Editorials
[Interview] Eight New Things We’ve Learned About ‘Doctor Sleep’!
By now you’ve certainly seen the trailer for Doctor Sleep, the long-awaited follow-up to The Shining from writer/director Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House). The preview featured surprising imagery evoking Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, but also seemed to indicate a faithfulness to the novel by Stephen King.
In a Q&A immediately after the premiere of the trailer in Los Angeles, Flanagan and his producing partner Trevor Macy answered questions from the press about the film’s production, its unique status as a sequel to multiple versions of the same story, and what sort of Easter Eggs fans will see in the film, which opens in theaters on November 8, 2019.
These are the most fascinating stories that came from the filmmakers!
Doctor Sleep is a Sequel to Stephen King’s Novel AND Stanley Kubrick’s Film
Given the differences between Stephen King’s classic novel and Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, an adaptation of King’s “Doctor Sleep” would presumably have to make a choice: follow the books, or follow the film. Right?
Not necessarily.
“It’s the most common question we’ve had since the project was announced, and the question that we couldn’t really answer until we had material to present,” Mike Flanagan said. “Because the answer is really complicated. The answer to all of those questions for us has always been, ‘yes’.”
“It is an adaptation of the novel ‘Doctor Sleep’, which is Stephen King’s sequel to his novel ‘The Shining’. But this also exists very much in the same cinematic universe that Kubrick established in his adaptation of The Shining,” Flanagan continued, “and reconciling those three, at times very different sources has been kind of the most challenging and thrilling part of this creatively, for us.”
“First and foremost the movie is kind of its own thing,” Trevor Macy added. “And has been embraced by the Kubrick estate and by King as such. But in a very real sense we’re standing on the shoulders of literary and cinematic giants.”
“Which has been, you know, no pressure,” Flanagan joked.
Stephen King Had to Agree to the Kubrick Ideas
“Very, very carefully,” Mike Flanagan explained, “and over a lot of trial and error initially, when it came to trying to craft the adaptation, I went back to the book first and the big conversation that we had to have was about whether or not we could still do a faithful adaptation of the novel as King had laid it out, while inhabiting the universe that Kubrick had created.”
“And that was a conversation that we had to have with Stephen King, to kick the whole thing off.
“If that conversation hadn’t gone the way it went we wouldn’t have done the film,” Flanagan revealed.
“As a lot of you know – I imagine all of you know – Stephen King’s opinions about the Kubrick adaptation are famous and complicated. And complicated to the point that if you’ve read the book you know that he actively and intentionally ignored everything that Kubrick had changed about his novel, and defiantly said nope, this exists completely outside of the Kubrick universe,” he added.
“So the first conversation we had to have, other than that we as – fans of King and apostles of The Shining – really needed to try to bring those worlds back together again,” Flanagan continued.
“We had to go to King and explain how, and some of that amounts to very practical questions about certain characters who are alive in the novel, ‘The Shining’, who are not alive by the end of the film,” Flanagan said. “How do I deal with that? And in particular how to get into the vision of the Overlook that Kubrick had created.”
“And our pitches to Stephen went over surprisingly well, and we came out of the conversation with not only his blessing to do what we ended up doing, but his encouragement,” Flanagan said.
“This project has had for me the two most nerve-racking moments of my entire career,” the director then confessed.
“The first was sending the first draft of the script to Stephen King, and that was utterly terrifying, but he thankfully really loved it. And the second was at the end, very recently, of this post-production process when the film was sent to Stephen to watch and also to the Kubrick estate.”
“Both went very well, and that was always the hope going in, that there was some universe in which Stephen King and the Stanley Kubrick estate could both love this movie. That is the dream. Threading that needle has been the source of every ulcer we’ve had for the last two years,” Flanagan said.
There’s Only One Shot in the Trailer from The Shining
The footage from the first Doctor Sleep trailer features surprising footage of Danny Torrance and the Overlook Hotel, but even though it looks Kubrickian, only one shot in the preview was from Kubrick’s The Shining
“It’s interesting too because what you’ve seen today, in the more iconic imagery that’s been on the screen, that isn’t taken from the Kubrick film,” Flanagan explained. “There’s only one shot in the trailer you saw that’s actually his footage, and that’s the shot of the bloody elevators.”
“Everything else is us. Everything else is our recreation. So I don’t want to spoil to what extent and what specific, outside of what you already got to see, what we have kind of been able to revisit form Kubrick’s world,” Flanagan teased. “But I can say that everything that we decided to use, our intention was always to detail and reverence, and making sure that we were doing it properly, with the hope that even the most rabid cinephiles might not be able to tell the difference with some of our frames and some of his.”
“That’s always been the goal, Flanagan concluded. “We were able to do that with the full support of the Kubrick estate, who were willing to provide us with his designs.”
Doctor Sleep Was Not Made Like a Modern Horror Movie
The Shining may be a classic horror movie, but some younger audiences might not fall under its spell, since trends of horror have evolved in the ensuing decades. It’s a concern that Flanagan thinks he has an answer to.
