1980. Since this version tries to stick close to the book, Danny talks a lot more, and it comes off pretty wooden. And maybe I'm just a bad person, but his mouth seemed to be hanging open all the time like he was in awe of everything around him. As for the rest of the cast, it's about even with the competition, although we really don't see as much of the extra-pimpin' Melvin Van Peebles Hallorann as I thought we would. The decision, however, to "visualize" Tony was regrettable. He just looked silly and showed up at the weirdest times. They probably should have just stuck to having Danny do voices.

All in all, this was a pretty weak miniseries, and definitely should make one question how important King's involvement or approval actually is to the reputation of a production. For comparative value, however, it wasn't an entire waste of time. I'll save my vitriol for some of the upcoming movies, which have a notoriety so great even someone as oblivious as me is leery of them.

Movie: The Shining (1980)

The conventional wisdom has been that the book is always better than the movie. This makes sense, as Stephen King had 450 pages (or 659 if you read my copy) to tell his story, and Stanley Kubrick had a little over two hours to tell his. However, alongside Gone With the Wind, The Shining in its 1980 adaptation may enjoy the rare honor of standing above the book it was based upon. It is a well-known fact that King despised this film. His criticisms are not entirely without merit, and if your number-one criterion in rating an adaptation is faithfulness to the source material, you will probably agree with them. I'm not sure how much of the "blame" lies with the screenwriters and how much falls on Kubrick himself, but for simplicity, I will frame it as a King vs. Kubrick issue when making comparisons.

Obviously, given the constraints inherent in a feature film, plot elements were going to have to change or be thrown out altogether. Probably the most shocking plot change came at the expense of Dick Halloran. Scatman Crothers nailed the portrayal, but when he took an ax to the gut it was a truly jarring moment. Halloran wasn't supposed to die! This was just one of a number of needed plot changes to make the movie fit within the allotted time and make sense. For example, it isn't much of an ordeal for Halloran to get to the Overlook. Also, from the time the last of the summer staff leaves the hotel, it is pretty much full-on-trapped-in-the-snow wintertime for the Torrance family. And let us not forget the hedge animals are gone. Even if the lack of CGI as of 1980 wasn't a stumbling block, these critters just don't translate well to the screen, so enter the famous hedge maze, used to great effect by Kubrick. In fact, the movie adds a few iconic elements missing from the book, such as "all work and no play", "Here's Johnny!", and those creepy twin girls. And even the ending, in which Jack is physically absorbed into the Overlook's history, is completely different from the book, where the hotel explodes in a massive boiler blow-up (making it the third consecutive fire/explosion ending for King).

Characterizations also suffered in King's eyes. Jack a la Jack Nicholson is pretty much crazy from the get-go and is tepid toward Danny at best. He is not the doting father, or a regular guy who slips into insanity. This necessarily makes Jack, rather than Danny, the central character. Wendy meanwhile, not King's strongest female character to begin with, is even further reduced in this movie to a largely helpless role. Danny, however, is an interesting case. Danny Lloyd, the actor, was seven years old when this was released, which means allowing time for post-production and so forth, he was pretty darn close in age to the book Danny, who is five. As seen especially in the 'Salem's Lot adaptations, King is guilty of making child characters behave as little adults (usually under the pretense of being exceptionally bright), particularly those playing a central role to the plot. While it is probably doable to have an older actor play a younger character, it's not nearly as easy to get a younger actor to play either at their age or older, especially if the age in question is five. So it's quite the directorial feat for Kubrick to get an almost-five-year-old to play at that level and not come off completely fake or marginalized, and even more impressive that this was Lloyd's feature film debut.

Probably the most direct aspect of conflict King would have with Kubrick was over setting. Although the book never admits it, it's a well-known fact that the Overlook is based on the Stanley Hotel, located on the edge of Estes Park. Kubrick effectively nixed the Stanley from the moment he laid eyes on it. What few outside shots there are come from a hotel in Oregon and all the interiors are soundstages, albeit masterfully designed ones. Having been to the Stanley, I can sympathize with why Kubrick would jettison it from consideration. First off, Estes Park is really close by. It doesn't radiate the kind of remoteness the Overlook demanded, especially in a visual depiction. Second, the Stanley is kind of small. I think the giant ballroom in the movie equals around half the size of the entire actual Stanley building, and the kitchen would consume all of the rest. Finally (and most devastating), it was clear that Kubrick wanted to do things to the property that would have violated the Stanley's historical landmark status. In our visit to the Stanley, we learned Kubrick considered it as a location for less than five minutes.

