Stephen King, the master of doom, leaves room for light and joy
Stephen King 's first editor, Bill Thompson, once said, "Steve has a movie camera in his head."
So vividly drawn is King's fiction that it's offered the basis for some 50 feature films. For half a century, since Brian De Palma's 1976 film Carrie, Hollywood has turned, and turned again, to King's books for their richness of character, nightmare and sheer entertainment.
Open up any of those books at random, and there's a decent chance you'll encounter a movie reference, too. Rita Hayworth. The Wizard of Oz. Singin' in the Rain. That King's books have been such fodder for the movies is owed, in part, to how much of a moviegoer their author is.
"I love anything from The 400 Blows to something with that guy Jason Statham," King says, speaking by phone from his home in Maine. "The worst movie I ever saw was still a great way to spend an afternoon."
Over time, King has developed a personal policy in how he talks about the adaptations of his books. "My idea is: If you can't say something nice, keep your mouth shut," he says.
The most notable exception was Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which King famously called "a big beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside". But every now and then, King is such a fan of an adaptation that he's excited to talk about it. That's very much the case with The Life of Chuck, Mike Flanagan's new adaptation of King's novella of the same name published in the 2020 collection If It Bleeds.
In The Life of Chuck, there are separate storylines but the tone-setting opening is apocalyptic. The internet, like a dazed prize fighter, wobbles on its last legs before going down. California is said to be peeling away from the mainland "like old wallpaper".
And yet in this doomsday tale, King is at his most sincere. The Life of Chuck, the book and the movie, is about what matters in life when everything else is lost. There is dancing, Walt Whitman and joy.
"We understand that this guy's life is cut short, but that doesn't mean he doesn't experience joy," says King. "Existential dread and grief ... are part of the human experience, but so is joy."
It's telling that when King, our preeminent purveyor of horror, writes about doom times, he ends up scaling it down to a single life. While darkness and doom mark his work, The Life of Chuck is a prime example of King, the humanist.
"An awful lot of people assume, because he writes so much stuff that's so scary, they kind of forget the reason his horror works so well is he's always juxtaposing it with light and with love and with empathy," says Mike Flanagan, who has twice before adapted King (Doctor Sleep, Gerald's Game) and is in the midst of making a Carrie series for Amazon.
"You forget that It isn't about the clown, it's about the kids and their friendship," adds Flanagan. "The Stand isn't about the virus or the demon taking over the world, it's ordinary people who have to come together and stand against a force they cannot defeat."
King, 77, has written about 80 books, including the just released Never Flinch. The mystery thriller brings back King's recent favorite protagonist, the private investigator Holly Gibney, who made her stand-alone debut in If It Bleeds. It's Gibney's insecurities, and her willingness to push against them, that has kept King returning to her.
Never Flinch is a reminder that King has always been less of a genre-first writer than a character-first one. He tends to fall in love with a character and follow them through thick and thin.
"I'm always happy writing. That's why I do it so much," King says, chuckling. "I'm a very chipper guy because I get rid of all that dark stuff in the books."
Dark stuff, as King says, hasn't been hard to come by lately. The kind of climate change disaster found in The Life of Chuck, King says, often dominates his anxieties.
"We're creeping up little by little on being the one country who does not acknowledge it's a real problem with carbon in the atmosphere," King says. "That's crazy. Certain right-wing politicians can talk all they want about how we're saving the world for our grandchildren. They don't care about that. They care about money."
The original germ for The Life of Chuck had nothing to do with current events. One day in Boston, King noticed a drummer busking on Boylston Street. He had the vision of a businessman in a suit who, walking by, can't resist dancing with abandon to the drummer's beat.
King, a self-acknowledged dancer (though only in private, he notes), latched on to a story that would turn on the unpredictable nature of people, tracing the inner life of that imagined passerby. Chuck first appears, oddly, on a billboard that haunts and confuses a local teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who's struggling to get his students to care about literature or education with the possible end of the world encroaching.
It's a funny irony that many of the best King adaptations, like Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption, have come from the author's more warm-hearted tales. The Life of Chuck, which won the People's Choice Award at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, is after a similar spirit.
The Stephen King industrial complex, meanwhile, keeps rolling along. Coming just this year are series of Welcome to Derry and The Institute and a film of The Long Walk. King, himself, just finished a draft of Talisman 3.
"There are some days where I sit down and I think, 'This is going to be a really good day,' and it's not, at all," says King. "Then other days I sit down and think to myself, 'I'm really tired and don't feel like doing this,' and then it catches fire. You never know what you're going to get."