“It’s interesting because I’ve had that experience where I’ve shown someone The Shining and they don’t see what the fuss is about,” the director explained.
“I think one of the solutions to that for us was we never approached this movie as a horror movie. We always wanted to try to come at it from a different side. We’ve done that for a lot of our things but I don’t know if it’s ever been more true than with this one,” he continued. “It has horrific elements, absolutely, but one of the things that we were trying to be very careful to do is not to create the expectation that this is a modern horror movie in the way that people expect it.
“One of the questions that I would ask,” Flanagan added, “when we were developing the project and when we were talking about the metered expectations audiences have about, in particular, jump scares and startles and the pacing of those, which we’re utterly uninterested in this film, [was] I would say, ‘What’s your favorite jump scare in The Shining?’”
“There isn’t one. The same is true here. We used a lot of the lessons that Kubrick taught us about how to do a psychological thriller, a supernatural thriller, in a way that is more about suffocating atmosphere and tension than it ever is about the kind of traditional scares as we understand them today,” Flanagan concluded. “So in light of that, we have been very careful not to make the kind of movie that those audiences would expect.”
The Big Argument: A Door Number
The notorious and ominous room that Danny is warned about in The Shining is different in the novel than in the film. The novel set the disturbing action in Room 217, whereas Kubrick’s adaptation moved it to Room 237. (The hotel managers of The Timberline Lodge, which was used for exteriors, were afraid nobody would want Room 217 again, so Kubrick changed it to a room number they didn’t have.)
“I’ll tell you one of the most robust arguments we had was about whether the door would be 237 or 217,” Flanagan explained. “Robust argument.”
“And we went back and forth about four times in prep,” Trevor Macy added.
There Will Be Easter Eggs
Mike Flanagan may get asked about King’s novel and Kubrick’s movie the most, but he knows The Shining has other adaptations and influences.
“I actually have quite a bit of admiration for the mini-series,” Flanagan says, referring to the 1997 mini-series directed by Mick Garris, and adapted by King himself. “Because of not only where they chose to shoot it – at the Stanley, which is really meaningful just as far as the genesis of the novel – but for how they treated Jack.”
“So what you’ll see eventually, and I can’t talk too much per spoilers again, but what you’ll see is an honest attempt here to try to pull all that together,” Flanagan continued. “There are lots of easter eggs within the film, specific not only to Kubrick but to King as well, outside of the Shining and Doctor Sleep novels. So I’m hoping this will be exciting for people as nerdy as me, and we did go out of our way to try to make sure it would be.”
Will There Be Conspiracy Theories?
If you’re wondering whether Doctor Sleep will have anything to do with faking the moon landings – a conspiracy theory about Kubrick’s The Shining that took on a life of its own – the answer is very silly.
“Not to be overly spoilery,” Flanagan confessed, “but at least one major announcement by NASA in the past year is something that I have faked. And this is my confession for that. Let me know what you think it is!”
They Had an Adult-Sized Big Wheel On the Set
When asked if anything eerie occurred on the set of Doctor Sleep, Mike Flanagan accidentally revealed the coolest-sounding part of the production.
“The crew and the cast were kind of too busy riding the Big Wheel around and giggling for it to be too ominous for us,” Flanagan explained, before his producing partner interjected.
“He’s not kidding,” Trevor Macy explained. “We had an adult-sized Big Wheel that you could ride around the hotel.”
“It was the coolest thing,” Flanagan admitted, laughing.
Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson lead the cast. McGregor stars as the adult version of Danny Torrance, while Ferguson plays Rose the Hat.
Carl Lumbly is playing Dick Hallorann with Alex Essoe as Wendy Torrance in the continuation of the storyline from The Shining. Kyliegh Curran has been cast in the role of Abra Stone, a girl who has the gift of ‘The Shining’. Bruce Greenwood plays the role of Dr. John. Alyn Lind is Snakebite Andi, with Jocelin Donahue and Jacob Tremblay also starring.
In Doctor Sleep, still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook, Dan Torrance has fought to find some semblance of peace. But that peace is shattered when he encounters Abra, a courageous teenager with her own powerful extrasensory gift, known as the “shine.” Instinctively recognizing that Dan shares her power, Abra has sought him out, desperate for his help against the merciless Rose the Hat and her followers, The True Knot, who feed off the shine of innocents in their quest for immortality.
Forming an unlikely alliance, Dan and Abra engage in a brutal life-or-death battle with Rose. Abra’s innocence and fearless embrace of her shine compel Dan to call upon his own powers as never before—at once facing his fears and reawakening the ghosts of the past.
Trevor Macy and Jon Berg produced the film, with Roy Lee, Scott Lumpkin, Akiva Goldsman and Kevin McCormick serving as executive producers. Flanagan adapted the novel.
Doctor Sleep hits theaters on November 8, 2019.
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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