Erin and I just got done watching “Doctor Sleep.” It took us two nights because we watched the Director’s Cut and, at three hours, it was a little much for her to sit through last night.
Her final review was basically along the lines of, “It’s good. Not sure if I’ll watch it again.”
Erin watches Horror movies non-stop. Well, no. That was true up until a few months ago, and then she started listening to True Crime podcasts, except they’re all on YouTube, so there’s a video component, even if most of it just some someone sitting there talking into a camera. As an audio podcaster who has that same component on our YouTube channel, I don’t really know what it counts for. But I can’t get her to do audio podcasts, which bums me out because that’s most of what I know to recommend. But at least she’s found something she likes.
Back to Doctor Sleep though.
I am not a Kubrick fan. As a film “reviewer” I know that’s a pretty high level of blasphemy, right up there with me not caring for Scorsese or, I don’t know, Coppola or whoever. It’s probably more the content of the movies than the directing. I don’t like mob/mafia movies, so Scorsese is pretty much out of my wheelhouse. And Kubrick always gets billed as a genius and I’m constantly wondering why.
And nothing stirs up more misguided genius talk than The Shining.
I never read King’s book. I haven’t seen the closer-to-it adaptation that ABC did with Stephen Webber either. So I am not comparing the original film to the source material.
I’ve seen The Shining now a few times. Like I said, Erin watches horror movies a lot, and some of them she basically has on repeat. She is a Kubrick fan, to hear her talk. I’ve heard her say it in regards to The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and maybe A Clockwork Orange, but I could be wrong on the last one. I don’t know what else the guy did that she likes. Doctor Strangelove is probably the most my speed from his lists of work. I saw Eyes Wide Shut in the theater and felt like it was the world’s longest con job of what a movie should be. I honestly have more affection for A.I. more than anything and he was just the concept on that, right, before it went to Spielberg? I don’t know.
But what I do know is that there about 50 or so hardcore theories about what Kubrick did with The Shining film, and how if any single one of them is right AT ALL, then it completely destroys all the other theories. They have absolutely no standing. It’s like backmasking a Beatles album and hearing “I Killed Paul” as clear as mud and coming up with a conspiracy out of it. Paul is dead. Michael Jackson was replaced by a white guy. Beyonce is part of the Illuminati.
What kind of gets to me is that Stephen King hated the movie. Because I guess it and the book differed a lot. But King… What do you do if you’re him? Here is the most successful adaptation of your work, that probably put you on people’s radars in a bigger way than anything else had. You had Carrie and then the TV two-parter of Salem’s Lot. I seem to remember that Kubrick’s Shining was a flop, right? And then, over time, it got seen as genius. Kind of like I see Maximum Overdrive as a work of genius. Fucked up, coked out of it’s mind genius, but, for my money, a much more enjoyable film.
Erin asked me if King had anything to do with Doctor Sleep. Did he write it, did he direct it? I said he wrote the book. And she told me that she tried reading his Shining novel and only got so far into it because it was so different from the movie she already loved. And I get that. But I wonder, and I’ll have to ask Levi because he actually reads King’s stuff, if Doctor Sleep the novel is as reverent to the Kubrick film as Doctor Sleep the movie is. Because the movie really has to walk a line, right? As popular a writer King is, I’ve gotta imagine a lot more people saw the flicks than read either of the books. It’s just the way of things.
When it comes to King, as a teenager I read “The Eyes of the Dragon.” Everyone I ever told that to said, “Oh, that’s different from all his other stuff!” And then they’d spout a list of the books I should read. When I first moved to California, I started reading “The Gunslinger” which is the first Dark Tower book. I got… most of the way, I think, and then set it down and never picked it back up again. The only other book I’ve gotten through of King’s is “On Writing.” Which, great though it is, is a strange thing, me reading a book (partly) about writing by a writer I haven’t read all that much of. I enjoyed “On Writing” a lot. I think I remember liking “Eyes of the Dragon,” but that was thirty years ago. And all I can remember of “The Gunslinger” was that someone was playing a Beatles song on an old-style piano in a saloon.
Maybe it was being played backwards.
