Aaron: Welcome back to We Who Watch Behind the Rows, and our discussion of The Woman in the Room. This time we delve into the 1983 short film based on that story, adapted by one Frank Darabont. The film is available on YouTube in its entirety, in two separate videos. Both of those videos are embedded below for your convenience:
The Woman in the Room (1983)
Written and directed by Frank Darabont
Aaron: Stephen King started making deals with student filmmakers allowing them to adapt his shorter works in 1977, which means Frank Darabont is a few years away from being the first official Dollar Baby, although he is part of what we can consider the first wave, and he’s definitely the most successful graduate of that program. To hear Darabont himself tell it, though, he was unaware of King’s policy when, as a twenty-year-old with no movie industry experience, working various odd jobs, he wrote King a letter asking if he could make a short film based on The Woman in the Room. Three years later, the film was released, and was successful enough that Darabont submitted it for consideration at the Academy Awards (it did not get nominated, but was reportedly on the short list). It was also one of the very few Dollar Babies to be officially released on a home video format, and no less an authority than King called it “clearly the best of the short films” made from his work.
Time will tell if it actually is the best (and certainly there was a much less crowded field of competition for that title in 1983), but one thing is certain: Darabont’s film is the most professional Dollar Baby we’ve watched so far, and it’s easy to see why it was given a VHS release in the ‘80s. Even if it’s not the type of thing I’m normally drawn to, and not something I see myself returning to time and again, I can appreciate the skill that went into making this film on a minuscule budget, with very little experience. The film could easily stand alongside more professional releases from that same time period. I kept thinking back to the nonexistent Stephen King television series you speculated about in our Night Surf piece. The Woman in the Room is the best argument I’ve seen so far for an anthology series based on King’s work, a series that would allow aspiring and established filmmakers adapt the stories to their own strengths, as Darabont has clearly done here.
I said in the first part of the discussion that I don’t find King to be a very emotional writer. Certainly he gets us invested in his characters so that we feel concern for their outcomes, but I’ve never been really moved by his love stories or his more intimate moments. That was clearly not the case for The Woman in the Room, which is the most nakedly, affectingly emotional King has ever been. It makes sense, then, that Darabont would be drawn to this story for his first film. Darabont has, through his three feature length King adaptations, proven that he is at least as concerned in the emotional subtext of the source material as he is in the more fantastic elements on display. The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile are melodramatic and heartwarming in a way that King films don’t normally attempt (though to be fair, those elements are present in the original stories as well), to the point that many people don’t actually realize King had a hand in writing them. Even Darabont’s adaptation of The Mist added a gut punch of grief to the gory bleakness of King’s original novella, so there is a very clear through-line in the stories that Darabont has adapted, and the elements to which he seems drawn.
Rik: And if they ever did make that Stephen King anthology show, how about Frank Darabont direct every single episode? Look, Darabont clearly gets King. A few directors have done a great job of adapting King to the big screen, but there have been far more misses than hits as far as quality overall, and even more misses as far as capturing what was so entrancing on the written page in the first place. But Darabont has yet to really make a misstep, even if I am not quite so enamored with The Green Mile as many people are. (The film is still pretty good, I just didn’t connect with King’s story either at the time. But that was one of those rare spots in the late ‘90s where I sneaked back in for a peak at King’s writing, and then slipped back out because what I found was lacking.) There is a clear artistic connection between the two that I am surprised hasn’t been developed even further than it has.
I know that, just between ourselves, I displayed some reticence in tackling the Dollar Baby films at first; in fact, we both wrestled over it. It was mostly because finding a lot of the films is really hard, if not downright impossible in many cases. And then there is the quality factor. It is one thing to criticize a bigger budget, Hollywood feature film adaptation of a King story that has been produced by a professional crew and actors, with the intent of global distribution in theatres and on home video or on television. Those things are fair game for critics and the public alike to rip apart or praise as they see fit. Once art is in the public eye, have at it. But Dollar Babies are student films, and while, as art, they should be prone to the same critical measures as anything else, you really don’t want to pound someone too hard who made a ten minute film for about $127 with amateur actors and his best friend Andy holding a rented boom mike with shaky hands. You don’t want want to shatter the dreams of the next Spielberg (unless, of course, you would prefer that you did) with a blistering review of a short he created simply to pass his film studies class.
