[HN Gopher] King vs. Kubrick: The Origins of Evil (2020)
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King vs. Kubrick: The Origins of Evil (2020)
Author : indigodaddy
Score : 46 points
Date : 2024-10-05 12:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sensesofcinema.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sensesofcinema.com)
| dsq wrote:
| 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.
| garblegarble wrote:
| 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.
| mindcrime wrote:
| > 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
| robterrell wrote:
| 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."_
| rob74 wrote:
| 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.
| garblegarble wrote:
| 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
| tetris11 wrote:
| Agreed. The Dark Tower series works very well as independent
| books exhuding their own exotic charm.
|
| As a canonical series, it's a jumbled mess of barely
| connected themes tied together only by Kingcs own ego (maybe
| that's the point, but its still narcissistic).
|
| At some point he even tries to take credit for Harry Potter
| and Star Wars, albeit in a vague "everything's connected"
| type of way.
|
| I tell anybody who wants to read the series to simply read
| the first book, and the last chapter of the last book.
|
| He's a brilliant writer, but his strength lies in leaving
| some things to mystery, instead of micromanaging his worlds.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _I tell anybody who wants to read the series to simply read
| the first book, and the last chapter of the last book._
|
| I don't know about that. The whole idea behind the series
| is to serve as a recounting of Roland's mistakes along the
| way, and how he progressively refines his course at each
| iteration. Cutting to the proverbial chase just leaves the
| reader (and Roland) stuck in the cycle forever. You have to
| suffer alongside him (and his companions) to get it, I
| think.
| tetris11 wrote:
| The suffering becomes gratuitous after a certain point
| (spiderman? really?), so I think I just rejected that
| aspect and focused more on what made the Gunslinger so
| good: a slow relentless chase across an unknown world
| where the lines of good and evil are neither defined nor
| relevant.
| mkl wrote:
| 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...
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| 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.
| mykowebhn wrote:
| Should the original link then be changed from the Trinitonian
| to the Senses of Cinema site?
| 486sx33 wrote:
| +1 much better , thank you for posting.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we'll switch to that from
| https://trinitonian.com/2023/10/27/a-closer-look-at-
| stephen-.... Thanks!
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| 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.
| vundercind wrote:
| 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_ )
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| 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).
| lupusreal wrote:
| 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.
| vlunkr wrote:
| 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.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| 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 books. 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.
| dleary wrote:
| > 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.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| 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).
| anotherhue wrote:
| He literally writes himself into the dark tower series.
| throwme_123 wrote:
| > 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...
| dkarl wrote:
| > Stephen King's opinion just makes me think less of him (King)
| although I'm also a fan of his writing too
|
| This happens in software development, too: someone is so
| single-mindedly fixated on their own approach to building
| understandable, maintainable software that they can't recognize
| understandable, maintainable software built any other way.
|
| I've seen something happen a few times with senior engineers
| who are being integrated into a team. It makes sense for their
| first task to be a fairly easy change in the best codebase, the
| "model" codebase where everything runs smoothly and there
| aren't any nasty surprises. You won't show them the cesspool
| codebase that causes all your problems until later.
|
| So you give them the easy problem in the easy codebase, and
| they react like they've been dropped into the pits of hell.
| They might say, "Where's the dependency injection?" or "Oh my
| god, you're instantiating this object directly instead of using
| a factory!" or something else, depending on their taste. They
| don't see any sign of the techniques _they_ would use to build
| maintainable software, so they assume the worst. You reassure
| them: we don 't have any quality or maintainability issues with
| this codebase. It's fast, it doesn't break, everyone
| understands it, and it has absorbed every requirements change
| product has thrown at us for eighteen months, tripling in size
| in the process, without losing those desirable qualities.
|
| At this point they have a choice. They can keep an open mind,
| see if what you're telling them proves to be true in practice,
| and maybe learn how a codebase can be understandable and
| maintainable without looking like they expect, or they can let
| their obsession with their own techniques be their final
| thought on the issue.
|
| Obviously this is much more crucial for software engineers, who
| almost always work collaboratively, than for a novelist who
| works alone. A novelist with a track record of success doesn't
| have as many reasons to appreciate the techniques of other
| creators as a software engineer does.
| rwmj wrote:
| This article seems to end rather abruptly ("limitations and
| possibilities of the horror genre"). Is there more?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 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.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 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?
| dang wrote:
| (we since changed the URL - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41758789)
| jart wrote:
| 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.
| alexjplant wrote:
| 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.
| dkobia wrote:
| 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.
| mrbigbob wrote:
| 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
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The film is much better with the ambiguity imo
| RhysU wrote:
| The hedge lions!
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| 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).
| KingMob wrote:
| 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.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| 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.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| 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.
| Jun8 wrote:
| 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.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| It's been a long time but I don't remember nick being a bad
| guy?
| Jun8 wrote:
| You're right, he was an overall good guy. I had Harold in
| mind, who builds the bomb that kills Nick.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| 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.
| farceSpherule wrote:
| If Stephen King thinks he can make a better movie then he should
| start directing.. Kubric was a genius.
| stavros wrote:
| > he should start directing
|
| He did.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Maybe he should stop directing?
| ccppurcell wrote:
| King could fairly easily have negotiated for less money and more
| control. I suppose hindsight is 20 20.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I'm just amazed that film contracts with novelists don't
| _universally_ come with non-disparagement clauses.
|
| I bet they do now.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| 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.
| smitty1e wrote:
| > Many of King's criticisms of the film largely arise from the
| fundamental differences in the intentions behind the book and the
| movie.
|
| As with "Heart of Darkness" / "Apocalypse Now", this gets at one
| point I always bring up in these contexts: a book and movie can
| be related, but they are distinct works of art. (HoD/AN being an
| extreme example of distance.)
|
| "The book was better" always strikes me as unhelpful. What is
| communicated visually is radically different than what is
| communicated in prose. Plus, an actor is an artist, too. "Here's
| Johnny!" cannot be achieved in text the way Nicholson delivered
| it on the screen.
|
| King himself is standing too close to the prose work to assess
| whether the film is any good. Of _course_ Kubric couldn 't match
| a vision that exists in King's head.
| atemerev wrote:
| But of course. Jack is King's self-insertion, and when he sees
| Jack as completely unsympathetic and evil in the movie, of course
| he doesn't like it too much.
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