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Kyle (Horrorble Writer)'s avatar

I showed my teenaged daughter MO when she was around 11 and she loved it. So the movie will forever hold a special place in my heart.

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Dennis Morrigan McDonough's avatar

"The Shining" was a director?

For the record, amateur filmmakers pay King USD 1 for the right to make a short film from one of his stories. It's called the Dollar Baby program and has supposedly produced a few decent flicks.

This flick was based on a decent story called "Trucks," in which only vehicles with internal combustion engines gained sentience, later adapted more faithfully as a cable movie of the same name. It was a lower key, lower budget affair, lacking Civil War 2 weapons caches, inexplicable (but awesome) licensed Marvel villain figureheads, or autonomous machine guns.

It also lacked a supporting player from the short-lived sitcom "Herman's Head" (a show with *two* supporting players who would a few years later score the kind of continuing gig many actors might amputate a finger to get — and much later wonder if sacrificing a limb could make the scripts fresh and funny, again).

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Dave Austin's avatar

Maximum Overdrive is the zenith of his cocaine addiction, not the nadir. It is simply the best thing cocaine has ever done (aside from the works of Martin Scorsese).

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Dennis Morrigan McDonough's avatar

He also wrote "Christine" while totally coked out, so give him credit for that. According to King, he was so exhilarated that he typed for hours without a break. It's a striking scene to imagine, his animated face above the clacking keys, a cigarette between his lips. However, he had Q-tips shoved up his nose to control the bleeding from his ravaged mucus membranes, which pushes the scene into ridiculousness (or tragicomedy, perhaps).

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Damian Penny's avatar

I’d heard it was “Cujo” he doesn’t remember writing because he was so coked out all the time. He’d wake up after a massive bender and find pages and pages already written, which he then edited into something readable.

“The Tommyknockers” is definitely a work of Colombian origin, too.

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DR Darke's avatar

THE TOMMYKNOCKERS reads more like a work King wrote while in withdrawal, aware his addictions were killing him but not sure he really wanted to fight to give up the drugs and the booze, because he wasn't sure he'd be as good clean&sober as he was when he was high as a fucking kite!

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Damian Penny's avatar

The main thing I remember from that book is a really long author screed about the dangers of nuclear power.

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DR Darke's avatar

Maybe because I'm a recovering alcoholic I remember Gard's alcoholism?

I'm not 100% anti-nuclear power, but the older I get the clearer it is that nuclear power is too dangerous to be left in the hands of people who can't be counted on to follow every safety standard to its fullest extent, and to react in the correct way AT ONCE when something goes wrong anyway.

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Dennis Morrigan McDonough's avatar

So sorry. You're right. My brain doesn't work as well as it ince did .

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James Amaz's avatar

Halfway through this article I realized that I had read it before, but also that it was such a good one that I didn't care.

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Johnny Socko's avatar

I was thinking to myself, "I don't know why Nathan keeps writing about Maximum Overdrive, but I'm certainly never going to tell him to stop."

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Dennis Morrigan McDonough's avatar

The reference to "It" puzzled me until I realized this was probably a rerun. Given Nathan's editing problems, I couldn't be sure. Thanks for confirming.

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James Amaz's avatar

Yeah, I also noticed that it said that "It" was still collecting box office money.

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James Amaz's avatar

I think I heard that King has finally acknowledged that “The Shining” was a good movie in its own right, but still says it’s a bad adaptation of his book.

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Dennis Morrigan McDonough's avatar

And his opinion is 100% accurate.

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A. R. Yngve's avatar

To quote the sage Rick James: “Cocaine is a hell of a drug!”

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Jenny In ABQ's avatar

This is too fun to not watch at least once, though. Or just maybe YouTube clips. How Did This Get Made did a great live episode about this movie with Andy Daly.

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G. A. Nuttall's avatar

Little known fact. Stephen King cowrote the screenplay for ‘Maximum Overdrive’ with Joan Didion.

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Alex Scott's avatar

And that "Yo mama" guy?

None other than a young Giancarlo Esposito. Look it up!

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Andy's avatar

Steam coming out of my ears reading the first half of this article thinking "is this mf really not going to factor AC/DC into why this movie is awesome?" But we got there. I'll go out on a limb and say the soundtrack is the only AC/DC album you need

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DR Darke's avatar

I keep coming back to the question (and it's not just Nabin who's written about MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, so I know I've said this a lot!)—WTF was Dino DeHorrendous on to let a guy with ZERO directing experience direct a feature film? Maybe King was so high on his own supply that he thought he could direct a feature film without having so much as directed an episode of television, a short subject, or even a school play, but he had friends who were directing movies and episodic television like George A. Romero, Mick Garrison, or Frank Darabont who really should have sat him down and said, "Steve, Buddy! Don't you think you ought to try directing something less ambitious to see if you even WANT to direct first...?"

It would be one thing if Big Steve had announced he was laying out $1M, or even $10M of his own money to direct this movie and "show Hollywood" how it was done—but it wasn't his money he was spending, it was De Laurentiis Entertainment Group's. It would also be something else if King had directed a handful of episodes of TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE before announcing he was directing his first feature—but he hadn't.

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Damian Penny's avatar

Both Stephen King and Eminem, when their respective drug addictions were at their worst, made works of “art” prominently featuring the phrase “We Made You.” There’s an essay to be written about that.

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