I enjoy Mick Garris' movies/mini-series quite a bit. I am referring to his King work, as I am not familiar with other movies he directed. (Really, there's a movie called "Fuzz Bucket" !)
Here is a chronological listing of King movies Garris has directed:
1992, Sleepwalkers
1994, The Stand
1997, The Shining
2004, Riding The Bullet
2006, Desperation
2011, Bag Of Bones
Faithful: I think Garris' work is very true to King's writing. He doesn't go rogue! He at least attempts to capture the characters, tone and plot of the story as King did. I actually think writing this stuff might be easier than trying to capture it on film. Garris is not the first to struggle at points with adapting Stephen King.
Sometimes it's nice when a movie maker is inspired by King, and then goes their own direction. Hence the Kubrick version of The Shining. King is right, it's not "His" book on screen; but it is a version of his book. It's the Shining as inspired by Stephen King. Sometimes that works even better than the faithful adaptations. But as a King reader, I enjoy the movies that hold tight to the books.
My favorite of the bunch is The Stand. Garris has directed all of the recent King mini-series, and I think done well with the format. The Stand was given the room it needed to breathe. Of course, some characters got squashed together and subplots were lost -- but in general the story remained intact. You wouldn't read the novel having read the book and think, "Wow, this is a totally different story." You would know the flow of events and the characters remained true to their on page persona.
Now, dare we discuss Sleepwalkers? It was terrible! For one thing, the main idea of the movie is never explained. Thus the viewer is left wondering, "What happened?" It would be like making The Shining, and never letting you in on the fact that Danny has special powers. You're left wondering: Is this an incest movie? What's up with these characters? Thus, from the get go, the viewer is left in the dark and grasping throughout.
I spotted the Bag Of Bones mini-series on Netflix last night, but resisted the urge to watch all four hours. For some reason, though I was very excited about it when it first aired, I cannot muster the energy to watch it again. Simply put, while the movie engaged me at the time, knowing the end take away some of the excitement. It's not that knowing how a movie concludes messes up the "mystery" for me. Not at all! I enjoy watching a second time with the ending in mind. But, I do not think the end of Bag of Bones was a strong, and thus I am not propelled through the four hours toward it. Or, maybe, ya'all have been talking it down so much you (you know who you are) finally got me to see things in a new light.
I welcome your thoughts and insights. Go ahead, list out your favorites and least favorites.
I'm sorry mate, I respect your opinion, but to me Garris is like the Antichrist of the movies. I don't understand why Mr. King is more than happy to let Garris handle his adaptations, while there are genius like Frank Darabont who makes only 3 adaptations...
ReplyDeleteThe antichrist of movies. . . WOW!!! I knew opinions were strong on this.
DeleteYeah, I'm gonna have to say that Garris is not my favorite King adaptor. The Stand was pretty good, but all the others are hackneyed and amateurish. He completely misses the tone and feel of the story and always seems to cast the absolute wrong actors for the part. Maybe I'm just angry at what a shitstorm Bag of Bones was... but maybe not...
ReplyDeleteSleepwalkers, however, is one of those movies that's kind of awesome because of how stupid it is. Like the King-directed Maximum Overdrive - that movie rules.
You are comparing Sleepwalkers to Maximum Overdrive? At least Maximum Overdrive told you what it was about. . . sleepwalkers was just random scenes on screen.
ReplyDeleteAHAHA! Nice.
DeleteSometimes I think a movie does capture the "tone" of a book. . . and that makes it a bad movie. case in point: Thinner. It is a total downer; and partly because it does have that gritty feeling that the novel has.
ReplyDeleteMick Garris sucks.
ReplyDeleteThat is all.
BH
Allow me to step in here as resident nose thumber (hey I invented a new phrase) and say that I have no fundamental problem with most, if not all of Garris's King collaborations.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason Garris gets knocked so much for his adaptations is twofold. First, there's the Tolkien element. Whether they believe this or not, I'm convinced that the best of King's fiction contains the same epic vibe as Lord of the Rings (readers of It, Salem's Lot and 11/22/63 will know what I mean). That said, whether others see it like that, one thing you can't deny is that King's books have long since been projected onto this epic canvas. Even with shorts stories like Uncle Otto's Truck, you can't help but make setting and character's ten times larger than life so that ol big rig looms over you like some mechanical monolith.
The other blockade to appreciation of the Garris films is more complex. Basically it stems from the fact that King and Garris grew up in the era of American International Pictures Horror and most viewers today live in the time of Peter Jackson and the Transformers. In a way, I think that’s limiting, especially when it cuts you off from the past.
