by Rocky Wood
Sukeena was Ellen Rimbauer’s servant. She came to America with the Rimbauers from Africa, where they met her while honeymooning. Ellen never called her a servant but rather a friend, and later a sister. She was severely treated by the authorities after April Rimbauer disappeared in 1917 and helped Ellen push John Rimbauer to his death in 1923. In May 2001 she “took” both Carl Miller and Kay Waterman.
The members of Reardon’s disastrous expedition were chosen for a variety of psychic skills. The concept will remind horror fans of Shirley Jackson’s classic 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, made into an excellent black-and-white movie, The Haunting in 1963 but poorly remade in 1999, with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Liam Neeson starring. As King has often acknowledged Jackson’s influence on his writing there is little doubt that Rose Red is both homage and King’s take on the “wake-up the haunted house expedition” sub-genre. Indeed, the opening words of Jackson’s novel might well describe Rose Red:
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Apart from Joyce Reardon and Steve Rimbauer there were another seven members of the “official” expedition, not including the photographer, Bollinger. The key to awakening the house was Annie Wheaton. A 15 year old autistic girl, Annie was also telekinetic, telepathic and psychokinetic. As a result, Reardon believed she would have the power to wake Rose Red. At the age of five she’d made stones rain on her neighbor’s house after their dog bit her. Annie survived the expedition.
Her older sister Rachel wanted Annie to go to the Gatt school in Tacoma because she thought someone would understand her there, unlike her parents. The father, George did not like Annie and her mother was afraid of her. Rachel therefore saw the $12,000 offered by Reardon for Annie to attend Rose Red as means to an end. She also escaped the house.
Emery Waterman, about 28 and plump, was post cognitive. He lost four fingers on one hand when Rose Red slammed the door he was holding but otherwise survived the expedition intact. Victor Kandinsky, a precognitive, followed someone or something he thought was Pam Ashbury in the house and died of a heart attack. Nick Hardaway disappeared in the perspective hallway (for some reason this character and actor always remind your author of the British operative and hero of The Langoliers, Nick Hopewell). Viewers of the mini-series often comment on the lack of set up of an explanation for Hardaway’s disappearance. In fact the other characters don’t seem to notice his absence at any point!
Pam Ashbury was a “touch-know.” She drowned in the little pond in Rose Red’s back yard after following someone or something she thought was Cathy Kramer. Kramer was an automatic writer and was one of the survivors.
As ever in his screenplays King takes the opportunity to link the script with his other fiction in a number of ways (Rose Red is also mentioned in the later The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah). Andre Linoge of Storm of the Century is mentioned in the screenplay as a note for Emery Waterman’s dialogue – “Emery does Andre Linoge and says, ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil.’” Sukeena heard April Rimbauer singing I’m a Little Teapot after she disappeared. This was an important tune in Storm of the Century.
Bollinger disappeared and apparently hung himself in the Mirror Library of Rose Red, which had bookcases lined with books and a mirrored floor. In King’s early short story The Glass Floor, a library (empty of bookshelves) with a mirrored floor and ceilings was also the location of a number of deaths.
Carrie White made it rain stones on a house. At the end of Carrie there is a letter from Amelia Jenks to her sister Sandra Jenks. In it she discusses her 2 year old daughter Annie (!) who is able to move things around without touching them, so obviously she is telekinetic. The letter is dated 3 May 1988, meaning that Annie Jenks was born in 1986, the same year as Annie Wheaton, who also made stones rain on a house after the neighbor’s dog bit her.
The whole concept of a house building itself long after its owner has died was originally proposed by King in one of his more under-rated tales, It Grows on You. That story was first published in Marshroots for Fall 1973 and is therefore one of his earliest original storylines. It was significantly revised for its appearance in Whispers for July 1982. Another major revision for its appearance in Nightmares and Dreamscapes in 1993, in which it became a Castle Rock Story, represents a third version of the story. Another variation of It Grows on You appeared when the Marshroots version was published with minor textual variations in Weird Tales for Summer 1991. It certainly seems King has an attachment to this tale, and storyline!
In summary Rose Red is likely to be seen as a valiant attempt at network mini-series television of the haunted house sub-genre. The characters have great potential but do not seem to deliver on screen. While the haunted house sub-genre is certainly not original the storyline created around it (Ellen, Sukeena and the events surrounding them) most certainly is. King students and fans alike may enjoy the viewing experience but Rose Red will most likely not make the favorite lists of King tales for most.
Rose Red And Its Victims
John Rimbauer built Rose Red, a grand house in Seattle, for his wife Ellen from 1906 to 1909. Between the end of World War One and 2001 five men and eighteen women died or disappeared on the premises. After Ellen Rimbauer’s disappearance in 1950 the house apparently continued to build itself. Dr. Joyce Reardon led an expedition to it in late May 2001, with disastrous results.
The known victims of the house are as follows.
