by Rocky Wood
In fear, Danny had earlier called Hallorann in Florida, using the “shine.” Hallorann arrived during a snowstorm at the Overlook, where Jack also attacked him. As Jack was considering killing his son, Danny reminded him that he had forgotten his caretaking job, and had not dumped the boiler, which slowly “crept” upward in pressure. Danny, Wendy and Hallorann escaped the hotel shortly before the boiler exploded, destroying the Hotel and killing Jack.
Eleven years later Danny Torrance graduated from Stovington High School in the presence of his mother and their friend, Dick Hallorann.
The inclusion of Danny’s graduation, from a school in the same town (but not the same school) in which his father had taught before being fired, is an addition to the mythology of this particular storyline, and a satisfying one at that. In the produced mini-series the ghost of Jack Torrance also appears, and this is one of the better emotional moments King has wrung from the screen in his role as scriptwriter.
For the purposes of this visual adaptation King escalated the presence of Danny’s “invisible playmate,” Tony. Tony showed Danny things that would happen, both good and bad. Of course, he is really an older version of Danny himself, the name Tony is simply a shortening of Danny’s middle name, Anthony. He is portrayed as a handsome, blond teenager who wears round spectacles.
The Delbert Grady who appeared in the novel had killed his wife by shotgun and his daughters with a hatchet, while caretaking the Overlook one winter. Presumably, these two girls (aged 6 and 8) were the models for the twins Kubrick portrayed in his film. Perhaps as a deliberate snub to Kubrick, Watson tells Torrance in this version that Grady killed himself with a shotgun, and was alone at the time.
King also moved the Masked Ball from the novel’s date of 29 August 1945 (also used in the unproduced moviescript) to 15 May that same year.
A further addition to the original storyline is the Gage Creed Band and its bandleader, the definitely not one and only Gage Creed, played by Big Steve himself, wonderfully camping the role. Of course, Gage Creed is the name of the little boy killed on Route 15 in Pet Sematary and whose sneaker was found in Atropos’ lair in Insomnia. This is a nice little in-joke for King’s faithful fans, to go with his enjoyable acting cameo.
There are, of course, many other links from this script to King’s other fiction and these are summarized in this chapter’s feature panel. King again does not name the unfortunate bathtub suicide, but she is no less menacing to young Danny Torrance in this version.
It is unclear if the screenplay is set in 1996 or 1997, a deliberate update from the 1977 of the original novel. This change in dates was apparently to satisfy the viewing audience (the mini-series was originally screened in 1997) by providing a current timeline.
There is one error in the script – while at one point it is stated that on Route 50 it was 23 miles from the Overlook Hotel to Sidewinder, when Dick Hallorann hired a Sno-Cat in Sidewinder to drive to the Overlook he went past a sign that read, “Overlook Hotel 37 miles.”
Certainly this is the better of King’s two scripts but all three visualisations (including Kubrick’s) somehow fail to capture the psychological power of the novel. The Shining is one of King’s greatest novels and will certainly be on the reading list for students of the American Novel for decades to come.
Links From The Shining To Other King Fiction
The Shining is one of King’s major works, existing in three forms – the novel, the mini-series screenplay and the unproduced movie screenplay. Before the Play was published separately in two different versions and these relate some of the early history of both the Overlook Hotel and Jack Torrance (as that story is a virtual prequel the extensive links from it are not summarized here). The links from the various versions of The Shining to King’s other fiction are summarized below.
