>Not once did Kubrick say anything about King’s constant criticism of the film and, in the same quiet fashion, took his revenge: since he still held the rights to the novel, one of his stipulations for giving them up was that King would be prevented from further commenting on his film; the other was $1,5 million. In a stunning move, Kubrick bought King’s silence but had King pay for it.
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is clearly a masterpiece of film making and to be honest, Stephen King's opinion just makes me think less of him (King) although I'm also a fan of his writing too.
I'd never noticed Jack's glances towards the camera, but once you notice them, it's clear that they were totally intentional and designed to unnerve the viewer (he's looking at me!). It's this attention to detail that makes Kubrick the master that he is.
Jack’s seeing lots of phantoms—why not also the viewer, whom the camera brings “in” to the scene?
(When you start pulling on that thread—the viewer as a vital part of the fiction, as really present, as encouraging and complicit in what takes place—and make that the focus of a horror film, you get Funny Games)
Never seen "Funny Games" - looking on IMDB, there's what looks like the original from 1997 and a remake in 2007 that doesn't seem as well received (shame as I have a high opinion of Tim Roth).
The Funny Games remake was poorly received because it was released at the height of the torture porn craze and contemptuous spat in the face of audiences for liking that sort of thing. When a movie entices an audience to come see it them tells them to go fuck themselves, it often doesn't go over well.
I don’t think less of King for it, though it strongly disagree with him. An artist sometimes has a much different connection to their artwork than the audience does.
Maybe I was over-harsh - I think less of Stephen King's taste in films. And yes, he's absolutely allowed to like or dislike any adaptations of his films. I used to think that the majority of Stephen King film adaptations were likely to be rubbish, but I think there's plenty of exceptions to that now.
I can imagine that King has a very deep connection to The Shining as Jack is probably the closest that King has got to an autobiographical character.
> I can imagine that King has a very deep connection to The Shining as Jack is probably the closest that King has got to an autobiographical character.
Kimg has a few autobiographical characters, but surely the closest has to be when he literally self inserted himself into the gunslinger series.
I haven't read them but that certainly sounds more autobiographical.
I've also seen the theory that Jack Torrance in the film had been sexually abusing Danny. There's various links with the use of bears (e.g. the fellatio scene with the man in the bear suit) and the subtle use of pornography around the hotel (e.g. Jack reading PlayGirl in the hotel lobby).
Ugh I got to the last paragraph and that definitely sounds like GPT. I can't stand those in summary paragraphs. The way it has to twist off and add a ribbon to every body of text. I hate that.
It reminds me of the rote methods of essay writing that they teach in US schools in order to pass standardized tests. It usually comprises an obvious "thesis statement" followed by supporting evidence and a final, contrived recapitulation of the previous few paragraphs. Thankfully this essay starts off well enough by avoiding the stilted "here is my point followed by a slew of observations and three filler sentences" convention, but yeah, that last bit seems a little rough.
In the interest of fairness I'm not sure that I could do much better since I've not written long-form in years.
I think it’s undeniable that Kubrick’s film is excellent. I do think that the TV adaptation of the shining is both a better adaptation of the story and flatly a better story than Kubrick’s. But execution on the film itself is just way more memorable.
In present day terms where books are constantly, dramatically changed for film so far from the original plot that they’re basically different stories with polar opposite ideologies King’s criticisms feel a lot less heavy hitting than they may have in the past.
I find it interesting that I like a lot of movies based on Steven King's writing (The Shining, Stand By Me, Shawshank Redemption, and Misery are top of mind), but I don't particularly care for Steven King's writing style or many of the books that are considered his best. I didn't care for 'IT' at all. It's like Lovecraft, I appreciate the ideas, body of work, and talent, even if it needs a different style for me to get into it.
As others point out this essay is not good (does not even touch on the Native American threads prevalent in the movie that are missing in the book).
However, it does sort of point to a major characteristic in King’s typical “could’ve been good” villains: As opposed to totally evil characters, eg Bev’s husband in It, who are driven by their primal urges, these characters would have landed in a whole different place had the dice landed differently. Overall they are good but with a few weaknesses, which evil forces manipulate to pull them under. Another good example of such a character is Nick, in The Stand.
