Room 237 (2012)

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Room 237 (2012)

Post by bunniefuu »

- The poster

that came out in Europe,

at least in England,

I believe,

before the movie was released

in Europe said,

"The wave of terror

that swept across America."

And Kubrick controlled

the posters very carefully.

Now,

it made you do a double take.

I remember seeing it in Europe.

I was the Rome Bureau Chief

at the time for ABC News.

And I remember looking at it.

It said, "The wave of terror

that swept across America."

What's he talking about?

And you'd sort of think

that he was talking about

the impact

of the book The Shining.

Maybe.

The impact of the movie

that had just opened over there?

Maybe.

It didn't quite fit.

The wave of terror

that swept across America

from Portland, Maine,

to Portland, Oregon,

was the genocidal armies

and the white men with their a*

clearing it all and bringing in

extractive industries,

among many other good things

as well.

But that was the wave of terror

that swept across America,

terrifying, of course,

the American Indians.

- I went in to see this movie in

Leicester Square Movie Theater,

right near

Leicester Square in London.

And I remember it

quite clearly from...

I can even remember the seats

we were sitting in.

If I went back to that theater,

I could point them to you,

sort of near the back

and over to the left.

From the moment of the opening

astonishing helicopter sh*t,

I was terrified.

I had no idea what was coming.

I remember sort of sitting

on the front edge

of my theater seat there

to keep from falling off.

And I remember gripping my

belt buckle with my left hand,

I think it was...

yes, my left hand,

sort of to keep from falling off

the edge of the seat

and to try to control my terror

as I watched this movie.

I had no idea what was coming.

I hadn't read the book.

I had barely seen

any of the posters.

And I remember that I was

stunned when the movie was over.

We left the theater, went in...

down into

our underground car park

to get into the car to leave.

And as we were driving up

out of the car park,

I was sitting

in the back left seat.

I was thinking, "What was that?

What was that?

"What was it?

What was it?

What was it?"

And I think

my visual imagination

looked at that

Calumet baking powder can,

the one right behind

Hallorann's head

when he was talking to Danny.

I knew what "calumet" meant.

It meant "peace pipe."

And I thought to myself,

"peace pipe, Indians.

"Oh, my goodness,

they're all over the place

in that movie."

- The loser

has to keep America clean.

- And I suddenly

said to my friends,

"That movie

was about the genocide

of the American Indians."

And they said,

"What are you talking about?"

And I started explaining it,

because I'd noticed

the Calumet baking soda can.

In the first... the first time

we seen one,

it's a single

baking powder can straight on.

And you can see the whole word,

"Calumet,"

so there's no duplicity,

like the little girls

represent later.

This is an honest truth,

an honest peace pipe

between them.

The other time we see

the Calumet baking powder cans

is when they're

very carefully placed

behind Jack Nicholson's head

when he's talking to Grady.

- No need to rub it in,

Mr. Grady.

I'll deal with that situation

as soon as I get out of here.

- There's about six

or seven of them stacked up,

and they're

all turned different ways,

and you can't read

any one of them completely.

It's... I've always interpreted

those as being broken,

dishonest peace pipe treaties.

They're not... these two guys,

Grady and Jack,

are not being honest

with each other.

Grady is trying to get Jack

to go k*ll his family

and commit genocide,

in the larger sense

of the movie.

You know, I mean,

Kubrick often,

in many of his movies,

he will end them

with a puzzle

so that he forces you to go out

of the theater saying,

"What was that about?"

And he would put things

in the scenes

that he knows will be,

among other things,

like confirmers when people

start to try to figure out

what the movie is about.

And we know he took

this kind of care.

There's a photograph

in one of the books

that actually shows Kubrick

carefully arranging

objects on the shelves

in that dry goods room.

I thought afterwards,

"How come I saw this and

a lot of other people didn't?"

And I've thought about it.

It's a combination of factors.

First, I grew up in Chicago

and, therefore,

just north

of the Calumet Harbor

and spent summers up

in the sand dunes of Michigan,

around on the other side

of Lake Michigan.

My father

took me and my sister out

to collect little bits

of Indian pottery.

I'd already...

I'd already covered,

at that point in 1980,

five years

of the Lebanese civil w*r.

I was, at that point,

covering John Paul ll.

I was the Rome Bureau Chief.

And listening

to what he was saying about...

because he had experienced

the Holocaust at its epicenter

and also other horrors.

And so all of those factors

were very much alive in my mind

when we went

to see The Shining,

which I just thought was going

to be some kind of horror movie

by this great moviemaker.

And all of those coming together

along with the little key,

the Calumet baking soda can,

is why I just happened

to tune to it

as we were driving up out of

that underground parking garage

just off Leicester Square.