So I wonder, if King knows the audience is broader for the movie that, he feels at least, was disrespectful to the book it was based on, how does he approach a sequel that everyone is going to expect to be like the film? Does he suck it up and write scenes that describe the carpet in the Overlook Hotel in great detail? Does he mention the use of “red” and what the symbolism meant according to some crackpot on the internet (not me this time)?
This movie, the Director’s Cut of it I should say again, does that. Leans into it hard. And i both loved it and hated it.
The story for the most part was about a young girl, some spiritual vampires, and then Danny Torrence was in it. But not Danny in any way that we’d know if not for the flashbacks they kept throwing our way. It was Danny by way of Trainspotting, in the beginning at least, which makes sense because of who they cast in the part. But it felt like all the stuff dealing with The Shining was just window-dressing that, which one part fascinating in seeing how they used new actors in those familiar roles, it could have and probably should have all been chopped up like Scatman Crothers in the original.
Side note though: Carl Lumbly as Dick Hallorann and Alex Essoe as Wendy Torrence were just phenomenal. You want to do an homage to the actors in the original movie, they were the right way to go, absolutely. I wasn’t quite as taken with The Bartender, although holy shit, that was Henry Thomas I am just finding out! Insane!
Anyway, the story about Abra and the soul-suckers felt very similar to The Outsider, which was a mini-series HBO did this year based off of another King book, so that makes sense. Certain scenes that happened in this one, like the one in the woods, felt like I was watching a reflection of the other. Also the relationship between Abra and Dan reminded me of the one with Holly and Ralph. None of that is a complaint because the relationships between the characters were my favorite parts. But we know King has tropes (as much as he writes, he’d have to). Its just something to see them so clearly.
So without The Shining to give it the additional flavor of the familiar, I think Doctor Sleep had a better story in there that just didn’t get to be its own. If it had been focused more completely on Abra and maybe other kids like her, we would’ve been closer to “IT” territory, which may have meant it didn’t get made at all because “IT” has been coming out the same time.
But this isn’t a review so much as a curiosity.
King has to please the audience. Which, as a writer, I don’t know if is something he considers himself loathe to do necessarily. But I know he must hate that he has to embrace the film he talked so much shit about. And I don’t blame him for talking shit. I really don’t. You make something, you put it in someone else’s hands to move it to another medium, but you are allowed to have expectations. You can’t do jack about it, mind you, but you created the art. What other people do with it, yes, it’s bound to lose some recognition to the original thing. But being far and away from what you created has got to be annoying. And even more annoying when, over time, it starts to outshine what you did.
So how does King feel about Doctor Sleep? His book and then the film? He’s been having a real resurgence recently with movies and TV (or streaming). Nothing wrong with having success. I just wonder is the success seen that way when you have to also invite what you didn’t love to enjoy with you.
There’s probably interviews online that I could go look at about all this. But I’m content to let my mind wander.
I don’t hold a lot precious myself. But then, I’ve had no real success with anything I’ve made. So it’s easier for me. That said, the comic (for lack of other things I could throw at into being the sacrifice) that I’m trying to work on holds a lot of importance to me. For one, I want it to be an all-ages book. And two, the characters really are kind of fixed in my head. If Levi and I were approached to put it into a film or cartoon (as I’ve mentioned previously, the far-reaching dream) and those elements were changed in particular, I think I’d feel pretty unhappy with it. I’m not on some moral high ground about respecting my original work and intents. It’s just… at a point, it becomes, “Why buy this property if you don’t see and believe in what it is enough to make it this way?” And this is an issue I’ve taken with certain superhero movies and other stuff where it gets less and less “right” (that’s an opinion, mine, and not a certainty) and instead just wants to use the recognizable name or imagery to do something else far from what the original thing was. And I’m normally pretty vocal about my feelings when it comes to stuff like that. You want to do a Spider-Man film where he’s African American or Latino or something? I’m down. You want to do a Spider-Man movie where he outright kills his foes? No. That goes against everything I know the character to be. If the heart and the heroism isn’t there, why do it at all?
But that’s me. A “no one is knocking on my door to buy my ideas” version of me. Someone shows up with a check and a lot of zeroes before the decimal point… Who knows. I would like to buy my house. I would like to see a dentist again some day.
I’m not pointing at King for giving the audience what they expected (if that’s what happened). Like I said, I’m just curious. Because I wonder, if it came down to it, what I would do.
