Details Behind One of the Most Surprising and Important Elements of DOCTOR SLEEP and How It Won Stephen King Over
I’m surprised that director Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep hasn’t been doing better at the box office. I don’t understand why more people aren’t seeing it. It’s a great movie, and also serves as a sequel to one of the greatest horror films of all time, The Shining.
It’s a shame. People are missing out on a really freakin’ good movie! There is one important and surprising scene that was included in the film that was not featured in the book. This is a scene that Flanagan came up with, and it was this scene that convinced King to give the film his blessing to crossover with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you won’t want to read any further as we dive into super spoiler territory.
During an interview with /Film, Flanagan and his longtime producer Trevor Macy talk about the scene and share details on how it came to be. This scene involves the moment in the Overlook Hotel when Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) sits down at the bar with his dad Jack Torrance (Henry Thomas). I loved this scene!
When talking about pitching the scene to King and winning him over, Flanagan said:
“This was the scene that convinced Stephen King to let us go back to The Overlook. That was my whole pitch. I said, ‘I want to go back to The Overlook.’ He said, ‘No, I don’t want to go back to The Overlook. I did that very intentionally.’ And I said, ‘But imagine, if you will, Dan Torrance, walking through The Overlook alone, comes to the bar where a drink is waiting and the bartender is there, and the bartender is his father and they talk.’ And that’s what made him say, ‘OK, I would like to see that.’”
It’s a scene I didn’t know I wanted to see until after I saw it. It was a pretty incredible moment in the film to see Dan and Jack have an intense discussion. Flanagan went on to talk about bringing Jack Torrance back without Jack Nicholson.
“That was the whole reason I wanted to make the film. I knew immediately it was going to be the most controversial scene in the movie because of Jack Nicholson. There was no interest in my part in doing a digital Jack. I thought the technology would rip you out, and this is about Dan, it’s not about Jack. So it became about, how do we best present Jack Torrance? So we’re using the Kubrick visual language in everything else, so it’s gotta be someone we recognize as Kubrick’s Torrance. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Jack Nicholson. The same way we approached Wendy and Dick Hallorann and young Danny. The mission was to try to cast actors who remind us of those performers, but who aren’t doing a parody, who aren’t doing an imitation.”
Casting Henry Thomas in the role was perfect. I thought he did a fantastic job in the role of Jack. He carried the same spirit of the character but made it his own. When talking about casting Thomas in the role, the director said:
“Henry is one of my best friends, one of my favorite actors to work with, and I called him up and said, ‘I have two parts that I think you’d be perfect for in this. One is Billy, the best friend part. You could play it in your sleep. You’ve done it a million times. You know that part. The other one, though, I just need you for one day, but holy shit, will you be under the microscope.’ I let him think about it, and he came back and said, ‘Look, if you’re stepping into Kubrick’s shadow with all the pitfalls of that, I’ll go with you and I’ll step into Jack’s and we’ll sink or swim together.’”
While the box office numbers may be sinking, they certainly swam and succeeded in pulling this scene off perfectly. Macy also discussed the keys to sticking to Kubrick’s rules while shooting the film, saying:
“Really, the guy who did the blueprint of that was Kubrick, with Delbert Grady. The idea that – we always call him The Bartender – is little part Lloyd, little part Jack, is a nod to how Kubrick handled Delbert Grady, who may or may not have been the caretaker. That kind of ambiguity, we felt like was central to the mythology and that’s how Henry approached the character.
“So what we did with it, was we decided that Kubrick had shown us how to handle Jack with Delbert Grady. He had made it clear that when the hotel digests you and you’re part of the hotel, Delbert always denied who he was. He was just a waiter. Even as Jack Torrance called him out and said, ‘You’re Delbert Grady, you killed your family,’ he said, You’ve mistaken me for someone else. I’m just the help.’ That was the key to Jack. As long as we weren’t ever trying to do ‘Here’s Johnny!; and we weren’t ever trying to do Nicholson at his most Nicholson, because no one is capable of doing that – if he was Lloyd, then that was the scene.
So instead of going full-on Jack Nicolson, it’s explained that Thomas’ whole mission was “I don’t play Jack. I play Lloyd and now and again, here and there, for a sentence or two, for a look, for a moment, Jack comes out a little bit.”
That was certainly the only and most respectful way to be able to pull this whole thing off. It’s so much better than a digital recreation that would have sucked the audience out of the movie. In the end, this scene was Flanagan’s favorite scene in the movie, and he explained how its the crux of Dan Torrance’s emotional arc:
“I know people are going to have strong feelings about it. I do, too. I walked down every possible road and this was the only one that felt appropriate. I love the scene. It’s my favorite scene in the movie. The three of us – Henry, Ewan, and I – knew as we sat down to do it, it was like, ‘You know, we’re not going to please people with this. People are going to love it or hate it. Let’s do our best to make a scene about what a conversation between Dan and his dad – and, in a sense, Dan and his own addiction – what that conversation would be. If we do right by Dan, we’ll do right by everything else.’ So I hope we did. We’ll see.”
Well, I loved it! I’m happy and satisfied with how that whole scene was handled. If you saw the movie, what did you think about this scene?