{"id":3880,"date":"2005-11-15T13:02:50","date_gmt":"2005-11-15T18:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3880"},"modified":"2022-03-21T10:09:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T14:09:40","slug":"its-the-casting-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3880","title":{"rendered":"It’s the casting, stupid!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A wonderful post about Stephen King<\/a>, and the movies made from his books.<\/p>\n

I was particularly gratified to read this:<\/p>\n

I stayed up three nights running to read It<\/i>. I did not leave a room without it under my arm; my mother could barely persuade me to put it aside during dinner, which I would then wolf down in ten minutes so I could power through the dishes and get back to reading. I can’t remember the last book that had my attention that completely. The Secret History<\/i>, maybe.<\/p>\n

It <\/i>is a scary book and horrible things happen in it, but I couldn’t put it down because of the people — the characters, the human beings. King is a great plotter, but he’s a master of characterization in tandem with that: realistic reactions to unrealistic situations, natural dialogue in unnatural circumstances. The attraction of the horror genre is not just about freaking yourself out so bad that you have to sleep with a light on; it’s about trying to control something that you think, secretly, could maybe possibly happen to you one day, and reading as much as you can about it so you’ll know what to do. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“I couldn’t put it down because of the people” – that was exactly my experience with that great book.<\/p>\n

But go over there <\/a>and read her analysis of why some movies based on King stories are great – and why some suck. She puts it on the CASTING of the films, which I think is quite interesting, and I can’t really think of any exceptions.<\/p>\n

Her paragraph about Timothy Hutton in The Dark Half<\/i> is hilarious.<\/p>\n

But why not just cast the George part with another actor, instead of one who can’t stick a Southern accent for more than five words in a row and whose idea of a scream of rending pain is actually closer to the gargle of a clogged bathtub drain? Because it is possible for an actor of Hutton’s physical stature to convince me of what he’s doing. Buscemi could do it. Buscemi would not back down from that shit even if the check bounced. Hutton plays it like he cheated on you, got caught, and is now crying about it and making you comfort him about how his parents got divorced and he’s a really self-hating person. This character kills people with a straight razor<\/i>, Timbo. Get your damn back into it for five minutes. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Timbo … heh heh heh heh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A wonderful post about Stephen King, and the movies made from his books. I was particularly gratified to read this: I stayed up three nights running to read It. I did not leave a room without it under my arm; … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[263],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3880"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19789,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880\/revisions\/19789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}