John “Jack” Torrance Misery103, Desperation (Telescript)104, The Dark Tower VI
Daniel “Danny” Torrance The Dark Tower II, Storm of the Century
Dick Hallorann It 105
Gage Creed Pet Sematary, Insomnia 106
The Overlook Hotel Misery, The Regulators
Overlooked The Stand107
Sidewinder, Colorado Misery, The Talisman
Stovington, Vermont The Stand, Everything’s Eventual
Stovington Prep The Dead Zone
The Shine The Stand (Complete and Uncut version)
98 The Stephen King Story, George Beahm, p.106
99 Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, Stephen Jones, p.19-23
100 Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King, Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller (editors), p. 79-80
101 Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, Stephen Jones, p.109-111
102 Weber has also appeared as Steve Ames in Desperation, as Clark Rivingham (in the You Know They Got a Hell of a Band episode of Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King);and 8x10 Man (in the Revelations of Becka Paulson episode of The Outer Limits)
103 He is referred to, but not named
104 He is named in the note for a character’s actions
105 Hallorann’s appearance in It was as an army cook in Derry in 1930, but in The Shining he was born in 1918, making him rather young to be a soldier. It seems clear King intends this is the same character but there is a timing error between the stories.
106 Different Gage Creeds – a small boy in the two linked stories; a band leader in the Mini-Series screenplay of The Shining only
107 In the Uncut book version only. Brad Kitchner is addressing the Free Zone Committee in Chapter 58, Section 3: “We had two of the generators going yesterday, and as you know, one of them overloaded and blew its cookies. So to speak. What I mean is that it overlooked. Overloaded rather. Well … you know what I mean.”
The Shotgunners (Undated)
The screenplay for an unproduced movie, The Shotgunners is held in Box 2318 of the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine, Orono. The good news for potential readers is that this screenplay can be accessed by attending the Library, as it is not held in a Restricted Box. There are 113 pages in the screenplay, covering 423 scenes.
According to various sources the legendary film director Sam Peckinpah died while pre-producing this script. Peckinpah made Straw Dogs, The Wild Bunch and was famed for the violence portrayed in his later films, long before the emergence of Quentin Tarantino in the 1990s.
The Shotgunners is clearly the forerunner of The Regulators; the Richard Bachman credited companion volume to King’s Desperation. While the premise is the same, the characters are completely different. It appears this screenplay actually developed into The Regulators novel. If Peckinpah was indeed working on pre-production for this screenplay when he died in 1984, it was over a decade until it appeared reworked as The Regulators in 1996. Bachman’s dedication in the book, “Thinking of Jim Thompson and Sam Peckinpah: legendary shadows” would seem to confirm the story.
Further, in a non-fiction piece, Digging The Boogens,108 published Twilight Zone Magazine for July 1982, King has this to say about the plot of Taft International’s 1982 film The Boogens, directed by James L. Conway:
A Colorado silver mine is closed by a series of explosions and cave-ins in 1912; miners are trapped, and most of them die (all of this background is elegantly presented over the credits in a series of frontier-style newspaper headlines and gorgeous sepia photographs). Seventy years later, a mining company reopens the mine. What else do you need?
Sound familiar? Perhaps this movie partly inspired Desperation, The Regulators and The Shotgunners?
The location of Maple Street for the shootings also links The Shotgunners to The Regulators, although it should be noted that the house numbers are separated by two blocks from each other. In The Shotgunners the house numbers range from 1 to 12 and Maple Street is in an unnamed Ohio suburb or town near what was, in 1874, Marionsville, Ohio. In The Regulators the house numbers range from 240 to 251 and Maple St
reet is in Wentworth, Ohio.
In this America Under Siege tale the shootings begin late one afternoon. While the timeline is clearly modern day an exact year or decade is not provided. Cars start to cruise onto Maple Street and shotguns protrude from them, randomly shooting at people and houses. Various survivors gather together as one by one the victims mount. The group soon realize that something is very wrong – no police are attending, there is no reaction from the outside world. Bill Hoffman, Georgia Kellogg and Lou Stein determine to escape and make it across the intersecting Hyacinth Street.
They find themselves in the Ohio of about 1874, the year six radicals, known as The Shotgunners, were hanged for their crimes. The leader of the group that executed the Shotgunners was a Hoffman and we therefore assume the modern day attack is some form of revenge from beyond the grave by the Shotgunners on Hoffman’s descendant and his neighbors. The modern day group see seven mounted men, which turn out to be straw men on wooden horses. The Shotgunners cruising Maple are also straw men, but very much active and firing their shotguns. After one final massive attack on the street, dawn arrives and Maple Street returns to our reality.
