The Doctor Is In

My friend, Ellen, was visiting this weekend and we went to see Dr. Sleep yesterday. For those of you that don’t know, Dr. Sleep (2013) is Stephen King’s follow-up novel to his earlier work, The Shining (1977). Mike Flanagan has turned the book into a feature film starring Ewan McGregor.

What you may not know is… Stephen King hates the 1980 film version of The Shining by Stanley Kubrick so much that he has gone on record in various mediums declaring so… saying things like, “it’s a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine in it,” and “Stanley set out to make a film that hurts people.”

But film lovers and King devotees like me often separate the two. Kubrick’s version of The Shining is monumental, a beautiful work of art that layers the dread frame by creeping frame. Yes, it is different from the book…but so are many other film adaptations of novels.

With Dr. Sleep, Mike Flanagan—also an admirer of both works—mounted a quest almost as daunting as that of Roland in King’s Dark Tower saga: to adapt the novel Dr. Sleep AND make a sequel to Kubrick’s film… with approval from King and the Kubrick estate.

Wait a minute, shouted the masses. How are you gonna do that? There are vast differences between the two. Halloran lives in the book, dies in the movie. The hotel blows up in the book but remains standing in the film. How are you going to make this work for both team King and team Kubrick?

Well…. he does. And he does it so well that it’s mind-boggling. I won’t give away his tricks, because that’s a large part of what makes the movie so great. But I will say that the hotel is still in it, beloved characters are brought back, and not only does he pay beautiful homage to both, but he also goes one step further by fixing, or should I say warming, Kubrick’s original vision and likely redeeming many of King’s perceived flaws with the 1980 classic.

Who does that?! Who thinks to do that?! How on earth can a director set out to make a film, marry it with a classic, maintain the sequel’s separate storyline, and manage to soften the author’s stern judgment of the original adaption?

Who: Mike Flanagan. How: love.

He loves them both so much… he had no choice.

I should have known better. I had similar questions when I heard Flanagan was adapting Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959) for Netflix last year. There was already the classic film (directed by Robert Wise) from the 1960s. There had also been a terrible remake (starring Liam Neeson) in the 1990s. Why would you attempt to turn this seminal novel into a series?

Again… love. The storyline was not the same as the novel, but it involved Hill House and its effects on a modern family… and there was so much homage paid to both Shirley Jackson and Robert Wise that my doubts were swept away in mere moments of the first episode. I knew in my very heart that Flanagan loved the source material as much as me and that the show was in more than qualified hands.

I could see and feel this same love for King and Kubrick while watching Dr. Sleep… and it took my breath away. The original sense of dread still grabs you… but I was also both thrilled and giddy with reminiscence. It’s not a perfect film. It’s a little long, and some scenes felt rushed for timing’s sake. But I forgive him this minor hassle and I’m anticipating an extended digital release.

Flanagan gets this pardon from me because he is not only a writer and director… he’s a fan. He knows the key elements that endear us to these works, reignites them, and makes magic happen. He takes our hand and says… remember this? Let’s go there.

And above all else… he shines.

—Tim

‘Salem’s Lot… a Lot

I read ‘Salem’s Lot in 1977. It was the first Stephen King book I ever read. I might have sampled some stories in Night Shift prior, but he only had a few titles back then, and it was definitely the first novel of his that I took on. My mother had read it and I became intrigued when I witnessed her shriek and hurl the paperback across the room (I later found out that she was at the part when Marjorie Glick sits up on the morgue table). Thus began my longest affair with any writer ever.

I’m not sure how many times I have perused the book since. I used to think revisiting novels was a waste of time, but now I do it not only for research into the mechanics but for pure pleasure as well. I’ve compared great horror—novels and film—to comfort food, and ‘Salem’s Lot is no exception. Rereading the book, to me, is like slipping into a favorite recliner, or a warm fireplace on a rainy Autumn day, or having a delicious piece of cake… maybe red velvet.

I’m sure I’ve read the novel at least five times—once for every decade I’ve been alive—maybe more, though it’s difficult to pinpoint the reasons for its magnetism. It was by no means the first book I ever completed. Perhaps it was the first that I ever thoroughly enjoyed. I relish the nostalgia of the small-town setting, in a decade long before technology kept everyone connected. King himself has described the book as Dracula comes to Peyton Place. Maybe its draw is similar to the addiction people have with soap operas, a voyeuristic peek into the secret lives of middle America (or in this case New England).

Several chapters have become nothing short of iconic (some enhanced by Tobe Hooper’s television miniseries of 1979). Who could forget:

Mike Ryerson’s in the open grave of Danny Glick (“Stop staring at me.”).

Danny Glick at Mark Petrie’s window (“Let me in.”).

Ryerson returning to Matt Burke’s bedroom (“You’ll sleep with the dead, teacher.”).

Marjorie Glick sitting up on the morgue table (“Danny, are you there?…”).

And the list goes on. I don’t know why these scenes stay with me. King was young when he wrote them—good, but nowhere near the writer he has matured into. Yet this is the book that immediately comes to my mind when he’s mentioned. It’s magic.

After rereading the novel last month, I decided to watch both television adaptions again—the Tobe Hooper version from 1979, and the 2004 version starring Rob Lowe (skipping the unofficial, un-watchable Cohen sequel, A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987). Neither of these two versions capture the overall magic, but both have their charms.

Hooper’s Lot does a good job creating the close-knit feel of the community but sacrifices substance for scares by turning Barlow into an unintelligible knockoff of Murnau’s Nosferatu. The Rob Lowe version has an excellent cast (Donald Sutherland, Rutger Hauer, Samantha Mathis, Andre Braugher), exposes more of the darker underbelly of the community, but manages somehow to mangle the story through modernization—as if the writer is saying, the book is great, but I can do better by changing it—a ridiculous Hollywood paradox (territorial pissing is what I call it—a term I borrow from the late, great Kurt Cobain).

Horrible movie adaptions and Stephen King are in most cases synonymous, and when inevitably admonished by a reader that a movie version has “ruined his book,” King simply answers—and I paraphrase:

No, it didn’t. See. There they all are, lined up on the shelf.

And so, as always, I return to the book because the essence remains unchanged within the binding. And with this recent reading—coupling, again, his lush prose with my mind’s eye, I found the answer:

The magic is in the collaboration.

–Tim

This piece is reprinted from a previous blog in response to hearing the news of a new adaption by James Wan and Gary Dauberman.

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Stranger Things Special

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A few years ago, Netflix created a pop culture phenomenon that has now, as of this last season, become their most successful original show to date. Stranger Things season 3 debuted on July 4th this year and has flayed any other summer television competition. What makes this show so resonant with viewers? Why is it that the pull of 1985’s nostalgia draws even non-genre fans… especially to a show that is filled with monsters, murder, and mad scientists? Join David and Tim for a Johnny Has the Keys Special Episode discussing the lure of memory lane and this welcome the addition to the canon of genre television. Listen… as we merely brush the surface of a treasure trove of keys that all fit the magical door to Stranger Things.

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