Movie Wars Short: Revisiting Stanley Kubrick Vs. Stephen King
Speaking of wars, Kyle revisits one of his all-time favorite Hollywood stories. If you weren't aware, the release of Stanley Kurbrick's The Shining started a kerfuffle with the novel's beloved author, Stephen King. The Shining was King's most autobiographical work that brought him into the limelight. He saw Kubrick's interpretation as an insult to his prized work. Kyle analyzes and retells the story and concludes with who he believes came out the other side victorious, albeit, decades later.
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Transcript
sk vs sk
[:here in his vocal booth. Once again, on my favorite microphone again.
And I am going to talk about one of my all time favorites. One of my
. This is one of the reasons [:movie podcast and I'm, I'm enjoying, you know, the wars are, are still
there and they take time and I'm enjoying just going solo and doing what
I kind of refer to as essays.
[:plenty of movie review podcasts out there. And I'm not really interested
in like being a movie review guy. You know, I want to, I want to analyze
he reason I got into movies, [:fun story for you, I always enjoyed them.
[:And that's a movie that over time has just aged so well for me because
podcasts, you know, you, when you're younger, you come to it for the
action and then you get older and you realize there's so much
philosophical nuance. And that's what I'm really interested in movies is
the themes and the analysis and how it relates to modernity and all
ings, you know, and, and the [:ended up connecting these two things is I, I was not a good student.
[:situation that I won't get into here, but I just wasn't a good student. The
only way I really survived, I mean, being frank, the only way I, Stopped
from killing myself, which was my full ambition was playing guitar five
hours a day. And then I, you know, I got into movies, but I liked him at a
surface level, but I knew there was something about them that was
drawing me to them.
[:philosophy teacher. [00:02:00] The first, he knew what he was doing.
And I had him around the time the matrix had just come out and the
matrix was just exploding. You know, it was, it was, If you weren't around
then, or weren't paying attention, it was just a cultural event.
[:conspiracies, just all the things that are in that movie. It just was such a
cultural phenomenon. And he knew what he was doing, and he got me
into philosophy by the very first book we read was The Matrix and
Philosophy. [:the philosophies in the movie.
[:You know, they, they pull me in, and there's, there's nuance, there's, you
know, there's philosophy, there's psychology, it's both audible, it's visual,
it's in some taste, in some senses, like when you watch a horror movie,
you can almost taste what's going on.
[:get that nausea, or that, that, oh, what's going on [00:03:00] here, you
can feel it in your bones. It's such a multi faceted event, but that
philosophy and that meaning, and I love, I love when there's adaptations
of material. Kind of like what we're going to talk about today.
[:question I usually get is, why don't you cover a lot of newer movies?
And, and I'm not prone to it. I mean, we did the newest Batman. Like,
we'll get to newer movies, but there's just not as many stories about new
movies today. I mean, you will occasionally find interesting and fun
stories.
[:time period for so long where the greatest films faced just adversity and
constraints. Jaws, The Shark, never worked. The Shark is barely in the
movie because it didn't work. It probably would have been a different
movie if it worked. They would have put it in the movie more.
[:want Marlon Brando. They wanted Coppola to be a yes man, a
pushover. They didn't want him to be this new avant garde guy who was
a completely change the film [:creative and artistic endeavors to the fullest extent. If you want to find
out more about that, watch the Hearts of Darkness documentary.
[:is based on, but the documentary is called Hearts of Darkness. It follows
Francis Ford Coppola, and it follows the making of that film, and how he
almost pushed himself to the brink of insanity. Just to see his own artistic
vision realized, you know, and some of the greatest movies, and this is a
commonality we discovered on the podcast is that some of the greatest
[:[00:04:33] They almost didn't get the right actor. Um, they faced
disasters. There's budget constraints, ownership changes, director
changes, actor changes. There's just so much, and I'm not saying that
doesn't happen today, but the big hitter movies have such big budgets
today, and CGI is so prevalent, they can doctor up and cover up for so
many things now.
