A Slave To Interpretation

I came across an interesting article tonight (well, technically it's morning) where a columnist was listing their 10 (from best to worst) Stephen King movie adaptations. I saw before I clicked over to the main article that The Shining was listed at #1, and immediately thought "Well, surely they're talking about the miniseries SK did in '97", but I was wrong. For some reason I couldn't fathom, they had not only put the Kubrick movie on the list, but at #1, above every other adaptation.

So, after reading the entire list, I went back to the top and re-read the description, which I'll just quote here:

"Stephen King famously hated Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining. His major grievance with the Kubrick film is his feeling that the director downplayed the supernatural element of the story as much as possible and emphasized the psychological origins of main character Jack Torrance’s madness. He also suggested, probably correctly, that casting Jack Nicholson in the role would diminish the effect of an otherwise normal man descending into derangement, as Nicholson had mostly played unstable characters up to that point. However, I think what is so powerful about The Shining is its open-endedness and the idea that we may never know exactly where our demons are coming from. It would be easy enough to blame Torrance’s meltdown on some external evil entity but the film is much more compelling because that is not made explicit. All of this aside, Kubrick is a visual master and a director whose vast attention to detail and style give this film its unique and stunning look. This is my number one Stephen King adaptation because it transcends King himself and is not only one of the best thrillers ever made, but one of the best films ever made"

Well, that's....

I'm sorry, but doesn't "best adaptation" imply that it's the most faithful to the source material? Am I missing something here?

The main part of that whole spiel that bothers me is the last line: "...because it transcends King himself and is not only one of the best thrillers ever made, but one of the best films ever made." So, in a roundabout way, it seems like the writer of this article is implying that King's beefs with the so-called adaptation are unfounded, which is wrong, in my opinion.

Anyway, after re-reading the description a second time, I decided to hit the comments and see what other people were saying about it, and the first couple of comments gave me hope, with people saying thinks like:

"Shawshank Redemption is one of the best movies of all time so it should be number 1 without a doubt. Kubrick’s self indulgent butchering of the story in The Shining should make it a choice on the worst list."

"The Shining was one of King's best novels. The movie was outstandingly bad and I can't believe anyone who rates the movie highly even read the book. Stanley Kubrick is/was one of the world's most over-rated directors. The television mini-series version of "The Shining" was a vast improvement over the cinematic version."

"The Shining #1????? That was the most pathetic adaptation of a Stephen King book on record! Shawshank Redemption should have been #1 with The Mist a lot higher than it was ranked. The rest of the list is pretty well spot on."

But then I read further down and found comments like:

"" This is my number one Stephen King adaptation because it transcends King himself and is not only one of the best thrillers ever made, but one of the best films ever made." Agreed. Stephen King is my hero but I do agree that the movie was done well. It wasn't what he envisioned, but obviously it resonated with readers, and they have the book (as well as his own Shining movie series) for his idea. Besides, a major part of writing is begin interpreted in endless ways." 


And there were a few others who agreed with this person which, as a writer, really bothered me.

Now, I don't claim to know everything about writing (which is part of the excitement that keeps me going) and I can't speak for every writer, but there are certain ways I NEVER want my work to be interpreted. If I feel it's a complete bastardization of the work I lovingly cultivated over months or years, then I have every right to fight against it, in my mind. The idea of a novel "transcending" the writer in a way the writer is vehemently against is something that should never happen, and yet it happens everyday.

Exhibit A: Alan Moore

Moore has been very outspoken over the years about not wanting his work, saying, "They were written to be impossible to reproduce in terms of cinema. So why not leave them as a comic, in they way they were intended to be?"

Initially, Moore was content to just take the money for the film and keep his mouth shut, then he stopped taking any royalties at all and insisted that his name be stricken from the titles. And I can see why after so many of his stories were outright ruined by Hollywood, even before Watchmen. For some reason, even with Moore's constant protests, studios continue to gain access to movie rights due to his publishers' moneygrubbing.
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Now, I consider it different when a writer is closely involved with the filming process, like O'Barr was on The Crow. This was an instance where the writer personally signed off on everything the director wanted, and was pleased with the final product. In cases like this, if the writer has any complaints after filming, it's really their own fault.

Anyway,  I guess the main thing that irked me about the article was the fact that people (most of whom didn't even seem to have read the book) were running to the defense of a pitifully-done adaptation of a great work. If the movie had been called anything other than The Shining, I probably wouldn't have any problems with it, in all honesty, but when you use the name, you're making certain promises to the viewer, and I felt that those promises were broken by Kubrick.

If you'd like to check out the article for yourself, I'm leaving a link below, so feel free to check it out. And if you get a chance, please comment and give me your opinions on this. Should a writer always be a slave to unwanted interpretation?

Stephen King's Books Turned to Films, From Best to Worst