Stephen King Struggled To Finish The Book That Inspired One Of His Best Movies

Stephen King has been honest over the years about the difficulties of being a writer, sharing his thoughts on the craft in his book "On Writing" and dropping plenty of anecdotes in interviews and online. There are lots of things that King does incredibly well, like develop complex and interesting characters or craft intense descriptions that evoke emotion in even the least imaginative reader, but sometimes he struggles a bit with the overall narrative and gets a little lost. Look, there's a reason why so many of King's books have wildly disappointing endings, and it's not because King is a bad writer. Far from it — he just occasionally gets a little too into the weeds for his own good.

One especially interesting background note on a King novel is that he apparently had a difficult time finishing the book "Christine," which is about a 1958 Plymouth Fury with supernatural qualities. In a 1984 interview with Lofficer, King revealed that he got totally hung up on finishing "Christine" because of the approach he had taken, essentially writing himself into a corner by side-lining his narrator early on. "Christine" isn't as famous these days as something like "The Shining" or "It," but John Carpenter's movie adaptation is one of the best screen takes on King's work, showing off one seriously scary automotive baddie.

In the book "Christine," King uses two distinct narrative styles. The beginning and end are told in first-person from the perspective of the character Dennis (played by John Stockwell in Carpenter's movie), whose good friend Arnie (Keith Gordon) ends up being ensorcelled by the possibly-possessed Plymouth. Meanwhile, the middle section is told in third-person, which feels a little odd. As King explained to Lofficer, he ended up creating problems for himself with Dennis's narration and it almost "killed the book." Because of this, King came to realize the third-person narrator was really the only way out. As he put it:

"I had Dennis telling the story, and he was supposed to tell the whole story. But then he got in a football accident, and was in the hospital while things were going on that he couldn't see. Then, for a long time, I tried to narrate that second part in terms of what he was hearing, hearsay evidence, almost like depositions. But that didn't work. I tried to do it a number of different ways, and finally I said, 'Let's cut through it. The only way to do this, is to do it in the third person.' I tried to leave enough clues, so that when the reader comes out of it he'll feel that it's almost like Dennis pulling a Truman Capote. It's almost like a non-fiction novel."

While King has said that the third-person section is really Dennis's explanation after the fact, just through a different kind of writing, it's still a little awkward in print. Thankfully, that awkwardness didn't translate to the screenplay for Carpenter's "Christine." Rather, Dennis being sidelined in the film doesn't suddenly cause a huge narrative shift since we've already been watching the story unfold through Arnie's eyes. It's one of a handful of reasons why Carpenter's movie works better than King's source material, and yet King himself has been incredibly cold towards this killer adaptation, calling it "boring." Excuse me, but did we watch the same film? 

King isn't the only one who's a little cool on "Christine," as Carpenter doesn't exactly have a ton of love for the movie either. "Christine" was his first studio film, and he signed on for the movie right after being brutally fired as the director on another Stephen King project in the form of "Firestarter." Carpenter, you see, had been working on an adaptation of King's original "Firestarter" novel when his 1982 horror flick and future classic "The Thing" absolutely bombed at the box office. As a result, he was yanked off "Firestarter" and was willing to take on anything. "Christine" may've been Carpenter doing work-for-hire, but he still brought every ounce of his filmmaking goodness to the table.

Is the idea of a killer car a little silly? Absolutely. But when you combine a very creepy and believable performance by Keith Gordon as Arnie, who really makes us believe he's in love with/entranced by his car, with some seriously stellar visuals and an A+ soundtrack? It's a whole heck of a lot of fun. "Christine" might not be the scariest Stephen King movie of them all, but it is entertaining from start to finish (and even contains a performance by one of the all-time great character actors, Harry Dean Stanton). Carpenter and King may have had their problems while creating their respective versions of "Christine," but Carpenter's film is a pretty great ride with some incredible moments. Sorry, sirs, but the movie "Christine" rules.