Stephen King on DVD extras (1 Viewer)

[Travis Brashear]

And how and why King perceives that marginalization remains a mystery to me...as a child of an alcoholic step-parent myself, that theme resonates very powerfully for me in Kubrick's film...

 

[Kevin M]

It's hard not to pick up on the humor in the article but if you're suggesting that the entire piece was meant to be totally tongue in cheek with no true feelings/opinions from King, purely a comedy bit, then I disagree.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

If I'm not mistaken, he did both. From my perspective, I think Spielberg said that it was wonderful he was having a live commentary from David Lean (who wouldn't love a commentary from one of the masters?). But all things considered, Spielberg came off sounding like he preferred to watch the film instead of having somebody talk over it. That's how I see it.

As for Stephen King? I like his EW columns, and I don't take them too seriously. They really are tonuge in cheek.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Well put! People, there is a difference between *popular fiction* and *literary fiction*. King is squarely in the former camp (and certainly a master of it!).

Then there is the abomination that is Faithful. . .

As for Spielberg. . .he does realize that one can turn commentary tracks on and off, right?

 

[WillG]

That's my biggest problem with his quotes, some of which are posted above. Spielberg seems to view the concept of DVD audio commentary as some sort of manditory thing for some reason that ruins the movie by talking over it instead of an option that is there for the people who want to hear a director's thoughs and notes as the film is playing. I wish he would at least try out the format and if then, he finds out it is not for him, then fine.

James Cameron was someone who was reputed to be against audio commentaries as well, until he sat down and recorded one. Now we have excellent commentaries for "T2" and "Aliens" that do nothing but enhance the viewing experience. And, I'm sure the one that will appear on the "Titanic" will be great as well.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Maybe not completely lacking in his "true feelings" - but certainly overemphasized for the sake of a humor column in a magazine.

I would suggest people take a step back...

Speaking from experience as a writer for several parody and comic websites, often a small annoyance becomes are rather humerous tirade when taken to an extreme perspective.

-Vince

 

[Jamie Cole]

It's worth noting that the title of the column is "The Pop of King" ... this is meant to be a comment on popular culture, not the film culture that many of us live and breathe on this board. For the Everyman (think of your parents, or your brother who rents straight from the new release shelf at Blockbuster and grabs a Big Mac on his way home, etc.), the DVD commentary is silly, pretentious and boring. For me—a guy who puts commentaries on his iPod and listens to them at the gym—they're an invaluable way to enjoy the movies I love on an even deeper level.

As for King's literary credentials:

No one who has actually read "Salem's Lot," "The Shining," "Bag of Bones," many of King's shorter works (such as the aforementioned "Shawshank" along with the O. Henry Award-winning "Man in the Black Suit") can legitimately call him a pulp author. Yes, he has written pulp. He has also written a bad story or two (anyone that prolific is bound to just by the odds). But to paraphrase an old Fleetwood Mac song, "when he was good, he was very, very good."

As a lifelong fan of King's, I was proud when he received the National Book Award for lifetime achievement. He's a masterful writer and storyteller, but he also invented the blockbuster bestseller (much like Spielberg's "Jaws" is credited with inventing the summer blockbuster). In fact, I think that's an apt analogy; King is to literature what Spielberg is to film.

I read lit critics all the time who lump him in with Danielle Steele, Dean Koontz, Tom Clancy, Nicholas Sparks and the like. That's pure snobbery, and likely a heaping dose of jealousy, too.

Many of us have lived with King's fiction now for 30 years, and many of us haven't been around much longer than that ourselves. It's difficult, from that perspective, to gauge how he changed publishing and people's perspective on reading in general. In 100 years, his best work will be required reading in schools and studied like Shakespeare and Dickens (which, lest we forget, were the "popular" entertainments of their time) as the literature of our time. I'm quite well-read, and I can't think of a novel that captures late 20th-century America better, and with such scope, than "The Stand."

The movies from his books... ah, crap. None of them can measure up. Frank Darabont's contributions have come closest. King himself can't adapt his own work, as noted in other posts. But the differences in the two media are incalculable. And as King has always said when interviewed about whether a movie "ruined" his book, he just points to the shelf and says, "No... it's still right there!" Dickens is lucky he didn't have television around to dick up "Great Expectations" as an ABC Miniseries Event." I've long wished King hadn't embraced TV like he did and would just keep writing. But I'm not saying the man's perfect.

Sorry to ramble; I guess I'm a defender of the faith when it comes to Stephen King worship.

 

[Damin J Toell]

I hope I am around 100 years from now to call B.S. on that one. If you think King's works will ever remotely get the level of attention "like Shakespeare," you're only kidding yourself.

DJ

 

[Aaron Silverman]

OK, now you're really pushing it (Dickens, maybe -- But Shakespeare? Maybe in a million years, not 100).

