'They're Not Paying Me Enough To Go To That Place:' The Green Mile's William Sadler Looks Back On The Beloved Stephen King Film As An Emotionally And Physically Exhausting Experience
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Earlier this month, I led off The King Beat with a cool story about William Sadler making a key ad-lib in the making of The Shawshank Redemption, and last week’s column including details from the actor about his experience making writer/director Gary Dauberman’s Salem’s Lot. Still, however, I’m not done sharing cool insights from Sadler’s time making great Stephen King movies, and this time around, my main headline has his reflections on his reunion with writer/director Frank Darabont in the making of 1999’s The Green Mile.
That story is joined in this week’s feature by not only a fresh Recommendation Of The Week but also a cool revelation from screenwriter Glen Mazzara: the script for his Dark Tower pilot that was shot but never aired. Let’s dig in!
The Green Mile’s William Sadler Recalls His Tough Experience Making The Stephen King Movie
When I spoke with William Sadler at the end of last month about his impressive history acting in Stephen King adaptations, I got the sense that he loved his time making The Shawshank Redemption – enjoying the camaraderie among his colleagues during production, playing a fun dim bulb character in Heywood, and its impressive legacy in modern cinema.
His experience making The Green Mile was quite different, however.
The movie reunited Sadler with Frank Darabont just a few years after their collaboration on Shawshank and the role he played was considerably smaller, but it was ultimately both an emotionally and physically exhausting experience. As the actor explained, there was a particular parallel between the material and his personal life that he couldn’t ignore. Said Sadler,
[Frank Darabont] wanted me to do it, and I understand why, but it ended up being one of the most... it's not a very big role, but our daughter was about the size of those two little girls that are dead.
In The Green Mile, William Sadler plays Klaus Detterick – the father of two young girls who are abducted and killed before their bodies are found held in the arms of the gentle giant John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan). It’s a part that didn’t just require the actor to access some extreme emotions; it had him coming face-to-face with a true fear. Sadler continued,
As an actor, I kind of… I had to go there. I had to sort of imagine 'What would you feel if you came out on the porch and there was blood and the screen door was cut and the kids are gone?' For me, that's about the most frightening thing a human can... you can show me all the creatures and predators and sharks you want, the idea of losing a child and having, you know, there's blood and a broken screen and they're gone, just like this horrible panic sets in.
It was a challenge to access that very scary headspace… but that wasn’t where the challenges ended. In addition witnessing high-intensity emotion, the audience also sees Klaus desperately search for his kidnapped children, and that meant getting a workout every time that Frank Darabont called, “Action.” William Sadler explained that the terrain and his costuming didn’t do him any favors:
He goes out on the chase, and the chase was hard. [Laugh] The end of the chase was the hardest because I'm not a runner. I don't have long legs, and I'm old, and I'm wearing these work boots and so on. And Frank set up a track like a hundred yards long, and I start running with the shotgun, and I drop the shotgun and climb up the hill and start punching [Michael Clarke Duncan’s John Coffey]. But it was like spending the day or two that we spent shooting that was some of the most difficult stuff I've ever done in my life.
The physical pain that came with William Sadler’s performance in The Green Mile stands out in his memory, but he said it was the emotional weight of the role that “cost” him the most. Being a professional actor, he felt that he had a responsibility to approach the performance with full engagement and honesty, but in retrospect, the credit and the paycheck didn’t provide full compensation for his experience. Sadler added,
Just to be in that neighborhood… It was a combination. The physical was difficult, but the emotional was... I came away from the whole experience thinking they're not paying me enough to go to that place, to feel that. It costs too much to stand there and imagine the death of my child, you know? And I sort of felt like I had to do that. I had to do that for the camera because it's not something you can kind of fake your way through and joke around with the crew.
It’s a relatively small role in the film, but William Sadler delivers an exceptional performance – and the next time you watch The Green Mile and the scene where Klaus Detterick first encounters John Coffey, you can fully appreciate that all of the pain in the actor’s eyes is powerfully real.
