NEW YORK (AP) ā ās first editor, Bill Thompson, once said, āSteve has a movie camera in his head.ā
So vividly drawn is Kingās fiction that itās offered the basis for some 50 feature films. For half a century, since Brian De Palmaās 1976 film āCarrie,ā Hollywood has turned, and turned again, to Kingās books for their richness of character, nightmare and sheer entertainment.
Open any of those books up at random, and thereās a decent chance youāll encounter a movie reference, too. Rita Hayworth. āThe Wizard of Oz.ā āSinginā in the Rain.ā Sometimes even movies based on Kingās books turn up in his novels. That Kingās books have been such fodder for the movies is owed, in part, to how much of a moviegoer their author is.
āI love anything from āThe 400 Blowsā to something with that guy Jason Statham,ā King says, speaking by phone from his home in Maine. āThe worst movie I ever saw was still a great way to spend an afternoon. The only movie I ever walked out on was āTransformers.ā At a certain point I said, āThis is just ridiculous.āā
Over time, King has developed a personal policy in how he talks about the adaptations of his books. āMy idea is: If you canāt say something nice, keep your mouth shut,ā he says.
The most notable exception was Stanley Kubrickās āThe Shining,ā which King famously called āa big beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside.ā But every now and then, King is such a fan of an adaptation that heās excited to talk about it. Thatās very much the case with Mike Flanaganās new adaptation of Kingās novella of the same name published in the 2020 collection
In āThe Life of Chuck,ā which Neon releases in theaters Friday (nationwide June 13), there are separate storylines but the tone-setting opening is apocalyptic. The internet, like a dazed prize fighter, wobbles on its last legs before going down. California is said to be peeling away from the mainland ālike old wallpaper.ā
And yet in this doomsday tale, King is at his most sincere. āThe Life of Chuck,ā the book and the movie, is about what matters in life when everything else is lost. There is dancing, Walt Whitman and joy.
āIn āThe Life of Chuck,ā we understand that this guyās life is cut short, but that doesnāt mean he doesnāt experience joy,ā says King. āExistential dread and grief and things are part of the human experience, but so is joy.ā
Stephen King, the humanist
Itās telling that when King, our preeminent purveyor of horror, writes about doom times, he ends up scaling it down to a single life. While darkness and doom have, and probably always will, mark his work, King ā a more playful, instinctual, genre-skipping writer than heās often credited as ā āThe Life of Chuckā is a prime example of King, the humanist.
āAn awful lot of people assume, because he writes so much stuff thatās so scary, they kind of forget the reason his horror works so well is heās always juxtaposing it with light and with love and with empathy,ā says Flanagan, who has twice before adapted King (āDoctor Sleep,ā āGeraldās Gameā) and is in the midst of making a āCarrieā series for Amazon.
āYou forget that āItā isnāt about the clown, itās about the kids and their friendship," adds Flanagan. āāThe Standā isnāt about the virus or the demon taking over the world, itās ordinary people who have to come together and stand against a force they cannot defeat.ā
King, 77, has now written somewhere around 80 books, including the just released The mystery thriller brings back Kingās recent favorite protagonist, the private investigator Holly Gibney, who made her stand-alone debut in āIf It Bleeds.ā Itās Gibneyās insecurities, and her willingness to push against them, that has kept King returning to her.
āIt gave me great pleasure to see Holly grow into a more confident person,ā King says. āShe never outgrows all of her insecurities, though. None of us do.ā
āNever Flinchā is a reminder that King has always been less of a genre-first writer than a character-first one. He tends to fall in love with a character and follow them through thick and thin.
āIām always happy writing. Thatās why I do it so much,ā King says, chuckling. āIām a very chipper guy because I get rid of all that dark stuff in the books.ā
Contemporary anxieties
Dark stuff, as King says, hasnāt been hard to come by lately. The kind of climate change disaster found in āThe Life of Chuck,ā King says, often dominates his anxieties.
āWeāre creeping up little by little on being the one country who does not acknowledge itās a real problem with carbon in the atmosphere,ā King says. āThatās crazy. Certain right wing politicians can talk all they want about how weāre saving the world for our grandchildren. They donāt care about that. They care about money.ā
On social media, King has been a sometimes critic of President Donald Trump, whose second term has included battles with the arts, academia and Over the next four years, King predicts, āCulture is going to go underground.ā
In āNever Flinch,ā Holly Gibney is hired as a bodyguard by a womenās rights activist whose lecture tour is being plagued by mysterious acts of violence. In the afterward of the book, King includes a tribute to āsupporters of womenās right to choose who have been murdered for doing their duty.ā āIām sure theyāre not going to like that,ā King says of right-wing critics.
The original germ for āThe Life of Chuckā had nothing to do with current events. One day in Boston, King noticed a drummer busking on Boylston Street. He had the vision of a businessman in a suit who, walking by, canāt resist dancing with abandon to the drummerās beat.
King, a self-acknowledged dancer (though only in private, he notes), latched onto a story that would turn on the unpredictable nature of people, tracing the inner life of that imagined passerby. In the film, heās played by Tom Hiddleston. Chuck first appears, oddly, on a billboard that haunts and confuses a local teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who's struggling to get his students to care about literature or education with the possible end of the world encroaching.
Sincerity for a cynical world
Itās a funny but maybe not coincidental irony that many of the best King adaptations, like āStand By Meā and āThe Shawshank Redemption," have come from the authorās more warm-hearted tales. āThe Life of Chuck,ā which won the Peopleās Choice Award last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival, is after a similar spirit.
When King reached out about attending the TIFF world premiere, Flanagan was shocked. The last time King had done that for one of his own adaptations was 26 years ago, for āThe Green Mile.ā That movie, like āThe Shawshank Redemption,ā was a box-office disappointments, King recalls, a fate he's hoping āThe Life of Chuckā can avoid.
āHe views this movie as something thatās a bit precious,ā says Flanagan. āHeās said a few things to me in the past about how earnest it is, how this is a story without an ounce of cynicism. As it was being released into a cynical world, I think he felt protective of it. I think this one really means something to him.ā
The Stephen King industrial complex, meanwhile, keeps rolling along. Coming just this year are series of āWelcome to Derryā and āThe Instituteā and a film of āThe Long Walk.ā King, himself, just finished a draft of āTalisman 3.ā
If āThe Life of Chuckā has particular meaning to King, it could be because it represents something intrinsic about his own life. Chuck's small, seemingly unremarkable existence has grace and meaning because, as Whitman is quoted, he "contains multitudesā that surprise and delight him. King's fiction is evidence ā heaps of it ā that he does, too.
āThere are some days where I sit down and I think, āThis is going to be a really good day,ā and itās not, at all,ā says King. āThen other days I sit down and think to myself, āIām really tired and donāt feel like doing this,ā and then it catches fire. You never know what youāre going to get.ā
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
