Dollar Baby

    The Dollar Baby is a term coined by best-selling author Stephen King to refer to a select group of student and aspiring filmmakers whom he has granted permission to adapt one of his shorter works for the consideration of one dollar. The term is used interchangeably to refer to the film work itself or the filmmaker. 

    As the author explains in his introduction to the published shooting script for The Shawshank Redemption (a film by Frank Darabont adapted from King's "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," a novella that appeared in the collection Different Seasons), "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.

    "'77 was the year young filmmakers - college students, for the most part - started writing me about the stories I'd published (first in Night Shift, later in Skeleton Crew), wanting to make short films out of them. Over the objections o fmy accountant, who saw all sorts of possible legal problems, I established a policy which still holds today. I will grant any student filmmaker the right to make a movie out of any short story I have written (not the novels, that would be ridiculious), so long as the film rights are still mine to assign. I ask then to sign a paper promising that no resulting film will be exhibited commercially without approval, and that they send me a videotape of the finished work. For this one-time right I ask a dollar. I have made the dollar-deal, as I call it, over my accountant's moans and head-clitchnig protests sixteen or seventeen times as of this writing."1

    The most famous Dollar Baby was young Frank Darabont's adaptation of "The Woman in the Room" which was eventually released on VHS by Granite Entertainment Group Interglobal Home Video as part of the Stephen King's Night Shift Collection along with Jeff Schiro's adaptation of "The Boogyman."

    One of the first to bring the Dollar Babies to the public eye was author Stephen Spignesi in his exhaustive volume The Stephen King Encyclopedia wherein he notes two student short adaptations: "The Last Rung on the Ladder" (12 minutes 20 seconds 1987) by James Cole and Dan Thron and "The Lawnmower Man" (12 minutes 1987) by Jim Gonis.

    As Dollar Babies were not intended to be seen in public - beyond film festivals and school presentations - and not commercially traded, many of them have alluded the King fan community. Although in the 1996 introduction (quoted above) King mentions sixteen or seventeen such Dollar Babies, it is difficult to account for them all. Pre 1996, the known Dollar Baby adaptations are:

• • The Boogyman (1982) by Jeff Schiro
  • Disciples of the Crow (1983) by John Woodward
  • The Night Waiter (1983) by Jack Garrett
  • The Woman in the Room (1983) by Frank Darabont
  • Srajenie (The Battle) (1986) by Mikhail Titov
  • Last Rung on the Ladder (1987) by James Cole and Dan Thron
  • Llamadas (Sorry, Right Number) (1999) by Daniel Yañez
  • Cain Rose Up
  • Here There Be Tygers
  • Night Surf
  • The Sun Dog

    In 2000 Dollar Babies came back into the public eye when young filmmaker Jay Holben made an adaptation of "Paranoid: A Chant," an obscure 100-line poem that appears in Skeleton Crew. Paranoid was the first such Dollar Baby to be released on the Internet in 2002 and the first to be released on a commercially available DVD along with the quickly-defunct Total Movie Magazine (a failed offshoot of the immensely popular UK publication Total Film). King fans clamored to download the eight-minute visual mindtrip, and then clamored for more. 

    After Paranoid a rash of Dollar-Babies cropped up including:

• • Stud City (2000) by Sean Parlaman
  • Night Surf (2001) by Peter Sullivan
  • Strawberry Spring (2001) by Doveed Linder
  • Rainy Season (2002) by Nick Wauters
  • Autopsy Room Four (2003) by Steve Zakman
  • Here There Be Tygers (2003) by James Cochrane
  • The Man in the Black Suit (2003) by Nicholas Mariani
  • All That You Love Will Be Carried Away (2004) by James Renner
  • All That You Love Will Be Carried Away (2004) by Scott Albanese
  • I Know What You Need (2004) by Shawn S. Lealos
  • The Gunslinger (Roland Meets the Dweller) (2004) by Robert David Cochrane
  • Luckey Quarter (2004) by Robert David Cochrane
  • The Road Virus Heads North (2004) by Dave Brock
  • The Secret Transit Codes of America's Highways (2004) by Brian Berkowitz
  • El Sueño de Harvey (Harvey's Dream) (2005) Rodolfo Weisskirch
  • Gotham Cafe (2005) by Jack Sawyers
  • Home Delivery: Servicio a Domicilio (2005) by Elio Quiroga
  • La Femme Dans la Chambre (The Woman in the Room) (2005) by Damien Maric
  • Sorry, Right Number (2005) by Brian Berkowitz
  • Suffer the Little Children (2005) by Bernardo Villela

    In 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 in the Corbet Business Theater at the University of Maine, Orono, Stephen King's own Alma Matter (1966-1970) where King wrote for The Maine Campus newspaper. Renner followed the festival with a second incarnation in  2005. 

    It is a common misconception that the filmmakers of the Dollar Babies have obtained the rights to the properties. In fact, author King retains all rights and merely grants the exclusive permission to the filmmaker to make a non-commercial adaptation. 

    On the Internet, the largest public collection of the Dollar Babies can be found at Stephen King Short Movies http://www.stephenkingshortmovies.com.  

1 "The Shawshank Redemption The Shooting Script" Darabont, Frank Newmarket Press 1996 introduction King, Stephen.