Stephen King's Honest Opinion About "The Shining" Film | Letterman

good morning and welcome back to the show  my next guest is a best-selling author who   has written such Thrillers as Carrie The  Shining and the dead zone and his new book   which is entitled The Fire Starter ladies  and Gentlemen please welcome Stephen King how are you I'm fine how are you fine you don't uh  you don't look like a guy who would be filled with   frightening thoughts neither did Norman Bates  Norman Bates is a frightening fellow himself   um what what makes people frightened and uh how  do you get it down on paper well I think people   are frightened of almost anything you know as far  as the unknown anything unexpected anything that's   going to jump out of them at them in the dark  you know I remember the final scene in Cary where   the hand comes up out of the grave and grabs Amy  Irving if you can get people with their defenses   down and get them in the open you can grab them  and do a job on them and that's what I like to do   what um did you always have these thoughts inside  of you or did you just see it as as a way to to   make money as a writer now um really I didn't  go to the market the market came to me um as   far back as I can remember I've been interested in  ghosts and goblins and Things That Go Bump in the   night and in the early 70s I was writing stories  for those magazines where if you hold them up by   the side a picture falls out you don't show your  mother that kind of thing and getting anywhere   from 100 to 200 to 300 for stories my wife and I  were just married I was working in a laundry and   she would say hurry up and think of a monster  whenever the bills came due so I did the best   I could um has there ever ever been anything that  frightened you in real life that's made it into a   story anything out of your childhood that turned  up as a book yeah there are a lot of things and I   suppose the one thing that uh scares all little  kids is the Boogeyman the thing in the closet   and uh you know I can remember Bill Cosby's rap  about covers covers a magic yeah you know that   there's nothing under the bed and you know that  if you keep your feet under the covers it will   never grab you anyway and uh even as a grown-up  I think that as children we fear these things and   we let our fears out we tell people because we're  unsophisticated and as we get older we still have   the fears we just sublimate them you know and  we don't tell people but still most people when   they're alone in the dark things that you would  laugh at in the daylight begin to seem a little   bit like Technicolor there's always a period for  me when uh between the time you get in bed and the   time you fall asleep where stuff doesn't make  correct sense and I remember as a kid thinking   that I was uh wake up in a real cold sweat out of  that gray period pain thinking that the bed was   covered with snakes and when you get to examining  it of course it was covered with snakes it was an   ugly joke that my parents played with me but it  would just be lumps and folds of the uh yeah of   the thing uh why do people like to be scared like  that why do you what is your kind of thing sell   so well well on the simplest level I think people  like to be scared about the same as the old joke   about the guy who beat his head against a Wong  and somebody said well why do you keep doing   that he said it feels good when I stop and I  think that if you're being scared out of your   wits when the scare ends when the lights go up or  when the book ends you know you say to yourself I   thought things were bad for me but at least I'm  not in that position you know I'm not stuck in   the haunted hotel or I'm not uh you know trapped  with a telekinetic girl or whatever it happens   to be yeah do you ever get the communication from  other people who say uh you think what you wrote   about was frightening here is my personal I get  a lot of letters like that and sometimes you'll   get a letter from a genuine ding dong I mean most  of the people who write to me are straight ahead   you know and they say things that make sense  they're good letters we try to answer them as   much as we can but every now and then you get a  letter from a guy who wants to come up with his   Polaroid camera and photograph all your ancestors  standing behind you you know on a straight line   back to Adam or something like that or they will  tell you about the time that the ghost got them   or whatever it happens to be and they'll seize on  you as though you were a kindred spirit you know   these things yourself do you find that annoying  when they do that no I love it yeah you live in   Maine what part of Maine we live in Western Maine  I'm not a Seacoast boy most people when they think   of Maine they think of the Seacoast but as far as  I've ever been concerned Lobster pots are to make   coffee tables out of uh is it scary up there it's  scary at night in the woods in the dark with loons   on the lake now we're getting somewhere Stephen  King this morning uh his most recent work is uh   the fire starter and there's a picture of someone  who looks a little like you but that's not true   it's a guy who looks like an author you had to  take this picture for yeah that's that's severe   that's Mr Hyde you got Jekyll this morning what  about uh uh Jack Nicholson in The Shining were   you pleased with the with that I thought he did  a wonderful job yeah shining I did very much how   did you feel about the movie itself well I feel  both ways or I got to see it four times because   of commitments one place and another and there  are an awful lot of things about that movie that   I think are flawless and beautiful and uh just  marvelous and then there are other times when   I feel as though uh I'd given Stanley Kubrick a  live grenade knee heroically threw his body on it   um when when you sell something to a Motion  Picture company I guess there'd be several   thousand different kinds of deals but how much  control do you have of what actually gets on   on the screen well I've never asked for a lot of  control I'm working with a guy named George Romero   now who did Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of  the Dead a couple of Nursery tales for younger   people you know yes and uh I'll be working on the  screenplay with him and uh there I would expect   to exercise some control as part of the film  company but as for actually selling a book to   the movies you send it off the way you'd send a  child off to school and you hope it will do well   and well will be done by it but I've never asked  for control then you're in a perfect situation   if they do a great job you can say that's  my book and if they do a lousy job you can   say I had no control right right I was pirated  yeah uh what about the you have children three   now uh well uh how what are the ages I've got a  daughter who's 10 and a little boy who's eight   and another little guy who's three and a half do  the older kids read your Works they've seen uh   Salem's Lot which was made into a TV movie  and uh they've seen excuse me the TV version   of Carrie but as far as reading the things  they've never been forbidden but my daughter   is the great reader right now and she's really  involved with horses and things like that she's   not into vampires yet uh what kind of things do  you read everything I can get my hands on really   um I don't read really widely in the horror  field if it's something that I really want to   read I do but I like General novels uh any kind  of non-fiction that looks interesting kind of   interested in uh Dillinger and someday I like  to write a book about Dillinger and those bad   guys former fellow Hoosier I believe yeah from  Indiana yeah uh has this tell me the difference   between just a horror film and a science fiction  film they both are kind of overlapping yeah they   do and uh you know fans argue about this back and  forth for hours but my idea of what a horror film   is is it's something that comes out of nothing  that's totally inexplicable and in a science   fiction movie you say well we have this now  so that maybe in uh 20 years or 30 years we   really will be able to clone Ronald Reagan  if we want to you know that sort of thing so I see that as the difference yeah yeah uh  I guess the like Star Wars the first one that   was all fabrication because they said a thousand  Generations ago yeah so I see that as a fantasy   though David really um basically what they're  saying is let's remake Buck Rogers Flash Gordon   or all the things that we remember it has some  science fiction trappings this spaceship Zoom   around but they're just saying they're there let's  not worry about why they're there what uh can you   tell me quickly this is your new book are you  now working on the next one I'm starting to play   around with an idea on paper you know the ideas  come and they stay for a while and then if they   don't go away you kind of hope that they will  because most writers are pretty lazy and if it   won't go away finally you have to pick it up and  do something with it so do you think of a great   scary scene and then write a book to it or does it  happen the other way around usually what happens   is if you're writing a horror book and this thing  that I'm working on should turn out to be a real   screamer if it goes the way that I want it to you  get an idea for something that's really nasty yeah   yeah terrific it's called the fire starters his  latest work and Stephen King thank you very much [Music]

Channel: Letterman

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Keywords: letterman, david letterman, dave letterman, interview, letterman interview, letterman official, letterman late show, letterman late night, late night, stupid pet tricks, stupid human tricks, top ten, late show, top ten list

Id: U8wxjIecmD4

Length: 8min 56sec (536 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 02 2023