Kathy Bates Tells Rob Reiner to His Face She Regrets Him Toning Down the Violence in ‘Misery’


Kathy Bates Tells Rob Reiner to His Face She Regrets Him Toning Down the Violence in ‘Misery’

APRIL 28, 2025 5:30 PM Last weekend thousands of the world’s most passionate and obsessive movie fans descended upon Hollywood for the 16th annual TCM Classic Film Festival, which provided opportunities to see everything from “Gunfight at the OK Corral” and “We’re No Angels” projected in true VistaVision to nitrate prints of “Daisy Kenyon” and “Mildred Pierce” at The Egyptian Theatre, one of only five venues in the country capable of screening that format. There was also a restoration of a silent classic with live accompaniment (“Beau Geste“), a BFI restoration of Ernst Lubitsch’s timeless — and timely — comedy “To Be or Not to Be,” and a a tribute to groundbreaking director Michael Schultz, among many other delightful programs. It’s hard to pick a favorite event from such a stacked weekend, but for sheer moviegoing pleasure it was tough to beat the 35th anniversary screening of “Misery,” which screened in the legendary TCL Chinese Theatre to a packed crowd. The movie itself — a diabolically funny and terrifying two-hander in which obsessive fan Kathy Bates holds writer James Caan hostage after he suffers a debilitating accident — plays better than ever, and after the audience was done laughing and screaming for 107 minutes straight they were treated to an even more special treat than seeing “Misery” on a huge screen: Hearing Bates and director Rob Reiner discuss the movie live with TCM host Dave Karger. Reiner began the evening by saying how happy he was to see that the movie still played to a crowd. “I was surprised by how many laughs are in there,” he said, adding that he was also surprised to see how well Caan and Bates came across on screen together given their different working methods. “They come at acting in very different ways. Kathy is a brilliant stage actress and Jimmy didn’t want any rehearsal, he just wanted to be instinctive. So we found a way to rehearse more than Jimmy wanted and less than Kathy wanted, but it works.” Aside from not getting as much rehearsal as she would have liked, Bates had only great things to say about her experience on “Misery” — though she did admit being disappointed that Reiner toned down the gore in the novel, cutting a scene in which her character ran someone over with a lawnmower and downgrading Caan’s foot amputation to a mere hobbling. “I was crushed that you took that out,” Bates said to Reiner, who defended himself by saying that he felt Caan’s character shouldn’t have to lose something after he had learned something. “I didn’t agree with that at all,” Bates said.