[:of CGI, you know, they really had to figure out how to make practical
[:Indiana Jones podcast that we did, when we, when we did uh, versus
National Treasure. Treasure just the the youth scene at the end when
they open the when they open the the arc The the stuff they went
through with the speeding up of time and using Gelatins and using paint
and using specific types of paint to melt just the incredible things they
went through And and the creativity that had to be utilized In a time
;t just doctor it up with [:[00:05:30] So that's why I love Hollywood stories. Now, let's just get right
to it. This is titled, uh, Revisiting Stanley Kubrick versus Stephen King.
And you may have seen that and seen what the hell is he talking about?
They didn't fight. I wish they did. They didn't get their gloves on. So if
you, if you're not aware, I'm just gonna dive in.
[:of my favorite all time stories in filmmaking. The Shining is one of
Stephen King's most beloved books. It's not one of my favorite books.
[:actually not one of them, surprisingly. The Stand, It, those are probably
my favorite Stephen King novels.
[:way. And Stephen King, although he was exhausted, I think he did have
a sense of pride. In the fact that he was Stephen King who wrote The
Shining. It's his most autobiographical work. Torrance, Jack Torrance is
Stephen King in a lot of ways. A writer.
[:writer, um, who faces addiction, and addiction messes with his life, it
ruins his relationships. And Stephen King was that guy. He struggled
with addiction so mightily that he doesn't remember writing Cujo. Um, he
was so coked up and drunk, he wrote it in like one or two nights, I think.
[:anyway, he was on a coke alcohol fiasco. Wrote Cujo, didn't remember,
got a call from the publisher or a fax or something like, Hey, we love it.
;s like, [:what are you talking about? If I recall, Cujo is another word for coke.
[:cocaine as a street drug back in the day. But addiction was a big part of
Stephen King's life. And Jack Torrance was this character, you know,
toiling with art. Toiling with relationships and how addiction interweaves
with those things. So Q, Stanley Kubrick, prize director, obsessive and
compulsive, and I don't say that negative, in a negative way, I have been
diagnosed with [:like obsessive compulsive, but obsessive over details, it's hard to tell
sometimes, and as someone who has it myself, it's hard to tell where the
art begins and the compulsion ends, but Kubrick was, was meticulous,
and He really showed that the most on The Shining.
[:framework on space, on Space Odyssey. You can see the meticulous
framework and the use of images and repetitive images and
nscious images. This guy, he [:details and, uh, but he was in a weird place. Both he and King share a
unique relationship with The Shining.
[:King, it was the addiction, but for, for Kubrick. He, it was two things. He
had an obsession with doing horror, and he just never found a story that
really checked the boxes for him. But also, he himself, and this is just
based on my memory and reading, you know, he had toiled with some
himself, and creative block.[:[00:08:30] And he found himself domesticated, as it was referred to, and
at home with a wife, and living an ordinary life, and this creative block
drove him insane. And so, the way that Shelley Duvall is treated in the
film, if you didn't know, verbally abused her, forced her to do hundreds of
takes, I don't know if you know this, but the Shining, there's several
scenes where Kubrick just drove the actors into the ground doing
hundreds of takes, in fact, I don't know if this holds up today, but For a
long time, it held the Guinness World Record for the most takes.
[:when they meet in The Overlook for the first time. I think it was 149
takes, maybe more. Um, I'll have to look that up, but anywhere between
140 and like 200 takes. Shelley Duvall was not a world class actress.
She had done Olive Oil, and she, she'd done a couple of other films.
[:Kubrick film. You know, a major blockbuster film. Kubrick found it as an
e those domesticated demons. [:You know, he saw the domesticated woman as a target, and he picked
Shelley Duvall, I think, because he felt that he could control her.