- I first saw the movie in 1980

when it first came out

and saw it probably two times.

I can say that I remembered

the skier poster.

That is one thing

that really stuck with me.

And the window.

The window in the office,

that's another thing

that really stuck with me.

I remember, you know,

in the newspapers afterwards,

people being disappointed.

And I remember people

that I knew,

yes, in dialogue afterwards,

being disappointed that it was

not more a horror film.

Well, no Kubrick film's

really just a regular movie.

I understood that from,

well, when I was 10 years old

and I first saw 2001.

I walked away.

I thought, "This is a film

that's supposed

to make me think."

- I had my first

religious experience

seeing the film

2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968.

I was a smart kid

and liked art,

but I really

did not like movies

and thought that they

were really a substandard art.

And, you know, films like

My Fair Lady

and Doctor Dolittle were out.

And it was a rather pathetic

time in the '60s for films.

And my girlfriend,

she pulled up

and told me that she'd

seen a movie the night before

and she wanted to see it again.

So she took me to the theater,

the Cinerama Dome,

and I watched it.

And I had never in my life

envisioned that a movie

could do what this movie

was doing.

And it was showing me things

that I had never seen,

and it was

intellectually challenging.

And it was an artistic

masterpiece in every way,

from the soundtrack to

the visuals to the story line.

And when the movie ended,

I couldn't get out of my seat.

I was frozen in the seat,

completely paralyzed

by what I'd just witnessed.

And the usher actually

had to come and get me out.

And I was the last person,

me and her.

And I staggered

out of the theater

completely changed

as a human being

and decided at that moment

that the only thing

that I wanted to do

for the rest of my life

was to make films

in one fashion or another.

And so I have done that.

So I owe Stanley Kubrick and

his film 2001: A Space Odyssey

everything for everything that

I have become in my life, so...

- I saw a number

of Kubrick films

before I had

an academic interest in him.

And then I went to see

The Shining in 1980.

And frankly,

I didn't think that much of it.

I thought the other

Kubrick films that I'd seen

were far superior.

But as I thought

about the film afterwards...

and even when

I wasn't thinking about it...

there were things

that bothered me about it.

It seemed

as if I had missed something.

And so I went back

to see it again.

And I began to see

patterns and details

that I hadn't noticed before.

And so I kept watching the film

again and again and again.

And since

I'm trained as an historian

and my special expertise

is in the history of Germany

and n*zi Germany in particular,

I became

more and more convinced

that there is,

in this film,

a deeply laid subtext

that takes on The Holocaust.

I think

it probably was the typewriter,

which was a German brand,

which might seem arbitrary,

but by that time,

I knew enough about Kubrick

that most anything in his films

can't be regarded as arbitrary,

that anything...

especially objects and colors

and music and anything else,

probably have some intentional

as well as

unintentional meaning to them.

And so that struck me.

Why a German typewriter?

And in connection with that,

I began to see the number 42

appear in the film.

And for a German historian,

if you put the number 42

and a German typewriter

together,

you get the Holocaust,

because it was in 1942

that the Nazis made the decision

to go ahead and exterminate

all the Jews they could.

And they did so in

a highly mechanical, industrial,

and bureaucratic way.

And so the juxtaposition

of the number 42

and the typewriter was really

where it started for me

in terms of the historical

content of the film.

Of course "adler"

in German means "eagle."

And eagle, of course,

is a symbol of n*zi Germany.

It's also a symbol

of the United States.

And Kubrick

generally has recourse to eagles

to symbolize state power.

Kubrick read Raul Hilberg's

The Destruction

of the European Jews.

And Hilberg's

major theme in there

is that he focuses

on the apparatus of k*lling.

And he emphasizes

how bureaucratic it was

and how it was a matter

of lists and typewriters.

Spielberg picked that up in

Schindler's List, of course.

I mean, the film begins

with typewriters and lists

and ends with a list,

of course.

And so that informs...

and I had a chance

to talk to Raul Hilberg.

He visited Albion College.

And he said that he and Kubrick

corresponded about this.

And the fact that he read it

then, in the 1970s,

when there was a big wave

of interest in h*tler

and the Holocaust and the Nazis,

I think...

I think just tells us

that that typewriter,

that German typewriter...

which by the way, changes color

in the course of the film,

which typewriters

don't generally do...

is terribly,

terribly important

as a referent to that

particular historical event.

- I worked in a film archive

for a decade,

kind of like

fast-forwarding

through World w*r II

ten times a day.

But, you know, like,

when you see things

over and over and again,

their meanings change for you.

Like, when you see these... see,

like, World w*r ll newsreels,

like, after a while,

you come to realize

that it's all faked on film.