Then we knuckled down and watched the five films we could locate for our piece on Night Surf, and I was fairly astounded by the wide variety of stances based on the same exact material. None of them were great, most of them were wildly off the mark as far as I was concerned, but a couple were fairly entertaining, and all of them (even the worst) seemed to capture at least a little snippet of the original story – whether in mood or fully captured scene – within their generally clumsy attempts at adapting a major writer to the screen on the cheap. While there were a couple of versions that I never wish to revisit again (at least, not in the low quality scrubs available on YouTube or elsewhere), I found the experience enlightening overall.
Enter Frank Darabont and his version of The Woman in the Room. Aaron, I am sure you’ve done a bit more research into the background of the making of this film than I have. From its very first frame, The Woman in the Room shows a higher degree of craftsmanship than the Dollar Babies we have watched thus far, and even if it is still a student short, the feel of the film at least approaches the standard look of television programming at the time of its release (1983). Frankly, it almost looks good enough that one could convince me that it was an episode of the 1985 revival of The Twilight Zone, that ran on CBS for a few years in that decade. However, I had only seen this one a long time ago on video, and apart from remembering that I had seen it at some point, had rather forgotten that it was actually pretty well done. What about you?
Aaron: One quick clarification: This was not technically a student film, this was an independently produced short film from someone who would go on to become a highly successful director and screenwriter. A minor distinction, considering Darabont’s youth and means at the time, but an important one. Frank Darabont made this film without the benefit of school backing, meaning he had to scrounge together the money to get it made, and he spent several years filming it on borrowed or rented equipment, editing it himself in his bedroom. For Darabont, who had not yet had a job in the film industry when he began the project, this was more than just a means to a passing college grade, this was his shot to prove himself, and to adapt an author who clearly meant a lot to him. I want to make the distinction because I mostly agree with you; I think this is at least as good as a lot of the stuff that made it into The Twilight Zone remake, and surpasses the quality of many of the other anthology shows of the time, like Tales from the Darkside.
Each of the Dollar Babies we’ve seen so far has shown, at the very least, glimpses of talent. The Woman in the Room is the first one to show equal amounts of skill, passion, and an innate understanding of the source material. That understanding doesn’t mean the source material went untouched, of course, as The Woman in the Room makes a few excisions, and one major addition, to the story it was based on. Frankly, I’m OK with that. I’ve never been one of those people who negatively compares a filmed entertainment to its written origins because of what it changes or omits. I want a movie to change things around a bit, otherwise, what’s the point? I know we criticized some of the Night Surf shorts for the way they seemed to miss the point of the original story, or for how far afield they strayed from the events as written, but there is a difference here. A work of art has to have some resonance to the artist, or there will be no resonance for the audience. When it came to some of the Night Surf shorts I had trouble understanding, through their alterations, why they chose to adapt that particular story. I didn’t get the impression, even from the best of the bunch, that the story held any real significance to the filmmakers. With Darabont, on the other hand, it’s blindingly obvious that the story struck a chord in him, that it has some special meaning. Why else would he choose to adapt Stephen King, and then stay away from the monsters, the gore, or the spookiness?
The biggest change Darabont makes is with the addition of a character known only as Prisoner (played by Brian Libby, a prolific character actor who has had small roles in each of Darabont’s King adaptations). In the short film, John (Michael Cornelison) is a lawyer, and we see a short scene where he consults with his client, who is on death row, and asks him conversationally about what it’s like to kill a person. This character, a grizzled Vietnam vet who channeled his experience of the atrocity of the war into a career as a hitman once he got back home, seems like a character type King himself might have written. The scene itself is probably a bit too on the nose, as Brian Libby’s every line of dialogue is meant to subconsciously reverberate with the decision John has to make. It’s so directly addressing him that the character never feels like a real character, but instead feels like a totem, an oracle that John needs to hear from. But of course, that’s exactly what he’s meant to be in this story, and both actors (who would were in the midst of, or the beginnings of, healthy careers) are good enough to sell the scene.
Rik, I feel like this scene is the most obvious focal point for most discussions based around the short story and the short film. How did it sit with you?