If you replace “evil forces” above by “life’s circumstances”, I think this to be a good description of how real-life villains are made.
The Shining is one of my favorite King books and I always thought the movie was a bastardization of his work. One of my biggest peeves is the fact that Wendy in the book was a much stronger character than the one played by Shelley Duvall. Also the hotel was actually haunted and not a mental breakdown by John. There was a very real supernatural element.
The best interpretation of The Shining film that I've heard does explicitly acknowledge that the Overlook was haunted. Basically, the different murderers are reincarnated versions of themselves - this is shown in the last shot with the original version of Jack being shown in the Baphomet posture in the old photo. Jack also mentions that he felt that he had been in the hotel before and could tell what was behind each corner (there's a constant corner/hidden theme running through the film too). There's also the hint that Grady appears to be two people - Delbert Grady and Charles Grady - presumably Charles is the reincarnation of Delbert. This is also borne out by the confusion between Grady having twin daughters and also their ages being 7 and 9 (i.e. not twins).
the movie does show the house is haunted. when danny gets attacked by the woman in the room and at the very end of the movie when shelly duvall is running around the house and shes all of those people and the skeletons in the lounge area. although i do admit it took me a while before reading the book to realize that they all werent having mental breakdowns. the movie definitely could have been a little clearer there
I suppose this is really due to the needs of getting things read on the web as a medium. The article is at basically the optimal length for read metrics.
Sucks if you have the attention span to handle more, for example if you came from a pre-internet reading culture
on edit: in a way this article on the Trinitonian exemplifies a common strategy for Internet writing, the TLDR article that summarizes another longer form article, or a number of related articles, as this one summarizes a bunch of the Senses of Cinema article https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2020/the-shining-at-40/king-v... (although not in the traditional way that one summarizes)
Often of course such a summary article is written by the same person who wrote the original and related articles.
gosh, evidently being the bearer of bad news deserves a down vote. Or maybe people just think it's wrong and the internet does not reward shorter articles?
If you’ve ever seen the tv series one, with the guy from Wings in it, it is pretty good too. I like it a lot. An ex-gf introduced me to it, as she liked how it was much more true to the book. You can appreciate each version for what they are. Kubrick’s is riffing on the book like jazz, to go its own way and explore things Kubrick finds interesting. The tv series one goes for what makes the book scary and moving.
I only discovered King a few years ago, having purposely avoided his books as something that "everyone liked". Now I am a fan. However, I am less fond of the film adaptations. I think that it is very challenging to make King's books into movies. The Shining is one of the more successful adaptations and ironically that which King most despises.
I always thought King adaptations work best the less he is involved with them - adapting a story to another medium requires a very different way of thinking, and a novellist (especially an incredibly talented one like King) isn't always well suited to the visual storytelling medium.
Yes, but you can adapt the story to the visual medium ("show don't tell" and all that) while staying true to its original intention. Or you can turn King's autobiographical character into a stereotypical psycho axe murderer.
I'll preface this by saying that my love of cinema is more about the visual than the characterisation, so it may be that we're coming at this from two different angles... I do love both the book and Kubrick versions of The Shining, and I don't think either detracts from the other.
I can't help but think keeping Jack's character more faithful to King's character of a good man slowly being corrupted by the hotel and resisting would have really changed the pace of Kubrick's movie for the worse, and taken away a lot of his really beautiful compositions.
I think King's panned adaptation for the 1997 miniseries is evidence supporting that Kubrick's character adaptations were good choices for the film he was making / the medium shift.
Edit: not sure why you're being downvoted, I think your characterisation of the changes Kubrick made to Jack's character is entirely valid
> I always thought King adaptations work best the less he is involved with them
Maximum Overdrive[1] certainly provides some support for this hypothesis. About the only good part of this movie is the soundtrack, which was provided by AC/DC.
Directing a movie requires very different skills. Even on just a personality level: an author can be reclusive, but a director has to be extremely social, because a film is made by a large crew of people. And there's the obvious other skills too (this interview is from American Film magazine):
Stephen King: The movie is about all these vehicle goings crazy and running by themselves, so we started shooting a lot of gas pedals, clutches, transmissions, things like that, operating themselves. We had one sequence: The gas pedal goes to the floor, the gas pedal goes up, the clutch goes in, the gears shifts by itself, the clutch comes out and the gas pedal goes back to the floor again. We were able to shoot everything but the transmission from the driver's side door. The transmission was a problem, because we kept seeing either a corner of the studio of a reflection.
