Daddy Wants a Shine Part Two

For those of you too lazy to scroll down, part one can be found here.

When it comes to film, there's few directors that I am in as much awe of as Stanley Kubrick. There's really not much I could say about his genius that hasn't been said elsewhere, but out of all the Kubrick movies I've seen, The Shining is the only one that isn't very good, despite the fact that it's incredibly entertaining.

So how does a guy like Kubrick fail at adapting The Shining, especially when he takes the same approach to adapting the novel that he took with all his other adaptations?

I think, quite simply, it's because Kubrick had no interest in retelling the story and decided to film a straightforward horror movie chock full of cliches. To be clear, I have no qualms with Kubrick's approach. I think it was a fantastic idea to strip out all of the back story. Films are not books, and as such, have to get the point across in a much shorter time than a book does. Likewise, replacing some of the more fantastic elements with practical ones, such as replacing the topiary with the hedge maze.

In the book, the hotel grounds sports a bunch of hedge animals that come to life and chase the characters around. Now, this is one of the aspects of the book that I flat out disliked. Admittedly, I'm not much of horror fan, and things like anthropomorphic shrubs are part of the reason why. They are just silly. I really liked them early on in the book, when they were just haunting the Jack and Danny, but by the end when Halloran is wrestling a lion bush, well, it's silly. Others may not think so, and that's fine. But I think it's a good example of something that "works" in a book, but would look silly in a movie.

Likewise, in the book Jack chases his family around with a Roque mallet as opposed to the Axe Nicholson used in the film. This allows him to be a truly brutal character by severely beating his wife. It also allows for some haunting foreshadowing with Danny's visions of a monster chasing him down a hallway with the steady thunderous thud of the mallet on the wall echoing after him. But let's face it, an axe is much more immediately frightening. And Nicholson nailed the scenes where he chops through the doors. I think it was a good choice.

Also gone is the history of the Overlook Hotel. As I understand it, the hotel is haunted simply because a lot of people died there, thanks to gang dealings, suicides, and so forth. Trauma such as that leaves behind psychic imprints which people with the "Shine" are able to see. Kubrick sidesteps the various gangster murders by instead focusing on the previous caretaker's daughters whom the caretaker murdered before killing himself the previous winter. This is another good choice. It provides a strong visual that's actually more relevant to the characters situation. I was actually a little surprised King didn't focus more on them in the book.

So, strip out the excessive back stories, the silly bushes, etc, and you have a much tighter story. But Kubrick doesn't stop there, he goes further and strips the characters down to their core. Firstly, gone is Jack Torrance's resentment toward authority figures. This is fine, focusing on just the alcoholism gives you more room to drive home the point. Also, Wendy is no longer the resilient woman she was in the book, but rather a meek, victim, typical of horror films. I don't enjoy this. Seeing a strong female character turned into a typical horror movie "woman victim" is a little disappointing. Likewise, Danny's psychic visions are changed from being his inner self explaining what the visions are to an creepy alternate personality. This presents Danny's telepathy in a more horror film context, making him sound possessed instead of oddly intelligent. I don't mind it so much, as it's basically a shorthand to get across the creepiness his parents feel about his telepathy.

So, I stand by the decision to strip out a lot of the excess and keep the key scenes. But in doing so, you lose the narrative of the story. Now all we have is a bunch of disparate scenes without much motivation behind them, and this is where I feel Kubrick failed, because he couldn't provide a strong narrative for the remnants of the story.

What he does instead, is cram in a bunch of horror movie cliches, such as Wendy being a meek victim mentioned earlier. The hotel was built on an Indian burial ground? Really? Is that supposed to be some sort of an explanation? Halloran shows up and gets murdered in a yawningly "shocking" method. And worst of all, the scene where Danny first encounters a ghost and realises that they can hurt him(because his psychic powers are bringing them to "life") is replaced by another typical horror cliche where upon Jack meets the sexy woman(in full frontal) ghost and proceeds to make out with her, only afterwords to realize that she's suddenly turned into a decayed hag woman. Man, I saw that scene already in movies featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

But I think the worst offender is the fact that Kubrick didn't even bother to try to present Jack as a loving father. The complex Jack Torrance of the book, the man who when drunk accidentally broke his son's arm, who went sober out of fear of hurting his loved ones or anyone else for that matter, who submits himself to humiliation and back breaking labor just so he can provide for his family...is completely gone. Jack Torrance in the movie seems to actually hate his family before he even gets to the hotel. It's so off base, I can only assume it was done on purpose, which if that's the case, I can't fathom why. It takes all the punch out of a strong family unit trying to kill each other. Part of it could just be that Nicholson is just a surly character actor, I don't know, but whatever the case, in the movie Jack is an unrepentant asshole.