 

[Jamie Cole]

Well, you could argue they already do. As fiction goes, King's stuff is THE popular entertainment of the last quarter century—not a passing fad a la Da Vinci Code. And King's lucky that his critical attention is beginning to happen in his lifetime. Only recently have "critics" begun to come around to the literary credibility of his best work. Mssrs. Clancy and Koontz—and hell, for that matter, Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling, etc.—won't be stepping on the stage to accept any literary honors anytime soon.

Shakespeare may be pushing it somewhat—but he wasn't appreciated in his time, either. So I'll only qualify that with "somewhat."

Is King the best writer of his generation? No. Is he our Edgar Allan Poe? Yes. Will "Man in the Black Suit" takes its place beside "Tell-Tale Heart" and "Young Goodman Brown" as high examples of the form? I have no doubt.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Sure he was. Maybe not as the greatest writer in the history of the language, but that sort of recognition always takes time.

So which book has this "Man In The Black Suit" story? I'll have to check it out.

 

[Jamie Cole]

Exactly right. It takes time. King is appreciated now, but not the way he WILL be decades from now.

"Different Seasons" is a beautiful book of short fiction, too. "Man in the Black Suit" was originally published in the New Yorker (how's THAT for literary cred), won the O. Henry Award for the best short story of the year in 1996, and was re-published in that year's O. Henry book and in King's own collection, "Everything's Eventual."

 

[Damin J Toell]

In schools?! Come on.

DJ

 

[Jamie Cole]

Of course not. Many of his books are banned from schools due to language.

 

[cafink]

Dean Koontz's WATCHERS was assigned in my 10th grade English class.

 

[Travis Brashear]

Yeah, but you live in the South--we have lower standards...

 

[Dome Vongvises]

The critical community, be it literary, artistic, or cinema, will never allow "current" pop to sit aside treasured works. And there will always be people who defend those decisions as well.

Granted, people like Dickens and Shakespeare were accessible to all people (if I had my druthers, I'd rather take my chances with the plague-infested lower class in the cheap seats), but there's always that subtext the critical community gets giddy about.

I consider the Dark Tower series to be King's greatest works, but seriously, given critical obsession about commentary I'm not surprised a bit King is being looked over. Imagination and storytelling simply won't do.

 

[Joel C]

Dean Koontz wrote about four good books before devolving into horrible prose and spiritual navel gazing. Watchers is an excellent Frankenstein horror story, Midnight is a great sci-fi yarn about a Dr. Moreau-like mad scientist, and Lightning has a cool time travel premise.

Ok, three. Aside from those, I'm troubled to think of one that succeeds as more than a good read (Dragon Tears, maybe). But on the whole, he doesn't hold a candle to King, whose Dark Tower series is a pulp epic that I hope will be recognized as an incredibly ambitious, largely successful experiment in time.

As for King's article, I think he was mostly trying to be funny, and I totally agree with him that 90 percent of DVD extras are total crap these days. I hate the omnipresent audio commentary on every crappy movie and I don't listen to them unless A) the movie has some merit, or B) I hear they're funny. Classic commentaries by historians, however, are usually very interesting just from a behind-the-scenes standpoint, explaining how the movie fits into film history as a whole. Which is, of course, why commentaries were recorded for the early Criterion LDs in the first place.

 

[Jamie Cole]

Aaron! I'm shocked! "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" don't come within miles of "middlebrow." Some could even make a good argument that "Close Encounters," "Jaws" and even "E.T." are masterpieces. I'm not enough of a Spielberg fan to do so, but I know they're out there.

Didn't the High Priest of Highbrow himself, Stanley Kubrick, think enough of Spielberg to collaborate with him? And he must have had at least a passing fancy for King, too... "The Shining" was a great deal Kubrick, but the premise was King's. I agree with other posters that King's theme of alcoholism and abuse is front and center in Kubrick's film. Stripped to their core, both book and film are ABOUT the same thing: a family torn apart by a father's personal demons.

I think it's probably worth saying that, for many, all that's known of King is the movies, and possibly some of his more mainstream work. These people judge him by that, having never sought out an acclaimed short piece or without cracking a "Dark Tower" volume. I actually KNOW critics who will review a Stephen King book having never read anything else by the man and call him a hack if that particular book isn't right on his game. That's like judging Tom Wolfe's whole career by something like "I Am Charlotte Simmons" or worse, by De Palma's movie of "Bonfire of the Vanities."

 

[Nathan Phillips]

I love the movie of "The Shining," but I don't find it even remotely scary. (However, I feel the same way about nearly all horror movies, including the ones I like; they just don't affect me that way.) I haven't read the book yet but it's on the shelf somewhere so I'll have to check it out someday.

I don't usually find King's comments about popular culture especially interesting, but I do applaud him for making them, because I think it's cool when celebrated people are vocal about their opinions on things even as small as DVD extras. Anyway, this is not even close to the terror of Orson Scott Card's writing about movies.