Rik: It’s funny, you mention that both actors were in the midst of or at the beginnings of healthy careers, but when I watched The Woman in the Room again, I couldn’t place either actor at all and had to look them up. Sure enough, they have been acting a long time, and Cornelison has had a lot of stage success. But I could probably only pick Libby out of a police lineup and that is just because he is large and imposing. When I look at their credits, it turns out that I have seen a lot of their films and television shows, but it’s for a lot of parts like “Perimeter Guy” and “Employee #1” and “Embalmer”; even in films that I remember seeing, I cannot remember who they were.
And this is not to say that they are not both very good in their roles in this short. They do a fine job, and I have to say Libby is particularly appealing in his part as the convict. I agree with you: I don’t mind when a director or a screenwriter veers from the original work being adapted as long as the divergence adds something to the story that adds what you termed resonance to the work at hand. I think we both agree that it was what was so frustrating about the Night Surf shorts. They each took a different tack with the same material, but all of the shorts, even the barely best ones, really missed the point of the material, missed the painful, nostalgic soul at the center, the dying of the light, the slowly vanishing heartbeat of humanity. When I saw that this film was a half hour, I was really wondering just how Darabont would be able to carry what is rather slight material that far. Certainly it would be hard to make a feature film out of this story without greatly expanding it by giving both the son and the mother full backstories. And maybe Darabont felt that summing the slim story up in just fifteen minutes was just too brief a visit with these characters, like maybe to feel the real punch in the gut of the situation he had to draw it out at least a little bit. So maybe that is part of why he felt he needed to stretch it out and add an extra scene. But I really like the extra scene he did add.
I like the familiarity between the client and the lawyer. There is certainly a level of trust that has been established, the light smiles in jokes about courtroom attire that are easily accepted between the two, and there is a definite air of relaxation in even the lighting of a cigarette that signifies these two have spent a good deal of time together. Even when the Prisoner gets riled up about something, he is able to be defused by a steady gaze or a smirk. I enjoyed their interplay, and it would be interesting to see if these two would ever be friends “on the outside,” as it were. (Of course, he is telling the lawyer the story of how he killed a buddy of his, a guy who saved his life at one point in Vietnam, so you may not want to know him on the outside.)
When they do get to the meat of that discussion, about whether killing someone ever meant anything to the Prisoner, I feel like the relationship between the two characters serves to make the scene perhaps not quite as maudlin as it might have been in lesser hands, even hands as inexperienced as Darabont’s at that age. You say it is perhaps too on the nose; I agree, yes, but it does allow us to see another side of John that we otherwise would either not have gotten to see (we get to understand, in short order, both his professionalism and his basic humanity in one scene) without perhaps plunging into a series of all too obvious flashback sequences. And as such, I think it is a wise addition to the story.
Aaron: Although I do find the Prisoner scene a bit too obvious, that’s not as much of a complaint here as it would be in, as you say, lesser hands. Because you’re right; Frank Darabont “gets” Stephen King, but more than that, he also “gets” the mechanics of storytelling in much the same way that King does. The Prisoner sequence is essential in this story as Darabont tells it, because it humanizes Johnny and addresses his dilemma directly without having him break into tears and wail that he doesn’t want to kill his mother. It’s also, as you point out, important to get an outsider’s look at this character, to show us something outside of Johnny’s own head or perceptions. And it is, admittedly, entertainingly written. Much more gratifying than a series of generic flashbacks.
Stephen King’s short story is largely plotless, achronological, and full of impressions rather than concrete incident. That sort would be impossible to translate to film, unless you wanted to make an avant-garde, experimental film, which Darabont clearly was not interested in. Looking back over Darabont’s career, many of his scripts have been for potentially nostalgia-riddled movies like the remake of The Blob, the sequel to David Cronenberg’s version of The Fly, an unproduced Doc Savage film, and the script for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as well as various episodes of Tales from the Crypt and Young Indiana Jones. Of the four movies Darabont has directed, three of them are set in the fifties, and one of them takes its cues from the creature-feature monster films of that era. Frank Darabont is a man clearly enamored of the films of Hollywood’s “golden age”, and as such uninterested in making impressionistic arthouse fare.