Finally, we get to the ending, which...is baffling. In the book, the Overlook Hotel wants Danny to die so that his psychic powers will stay with it, thus keeping it and the ghosts a conscious entity. It uses Jack to do this. It manipulates his vices, coerces him to give into his paranoia and ego in an effort to get him to kill his family. In the movie, I don't even know what Kubrick was trying to say. At the end, after Jack dies, the movie zooms in on a photo of the Overlook staff from the 20's, and featured in the front of the group of employees is non other than Jack Torrance, implying(I guess) that Jack is the reincarnated caretaker or that he was absorbed into the hotel somehow defying space and time. I don't know, it doesn't make any sense and is purposely ambiguous. This just reeks of a scatter shot attempt to provide a horror film ending.

Furthermore, there was a scene in the original cut of the film at the end where Ullman states that Jack's body was never found. This is ridiculous, and just further proof that Kubrick was throwing whatever horror cliche's he could think of to get some cheap thrills in place of the story he cut out.

So why do I think this movie was a poor adaptation. Well, I think it was the right decision to strip the story down to it's bare elements, but unfortunately Kubrick didn't seem to be bothered with trying to present the story at all, but rather present some vivid scene's tied together by horror movie cliches. Scene for scene, it looks great and Nicholson is fantastic, but the movie is so gut wrenchingly weak as a whole, I can understand why Stephen King would want to remake the movie, this time in a series of three hour long episodes. So, how does that work out? I'll give my insights in the next blog post.

REAL LIFE/REAL DEATH Chapter Three

"SO LONELY"

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

I pawed at the alarm clock, trying to stop the irritating noise. Then I realized that I didn’t have an alarm clock. It wasn’t an alarm clock buzzing at all, it was my phone. Ringing. I was cold, where the hell did my good blanket go? How much did I drink last night? Didn’t matter. I picked up the phone.

“Hullo.”

“Mr. Calico.” It was a lady, and she sounded like she was making a statement, not asking a question.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Calico, this is Pamela Shelly. I was calling to see if any…progress has been made…since we last talked.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, bitch? Calling me up, checking up on me! You don’t trust me to do my job? Like I’m not going to give you all the information as soon as I get it! Fucking classist bitch, where do you get off?” At least, that’s what I was thinking before I remembered that there HAD been progress made; and that I had promised to call her this morning to let her know if I got the pictures or not. Fuck, I’m a mess.

“Uh, yeah. But I don’t think we should discuss it over the phone. Can you meet for lunch, same place as last time?”

“Yes.”

“Fine, see you there.” And I hung up the phone. Shit, I needed a shower.

I needed to check my camera and see what photos I got. I was too tired and hung over to remember much of the previous night and needed to get myself straightened out before I made any commitments to the Shelly woman. I wandered out of my bedroom to get some coffee. My apartment was small, but I didn’t mind. I don’t own a lot of stuff so what did it matter. Five steps across the living room and I was in the kitchenette, salivating over some instant coffee.

The coffee didn’t do much to wake me up, but I guess it never got a chance to. I turned around and dropped the mug. Landing on the carpet, it didn’t break, which was fortunate because it’s my only coffee cup, but the coffee was going to leave a stain. None of this mattered of course because I was too distracted by the naked girl sleeping on my couch. At least I assumed she was naked under my good blanket. That explains where my blanket went. She’s gotta be naked.

Probably.

She was lying on her side, face buried into the couch cushion. She was nestled up tightly under the blanket, one naked leg sticking out one end and her short black hair ruffled by the pillow on the other end.

I took a few deep breathes and tried to keep from gawking at her leg, but my eyes wouldn’t pull away. Where did this girl come from? She looked much too young to be with a guy like me.
She rolled over. She was definitely too young for me. Her pert little nose twitched uncontrollably, one arm fell out from under the blanket and dangled off the edge of the couch. She had a warm, familiar face. God, I’m lonely. I should go see Sandy. She’d take care of me.

Always has since my wife left.

Of course, it had to be at this moment, the moment of my gawking, horny, resentment, that the girl opened her eyes and let out the appropriate scream.

I stumbled backwards, my feet tripping up in some kind of loose fabric, causing me to come down on my back hard. The girl ran into the bathroom. I laid there for some minutes, afraid to move for fear of having broken something. This would be an appropriate end for me, I suppose.

After a few minutes, I craned my neck up (nothing broken there) to see what I had tripped on.
It was a wig. A blonde wig. The fragmented memories of last night came flooding back. The bodies, the blood, the girl…the costume. Shit, she wears a blonde wig. The girl that I was lecherously eyeballing was the same girl I swore to help last night. What the fuck’s wrong with me? She probably thinks I’m going to rape her now and locked herself in my bathroom. Damn, and I need to get cleaned up before meeting with Mrs. Shelly. Shit, what time was it anyway?