1906 A foreman – shot by Harry Corbin on the building site
1906 Harry Corbin – possibly driven to murder by something at the site
c. 1906-1909 Three workmen died – one decapitated by a sheet of falling glass; another fell off scaffolding and broke his neck; and one choked to death on a piece of apple
1915 Douglas Posey – John Rimbauer’s partner, hung himself at Rose Red in front of Adam and April Rimbauer
1917 April Rimbauer – disappeared
c. 1919 George Meader – died in the solarium of Rose Red after being stung by a bee
1923 John Rimbauer – pushed from the Rose Tower by Ellen Rimbauer and Sukeena
15 January 1946 Deanna Petrie – disappeared while at Rose Red
15 January 1950 Ellen Rimbauer – disappeared in the perspective hallway
1972 Liza Albert – went missing while touring Rose Red
26 May 2001 Pam Ashbury – drowned in the little pond in Rose Red’s back yard
26 May 2001 Victor Kandinsky – died of a heart attack
c. 26 May 2001 Kevin Bollinger – Rose Red took him while he was in the solarium. Later he was “seen” hanging in the mirror library
c. 26 May 2001 Nick Hardaway – disappeared in the perspective hallway
c. 26 May 2001 Carl Miller – led into the side yard by Sukeena and killed
c. 26 May 2001 Kay Waterman – taken by Sukeena
c. 26 May 2001 Joyce Reardon – disappeared after refusing to leave Rose Red
97 Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, Stephen Jones, p.131
The Shining Screenplays (Late 1970s, 1997)
King has effectively created three versions of the tale many non-King fans associate him with, The Shining. Most fans would immediately identify both the novel and the mini-series screenplay but many fewer would know that King also wrote a movie length screenplay that, of course, was never produced.
One of King’s most searing psychological pieces, The Shining was first published in 1977. He wrote Before the Play as a deliberate prelude to The Shining – that story is covered in a separate chapter. King also penned After the Play, an epilogue to The Shin
ing but this was merged into the novel. King has said that the full version of that story has been lost.
The novel was inspired by Ray Bradbury’s The Veldt and was originally to be titled Darkshine. The draft of that story was on the backburner when the Kings went to visit the Hotel Stanley in Estes Park, Colorado on 30 October 1974, where they are said to have stayed in Room 217. Inspired by the eerie atmosphere of the end-of-season hotel King began working again on the manuscript, now known as The Shine. At publication the book was given its final title.
Stanley Kubrick’s classic movie adaptation, starring Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, was released in 1980. Kubrick and his movies are the subject of endless debate in artistic and movie industry circles. The director of the brilliant 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket, Lolita and the execrable Eyes Wide Shut arouses strong emotions among movie critics and fans alike and The Shining was no exception.
Kubrick’s adaptation is also the subject of much controversy within the King community. Despite its obvious brilliance as a movie and the outstanding acting of Jack Nicholson, many King fans cannot bring themselves to fully appreciate the movie as a result of the many changes Kubrick made to the storyline and the way he presented Jack Torrance’s character. Instead of the slow decline into insanity portrayed in the novel moviegoers understood that Jack was quite mad to begin with (this was perhaps further influenced by Nicholson’s Academy Award winning role as an asylum inmate in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, released only five years earlier).
King himself did not particularly enjoy the adaptation. King’s childhood friend, Chris Chesley told George Beahm, “I went with Steve to see The Shining. I could tell … that he liked what the director had done, but the supernatural side of it had been excised – it wasn’t his vision at all. That’s what he said when we left the theater. It wasn’t his book – it was Kubrick’s movie.”98
Regardless of the feelings of many King fans, used as they were to the written format of storytelling, there is no doubt the high-profile and the cinematic, critical and box office success of the movie added greatly to King’s early career, bringing ever more readers to his novels. Considering King’s appreciation of the silver screen, it still surprises somewhat that he appears to dislike the movie so intensely. One wonders if it was the actual film, or the effects of dealing with the notoriously difficult Kubrick, that created that dislike.
King always harbored a strong desire to remake the movie in the manner in which he would have preferred and got his chance with the 1997 mini-series, appropriately named Stephen King’s The Shining (as compared to Stanley Kubrick’s!) While that adaptation is faithful to the core storyline and motivations of the novel (with some changes, as noted later) it lacked the dramatic punch of the movie.
The debate over which version is the better will rage on for decades but each should be viewed on its own terms – Kubrick’s as a brilliant piece of movie making, with superb imagery and never to be forgotten scenes (“Here’s Johnny!”) that have entered movie lore, along with outstanding acting by Nicholson; King’s as a superb piece of television, genuinely frightening and a faithful adaptation of the material, along with an element of fun lacking in both the book and the movie.
All versions of The Shining are America Under Siege stories and link to other King fiction (see the feature panel).
