Stephen King Hates The Only Movie He Ever Directed
In the 1980s, Stephen King was on top of the world. He burst onto the scene in the late 1970s with his debut novel "Carrie," and seemed to be unstoppable. His books were best sellers, and Hollywood came calling. The film adaptations weren't always well-received, and they weren't always box office hits, either. Eventually, King would get an idea in his head: what if he directed a film adaptation himself? Who better to adapt Stephen King than ... Stephen King?
Of course, there was a flaw in this logic: King didn't know the first thing about filmmaking. But how hard could it be? When mega-producer Dino De Laurentiis scooped up the rights to a film adaptation of King's short story "Trucks," the film's production designer, Giorgio Postiglione, told King that the famed author should be the one to direct the project. According to the book "Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide," De Laurentiis gave King $70,000 to make the picture. The end result would be "Maximum Overdrive," a big, dumb B-movie about killer trucks. It's King's riff on Hitchcock's "The Birds," with machines standing in for birds.
And after it was all over and done with, Stephen King would never direct a movie again.
'A wonderfully moronic picture'
The premise of "Maximum Overdrive" is pretty simple: when Earth crosses the tail of a comet, machines suddenly start coming to life — ready to kill. Soda machines spit cans at people, ATMs call folks a*sholes, and cars and trucks start mowing people down. King, to his credit, had no preconceived notions about this material. He knew it was trash, and trash was exactly what he wanted. "I wanted it to move fast," he told American Film magazine. "It's a wonderfully moronic picture in that sense. It's a really illiterate picture in a lot of ways. There isn't a lot of dialogue in it. It's fast. A lot of things explode. It's very profane, very vulgar, quite violent in some places. We're going to have trouble with the ratings board, I guess."
The ratings board was the least of King's worries. After pre-production, the author-turned-filmmaker arrived on set in the summer of 1985 and quickly realized he didn't know anything about making movies. "I was surprised by how little I actually knew," the author told Cinefantastique (via the book "Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide"). It didn't help that King was also battling a serious drug problem. In the book "Hollywood's Stephen King," King is quoted as saying: "The problem with that film is that I was coked out of my mind all through its production, and I really didn't know what I was doing."
Just to make things extra complicated, King also found himself working with a crew that mostly spoke Italian — a language he did not understand. As "Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide" puts it, conversations that "should have taken only a few minutes invariably lasted for twenty or more." Still, King pushed through and got the picture made. But the problems weren't over.
'I didn't do a very good job'
When "Maximum Overdrive" opened in the summer of 1986, it was lambasted by critics and promptly flopped at the box office. King had failed. And yet, he originally tried to save face, telling the British magazine Knave (via "Creepshows") that critics tearing the movie apart was a kind of badge of honor; that he hadn't set out to win over critics, but to make a down-and-dirty picture. "It's the kind of picture I'd go and see, the kind I'd pay money for," King said.
Over time, however, the acclaimed author would come to disown the movie. It was impossible to deny that he hadn't succeeded. "I didn't do a very good job of directing it," he told Cinmefantastique. He told the same magazine: "There was a long period during post-production where I thought I had made a worthy successor to 'Plan 9 From Outer Space.'" According to "Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide," King was also quoted as saying "I can't see myself doing anything like this again ..."
In "Hollywood's Stephen King," the author doesn't quite rule out ever directing again, though. He even states that making "Maximum Overdrive" was a "learning experience," and that someday he might want to direct an adaptation of his novel "Gerald's Game." That never happened, though — "Gerald's Game," a King novel many considered to be unadaptable, would eventually be turned into a successful Netflix film by Mike Flanagan.
Crank the AC/DC
Is "Maximum Overdrive" as bad as its reputation suggests? It's certainly not good, but there's a trashy charm to everything at play in the film. You can feel the coked-out over-the-top glee of King as he constructs big, dumb set pieces. The loud soundtrack, courtesy of King-favorite AC/DC, only complements what the writer/filmmaker was attempting to do here. Perhaps King put it best during a 1986 promotional interview for the film: "I like movies where you can just, like, check your brains at the box office and pick 'em up two hours later. Sit and kind of let it flow over you and, you know, dig on it. This movie is just sort of gaudy blaaaaah. It's not a heavy social statement." It sure isn't.
There's also something delightful about the movie's very existence. It's almost charming that at one point in time, King was such a pop culture phenomenon that he could essentially do whatever the hell he wanted, and what he wanted to do was make a big, dumb, loud movie about killer trucks. There's nothing wrong with having some fun with "Maximum Overdrive." Sit back, crank up the AC/DC, and enjoy the "gaudy blaaaaah."