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Letting Go Is Hard To Do

        It happens to us all…

We fall in love with a character. Maybe it’s not the main character. Maybe you don’t even like the book. But for some reason, you want him, or her, or it, back again, even if you have to put up with people, places, and things you’d rather never experience again. “Love” might not be the exact feeling you have for that character, even. It’s possible to feel that way about some villains, like, for instance, the mayor of Sunnydale in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

That’s probably why I kept reading Game of Thrones. Martin doesn’t really have one main character, and just when you think you hate one completely, there’s a total turnaround in the character. So when the characters start dropping like flies, there’s always another connected story to entangle you. My son heard a comment about Martin killing off all his characters and said, “Oh, does he write The Walking Dead? My friend says everyone on The Walking Dead dies, too” (a second grader watching The Walking Dead is mind-bending to me, but that’s another soapbox).

I  like good world building and good genre fiction that plans to explore the nooks and crannies of  an imagined world or universe (the Liaden universe created by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, for instance, or the Dark Tower books by Stephen King). It’s easier to excuse a less-than-successful story, when there are many others to fill things out (I find this to be true of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover books, for instance). But sometimes there is not as much chance that you’ll run across the same characters regularly, and when they’re gone, you can’t necessarily expect them to reappear in the next book. And then you miss them.

I would say that right now it’s more likely now to find a series with one main character who narrates the story (in romance or in YA fiction you often find alternating points of view, but from a core of main characters) and, frankly, sometimes the main character, or the one who is supposed to be most sympathetic, is the one you wish weren’t there. In Maggie Stiefvater’s The Dream Thieves, the characters I loved were Calla and Persephone, who have very minor roles in the book. In Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series, I keep reading partly because I love Jenks and Matalina, and want to find out what will happen with David and Ceri. Rachel’s mother is also a fantastic character. I want to know what happens with them. Rachel, the point of view character? Her, I could live without.

When a character you love, or love to hate, disappears from the story, or the series, or your life, of course you miss him, or her. When the story’s done, and you loved the world it was in, it’s hard to return to your daily life. That character is still there in the pages you turned, in the imagined world the author created, unforgettable. As hard as it is to tear myself away, I know I can always return… but it will be time to put my kids to bed before I know it, and someday soon, even though the characters I loved on the page will still be there, the ones in my life will change, and I’ll never get this day back.

 

What worlds do you visit? What characters do you miss?
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Posted on December 16, 2013 by , Reply

Stephen King Goes To The Theater: The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County

 

When we first saw the advertisement for The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, we were pretty excited. A collaboration between John Mellencamp and Stephen King has all kinds of potential for coolness. Stephen King is a great storyteller, and for a rock musical in a southern gothic atmosphere, I can’t think of anyone who I’d rather have making the musical contribution than John Mellencamp (to clarify, he wrote the music, but didn’t sing it). The description of the show included the information that this collaboration had been thirteen years in the making. We were very intrigued, and made the tickets to the show our anniversary present to each other.

I am a huge believer in the power of live performance. I love storytelling and I love opera, and once you’ve seen those live, film provides only a pale imitation. I don’t think that is necessarily true of horror, though. Maybe it has something to do with the realism that a horror movie has to have to give you that emotional punch. So I wondered how that would present itself in a musical on stage.

The honest answer is that I’m really not sure whether this lives up to its billing as a collaborative horror musical. The music was tremendous, as I expected it would be, and the acting and singing were fantastic. Both the choreographer and whoever was in charge of lighting deserve awards. But… the plot? Character development? I think Stephen King was taking a nap.

The story is along these lines. In a small town in the South, a rift has developed between two brothers. One brother is an auto mechanic who plays in a local band, whose girlfriend, Anna, has just dumped him for the other brother, a writer who has just sold his first book. Their father, Joe,  meets them at the family’s lakeside cabin to tell them the story of his own brothers as a warning. Decades earlier, his older brothers also turned against each other and both died tragically because of their differences over a girl named Jenna.  Joe’s brothers and Jenna now haunt the cabin, providing commentary and acting out the backstory. There is a creature called The Shape hovering around the edges of events (and often stealing the stage– the actor took his part and ran with it), encouraging all the characters to act on their worst impulses.

