The real story behind the most brutal scene in Stephen King’s ‘Misery’
Many Stephen King novels have had iconic film adaptations ranging from The Shining to Carrie. Ostensibly, the Maine native is hailed as ‘The King of Horror’, but his oeuvre is a varied one that has spawned equally as famous titles outside those confines, including The Running Man and The Green Mile. Whilst his many titles outside of the horror genre are stellar, it is within the realms of the weird and the eerie, the gruesome and the chilling, where he really excels, hence his de facto status as the master of all things horror. One of the finest film adaptations of his horror works is 1990’s Misery, a staple of the claustrophobic psychological thriller subgenre.
Based on the 1987 novel of the same name, it stars James Caan as the famed romance novelist Paul Sheldon who is about to end his successful series of Victorian romance novels and kill off their protagonist Misery Chastain. Opposite him is Kathy Bates in her first film role after making waves on Broadway, and she plays the unhinged mega-fan of Sheldon’s novels, Annie Wilkes, who holds the author captive and subjects him to unimaginable horror. This is her definitive role for Bates, and it has continued to gain plaudits from many of her most esteemed peers.
Despite the film having many terrifying scenes, none made more of an impact on everyone than the hobbling scene, where after finding out that Sheldon had been sneaking out of his room, Wilkes subjects him to the brutal punishment of breaking his ankles with a sledgehammer to render him immobile, so she can force him to re-write his last novel and save Chastain.
Undoubtedly this is the film’s defining scene, and it was this part that captured the imagination of screenwriter William Goldman when director-producer Rob Reiner approached him to helm the script. “I could not f—ing believe it,” Goldman recalled in his memoir Which Lie Did I Tell? More Adventures in the Screen Trade. “I mean, I knew she wasn’t going to tickle him with a peacock feather, but I never dreamt such behaviour was possible. And I knew I had to write the movie.”
Although the scene from the movie is now one of the most iconic in the world of Stephen King cinema, as original fans of the book will know, it is much different to King’s original. It got watered down due to the adverse reaction of those working on the title and those in the picture for starring roles.
In the book, Wilkes doesn’t break Paul’s ankles, instead the unhinged former nurse slices off his left foot with an axe, and then cauterises the wound with a propane torch, in one of the most spine-tingling moments King has ever put to paper. Duly, it didn’t take long for Reiner and Goldman to realise that this was too brutal of a scene to be included in the film adaptation.
The scene was so divisive that the original director Reiner had hired, George Roy Hill of The Sting fame, pulled out, citing his issues with directing that particular scene. Per Goldman’s account, Hill explained: “I was up all night. And I just could not hear myself saying, ‘Action!’ on that scene.”
After Hill pulled out, refusing to direct the scene, Reiner decided to head the flick himself. Hill’s decision made Goldman question the scene, and in the period that followed, Reiner informally surveyed everyone working at his production company, Castle Rock. He provided the screenwriter with updates, telling him on one occasion: “A good day for the hobblers today, three secretaries said leave it alone.”
The scene impacted the casting to such an extent that Bette Midler, one of the most prominent names of the day, turned down the role of Wilkes because of it. When speaking to the New York Times later, she labelled her decision to turn the film down “stupid”, but that it was because she “didn’t want to saw off someone’s foot.”
For a time, Hollywood’s legendary lothario Warren Beatty looked set to take the role of Paul, but again, the scene left a sour taste. Goldman recalled: “Beatty’s point was this: He had no trouble losing his feet at the ankles, but know that if you did that, the guy would be crippled for life and would be a loser”.
Becoming a real nuisance, the scene forced Reiner and co-producer Andrew Scheinman to look at the script without Goldman. When he eventually read their edit, he was incensed, as they had changed the foot chopping to broken ankles in the hope of lifting the movie out of production hell.
“We wanted Paul Sheldon at the end of this movie to emerge victorious over Annie Wilkes, and if he wound up without a foot — even if he winds up beating her and she dies — then he maybe paid too high a price for that,” Reiner explained in the DVD commentary for Misery. “Most of the people who have seen this movie say it was pretty darn painful to look at, so I don’t think we compromised it too much.”
Even after they watered down the brutality of the scene, Reiner struggled to find an actor to play Paul. He was rejected by a host of icons after Beatty, including Harrison Ford, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Robert Redford. Eventually, they ended up with James Caan, which proved to be a masterstroke of providence.
Given the challenging themes of the film, and just how horrific Wilkes’ violence could be, despite it being dialled back, filming Misery could often be tense, with the hobbling scene the most difficult for Caan and Bates. In Misery Loves Company, Caan remembered it having an adverse effect on Bates: “She’s so antiviolent, or antiviolence, she literally was crying”. However, she stuck at it, and it became the film’s most iconic moment, searing it into popular culture lore.
“The hobbling scene was kind of horrible for all of us,” cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld also recalled. “For Rob, you know, anything where an actor doesn’t talk, it’s like a huge special effect. So I remember he was sort of in a bad mood about having to do it.”