Stephen King 's first editor, Bill Thompson, once said, "Steve has a movie camera in his head."
So vividly drawn is King's fiction that it's offered the basis for some 50 feature films. For half a century, since Brian De Palma's 1976 film Carrie, Hollywood has turned, and turned again, to King's books for their richness of character, nightmare and sheer entertainment.
Open up any of those books at random, and there's a decent chance you'll encounter a movie reference, too. Rita Hayworth. The Wizard of Oz. Singin' in the Rain. That King's books have been such fodder for the movies is owed, in part, to how much of a moviegoer their author is.
"I love anything from The 400 Blows to something with that guy Jason Statham," King says, speaking by phone from his home in Maine. "The worst movie I ever saw was still a great way to spend an afternoon."
Over time, King has developed a personal policy in how he talks about the adaptations of his books. "My idea is: If you can't say something nice, keep your mouth shut," he says.
The most notable exception was Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which King famously called "a big beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside". But every now and then, King is such a fan of an adaptation that he's excited to talk about it. That's very much the case with The Life of Chuck, Mike Flanagan's new adaptation of King's novella of the same name published in the 2020 collection If It Bleeds.
In The Life of Chuck, there are separate storylines but the tone-setting opening is apocalyptic. The internet, like a dazed prize fighter, wobbles on its last legs before going down. California is said to be peeling away from the mainland "like old wallpaper".
And yet in this doomsday tale, King is at his most sincere. The Life of Chuck, the book and the movie, is about what matters in life when everything else is lost. There is dancing, Walt Whitman and joy.
"We understand that this guy's life is cut short, but that doesn't mean he doesn't experience joy," says King. "Existential dread and grief ... are part of the human experience, but so is joy."
It's telling that when King, our preeminent purveyor of horror, writes about doom times, he ends up scaling it down to a single life. While darkness and doom mark his work, The Life of Chuck is a prime example of King, the humanist.
"An awful lot of people assume, because he writes so much stuff that's so scary, they kind of forget the reason his horror works so well is he's always juxtaposing it with light and with love and with empathy," says Mike Flanagan, who has twice before adapted King (Doctor Sleep, Gerald's Game) and is in the midst of making a Carrie series for Amazon.
"You forget that It isn't about the clown, it's about the kids and their friendship," adds Flanagan. "The Stand isn't about the virus or the demon taking over the world, it's ordinary people who have to come together and stand against a force they cannot defeat."
King, 77, has written about 80 books, including the just released Never Flinch. The mystery thriller brings back King's recent favorite protagonist, the private investigator Holly Gibney, who made her stand-alone debut in If It Bleeds. It's Gibney's insecurities, and her willingness to push against them, that has kept King returning to her.
Never Flinch is a reminder that King has always been less of a genre-first writer than a character-first one. He tends to fall in love with a character and follow them through thick and thin.
"I'm always happy writing. That's why I do it so much," King says, chuckling. "I'm a very chipper guy because I get rid of all that dark stuff in the books."
Dark stuff, as King says, hasn't been hard to come by lately. The kind of climate change disaster found in The Life of Chuck, King says, often dominates his anxieties.
"We're creeping up little by little on being the one country who does not acknowledge it's a real problem with carbon in the atmosphere," King says. "That's crazy. Certain right-wing politicians can talk all they want about how we're saving the world for our grandchildren. They don't care about that. They care about money."
The original germ for The Life of Chuck had nothing to do with current events. One day in Boston, King noticed a drummer busking on Boylston Street. He had the vision of a businessman in a suit who, walking by, can't resist dancing with abandon to the drummer's beat.
King, a self-acknowledged dancer (though only in private, he notes), latched on to a story that would turn on the unpredictable nature of people, tracing the inner life of that imagined passerby. Chuck first appears, oddly, on a billboard that haunts and confuses a local teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who's struggling to get his students to care about literature or education with the possible end of the world encroaching.
It's a funny irony that many of the best King adaptations, like Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption, have come from the author's more warm-hearted tales. The Life of Chuck, which won the People's Choice Award at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, is after a similar spirit.
The Stephen King industrial complex, meanwhile, keeps rolling along. Coming just this year are series of Welcome to Derry and The Institute and a film of The Long Walk. King, himself, just finished a draft of Talisman 3.