You are not seeing troops

storming Normandy.

You're seeing troops

storming a beach in Hollywood.

You know, like, you're not

seeing a plane flying to Japan.

You're seeing a plane flying

over, you know, New Mexico.

What you're really being shown

is, like, staged heroism.

You know, like, you're seeing

men moving with machines,

but you're not seeing what

they're talking about.

And I think that that's

something that Kubrick plays on.

Like, he plays on your

acceptance of visual infor...

and also your ignorance

of visual information.

Like he'll often, like,

put little special clues

that you see,

like, in the corner.

Every scene,

there's an impossibility,

like the TV doesn't have a cord

or even something as simple as,

like, them...

they, like...

they bring too much luggage up.

They, like... Jack, you know,

glances over at a pile

of their luggage

that they brought,

and ifs about the size

of a car.

You know, a lot of it is jokes.

Like, they're taking the tour.

They're crossing the street

from the maze

to go check out the garage.

Like, a car

is just about to hit them.

And then it cuts right before.

- I had anticipated the film

and had read

the Stephen King novel

before the film came out and

found it a very appealing story.

And I had spent

a lot of time

at the Stanley Hotel

in Estes Park, Colorado,

which is where he was inspired

to write the book The Shining.

And so I, you know... I knew

a little bit of the background.

And when

Kubrick's film came out,

I was first in line to see it,

of course.

And I was just

really disappointed

and walked out of the theater

wondering what the hell

I had just witnessed.

And, I... actually,

my reverence for Stanley Kubrick

diminished after that.

I was disappointed, but I still

watched it every few years.

I couldn't understand why I was

so attracted to watching a film

that I actually didn't like.

And now

in all these years later,

I know why it is a great film.

It is a masterpiece,

but not for the reasons

that most people think.

We are dealing with a guy

who has a 200 IQ.

I believe

that when Stanley Kubrick

finished with Barry Lyndon,

he was bored.

He had conquered

the filmmaking landscape.

He had succeeded in making

masterpiece after masterpiece,

and he was bored.

Barry Lyndon

is a boring movie.

It is wonderfully sh*t.

It is beautifully costumed.

But it is a film

made by a guy who is bored.

And I could see that.

And so I think Stanley

retreated after Barry Lyndon.

And he began working on

a new kind of film,

a film that

had never been made before,

a film that was made

by a bored genius

who had thoroughly

emptied the jug of everything

that could be done

in filmmaking.

And he was looking

for the next thing.

And what he did was he began

reading Subliminal Seduction

and a number of other books

which were about how advertisers

were injecting...

injecting images,

subliminal images,

into advertising

to sell products more.

- Suggestible trends.

- You know, there'll be

an ad for Gilbey's Gin,

and inside, the ice cubes

will be various sex organs

and things to add

a subliminal appeal to the ad.

Kubrick went

to these advertisers,

and he asked them

what their methods were.

And then he took those methods

and he applied them

to The Shining.

Inside The Shining are

hundreds of subliminal images

and sh*t line-ups.

And what

these images are telling

is an extremely disturbing

story about sexuality.

And the subtext of the story,

besides the other subtexts

of the story,

is a story of haunted

phantoms and demons

who are sexually attracted

to humans

and are feeding off of them.

You'd have to be able to be

a complete fanatic like I am

in order to find all this,

but, you know,

I'll give you my favorite.

I'm only gonna give you one,

but I'll give you my favorite.

When Jack meets

Stewart Ullman in the office

at the very beginning

of the movie

and he reaches over to shake

Jack Nicholson's hand...

and so step through

that scene frame by frame.

And the minute,

the moment,

the frame that he

and Jack Nicholson touch hands

and right after the line

that Barry Nelson says,

which is, "Nice to see you,"

you can see

that there's a paper...

a paper tray on the desk.

And as soon as they touch hands,

the paper tray

turns into a very large

straight-on hard-on

coming out of Barry nelson.

Yeah, it's hilarious.

It's a joke... a very serious

joke... but a joke by Stanley.

And there's

many of these in the film.

And very disturbing,

some of them.

And this will all be in my film,

Kubrick the Magician.

I'll give you one more.

This one's harder to find, okay?

And you have to know what

Stanley Kubrick looked like

during the making of

The Shining to know this one.

But if you go

to the opening credits

and you pan the frame...

you... you go through the frames,

right after it says

"Directed by Stanley Kubrick,"

as soon as his name

passes off the frame,

stop and you will see that the

clouds have Stanley Kubrick

airbrushed into them,

his face...

with the beard and the wild hair

and the whole thing.

I know this one's

a little harder to find.

