It's an obvious quandry for any successful, creative mind at a standstill: should they write for themselves.or the fans? As Paul soon learns, Annie is willing to break plenty of moral codes (and bones) to convince him of the latter.
Thrilled to have her favorite author as a houseguest, Annie's sweet admiration quickly turns rabid: she disapproves of the career path that Paul is planning, insistent he continue her beloved "Misery" series ad nauseum.
Injured and unable to move, a stranger comes to Paul's rescue: Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), a local nurse who tends to his injuries at her nearby home.and, as fate would have it, she turns out to be Paul's self-proclaimed "number one fan". After completing his latest novel at a remote cabin, Paul loses control of his car on the drive home and flips over an embankment. The protagonist in question, Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan), maintains one of King's favorite themes: he's a writer in peril. As he would soon learn, Reiner had at least one thing in common with the protagonist of Misery: though never terrorized by a sledgehammer-wielding psychopath, he was indeed a creative mind who longed to branch out in new directions. The director certainly didn't seem like the obvious candidate on paper, having cut his teeth on films like This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride several years earlier, but it was Reiner's Stand by Me (adapted from a King short story) that first caught the author's eye in 1986. Many fans of Stephen King regard his source novel as one of the author's best works, so it's fortunate that Rob Reiner's gripping adaptation of Misery (1990) does it visceral justice.