"There are some days where I sit down and I think, 'This is going to be a really good day,' and it's not, at all," says King. "Then other days I sit down and think to myself, 'I'm really tired and don't feel like doing this,' and then it catches fire. You never know what you're going to get."
Stephen King 's first editor, Bill Thompson, once said, "Steve has a movie camera in his head."
So vividly drawn is King's fiction that it's offered the basis for some 50 feature films. For half a century, since Brian De Palma's 1976 film Carrie, Hollywood has turned, and turned again, to King's books for their richness of character, nightmare and sheer entertainment.
Open up any of those books at random, and there's a decent chance you'll encounter a movie reference, too. Rita Hayworth. The Wizard of Oz. Singin' in the Rain. That King's books have been such fodder for the movies is owed, in part, to how much of a moviegoer their author is.
"I love anything from The 400 Blows to something with that guy Jason Statham," King says, speaking by phone from his home in Maine. "The worst movie I ever saw was still a great way to spend an afternoon."
Over time, King has developed a personal policy in how he talks about the adaptations of his books. "My idea is: If you can't say something nice, keep your mouth shut," he says.
The most notable exception was Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which King famously called "a big beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside". But every now and then, King is such a fan of an adaptation that he's excited to talk about it. That's very much the case with The Life of Chuck, Mike Flanagan's new adaptation of King's novella of the same name published in the 2020 collection If It Bleeds.
In The Life of Chuck, there are separate storylines but the tone-setting opening is apocalyptic. The internet, like a dazed prize fighter, wobbles on its last legs before going down. California is said to be peeling away from the mainland "like old wallpaper".
And yet in this doomsday tale, King is at his most sincere. The Life of Chuck, the book and the movie, is about what matters in life when everything else is lost. There is dancing, Walt Whitman and joy.
"We understand that this guy's life is cut short, but that doesn't mean he doesn't experience joy," says King. "Existential dread and grief ... are part of the human experience, but so is joy."
It's telling that when King, our preeminent purveyor of horror, writes about doom times, he ends up scaling it down to a single life. While darkness and doom mark his work, The Life of Chuck is a prime example of King, the humanist.
"An awful lot of people assume, because he writes so much stuff that's so scary, they kind of forget the reason his horror works so well is he's always juxtaposing it with light and with love and with empathy," says Mike Flanagan, who has twice before adapted King (Doctor Sleep, Gerald's Game) and is in the midst of making a Carrie series for Amazon.
"You forget that It isn't about the clown, it's about the kids and their friendship," adds Flanagan. "The Stand isn't about the virus or the demon taking over the world, it's ordinary people who have to come together and stand against a force they cannot defeat."
King, 77, has written about 80 books, including the just released Never Flinch. The mystery thriller brings back King's recent favorite protagonist, the private investigator Holly Gibney, who made her stand-alone debut in If It Bleeds. It's Gibney's insecurities, and her willingness to push against them, that has kept King returning to her.
Never Flinch is a reminder that King has always been less of a genre-first writer than a character-first one. He tends to fall in love with a character and follow them through thick and thin.
"I'm always happy writing. That's why I do it so much," King says, chuckling. "I'm a very chipper guy because I get rid of all that dark stuff in the books."
Dark stuff, as King says, hasn't been hard to come by lately. The kind of climate change disaster found in The Life of Chuck, King says, often dominates his anxieties.
"We're creeping up little by little on being the one country who does not acknowledge it's a real problem with carbon in the atmosphere," King says. "That's crazy. Certain right-wing politicians can talk all they want about how we're saving the world for our grandchildren. They don't care about that. They care about money."
The original germ for The Life of Chuck had nothing to do with current events. One day in Boston, King noticed a drummer busking on Boylston Street. He had the vision of a businessman in a suit who, walking by, can't resist dancing with abandon to the drummer's beat.
King, a self-acknowledged dancer (though only in private, he notes), latched on to a story that would turn on the unpredictable nature of people, tracing the inner life of that imagined passerby. Chuck first appears, oddly, on a billboard that haunts and confuses a local teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who's struggling to get his students to care about literature or education with the possible end of the world encroaching.
It's a funny irony that many of the best King adaptations, like Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption, have come from the author's more warm-hearted tales. The Life of Chuck, which won the People's Choice Award at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, is after a similar spirit.
The Stephen King industrial complex, meanwhile, keeps rolling along. Coming just this year are series of Welcome to Derry and The Institute and a film of The Long Walk. King, himself, just finished a draft of Talisman 3.
