“That’s just me”: the iconic performance Stephen King compared to a “screaming dishrag”
When so many of his novels, novellas, and short stories are being brought to the screen with such regularity, Stephen King is under no obligation to even watch them all, never mind passing judgment on their positives and/or negatives.
The prolific author wouldn’t even have the time to add to his ever-expanding bibliography if he felt compelled to comment on every single adaptation that trundles down the Hollywood pipeline, but sometimes he can’t help himself.
Not that he’s ever stood on a soapbox or pedestal to denigrate filmmakers for butchering his back catalogue, though, when he’s reserved particularly scornful words for himself. Maximum Overdrive is undoubtedly one of the worst movies ever based on a King story, and because he directed it himself, he wasn’t too proud to take himself out of the firing line for creating such a disastrous picture.
King’s seal of approval still carries plenty of weight when many filmmakers who tackle his tales on screens, big or small, have grown up as avid readers and huge fans of his work, but Stanley Kubrick couldn’t have cared less what the author had to say. He was meticulous, single-minded, and an icon of cinema, so he decided it was in the best interests of all involved for The Shining to make some deviations from the source material.
It’s hard to try and argue against Kubrick’s call when the spine-chilling psychological terror is undoubtedly one of the greatest, most intense, and atmospheric horror flicks to ever emerge from Hollywood, but King is its most famous and vocal detractor who believes 1997’s televised miniseries was the superior of the two.
Shelley Duvall’s performance as the traumatised and beleaguered Wendy Torrance is one of the genre’s most iconic and unmistakable turns, one that pushed the actor to the brink in order to achieve Kubrick’s vision. It was among her finest work on the silver screen, but King was not a fan of how a character he created became virtually unrecognisable.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, King continued his anti-Shining crusade by describing the film as “so misogynistic,” singling out Duvall as endemic of Kubrick’s approach. “I mean, Wendy Torrance is just presented as this sort of screaming dishrag,” he suggested. “But that’s just me; that’s the way I am.”
Admittedly, Wendy does do an awful lot of screaming in The Shining, but it would be stranger if she didn’t. After all, she’s trapped in the middle of nowhere in a cavernous hotel that carries its own set of dark and dangerous secrets, all while her husband is edging closer to the brink of insanity, which by extension makes Jack Nicholson’s spouse an increasingly ominous threat to her very existence.
From where King was sitting, Duvall was little more than lung-bursting window dressing, which is doing a disservice to a performance that’s unquestionably one of the most unforgettable in horror history.
