Review: 'Adapting Stephen King Volume 1: Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, and The Shining from Novel to Screenplay'

Joseph Maddrey begins Adapting Stephen King Volume 1 with the statement that Stephen King is in the Guinness Book of World's Records as the guy whose work has inspired more movies than any other writer. That means Maddrey really has his work cut out for him since Volume 1 only covers adaptations of King's first three novels published under his own name, and it covers the scripting processes of Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, and The Shining in great detail. He follows King's debut from its early stages as an apparently disappointing adaptation from revered screenwriter Stirling Silliphant through Lawrence D. Cohen's unquestionably successful adaptation. Along the way he explains where the drafts veer from King's source material, analyzes how those alterations affect the story, and explains how the directors and actors' interpretations of the scripts alter the work further. Maddrey also gets into the reinterpretations as each of King's first three novels have been brought to screens large and small more than once.

Maddrey's approach is as resourceful as his information is thorough and insightful. Adapting Stephen King Volume 1 is mainly a novel-to-script-to-screen study, but it also includes oral history interludes and interviews with the screenwriters responsible for the most significant adaptations (the only screenwriter he does not personally interview is King himself; oddly, he selects an interview from the run-up to Kubrick's Shining in 1979 to illustrate the section on the Shining miniseries King spearheaded in 1997). Clearly, a lot of work went into this book which means it will likely be years before he gets around to my favorite King novel, It. Get cracking, Maddrey.