[:this level of verbal abuse, but also you see how it's affected her. She's,
she's not in a good place today. But, um, so for King and Kubrick, This
story was kind of the intersect of a couple of demons. So anyway,
Kubrick adopts his work, adopts Stephen King, and Stephen, uh, and he
hen King is really good with [:impressed with the in between details.
[:same thing, uh, in the agreement. King got first rights to write the
screenplay. That doesn't mean that the director has to use it, or even
read it. At least Steven Spielberg had the niceties to at least read, you
know, Benchley's work. His problem with Benchley's work is that the
draft was a lot like the book, and it had everything he didn't like in the
book.
[:[00:10:30] they didn't like it. It wasn't adventure. There was this mafia
subplot, there was an affair between characters that Spielberg thought
could be really lovable, you know, Hooper and Brody's wife in the book,
or they have an affair, they're not lovable, there's a lot of like depressing
themes, and Spielberg was like, this is an adventure movie, this is a
summer blockbuster, baby, and so, it's not uncommon, and King got the
same opportunity on The Shining, except Kubrick in his, in his, uh, in his
, you know, you read in some [:places, he just threw it directly in the trash, you And, uh, I don't know
where the quote came from or the interview, but Kubrick was then
interviewed to say we're gonna bring in a serious American author
named Diane Johnson to co write this with me.
[:him as a lesser creative, he views him as a lesser intellectual, and for
Kubrick, this was a war on King in a lot of ways. I don't know if it was
ere was something about King [:just did not like, and he's saying, I'm bringing on a A real author, a real
serious American author.
[:her. But she was the co writer after he threw away King's draft. This
incensed Stephen King. We're talking about a story deeply personal to
him. And a story that he was known for. He was, this was a
breakthrough for him. And he was Stephen King, the guy who wrote The
Shining.
[:ass later. Because later, [00:12:00] after the film would come out, he
would become known as Stephen King, the guy that wrote The Shining,
but they didn't mean the book. They meant Stanley Kubrick's version.
Because Stanley Kubrick's version would become such a cultural
phenomenon.
[:crazy face in the door, Red Rum. All these things that even, like, if you
were, even if you're 20 and listening to this, you know it. If you like
movies, you know Red Rum. You know Here's Johnny. You know The
Maze. You You [:woman in it.
[:it out there on the web. You've seen memes. It just, it was not only the,
one of the biggest movies of the eighties. It's consistently on greatest
films of all time lists. And a lot of that is because Stanley Kubrick
stripped out a lot of the cheese that's in the shining.
[:don't think there's an author I've read more books up, but an author that I
think less of at the same time, I like King, but given the amount of books
;s not [:because I keep going to the well and I kind of come back disappointed
But there are some works that I absolutely love by him.
[:like I don't know what to do here telepathy. We're gonna give the
character. I'm surprised Kujo didn't have telepathy It's like oh man. I
don't know what to do with the dog here Let's give him telepathy. So
Stephen king is absolutely incensed by this Then he finds out they're
casting jack nicholson and he's pissed off about this jack nicholson You
Had already [:flew over the cuckoo's nest, but he, he was known as guy who did crazy.
[:dynamic than that. And the whole reason I'm doing this podcast is
because we're doing as good as it gets versus silver linings playbook.
And I went on a Jack Nicholson tear because I think he might be my
favorite actor. I went and watched the last detail, the passenger, a
crossing guard, which I don't like that much.
[:directorial debut for Sean Penn, not a great film in my opinion. [00:14:00]
But, I'm not here to tell you what to do. But, uh, you know, I didn't need
to re watch The Shining, I watched it twice a year already, as it is. It's, it's
in my top 20, it's probably in my top 10, I love that film, so much.
[:near perfect film, but one, one complaint, and I don't really approve of
many complaints of The Shining, but one I can side with is, Jack
Nicholson comes in with a, he's, he's already at a nine, you know. If a
scale of one, if one to ten is like least crazy to most crazy, he's, he's kind
of [:him if they're there yet, and all, and, He's got this kind of sarcastic
demeanor.