Garris shoots his films in a style that is a modern continuation of the Midnight Movie style of filmmakers like William Castle and Roger Corman and George Romero. One thing to remember is that this style can also be written as well as filmed, and it’s also a style King puts into both his books and fiction. Case in point: Trucks, Uncle Otto, Throttle, The Mist. These days it seems people have gotten so hooked on the literary and Tolkienesque aspects of hi stories that the neglect to see the Midnight Movie Schlock elements in King’s work.
This type of filmmaking is becoming rare in the MTV age, and it might be that there’s a new kind of generation gap at work here; if so, then only those who have sympathy for this sort of thing. I’d also like to know if you’re familiar with the type of film I’m talking about Reverend, films like House on Haunted Hill, Roger Corman and Richard Matheson’s The Pit and the Pendulum and House of Usher (my favorite), or maybe Targets featuring Boris Karloff.
That being said, I think Garris’s best SK adapt is none other than the Shining. Being the town pariah has never garnered such satisfaction. Do your worst all the rest of you. Just you three stooges out there remember which one elected himself Ted Healey, and yes that counts, he started the whole act, he gets to be a choice.
For those who don’t know what in hell I’m talking about, sorry, earlier nerd discussion.
ChrisC
So you're suggesting he gives us old fashioned horror?
DeleteThe reason Garris "gets knocked" so much for his adaptations is neither twofold nor complex. It has nothing to do with Tolkien or Midnight Movies. The problem is that his adaptations simply aren't good films. In fact, from dialogue to acting, Garris's film's are quite bad. I'm kind of baffled as to why he continues to get work. And The Shining remake was laughably bad. Maybe not as bad as TNT's 2004 remake of Salem's Lot, but still pretty awful.
DeleteI am familiar with the era you refer to, but just today noted Garris' age. Yes, he and King are the same generation. Yes, I am familiar with the movies you listed. House on Haunted Hill was my favorite of that batch. Thing is, William Castle was mocked in his day! (Kind of like Garris)
ReplyDeleteGarris is a terrible filmmaker, in my opinion. My favorite directors are Spielberg, Hitchcock, Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Scorsese ... artists who blend phenomenal visual style with superb storytelling.
ReplyDeleteGarris is not in the same class as those gentlemen; he's not even close. His visual style is ineffective; he can't reliably get good performances out of his actors; he's lacking in subtlety, and therefore unable to convey subtext.
If he was putting this "talent" to use making Adam Sandler movies, then I'd simply disregard him and be done with it. Instead, he's taking novels I adore and making mediocrity out of them.
I don't accept Chris's hypothesis that Garris's movies improve if you view them through the prism of Corman/Castle-type movies. I'll be the first to admit that I'm weak on those subjects. However, if there's a generation-gap element at work, I'd be surprised: movies by John Ford and Howard Hawks are some of my favorites, not to mention any number of Hitchcock films. Not only do I have no problems watching movies from before my birth, I actively love a large number of them.
True, I haven't seen "The Pit and the Pendulum" or "The House on Haunted Hill" (mistakes I really need to remedy some day), but I feel I'm on solid ground when I speculate that they've got nothing on "The Searchers" or "Red River" or "North By Northwest."
In other words: I seriously doubt Corman or Castle did ANYTHING I need to actually see in order to be able to roll with what Chris is saying Garris is doing ... because I don't think he's actually doing anything!
Bad is bad is bad, in my book ... and Garris has yet to make a movie that is anything but bad.
Chris, I also get the point you make about modern audiences looking past the Midnight Movie schlock elements in King's work. You're right to point out that element of King's work, but I'd argue that you're looking at it from the wrong viewpoint. When he's going the schlock route and is firing on all cylinders, King elevates that material from shlock into literature.
Garris is unable to raise his own game high enough to meet King's, and as a result he's at a disadvantage right off the bat. If King is dealing in schlock and turning it into art, Garris is relegating it back to the level of schlock ... but it never survives the trip backward.
If you want to see an example of shlock turned into genuine art, look no further than Tarantino. He makes trashy films, but applies to that trash excellence in dialogue, acting, cinematography, editing, humor, and music. There's nothing deep about his stories, and yet his films are marvelously deep in the way they subsume and then regurgitate trash cinema of years past. In his hands, trash becomes art.