So how, then, do you go about filming an impressionistic story while also delivering a clear, audience-friendly, narratively simple film? Well, in this case, you whittle the story down to two or three important events, add a character to make external some of the internal struggles John is going through, and add a brief dream sequence. If I’m being honest, the dream sequence is probably cheesier and more on-the-nose than the Prisoner sequence, but we’re speaking comparatively, here. Although now that I’m nitpicking the film, I realize the obviousness of these aspects, but as I was watching it they didn’t bother me at all. More importantly, in the film as it exists, these two scenes are necessary.
One of the joys I’ve been getting out of this series of discussions with you lies in how deeply we delve into tiny moments. Some of our pieces so far have rivaled the original short stories in terms of length, and that’s allowed us to really explore different aspects of them. I’m not going to claim that our casual discussions here are encyclopedic, exhaustive, or even very academic, but it is a level of critical evaluation I don’t normally indulge in, outside of the odd college course. What I said up there about how Darabont “gets” how stories operate is true, because at this young age, with no formal training, he was able to distill Stephen King’s story to its elements, and then mold them to his own personal vision, and the resulting film is structurally satisfying and emotionally powerful. I wouldn’t say I’ve always been a fan of Darabont (I’m both looking forward to and dreading the day when we cover The Green Mile), but he has an eye for crowd-pleasing entertainments.
Darabont deploys the Prisoner scene at the right time in his film, turning it into the centerpiece of his short. It sheds light on the main character and adds shading to his emotional state, while also breaking up what could have become monotonous. Even the dream sequence serves a similar purpose, so who cares if it’s a bit more obvious than I normally like? Darabont had a limited amount of time with which to tell his story, and very limited means and experience. Things have to be more direct in a short film like this, where we don’t have time to get fully acquainted with the characters and their histories.
The Wrap-Up
Rik: I would say that I am neither a huge Darabont fan or a detractor. His greatest work is obvious, I greatly admire his take on The Mist though I dislike a couple of casting choices, I am cool on (not cool with) The Green Mile (I need to do a rewatch, but neither am I a fan of the story), and I have never fully seen The Majestic. That pretty much evens things out as far as his directorial efforts go for me.We started this piece ages ago and much has happened in our lives since we started it. I feel it is time we put this thing to bed. I think this is a pretty terrific short film that has held up marvelously over time. I don’t think it is great, but it’s pretty damn good considering its origins and the fact it was made for about a buck-thirty-seven. Like the story, I will plan to revisit it again in the future, and perhaps not wait quite so long the next time. But it is such a downer, that that “not wait quite so long” is still going to be a few years if I can help it.
Aaron: I believe we are in agreement on Frank Darabont (although I would be much harsher in my estimation of The Green Mile, but I’ll save that for whenever we actually focus on that film); he is a talented filmmaker who has created some works I love, some I modestly enjoy, and then some I just don’t care for. I figure I’ll always have a fondness for him, if only for his part in bringing forth the 1988 remake of The Blob, which is a pretty fun film that, while probably not underrated, still deserves to be seen. If I’m being honest, Darabont skews a little too much towards the emotional side of the spectrum, veering often into cheap sentimentality and schmaltz, but I think he acquits himself quite nicely here. The Woman in the Room never gets too maudlin, although it has every reason to.We also seem to be in agreement on this film, and while I enjoy it, I don’t see myself revisiting it, or the story that inspired it, anytime soon. It was a revelation, to be reminded of an aspect of King’s writing that I had forgotten (or, more likely, ignored), and it was interesting to see the humble beginnings of an Oscar winning director. I appreciate the ways in which the story affected me now that I’m older and, maybe, a little wiser (very little), but neither the story nor the film are the sorts of entertainments I normally seek out, so it may be awhile before I head this way again.
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| VHS Cover |
Time will tell if it actually is the best (and certainly there was a much less crowded field of competition for that title in 1983), but one thing is certain: Darabont’s film is the most professional Dollar Baby we’ve watched so far, and it’s easy to see why it was given a VHS release in the ‘80s. Even if it’s not the type of thing I’m normally drawn to, and not something I see myself returning to time and again, I can appreciate the skill that went into making this film on a minuscule budget, with very little experience. The film could easily stand alongside more professional releases from that same time period. I kept thinking back to the nonexistent Stephen King television series you speculated about in our Night Surf piece. The Woman in the Room is the best argument I’ve seen so far for an anthology series based on King’s work, a series that would allow aspiring and established filmmakers adapt the stories to their own strengths, as Darabont has clearly done here.
