The cinematic sin Frank Darabont refused to atone for: “Kiss my ass!”
Stephen King is one of the most adapted writers in the English language.
His horror stories have led to some of the scariest films ever made, while his non-frightening texts have become classics too. But the question naturally arises – ‘Which director knows how to handle his work the best?’, because Rob Reiner did an excellent job with Stand By Me, while Brian De Palma undoubtedly sparked the entire craze with Carrie. For my money, however, it’s Frank Darabont that holds the title of ‘The King Whisperer’.
In the 1990s, Darabont adapted two of King’s stories so well, he earned the author’s complete trust. The first is a film that regularly comes up in discussions of the greatest of all time: The Shawshank Redemption.
Based on a novella from 1982, Andy Dufresne’s torturous stint in and miraculous escape from Shawshank prison is widely (and rightfully) considered a masterpiece. Darabont followed this up with another tale of hope and turmoil set inside a prison. The Green Mile studied the relationship between Tom Hanks’ death row guard and Michael Clarke Duncan’s condemned inmate. It made a star out of the latter and once again received rave reviews.
Unfortunately for Darabont, his non-King affiliated projects haven’t always turned out so well. Just look at his 2001 romantic drama, The Majestic. That was slated by critics, including Empire. Well over a decade later, Darabont got the chance to defend his movie against the publication when he was interviewed by them. He didn’t pull any punches.
“The Majestic, for example, is a movie I’m very proud of and I really love,” he said. “It achieved exactly what I set out to make. And I find it very moving. But in your very magazine, somebody who praised the hell out of Shawshank said, ‘Frank Darabont needs to apologise for making The Majestic.’ And I thought, ‘Really? What did I do? I need to apologise? Kiss my ass!’”
The film stars Jim Carrey as a blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter who, after suffering a head injury, winds up in a small town with no memory of who he is, where he locals believe him to be a resident who went missing during World War II, so they take him in as if he were one of their own, and this was one of the first times Carrey took on a purely dramatic role, foreshadowing his greatness in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Unfortunately, that did little to win over the critics or the public. The Majestic was a massive financial disappointing, losing Warner Bros an estimated $35million.
A quick scan of Empire’s original review of the movie reveals zero mention of the director needing to apologise. It’s possible that Darabont is talking about a different review, or part of the original article has been lost, or he’s just confusing Empire for a different magazine. Whatever the answer, his stance on those pesky critics is probably still the same.
For the record, Carrey holds a similar stance to his old colleague, praising the movie and lambasting those who didn’t get it.
