Encyclopedia
| Dollar Baby
Encyclopedia
|
| Tutorials | Encyclopedia | Dictionary | Directory |
|
Dollar Baby
The Dollar Baby (also sometimes referred to as the Dollar Deal) is a term coined by best-selling author Stephen King in reference to a select group of students and aspiring filmmakers or theatre producers for whom he has granted permission to adapt one of his short stories for the sole consideration of one dollar ($1). The term is used interchangeably to refer to the film or play itself, or the maker (for example, "The Sun Dog" was made as a Dollar Baby, or writer/director Frank Darabont was a Dollar Baby). The production budgets range from a few hundred dollars to over $60,000 (Umney's Last Case) and the film formats range from home video to professional 35 mm film.
HistoryAs King explained in his introduction to the published shooting script for Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption (based on his Different Seasons novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption), "Around 1977 or so, when I started having some popular success, I saw a way to give back a little of the joy the movies had given me.[1]
Once the film was made and King received his copy he explains, "...I'd look at the films ... then put them up on a shelf I had marked 'Dollar Babies'."[1] Then-20-year old Frank Darabont's Dollar Baby adaptation of "The Woman in the Room" was eventually released in 1986 on VHS by Granite Entertainment Group Interglobal Home Video as part of the Stephen King's Night Shift Collection along with New York University film student Jeff Schiro's adaptation of "The Boogyman." Darabont went on to direct three feature film adaptations of Stephen King's work, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including Best Picture, as well as "The Mist." One of the first to bring the Dollar Deal to the public eye was author Stephen J. Spignesi in his exhaustive volume The Stephen King Encyclopedia where in he writes about two student short adaptations: The Last Rung on the Ladder (1987) by James Cole and Dan Thron and The Lawnmower Man (1987) by Jim Gonis.[2] There is a distinction to be made wherein a Dollar Baby is a film that has received special permission from Stephen King and the filmmaker has an exclusive contract with the author. Some films listed below may simply have been unauthorized short adaptations without the official sanction from King, in which case they would not officially be Dollar Babies and should be removed from this list. Every attempt has been made to confirm the authenticity of all the titles below, but many still remain in question. 1977-1996As Dollar Babies were not intended to be seen by the public beyond film festivals and school presentations, and not commercially sold or openly traded prior to the advent of the Internet, many of them have eluded the King fan community. In 1996, when King first publicly discussed the Dollar Deal policy, he mentioned "sixteen or seventeen" such Dollar Babies. It is difficult, if not impossible, to account for them all without access to King's designated Dollar Baby shelf. Although Frank Darabont originally requested to make his adaptation of "The Woman in the Room" in 1980, it took him three years to complete the film. The known Dollar Babies between 1977 and 1996 are:
New Dollar Babies (2000—)In 2000 Dollar Babies came back into the public eye when Los Angeles based filmmaker Jay Holben made an adaptation of "Paranoid: A Chant," a 100-line poem that appears in Skeleton Crew. Paranoid was the first Dollar Baby to be released with King's permission for a limited time on the Internet in 2002. Again with King's permission, the film was then the first Dollar Baby released on a commercial DVD, in a package with Total Movie Magazine, a short-lived offshoot of the immensely popular UK publication Total Film. King fans clamored to download the eight-minute film, and then clamored for more. In September 2004, fellow Dollar Baby James Renner ("All That You Love Will Be Carried Away") put together the first public film festival presentation of Dollar Babies. The festival was held in the D. P. Corbett Business Theater at the University of Maine, Orono, Stephen King's own Alma Mater (1966-1970) where he wrote for The Maine Campus newspaper. Renner followed the festival with a second incarnation in September of 2005 at the same location. http://www.dollarbabyfilmfestival.com On the Internet, the largest public collection of the Dollar Babies has been put together by Bernd Lautenslager in the Netherlands. Many of the films listed above were available for download at a site called "Stephen King Short Movies", but at the request of Stephen King's representatives, the films are no longer available for download. To date, the only short specifically granted permission to play for a limited time on the Internet was Paranoid. In 2008 Australian based writer Mathew Dollimore has started pre-production of a "dollar baby" version of the "The man who loved flowers" from the night shift collection. Another Australian, director Wade K. Savage, is in the process of adapting "Survivor Type" from the collection Skeleton Crew. CopyrightIt is a common