I said in the first part of the discussion that I don’t find King to be a very emotional writer. Certainly he gets us invested in his characters so that we feel concern for their outcomes, but I’ve never been really moved by his love stories or his more intimate moments. That was clearly not the case for The Woman in the Room, which is the most nakedly, affectingly emotional King has ever been. It makes sense, then, that Darabont would be drawn to this story for his first film. Darabont has, through his three feature length King adaptations, proven that he is at least as concerned in the emotional subtext of the source material as he is in the more fantastic elements on display. The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile are melodramatic and heartwarming in a way that King films don’t normally attempt (though to be fair, those elements are present in the original stories as well), to the point that many people don’t actually realize King had a hand in writing them. Even Darabont’s adaptation of The Mist added a gut punch of grief to the gory bleakness of King’s original novella, so there is a very clear through-line in the stories that Darabont has adapted, and the elements to which he seems drawn.
Rik: And if they ever did make that Stephen King anthology show, how about Frank Darabont direct every single episode? Look, Darabont clearly gets King. A few directors have done a great job of adapting King to the big screen, but there have been far more misses than hits as far as quality overall, and even more misses as far as capturing what was so entrancing on the written page in the first place. But Darabont has yet to really make a misstep, even if I am not quite so enamored with The Green Mile as many people are. (The film is still pretty good, I just didn’t connect with King’s story either at the time. But that was one of those rare spots in the late ‘90s where I sneaked back in for a peak at King’s writing, and then slipped back out because what I found was lacking.) There is a clear artistic connection between the two that I am surprised hasn’t been developed even further than it has.
I know that, just between ourselves, I displayed some reticence in tackling the Dollar Baby films at first; in fact, we both wrestled over it. It was mostly because finding a lot of the films is really hard, if not downright impossible in many cases. And then there is the quality factor. It is one thing to criticize a bigger budget, Hollywood feature film adaptation of a King story that has been produced by a professional crew and actors, with the intent of global distribution in theatres and on home video or on television. Those things are fair game for critics and the public alike to rip apart or praise as they see fit. Once art is in the public eye, have at it. But Dollar Babies are student films, and while, as art, they should be prone to the same critical measures as anything else, you really don’t want to pound someone too hard who made a ten minute film for about $127 with amateur actors and his best friend Andy holding a rented boom mike with shaky hands. You don’t want want to shatter the dreams of the next Spielberg (unless, of course, you would prefer that you did) with a blistering review of a short he created simply to pass his film studies class.
Then we knuckled down and watched the five films we could locate for our piece on Night Surf, and I was fairly astounded by the wide variety of stances based on the same exact material. None of them were great, most of them were wildly off the mark as far as I was concerned, but a couple were fairly entertaining, and all of them (even the worst) seemed to capture at least a little snippet of the original story – whether in mood or fully captured scene – within their generally clumsy attempts at adapting a major writer to the screen on the cheap. While there were a couple of versions that I never wish to revisit again (at least, not in the low quality scrubs available on YouTube or elsewhere), I found the experience enlightening overall.
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| Frank Darabont |
Aaron: One quick clarification: This was not technically a student film, this was an independently produced short film from someone who would go on to become a highly successful director and screenwriter. A minor distinction, considering Darabont’s youth and means at the time, but an important one. Frank Darabont made this film without the benefit of school backing, meaning he had to scrounge together the money to get it made, and he spent several years filming it on borrowed or rented equipment, editing it himself in his bedroom. For Darabont, who had not yet had a job in the film industry when he began the project, this was more than just a means to a passing college grade, this was his shot to prove himself, and to adapt an author who clearly meant a lot to him. I want to make the distinction because I mostly agree with you; I think this is at least as good as a lot of the stuff that made it into The Twilight Zone remake, and surpasses the quality of many of the other anthology shows of the time, like Tales from the Darkside.
