Language Barriers Made Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive Unnecessarily Difficult

Stephen King is one of the most prolific writers of popular fiction in the history of literature. From "Carrie" to "The Dark Tower" series and everything in between, the sheer volume of beloved works that he's producing is remarkable. Many of King's works have been adapted into movies and TV shows over the years, with mixed results. But King has only personally directed one of them in the form of 1986's "Maximum Overdrive," a movie even he doesn't like.

Based on King's short story "Trucks" from the "Night Shift" collection, the film was produced by the legendary Dino De Laurentiis, with the author penning the screenplay and sitting behind the camera. The production was plagued with issues and the resulting movie was far from a success.

In the film, after a mysterious comet passes by Earth, trucks and other machines come alive and begin killing people. The story largely takes place at the Dixie Boy truck stop where a ragtag group tries to band against these killing machines. One of the film's stars Yeardley Smith, best known for her work as Lisa on "The Simpsons," spoke with Yahoo about the film in 2020. Aside from revealing that King was drinking a lot of beer at the time, she explained that there was a pretty major communication issue on set because the entire crew had been brought over from Italy. Hence, they didn't speak much English.

"We had a translator on set who would say to Stephen: 'What would you like to do?' And then Stephen would say, 'I want to do this,' and then the guy would translate to the Italian crew and the Italian crew would discuss it. We must have added on a week-and-a-half in shooting in time just for translation alone."

An Italian crew was far from the only issue that plagued the production. For one, King didn't exactly have a natural knack for directing. Camera assistant Silvia Giulietti once explained, "Stephen King had a very strong idea about the movie, but he was not able to translate it into images." Similarly, production assistant Chip Hackler added, "I do think writing and directing are very different talents, and it's hard enough to be good at one of them." King has more than proven himself as a writer. There's a reason he only directed a movie once.

Not only was the movie contending with King's shortcomings as a director — not to mention his issues with drugs and alcohol at the time — but it was also running up against the famous cost-cutting measures employed by De Laurentiis, which is why this translation problem emerged in the first place. De Laurentiis' longtime translator Roberto Croci explained in a 2015 oral history of "Maximum Overdrive" that the notorious producer was all about saving money.

"The reason, also, that he did all of this — shoot outside Los Angeles — was to make the movies for less. In California, there are all these laws, taxes, bulls**t. So Dino just went to other places. That's the smart business guy Dino was. He was basically the guy who invented the role of the executive producer. I worked with him for 20 years and one thing he like to say was: 'If you're going to make a buck ... why not make more than a buck?'"

De Laurentiis may have saved more than a buck by bringing in an Italian crew on "Maximum Overdrive," but at what cost? That language barrier certainly added another wrinkle to an already wrinkly situation. For what it's worth, the film has gained a bit of cult status in the years since its original release, and a big part of that is because the end result feels chaotic. Mostly because it was chaotic, apparently.