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Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: "With great power comes great responsibility."
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Paul Sheldon is the main protagonist of Stephen King's 1987 psychological horror novel Misery its 1990 film adaptation of the same name. He is a romance novelist whose #1 fan, Annie Wilkes, is obsessed with. He wrote a successful novel series which involves a woman named Misery Chastain.
He was portrayed by the late James Caan in the film, who also portrayed Walter Hobbs in Elf and Matthew Sykes in Alien Nation, and voiced Tim Lockwood in the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs duology.
Early Life[]
Paul lives in New York City, New York and also in Los Angeles, California. However, he writes his own novels in a remote cabin near Sidewinder, Colorado. It has also been revealed that he has been married and divorced several times, although he is a bachelor in the events of the novel.
He is also the author of the Misery Chastain novel series. Paul believes that these novels are little more than dime-store romances, and writes that Misery has died in childbirth in his latest published work, Misery's Child.
Now that he feels freed from his popular novels, Paul settles in to his writing cabin in Sidewinder, Colorado. After finishing his latest novel on car thieves (Fast Cars), Paul celebrates with champagne and decides to drive to California with his finished manuscript.
Appearance[]
Described in the book as a "tall man who is forty-two years old".
Personality[]
Paul Sheldon is an author of novels, "good ones and best-sellers". He's is twice divorced, and an alcoholic. Paul has a "vivid imagination", which he's used to write a series of best-selling romance novels centered on Misery Chastain, "darling of the dump bins and sweetheart of the supermarkets". When the novel begins, Paul has just finished writing Fast Cars, his first non-Misery novel, which he hopes will garner him the critical praise he desires. During his time as Annie's prisoner, Paul swings between utter terror, hopelessness, and depression and inspiration, hope, and bravery. Paul also expresses himself as a writer, giving the reader an idea of what it's like to write under extreme duress.
Trivia[]
- Bill Murray, Jeff Daniels, Ed Harris, John Heard, Robert Klein, and Ed O'Neill were considered for the role of Paul Sheldon.
- Jack Nicholson was offered the role of Paul Sheldon, but passed because he was not sure he wanted to do another movie based on one of Stephen King's novels, after what he had experienced with Stanley Kubrick on The Shining (1980). James Caan accepted the lead role after Jack Nicholson turned it down. Caan had previously turned down Nicholson's Oscar-winning role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), in which he also is the victim of a psychotic nurse, Louise Fletcher, who also won an Oscar for her role.
- According to writer William Goldman, Richard Dreyfussalmost accepted the Paul Sheldon part because he regretted turning down the lead role in When Harry Met Sally... (1989) and he wouldn't like to disappoint the director Rob Reiner again - they previously collaborated in another Stephen King's adaptation in Stand by Me (1986). Reiner asked Dreyfuss to read the script but he didn't like it.
- Paul's car is a 1966 Ford Mustang.
- Paul preferred to write on white, long-grained mimeo paper. Paper cut long-grained resists curling, which is frequently caused by the hammering of manual typewriters, the heavy ink of pens, and changing weather conditions. Likewise, the dust jackets on hardback books, and the covers of larger paperbacks, are often shortcut. Thus they tend to curl away from the book instead of hugging it.
- A photograph of a younger Paul Sheldon shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth II can be seen above Annie Wilkes' shelf of "Misery" novels. This is a real photograph of James Caan meeting the Queen at the Royal Film Premiere of Funny Lady (1975) at the Odeon Theatre Leicester Square in London on March 17, 1975. A partially obscured James Stewart can also be seen in the photo standing to Caan's left.
- One of Stephen King's first typewriters had a malfunctioning "N" key, just like the one used by Paul in the movie. In the novel, the typewriter also drops its "T" and "E" keys. Those two letters are second and first most commonly used letters in the English language, respectively, making Paul's job even tougher.
- The film downplays one of the key themes in the book: Paul's addictions and substance abuse and how that plays into his captivity. The book gives us a lot of backstory about his history of substance abuse; and how he'd recently gotten himself back on track. Being held in captivity; coupled with her feeding him Novril pills all the time, (Novril is a fictional form of codeine; an opiate); has caused Paul to relapse; and he has swung into full on addiction to the Novril/codeine. (These scenes of the drug addicted writer banging away compulsively at the typewriter as a kind of panacea bring up memories not just of The Shining and its substance abusing writer; but also of King himself; who was the real deal and the inspiration for all of this). King himself has said that Annie is a symbol of Paul's own addictions; come to life; holding him captive; trying to kill him.