Each of the Dollar Babies we’ve seen so far has shown, at the very least, glimpses of talent. The Woman in the Room is the first one to show equal amounts of skill, passion, and an innate understanding of the source material. That understanding doesn’t mean the source material went untouched, of course, as The Woman in the Room makes a few excisions, and one major addition, to the story it was based on. Frankly, I’m OK with that. I’ve never been one of those people who negatively compares a filmed entertainment to its written origins because of what it changes or omits. I want a movie to change things around a bit, otherwise, what’s the point? I know we criticized some of the Night Surf shorts for the way they seemed to miss the point of the original story, or for how far afield they strayed from the events as written, but there is a difference here. A work of art has to have some resonance to the artist, or there will be no resonance for the audience. When it came to some of the Night Surf shorts I had trouble understanding, through their alterations, why they chose to adapt that particular story. I didn’t get the impression, even from the best of the bunch, that the story held any real significance to the filmmakers. With Darabont, on the other hand, it’s blindingly obvious that the story struck a chord in him, that it has some special meaning. Why else would he choose to adapt Stephen King, and then stay away from the monsters, the gore, or the spookiness?
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| Brian Libby as The Prisoner |
Rik, I feel like this scene is the most obvious focal point for most discussions based around the short story and the short film. How did it sit with you?
Rik: It’s funny, you mention that both actors were in the midst of or at the beginnings of healthy careers, but when I watched The Woman in the Room again, I couldn’t place either actor at all and had to look them up. Sure enough, they have been acting a long time, and Cornelison has had a lot of stage success. But I could probably only pick Libby out of a police lineup and that is just because he is large and imposing. When I look at their credits, it turns out that I have seen a lot of their films and television shows, but it’s for a lot of parts like “Perimeter Guy” and “Employee #1” and “Embalmer”; even in films that I remember seeing, I cannot remember who they were.
And this is not to say that they are not both very good in their roles in this short. They do a fine job, and I have to say Libby is particularly appealing in his part as the convict. I agree with you: I don’t mind when a director or a screenwriter veers from the original work being adapted as long as the divergence adds something to the story that adds what you termed resonance to the work at hand. I think we both agree that it was what was so frustrating about the Night Surf shorts. They each took a different tack with the same material, but all of the shorts, even the barely best ones, really missed the point of the material, missed the painful, nostalgic soul at the center, the dying of the light, the slowly vanishing heartbeat of humanity. When I saw that this film was a half hour, I was really wondering just how Darabont would be able to carry what is rather slight material that far. Certainly it would be hard to make a feature film out of this story without greatly expanding it by giving both the son and the mother full backstories. And maybe Darabont felt that summing the slim story up in just fifteen minutes was just too brief a visit with these characters, like maybe to feel the real punch in the gut of the situation he had to draw it out at least a little bit. So maybe that is part of why he felt he needed to stretch it out and add an extra scene. But I really like the extra scene he did add.
I like the familiarity between the client and the lawyer. There is certainly a level of trust that has been established, the light smiles in jokes about courtroom attire that are easily accepted between the two, and there is a definite air of relaxation in even the lighting of a cigarette that signifies these two have spent a good deal of time together. Even when the Prisoner gets riled up about something, he is able to be defused by a steady gaze or a smirk. I enjoyed their interplay, and it would be interesting to see if these two would ever be friends “on the outside,” as it were. (Of course, he is telling the lawyer the story of how he killed a buddy of his, a guy who saved his life at one point in Vietnam, so you may not want to know him on the outside.)
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| Michael Cornelison as John |
Aaron: Although I do find the Prisoner scene a bit too obvious, that’s not as much of a complaint here as it would be in, as you say, lesser hands. Because you’re right; Frank Darabont “gets” Stephen King, but more than that, he also “gets” the mechanics of storytelling in much the same way that King does. The Prisoner sequence is essential in this story as Darabont tells it, because it humanizes Johnny and addresses his dilemma directly without having him break into tears and wail that he doesn’t want to kill his mother. It’s also, as you point out, important to get an outsider’s look at this character, to show us something outside of Johnny’s own head or perceptions. And it is, admittedly, entertainingly written. Much more gratifying than a series of generic flashbacks.