The 1980 feature film adaptation of The Shining is probably the greatest piece of film based on a Stephen King novel. The other "great" adaptations benefit from coming from more concise source material (Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption). It also meant open season on moving much of King's writings to the big screen, so much so that every single novel under his own name alone until 1987's Eyes of the Dragon would get some kind of movie treatment, and that doesn't even take into account the Bachman books or short stories.

Shining (spoof)

Posts are forthcoming on the two rival movie versions of The Shining. In the meantime, here's an old chestnut from about ten years ago. Drop the "The" and you get a veritable rom-com!

The Shining (1977)

1976, it would turn out, was the last year to date not to feature some kind of Stephen King release. Sure, there have been some close calls (1985 was just Skeleton Crew, a story collection, and 1988 had only the photo-book Nightmares in the Sky), but in 1976, unless you count the Carrie movie, it was The Year Without a King. I'd like to think that this had something to do with making his third book his best one to date, something special and a giant leap forward from 'Salem's Lot. While The Shining, especially in light (no pun intended) of a critically acclaimed adaptation a few years later, enjoys a reputation of being one of King's finest books, it isn't completely perfect. However, I'll save the nitpicks for further down.

Can a place that has witnessed decades of horrors and atrocities absorb them all and become "infected" itself with ghosts? According to Stephen King, that would be a strong affirmative. It isn't really clear if the place had always been that way and was a magnet for trouble, or if the stain of a corrupt past made the Overlook an evil place. Either way, by the time Wendy and Jack Torrance and their son Danny show up, the place has developed a nasty reputation. Furthermore, as the plot unfolds, it appears the Overlook has a mind of its own and it feeds off psychic energy. Danny has "The Shine", an overpowering psychic energy. Not everyone has this or in the same amount. According to the narrative, Dick Halloran, the Overlook chef cook, has a decent amount, while Wendy has very little, and Jack has none at all. It is clear that Danny is who the hotel wants - for what exactly, I can't say. The different characters react differently to the Overlook's nightly assaults. Wendy, for example, doesn't seem to pick up an anything ethereal, but can see the "physical" manifestations of the Overlook's ghosts: the streamers and confetti, and the alcohol that Jack somehow managed to ingest. Jack, on the other hand, is more susceptible to the Overlook than any other character. Although Halloran can detect no shine in Jack, his tortured past, his guilt, and craving for recognition make him the perfect "host" that the hotel can pour all of its darkness into. Danny falls somewhere in the middle, attacked by the hotel (in room 217 and the playground), but not consumed by it. By the end of the novel, Jack is obliterated by the Overlook, and Danny's recognition of this ends up being what saves him. While he is unswerving loyal to his father, in spite of all his faults, when he is finally able to separate Overlook Monster Jack from his father, he is able to rebuff him.

Although there is an extensive chain of events that bring Jack and his family to the Overlook, King leaves the question open as to if it was all predestined. As the novel clearly indicates, someone with a good "shine" need not be in the same room, city, or state to communicate it to others. So it isn't completely implausible that the Overlook, as a center of darkness, could "detect" Danny and put a plan in motion to draw him in, using Jack as its primary vessel. Jack, of course, is the most vulnerable character of the three and easily exploited by the Overlook, to the point that by the end it has completely eclipsed his identity, as Danny rightly notes. If this is all the case, it lays out of a very deterministic model of life, where everything has been scripted out for us by more powerful entities, and we merely follow along the path laid out for us. Having studied some philosophy this fall, it is not an unfamiliar concern of great thinkers throughout history. How much free will do we think we have?

The Shining heralded numerous improvements in Stephen King's writing and marked the beginning of new territory. In the mid-1970's King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado, providing him with a new backdrop for his writing. While the previous two novels were almost exclusively set in Maine, this book is entirely in Colorado except for the flashbacks. Colorado, of course, would also provide a home base for the good guys in the next novel, The Stand, which continued the trend of expansiveness in King's writing. Just as King "gets" Maine pretty well in his novels, based on my recent trip to Colorado, he really picks up the flavor of the remote Rockies quite well in his prose.