And I will have to...

I will have to Photoshop

this one to show people it,

but there is definitely the

photograph of Stanley Kubrick

in one frame

airbrushed into the clouds.

- In most films,

a dissolve is used

to indicate a long passage

of time between two scenes.

But in The Shining,

the dissolves go on for so long

that they create

a superimposition,

where different scenes seem to

be interacting with each other.

For example,

you have the exterior image...

a tracking sh*t of the lobby

of the camera

moving along the western wall

south towards the entrance.

And you see

a janitor mopping the floor,

but it looks like he's...

it looks like

a he's a giant, mopping,

like, clearing the forest

because he's mopping, like,

a vacant area in the forest.

And then the...

then the ladder lines up...

lines up with the pyramid form

of the exterior of the hotel,

which, in the exterior set,

disappears.

Like, we don't see...

we only see that

in the Timberline exteriors.

But the England movie set

exteriors of the hotel,

like, the pyramid is missing,

and it seems as if the hotel

then takes both sides

of the Timberline Hotel

and then kind of, like,

makes a composite of it.

So it's... you know,

it's a perceptual shift

of making people

look like giants,

also making the hotel look

larger or smaller than it is.

I mean, these things

kind of litter the movie.

But then the sh*t goes on.

We see a...

we see a janitor pushing

a folded-up bed on wheels.

And then he's followed

by another...

he's followed by another guy,

who's carrying, like, one...

like, one coffee table?

And then another... like, another

guy is carrying one chair.

Like, where are these guys going

with, like, these light loads,

you know?

Then we see Jack sitting

on a chair, eating lunch.

And the manager

and his assistant crosses paths

with two women who...

and just as he's

in the corner of the screen...

you just see it for a second.

You see one of the women

is wearing, like, a 13,

a number 13 jersey?

Can you hear that?

My boy, yelling?

Hold on one second.

I'm gonna see if I can...

I can see

if I can calm him down.

You know,

so, like, he's like,

leaning back

and eating a sandwich.

And he's got, you know,

a magazine in his lap.

And as he stands up

to greet them,

he, like, throws it down.

And if you look at"

look at...

look at it, you know,

close up,

it's an actual

Playgirl magazine.

Yeah, a Playgirl magazine

in the lobby of a hotel

right in front of his boss,

like on his first day at work.

Yeah.

Like, the cover is like, people

getting ready for New Year's.

There's an article about incest.

At the beginning of the film,

Danny's been physically abused.

But there's a suggestion

that he's been

sexually abused as well.

You know, so like,

just in that one...

one sh*t, there's all these,

like, you know, complex things

going on in the background,

like things

that are choreographed

to match up exactly.

Like, we see a guy...

we see a guy, carrying a...

entering the room,

carrying a rug.

And by the time

the scene is just ending,

we see him

walking up the stairs.

Like, he's crossed

the entire place,

you know, timed exactly.

I don't even...

Yeah.

- When Ullman

is leading the Torrances

out of the elevator

and into the Colorado Lounge

for the first time,

there's a pile of suitcases.

And in the dissolve

into that scene,

the scene before,

a group of tourists

are standing in the lobby.

And those tourists

dissolve into the suitcases.

Now, as an historian

of the Holocaust,

I find that

very, very striking

and certainly not accidental

'cause he's using those

sort of cross-dissolves.

Now, that could be,

along with the ladder,

where he's trying to make

substantive connections

as well as formal ones.

- Oh, the window

in Ullman's office,

it is absolutely beautiful.

The casual viewer

isn't going to see

so many things

in Kubrick's films,

although I think they may

register unconsciously.

You know, but they're not

going to, you know,

perceive

perhaps these things

because as I've said,

he presents them

as being real.

You know, it's realism.

And it's not

your typical horror...

you don't have a horror film

except for this one section

at the end,

right where Wendy walks in

and the lobby is blue

and you've got the cobwebs

all around.

And it's almost like

a Saturday morning

kind of horror film

suddenly there for a second.

And you kind of go.

"Ooh, what is this with

the skeletons and the cobwebs?"

And it's kind of cheesy.

But then, after that,

following that,

you've got her going down

the red hallway,

which...

on the big screen,

that's petrifying.

So I think the kind of

cheesiness before it

helps set up

that red hallway.

So anyway, what was I saying?

Right, the windows.

So you got... Jack has entered.

And you can see...

you are...

Kubrick shows you.

But he shows you this lobby,

and you get to see...

as Jack moves across the lobby,

you see the elevator beyond.

And you see beyond that,

a hallway.

You don't see yet how far back

it goes, you know,

the other things back there,

but you have an impression

that this place is towards

the middle of the hotel.