Stephen King’s short story is largely plotless, achronological, and full of impressions rather than concrete incident. That sort would be impossible to translate to film, unless you wanted to make an avant-garde, experimental film, which Darabont clearly was not interested in. Looking back over Darabont’s career, many of his scripts have been for potentially nostalgia-riddled movies like the remake of The Blob, the sequel to David Cronenberg’s version of The Fly, an unproduced Doc Savage film, and the script for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as well as various episodes of Tales from the Crypt and Young Indiana Jones. Of the four movies Darabont has directed, three of them are set in the fifties, and one of them takes its cues from the creature-feature monster films of that era. Frank Darabont is a man clearly enamored of the films of Hollywood’s “golden age”, and as such uninterested in making impressionistic arthouse fare.
So how, then, do you go about filming an impressionistic story while also delivering a clear, audience-friendly, narratively simple film? Well, in this case, you whittle the story down to two or three important events, add a character to make external some of the internal struggles John is going through, and add a brief dream sequence. If I’m being honest, the dream sequence is probably cheesier and more on-the-nose than the Prisoner sequence, but we’re speaking comparatively, here. Although now that I’m nitpicking the film, I realize the obviousness of these aspects, but as I was watching it they didn’t bother me at all. More importantly, in the film as it exists, these two scenes are necessary.
One of the joys I’ve been getting out of this series of discussions with you lies in how deeply we delve into tiny moments. Some of our pieces so far have rivaled the original short stories in terms of length, and that’s allowed us to really explore different aspects of them. I’m not going to claim that our casual discussions here are encyclopedic, exhaustive, or even very academic, but it is a level of critical evaluation I don’t normally indulge in, outside of the odd college course. What I said up there about how Darabont “gets” how stories operate is true, because at this young age, with no formal training, he was able to distill Stephen King’s story to its elements, and then mold them to his own personal vision, and the resulting film is structurally satisfying and emotionally powerful. I wouldn’t say I’ve always been a fan of Darabont (I’m both looking forward to and dreading the day when we cover The Green Mile), but he has an eye for crowd-pleasing entertainments.
Darabont deploys the Prisoner scene at the right time in his film, turning it into the centerpiece of his short. It sheds light on the main character and adds shading to his emotional state, while also breaking up what could have become monotonous. Even the dream sequence serves a similar purpose, so who cares if it’s a bit more obvious than I normally like? Darabont had a limited amount of time with which to tell his story, and very limited means and experience. Things have to be more direct in a short film like this, where we don’t have time to get fully acquainted with the characters and their histories.
The Wrap-Up
Rik: I would say that I am neither a huge Darabont fan or a detractor. His greatest work is obvious, I greatly admire his take on The Mist though I dislike a couple of casting choices, I am cool on (not cool with) The Green Mile (I need to do a rewatch, but neither am I a fan of the story), and I have never fully seen The Majestic. That pretty much evens things out as far as his directorial efforts go for me.We started this piece ages ago and much has happened in our lives since we started it. I feel it is time we put this thing to bed. I think this is a pretty terrific short film that has held up marvelously over time. I don’t think it is great, but it’s pretty damn good considering its origins and the fact it was made for about a buck-thirty-seven. Like the story, I will plan to revisit it again in the future, and perhaps not wait quite so long the next time. But it is such a downer, that that “not wait quite so long” is still going to be a few years if I can help it.
Aaron: I believe we are in agreement on Frank Darabont (although I would be much harsher in my estimation of The Green Mile, but I’ll save that for whenever we actually focus on that film); he is a talented filmmaker who has created some works I love, some I modestly enjoy, and then some I just don’t care for. I figure I’ll always have a fondness for him, if only for his part in bringing forth the 1988 remake of The Blob, which is a pretty fun film that, while probably not underrated, still deserves to be seen. If I’m being honest, Darabont skews a little too much towards the emotional side of the spectrum, veering often into cheap sentimentality and schmaltz, but I think he acquits himself quite nicely here. The Woman in the Room never gets too maudlin, although it has every reason to.We also seem to be in agreement on this film, and while I enjoy it, I don’t see myself revisiting it, or the story that inspired it, anytime soon. It was a revelation, to be reminded of an aspect of King’s writing that I had forgotten (or, more likely, ignored), and it was interesting to see the humble beginnings of an Oscar winning director. I appreciate the ways in which the story affected me now that I’m older and, maybe, a little wiser (very little), but neither the story nor the film are the sorts of entertainments I normally seek out, so it may be awhile before I head this way again.
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