[:you know, whereas in the book, and again, I haven't read the book in a
long time, but if I recall, you know, Jack Torrance, you know, in the book,
his character was in a phase of seeking You know, forgiveness and
seeking a new life after not only in the movie, they reference him hurting
Danny, but in the book, he breaks Danny's arm and beats up a student
in the [:into the good graces of academia.
[:him writing book again, pulling from memory. So Jack Torrance was kind
of More of a sympathetic character, the way they positioned him. He
was, he kind of started off as someone looking for redemption versus a
guy who comes in crazy and is gonna go out at an 11 out of 10 on the
scale.
[:Nicholson puts a performance on here that [00:15:30] is, uh, you don't
get many performances that are both so freaky, Misogynistic, abusive,
scary, and so iconic. I mean, considering what the character represents
and what he does in the movie, I mean, we can't help but take it a little
lighthearted because it's just so embedded in our culture.
[:Just cast such a wide shadow here. It's just such an incredible
performance. It's so perfect. And to me, the moment where I'm really
sold on Nicholson is when he [:man's burden, Lloyd white man's burden. I don't do a Nicholson
impression, but I try.
[:bartender, it's just so good. And he breaks the film wide open right there.
That's where I feel like The Shining takes that next step into like, this is a
perfect film. Anyway, so King didn't like that. And then after the movie
came out, King was pissed at the way they treated the character of
Wendy.
[:verbally abusing Shelley Duvall. But in the [00:16:30] book, and, and
King's intention was that she was a strong feminine character. She was
a source of strength. She was a protector. And then Shelley Duvall plays
it up as a, I hate to put it this way, but an unintelligent housewife who
lacks power.
[:finger in this movie. What, what does he do? He doesn't make a meal.
He throws a tennis ball and writes and kills, and tries to kill people.
That's, that is his forte here. She's doing all the work. I'm just telling you
that Stanley Kubrick really had it out for this.
[:which he had grown to abhor during his, you know, time with some
writer's block. Again, this is research, I'm pulling from memory. I just
turned on the microphone because I'm inspired and want to talk about
one of my favorite stories. So King hated that. And then the film comes
out.
[:Felt that he had written a better version of this story than what Kubrick
put on. He sued to have his name removed because he didn't want to be
ssociated with this version. [:from there on out. Um, for years he would pine after getting the rights
back for this movie and making it his way.
[:and, and I've actually in this, in this context, put pettiness in a good way.
Kubrick's genius prods of King embedded in this movie. The biggest one
that comes to my mind is in the, in the beginning of The Shining in the
movie, you know, Jack Torrance is driving a yellow beetle.
[:film, You see, and this is depicted in the, in the novel as well as I
believe, a semi truck when Dick Halloran is scaling back to get to the
mountain or getting back to the hotel through the, through the crazy
snow, the semi truck is turned over and it's on top of a red beetle and
Kubrick did that on purpose.
[:smarter than you, and here's just a little poke at ya. My, my filmmaking
prowess is [:Kubrick was saying there. And it's such a petty little slap in the face. It's
just, I respect it though. You know, in an age where we just make
memes and, and make shitty comments and react instantly with zero
research, or we go out and research and try to backhand people on the
internet with our last minute research.
[:good, that's some good pettiness. You know, and, and what I want to
p with is you, so if this is [:there is a war, a battle of intellectual wills between Stanley Kubrick and
Stephen King, who wins? And in this case, I think it's pretty evident
Kubrick won this war.
[:Shining, but people meant the movie. Before the movie came out, it was
all about Stephen King. Kubrick and Jack Nicholson took this thing to the
next level. It became so iconic, it's such a beloved film, it's so terrifying.
;s so simplistic, [:questions than answers.