misconception that the filmmakers of the Dollar Babies have optioned or obtained the legal rights to the stories the films are based on. In fact, author King retains all rights and merely grants the exclusive permission to the filmmaker to make a non-commercial adaptation. As in the case of The Woman in the Room and The Boogyman, Granite Entertainment Group Interglobal Home Video negotiated and purchased the rights to commercially release both shorts on video in 1986. The non-public details of these agreements are well beyond the original $1 for Dollar Baby permission. Both of these films were originally announced for home video distribution by Gerard Ravels' Native Son International, but after Frank Darabont discovered that Ravels did not secure proper rights to the stories, the release was scrapped. As part of the agreement with Stephen King, all Dollar Baby films must include the specific phrase "© Stephen King. Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved." This rather unorthodox arrangement is the reason the films cannot be commercially released nor can the filmmakers garner any profit from the works, and accounts for adaptions of the same source material by multiple filmmakers. For example, "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away" was adapted six times by James Renner, Anthony Kaneaster, Scott Albanese, Chi Laughlin & Natalie Mooallem (as All That You Love), and Brian Berkowitz (as The Secret Transit Codes of America's Highways). King's phrase "so long as the film rights are still mine to assign..."[1] actually has two meanings. This refers to King retaining rights to the original material in order to sell them to a legitimate buyer in the future and also to material that has not been previously sold (i.e.: material that King still holds all the rights). If another company or individual has purchased the film rights to one of King's stories, he no longer has legal authority to grant permission to a Dollar Baby as the rights are now held by the buyer. Possessory titleSome of the Dollar Baby filmmakers have mistakenly assumed that Stephen King's explicit permission to make and showcase the adapted filmwork automatically qualifies the film for a possessory credit (e.g. "Stephen King's Silver Bullet" as opposed to just "Silver Bullet"). In actuality, this is a specified legal usage of the author's name and King does not grant permission for Dollar Baby filmmakers to use his name in this manner. The possessory title is only used on projects in which King has a direct and considerable involvement. Previously, this title was applied more liberally until it was abused with the release of Brett Leonard's The Lawnmower Man. The film, which bears little to no resemblance to King's short story, was originally released as Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man, but the possessory title was removed following a lawsuit filed by King against the filmmakers. A federal court ruled in King's favor and, a Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that King's name should be removed from the title.[3] Journalists and Internet fans often mistakenly apply the possessory credit to Dollar Baby films beyond the control of the filmmakers. Stephen King's Gotham Cafe, in which Stephen King has a cameo, is the only Dollar Baby to have been granted this prestigious possessory title. Critical commentaryAs Stephen King himself comments, "Many of these adaptations weren't so great, but a few showed at least a smattering of talent. ... in many cases one viewing was all a person could bear..."[1] As many, if not the majority, of the Dollar Baby films are made by student or tyro filmmakers, the quality is often sub-standard, although there are a few notable exceptions. King offered praise to "...a fairly impressive eighteen minute version of 'The Sun Dog'"[1]. Darabont's The Woman in the Room, in addition to being photographed by the renowned cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia (Glengarry Glen Ross), made the semi-finalist list for Academy Award consideration in 1983. King is also quoted as saying that "The Woman in the Room" is "clearly the best of the short films made from my stuff." [4] Paranoid is among the most critically acclaimed Dollar Babies. Rolling Stone magazine's David Wild said of the film "Rarely has paranoia been so much fun... Jay Holben has created a stunning and artful rendering of madness, turning a poem by Stephen King into a vivid and compelling nightmare vision."[5] Of the twenty Dollar Babies listed on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the top rated films with more than 40 votes are Autopsy Room Four, Stephen King's Gotham Cafe, Paranoid, The Woman in the Room, Night Surf, and Strawberry Spring (noted August, 2006). The definitive listThis list includes all known Dollar Baby films, the directors, format, length and production budget when available. Where possible, links are provided to the films' official websites.
References
Other sources
External linksSource: Wikipedia | The above article is available under the GNU FDL. | Edit this article
|
|
top
©2008-2009 TutorGig.com. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Statement
