The horror, the horror

CUJO. THE SHINING. STAND BY ME. DOLORES CLAIBORNE. So I think I mentioned to you that I am indulging in some pulp reading this summer in order to prepare for the next season of Lost. I am not generally much of a genre reader and it has been years since I have read such a novel. It seems to me I went through a bit of a John Grisham kick, although it seems to be that was in the mid-1990s. The point of this prologue is that I was a bit unprepared for cracking open The Stand, by one of the more respected genre writers, Stephen King. He is often cited by book critics and such as one who blurs the lines between pulp and literature and I will have to say that unless either things are going to change drastically in the book I am reading or his other novels are quite different, I think those critics must be on crack. As I found myself ruminating on King's writing, by happenstance I watched two films based on his writings and was considering how much better they were than the novel thus far. I have watched a number of other King-inspired movies and decided to take a quick look and see how many films have been made from his canon --- roughly 40, not including sequels and remakes! And that doesn't even count the roughly 20 or so television products. So I thougt I would write a bit about our culture's most prolific creator of horror.

The reason I think King has become so famous and respected must be more for his ideas than his craftsmanship, which is why it works well for a conversion to film because another writer can hone some of what are appearing to me as his shorfalls as a writer. Chief among these critical flaws is his dialogue. In my announcement that I had not read genre fiction in a while, I was hedging my bets a bit here on this claim. Perhaps it is common for books that are focused on a genre to have cringe-worthy dialogue, and I guess that is somewhat of an excuse -- he's not worse than any of his competitors would be the argument. Another more logical result of the limitaitons of the world in which he writes is the dumbing-down of his characters. I guess I can understand that when you are writing a book solely for entertainment, one does not want the reader to have to think too much about characters and instead get right to the action. So instead we get rather cliched, cardboard-cutout characters. So far in The Stand I have such characters as the irresponsible one-hit pop star (from whom I have heard the character Charlie Pace of Lost was influenced), the smart-alleck young woman who who gets knocked up (and whom I always picture as Ellen Page when I read her sections), and the grissly small-town guy who doesn't put up with any guff from the big, bad federal government. I'm still awaiting for the arrival of the non-stock character.

So why is King so famous? Well, I'm too early into The Stand to tell directly from this book (200 pages in the the flu pandemic that, along with the military, is pretty much wiping out the population to set the stage for the good-vs.-evil battle for which I am reading the book), but what I can discern from it thus far and from his movies is that the plot is much stronger than the craftsmanship. The reason why his movies (sometimes) turn out well is that the plotlines often sound like pitches for a movie and allow the filmmaker to either fill in the blanks that King leaves out or take advantage of the fact that a genre film needs real characters even less than a book. Although I have not seen anywhere near all 40 films, I have seen a few and the first that comes to mind as an example of this is Cujo. I watched the movie during the summer I lived in Birmingham, when I watched a lot of supposedly scary movies from the library in order to make my boring life feel slightly more interesting. I found Cujo to be a rather well-made thriller -- albeit one without a whole lot of emotional connection to the main characters. We just got a little bit of a basic, human necessity to survive and protect one's offspring and the terror the woman was going through just made sense.

Arguably the best film to be made of a King story is The Shining, for which the author himself harbors much misgivings. He complains, from what Wikipedia says, about various things such as the casting of Jack Nicholson, but what seems likely to be his real issue is that it was not a good adaptation because it failed to include the issues of alcoholism and family dynamics of his novel. From what little I have read thus far, I am willing to say already that my guess is Stanley Kubrick made the right move. King's treatment of human interaction and issues beyond pushing the plot forward seem to be both awkward and pedestrian and I would imagine much is the same in The Shining. I find the movie to be one of the most physcologically terrifying movies I have ever seen. The buildup is put together so smoothly and the readers own sense of confusion and fear is matched by those of the characters and by the end of the film we have just gone through a rather terrifying tale, but one that also made the viewer think along the way.

I will not write about every King-inspired movie (no on The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, in case you were wondering), but I would like to touch on the two movies I saw recently that explain how his work translates well into film. Dolores Claiborne was added to my queue because it was written by one of my current favorites, Tony Gilroy. I definitely saw his stamp on the movie and can see how this story that questions whether a beaten-down woman played by Kathy Bates (who gave one of her best preformances in the King-inspired Misery) who was once suspected of killing her husband of now doing the same to her employer. This story setup works well for what has become Gilroy's style of questioning point of view and using the art of the reveal to drive tension between events happening at different points in time. The movie expanded the role of the title character's daughter (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) to work as the center from which the Dolores of past and present revolve. Despite Leigh's character being a bit of a cliche and a scene at the end of the movie that wrapped up the story a too easily, it was quite a good, methodical movie.

The movie that I think helps me understand why people like King so much is the other movie I watched recently - or rewatched, to be more accurate, as I am pretty sure I have watched it more times than any other. Stand by Me is one of my personal favorite movies not because of the quality of the film but beacause I have watched it since childhood and the characters and plot are so endearing to me. Based on King's novella "The Body", it is not a horror story and that might have more to do with my taste than the worth of his various writings. Where I think I can understand the millions of King fans is that I like the movie despite its mediocracy. The story is good and the characters are pretty straightforward and a bit cliche, but because of that I can easily relate to them and digest what I am watching on screen without being caught up by having to think too much. It is a movie I can enjoy more so than respect and perhaps that is why Stephen King has become so famous and beloved as an author -- because his readers have the same reaction to his novels.