I looked at my wall clock. It read 11:43. Christ, no time for a shower anyway, but I can’t leave with that girl locked in my bathroom.

I pulled myself up off the floor and made my way toward the bathroom.
“Listen, uh,” I paused, trying to remember her name,” Jen, Jennifer. Listen, sorry if I startled you. I’m, uh, not used to other people being in my house.”

Silence.

I continued,” Look, I need to go, some work things to take care of. I won’t be gone long. There’s really not much in the fridge, sorry. I’ll bring some food back, though.”

More silence.

“Okay, well…well I’ll be back in like, an hour. Bye.”

I threw on some clothes and grabbed my camera and my coat and made my way out. My apartment was on the third floor of a rundown building sandwiched between two other rundown buildings in a rundown neighborhood. It’s no castle, but it’s cheap. And cheap suits me just fine.
The meeting with Mrs. Shelly went surprisingly well. I hadn’t developed the pictures yet, but I told her what I saw and that the pictures were coming. She took it surprisingly well, she didn’t seem to want to make excuses for her husband at all. Which I don’t mind at all because it makes my job that much easier. The meeting took ten minutes; we didn’t even get food, just some coffee. Truthfully, there wasn’t anything that couldn’t have been said over the phone. But if I hadn’t met her in person, then I couldn’t have squeezed another check out of her.

So that went well. I cashed the check at a gas station and picked up some food for Jennifer, some Scotch for myself, and filled up the gas tank with the leftover money. So I was at least set for another week or so.

I was trying to feel good as I parked across the street from my apartment, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Jennifer. Secretly, I hoped she had run off while I was gone and I’d never hear from her again. But that wouldn’t keep me from worrying about her. But hey, that’s what the Scotch was for, right?

But whatever good feelings I could sum up from a bag full of groceries and a fresh bottle of Scotch were instantly diminished when I saw the police squad car parked along the curb right outside my apartment.

Daddy Wants a Shine

Last month I read The Shining, and these last couple of weeks I've watched both the movie and television miniseries. Like many movies I didn't see until I was older, The Shining was ruined for me by The Simpsons, but in a good way. That was definitely the spark of my interest in The Shining story, but more recently I've become quite interested in the Intellectual Property(as it were) as I think it's a great example of what goes wrong when trying to migrate a story across mediums. The movie and the miniseries both take a decidedly different approach to adapting the story and as far as I'm concered, they both failed in doing so.

Let's look at the book first. Now, this is actually the only book by Stephen King that I've read, so I'm not going to presume to be an expert on him or his writing style, but I've read a lot about him and his insights into writing and I think all those insights are on display in this book(for better and worse). Cheifly, what I liked most about this book were the characters. I think King's greatest strength as a writer is his ability to present the character voices quite distinctly, especially though third person narrative. This makes the book pretty accesable and quite easy to read. Though this, King presents a haunting tale of a man struggling with alchohol and authority issues, driven mad when he's manipulated into giving into his vices. It's a good book, if a bit rambly in it's approach to the climax(which is really good).

In his book On Writing, King states that stories should not be plotted out beforehand, and that the writer should instead focus on the "seed" of the story and let it grow itself. I both stenuously agree and disagree with this(Ambivalence!). On the one hand, I think that a good idea, with well rounded and developed characters should be able to write itself(to a degree, naturally). In that, the writer should never really reach a point where he can't decide what he wants the character to do. If the character is fully developed, the writer should know how the character will react to most situations. On the other hand, I think it's a terrible idea to to write a story without a clear idea of what you want to say and how it's going to be said. Now, keep in mind that this dilema could easily be solved with some strong editing, but that's not always the case.

In the case of The Shining, I feel that some tighter plotting could have made the book much better. The chapters almost seem to hop without any concern for the flow of the book. I don't think it's all that distracting, per se, but upon finishing the book, it felt really long for only having a few (what I would call) key scenes. King also likes to dwell on backstory, which adds leagues of sympathy to the character of Jack Torrance, but the story seems to lose some subtlety in doing so.

But all in all, it's a fantastic story. Ghosts, a madman trying to murder his family, a pshychic child, it's no wonder Hollywood would want to mine this for a movie. But there's no way you could trancribe a suitable screenplay by using everything in the book. It's litttered with backstory, it's a very long, slow build to it's climax, and some of the supernatural elements are seemingly impossible by the special effects standards of the time. So, how does Hollywood do with an adaptation?

More to come later.