The plot is pretty thin, in other words. On stage, sets are often pretty minimal, and that’s the case here. So realism isn’t really an option. You’ve either got to have action or character development to catch your audience. Spectacle, music, and talent (and this show has all three), can carry you pretty far, but to get really invested there has to be movement and change of some kind. And especially with horror, you have to be invested. But we never get to know the characters enough to find them sympathetic, or even care much about their troubles. None of them are particularly likable and their parts just don’t gel together. As a result, the final events, which actually were objectively really horrifying, didn’t pack the emotional punch of, say, the final events of Rigoletto, or Carmen. I feel like the actors made the most of what they were given to work with, particularly the Shape. Mellencamp’s music, played by members of his band, was great, and especially the women had great voices and stage presence (Anna in “That’s Who I Am”, Jenna in “Home Again”, and the boys’ mother, Monique, in “You Don’t Know Me”). Unfortunately, not even lighting that made it look like the actors were dripping in blood was enough to disguise the thinness of plot and character development.

I am likely to buy the musical’s soundtrack (especially as it has Sheryl Crow, Rosanne Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Elvis Costello singing on it), and I’m not sorry I went, because I will be able to easily picture the acting  that went along with the music, but I can’t say that I think either of us think this is a must-see live performance (although apparently many Stephen King fans disagree). It’s quite possible that as a film, set in the South with realistic detail, that many of the shortcomings of the live performance could be overcome… although, most likely at the expense of the Shape’s impact on the characters and scene. You can’t beat Mellencamp’s music live, though, and that, I think, was worth the price of the ticket.

 

 

Posted on October 21, 2013 by , Reply

The Shining in Book and Film: Guest Post by Elizabeth Eckhart

There are so many good reasons to write about The Shining right now. Stephen King’s birthday was September 21– born in 1947, he now             officially qualifies for Social Security benefits. We can only hope he doesn’t retire!

 

As almost a birthday gift from him to his readers, his newest release,  Doctor Sleep, was released last week, and since then, it has hit the bestseller lists with a bang, taking the #1 slot last week. How does   this relate to The Shining?

Well,  Doctor Sleep is the long-awaited sequel to The Shining, telling the story of what became of Danny Torrance.

 

 

 

The Shining was made into a very effective movie by Stanley Kubrick, and there’s been debate in the past over the translation from book to film.

In the spirit of, well, getting “into the spirit”for King’s newest book, out just in time for our haunted holiday, writer Elizabeth Eckhart has written a little about the movie and the book, and why they’re controversial among fans.

 

Enjoy! And if you’re interested in following through on any of these, the images you see to the side are direct links to Amazon. All you have to do is click!

 

 The Shining in Book and Film

By Elizabeth Eckhart

Stephen King’s The Shining, originally published in 1977, was a commercial success and helped to cement the author’s stature in the world of popular literature. The book also served as the basis for a Stanley Kubrick film of the same name which, despite being panned by critics upon its initial release in 1980, is now regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all time.

The novel, in summary, follows the story of a character named Jack Torrance, a writer and recovering alcoholic with a violent temper. Jack lives with his Wife Wendy and young son Danny, who is imbued with psychic power. After Torrance loses his job as a high school teacher for hitting a student, he manages to secure a job as the caretaker for the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. The family will live in the hotel throughout winter. The Overlook is inhabited by ghosts, who Danny can see and commune with. Danny becomes friendly with the Overlook’s cook, Dick Halloran, who also has Danny’s psychic ability. Eventually, the ghosts start to communicate with Jack, and they persuade him to murder his family, as previous caretakers had done in the hotel.