So I said: This is no problem, we will simply take the camera around to the other side and shoot the transmission from there. Total silence. Everybody looked at everybody else. You know what's happening here, right? I'd crossed the axis. It was like farting at the dinner party. Nobody wanted to say you've made a terrible mistake. I didn't get this job because I could direct or because I had any background in film; I got it because I was Stephen King.
So finally [cameraman] Daniele Nannuzzi told me I'd crossed the 180-degree axis and that this simply wasn't done, and although I didn't understand what it was, I grasped the idea that I was breaking a rule.
Later on, I called George [Romero] up on the phone and I said, "What is this axis shit?" and he laughed his head off and explained it, and I said, "Can you break it -- the rule?" He said, "It's better not to, but if you have to, you can. If you look at The Battleship Potemkin" (which I never have), "it crosses the axis all the time, and the guy [Sergei Eisenstein] gets away with it." Then I saw David Lynch and asked him: "What's this about crossing the axis?" and he burst out laughing and said, "That always gets me." And I asked if you could do it, and he gave me this startled look and said, "Stephen, you can do anything. You're the director." Then he paused and said, "But it doesn't cut together."
The Senses of Cinema article this links to multiple times is much longer and better (2020): https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2020/the-shining-at-40/king-v...
You're right, that's a much better article.
I didn't realise that this happened:
>Not once did Kubrick say anything about King’s constant criticism of the film and, in the same quiet fashion, took his revenge: since he still held the rights to the novel, one of his stipulations for giving them up was that King would be prevented from further commenting on his film; the other was $1,5 million. In a stunning move, Kubrick bought King’s silence but had King pay for it.
Should the original link then be changed from the Trinitonian to the Senses of Cinema site?
+1 much better , thank you for posting.
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is clearly a masterpiece of film making and to be honest, Stephen King's opinion just makes me think less of him (King) although I'm also a fan of his writing too.
I'd seen a few analyses of the film, but was quite surprised and amazed when I happened across the Overlooked! youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr6PgWFs0Pw
I'd never noticed Jack's glances towards the camera, but once you notice them, it's clear that they were totally intentional and designed to unnerve the viewer (he's looking at me!). It's this attention to detail that makes Kubrick the master that he is.
> just makes me think less of him (King)
He's a great writer and I was following him on X, but his constant attacks on random people who don't share his political ideas had me.
He's still a great writer but probably a real AH too...
Jack’s seeing lots of phantoms—why not also the viewer, whom the camera brings “in” to the scene?
(When you start pulling on that thread—the viewer as a vital part of the fiction, as really present, as encouraging and complicit in what takes place—and make that the focus of a horror film, you get Funny Games)
Never seen "Funny Games" - looking on IMDB, there's what looks like the original from 1997 and a remake in 2007 that doesn't seem as well received (shame as I have a high opinion of Tim Roth).
The Funny Games remake was poorly received because it was released at the height of the torture porn craze and contemptuous spat in the face of audiences for liking that sort of thing. When a movie entices an audience to come see it them tells them to go fuck themselves, it often doesn't go over well.
It's good.
I don’t think less of King for it, though it strongly disagree with him. An artist sometimes has a much different connection to their artwork than the audience does.
Maybe I was over-harsh - I think less of Stephen King's taste in films. And yes, he's absolutely allowed to like or dislike any adaptations of his films. I used to think that the majority of Stephen King film adaptations were likely to be rubbish, but I think there's plenty of exceptions to that now.
I can imagine that King has a very deep connection to The Shining as Jack is probably the closest that King has got to an autobiographical character.
> I can imagine that King has a very deep connection to The Shining as Jack is probably the closest that King has got to an autobiographical character.
Kimg has a few autobiographical characters, but surely the closest has to be when he literally self inserted himself into the gunslinger series.
I haven't read them but that certainly sounds more autobiographical.
