Script Review: DESPERATION

by Darwin Mayflower

WARNING: SPOILERS!

(08/14/00) NOTE: The screenplays we review are often in development and may experience many rewrites, some could end up being completely different than what is reviewed here. It is our hope that our reviews generate more interest in the film. Thank you.

If someone asked me who the best contemporary novelist was, Id say...Tom Wolfe.

If they asked who the second-best novelist was Id say Stephen King.

(Right now book-readers are hissing and crying foul. Even I can think of others, off the top of my head, who could usurp that silver position. William Kotzwinkle, Denis Johnson, Kathryn Harrison, Richard Price, Elmore Leonard, Jonathan Ames, Salman Rushdie, Charles Baxter -- forget it...this list can go on forever.)

When stuck with the inquiry of why the King of Horror is so popular, most will say its because hes a normal guy. Yeah -- Stephen Kings Steve. The guy who plays his guitar at local clubs and comes into town to buy his socks.

But I think thats a kneejerk response; something created and repeated so often its now become law.

Steve may be a normal guy -- and a damn nice one -- but hes a normal guy whos a billionaire. Hes a normal guy who regularly reinvents his particular genre and sends the publishing world falling on its cushy ass.

A normal guy whos entered the worlds lexicon. On the level of "Its like were in the TWILIGHT ZONE." Something really weird happens and its like "being in a Stephen King book."

If you were to ask me why I think King is so effective Id say: because he still understands the simple scares. Hes still aware that shadows in your bedroom at night can be a hell of a lot more frightening than a special-effect ghoul.

King decided to adapt DESPERATION on his own -- squashing a hefty 700-page novel into a 135-page screenplay. Mick Garris (King director of choice: THE STAND, THE SHINING) will direct. New Line Cinema put it in turnaround last year.

DESPERATION, as you probably know, is about Desperation, Nevada, where it seems a cop has gone berserk and killed every single person in the town. Various travelers riding on Route 50 get stopped by the lunatic cop, beaten, and then tossed in jail.

The cop speaks in a bizarre, ancient tongue. The language of the unformed. The language of the dead. He also has an impish streak and likes to ridicule his prisoners as hes leading them to their doom.

Stephen King has been in this genre-territory before. A group of strangers (in this case an ex-alcoholic writer, a family (which includes a kid that talks to God), a husband and wife, and an old-timer from the town) are brought together by an outside force. Everyone else is dead. They dont know why theyve been chosen to live. But they must work together and battle the evil presence.

We saw this in THE STAND and THE LANGOLIERS. And even to a certain extent in THE MIST. In DESPERATION and THE STAND religion plays a much larger role.

At this point King is such a master -- with this type of story or anything else, really -- that hes like an old, enthusiastic master magician. A genius of the legerdemain. His hands move as gracefully as a birds wings and as fast as a pounding heart.

We, the audience, watch horrified (because he appears to be a demon, something unholy), in fascinated awe (because were stunned)...and then beg for more.

Openings are important. And King creates a beautiful one here. It taps into his knowledge of what really scares us -- our basic paranoia.

Think about it: Youre traveling on the road, windows open, wind blowing; the skys blue and clear; youre thinking about a million things and none of them involve the nonsense that makes your hair turn gray at work.

Suddenly, behind you, flashing lights. Youre being pulled over by the cops. You havent done anything. Youve never done anything. But you know, this time, that the cop is going to arrest you anyway, drag you to jail, your life is going to become MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, and youll be praying to go back to that lousy job you had.

King exploits that fear and jacks up the volume. Because this time the cop is against you. And not just angry but nuts.

Hes a giant, a racist, and hes taking your ass to jail. And theres nothing you can do about it.

King has expanded the role of the police officer in the script. He was loony in the book, no doubt, but hes now like a demon comedian. Singing while pummeling someone and saying, "Anything you bray will be abused against you in a sort of caw."

DESPERATION was more of a pure-fun, sit-around-the-campfire-and-scare-yourself-silly, spooky read compared to his later releases (it was connected to his pseudonym Richard Bachmans novel THE REGULATORS). A young boy goes through a spiritual journey, its true (he finds God and God saves him), but compared to THE GREEN MILE and HEARTS IN ATLANTIS (which deals beautifully with Vietnam, its protestors (Joe Eszterhas should have read Kings account and learned theres two sides to a story), and its aftereffects) it stands as a glorious distraction. A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM to HAMLET. This is the King who wrote CARRIE and SALEMS LOT -- not STAND BY ME and APT PUPIL.