At the climax of the book, Jack is chasing after his wife and son with a roque mallet, and the topiary animals outside of the hotel come to life. Dick Halloran tries to intervene to save the family, and he is viciously attacked by Jack. Jack regains composure long enough to try to save his family, and the boiler room explodes as Wendy and Danny escape.

Now, 36 years after the initial publication of King’s novel, a sequel has been slated for release this month. King’s new book is titled Doctor Sleep, and it will reportedly follow the story of Danny Torrance, the child with extrasensory perception from The Shining, as a grown man. Torrance is now in his 40’s and works in upstate New York as a hospice care provider who uses his special abilities to soothe terminally ill patients as they’re dying. King has also disclosed that a gang of vampires with psychic abilities become involved in the story at some point…

With talk of this new sequel, one can’t help but wonder how the new book will perform in the marketplace, and whether or not public interest will merit a film adaptation. King has produced a huge volume of work over the course of his career (well over 50 novels, and that’s not even accounting for scripts or shorts), and a large percentage of those works have been adapted for either TV mini-series or feature length films. Some adaptations have been strong, while others have left much to be desired.

The Shining makes particularly good fodder for this discussion, as it long since polarized fans. For all the similarities between King’s novel and Kubrick’s film, there are many differences. Stephen King himself was highly critical of Kubrick’s film when it was originally released.

In more abstract terms, the tonal differences between the two seemed to be a product of the artists’ conflicting spiritual ideologies. King’s work is commonly laden with spiritual undertones, whereas a defining characteristic of Kubrick’s films is a cynicism so potent that, at times, it borders on misanthropy. King’s biggest complaint with the film was that Kubrick dedicated too much attention to the neurosis of Jack Torrence, and directed a film which places too much emphasis on the mental instability and volatility innate to the character, while undermining the more supernatural parts of the story. King felt that Kubrick’s religious skepticism made for a situation where, because Kubrick himself couldn’t believe in supernatural occurrences, he failed to produce a believable film. King also did not like Kubrick’s decision to cast Jack Nicholson, as Nicholson already had a reputation for playing brooding and neurotic characters, and his descent into insanity would hardly surprise viewers. King had hoped for an actor who would evoke more sympathy from viewers. King’s notion was that the character was troubled, but fundamentally moral, and that he fell victim to the corrosive influence of the spirits in the hotel. In the mid-nineties, King directed his own adaptation of The Shining, which was a three-part mini-series for ABC. Was this version truer to King’s novel? Perhaps. Was it more compelling? It was certainly no Kubrick film…

In more concrete terms, though, there are several differences between the book and the film. Kubrick’s version substitutes a large hedge maze for topiary animals. In the book, the Overlook burns down and Jack Torrance perishes in a boiler room explosion, whereas in the movie, he freezes to death in the hedge maze.

Another key difference is that in King’s novel, Jack Torrance doesn’t end up actually murdering anyone. In the movie, however, Jack kills Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers). The book ends more optimistically, with Dick Halloran spending time with Danny over a summer vacation on the east coast. In the film, we get one extended zoom on a photograph of a full ballroom, with the image dated in the forties — but there, in the very foreground of the image, stands Jack Nicholson. Apparently, his spirit has been permanently integrated into the restless community of ghosts in the hotel.

The Shining, both the book and the film, occupy a very special place within our collective cultural consciousness. We see it referenced and parodied everywhere, from TV cartoons to countless other feature length horror novels and films. Let’s hope that this new novel from King serves as an adequate follow up to The Shining, and resonates with the public; and, if popular interest merits it, let’s hope that whatever film treatment it receives does the book justice.
Author Bio: Elizabeth Eckhart is a film and entertainment writer for DirectTVcomparison.com. She still considers the The Shining Jack Nicholson’s most powerful role, and is excited/concerned about the upcoming sequel. She lives and works in Chicago.

 

Posted on October 9, 2013 by , Reply
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