by Paul Simpson
Rose Red owes a great debt to earlier haunted-house stories, particularly Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House – a story that King admired for a long time, and paid brief homage to in Carrie, giving the young girl the ability to make stones rain from the sky. Annie Wheaton in Rose Red has that ability – and there’s an argument to be made that Annie could even be the young girl referred to in the closing pages of King’s 1974 novel. Certainly, this is the nearest that King has come to any sort of sequel to his first bestselling book.
King had wanted to work with Steven Spielberg on a project for some time, with Spielberg telling the writer that he wanted ‘to make the scariest ghost story ever made’. It seemed as if Rose Red, which was effectively a remake of the classic 1963 horror movie The Haunting (itself an adaptation of Jackson’s tale), would be a perfect fit for both men. However, during their discussions, it became clear that the two men had drastically different ideas about the approach, and they parted company. ‘In what he wanted, there was a feeling, almost a kind of sense of derring-do,’ King told the Los Angeles Times. ‘An “Indiana Jones” kind of thing that I didn’t really want in there. Steven wanted these people to be heroic. I just wanted them to be terrified.’ (Spielberg was executive producer at Dreamworks of the eventual remake of The Haunting in 1999, which was slated.)
After Storm of the Century, King pitched the story of Rose Red to ABC’s Mark Carliner, and in mid-June 1999, pre-production was all set to start, with King beginning adapting the script the following Monday. However, on the Saturday, King was knocked down by a vehicle, necessitating a long recovery period, during which writing Rose Red helped to keep him focused. The two-hour movie script was expanded into a six-hour miniseries: ‘My problem with scripts has never been not being able to find enough material,’ King admitted. ‘My problem is getting ’em down to a shootable length.’
As far as the mystery of the house was concerned, King was inspired by the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. Its owner was told by a psychic that she would die if the house was ever finished, so she continued to add room after room to it over the decades, as the Rimbauer family do in Rose Red.
The miniseries was aired in January 2002, and did well for ABC. The New York Times concluded, Rose Red is a clever tale to the end. You’ll never be tempted to take it seriously. But if you let it hook you, you won’t be tempted to turn it off,’ although USA Today was more scathing, commenting on its ‘numbingly predictable series of seen-it-before jolts’.
As part of the high-profile publicity for the series, a book entitled The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red was released, supposedly annotated by Joyce Reardon. While for a time people believed that King – or even his wife Tabitha – was the author, it was eventually revealed that King’s friend Ridley Pearson had penned the tie-in, which filled in some of the backstory for the miniseries. The Diary itself was filmed as a miniseries in 2003, directed by Craig R. Baxley.
Kingdom Hospital (2004, directed by Craig R. Baxley)
Welcome to Kingdom Hospital in Lewiston, Maine. It’s not your run-of-the-mill place of care for the sick. Mysterious spirits haunt the building, connected to the children who died in a fire many years before, and the staff aren’t exactly normal: there’s a nearly blind security guard and a nurse who faints at the sight of blood. And that’s before you meet Blondi, the highly intelligent German Shepherd dog, or Antubis, the anteater . . .
Artist Peter Rickman is the victim of a hit-and-run accident, and miraculously manages to survive, thanks to the forces gathering at the Kingdom. His assailant is killed by Antubis, and Rickman is regularly reminded by the anteater that there is a price to pay for his survival. Medium Mrs Druse wants to hold séances in the hospital, a serial killer fakes illness to get admitted, and the hospital’s chief of neurology, Dr Stegman, is starting to lose his grip on reality. If anyone at the Kingdom can be quite sure what reality is any more . . .