You just have that

impression that it's towards

the middle of the hotel.

And you go from the lobby into

the general manager's office

and then into Ullman's office,

and there's this window.

And the window's

a powerful window.

I mean, the light coming

through there is glaring.

It's like a character in itself.

It takes over.

And you've got these tendril-y,

sinister kind of trees

that are outside the window.

And you've got...

it's just such

a forceful presence,

this light

that comes over everything.

And, you know...

And there's

something wrong with it.

There's something wrong with it,

and I think it registers

as something wrong.

This is an impossible window.

It's not... it is impossible.

It is physically impossible.

It cannot be there.

It should not be there.

There's no place in the hotel

for this window to exist.

It's only toward...

finally,

towards the end of the film,

that you have the realization

that there are several hallways

in succession behind the office.

You see it when Wendy,

when she's later down there and

she sees d*ck Hallorann's body

after he's been k*lled.

You have her behind... in that

hallway behind the office.

So really, now, what

can I tell you about the maps?

No, I did not sit down

with graph paper.

I did not even begin to attempt

to do them to scale.

Let me see.

I can't say which room

I started off with.

I don't remember.

I just went through

and decided I was going to do...

try to do as much as I could,

feeling that...

I felt, eventually,

that there were places

that I could plot out, such

as where the girls were k*lled.

I was not absolutely sure

at that point,

when I started out

doing the maps,

where the girls were k*lled.

But I felt that it was

somewhere back around

the area where they lived.

Suite number, what?

They lived at

suite number 3.

- When Jack is sitting,

typing at his typewriter,

and Wendy comes in

and interrupts him

while he's working...

and in one sh*t of Jack...

- You get a lot written today?

- Sitting at the typewriter,

a one sh*t,

you look back behind him.

And of course,

you can see very clearly

'cause Kubrick was the master

of depth of field.

He kept everything in focus

so he would have lots of space

in which to puts things

that he wanted you to notice.

And in the first sh*t, behind

Jack sitting at his typewriter,

back against a wall, behind him

probably 10 or 12 or 15 feet

is a chair.

And then there's a switch

to a one-sh*t of Wendy

saying something.

- Hey, the weather forecast

said it's gonna snow tonight.

- And then the camera

switches back to Jack,

and the chair is gone.

- What do you want me

to do about it?

- And my students and I

always have fun with that,

saying,

"Well, continuity error?"

Could be.

Or it's not,

and the answer, if it's not...

or if it was originally

and then Kubrick saw it

and decided to keep it,

is that he's

parodying honor films

in order to remind you that

this isn't just a horror film.

And there's another one

in The Shining that's, I think,

less well-noticed.

And I think it's even more

clearly substantive.

When Danny has his first vision

of the elevator gushing blood

and the camera

is tracking toward him,

past the open door

of his bedroom

and toward the hall

and the bathroom,

the open bathroom door

across the hall...

and his bedroom door, as you

would expect a kid's door,

has lots

of cartoon characters on it

And, the one

who is most apparent,

because it's right

at the edge of the door

and it's the largest one

that you can see

and it's the last one you can

see as the camera moves past it,

is one of the Seven Dwarves.

And it happens to be Dopey,

okay?

Subsequently,

after Danny has passed out,

Wendy and the pediatrician

leave Danny's room.

And as they do, they,

of course, go out his door.

And you again see the door,

the open door with all

the cartoon characters on it,

and Dopey isn't there.

Now, again continuity error?

I don't think so.

I think what Kubrick

is saying is that before,

Danny had no idea about

the world, and now he knows.

He is no longer a dope

about things.

He has been enlightened.

- Anything you say, Lloyd.

Anything you say.

- The the advocaat is spilled.

There's the accident.

Kubrick is setting it up

as where they come around

in a circle,

'cause I feel like

that's what the camera does.

I feel like the camera

brings us around in a circle

so that we're coming back.

The bathroom seems to be

overlaying the Gold Room and...

so that

the advocaat situation

in the bathroom

is occurring about

in the same area

that it did in the Gold Room.

- They use the camera

to create an emotional

architecture in your mind

but at the same time,

showing you that it's false.

The set is complete...

so completely plastic

that its contradictions pile up

in your subconscious.

Hallorann is showing...

showing Wendy, you know,

the place where she will,

you know, basically,

entrap Jack...

entrap him both physically,

but also, like, that will be

the last straw for him,

last straw for

the management of the hotel.

It's in the store room

that he finally is like,

"Okay.

Now I'm gonna do it."

And, you know,

the opening of that door

is the famous, like,

only thing that's supernatural

happens in the movie that can't

be explained any other way.

Yeah.