That is not what Garris is doing. He's not taking anything and improving upon it; certainly not the source material, and not the Corman/Castle approach to schlock, either. No, he's just making schlock. Even worse: he's making schlock that should have been art, based on how artistic the source material is.
I won't accept it, gentlemen; I just won't do it.
I think about Garris doing what he did to "Bag of Bones" to, say, "The Green Mile" or "The Dead Zone" and it makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. And I had buffalo wings for dinner, so it's especially gross.
ReplyDeleteMick Garris directs "The Dark Tower"! HUUURKKK!!!!! BLEEEEEEARRRCCHHHH!!!!! Whew, was that corn?!?
I also don't get what Chris is saying about Peter Jackson. He's five times the filmmaker Mick Garris is, and lumping him in with the odious mess that is Michael Bay is ... well, it's just plain wrong, on every level.
ReplyDeleteLike Jackson or not, he at least strives -- successfully, in my reckoning -- to inject some soul into his films. Bay is about as soulless a filmmaker as there can be. He gets praised for his visual style, but only by people who think robots punching each other in the face is the height of sophistication.
Come to think of it, Bay and Garris make for a pretty decent comparison: both tend to overlight their films, both are poor at editing, and both have an appallingly unfunny sense of "humor." Bay is Mick Garris if Mick Garris was financially successful ... which he patently isn't.
For the record Reverend, yes, I am saying Garris and King both are giving us a more older fashioned model of horror.
ReplyDeleteI'd appreciate while it's still around, if that style of horror should ever go out, then it'll sad to think of a future without. any creativity and instead populated by mindless Hostel and Saw imitators. That's the danger the whole genre is facing.
ChrisC
By the way Honk, I note what you say about Peter Jackson, maybe I used the wrong comparison, although I didn't really mean to compare the two directors. While I might not have liked the Rings adaptations I thought his King Kong was spot on.
ReplyDeleteI was just looking for the two most identifiable styles around today that most people need no reference point for.
Other than that, I guess it all depends on what first principles (i.e. underlying critical artistic ground rules) you use as a criteria in fiction on page or screen.
My own is I guess essentially pulp populist to coin a phrase, with a heavy accent on the pulp, as long as it doesn't debase itself. The difference then seems to be the level at which debasement of pulp fiction, which I regard as legitimate, must be a bit lower on the scale. You could argue I have less class and taste by this reading.
Just rest easy in knowing I take it as a matter of pride that I've seen no Jackass movies. I draw the line way before then.
ChrisC
Aha -- okay, that makes sense.
DeleteI'm a much bigger fan of what Jackson did on "Lord of the Rings" than on "King Kong," personally. That's not to say I disliked his "King Kong." Far from it, actually. But I thought Jack Black was badly miscast, and for me, it hurt the movie. I'd have loved it if Bill Paxton had gotten that role instead.
Overall, though, it's a really good version of the story. And I may as well admit it: the ending makes me cry every freakin' time.
I don't think he is a great director but I think he is a good writer and a great producer.
ReplyDeleteI loved Fear Itself and Masters of Horror.
-mike
Hey he likes it, Mikey likes it!!!
ReplyDeleteChrisC
I guess should mention one last thing. For those who care to receive it, have pleasant Ash Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteChrisC
Mick Garris is VERY hit-or-miss in my opinion and more on the "miss" side than the "hit". He takes the "epic" feel of King's novels and makes them mundane. And yes, I'm well versed in the Corman / Castle / AIP movies and I don't think they help in appreciating Garris' output.
ReplyDeleteI guess may it all comes down to the ability to see the epic in the mundane. There was writer, G.K. Chesterton who was good at pointing that up.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's definitely possible to see the epic in the mundane. It's also possible to see the mundane in the epic.
ReplyDeleteIt makes more sense to me to see the epic in the epic and the mundane in the mundane.
It's all opinions, of course, and they're a lot like cornholes in that we've all got 'em, and they're all full of crap once in a while. Even mine!
Count me on the anti-Garris side. His films are just so "pedestrian". There's no inspiration to them, no soul, nothing beyond a sense of "we'll do this scene this way, because that happened in the novel". Okay, well, do something with it. No? Okay.
ReplyDeleteAt his best, what we get is The Stand, which I still think was a woefully inept mini-series. At his worst we get...everything else he's ever done. Seriously, I see his name attached and I groan.
Everything he does seems like a high school production. Actors are cast because they're available, not because they're good or really fit the part. The script is basically a chopped up version of the original. He points his camera and then points it at something else. It's just pedestrian.