"There are some days where I sit down and I think, 'This is going to be a really good day,' and it's not, at all," says King. "Then other days I sit down and think to myself, 'I'm really tired and don't feel like doing this,' and then it catches fire. You never know what you're going to get."
Stephen King 's first editor, Bill Thompson, once said, "Steve has a movie camera in his head."
So vividly drawn is King's fiction that it's offered the basis for some 50 feature films. For half a century, since Brian De Palma's 1976 film Carrie, Hollywood has turned, and turned again, to King's books for their richness of character, nightmare and sheer entertainment.
Open up any of those books at random, and there's a decent chance you'll encounter a movie reference, too. Rita Hayworth. The Wizard of Oz. Singin' in the Rain. That King's books have been such fodder for the movies is owed, in part, to how much of a moviegoer their author is.
"I love anything from The 400 Blows to something with that guy Jason Statham," King says, speaking by phone from his home in Maine. "The worst movie I ever saw was still a great way to spend an afternoon."
Over time, King has developed a personal policy in how he talks about the adaptations of his books. "My idea is: If you can't say something nice, keep your mouth shut," he says.
The most notable exception was Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which King famously called "a big beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside". But every now and then, King is such a fan of an adaptation that he's excited to talk about it. That's very much the case with The Life of Chuck, Mike Flanagan's new adaptation of King's novella of the same name published in the 2020 collection If It Bleeds.
In The Life of Chuck, there are separate storylines but the tone-setting opening is apocalyptic. The internet, like a dazed prize fighter, wobbles on its last legs before going down. California is said to be peeling away from the mainland "like old wallpaper".
And yet in this doomsday tale, King is at his most sincere. The Life of Chuck, the book and the movie, is about what matters in life when everything else is lost. There is dancing, Walt Whitman and joy.
"We understand that this guy's life is cut short, but that doesn't mean he doesn't experience joy," says King. "Existential dread and grief ... are part of the human experience, but so is joy."
It's telling that when King, our preeminent purveyor of horror, writes about doom times, he ends up scaling it down to a single life. While darkness and doom mark his work, The Life of Chuck is a prime example of King, the humanist.
"An awful lot of people assume, because he writes so much stuff that's so scary, they kind of forget the reason his horror works so well is he's always juxtaposing it with light and with love and with empathy," says Mike Flanagan, who has twice before adapted King (Doctor Sleep, Gerald's Game) and is in the midst of making a Carrie series for Amazon.
"You forget that It isn't about the clown, it's about the kids and their friendship," adds Flanagan. "The Stand isn't about the virus or the demon taking over the world, it's ordinary people who have to come together and stand against a force they cannot defeat."
King, 77, has written about 80 books, including the just released Never Flinch. The mystery thriller brings back King's recent favorite protagonist, the private investigator Holly Gibney, who made her stand-alone debut in If It Bleeds. It's Gibney's insecurities, and her willingness to push against them, that has kept King returning to her.
Never Flinch is a reminder that King has always been less of a genre-first writer than a character-first one. He tends to fall in love with a character and follow them through thick and thin.
"I'm always happy writing. That's why I do it so much," King says, chuckling. "I'm a very chipper guy because I get rid of all that dark stuff in the books."
Dark stuff, as King says, hasn't been hard to come by lately. The kind of climate change disaster found in The Life of Chuck, King says, often dominates his anxieties.
"We're creeping up little by little on being the one country who does not acknowledge it's a real problem with carbon in the atmosphere," King says. "That's crazy. Certain right-wing politicians can talk all they want about how we're saving the world for our grandchildren. They don't care about that. They care about money."
The original germ for The Life of Chuck had nothing to do with current events. One day in Boston, King noticed a drummer busking on Boylston Street. He had the vision of a businessman in a suit who, walking by, can't resist dancing with abandon to the drummer's beat.
King, a self-acknowledged dancer (though only in private, he notes), latched on to a story that would turn on the unpredictable nature of people, tracing the inner life of that imagined passerby. Chuck first appears, oddly, on a billboard that haunts and confuses a local teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who's struggling to get his students to care about literature or education with the possible end of the world encroaching.
It's a funny irony that many of the best King adaptations, like Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption, have come from the author's more warm-hearted tales. The Life of Chuck, which won the People's Choice Award at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, is after a similar spirit.
The Stephen King industrial complex, meanwhile, keeps rolling along. Coming just this year are series of Welcome to Derry and The Institute and a film of The Long Walk. King, himself, just finished a draft of Talisman 3.
