Stephen King made a fun cameo appearance in the 1997 TV miniseries remake of The Shining, which pays tribute to fellow King story Pet Sematary. King has penned over 60 full-length novels and over 200 short stories in his prolific career, but it’s safe to say that The Shining remains one of his most cherished works. The story of the haunted Overlook Hotel and the negative effects it has on the Torrance family is a legendary one, and some would hold it up as King’s best book.
The Shining was famously adapted into a 1980 film by director Stanley Kubrick, which is often cited as being one of the greatest horror films of all time. The wrinkle there of course has always been that King hates Kubrick’s movie, and considers it a soulless adaptation of his story. Thus, in 1997, King wrote and produced a three-part TV miniseries adaptation for ABC, starring Steven Weber as Jack Torrance and Rebecca De Mornay as Wendy.
While in most ways much closer to King’s prose than Kubrick’s film was, most would agree that The Shining miniseries doesn’t come close to the quality of its predecessor. Still, it’s far from worthless, and features some memorable scenes and moments, as well as a bizarre cameo by Stephen King himself.
Stephen King’s Shining Remake Cameo Pays Tribute to Pet Sematary
In The Shining‘s TV miniseries remake, Jack Torrance attends a lavish party in the Overlook Hotel, one populated entirely by ghosts. At the party, a band plays old-timey music, while Jack imagines dancing with one of the Overlook’s many ghouls, and conversing with the specter of its bartender. He’s not onscreen for long, but his face is visible enough for fans to notice that the band leader is played by Stephen King, in an amusing but odd cameo.
Naturally, The Shining miniseries sticks to King’s book ending, and has the Overlook Hotel end up destroyed thanks to a possessed Jack Torrance forgetting to check the boiler as he was previously instructed to. As this happens, the Overlook’s ghosts are destroyed as well, melting away. This includes King’s band leader, who is credited as Gage Creed, and a close look at the stage reveals that the band is in fact called the Gage Creed Orchestra. Gage was of course the little boy who was hit by a truck in King’s other novel Pet Sematary, and then brought back from the dead using a cursed burial ground. It’s unclear why exactly King chose this name, other than as a simple Easter egg for his fans to notice and get a chuckle out of. If that was the goal, mission accomplished.