The novel also pulls a reverse on the tone of 'Salem's Lot in that the writer is no longer the hero, but instead the villain, albeit a sympathetic one (or perhaps even just pathetic at times). Ben is the writer as hero, the returning warrior who wisely investigates evil and acts upon it to the best of his ability. He's had a tough go of it previous to his return to Jerusalem's Lot, but appears to have put the past behind him and is capable of facing new challenges with a clear mind. Jack, on the other hand, is a broken man, vainly trying to put the pieces back together. In Danny's mind, it seems like getting to the Overlook is the first step in his father's restoration. Unfortunately, unlike Ben, all of Jack's demons are instead conjured out of him by the cursed hotel, and instead of rising up, he fatally falls apart. While it isn't all that unusual for writers to make their author-characters more potent and heroic than life, it is a bold move for King to pull an about-face and effectively reveal his own dark side in novel form. Whether or not he's trying to also explain that his own dark side was beyond his control, I will leave up to serious lit-crit people to decide.

Finally, some writing problems that are prominent in Stephen King's early works still persist in The Shining. Female characters remain problematic. Wendy is a doormat of a character, trapped between her possessed husband and psychic child. As previously noted, she seems the most oblivious to any haunting other than the most physical manifestations, as well as the impacts on the other two. At least this time the lead female character did not end up turning into vampire fodder or straight up dying. Almost the entire rest of the novel's (non-ghost) cast is male, so Wendy is pretty much all there is. Racial diversity isn't exactly in King's wheelhouse either at this time, but Halloran is a major development and a surprisingly major figure in the book that I didn't expect based on my Kubrick-level understanding of the novel prior to now. And let's be honest, this is the guy who gave us The Shawshank Redemption, so, as they tell the gay teens, it gets better, if this is your biggest concern about Stephen King.

There is a lot more that can be said, but much of it has to do with comparing the movie and the miniseries to the novel, so more will be examined soon!

In Progress: The Shining

Like what I did for Carrie and 'Salem's Lot, this is a continually updated post for my running thoughts as I read through the third book of the project!

October 14 (page 14): Unlike the previous two novels, I do know a few things about The Shining going into it, but it is almost entirely because of the Kubrick film. Last year my wife and I visited the Stanley Hotel, which inspired this novel, but Kubrick rejected it as a shooting location in favor of a soundstage in London and some outdoor shots of another hotel in Oregon. Nevertheless, I'm already superimposing visual memories of that visit over the film as I start reading.

October 17 (page 85): I've been juggling this with some reading for work, so my progress is a little slow. At the end of Part I ("Prefatory Matters"), I'm left impressed with the backstory of the Torrance family that I either didn't remember or was left out of the movie. It's still pretty hard not to see Jack as Jack Nicholson (and the first name's the same part isn't helping!). As with the previous two novels, since this is the 1970's there are some quaint outdated things, mostly pertaining to phones. And yes, we've already experienced REDRUM and not even at page 100.

October 21 (page 149): Well, we've made it through Closing Day. Outside of Game of Thrones, the phrase "Winter is Coming" has never felt so ominous. The descriptions of the Rocky Mountains are excellent and remind me of our time there last year, although the Overlook is way more remote than the Stanley. In other news, we now know what "The Shining" means and it's all about Danny. It is clear the real main character is Danny, not Jack. This is a bit of a reversal from the heroic pair of protagonists in 'Salem's Lot.

November 1 (page 299): I had planned to get all the way through "The Wasp's Nest", but life has been intervening and opportunities to read not so frequent. Jack is definitely the unsympathetic version of the author character Ben played in 'Salem's Lot. You have to wonder if King was turning against himself if he was writing with himself in mind. We haven't reached the point of isolation yet, but it is all but a certainty now, with the radio reports heralding the first major snowfall. Speaking of certainty, thanks to Danny's almost-flawless mind-reading skills, it's just a matter of time before Jack and the bottle reunite and mayhem begins!