DESPERATION was a blatantly religious novel and is a somewhat religious screenplay. God is brought up (a lot). His wisdom and His cruelty.

The budget was blamed, but Id bet this is why the script was put into turnaround. Youre asking sixteen-to-eighteen year old kids -- who flock to the theater every weekend -- to question Gods existence when all they really want is more King-horror: dead people hanging from hooks and the like.

The faith-and-God talk played fine on the page. But it might be a different story on the screen. People might feel that its fustian, incongruous, moralizing, didactic, or, God forbid, boring.

King wants to make horror stories -- even popcorn-friendly ones like this -- into something more. So it must have been fun to throw in a long discussion on God into the mix. To make God the good guy of the story. But do young kids want to hear this? Do they care? You got me.

Many King novels have been ruined and raped. Even surefire, cinema-ready tales like APT PUPIL are shorn to shreds and left to fade away like a pleasant dream.

Sometimes authors cant fit Kings sprawling plots and inner monologues into anything workable. Its hard to blame them. King always creates great images. But its his characters, and what they do and say, that are the center of his work.

The script-to-screen passage is a tough one for King, and even a book like MISERY, which engendered a film people love, got tortured and run through a toning machine before it appeared onscreen. The book and the film look as though theyre the same...but in fact the movie was turned into a more-friendly, standard thriller. Kings book is more frightening. In the movie Annie is almost funny in her lunacy. King crafts a true psychopath: she acts without reason occasionally; drifts into depressive, self-flagellation bouts; appears and disappears like a person walking through a hall of mirrors.

We are easily lead into the madness of Annie -- and Paul. Paul slowly but surely goes insane, too, I think. And by the end, when he thinks Annie is still alive, hes briefly over the edge.

Something else King has on the movie: Annies torture is amazing in its brutality and inventiveness. Getting your leg smacked with a sledgehammer seems like a walk in the park next to what happens to poor Paulie in the book (his foot is cut off, if you didnt know). Even the scene where she makes him drink filthy rinse water from a bucket is more horrifying. Its scary because hes under her control, he sees for the first time shell hurt him and that shes insane, and hes willing, eager, to do it because hes so weak...and he needs his pills...and the pain is so bad...

While the book and movie are similar, William Goldman tamed this thing from a roaring, rolling, rushing-head-on lion to a yawning kitty-cat.

I always thought of MISERY as an immobile Jim Thompson novel. But Pauls mad rambling and hectic scheming are the things that were immediately cut from the script.

But back to DESPERATION.

Having said screenwriters have problems with Kings big-bad-and-heavy books, its only fair to put that to him, too, now as the screenwriter.

DESPERATION shows that its totally impossible to translate the effect of one of Kings books to a script. Its too limited (as far as time) of a format for that. So while DESPERATION gives us great haunted-house frights (trained coyotes and snakes and a person decomposing in front of us) Kings forced to cut the meat out of his characters and were left with the surface of his book. We never truly know the people, and the scares -- the dead bodies -- have to become the main attraction.

Ill give it to King in how he pulled in this plot. Fitting huge chunks of plot in a short amount of time is always a trick screenwriters try to perfect. And here, with a little help from Woody Allen, King comes up with a nice way of laying out to us just what the hell happened in this town.

Speaking of that -- I always thought the ending of DESPERATION (the novel) was a little weak. You see, what really killed the townspeople is Tak. Tak is an evil spirit living in an open-pit mine known as the China Pit. Chinese slaves were once buried alive in a massive cave-in. Two Chinese brothers were blamed for it and hanged.

Im not sure Tak is explained beyond that its an evil spirit. A foil to God, I guess, and a good reason to get these people together to battle it in Gods name.

DESPERATION was a great novel. Its a pretty good script, too. If it gets the budget it deserves it should make an entertaining movie.

Kings movies will never be as good as Kings books. But Hollywood is obsessed with bestsellers so well always have to have them.

In Kings case theres the intrinsic and the extrinsic. In movies the latter is all that applies.

Id shun the outer (crawling spiders and tearing skin) for the inner (the astutely written thoughts and emotions of the characters) any day.

-- Darwin Mayflower.