[:Jack Torrance actually, has he been dead the whole time? Or is he, had
he lived in the hotel? And is a reason to picture at the end because he
was always the caretaker? Or is this a different version of an old
caretaker? Is this about Native Americans?
[:of theories out there about what this movie represents. And the way
Kubrick did it was so subtle. And, and the way the ambiguity works here
s more questions, but not in [:a, you know, what is this movie even? It brings you back for more and
you rewatch it even though you don't know all the answers and it keeps
you guessing.
[:elevator coming out, it just casts such a wide shadow over the book. And
Stephen King for years said, I'm going to make this as a movie. So in
1997, he did what he has been doing, which is making straight to TV
movies. Cast Steven Weber from Wings as Jack Torrance, a sitcom
;m a [:love Wings, but this is the guy who is gonna play Jack Torrance under
the wide shadow of maybe one of the greatest performances we've seen
k Nicholson in The Shining in:[00:20:42] And we're going to get Stephen Webber and Stephen King is
going to hire a producer and a director who he can control. He wants to
hire people that are going to see his vision. Yeah, you're the director and
yeah, you're the producer, but this is my book. This is my movie. I want it
done my way and there are things that make it to this.
[:do success. We've had it and we had. Uh, and we had the stand, which
were pretty good. The stand launched Gary Sinise into stardom. You
know, we've seen goodies, even underneath the dome. But there was a
time period, and this is what really makes me angry. I retroactively get
angry at Stephen King because he deliberately cheapens his own work.
[:corns, and that, yes, I know, he doesn't have control over the fact that he
has sold the rights to the film and it just keeps getting remade. I know he
;t have that control, [:like The Langoliers, which is horrific, by the way, just one of the worst
things you've ever seen, it's actually an interesting story, the adaptation
that it's based on, or the story that it's based on, Tommy Knockers, these
things, were awful, and it's partly because he hired these mediocre
producers and directors that kowtowed to his every move and his every
need.
[:was walking around the set, just, just checking everything, checking the
expectations, and the stuff [:that made it to the final product is unforgivable. One of the smartest
things Kubrick did was strip out these, these bush animals, you know,
these hedge maze animals that come to life and try to attack.
[:could see how that could be a little scary. But the way it looks with 1997
cgi on a tv budget horrible. It's cheese It is pure cheese and we got this
comedic sitcom actor trying to pretend to be jack nicholson It's just bad
and he did this he did this with several of his works and it just You know,
I [:[00:22:31] You think Coppola wants, uh, wants to do a, uh, straight to TV
version of any of his films? Do you think I know he didn't write the
novels, but do you think that's something he's interested Do you think
he's interested in cheapening his vision, just to prove a point? The
closing sentiment here for me is that King had this chip on a soldier's
shoulder against Kubrick for so long, cheapened his own work just to get
control and try to prove that he's the smarter guy.
[:legendary, iconic roles of [00:23:00] Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance.
With some of the most vivid, memorable imagery. Some of the most
horrifying, horror film, psychological stuff we've ever seen in a movie.
And King is casting Steven Weber. Might as well have cast Jerry
Seinfeld.
[:here, by the way, if you haven't seen this god awful rendition. And, uh,
that's kind of just the details I'm pulling from memory. I just wanted to
talk about this story in case you hadn't heard it, and if you had, I just
wanted to talk about it.
[:[00:23:30] itself. I, uh, I have a, just a love for that film. Just a love for
that film. I, I, if you told me I could take a break and just watch it right
now, I would. So, anyway, that's the story. If you didn't know it, I hope
you enjoyed that. And I'd love to hear what you think.
[:cheap their own cheap in their own work for control or for profit or
whatever is motivating them Is is that is does that lose you as much as it
loses me or am I just a tight ass who? Who's overly artistic and has a
bent towards creativity [:admittedly.
[:me in my vocal booth So thankful for your ears and I hope you have the
best of days. Give me the bat. Give me the bat wendy Give me the bat
