by George Beahm
Stephen King: Shawshank did. I thought Shawshank was a terrific piece of work, and it is not a one-to-one adaptation. There are a lot of things in that film that are not in my book. The scene where Andy is playing the opera music in the yard is a good example. It’s a film about human beings—and human beings are not secondary to the theme of horror. That’s an important thing to remember: You cannot scare anyone unless you first get the audience to care about these make-believe characters. They have to become people with whom you identify. After all, they are only as thick as the screen, which means about as thick as your thumbnail. We go to the movies with the understanding that we are watching people who are not real. But if we come to like them, and we recognize that the things they are doing are also part of our own lives, if they are reacting the way in which we would react under similar circumstances, then we become emotionally invested. Once this happens, it is possible to frighten the audience by putting the character in frightening situations.
When Sissy Spacek was cast as Carrie, people wondered how she could play the role of ugly duckling convincingly. I really didn’t give a shit what she looked like before the prom, as long as she could appear transformed into a beauty when she got to the dance. It never really mattered to me exactly what she looked like, because I never had a clear picture of her. But I always had a clear picture of her heart. That’s what remains important to me. I want to know what my characters feel and think, and I want the reader to know these things, too. De Palma did such a good job in this film because he was interested in these things as well.
I would have to say that I was delighted with The Green Mile. The film is a little “soft” in some ways. I like to joke with [director] Frank [Darabont] that his movie was really the first R-rated Hallmark Hall of Fame production. For a story that is set on death row, it has a really feel-good, praise-the-human-condition sentiment to it. I certainly don’t have any problem with that because I am a sentimentalist at heart.
Magistrale: This is a good place for me to ask you this next question. Spike Lee, among other commentators, has been critical of John Coffey’s character in The Green Mile, arguing that his portrayal is insulting to blacks because his role is essentially to suffer for the sins of white people. According to Lee: “You have this super Negro who has these powers, but these powers are used only for the white star of the film. He can’t use them on himself or his family to improve his situation.” How accurate is this criticism?
Stephen King: It’s complete bullshit. Coffey was black for one reason only: It was the one sure thing about his character that was going to make certain that he was going to burn. That was the situation I was trying to set up. It was completely plot driven and had nothing to do with black or white. I’ve heard this same argument advanced by Toni Morrison about the so-called “magic Negro.” If you want to get me on this, then you should talk about Mother Abigail in The Stand. The reason I made Mother Abigail black is because I wanted a character that was old enough to remember slavery. And I wanted to write a song to celebrate their moment of emancipation while Randall Flagg lurked behind the drapes. All this got cut out of the original published version of The Stand and then got reinstated in the uncut edition. But in the case of Coffey, who is obviously a Christ figure, he’s black because his color makes certain that he will fry. As far as using his powers to help his race, he has no family; he’s a total loner. Whatever past he has is completely lost, and that’s crucial to the story. And the other thing that is crucial to the story is that he is a Christ figure. Christ figures are supposed to do good to them that revile you, to turn the other cheek to those who strike you. By doing good for white people—and particularly the wife of the warden, the man who is going to put Coffey to death—he is basically exhibiting his saintliness. You ask most people what was Christ’s race, and they’ll say white, god damn it.
I am not surprised that this is Spike’s reaction. It’s a knee-jerk reaction of a man who sees everything in terms of his race. And for an artist of his stature, it’s a hobbling factor in his creative life. If I took my pants down right now in front of you, you would see that my right leg is withered where there used to be muscle. This is a result of my accident. But the muscles in my left leg are bigger than ever because that leg has had to do all the work. This is the way it is with Spike. He sees things exclusively in racial terms. It has made him a spectacular artist, but the idea of Coffey being a superman is just plain wrong.
Magistrale: Does John Coffey have to be black? What happens to the film’s meaning if he is a white character?
Stephen King: In most cases you can cast a character in either race. Morgan Freeman in Shawshank could have been cast as a white man. But in the case of John Coffey, he’s supposed to be black because that puts him in a situation where the minute he gets caught with those two little blond girls in his arms, he’s a doomed man.
Magistrale: But isn’t that at least part of what Spike Lee is trying to argue? What chance does Coffey, a black man in Depression-era Louisiana weeping over the dead bodies of two little blond girls, have to save himself in spite of his redemptive powers? In one sequence the warden’s wife asks Coffey, “Who hurt you?” Why does he have so many wounds, and where did they come from? Much of this seems suggestive, at least to me, of the legacy of being a black man in America.
Stephen King: I am going to ask you a question now. Can you visualize a giant of a white man in that same situation? A dimwitted white man living in the South, knocking around low-paying jobs, a gentle giant riding the rails that is not able to hurt anybody? But a white man who bears the same scars as Coffey—can you visualize this person?
Magistrale: Maybe bearing the same physical scars, but not the same psychological scars as Coffey. The internal wounds he carries are particular to his race. If John Coffey is a Christ figure, he’s also a black Christ; his suffering, it seems to me, becomes all the more profound because he is black and a victim of wounds that are particular to his racial history.