But except that it can be

explained another way,

in that Danny lets him out.

I do have this idea that Danny

is a lot more consciously

murdering his father

than the narrative lets on.

I don't know.

It's weird.

Like, you notice how, like,

Wendy's walking backwards

when she's having

that confrontation with Jack

in the lounge, you know.

And she's being drawn up

to the hexagonal hallway room.

And you see Danny shining

at the beginning of that.

He's in his room,

and there's, like,

lights flickering in his eyes.

Like, is Danny drawing...

you know,

drawing his mother up the stairs

so that she can, you know,

sacrifice Jack on top of that,

you know, weird pyramid?

- When I had a chance...

when I was doing a story

out in Denver,

we went up to Estes Park.

It was in the off-season.

Went into the Stanley Hotel,

and I asked to see the manager.

And he came out, and we were

just having lunch with him.

And I said, "Can we talk to you?

I write about The Shining."

He said, "Really?"

This fellow told me

that he got a phone call

from Stanley Kubrick, who said,

"I think I want to make

a movie about The Shining."

And then he would keep

this fellow on the phone

for a long time.

He said, "We had many

long, long conversations

in which he picked my brain

about everything."

And at that point, he said,

"Kubrick was talking about

maybe coming here

to make the movie here,"

which I expect, at that point,

that fellow liked the idea of,

so it would

make his hotel famous.

And Kubrick said, "I'd like

to send out a research team."

And so he then sent out...

the man said it was something

like two or three people

who came out here

and stayed here

for two or three months,

taking photographs everywhere.

And they spent a lot of time

also down in Denver

in the Colorado state archives,

finding out,

as I would now expect,

the full history of Colorado,

which... the flag of which

plays a part.

And the gold rush,

the Colorado Gold Rush

was also a very big event.

And there's all...

there's still a lot

of American Indian/white people

tension in Colorado

with Navajos and Arapahos

just to the south.

This research team found out

absolutely everything

about Colorado,

about Estes Park,

about the Stanley Hotel,

about its entire history,

took photographs

all over the place.

Three months was

the impression that I have

of what he said about

how this research team

gathered absolutely everything.

Kubrick unearthed an enormous

amount about the real history

of Colorado,

where this takes place,

because what he has done

is found a way to dig

into all of the patterns

of our civilization,

our times

and our cultures,

and the things that

we don't want to look at.

And this movie is very much

also about denial

of the genocides

that we committed...

we white folk from Europe...

committed here and not that...

not that white folks are the

only people who do genocide.

All humans do, as Kubrick

makes clear in this movie.

He would research everything

and the full history and nature

of everything you're gonna see

in the movie on the screen

and then

boil it down and boil it down

until he got the universal

human and global patterns

that make it so real.

- White man's burden,

Lloyd, my man.

White man's burden.

I like you, Lloyd.

I always liked you.

You were always the best of 'em.

The best goddamned bartender

from Timbuktu

to Portland, Maine,

or Portland, Oregon,

for that matter.

- Thank you for saying so.

- What does it mean?

Jack saying, "You always

were the best of 'em."

Starting in Timbuktu?

Jack the schoolteacher

was never in Timbuktu,

but Jack

the universal weak male

hired by armies

to go commit atrocities

has always been there.

Now, of course,

the word "Portland"

is neat because

it means where we landed

or where the British

or the Europeans landed.

And Portland, Maine... Oregon is

where they may have taken off

from to go further west.

Kubrick is thinking about

the implications

of everything that exists.

You know, the power of the genie

is in its confinement,

as the great American poet

Richard Wilbur said.

Boiling it down, you know,

10,000 years in a little lamp,

you got to get

your act together.

But that's the essence

of great art.

It's like a dream.

It's boiled everything down

to an emblematic symbol

that's got all of life in it.

Now, if you'll allow me to make

a little bit of a link here.

As I've thinking of this more

in recent years,

what we now understand to be

the nature of what dreams are,

I mean, it seems to be,

the general theory is,

that it's a way

for the brain to boil down

all of the

previous experiences

and then add in

that day's experiences

as well to see what kind

of overall universal patterns

there are to be found,

so that you can be aware of what

the patterns are out there,

so that your subconscious

will be all the more ready

to react suddenly when you see

something dangerous happen

or something important

happen that may lead you

to a mate or to some food

or away from danger.

And therefore, the way Kubrick

made movies was not unlike

the way, according

to these current theories,

our brains create memories

and, for that matter, dreams.

That's the ultimate shining

that Kubrick does.

He is like a mega brain

for the planet

who is boiling down with

all of this extensive research,

all of these

patterns of our world

and then giving them back to us

in a dream of a movie...

because movies

are like a dream...

and that's related

to why I think

there's a lot of evidence

that what Kubrick

also gave us in The Shining

is a movie about the past.

Not just any past.

The past.

I mean past-ness.

It's a movie

about how the past impinges.

That's what ghosts are.

That's what those skitter-y

voices in the opening sh*t

that are following are about.

There's two phrases from T.S.

Eliot that I often think of

when I'm thinking about

The Shining.

One of them is "The night"...

I think they're both

from T.S. Eliot...

"The nightmare of history...

how can we awake from

the nightmare of history?"

- And the other is his phrase...

T.S. Eliot's phrase...

"History has

many cunning passages."

And I think both of those

phrases are directly apt

for The Shining,

in which we see

many cunning passages in the

maze and in the hotel itself

and in which the past

becomes a nightmare,

and in which Kubrick

shows us how you escape

from the nightmare of the past

by retracing your steps,

as Danny does

in that last line,

which means

acknowledging what happened

and learning about the past

and then getting out,

only if you are

going to be able to shine

and see what the patterns are

so you know

to get away from them

and avoid them

and go for the good things.

I mean, The Shining is his movie

about how families break down,

whether they are

an individual family

or the larger societal family

that tries to break up

individual families.

And his hat movie,

Eyes Wide Shut is the opposite.

It's about

a family sorely tried,

Bill Hartford

and his wife and child,

that survives

all the horrible temptations

that are in our DNA.

- This is our famous hedge maze.

It's a lot of fun.

But I wouldn't

want to go in there

unless I had an hour to spare

to find my way out.

- I did not look at it again

for a number of years

until it came out in rental.

And then I picked it up

a couple of times.

And, what, you had three days

in order to watch a rental?

And so, I can remember watching

it over and over again

during those three days

and really taking

a good look at it then.

And I was able to think "Oh,

yes, this is what I remember.

This is what I thought I saw,"

and then catching more things.

But it wasn't, of course,

until DVD came out

that I was really able

to sit down

and take a good look at it as

far as just running through it

over and over and over again.

Kubrick presents these things

where it's, you know, real...

you know, it's realistic.

You're not supposed to see

what's actually going on.

You've got Danny.

He's in the game room.

He turns around.

We're supposed to be focused

on the two girls there.

And than you... I saw...

over on the left,

I see this skiing poster.

And the thing is that

you already have Jack.

He's already asked about skiing.

But why isn't... you know,

"What about skiing?

Isn't the skiing good here

in the hotel?"

And he's already given the story

of why it isn't good,

why they can't do that.

But you got the skiing poster.

And my eye is drawn to it.

And I realize

that's not a skier.

That's a... that's a minotaur.

It just leaped out at me.

And so that was something

that I was able

to look at later on VHS

and say, "Yes, I had actually

seen a minotaur there,"

where the upper body, you've got

this really, you know,

overblown physique,

very physical physique.

And then you've got

the suggestion...

you have a suggestion

of a skiing pole there,

but it's not really there.

It's just

a suggestion of one.

And the lower body

is positioned,

the way the legs are,

it's like a minotaur,

the build is.

And you've actually got

the tail there.

And so it is a minotaur.

And this is in...

on the opposite side of the door

you have a cowboy

on a bucking bronco, so...

and so you got

a kind of echo there,

where you got the

minotaur on one side,

the bull man,

and on the other side,

you got the cowboy,

the man on the bucking bronco.

And this is just following

the scene where they...

Ullman has been

taking Jack and Wendy

through the Colorado Lounge,

showing off the Colorado Lounge.

And they go

into the hall

behind the Colorado Lounge.

And what's there,

but on the wall,

there is a painting

of an American Indian

with a buffalo headdress on.

And at that point,

Ullman is discussing with Wendy

who has stayed there

at the hotel.

Royalty, the best people,

stars have stayed there.

- Royalty?

- All the best people.

- You have "monarch" on

the bottom, which, you know,

keys in with royalty.

And you also have this

whole idea of the stars.

And the minotaur's name is,

what, Asterius?

His name is Asterius,

which means "starry."

So you know, you got

several things there

to do with mythology

that fit in.

It's very exciting to me.

That was the... you know,

that's the kind of

leap-up-end-down moment

where you go,

"Oh, wow, look at what

Kubrick has there."

Yeah, I mean the minotaur lives

at the heart of the labyrinth.

He's a part of the labyrinth.

The labyrinth,

at least in the myth...

you know,

in this particular myth...

was built for the minotaur.

The hotel is... you know,

it is the labyrinth.

And Jack is the minotaur.

You have scenes with him

where he...

such as in...

what is it?

The Thursday scene.

The snowfall has started.