November 9 (page 403): It's the busiest time of the year here at work, but I figured I needed to do an update just to prove I wasn't dead or giving up. Far from it! I'm deep into "Snowbound" (part four) and the road to Jack's inevitable psychotic break has taken many twists and turns. One moment he's plotting to kill Wendy, then he's sleeping with her...and then he's thinking of killing her again! Danny's been pretty quiet the past few pages after his experience in Room 217, and he seems to be able to the only thing keeping Jack's tether from completely snapping.

November 14 (page 469): Well, Danny's sent out the Bat Signal to Scatman Crothers Hallorann. Meanwhile it seems like Jack and Danny are profoundly impacted by the Overlook, while Wendy isn't picking up anything but the most obvious stuff and eating herself up over the crazy behaviors of the other two. I know, based on what little Stephen King I have read (or seen), that he is capable of writing strong female characters, but that really isn't apparent in either this or the first two books. Meanwhile his young male characters typically speak and act about twice their age, typically under the guise of being "smart". This is a nitpick though. So far this is the best book he had written to date, without a doubt.

Not really new Stephen King books

I'm very excited to take on The Shining, which will likely happen next month. In the interest of keeping things lukewarm here until then, I just wanted to note a couple books associated with Stephen King, but not actually new books.

First off is Six Scary Stories, in which King only wrote the forward. It must have been a huge score for the collection, as I don't recognize the publisher or any of the authors. As you can see by the cover, if you aren't paying attention it looks like Stephen King wrote the entire thing. Not true!

The other is called Hearts In Suspension, which doesn't even have a cover and the only description is: "Non-fiction collection of essays by Stephen and others about his time as a student at the University of Maine." I'm going out on a limb to say that his contribution is just a small fragment of an otherwise whimsical collection, so it does not apply to this project.

Movie: 'Salem's Lot (2004)

Three times around with Carrie was pretty exhausting, but two miniseries of 'Salem's Lot was especially taxing, and technically a longer time investment.

I'm not sure if the 1994 miniseries version of The Stand was to blame, but over the following ten years, a series of ill-advised and not-really-needed Stephen King miniseries aired. Perhaps the creators felt that 20 years of advances in special effects and a few big name actors and a modern setting would make for an improved adaptation. Here in the 2004 'Salem's Lot (bringing back the leading apostrophe!) we have a few big name actors, outweighing the 1979 version: Rob Lowe, Donald Sutherland, and James Cromwell, and maybe some other recognizable ones depending on how much TV you watch.

For the most part I felt this version tried to stick closer to the book. One big exception, of course, is the totally whacked-out ending. The opening scene, which was so different I nearly deleted it from my DVR thinking I had the wrong movie, teases this difference. In spite of creating this ultimately adversarial relationship between Father Callahan, Ben Mears, and Mark Petrie, there is a lot of things that click better. In spite of some tepid and dour acting, Rob Lowe looks more like Ben Mears's description in the book. Mark is way older than his book counterpart (and a "mean kid" to boot) but looks pretty much as described. Barlow has returned to being articulate and human-looking as he was in the book. Donald Sutherland, however, did not go chrome-dome as Straker. I guess even the best actors have to draw the line somewhere. Most different was Matt Burke, who regained his original name, but is now black and gay. The 1979 movie, probably in the interest of time, merged a bunch of characters together. There isn't so much of that going on here, but some of the book's more minor characters enjoy expanded roles, such as Dud the dump manager and Charlie the bus driver. For some inexplicable reason Eva has become French Canadian and marries Weasel, or at least tries to anyway. All in all, the parts of this movie that try to hew close to the book get derailed by the parts where things wildly diverge.

In the filming locations department, this has to be the craziest one yet. This time, maybe for tax reasons, Australia is now subbing in as Maine. Not only that, but the supporting cast is largely from either Australia or New Zealand, and it seems as if they've been dubbed over with American voices. Either that or they should have fired the sound guy because I've seen kung fu movies dubbed better. Plus, the ambient noise seems to drown out the dialogue in places. The chroniclers at IMDB have correctly noted that trees in full summer foliage are flocked for the winter setting, not to mention the not-found-in-Maine eucalyptus trees all over the place.

In closing, you can lead a perfectly happy life by not seeing either adaptation of 'Salem's Lot. This version is a missed opportunity to have fixed some of the shortfalls of the first one, and ultimately leaves you wondering what the whole point was in the first place.