The other “terribly indulgent” Stanley Kubrick movie Stephen King can’t stand: “Doesn’t hold up”
Stanley Kubrick may have crafted one of the greatest horror movies of all time with The Shining, but it wasn’t for everyone, with Stephen King having always been its most famous detractor.
There was nothing about the adaptation that appealed to the source material’s author, whether it was the “grotesque” casting of Shelley Duvall, the complete miscasting of Jack Nicholson, or the filmmaker’s cold, calculating, and meticulous approach, making him the wrong fit to take on the Overlook Hotel.
Those are merely King’s opinions, although it’s fascinating to think how The Shining could have turned out had his number one pick for the director’s chair, Don Siegel, gotten the nod instead. The horror icon has made his stance on the film clear, but he did at least manage to find catharsis twice over.
He believes the 1997 miniseries is the definitive take on his story, and Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep went a long way to soothing, if not outright healing, the scribe’s many issues with Kubrick’s vision. Ask anyone about which one of the auteur’s movies King hates, and you’ll get one answer right away, but it’s not the only one.
Even before The Shining had been released in 1980, King was openly trashing it. He was happy to get paid for the rights, but he suddenly decided that he had issues when one of the industry’s most talented creative minds wanted to make it their own. He appreciated Kubrick’s genius, just not all the time.
“He is one of the three or four greatest directors of our day, maybe of all time,” he acknowledged. “However, I think he is indulgent; terribly indulgent.” That’s not inaccurate, since Kubrick loved going behind schedule and shooting a ludicrous amount of takes, but what came next is nothing if not questionable.
“Clockwork Orange just doesn’t hold up today,” King stated. “Some of his other films do.” The controversial dystopian nightmare was one of the most divisive pictures of its time, so much so that Kubrick banned it from the United Kingdom until after his death. However, while it may look dated in some respects on a purely aesthetic level, the story and its themes still pack a powerful punch.
To illustrate that he didn’t have a personal vendetta against the director, King clarified that Dr Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Barry Lyndon did hold up, and so does Full Metal Jacket with the benefit of hindsight, even if he couldn’t comment at the time because it was still a twinkle in Kubrick’s cinematic eye.
The titan of terror prognosticated that even if The Shining was a failure, “it will be an interesting failure.” It wasn’t, even if Kubrick was nominated for ‘Worst Director’ at the Razzies for some inexplicable reason, but he continued shitting all over its existence in the years to come, regardless.
