Did Stephen King like it?

It sounds like the tv remake used the original story's ending.

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All he liked in the 80s was cocaine.

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I've never seen The Shinning yet. And it's not because of some "high" principal of sorts but just something personal - and nothing towards the film, director, writer, writer(s), etc.

Anyways, my best friend then saw The Shinning with other friends from school - this was some years ago. And she told me that it did not scare her one bit but made her cry incessantly. She told me she felt total sadness for the character played by Jack. So, it just goes to show, not everyone will have the same reaction as the expected majority would.

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The Shining is the finest horror movie ever made, probably the best example ever of a film being better than the source material.

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The Lawnmower Man was not too bad for 1992. I remember it was hot in video stores, it was sold out for weeks when it comes out. So it probably make tons of cash on video, and not bad in theaters. Plus, Jeff Fahey is solid.. Austin O'Brien was a good kid... and Pierce Brosnan broke up in the US finally ! So all in all, not the best, but far from the worse !

Last Movies: - Transformers 4: 4/5
- Neighbors: 4/5
- Non-Stop: 4/5

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From what I've heard, The Lawnmower Man took a Stephen King title and applied it to someone else's story, so SK had his name removed from the film because he wanted to tell the truth that he didn't write the freaking thing.

I had read COTC as a story years ago and it was a great atmospheric piece with neat psychology about fanaticism in children and a clever supernatural macguffin. I agree with someone earlier that the basic premise seems to be lifted from two episodes of the first Star Trek, a TV series to which SK's work makes frequent direct or indirect references, but it seems more like a Joseph Campbell archetype than a lazy plagiarism.

When I started to watch COTC as a movie last night, I expected it to suck, but it was a decent horrifying B-movie in its own right even if it wasn't like the book. I don't mind Hollywood happy endings either. I see the book and movie as two separate entities in their own right.

Some authors just don't write filmable movies. Alan Moore realised this after two films and put a blanket ban on any future adaptations. (Since he had already sold the rights, 2 or 3 movies went ahead after the ban as they were out of his hands.) Harry Turtledove writes great adventure epics but his books are so precise and metronomic that any adaptation would have to change it so much as to no longer be the same story--Turtledove is so unfilmable he doesn't even have an IMDB name entry. Lemony Snicket's "Unfortunate Events" series is a weak story buoyed up by brilliant prose narration which is impossible to translate to film, so the LS movie, while boasting great actors and designs, was doomed to a sucky script.

Some authors like JD Salinger, Ken Kesey, or the aforementioned Alan Moore, can't abide one jot or tittle of their work being changed in a film adaptation, so they decide "no more movies." Others, like Michael Crichton, Dan Brown and JK Rowling, just let it ride and don't mind that many elements have to be changed or cut when their work is put on film.

You make some very valid points, and I agree with a lot of them, but there are also some areas of concern as well.

Where I agree is that not everything in a novel will translate well to the screen. Almost all novels, when they are adapted, have to change some things around. I'm a writer myself and I accept this.

But what I find harder to accept is when Hollywood sees fit to change certain themes and the whole plot of the story. A good example here is Bram Stoker's Dracula. This 1992 film by Francis Ford Coppola was a true masterpiece on some levels, and an equally true failure on others. The acting was good, the atmosphere, special effects and sets were magnificent and I really did enjoy the movie.

The weak point of BSD was the abysmal script. It changed the story from a basic battle between good and evil (the English vs. the Count) to that of a sappy love story between Mina and Dracula that is not even hinted at in the book.

Now, the Dracula story can be told on screen, remaining true to the basic story of the novel and yet still have it to work well. The BBC did this in their 1977 presentation Count Dracula. It made some changes in the novel but at the same time, it was true to Bram Stoker's classic work, and it is my favorite adaptation of the story. This in case you are interested, is from the BBC's Masterpiece Theater collection.

I thought that the adaptations of Tom Clancy's works that I have seen were good. The scripts for Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger, were all well done, telling their respective stories well. I haven't heard of any negative feelings about these films from Clancy. But I do know that Clancy was not happy at all with the film, Sum of All Fears, feeling that they changed too much from the book. Since I have yet to see SOAF, I cannot comment directly on it but the changes that I have heard about do not sound to me like they were needed.

Another example of a good adaptation comes from the SK novel, The Stand. This is easily my favorite work by SK and he did the screenplay, keeping it reasonably close to the source novel. Although opinions will differ on this, with some thinking the result was nothing short of catastrophic, I thought the mini-series turned out very well and it is one of my all-time favorite films.

To sum up then, while re-working some scenes will often be needed to make the translation, complete revisions, such as Coppola with BSD are seldom necessary or advised.

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