- Paul Sheldon's (James Caan's) novels are published by Viking, the same publishing company that published Stephen King's books at that time.
- They spent weeks getting Paul Sheldon's briefcase to look "just right" in regard to the faded and worn exterior.
- (At 59 mins.) The shot through the bed rails that transitions into a shot through trees is meant as a nod to the idea that Paul's basically in jail.
- William Goldman who wrote the script said that the studio approached every man in Hollywood to play the part. But all turned it down including Robert Redford, William Hurt (declined the role twice), Dustin Hoffman (declined because he hates violent films), Robert DeNiro, Richard Dreyfuss, Gene Hackman and Warren Beatty. He said everyone said no "because leading men hate to be passive; hate to be eunuchized by their female co-stars." He said the only person who never said no was Warren Beatty. Beatty just kept them hanging forever; he said "to this day I still don't think he said no." Warren Beatty would later be involved briefly while they were developing the script and helped them close some possible plot holes in regard to Paul's efforts to escape. He said, "Pretend that it's me, Warren Beatty, an intelligent person trapped in the bed. I would think of every possible way to get out of this house." From there they worked through various possibilities and then made sure to block off those options from Paul.
- When Paul's car is found, he is assumed to be dead, in a subplot original to the film. Coincidentally, on June 19, 1999, author Stephen King was hit by a car with some initial reports saying he had died. King eventually incorporated the accident into his book "The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower," which also briefly mentioned Annie Wilkes.
- In the novel, Annie cuts off Paul's foot to prevent him from escaping. Screenwriter William Goldman had stated that the reason he decided to adapt the book to film was because of this gruesome scene, and the effect it would have on the audience. However, Rob Reiner and Andrew Scheinman's script revision changed the method of torture to Paul getting his ankles broken with a sledgehammer. Goldman was opposed to the change until viewing the film.
- In the original idea for the novel, Annie planned to kill Paul Sheldon by feeding him to Misery the pig, and take his skin to bind the book he had written. The title would have been "The Annie Wilkes 1st Edition."
- King has Paul pretend to burn Misery's Return at the end and then go on to see it published, but the film has him actually destroy the only copy. Reiner suspects that King, even subliminally, fears what might happen if he doesn't supply his constant readers with the kinds of books they expect from him. The director wanted to affirm Paul's desire to move on to other things.
- Cast and crew were excited for the scene where Paul picks the bedroom door lock and rolls himself out into the house to explore for possible escape options. "We had literally only moved, like, four feet, but it was exciting to be shooting something other than that bedroom."
- The novel has Annie chop off Paul's foot and cauterize the stump, but they opted to simply hobble him instead by having her break his feet with a sledgehammer. Their thinking was that they wanted him to be victorious in the end, and losing his feet would be too high of a price. "It was pretty darn painful to look at, so I don't think we compromised it too much." Strangely enough, in the novel, Paul is given a prosthetic foot which functions better than his broken foot would have if Annie hadn't severed it.
- In the movie, Annie forces Paul to burn his manuscript, which is "untitled" (as seen in the close-up). In the novel, Paul titles it "Fast Cars," and it is a story reminiscent of 1950s detective dramas, and one hundred eighty degrees away from the Victorian Era-set "Misery" novels that made him famous. The profanity in both versions is still what drives Annie to hate it and force Paul to burn it.
- In the book Annie not only chops off Paul's left foot as retaliation for him having moved around the house without her approval. She later cuts off his left thumb with an electric carving knife after Paul complains about the deteriorating typewriter (the "T" and "E" key strikers fall out in addition to the missing "N"). Paul has a nightmare where Annie then serves him a birthday cakes with his thumb as an unlit candle in it. She threatens that if he doesn't eat the cake he'll have to eat his thumb too.
- Towards the end of the movie, it's finally established just how long Paul has been there. Perhaps surprisingly, only 4 weeks have passed since the road accident. The ongoing snow and rain falling would also have covered up the various tyre and foot tracks at the crash site, hence the delay in finding the crash site in the first search. In the novel, the time Paul spends trapped in the house is longer, at least a couple of months from mid-winter to the warmer part of spring, which Paul keeps track of by the snow melting around her property.
