Checking Into "1408"
June 22, 2007 11:50
Introduction: It's Good To Be The King
The movie "1408," written by Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander and based on a Stephen King short story, opens in theaters today.
Imagine checking into a hotel that people say is haunted, hoping to discredit the myth, only to find that the place is truly haunted and - oh, by the way - you're also trapped in your hotel room. That's the chilling premise of "1408," the big-screen adaptation of the Stephen King short story, which was adapted for the screen by Matt Greenberg, and then rewritten by screenwriting team Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander. The story is about a writer, played by John Cusack, who writes books about discrediting allegedly haunted houses and other locations. When he checks into room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, which hasn't been occupied in years, he comes face to face with the supernatural.
For most of their careers, Alexander and Karaszewski were the weird biopic guys, beginning with "Ed Wood," all the way up to "Man on the Moon," the movie about comedian Andy Kaufman, and "The People Vs. Larry Flynt." They love a good challenge, and one of the biggest challenges they love to face is the notion that a particular subject or story can't be made into a film. Since they always wanted to try a horror story, they took on "1408," and it may be the best King adaptation we've seen in years. The movie opens nationwide this weekend, and it has already received strong reviews, including praise from King himself. Now Alexander and Karaszewski talk to TwitchGuru about "1408," and future projects such as another Stephen King adaptation, "Cell."
David Konow: How did you get the gig adapting the Stephen King short story "1408"?
Larry Karaszewski: We had kind of always talked about doing a horror film, but it never came together because we were always doing something else, and it's not a genre we pursued. It just never happened. [Producer] Lorenzo di Bonaventura and ["1408" director] Mikael Hafstrom came to us with this project. Initially, it was only going to be more of a quicker re-write, and we sort of loved the challenge of it. We loved the idea of a movie taking place with one man in one room. The more we got into it, the more we fell in love with it, and we wound up working two years on the movie.
David Konow: Were you familiar with the story before?
Larry Karaszewski: No. Clearly, we learned the story has a build up of good will. A lot of the King fans are very enamored with the story, I think because its history was so strange. It started as a writing exercise, I think, from his [non-fiction] book, "On Writing," and he never really intended to finish it. It's a sort of goofy back-story.
Scott Alexander: It wound up working in so many different...it was in "On Writing," then it was in an audio version only, then he actually published it in a book of short stories. It stuck with King, too.
David Konow: Were you Stephen King fans before working on this film?
Scott Alexander: Ah, yes I would say. Definitely more so when I was younger growing up. I was a huge fan of "The Stand."
David Konow: You guys hadn't written a horror story before. Did you feel it was something you could handle, something you could do well with?
Larry Karaszewski: Well, we were very happy when we first had a meeting at Dimension. We barely talked about genre at all. Bob Weinstein kept bringing up Ingmar Bergman films and Roman Polanski, and we really tried to make it more of an old school "Rosemary's Baby" / "The Tenant" / "Repulsion" kind of film, where it's really more about psychological dread. We really appreciated the freedom the studio gave us to take things very slowly, and build, and allow it to really become a character piece, where the scares come from what's happening in that character's mind as opposed to just the usual horror things where things are jumping out and flying all over the place.
John Cusack stars as a writer who is investigating supposed haunted houses and who checks into the mysterious Dolphin Hotel in the infamous room 1408.
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