Stephen King: I think your answer represents an imaginative failing on your part. Remember Steinbeck’s Lenny in Of Mice and Men. He’s white and he bears similar scars of suffering.
Magistrale: Have you been satisfied with the televised miniseries that have been done of your work? Do you feel that your novels are better suited for the miniseries genre? What are the limitations of the televised miniseries? Do you have a favorite Stephen King miniseries?
Stephen King: I think my novels are much better suited for miniseries presentations. I didn’t care very much for The Tommyknockers because it just didn’t seem that the people doing it got behind the project sufficiently and felt the story. As with a feature-length film, again it’s a crapshoot to have all the different parts to fall into place. My favorite made-for-television production is Storm of the Century. I love that as a piece of work, and I am still very proud of it. In my mind, it is as good as the best of the novels. Everything worked the way it was supposed to: the setting of the harbor town, the convincing sense of snow piling up, and Colm Feore was terrific in the role of Andre Linoge. ABC’s Standards and Practices was so obsessed with whether they would see blood on the faces of the some of these children that they totally ignored the fact that the bad guy wins and takes the sheriff’s son away with him. The Storm of the Century is fairly hard-edged for television. It’s not like any other miniseries that you’ll see on any of the other networks—you know, the happy-time, everything-works-out-happily-in-the-end program. It’s very realistic. And everyone who was involved with that show—from my screenplay, to the director, to the set designer, to the producer—we all did Rose Red (2002), and Rose Red is just not as good.
Magistrale: This is a good place to ask about the group decision in Storm of the Century to sacrifice the child, Ralph Anderson. Besides the destruction of Molly and Mike Anderson’s marriage, what are the other consequences—especially to the town of Little Tall Island itself—that occur as a result of this sacrifice?
Stephen King: Everyb
ody that takes part in that decision is a worse person, a smaller person as a result. Whatever flaws they have are worse afterward. The sheriff’s wife is in therapy; she remarries, but she is not very happy in her new marriage. One of the guys commits suicide. The sheriff ends up on the other side of the country, and he is the one person who has a chance at rebuilding his life. He knows that he was the one person who stood up for what was right. Everybody else pays a price for the town’s collective lapse in moral judgment.
Magistrale: Why did the citizens make this choice? Why was the sheriff the only one who stood up for what was right? I keep thinking of Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” and how much you admire it.
Stephen King: Let’s put it this way: In all of our lives we are faced with situations in which we are tested. Generally, it isn’t until years later that we find out that we actually failed the test. We come to understand that our morals gave out a little here, or our sense of right and wrong slipped, or our misplaced sense of expediency got the better of our morality. I’ve always been fascinated with the story of Job. The sheriff tells a version of the story of Job in Storm of the Century. He faces God and says, You took my kid, you wrecked my crops, and you ruined my marriage and left me alone to wander the earth. And God says, I guess there’s just something about you that pisses me off.
We all have a duty to look at our lives. What do we see? Children falling down wells to die, we send our loved ones off to work and crazy people hit their office towers and we never see them again. I was in New York for a screening of Hearts in Atlantis at Columbia University the week after the twin towers were destroyed. My taxi driver wanted to show me something. He took me down about four blocks from Ground Zero. He said, “Do you see all those cars in that parking lot?” There were several hundred parked cars all covered with white dust. He told me that the city doesn’t know what to do with those cars. They belong to the people who drove in from New Jersey to work at the twin towers the day of the attack. They are never going to come back and claim their cars. The people who escaped the tragedy, who are still alive, came and drove their cars away. You could see by the empty spaces in the parking lot that God had decided to let that one live, but that other poor bastard who parked in the spot next to him is never coming back. God had moved His finger and decided who would get to live a while longer. And you could look inside these remaining cars and see the toys that belonged to their children, the McDonald’s coffee that was maybe half drunk the morning of the last morning of their lives.
Magistrale: The September 11 event challenged many of our assumptions and added to our neuroses as a society and as individuals. How will the post-September 11 climate change the shape of horror? Is there anything on the page or screen that can equal in terror what we witnessed on our living room televisions?
Stephen King: Why should it? Think of how many references you have heard to this event over the past several months. You’ll be watching a talking head on television discussing the Star Wars movie and somebody will begin a question to George Lucas, “In light of September 11, do you feel.…” The event has totally pervaded the American consciousness. I read a lot of new fiction in galleys, and I have noticed the first ripples of awareness in the artistic consciousness—not conscience, it’s too early for conscience, that comes much later—that represent the first droplets of a rainstorm that will continue for years.
Magistrale: On several levels, the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center was very much a “cinematic event.” The planes were timed to hit at least twenty minutes apart from one another so that after the first plane plowed into the first tower cameras would be already in place to record—from a variety of angles and perspectives—the second plane’s explosive arrival. And of course, the world learned of the tragedy through its graphic visualization on film. I suppose that is the goal of any terrorist action: to make it as visual and as personal as possible.
