Comments on So, Regarding Movies based on King's Books

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BOTH probably ~

posted by MariVye on August 23, 2004 at 10:48 AM | link to this | reply

Hope spring eternal in the

heart of man. Maybe as you say, he keeps hoping and hoping....

posted by word.smith on August 20, 2004 at 6:49 PM | link to this | reply

Well, Kay-Ren -- Good points
One of the things I have noticed about myself and Stephen King movies is that I tend to enjoy the movie more if I haven't read the book.  Or, if I see the movie first thn read the book.  But, if I've read the book first, the movie almost always disappoints me.  Maybe I should learn from that? 

posted by archiew on August 20, 2004 at 11:36 AM | link to this | reply

Good point, JPLP
I hadn't thought of that.  BTW, Stand by Me is one of my favorite all time movies. 

posted by archiew on August 20, 2004 at 11:33 AM | link to this | reply

Not all the movies are bad. Some of my favorite movies are from Stephen King's books. I'm reading his "On Writing" book and from it I can guess that he keeps letting his stories become movies because movies were a huge part of his development.

posted by Kay-Ren on August 20, 2004 at 9:27 AM | link to this | reply

hmm...
I did enjoy those movies quite a bit, but haven't done any comparative analysis re: directors, producers, etc. I like your point though, veeely intelesting.....

posted by mycml56 on August 20, 2004 at 7:48 AM | link to this | reply

Books to Movies

Hi there. This is the first time I've read your blog, and I'm enjoying it.  Regarding King's books, it's true that they usually don't translate well to the big screen. Or the little screen.   A few diamonds in the rough do stick out however. Examples of movies that were either decent to excellent are Stand By Me, Misery, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption.

Misery was pretty good, but probably the worst movie out of the four.  Both Stand By Me and Shawshank were originally short stories by King, and both were excellent movies.  Now that I'm thinking about it, the "good" movies have a few things in common: Both Shawshank and Stand By Me were originally short stories.  Both of the movies also had a narrator helping the movie along.  Eureka!  Maybe that's it: A lot of the best writing in King's stories are the internal dialogues, monologues, emotional descriptions and observations of the characters.  With first person narration, these thoughts and observations can come out, greatly enriching the narrative. Didn't the Green Mile have narration as well? (and it was a serialized novel).

posted by JPLP on August 20, 2004 at 7:41 AM | link to this | reply

Stephen King's always been a bit like Alfred Hitchcock

He's always had a hand in the movie production somewhere along the lines, and has always had some cameo appearance in (I think) all his movies.  This link shows the movies he's appeared in: http://www.stephenking.com/pages/faq/movieappearances.php

A bit like Alfred Hitchcock in his movies, and Stan Lee in the recent SpiderMan movies!

posted by markd on August 20, 2004 at 12:54 AM | link to this | reply

Well, I think that's why he's directly involved with the productions now, isn't it?  Not sure what his situations was before, but let's face it, a buck is a buck, right?

posted by mycml56 on August 19, 2004 at 11:43 PM | link to this | reply

I think Kelli makes a good point
A lot of King's work is very in-depth and descriptive, and you can't just translate that to the screen.  Misery was a fairly successful transition, and I think Christine was too, but the others have been fairly poor.

posted by markd on August 19, 2004 at 11:31 PM | link to this | reply

Archiew

Thats a good question.  I have and love everything he's written, my husband had NEVER read him, but was interested in his movies, and he just thinks Stephen King is stupid now, and I can't explain to him that there is just too much DEPTH of thought in his books to put onscreen.  The movies ALWAYS piss me off.   

posted by Kelli on August 19, 2004 at 8:37 PM | link to this | reply