The Green Mile is available for digital rental and purchase on Amazon Prime Video, and the same service is also currently hosting William Sadler’s latest film: A Stage Of Twilight, written and directed by Sarah T. Schwab and co-starring Karen Allen.
As Mike Flanagan’s The Dark Tower Moves Through Development, Glen Mazzara Has Shared The Script For His Never-Released Amazon Pilot
While concurrently working on his contribution to the Exorcist franchise, Mike Flanagan has been passionately committed to making his dream project a reality: a properly faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. He announced acquisition of the rights to the source material in late 2022, and he has spoken of his vision for it as a series that will run “at least five seasons.” There is a lot of hope that it will actually happen – but at the same time, it’s hard not to remember as a King fan that this won’t be the first time that an attempt has been made at making a Dark Tower TV show.
In the aftermath of the terrible Dark Tower movie that hit theaters in 2017, The Walking Dead executive producer/showrunner was hired to develop a streaming series for Amazon based on Stephen King’s epic novels, and while the pilot was written, cast and shot, the project was cancelled. The finished work has never seen the light of day, but Constant Readers everywhere can now at least imagine what the show would have been, as Mazzara has publicly published his script online.
Seemingly apropos of nothing in particular, Glen Mazzara took to his personal Twitter account this week and posted a link to the website The Stunt List with the caption, “This was a blast to write.”
The Dark Tower script is available on the website to download as a PDF, and while there is no indication that it will only be online for a limited time, it’s probably best for you to save it now just in case.
The pilot script is 61 pages long, and the big thing that stands out about it is the fact that it is not a strict adaptation of The Gunslinger a.k.a. the first novel in the Dark Tower series. While there are elements of that seminal book in the teleplay, it’s primarily an adaptation of the big flashback in Wizard And Glass – the fourth tome. It follows a young Roland Deschain (played by Outer Range’s Sam Strike) as he both hunts for the evil magician Marten Broadcloak (Jasper P??kk?nen) and meets the love of his life, Susan Delgado (Joana Ribeiro), in the town of Mejis.
After reading the script, I come away with mixed feelings about the adaptation. For starters, I can understand the decision to not wholly dedicate the Dark Tower pilot to The Gunslinger, which is easily the weakest book in what is otherwise a phenomenal series. At the same time, however, I can’t help but dislike the long view of the approach. The show wholly focusing on the story of a young Roland Deschain would mean that it would have taken a long time to get to what is the true heart of everything – which is the relationships that Roland ultimately builds with Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers and Oy as they quest together to the Tower.
There is clearly a lot of love for Stephen King’s books apparent on the page of Glen Mazzara’s script (I particularly enjoyed the appearances of a bird-headed Taheen and a billybumbler), and for what it’s worth, it’s a faithful take on Wizard And Glass. But as someone who wants to someday see the full scope of The Dark Tower play out on screen, I can’t say it’s my favorite take, and my fingers remain tightly crossed that Mike Flanagan’s vision will be the adaptation for which Constant Readers have long been waiting.
Recommendation Of The Week: “The Fifth Step”
Over the last few months, I’ve primarily used this space to highlight each of the dozen titles featured in Stephen King’s latest collection, You Like It Darker, and I bring that particular run to an end this week with “The Fifth Step” – which was first published in the March 2020 issue of Harper’s Magazine before being included in the new omnibus. It’s the second spooky tale in the 2024 book after “Two Talented Bastids,” and utilizes one of the major themes in King’s bibliography: addiction.
Protagonist Harold Jamieson is a retiree who is out one day reading a newspaper in Central Park when he is approached by a shady stranger who introduces himself as Jack. Shakily, Jack explains that he is in an Alcoholics Anonymous program and has reached the fifth of the 12 steps – which requires him to admit to another person the nature of his “wrongs.” Harold reticently agrees to hear the man’s story, but slowly understands that there is a darkness in the man that goes beyond his drinking.
That wraps up this one-year anniversary edition of The King Beat (my first column covered the week of August 18-24, 2023), but I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a brand new feature full of all the latest developments from the world of Stephen King.
