Today’s project is another Stephen King adaptation. Can we learn some of the movie adaptation master’s secrets from the review?
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A writer on a late-night drive stops at a rest stop only to find himself in the middle of an escalating domestic dispute.
About: This was a Stephen King short story that Lionsgate picked up last year. Her Smell’s Alex Ross Perry will direct. This is from King’s 2009 collection of short stories, “Just After Sunset.” It originally appeared in Esquire magazine in 2003.
Writer: Stephen King
Details: about 25 pages long
Stephen King has had more of his stories adapted into movies than any other modern writer. And it isn’t even close. King has 39 produced feature credits off adaptations. Elmore Leonard is second with 21. And the next closest is Nicholas Sparks, with 11. (Shakespeare, of course, has had like 250, but he did have a 400 year head start on King, so let’s give it time)
That’s fascinating to me. That someone can be so tuned in to what makes a movie concept work that nobody else is even within shouting distance of him. I’ve thought about this for years. What is King doing that nobody else is doing? The only thing I can think of is he doesn’t set out to write movies. He sets out to write novels and short stories and if a studio ends up wanting to adapt one, great.
Does that mean there’s something to the approach of writing stories for the page rather than the screen that creates better movie ideas? Or is it as simple as King is the only author who writes successful mainstream horror consistently, and since horror is cheap to produce, many of his ideas get made?
I know this about King. His concepts tend to be very simple. A clown that eats children. A killer dog. A girl who has the power to start fire. A family stays at a haunted hotel. An author’s biggest fan kidnaps him and forces him to write a book. Simple concepts mean focused narratives. And you guys know how much I value simple narratives. Yesterday’s horror script fell apart specifically due to how un-simple it was.
But that begs the question. With concepts so simple, how is King able to pull 700 pages out of them? I mean who, other than King, is able to turn a killer clown into a double book? Could that hold the secret to King’s adaptation success? Unfortunately, we won’t find out today, since this is a short story. But maybe Rest Stop will get us one clue closer to the answer.
English professor John Dykstra just finished speaking at a benefit as his alter ego, Rick Hardin. Rick Hardin, you see, is a best-selling thriller novelist. Rick Hardin is the cool guy with a hop to his step who wears shit-kicker cowboy boots. Rick Hardin is a pseudonym. And after the benefit, Rick Hardin morphs back into John Dykstra.
Dykstra is driving home late on a deserted highway, and because of a few drinks he had at the benefit, he needs to go to the bathroom. Luckily, he knows of a rest stop up ahead. When Dykstra pulls in, he sees one other car there, a PT Cruiser. Just as he’s about to walk in the bathroom, he hears a man cursing out a woman in the woman’s bathroom.
Amongst the screaming is hitting. Lots of it. Dykstra is all of a sudden faced with a tough choice. Does he, all of 5’9” and 160 pounds, try to go in and stop this guy, or does he become the guy on the news in a week who was a witness to a murder yet stood by and did nothing? As much as he wants to do something, Dykstra doesn’t have the courage.
We then cut inside the woman’s room and switch POVs to Lee, the man doing the beating. Just as he’s putting the finishing touches on his girlfriend, he gets clocked in the back with something, yanked backwards, and shoved to the ground. It’s Rick Hardin. Yes, Dykstra’s cooler alter-ego. He tells Lee if he tries to get up, he’ll clock him in he head with the tire iron he’s holding.
Rick, aka Dykstra, tells the woman to get in the car and drive away. Once gone, Rick berates the man for what he does and finds himself actually enjoying it. He likes being in this power position, being the abuser. After threatening to come after the man if he ever does this again, Rick heads off in his car, drives 15 miles, then promptly throws up on the side of the driveway, turning back into John Dykstra.
Let’s start by stating the obvious. This sold last year. 2019 is still firmly in the #metoo trending stage. Which makes this a great example of understanding what the market wants (toxic masculinity, female abuse storylines), then going back into the library of the most movie adaptable author in history, and finding a story that fits that need. That’s good producer work there.
As a story, this is classic King. He sets up a simple scary situation – being stuck at a truck stop with something dangerous – and makes you wonder what’s going to happen. One of the things I noticed about King that might separate him from other writers who likewise favor simple concepts, is he really likes to get into the details of the characters’ lives. Both what led them to this point and the unending number of thoughts going on in their head at the moment.
The entire first part of this story is Dykstra recounting how he got to this point in his life. The reason this is relevant is because readers don’t care about characters they don’t know. Had this story begun with Dykstra walking up to the rest stop, it wouldn’t have worked. We needed to know who this person was to care about him when he got into this situation.
I’m thinking this is part of King’s secret sauce. Despite his concepts being scary simple, he loves character. He loves detail. He never just sees what’s in the frame. He wants to know what’s above the frame, below it, next to it, behind it. That curiosity factor elevates his characters above what everyone else is doing.
I mean look at You Should Have Left. There’s character backstory in that script. But nothing to the level of even what this short story provides. In fact, I think when King stories don’t adapt well, that’s a common reason. The person adapting isn’t able to transfer over the level of detail in the characters that King put on the page.
Now some of you might point out that King depends too much on on-the-nose situations. We have the good guy here. And the really bad guy who’s beating up a girl. I mean how much more obviously bad can you make a character? However, I think that also is a reason King is so successful on the movie front. Too many writers try and create these ultra-complex characters with too many dimensions and, in the process, dilute who they are. There’s definitely a factor in mainstream Hollywood films where a certain level of “on-the-noseness” is required. Any Steven Spielberg movie will prove that. They’re mostly filled with archetypes.
And when it comes down to it, King puts his characters into interesting situations. Situations where they’re forced to act but can’t (Misery) and situations where they’re given a problem and must make a difficult choice (Rest Stop). If you’re ever looking to write a good story, just do this. Put your character in a bad situation and see what happens.
All in all, I liked this short story. I was more into the “what is he going to do?” stuff than the silly Clark Kent-Superman stuff. But I was definitely pulled in and wanted to know what would happen, which is an indication that the story is working. It’s going to be interesting to see how they turn this into a feature, though. I’m guessing it won’t end so abruptly. This will likely extend out into the surrounding forest and have a few more twists and turns.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You have to have an insatiable appetite to get to know your characters if you want to be a really good writer. That’s what King reminded me of today. If your characters are just pawns to move the plot forward, there’s always a chance that you can make that work, such as the John Wick movies. But it will serve you better to get to know characters as much as humanly possible. It helps on pretty much every front of writing.
