The project Stephen King was “coked out of my mind” for
The works of Stephen King have always proven to be good value for a film adaptation, with the likes of The Shining, Carrie and Christine being handled by Stanley Kubrick, Brian De Palma and John Carpenter, respectively, showing that filmmakers can profit significantly from King’s ingenious writings.
The genres of science fiction and horror have been greatly advanced by King, and the directors who seek to bring his works to the big screen and American cinema would not be as rich in quality as it is today if it weren’t for King crafting his worlds with tense atmospheres and chilling narratives.
Eventually, King tried his hand at directing a movie himself, with the 1986 horror film Maximum Overdrive. It’s often the case that an actor turns director, but less frequently that a novelist finds themselves in the director’s chair. Still, in the mid-1980s, King brought his short story ‘Trucks’ into the cinema.
King’s only directorial effort tells of the events that occur after the machines of Earth become sentient following a huge comet passing over the planet, and a huge killing spree by the machines ensues. However, Maximum Overdrive was a disaster on a critical and commercial basis, and even at the time of release, King had referred to it as a “moron movie”.
King had once called the film thus when comparing it to Ron Howard’s 1984 work Splash!, noting, “You check your brains at the box office, and you come out 96 minutes later and pick them up again. People say, ‘How’d you like the movie?’ and you can’t say much. It’s not like The Big Chill or 2001.”
As a novelist, King might have been hesitant to take on a director’s role, but he once revealed that his editor once told him, “King has a movie projector in his head.” King felt that his editor might just have been right and explained that whenever he writes a scene in his books, he seems to consider it from a cinematic perspective.
King noted an interest in the “kinetics of the world” and that such an interest has led to many of his works being adapted for the big screen. Still, Maximum Overdrive was a sheer failure, and King might have put this down to the fact that he was working in a very different way to how he was used.
“I realised that I had never worked this way in my life,” he admitted. “I never wrote down ideas before I started a book; I always figured if I was one idea ahead, I was lucky.” The 1986 horror saw King be nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for ‘Worst Director’, while Emilio Estevez, who starred in the film, got the nod for ‘Worst Actor’.
Another issue arose when King came to make the movie: his well-reported drug use. The writer-turned-one-time director later explained, “The problem with that film is that I was coked out of my mind all through its production, and I really didn’t know what I was doing.”
However, King admitted that he “learned a lot from the experience” and that he would be interested in directing a movie on another occasion. Ever since then, though, King hasn’t taken to the director’s chair again, which might just have been for the best.
