TV Movie Review: Stephen King's Desperation

In the early or mid 90's (I can't recall the exact year), Stephen King published two books simultaneously. Both of them were variations on the same story idea. One of them, The Regulators was a light, gory, comic-bookish treatment of the idea, and he published it under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. Publishing the book under that name was a nod to fans... a way of telling us that the story would have no real redeeming value and no heavy morals, but would, instead, be a fun and frightening read.

The other variation on the story was published under King's own name, and it was titled Desperation. Word was that this was the meatier of the two books... the more serious, philosophical treatment of the story idea... the one meant to make a lasting impression.

I bought The Regulators and read it first. I enjoyed it. It was fun. Something of a popcorn book, if you will. It was almost impossible not to imagine the story as a comic-book as I read it, and I still think it would have made a fun graphic novel.

Then I bought Desperation and read it in a state of amazement. The meatier of the two books? Philosophical? Ah, man. That didn't even begin to touch it. Much to my surprise, Desperation was an outstanding book. It was, in fact, a far better book than I'd have thought King capable of writing at that point in his career.

You know that feeling you get when you finish an exceptionally good book? How you want to start it all over right then and there and read it again? How you want all your friends to read it, and how you want to find other people who've read it and discuss it with them? That's the feeling I had after reading Desperation. The word is WOW. Yes, that really is the word. That's not the right font size, though:

WOW.

Yeah, that's more like it. That big ol' WOW is the feeling I had after reading Desperation

I don't want to tell you too much about the book in case you haven't read it, and I really hope that something I've written here might entice you to go pick the book up and give it a shot. I will tell you, though, that Desperation is King doing what King does best... and then some. Now, don't get me wrong, King's faults are still writ large in Desperation. He still can't write female characters for anything, and he still writes the hokiest, silliest dialogue this side of soap operas. But when it comes to story... pure, page turning, can't-wait-to-find-out-what-happens-next story, King is one of the best. He can craft a story like nobody's business.

And, amazingly, King did his readers one better in Desperation. He took a huge chance with that book, and it paid off in spades. With Desperation, King explored serious theological issues for the first time in his publishing career. I'm not talking superficial mentions of God like in The Stand, I'm talking about serious, thoughtful ideas about the nature of God... the nature of man's relationship to God... the importance of obedience... total obedience to God, and how that obedience reveals the presence of the Master in surprising and amazing ways. Am I reading too much into the novel? Maybe. Am I simply projecting my own Christian faith onto a work of pop fiction? Sure, that could be the case. But if that is what I'm doing, I'm not the only one. Others have done the same thing. Here's one example. Here's another.

With Desperation, King took one of his typically addictive horror stories and hung it on the frame of what I take to be his serious ideas about God... and, amazingly, it worked. Desperation isn't just a good book. It might be King's best.

Several years ago... I want to say it was 2002... the Internet Movie DataBase put up a page for a movie based on Desperation. Wendy and I (she loves the book as much as I do) were thrilled. We were also thrilled that Mick Garris was slated to direct, since he's done such good work with two different miniseries based on King material, The Shining and The Stand.

In fact, Garris's small-screen adaptation of The Shining was, to my way of thinking, far superior to Stanley Kubrick's big screen adaptation. Maybe that's cinematic blasphemy? Kubrick was a genius, I'll give you that. But, Garris's mini-series was more faithful to King's source material, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Stephen King's novel The Shining is my all time favorite work of fiction, and I was very happy with the miniseries that Garris produced. Kubrick's film was a cold and unemotional treatment that relayed some of the atmosphere of King's novel, but none of the emotion. None of the punch of the book. Garris reproduced the novel faithfully on the small screen, and I really enjoyed it.

So Wendy and I waited with baited breath for Garris's Desperation... and as the production went through change after change after change, I began to get worried. For a while, it was talked about as a big-screen adaptation. Then as a miniseries. Then, finally, as a one-night made-for-TV movie. That didn't bode well.

But there were still good signs, right? I mean, King himself was writing the teleplay. Garris had done great work with King's material before. And the cast? Fuhgeddaboudit. There were some solid actors working on this thing. Ron Pearlman. Tom Skerritt. Charles Durning. And, Stephen Weber, who'd totally won me over as Jack Torrance in the Shining miniseries. Yeah, there were reasons to be hopeful.

Wendy and I watched Desperation on ABC last night.

It's going to be difficult for me to find enough negative adjectives to describe how bad this made-for-tv piece of crap was, but I'm darn sure going to try.

"Desperation" was awful. Schlock. Garbage. Damaged goods. Crap. Junk. Horse manure. Rancid. Disgusting. Horrible. Comically dumb. Incompetent. Repugnant. Idiotic. As enjoyable as a monkey fart. Other reviewers have been able to elucidate much of what's wrong with this movie without resorting to playground antics. I envy them. I wish I could have done so myself.

Here's the long and short of it: The book works very well because it HINGES on big, cerebral concepts and because it makes those concepts tangible by constructing characters that the reader actually comes to care about and putting them in a situation that the reader wants to see resolved. The made-for-TV movie fails because it tries to compact those concepts into brief catch-phrases and because it tells us NOTHING about the characters. In fact, the characters aren't even really characters. They're caricatures.

The story in the movie is silly, where as in the novel it was compelling and fascinating. The moral issues in the movie are indistinct and abbreviated; where as in the novel they were weighty and forceful. The actors all phone in their performances. The special effects are cheesy and poorly executed.

I blame Garris. He should have just walked away from this project rather than agreeing to direct something so truncated and contrived that it amounted to nothing more than a mockery of the source material.

And, I blame King. After all, King wrote the teleplay. King had a role in this. King sacrificed one of his most beautiful babies on the alter of marketing. King, by the way, is already making excuses for this piece of tripe. It doesn't wash with me. The novel was beautiful. The movie desecrates it.

Desperation? No. Frustration. Aggravation. Infuriation. Emotional Constipation. Those are better words to apply to this piece of garbage film, and any one of them would have made a better title.

And the most frustrating thing is that there are probably people who saw the movie and will now never read the book because the movie was so bad. And, even if they do read the book, their appreciation for it will be tainted by that awful, awful, awful, awful movie.

I feel like I should try to say at least one good thing about this film, though. I always try to say one good thing about every movie I review.

I've thought about it and thought about it and I have come up with one way to improve this movie. Here it is.

Take the film, as represented by the screen grabs below:

And turn it into this.

Some of what I've read on line indicates that ABC originally did film a multi-night miniseries based on the novel, but then chopped it down to this hackneyed junk because they weren't impressed with the final result. And that makes perfect sense, right? Take something big that you don't like, chop it into something small that nobody will like, and give it three hours of prime airtime.

Desperation? You're darn right. And it's all in the presentation.

  ¶ 12:28 PM