Josh-da-man

Darabont... also Fincher... Aranofsky...

There was a time, back in the late 70s and early 80s, when King's movies were directed by cats like De Palma, Kubrick, and Cronenberg. Hell, even Carpenter did Christine.

Then his adaptions moved to cheap-looking miniseries and direct-to-video/cable crud, with the exception of Darabont-helmerd projects.

I know that King was displeased with Kubrick's Shining; is it possible that he gained enough to pull to keep auteur directors away from his adaptions?

I'd love to see what David Lynch would do with a King story.

Preterite

Auteurs - heck, any director with talent and vision - have their own voice and will add their own spin to an adaptation. This pisses off King and a lot of his fans. Garris, on the other hand, hews pretty close to the source material and his lack of substance and style is seen as a feature and not a bug.

I never understood this point of view. If the movie needs to be exactly the same as the book, why bother? You're better off just reading the damn book.

brainee

Amen! I've gotten into this argument with other readers. Apparently, many think it's an absolute travesty when a film or television adaptation isn't perfectly faithful to the source book. And I just don't get it. Different mediums need different approaches. Sure, there are some shorter books that are written in a very cinematic fashion that don't need much changing - but those are exceptions, not the rule. And even then, any filmmaker worth a damn will want to bring something new to the project.

Josh-da-man

What I find odd is that... I'm using "The Shining" as an example here...

Kubrick's movie is fucking terrifying. Even when nothing is happening there's this palpable sense of isolation and dread that permeates the whole thing. Jack Nicholson gives you the willies whenever he's onscreen, Shelley Duvall always looks like she's at the end of her hope, and even the little kid is like that one creepy kid on the playground that nobody wants to hand out with.

Then, you look at the King-approved miniseries, and it's this overlong, bloated, plodding, monstrosity that is more mundane than scary. It looks and feels more like a daytime soap opera than a horror movie. And it has that guy from Wings in the Jack Nicholson role.

Is this really how King sees his novels in his own head?

rw2516

King pictured Ron Howard as Jack when writing the book. Clint Eastwood as Stu Redman.

JAA

Interesting . . . I would have imagined Clint Eastwood as his creative image for Roland Tower.