Kingdom Hospital is based on Lars von Trier’s miniseries The Kingdom, which was first broadcast in Denmark in 1994, and released as a subtitled video and DVD in the US a year later. While working on his version of The Shining in Boulder, Colorado in 1996, King picked up a copy of the video, which he immediately fell in love with: ‘I was immediately knocked out by how scary it was, how funny it was, and how universal it was regarding the world of medicine.’ Von Trier produced a second series of The Kingdom in Denmark in 1997 before serious work started on the American version, about which the Dane was delighted, since he was a fan of King’s writing – a feature-film version for English-speaking audiences was considered by Sony/Columbia but they came to an arrangement with King whereby they co-produced the miniseries in exchange for the rights to King’s novella Secret Window, Secret Garden which became the Johnny Depp movie Secret Window.
King’s adaptation follows some of the beats of the Danish series, with character names suitably Americanized, but there are many aspects which are unique to each variant. Antubis is a King creation; in The Kingdom, the psychic (Mrs Druse) has a very unsettling hearing test which was not replicated in the English-language edition.
It was also heavily influenced by King’s own experience of hospitals following his accident in June 1999. Executive producer Mark Carliner noted that, ‘The accident and Stephen’s extensive hospitalization gave him a more profound insight into Lars’ material. These things only happen to Stephen King.’ King was also inspired by the Dennis Potter miniseries The Singing Detective – the original BBC version with Michael Gambon rather than the movie starring Steve Martin.
At the launch of the show, King said Kingdom Hospital was ‘a little bit oddball, a little bit strange. It’s not a CSI clone; it’s not a Law & Order clone; thank God, it’s not a reality show – it’s not about carrying a tiki torch up the side of a volcano’. Entertainment Weekly called it ‘a small-screen B movie with the promise of turning into something richer and scarier’. The ratings were extremely high for the opening instalment – over 14 million viewers, an ABC record at that time – but they dropped off quickly, reaching what King described as ‘the ratings equivalent of the black death’.
Thirteen episodes were broadcast, with a two-month gap between the ninth and tenth. The scripts were by King and/or Richard Dooling, with Tabitha King providing the storyline for episode ten, ‘The Passion of Reverend Jimmy’ (aka ‘On the Third Day’). This marked the first time that the two writers had been credited together. King plotted out a second season, but the show was not picked up by ABC.
In July 2004, as the final episodes were about to air, King wrote an article for Entertainment Weekly – to which at that stage he was contributing a regular column ‘The Pop of King’ – explaining why he thought it failed: ‘We were asking viewers to give us a week or two, maybe three, and that was more time than most were willing to give.’ (A change in network bosses at ABC didn’t help the show’s chances of renewal either.)
Kingdom Hospital was initially well promoted by the network, with another tie-in book prepared, this time The Journals of Eleanor Druse: My Investigation of the Kingdom Hospital Incident, allegedly written by Druse, but penned by Richard Dooling. There are various links to other King tales within the story, and the series itself gets a mention in The Song of Susannah, the penultimate book in the ‘Dark Tower’ series.
Since then, King has written no other original stories for large or small screen.
17
A GRAPHIC APPROACH
Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men
(Marvel Comics, 1985)
The X-Mansion comes under attack from a psychic force which attacks nearly all of the mutants and makes them face their greatest fear – in the case of Kitty Pryde, it’s hunger, and she finds herself in the kitchen of the mansion facing a creature in a Death-like cowl who offers her a tasty meal which turns into a ‘sickening slush of putridity’ filled with maggots. The creature explains he is hunger personified, and tells her to starve. She is rescued by Nightcrawler.
Stephen King’s contribution to this ‘jam session’ for writers and artists was a three-page sequence featuring the young mutant Kitty Pryde – as delineated above. His section was illustrated by Berni Wrightson, with inks by Jeff Jones.
The one-off comic was the idea of Jim Starlin and Berni Wrightson, who suggested it to Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter. The proceeds from the comic would go to a hunger relief charity in the same way that the money raised by the Live Aid concerts assisted with the effort. Chris Claremont, one of the regular X-Men writers, recruited various colleagues with Starlin and Wrightson tackling their artistic friends, and the other X-Men writer Ann Nocenti coordinating efforts.