The police arrive and find Bill Hoffman wired to a stake, with his eyes sewn shut, just like the scarecrow that had stood near the 1874 hangings.
The key characters in the screenplay are the Shotgunners; Bill Hoffman; the Ashley family; Andy and John Bellingham; Alicia and Tom Brewton; Mike and Angie Connaught; Georgia Kellogg; the Parker family; the Stein family; Susan Stuben; Alan and Marlene Wilson; and Hannibal, the Connaught’s Irish Setter (this is the only character name King retained for The Regulators, where Hannibal was the Reed’s German Shepherd, unfortunately the poor dog was killed in both versions). Of course, the main characters in The Regulators are a sort of alternate reality use of the character names from Desperation.
The unfortunate Bill Hoffman was a divorced father of two who lived at 9 Maple Street and worked as a bank officer. His wife had left him and taken their two daughters to California. Georgia Kellogg, the pretty 7-11 clerk who ventured to the 1874 reality with Hoffman and Stein, was one very lucky young lady. For some reason the Shotgunners chose not to shoot her outside the store. Later she made it to the Ashley house. She was wounded while returning from the altered reality but survived. Lou Stein, the 14 year old, son of Al and Kathy, lived at 11 Maple Street. He survived the shootings, unlike his mother, who broke her neck trying to climb a fence and his father, shot dead.
The Ashley family lived at 1 Maple. The father, Roger (also called Richard in the screenplay) was not at home at the time of the shootings. His wife, Priss and their two children, eleven year old Stacey and six year old Anne, also survived. The Bellinghams lived at number 5. While the parents were not at home, the handsome fifteen year old twin boys, Andy and John were, and both were able to survive the massacre. (In The Regulators the twins were the 17 year old Reed boys, David and Jim. Jim died under the influence of Tak.)
Alicia and Tom Brewton lived at 7 Maple and both were shot dead. Mike and Angie Connaught were the residents of number 3. Mike, handsome and in his mid-40s and Angie, pretty but a little overweight, were luckier and both survived.
The Parker family lived at 4 Maple. Rob was the father of Herbie and Carl and husband of Darla. The street’s resident bore and a big gun collector and shooter, he was a writer for magazines on hunting and related matters, often working from home. He attacked the Shotgunners’ Dodge with his Uzi but was quickly shot and wounded. He then looked into the Dodge and saw, to his horror, two scarecrows just before he threw a grenade. He died, along with Darla who fired at the Shotgunners’ LTD; six year old Herbie and twelve year old Carl were shot and killed while struggling for a gun with his each other.
The Stubens resided at 11 Maple. Susan survived the shootings and her husband Steve (also called Hank), was not on the street during the incident. Alan and the unpleasant Marlene Wilson lived at number 5. Drunk, Marlene approached one of the cars and was shot dead. Alan, about 50 and an alcoholic, survived. 10 Maple was vacant, as the Plummers had moved away before the shootings.
The Shotgunners drove standard road vehicles, including a Chevrolet, a Dodge, a Ford LTD, an Oldsmobile, a Plymouth, a Ford Country Squire Wagon, a Pontiac Bonneville and a mid-seventies model Thunderbird. The problem for the residents was that there were hundreds of these vehicles, lined up in the alternate reality at each end of Maple, waiting to enter the street, all bristling with shotguns.
In the screenplay the Shotgunners themselves were all stuffed dummies but were animated and used shotguns to kill their victims. In the later novelized version the killers were characters from Seth Garin’s favorite movie, The Regulators. A creature called Tak used the autistic Garin’s mind to attack and murder many Wentworth locals. The strange weapons and vehicles the Regulators used looked as if they had come from the mind of a child and, of course, they had. We are told the original Shotgunners were a radical offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. They were basically nothing more than robbers and terrorists. Six of them were hanged outside of Marionsville, Ohio on 18 August 1874.
