One of the most famous and controversial opinions in film history is the well-known fact that Stephen King dislikes Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic, “The Shining.” Kubrick adapted King’s 1977 novel, and King was unhappy with the changes Kubrick made to his story, believing them to be pessimistic or arbitrary. King’s novel is about an alcoholic former author named Jack who moves his family into a remote, snowy hotel, serving as their caretaker during the winter. There, ghostly entities begin to appear, driving Jack into wrathful madness. King’s version was a clear metaphor for the fall of the wagon, a sad and sympathetic story about an ordinary man transformed into a monster by outside forces. Kubrick’s film, on the other hand, starred Jack Nicholson as Jack, making the character abusive and angry from the start. King hated it.
There are also myriad other tiny changes (room numbers change, for example), and each one has irritated King. Never mind that Kubrick’s mastery of the cinematic craft is undeniable and that he made one of the scariest and most impactful films of all time. King openly hated how evil Jack had become and felt his ideas had been mishandled. King was able to “correct” Kubrick’s version in 1997 when he adapted his novel into a television miniseries. Critics didn’t think it was as good, but King preferred it.
King might want “The Shining” to be handled with care, but he’s already crafted a wilder, slightly more “Scooby-Doo” version of the story. In the mid-1970s, when King was still spitballing ideas for a haunting new story he wanted to write, he first thought of a family stuck in a spooky, haunted amusement park. In 2013, King appeared on NPR’s “Fresh Air” to discuss his work and career, and he shared some of his early ideas for the novel that would become “The Shining.” The changes are rather dramatic.
Stephen King once imagined a version of The Shining set in a haunted amusement park
King shared that he always loved amusement parks as a child, recalling that he enjoyed his days at Topsham Fair, a carnival in Topsham, Maine, which still operates to this day. He was particularly fond of people called shy barkers, people who stood outside rides, games, and attractions and colorfully harassed customers to come inside or try to win prizes of questionable value. “Everyone wins,” he repeated. But a haunted amusement park was, King said, an ideal setting for a story. The premise of “The Shining” was already in place, but the setting was still evolving. Of his first version, King said:
“I always wanted to write a novel set in an amusement park and the original concept of “The Shining.” It was about a family that was running an amusement park at the end of the season, and I kind of had an idea. […] instead of an old hotel. And I had a title for the book. I was going to call it “Dark Shine” and I think I had a name for the amusement park too. Maybe it was Skyhook or something, the name of one of the rides. »
King eventually moved the action of “The Shining” to a remote hotel, which was a good thing; It seems a little classier and less cartoonish that way. King would eventually write his amusement park story in the form of “Joyland,” a novel he published in 2013. This book involves the ghost of a woman named Linda who had been murdered at Joyland the previous season, although it is as much a detective novel as a ghost story.
