Does anyone get nervous anytime they see a headline about the upcoming movie, The Stand? I do. Because it seems like so many bad decisions have already laid a foundation that cannot support
Tommy Cook at Collider has an interview with director Josh Boone on The Stand.
- Here are the bullet points
- I finished writing the script maybe a month ago.
- Stephen [King] absolutely loved it.
- It’s, I think, the first script ever approved by him. (Seriously, Josh? King WROTE the original screenplay for The Stand. I doubt YOUR version is the first script he ever approved!)
- It might begin filming in Six to eight months. Possibly in Spring 2015.
- [It'll be] a single version movie of The Stand. Three hours.
- It hews very closely to the novel.
When asked how he would trim down a story as big as the Stand, Boone gave this answer:
I just focused on the things that I felt strongly about, that I have strong memories about, that are evocative to me even when I read it now . . .
. . . I just focussed on the things that were more important to me and felt essential to me and were based in the characters.So the movie is really, "Josh Boone's favorite parts of The Stand" -- not Stephen King's THE STAND.
Boone goes on to discuss the fact he's an atheist/agnostic. Frustrating, since for many of us, The Stand is an intensely spiritual book. We already had a rather flat rendition by Garris; but at least Garris gave the story the room it needed to breath.
Is The Stand a religious novel? From Stephen King, A Face Among The Masters:
In 2008, King told novelist John Marks in Salon magazine that The Stand was his attempt to give God his due. “Too often, in novels that are speculative, God is a kind of kryptonite, and that’s about all that it is, and it goes back to Dracula, where someone dumps a crucifix in Count Dracula’s face, and he pulls away and runs back into his house. That’s not religion,” King told Marks. “That’s some kind of juju, like a talisman. I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to explore what that means to be able to rise above adversity by faith, because it’s something most of us do every day.” He then said that he wanted The Stand to “be a God trip.” (Stephen King A Face Among The Masters)
I don't want to sound like a judgmental prick, but . . . well, I AM a judgmental prick, so I may as well own it. And my gut impulse is to think that Boone is full of crap. Top to bottom, just crap crap crap. Sorry, Josh, but you can't cut "The Stand" to three hours. You can make a three-hour movie and call it "The Stand," and maybe even have scenes from the book in your movie; but that ain't "The Stand." It just isn't, and if you want me to believe otherwise, you are fighting a losing battle.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds to me like he's just playing studio politics and doing whatever Warner Bros. wants him to do and claiming that it was the best, only way to do it. And to be fair, it appears that how you get a movie made. But you don't get all that many GOOD movies made that way; yes-men and creative inspiration do not go hand in hand.
As for King loving the screenplay? Well, maybe si, maybe no, but even if he did, that holds little water with me. I've got a Fangoria from 1990 in which King talks about how great the movie version of "Graveyard Shift" is going to be. I love the man and his work to death, but I can't always agree with his opinions on movies.
So, yeah, to me this version of "The Stand" feels like a disaster in the making. But I've been wrong before, and I hope I'm wrong this time, too.
I can think of King praising many scripts, so what's he talking about it being the only script King has given his nod to? In fact, King WROTE the miniseries.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to call Boone a liar, so I'll settle for saying he's mistaken, as, like you, I can think of (at a bare minimum) half a dozen screenplays King has publicly approved of. You'd think a huge Stephen King fan like Josh Boone would know that, but maybe not.
DeleteAnd for all I know, maybe King actually told him, "Hey, this is great! It's the first screenplay I've ever read that I liked!"
Seems unlikely, but you never know.
Okay, I'll go for that.
DeleteBut this movie has me scared.
Me too. And not in the good way.
DeleteI look for this movie to only show the disgusting acts of human beings and not the good that brings them together. God will be cut from the story and half of the Twilight cast will bring their poor acting skills back to the big screen. I will watch this but I honestly have no expectations. At least I'll get popcorn :)
ReplyDeleteShould Stephen King fans bother with movies that promise to shred the art?
ReplyDeleteWell, here it is, December 2015 and Josh Boone's The Stand is no closer to being filmed than it was when this post was made. It's not even being cast. Methinks it is dead. Which is fine with me.
ReplyDelete