"There are some days where I sit down and I think, 'This is going to be a really good day,' and it's not, at all," says King. "Then other days I sit down and think to myself, 'I'm really tired and don't feel like doing this,' and then it catches fire. You never know what you're going to get."
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Mayor Luigi Brugnaro and regional governor Luca Zaia, on the other hand, argue that the wedding will bring an economic windfall to local businesses, including the motor boats and gondolas that operate its myriad canals. Eleven years ago actor George Clooney married human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin in Venice, turning the city into Hollywood on the Adriatic with a weekend of lavish celebrations. Then, locals and tourists alike were excited to witness a memorable moment in the city's long history of hosting stars for its film festival, the world's oldest. Bezos, 61, the founder of e-commerce giant Amazon and the world's third-richest man, got engaged to journalist Sanchez, 55, in 2023, four years after the collapse of his 25-year marriage to Mackenzie Scott. After a swirl of media speculation about the venue of what has been dubbed "the wedding of the century" Brugnaro confirmed in March that it would take place in Venice, which last year began charging tourists a fee to enter the city. The date is expected to be some time between June 23-28 in the midst of three days of stylish celebrations. In the face of early protests from residents who feared the arrival of thousands of celebrities and hangers-on, the city issued a statement clarifying that it would involve around 200 guests and would not disrupt Venetians' everyday life. Bezos and Scott had four children together, while Sanchez was previously married to Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell, with whom she has two children. She also has a son with NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez. Venice is divided ahead of next week's celebrity wedding of US tech-tycoon Jeff Bezos and Laura Sanchez, with some looking forward to the glitz and glamour, while others fear it will turn the scenic city of gondolas and palazzi into an amusement park. Many details of the wedding are still under wraps - including the precise day it will happen - but it is certain that scores of stars from film, fashion and business will arrive to see Bezos tie the knot - provided they can get past the protesters. One group has plastered banners on the city's famous Rialto Bridge reading "No space for Bezos!" and threatened peaceful blockades, complaining that the medieval and Renaissance city needs public services and housing, not celebrities and over-tourism. "Bezos arrogantly believes he can take over the city and turn it into his own private party venue," said Tommaso Cacciari, a leading light of the "No space for Bezos" campaign. Mayor Luigi Brugnaro and regional governor Luca Zaia, on the other hand, argue that the wedding will bring an economic windfall to local businesses, including the motor boats and gondolas that operate its myriad canals. Eleven years ago actor George Clooney married human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin in Venice, turning the city into Hollywood on the Adriatic with a weekend of lavish celebrations. Then, locals and tourists alike were excited to witness a memorable moment in the city's long history of hosting stars for its film festival, the world's oldest. Bezos, 61, the founder of e-commerce giant Amazon and the world's third-richest man, got engaged to journalist Sanchez, 55, in 2023, four years after the collapse of his 25-year marriage to Mackenzie Scott. After a swirl of media speculation about the venue of what has been dubbed "the wedding of the century" Brugnaro confirmed in March that it would take place in Venice, which last year began charging tourists a fee to enter the city. The date is expected to be some time between June 23-28 in the midst of three days of stylish celebrations. In the face of early protests from residents who feared the arrival of thousands of celebrities and hangers-on, the city issued a statement clarifying that it would involve around 200 guests and would not disrupt Venetians' everyday life. Bezos and Scott had four children together, while Sanchez was previously married to Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell, with whom she has two children. She also has a son with NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez. Venice is divided ahead of next week's celebrity wedding of US tech-tycoon Jeff Bezos and Laura Sanchez, with some looking forward to the glitz and glamour, while others fear it will turn the scenic city of gondolas and palazzi into an amusement park. Many details of the wedding are still under wraps - including the precise day it will happen - but it is certain that scores of stars from film, fashion and business will arrive to see Bezos tie the knot - provided they can get past the protesters. One group has plastered banners on the city's famous Rialto Bridge reading "No space for Bezos!" and threatened peaceful blockades, complaining that the medieval and Renaissance city needs public services and housing, not celebrities and over-tourism. "Bezos arrogantly believes he can take over the city and turn it into his own private party venue," said Tommaso Cacciari, a leading light of the "No space for Bezos" campaign. Mayor Luigi Brugnaro and regional governor