Stephen King: And don’t forget the desire to traumatize as many people as possible, which occurs when singular events in time are recorded on film and then televised to millions. In The Stand, my own rendering of cataclysmic proportions is always brought down to the individual, personal level. Franny Goldsmith trying to bury her father, and saying to Harold Lauder when he shows up in a car, “I’m just so tired.” To me, one of the great scenes in the television miniseries is when Harold and Franny are sitting around listening to records. These two people sitting at the end of the world, drinking warm lemonade, and listening to records for what may be the last time in their lives. As an artist, I can show you the end of the world on a microcosmic level, but no one can deal with it the way it actually comes down from the sky.
Magistrale: Your cameo appearances in your films have become something that fans enjoy and anticipate with each new film. Is this something you inherited from Hitchcock? How much control do you have over your cameo? The most original and humorous may have been your role as a weatherman on the broken TV in Storm of the Century. Was this your decision?
Stephen King: I generally pick the cameo. I picked, for example, the pizza guy in Rose Red, the weatherman in Storm of the Century. I gave myself a bigger role in The Stand. It’s fun. And yes, I’m playing Hitchcock here; I’m just a frustrated actor.
Magistrale: I’d like to spend a few minutes with you talking about the eclipse scene in Dolores Claiborne. You told me once that you labored hard to get that scene written right for the novel. Do you feel that the film did it justice?
Stephen King: I loved the way they did that; it’s probably my favorite scene in the film. I didn’t notice this the first time I saw the movie, but the filmmakers of Dolores Claiborne actually flip-flop our ordinary perceptions of the world. That is to say, we generally view what is going on right now as bright and colorful, crisp and clear. The past has a tendency to be a little bit misty, even as there are certain things that stand out among all the other things that are faded and fading, just as the color red is the last thing to fade in a photograph. This is how the human mind and its capacity for recollection work. But Taylor Hackford shoots his movie so that everything in the present is dull and monochrome, even the clothes are dull. In contrast, every moment in the past is bright and the colors really jump. It’s the best color photography I’ve seen since the Godfather films, particularly Godfather II, which is filmed like no other movie before it. It’s the difference between a color photograph and one that has been hand-tinted. I think Dolores Claiborne is a remarkably beautiful film to watch, if simply as an exercise in cinematography and the technical possibilities of using a camera and colors as active vehicles in the presentation of a story.
Magistrale: As horrible and as violent as the moments leading to the eclipse are, the actual scene of Dolores gazing down into the well where she has just committed murder with the eclipse at her back is actually almost transcendent, beatific. Is this right?
Stephen King: Yes. If there is anything wrong with Dolores Claiborne, it was the decision on the part of the filmmakers to try to tack on this artificial reconciliation between Dolores and her daughter. It’s a very human desire, and it’s understandable that producers would want to cater to it.
When you go to the movies and put down your cash to see a film, I don’t think it out of line to ask for people up on the screen to behave a little bit better than they do in ordinary life; certainly we expect people to look a little bit better than in ordinary life. This urge to make things a little bit nicer than in real life has a tendency to carry over into other aspects of the movie. I have always been interested in emotions. And the difference between books and movies is that when I have you in one of my books I want to move you emotionally, to establish some kind of intense emotional reaction—terror or laughter or serious involvement. But because I am one person and I do everything myself, the creative instrument I use is like a scalpel, it cuts deftly and deep. With films, every time you add another layer of production, the surface gets blunted more and widens. So that when you consider a big
Hollywood production such as Pearl Harbor, you get a beautifully produced, eye-popping spectacle that does absolutely nothing to you emotionally or spiritually because what should be a hypodermic point has become blunted into a sledgehammer. All you can do is to swing it as hard as you can.
Unfortunately, Dolores Claiborne is a film, like Kubrick’s The Shining, that is nearly overwhelming because of its beautiful photography, but the story that surrounds the photography is flawed.
Magistrale: I think I have a good spot for us to end. Your film Maximum Overdrive has a lot in common with The Terminator and Blade Runner insofar as these are films about the general paranoia our culture has about our overreliance on technology and machines. Were these conscious considerations as you were writing and directing Maximum Overdrive?
Stephen King: I had a very clear image of technology having totally overrun our ability to control it. You know, when Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, all the men who were part of the Crew of Light were technological men. Seward compiled his medical records on a phonograph; Van Helsing was one of the first doctors to pioneer the use of transfusions. All this fascinated Stoker; these men were his heroes, and their technologies were used to help defeat the evil of a supernatural past embodied in Dracula himself. But look at what has become of technology now. Think of the situation right now between India and Pakistan. These are two countries that do not have very highly developed skills and attitudes about problem solving. They may have a long religious history, which I would argue is in itself very dangerous to the modern world, but they also possess nuclear weapons. That’s really what I was thinking about when I did Maximum Overdrive. Technology may be its own dead end.
The problem with that film is that I was coked out of my mind all through its production, and I really didn’t know what I was doing [as the director of the film]. I learned a lot from the experience, however, and I would like to try directing again sometime. Maybe I’ll direct Gerald’s Game.8
