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Scott Tobias's avatar

With regard to King's annoyance with this film, I think there's also something to Kubrick asserting himself as The Guy in a way that other directors had not and would not. Kubrick took what he wanted from the book and dispensed with the rest, which is a rare and exceptionally assertive approach to adaptation. He doesn't even really care about honoring "the spirit" of the text, which has to be humbling to an author of King's stature quite beyond his connection to Jack as a character.

Of course, Godard's bit about criticizing a movie by making another one really didn't work out for King, because the TV miniseries version of The Shining is bad even by network miniseries standards. Woof.

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Scott Tobias's avatar

Wow, 77 comments and counting on this post. I knew THE SHINING was going to be a conversation-starter, but it warms the heart to see our humble little newsletter popping with the sort of activity we used to get at our giant websites of old.

Anyway, I think Kubrick deserves a little credit for feeling so guilty about faking the moon landing that he made a whole movie around it.

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