The silver-screen adaptation of Stephen King's "Riding the Bullet" takes a few imaginative ways of sharing this coming-of-age horror story and runs them into the ground.It wasn't the actors. This time, it was the way the story was told.
King's "Constant Readers" know of his propensity to use inner voices as "conversations" to move a character along. While this works in a novel where the inner voice is often seen in italics, it's hard to pull off in a motion picture.
Director Mick Garris, who has done many King projects, selected the split-screen sort of effect of having the main character appear with himself to carry on these conversations. This approach is used almost to the point of distraction.
And another feature of King's writing style is to have characters go into great detail about an imagined circumstance or outcome -- envisioning vivid accounts of what might be. Garris employs these as trippy flashbacks of supposed realities, sometimes in rapid succession.
I get what Garris was trying to do. He wanted to present what is, at heart, a tender story about a young man coming to terms with growing old in an unstable world; he wanted to give us the tale the way it was written. Unfortunately, the screen story suffers from the techniques it offers.
On the other hand, I will give Garris credit for borrowing some of his pacing, lighting and action methods from George A. Romero. I challenge you to see it and not get some of the same feel of the immortal "Creepshow".
King fans take heart -- apparently Romero is attached to bring "From a Buick 8" to the big screen as early as 2007.
1 comment:
SK is a writer with such a devoted and huge following that nearly any adaptation of his work to the movies is bound to generate controversy. Most of the best, for some reason, aren't the "horror," ones -Green Mile, Stand By Me, Shawshank.
A good Stephen King movie would have to be written and directed by King, and I don't know if he can do that...
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