As Jim Shooter recalled in 2011, those writers who weren’t used to the sparsity of the comics’ medium – particularly in the way comics worked in the 1980s – needed some help. Although he admitted he might be exaggerating slightly, Shooter believed that King gave them 5,000 words for the three pages; overnight, Claremont, Ann Nocenti and Shooter had to cut 90 per cent of it. Shooter’s blog also details the unbelievably negative reaction Marvel received from Oxfam America when they offered the proceeds to them, and the eventual decision to pass the half a million dollars plus to the American Friends Service Committee.
American Vampire (Vertigo, May 2010–September 2010; collected October 2010)
Skinner Sweet is an American Vampire – not your standard European breed, but something quite different. His origins are told by Will Bunting, the author of Bad Blood, or The Monster Outlaw – A Terrifying Tale of the Old West: a notorious murderer and bank robber, Sweet was captured by Pinkertons Detective Agency in Sidewinder, Colorado, and put on a train bound for New Mexico. However, when his gang derail the train, they encounter a banker named Percy, who bites Sweet in the neck, leaving him for dead. (Percy can go out in daylight, even though he is a vampire, as long as he has sun cream on!) Sweet is buried on Boot Hill, but despite his grave being flooded for decades when a lake is created over Sidewinder, he survives as one of the undead. The European vampires who control the area aren’t best pleased by his survival particularly as Sweet can walk around in full daylight.
Sweet goes after the Pinkerton agents, summoning them by telegram. They come to Lakeview, the town built next to the lake which now covers Sidewinder, which Sweet has devastated, and guess that he is now a ‘skinwalker’; Bunting, who is with them, thinks that Sweet is some new sort of vampire. Sweet himself deduces his power comes from the sun. The Pinkerton agents attack, but one is killed – the other, Jim Book, is infected by Sweet’s blood. A rock fall seals Sweet inside a cave.
Book begs his partner’s daughter Abilena to kill him, while Sweet escapes and goes to kill his ‘maker’, banker Percy. Abilena makes love to Book, and then shoots him. She and her daughter by Book track Sweet and see him in 1925 at a book signing by Will Bunting . . .
American Vampire marks the third time that Stephen King has been asked for something short connected to a project, and ended up penning far more than he expected. Cycle of the Werewolf developed from vignettes for a calendar; The Colorado Kid came when he was asked for a blurb for the new crime imprint; and his involvement with American Vampire began after its creator Scott Snyder approached him for some words about the new story that he had sold to DC Comics’ mature imprint, Vertigo. Taken with the tale, King asked if he could instead write part of it – if Vertigo didn’t mind. And of course they didn’t: ‘On Monday morning, at 8.30, I got a call from the whole Vertigo office saying, “Did you say Stephen King would be willing to do an issue or two?” So I told them that he was. And they, of course, were over the moon about it,’ Snyder told Lilja’s Library.
The first five issues of American Vampire contained two stories each: the first, written by Scott Snyder, told the tale of Sweet’s ‘current-day’ activities in 1925. The second was penned by King, and related Sweet’s backstory. Although he had been a comics fan for many years, King had not written for the medium since 1985, and, as he noted in ‘Suck on This’, his introduction to the graphic novel collection, it had changed considerably: ‘thought balloons . . . are now passé’ he discovered. He stated that he wanted to ‘light a blowtorch and burn [a story] in’, keen to help rid readers of the idea that vampires were of the Twilight ilk: ‘anorexic teenage girls, boy-toys with big dewy eyes’, as he described them in the introduction.
King didn’t devise Sweet’s backstory – Snyder had worked out the main beats before King’s involvement – but the storytelling was completely down to him, in tandem with artist Rafael Albuquerque. As he told Lilja’s Library, Snyder thought King would only have time to write two issues but King enjoyed himself, and surprised Snyder by asking if he could ‘go off the res[ervation] a little bit . . . He wound up doing five full sixteen-page issues about Skinner and his relationship with his adversary, a Pinkerton who caught him when he was alive. And it was just so good. I mean the series as a whole, not just his part of it, is exponentially better for his involvement. I couldn’t be more grateful.’
