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3rd February 2016
05:14pm GMT

Expanding on both Shawshank and Stand By Me, and his love for them, he added: "I like, well I have a number that I like, but I love The Shawshank Redemption and I’ve always enjoyed working with Frank (Darabont). He’s a sweet guy. Frank. And I love the Rob Reiner thing, Stand by Me."
However, he admits that he didn't 'care for' Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, and agreed with negative reviews when the film came out.
"I think The Shining is a beautiful film and it looks terrific and as I’ve said before, it’s like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it," he said.
"In that sense, when it opened, a lot of the reviews weren’t very favorable and I was one of those reviewers. I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn’t care for it much."
The reason he felt that way came down to the central character of Jack Torrance, as depicted by Jack Nicholson.
"The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie. Absolutely no arc at all," he added.
"When we first see Jack Nicholson, he’s in the office of Mr. Ullman, the manager of the hotel, and you know, then, he’s crazy as a shit house rat. All he does is get crazier. In the book, he’s a guy who’s struggling with his sanity and finally loses it.
"To me, that’s a tragedy. In the movie, there’s no tragedy because there’s no real change. The other real difference is at the end of my book the hotel blows up, and at the end of Kubrick’s movie the hotel freezes. That’s a difference.
"But I met Kubrick and there’s no question he’s a terrifically smart guy. He’s made some of the movies that mean a lot to me, Dr. Strangelove, for one and Paths of Glory, for another. I think he did some terrific things but, boy, he was a really insular man.
"In the sense that when you met him, and when you talked to him, he was able to interact in a perfectly normal way but you never felt like he was all the way there. He was inside himself."Explore more on these topics: