Prolific director David Cronenberg has taken to rubbishing not just any movie but The Shining, which many cinema fans consider to be one of the greatest horrors of all time. He's not only said the movie was crap, he's also said that Stanley Kubrick knew nothing about horror.
What exact brand of fairy dust has he been smoking? Cronenberg explains that Kubrick was more commercial minded than creatively driven, and therefore failed to grasp the true nature of horror, thus making a complete balls of Stephen King's hair-raising novel.
While giving a speech last week at the Toronto Film Festival, Cronenberg had no qualms in developing on his negative stance, a stance which Stephen King also shares. He said the following to the Toronto Star:
"I think I'm a more intimate and personal film-maker than Kubrick ever was... That's why I find The Shining not to be a great film. I don't think he understood the [horror] genre. I don't think he understood what he was doing. There were some striking images in the book and he got that, but I don't think he really felt it... In a weird way, though he's revered as a high-level cinematic artist, I think he was much more commercial-minded, and was looking for stuff that would click and that he could get financed. I think he was very obsessed with that, to an extent that I'm not."
Well every director wants to appear to be all about the story and the visuals but at the end of the day, your aim in Hollywood is to put bums on seats, which in turn puts money in the studio/filmmaker's back pocket.
Is Cronenberg way off the mark here or did you also find fault with The Shining?
