Did you know that Stephen King hated Kubrick's (and Nicholson's) The Shining?

It was a case of “artist remorse”, perhaps.

I used to have these discussions with my wife and son (my son is a professional musician now). They were under the impression that a song “meant” what the writer intended.

"What do the lyrics mean???" they were always wondering, when they had the lyrics right there in front of them and could figure it out for themselves.

I was much more liberal than they. “The song means what it means to ME. I hear lyrics, I find myself in them.”

Stephen King wrote a good story about a haunted hotel called The Shining, and Kubrick read it and saw it through his own weird prism and made it BRILLIANT.

Then you add Jack Nicholson…my God. One of the greatest ghost stories ever told on film.

Perhaps it wasn’t artist remorse on the part of Stephen King that made him hate Kubrick’s Shining so, but good ol’ fashioned jealously. Who knows.

Whatever. Eat it, King.