Luca Zaia, on the other hand, argue that the wedding will bring an economic windfall to local businesses, including the motor boats and gondolas that operate its myriad canals. Eleven years ago actor George Clooney married human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin in Venice, turning the city into Hollywood on the Adriatic with a weekend of lavish celebrations. Then, locals and tourists alike were excited to witness a memorable moment in the city's long history of hosting stars for its film festival, the world's oldest. Bezos, 61, the founder of e-commerce giant Amazon and the world's third-richest man, got engaged to journalist Sanchez, 55, in 2023, four years after the collapse of his 25-year marriage to Mackenzie Scott. After a swirl of media speculation about the venue of what has been dubbed "the wedding of the century" Brugnaro confirmed in March that it would take place in Venice, which last year began charging tourists a fee to enter the city. The date is expected to be some time between June 23-28 in the midst of three days of stylish celebrations. In the face of early protests from residents who feared the arrival of thousands of celebrities and hangers-on, the city issued a statement clarifying that it would involve around 200 guests and would not disrupt Venetians' everyday life. Bezos and Scott had four children together, while Sanchez was previously married to Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell, with whom she has two children. She also has a son with NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez. Venice is divided ahead of next week's celebrity wedding of US tech-tycoon Jeff Bezos and Laura Sanchez, with some looking forward to the glitz and glamour, while others fear it will turn the scenic city of gondolas and palazzi into an amusement park. Many details of the wedding are still under wraps - including the precise day it will happen - but it is certain that scores of stars from film, fashion and business will arrive to see Bezos tie the knot - provided they can get past the protesters. One group has plastered banners on the city's famous Rialto Bridge reading "No space for Bezos!" and threatened peaceful blockades, complaining that the medieval and Renaissance city needs public services and housing, not celebrities and over-tourism. "Bezos arrogantly believes he can take over the city and turn it into his own private party venue," said Tommaso Cacciari, a leading light of the "No space for Bezos" campaign. 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- The Age
With his $15m nuptials, Bezos is the latest to say ‘I do' to loving a massive wedding
This story is part of the June 21 edition of Good Weekend. See all 15 stories. Amazon gazillionaire Jeff Bezos is reportedly dropping $US10 million ($15.5 million) to marry his second wife, former TV presenter and amateur astronaut Lauren Sánchez, on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore next week. Last month, Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry partied at Sanchez's Paris hen night as an army of lawyers finalised the pre-nup. Such big-ticket wedding extravaganzas are much more than a celebration of love, of course: beyond the spectacle, they are highly choreographed PR offensives that the media lap up, giving the rest of us a glimpse into the rarefied orbits of the world's rich, famous and powerful. In 2007, I spent a week clinging to a rocky outcrop, fighting off the French paparazzi under the searing Mediterranean sun, while watching Tom Cruise, his then-wife Katie Holmes, Eddie McGuire, Shane Warne and most of the Murdoch family live the good life aboard superyachts during James Packer's six-day, $6 million wedding to Erica Packer. The bride wore a $150,000 dress by John Galliano for Christian Dior while Sarah Murdoch dazzled in a bikini on the deck of a $50 million Mangusta. At James' big sister Gretel Packer's lavish 1991 wedding in West Sussex, waiters were doused in Chanel No. 5 before being unleashed among the VIP guests gathered in a mock-Cotswold stone marquee fashioned out of polystyrene; Kerry Packer was clearly out to impress the Brits. In 2006, my lips turned blue hiding behind a pot plant as I listened to Keith Urban serenade his new bride, Nicole Kidman, on a freezing Sydney winter's night, while the wreck of the Hesperus had nothing on me after I'd chased Bec and Lleyton Hewitt's 2005 wedding flotilla across a choppy Sydney Harbour aboard a clapped-out fishing tinnie. Brynne Edelsten admitted she'd never met most of the guests at her extravagant 2009 Melbourne wedding to the late, disgraced medico Geoffrey Edelsten, who'd paid Jason Alexander and Fran Drescher to attend. Kyle Sandilands gave away tickets on air to his first wedding, to Tamara Jaber in 2008 and, in 2023, raised eyebrows by inviting PM Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns – along with underworld figure John Ibrahim and convicted drug trafficker Simon Maine – to his second wedding to Tegan Kynaston. Meanwhile, Australia's richest human, Gina Rinehart, caused a scandal when she flew then-deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop and Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce to the sumptuous, three-day wedding of the granddaughter of a prominent business associate in Hyderabad in 2011. According to industry statistics, the cost of the average wedding in Oz is $33,810. For the amount he's paying, Bezos could say 'I do' 458 times.