I've also seen the theory that Jack Torrance in the film had been sexually abusing Danny. There's various links with the use of bears (e.g. the fellatio scene with the man in the bear suit) and the subtle use of pornography around the hotel (e.g. Jack reading PlayGirl in the hotel lobby).
He literally writes himself into the dark tower series.
Ugh I got to the last paragraph and that definitely sounds like GPT. I can't stand those in summary paragraphs. The way it has to twist off and add a ribbon to every body of text. I hate that.
It reminds me of the rote methods of essay writing that they teach in US schools in order to pass standardized tests. It usually comprises an obvious "thesis statement" followed by supporting evidence and a final, contrived recapitulation of the previous few paragraphs. Thankfully this essay starts off well enough by avoiding the stilted "here is my point followed by a slew of observations and three filler sentences" convention, but yeah, that last bit seems a little rough.
In the interest of fairness I'm not sure that I could do much better since I've not written long-form in years.
I think it’s undeniable that Kubrick’s film is excellent. I do think that the TV adaptation of the shining is both a better adaptation of the story and flatly a better story than Kubrick’s. But execution on the film itself is just way more memorable.
In present day terms where books are constantly, dramatically changed for film so far from the original plot that they’re basically different stories with polar opposite ideologies King’s criticisms feel a lot less heavy hitting than they may have in the past.
I find it interesting that I like a lot of movies based on Steven King's writing (The Shining, Stand By Me, Shawshank Redemption, and Misery are top of mind), but I don't particularly care for Steven King's writing style or many of the books that are considered his best. I didn't care for 'IT' at all. It's like Lovecraft, I appreciate the ideas, body of work, and talent, even if it needs a different style for me to get into it.
As others point out this essay is not good (does not even touch on the Native American threads prevalent in the movie that are missing in the book).
However, it does sort of point to a major characteristic in King’s typical “could’ve been good” villains: As opposed to totally evil characters, eg Bev’s husband in It, who are driven by their primal urges, these characters would have landed in a whole different place had the dice landed differently. Overall they are good but with a few weaknesses, which evil forces manipulate to pull them under. Another good example of such a character is Nick, in The Stand.
If you replace “evil forces” above by “life’s circumstances”, I think this to be a good description of how real-life villains are made.
It’s been a long time but I don’t remember nick being a bad guy?
You’re right, he was an overall good guy. I had Harold in mind, who builds the bomb that kills Nick.
The Shining is one of my favorite King books and I always thought the movie was a bastardization of his work. One of my biggest peeves is the fact that Wendy in the book was a much stronger character than the one played by Shelley Duvall. Also the hotel was actually haunted and not a mental breakdown by John. There was a very real supernatural element.
The best interpretation of The Shining film that I've heard does explicitly acknowledge that the Overlook was haunted. Basically, the different murderers are reincarnated versions of themselves - this is shown in the last shot with the original version of Jack being shown in the Baphomet posture in the old photo. Jack also mentions that he felt that he had been in the hotel before and could tell what was behind each corner (there's a constant corner/hidden theme running through the film too). There's also the hint that Grady appears to be two people - Delbert Grady and Charles Grady - presumably Charles is the reincarnation of Delbert. This is also borne out by the confusion between Grady having twin daughters and also their ages being 7 and 9 (i.e. not twins).
the movie does show the house is haunted. when danny gets attacked by the woman in the room and at the very end of the movie when shelly duvall is running around the house and shes all of those people and the skeletons in the lounge area. although i do admit it took me a while before reading the book to realize that they all werent having mental breakdowns. the movie definitely could have been a little clearer there
The film is much better with the ambiguity imo
The hedge lions!
King could fairly easily have negotiated for less money and more control. I suppose hindsight is 20 20.
If Stephen King thinks he can make a better movie then he should start directing.. Kubric was a genius.
> he should start directing
He did.
Maybe he should stop directing?
This article seems to end rather abruptly ("limitations and possibilities of the horror genre"). Is there more?
I suppose this is really due to the needs of getting things read on the web as a medium. The article is at basically the optimal length for read metrics.