Unproduced Movie Screenplay
King wrote a 132 page, 369 scene screenplay for a movie length production of The Shining. It has never been published and it is clear that for any number of reasons, not the least of which is King’s writing of the later mini-series screenplay, it never will be. A copy is held in Box 2318 at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine, Orono and readers can access it there. It is enlightening that, despite the controversy over the Kubrick and King screen versions, King has not placed this earlier screenplay in a restricted box, but one that allows public access. Readers may therefore peruse the script at UMO if they wish.
The screenplay was written before Stanley Kubrick and novelist Diane Johnson developed their version, which was used in Kubrick’s film. In fact, Jones points out that Kubrick declined the script, “…because he did not want to be influenced by anyone else’s view of the book (not even the author’s!).”99 A copy of King’s rejected screenplay was displayed at a Kubrick exhibition in Melbourne, Australia in January 2006. King aficionado Denis Gatiatullin noted the date on it as 7 October 1977.
King speaks of the difficulty of writing this script, under contract, in an interview with David Chute, first published in Take One for January 1979 and reproduced in Underwood and Miller’s Feast of Fear100.
Although the novel is set in late 1977, no date is given for the action in this screenplay. However, we know it occurs after 1975, as that was the year we are told the Overlook Hotel first made money.
The screenplay will not be summarized here, as it is very faithful to the novel. There is a summary in the next section of the mini-series screenplay, which does include subtle changes from the novel. Among the minor changes in this script is that the Woman in Room 217 is not named (few but the most fanatical of King’s reader base will know her actual name, given in the novel as Mrs. Massey). After trying to strangle Danny Torrance she was seen in the Colorado Lounge images, very drunk and “…not looking much more alive than when Danny saw her in the bath.”
In another change, Danny’s imaginary playmate, Tony (actually a projected older version of himself) is not included in this script. Al Shockley, Jack’s recovering alcoholic friend who got him the job at the Overlook is also deleted (it seems King’s Word Processor is as powerful as Richard Hagstrom’s).
Although this script would have adequately served a movie adaptation it lacks the power and passion of Kubrick’s interpretation and we should be thankful that the King screenplay actually produced was that for the mini-series, written nearly two decades later, allowing more maturity to his scriptwriting and the valuable extra length allowed in that television format. All in all, the second script is the richer and more expressive of the two.
Mini-Series Screenplay
King’s screenplay for the mini-series version of The Shining has never been published and it is most unlikely that it ever will be, as readers have the novel and viewers the DVD/video to enjoy. Copies of the telescript do however circulate freely in the King community and readers should have no great difficulty in finding one.
The screenplay was produced on a budget of $25 million and shown as a mini-series in the United States, not surprisingly under the title Stephen King’s The Shining. To be allowed to produce the mini-series Warner Brothers had to make a payment described as “rather enormous” to Kubrick, who held the sequel and remake rights from the original movie101. The mini-series debuted on the ABC-TV network on the nights of 27 April, 28 April and 1 May 1997. IMDB members give the production a surprisingly low 6.0 rating out of a possible 10. Mick Garris directed, having earlier helmed Sleepwalkers, the mini-series of The Stand and Quicksilver Highway; and King was credited as Executive Producer. The production won two Emmys and the DVD was released in 2003.
The actors included Steven Weber as Jack Torrance102; Rebecca De Mornay as Wendy Torrance; Courtland Mead as Danny Torrance; Melvin Van Peebles as Dick Hallorann; Elliott Gould as Stuart Ullman; Pat Hingle as Pete Watson; and Cynthia Garris (the wife of the Director, in fantastic makeup) as the Woman in Room 217. Stephen King played Gage Creed, more of which later. Of the lead actors, perhaps only Gould was a truly satisfying casting choice.
As there are subtle changes in this screenplay from the novel a short summary of the storyline follows. Jack Torrance, a failed teacher and struggling writer with a drinking problem, took a caretaking job for the winter at the haunted Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Jack’s wife Wendy and son Danny also settled into the Hotel, hoping for a better turn in their lives after Jack’s alcoholism had led to his both sacking from a teaching job in Vermont and to the brea
king of Danny’s arm in a drunken rage. Danny had a strange ability to feel and see things no one else could, which hotel employee Dick Hallorann told him was called “the shine” or “shining.” Hallorann left for the winter, subtly warning Danny against the forces of the Hotel.
Torrance became fascinated with the sordid history of the Overlook Hotel and spent more time looking into its history than working on his caretaking or the play he had promised himself and his wife he would write. Snow finally cut the family off from the nearby town of Sidewinder. Both Danny and Jack saw strange things in the Hotel – a Masked Ball at which the Gage Creed orchestra played; topiary creatures that moved; and Delbert Grady, the bartender in an empty and alcohol free hotel. Danny even saw a dead woman in the bath in Room 217 and the word “MURDER” reflected in a mirror to read “REDRUM.”
Jack suffered a slow descent into insanity, urged on by Grady, who suggested he kill his family. Jack attacked Wendy with a croquet mallet and injured her but she managed to knock him out and lock him in the pantry, from which he escaped with the help of the Hotel and its denizens.