Readers of The Regulators will recall that Cynthia Smith worked at the E-Z Store 24 on the corner of Poplar and Hyacinth. The Shotgunners version has Rudy Halpern and Georgia Kellogg as clerks at the 7-11 on the corner of Maple and Hyacinth. Cynthia and Georgia survived, Rudy was shot dead.
While the action in The Shotgunners is undated that in The Regulators occurs on 15 July 1996. Of course, while the theme and storyline of the two are similar, in the screenplay it is supernatural revenge that causes the murders; while in the novelized version it is the power of a strange creature, Tak, operating through an autistic boy that is the basis of the killings.
This screenplay should make a better movie than the rather crazed altered reality storyline of The Regulators. Filming that story would require either full animation; or a mix of live action and animation. The Shotgunners could be filmed fairly cheaply as a standard violent horror movie of the type that Sam Peckinpah would undoubtedly have made a good fist of directing.
Perhaps King will choose to sell or revise this Screenplay for production at some point in the future, now that he has allowed the production of a mini-series version of Desperation, directed by Mick Garris. Indeed, might we one-day see Garris or even Quentin Tarantino helm the film of The Shotgunners? We should indeed be so lucky.
108 See Stephen King: The Non-Fiction by Rocky Wood and Justin Brooks. Abingdon, Maryland: Cemetery Dance Publications, 2009
Skybar (1982)
In 1982 the Doubleday & Company imprint, Dolphin Books, published a cheap paperback workbook for budding writers titled The Do-It-Yourself Bestseller – A Workbook. A number of well-known authors were convinced to contribute the opening paragraphs and closing paragraph of a story. Empty lined pages were provided between the opening and closing sections and the reader was to “complete” the story.
The contributing authors were Isaac Asimov, Belva Plain, Stephen King, Erskine Caldwell, Marilyn Harris, Arthur Herzog, Ken Follett, William F. Buckley Jr., Robin Cook, Georges Simenon, Alfred Kazin, Richard Llewellyn, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Steve Allen, Leslie Waller, Colin Wilson, Irving Wallace, John Jakes, Michael Blankfort and Alvin Toffler. King is quoted on the rear cover as saying, “…sounds like fun … God knows what goes on in the middle; perhaps one of your readers will.”
Photocopies and text copies of the sections circulate in the King community and copies of the Workbook appear on the second-hand market from time to time.
This was actually the second time King had contributed a partial story for writers to complete. The March 1977 issue of Cavalier magazine contained the first five hundred words of The Cat from Hell. In June of that year King’s completed story, along with that written by the winner of the readers’ competition were published in the same magazine. The third occurrence was The Furnace (see separate chapter).
The two sections of Skybar King contributed a total of 579 words. The opening se
ction begins with, “There were twelve of us when we went in that night, but only two of us came out – my friend Kirby and me. And Kirby was insane.” The closing paragraph of the story ends with:
I see these things in my dreams, yes, but when I visit Kirby in that place where he still lives, that place where all the windows are crosshatched with heavy mesh, I see them in his eyes. I take his hand and his hand is cold, but I sit with him and sometimes think: These things happened to me when I was young.
As it is unclear where the Skybar Amusement Park is (other than close to the coast) this is an America Under Siege story. In it the narrator recalls how he and eleven other people went to the Skybar Amusement Park when they were young. Ten of them did not come out alive and of the two survivors, only the narrator was sane. We never discover the narrator’s name but he was eleven and in sixth grade when he and his friends went to the exciting local amusement park, which contained such great attractions as Pop Dupree’s Dead-Eye Shooting Gallery, the Whip, a Mirror Labyrinth and an Adults Only freak tent. The youngsters had to wonder what was in there, “… you especially wondered when the people came out, white-faced, some of the women crying or hysterical. Brant Callahan said it was all just fake, whatever it was, but sometimes I saw the doubt even in Brant’s tough gray eyes.”
