Stephen King calls 'The Shining' documentary 'Room 237' 'academic bull****'

There are a lot of fans of Stanley Kubrick's classic horror film The Shining, but Stephen King, who wrote the book of the same name the film was (loosely) based on, is definitely not in that camp. So it shouldn't come to much of a surprise that he wasn't crazy about The Shining documentary Room 237 either, turning the movie off halfway and calling the whole endeavor "academic bull****."

Talking to Rolling Stone, the topic of Rodney Ascher's documentary came up. When asked if he say the movie he responded, "Yeah. Well, let me put it this way – I watched about half of it and got sort of impatient with it and turned it off."

When pressed to say why, he continued, "These guys were reaching. I’ve never had much patience for academic bull****. It’s like (Bob) Dylan says, 'You give people a lot of knives and forks, they’ve gotta cut something.' And that was what was going on in that movie."

This is far from the first time King has spoken out against the film, even recently. In the same interview, he continued to explain why he didn't care for the original film.

"In the book, there’s an actual arc where you see this guy, Jack Torrance, trying to be good, and little by little he moves over to this place where he’s crazy," King said. "And as far as I was concerned, when I saw the movie, Jack was crazy from the first scene. I had to keep my mouth shut at the time. It was a screening, and Nicholson was there. But I’m thinking to myself the minute he’s on the screen, 'Oh, I know this guy. I’ve seen him in five motorcycle movies, where Jack Nicholson played the same part.'"

"And it’s so misogynistic," he said as his rant continued. "I mean, Wendy Torrance is just presented as this sort of screaming dishrag. But that’s just me, that’s the way I am."

This isn't the first time King has attacked the movie as being "misogynistic," as he made the same claim just last year, as The Playlist reported.

"I don't get it, he also said. "But there are a lot of things that I don't get. But obviously people absolutely love it, and they don't understand why I don't. The book is hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fire, and the movie in ice."

King has never been crazy about most adaptations of his work, but there are a few he likes. For instance, Stand By Me is "probably" the best, in his opinion. But The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Misery, Dolores Claiborne and Cujo are all "great" and "terrific," in King's opinion. Don't expect him to change his mind of The Shining anytime soon, though.

"The movies have never been a big deal to me," King said. "The movies are the movies. They just make them. If they're good, that's terrific. If they're not, they're not. But I see them as a lesser medium than fiction, than literature, and a more ephemeral medium."

Image courtesy of Roger Wong/INFphoto.com