For an author who has already seen plenty of adaptations of his work, 2017 has been a bit of a banner year for Stephen King. On television, “The Mist” and “Mr. Mercedes” unfolded. At the multiplex “The Dark Tower” and “It” were unveiled, while Netflix delivered “1922” and “Gerald’s Game.” And while the results have varied pretty wildly, one person who has learned not be precious about it is King himself.
READ MORE: ‘1922’ Is The Most Essential Stephen King Adaptation Of 2017 [Review]
The author spoke with Vulture about the recent run of projects, and he’s candid about the fact that’s mostly pretty hands off when it comes to movies based on his books and stories. Why? Well, if the TV shows or movies fail, the books will always still be there:
I never had a problem with it, from Carrie onward. Even with Carrie, my feeling was, “They’re gonna make this movie. If it’s a success, it will help me do what I want to do, which is to write books.” When I was in college, I read something that stuck in my mind from James M. Cain, who did The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce. He did an interview near the end of his life where the reporter said, “They ruined your books for the movies,” and Cain snapped his head around and pointed at the bookshelf and said, “No they didn’t, they’re all right there.” In a way, the book is untouchable.
Now, what Hemingway said is that the best thing that can happen to a writer is when they pay you a lot of money for it but never make the movie. I’ve never felt that way, I’m always anxious to see what they do with it. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes you get pictures like the Children of the Corn sequels. I’ve been down this road before in the sense that a movie like Gerald’s Game or 1922. It’s easy to say, “This would be really difficult to make into a movie,” but I felt that way about Cujo and they did a terrific job, so you never know what’s going to happen. The attitude has to be, “I will get involved if you want me to get involved and I have these controls over who’s going to be in the cast and who will write the screenplay. I’m happy to do that when you understand that 90 percent of the time, I’m going to say, ‘That’s fine, go ahead.’”
I think part of my laissez-faire attitude comes from a) I’m doing okay financially so I can afford to take a risk, and b) I’ve been prolific enough so that I don’t feel upset about it. Take a guy like William Peter Blatty when Friedkin made The Exorcist: That was his baby, so it was probably an extremely important event in his life. Same thing with Ira Levin, who did Rosemary’s Baby. He was terrific, but he only wrote four novels, so when Polanski wanted to make Rosemary’s Baby, Levin was very anxious that he follow the book very closely, right down to the kind of shirts that the John Cassavetes character wore. I’m not that guy, I’m just not. My idea is, “If you’re going to make changes, hopefully they’ll work.” There are changes in It that work very well, and with Mr. Mercedes, which is on TV now, there are some terrific changes from the book. Sometimes you make those changes and they don’t work really well, and I’m always sorry when that happens.
It’s a pretty healthy, level-headed approach. If King deeply scrutinized each adaptation, he’d probably drive himself crazy (and then turn into a book or something). It turns, that of the many things that go bump in the night, the one thing that won’t scare King is a bad movie or TV version of one of his stories.