Sucks if you have the attention span to handle more, for example if you came from a pre-internet reading culture
on edit: in a way this article on the Trinitonian exemplifies a common strategy for Internet writing, the TLDR article that summarizes another longer form article, or a number of related articles, as this one summarizes a bunch of the Senses of Cinema article https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2020/the-shining-at-40/king-v... (although not in the traditional way that one summarizes)
Often of course such a summary article is written by the same person who wrote the original and related articles.
gosh, evidently being the bearer of bad news deserves a down vote. Or maybe people just think it's wrong and the internet does not reward shorter articles?
One of these is a master of their form, and the other had a massive coke habit which made them prolific.
Having read/seen both, Kubrick's vision is without a doubt better.
King is still really prolific so unless he has still been using coke all these years it wasn't the coke that made him so prolific.
If you’ve ever seen the tv series one, with the guy from Wings in it, it is pretty good too. I like it a lot. An ex-gf introduced me to it, as she liked how it was much more true to the book. You can appreciate each version for what they are. Kubrick’s is riffing on the book like jazz, to go its own way and explore things Kubrick finds interesting. The tv series one goes for what makes the book scary and moving.
I only discovered King a few years ago, having purposely avoided his books as something that "everyone liked". Now I am a fan. However, I am less fond of the film adaptations. I think that it is very challenging to make King's books into movies. The Shining is one of the more successful adaptations and ironically that which King most despises.
I always thought King adaptations work best the less he is involved with them - adapting a story to another medium requires a very different way of thinking, and a novellist (especially an incredibly talented one like King) isn't always well suited to the visual storytelling medium.
Yes, but you can adapt the story to the visual medium ("show don't tell" and all that) while staying true to its original intention. Or you can turn King's autobiographical character into a stereotypical psycho axe murderer.
I'll preface this by saying that my love of cinema is more about the visual than the characterisation, so it may be that we're coming at this from two different angles... I do love both the book and Kubrick versions of The Shining, and I don't think either detracts from the other.
I can't help but think keeping Jack's character more faithful to King's character of a good man slowly being corrupted by the hotel and resisting would have really changed the pace of Kubrick's movie for the worse, and taken away a lot of his really beautiful compositions.
I think King's panned adaptation for the 1997 miniseries is evidence supporting that Kubrick's character adaptations were good choices for the film he was making / the medium shift.
Edit: not sure why you're being downvoted, I think your characterisation of the changes Kubrick made to Jack's character is entirely valid
> I always thought King adaptations work best the less he is involved with them
Maximum Overdrive[1] certainly provides some support for this hypothesis. About the only good part of this movie is the soundtrack, which was provided by AC/DC.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_Overdrive
Directing a movie requires very different skills. Even on just a personality level: an author can be reclusive, but a director has to be extremely social, because a film is made by a large crew of people. And there's the obvious other skills too (this interview is from American Film magazine):
Stephen King: The movie is about all these vehicle goings crazy and running by themselves, so we started shooting a lot of gas pedals, clutches, transmissions, things like that, operating themselves. We had one sequence: The gas pedal goes to the floor, the gas pedal goes up, the clutch goes in, the gears shifts by itself, the clutch comes out and the gas pedal goes back to the floor again. We were able to shoot everything but the transmission from the driver's side door. The transmission was a problem, because we kept seeing either a corner of the studio of a reflection.
So I said: This is no problem, we will simply take the camera around to the other side and shoot the transmission from there. Total silence. Everybody looked at everybody else. You know what's happening here, right? I'd crossed the axis. It was like farting at the dinner party. Nobody wanted to say you've made a terrible mistake. I didn't get this job because I could direct or because I had any background in film; I got it because I was Stephen King.
So finally [cameraman] Daniele Nannuzzi told me I'd crossed the 180-degree axis and that this simply wasn't done, and although I didn't understand what it was, I grasped the idea that I was breaking a rule.
Later on, I called George [Romero] up on the phone and I said, "What is this axis shit?" and he laughed his head off and explained it, and I said, "Can you break it -- the rule?" He said, "It's better not to, but if you have to, you can. If you look at The Battleship Potemkin" (which I never have), "it crosses the axis all the time, and the guy [Sergei Eisenstein] gets away with it." Then I saw David Lynch and asked him: "What's this about crossing the axis?" and he burst out laughing and said, "That always gets me." And I asked if you could do it, and he gave me this startled look and said, "Stephen, you can do anything. You're the director." Then he paused and said, "But it doesn't cut together."