Stephen King’s involvement with the title ended with issue five, but according to Snyder at the time, he would ‘love [King] to come back for the 1950s. We both love rockabilly and hot rods. I want to see what he’d do with vampires in that period.’ However, when the tale reached that point – in stories published during 2012 – King was not part of the creative team.
18
PUMPING OUT THE MUSIC
Music has always been a driving force in King’s life – not just his use of song titles and lyrics in his writing, but also playing in the Rock Bottom Remainders, owning a radio station, and ‘cranking the AC-DC up’ when he is working. Although some of his stories have been brought to the stage in musical form – notably Carrie and Dolores Claiborne – public contributions to new musical works haven’t been one of his more prolific areas.
Black Ribbons (2010)
Shooter Jennings’ concept album, which he described before it came out as ‘an experience from top to bottom’, is a selection of songs sung by Jennings’ band Heirophant, hosted by a DJ Will O’ The Wisp, whose talk show is being shut down because of government censorship. In the final hour before the government’s lackeys arrive to close him down, Will O’ The Wisp plays music by his favourite band, Heirophant.
Jennings came up with the idea of asking King to play Will O’ The Wisp in the dystopian tale and sent a script to the author. King then ‘took that and he rewrote it and changed it and added quite a lot of great stuff, so at the end of the day, that part of it was a collaboration,’ Jennings told the Associated Press.
Jennings devised the concept while driving around America with his fiancée and infant daughter during the latter part of 2008 just as the economic crisis was building, and people were predicting the end of civilization or a police state. After various emails with the author, Jennings received a CD with a recording of King’s version of the text, called ‘The Last Night of the Last Light’, which he then incorporated into the album.
Jennings’ music was mentioned by King in Lisey’s Story, and the author told the Guardian that he had ‘been a huge Shooter Jennings fan from the very beginning, so I was flattered to be asked’. Jennings explained to music magazine Mix Online: ‘I’m super-proud of this record, and making it was one of the best times of my life.’ His connection with King continued two years later when he recorded the song ‘1922’ which was a retelling of King’s novella of that name from Full Dark, No Stars.
Ghost Brothers of Darkland County
(Stage version: 2012; Album: 2013)
In 1967 a tragedy happened in Lake Belle Reve, in Darkland County, Mississippi, and those who died haunt the site. Forty years later, Joe McCandless calls his family to the haunted cabin: his son Frank, an author who is having an af
fair with Anna, who’s supposed to be dating Drake, his older musician brother, who’s normally been the successful one of the pair. The two boys are constantly at loggerheads: Drake recently broke Frank’s arm, and Anna’s actions are making things worse. Joe arrives as the situation is being stirred up by the Devil whispering in everyone’s ears, and starts to tell them what happened in 1967 to his two brothers Jack and Andy, as well as the caretaker Dan Coker, who died in the cabin.
The boys both fell in love with the same girl, Jenna (and all three, as ghosts, are watching what’s happening in 2007), but when Jack started to get more attention after winning a shooting medal, Andy became very jealous. The story starts to get to Frank and Drake as Drake believes a ghostly hand helps him find Jack’s shooting medal that has been in the cabin for forty years. Joe relates how, as a youngster of ten, he watched Jack and Jenna tell Andy that they were engaged. The argument became more volatile as the boys got drunk, and escalated into a shooting contest – in which Jack shot Andy. Joe tells his family that Jack and Jenna then committed suicide. But the ghosts give their brother a chance to tell the truth – and that has unintended consequences . . .
Ghost Brothers of Darkland County was over a decade in preparation – rock star John Mellencamp approached Stephen King with the idea for a play in the mid-1990s, based on real events that had occurred at a cabin in Indiana. Two brothers had fallen out over a girl, one had shot the other, and the survivor and the girl were killed in a car accident on their way back into town. King liked the idea of a haunted cabin where events started to play out in the present as they had done in the past, reckoning he was the obvious choice for someone to talk to about writing a ghost story.