You have Wendy and Danny

outside playing.

And Jack

is inside the Colorado Lounge,

and he's looking out at them.

His head is tilted down,

and his eyes are somewhat...

his eyes are elevated.

They're pointing up.

And his eyebrows are drawn up.

But he has this

expression on his face

that he gets progressively

throughout the film

that is very bull-like.

It has a very

minotaur-like expression.

It's the same kind

of expression that Kubrick

pulls out in other films,

such as it was on

Private Pyle's face

in the berserker scene

in the bathroom

in Full Metal Jacket.

So it's, you know,

not specific to this film.

There's more minotaur imagery

and labyrinth imagery.

There's the Gold Room.

In front of the Gold Room,

you have

the "Unwinding Hours" sign.

And that plays in

with the labyrinth,

where you have...

Theseus

enters into the labyrinth,

and he has

the thread with him

that he ties

at the beginning that,

you know, assists him

in going through the labyrinth,

where he can

find his way back out.

And so I see

the "Unwinding Hours" sign

as having to do

with that thread.

For a while there,

I was into baseball.

And I get very excited with

baseball when I'm into baseball.

You know, I can be by myself,

and I will be

leaping up and down.

And Kubrick

is like that for me,

where all I have to do is see

the minotaur poster there,

and I go, "Oh, my goodness.

Look at this!"

Because you're not

supposed to see the minotaur.

- Danny is shown

riding his big wheel

through the hotel three times.

The first ride, I think,

is about realism.

That's Danny is a...

Danny is doing a loop

around the lounge set.

You know, he goes through

the service hallway

and then he goes

through the lounge

and then he goes back

into the service hallway.

And, you know,

when you first see the movie,

you're like,

"He's just wandering around.

It's crazy, it's just"...

But it... no, it's very...

it's just a very simple loop.

He does it once.

But that gives you

an idea of where...

of what that place is.

I mean, you know,

all right, you understand

that that set is real.

You know, like,

it's a continuous sh*t.

There are no tricks.

In the second ride,

in the hexagonal hallway,

there are a lot of...

there are more tricks.

Like, he doesn't do a loop.

He does kind of like

a key-shaped...

you know, or a p-shaped loop

around this hallway.

And you see the realism of the

connection to the lounge set.

And... but you also see the fakery

of the fake elevators.

And you see...

for just one second,

you see the big stained glass

windows out of the corner,

in the corner of the frame

right before he takes a turn

around the elevator.

Like, that's incredible because,

like, that connects

that whole hallway

to the giant

Colorado Lounge set.

I mean,

that's just for one second.

They didn't have to do that,

you know?

But it's also... you know,

it's a metaphor

because he's also elevated.

He's one level up

from where he was before.

Like, he starts in the same

place, just one floor up,

you know, in the northeast

corner of the set.

So now he's in the northeast

corner and one level up.

And if you take it

as a metaphor of, like,

going from a mundane reality

to up into your head

to more

of a fantastical reality...

The third one is even stranger,

'cause he starts off

in the service unit.

He starts off in the same,

you know, northeast corner

of the lobby hall,

of the lobby service hallway.

And then he takes a turn,

and suddenly he's upstairs

in the area

outside their apartment

So, like,

it's a kind of a combination

of the first two,

where like he's down low

and then he's up high.

And then he takes a turn,

and he's suddenly...

he's in that that yellow,

yellow and blue wallpaper.

Let's say that's

in the service hallway area.

He's, you know, right outside

his parents' bedroom,

so there's this

connection between him

going on these big wheel rides

and dreaming.

Like, he's near his bedroom.

He's near... like, you see his

parents are working downstairs,

but he's upstairs.

You know, like, you see his mom

on the telephone,

and then he's flying.

He goes above her

to the bedroom,

which is above

where she's working,

just as

the hexagonal hallway

is above

where his dad is working.

So these big wheel rides

become like a visionary way

of Danny to explore

his parents' headspace.

You know, like,

room 237 is his, like...

that's his father's

fantasy chamber

where, like, he gets it on

with the witches.

And the twins are like

his mother's fantasy...

fantasy headspace where, like,

they're these double blue women

who want to play with Danny

forever and ever.

- We're all gonna have

a real good time.

- My interpretation

of The Shining

is that there's many levels

to this film.

This is like

three-dimensional chess.

And he's trying

to tell us several stories

that appear to be separate

but actually are not.

And he's doing this both through

the overt script that he wrote.

He's telling it through tricks

of the trade,

the subliminal imagery

and these constant retakes,

giving him odd angles

and things.

And he's also telling you

through the changes that he made

to the Stephen King novel.

So if you watch

those three things,

you begin to understand

this deeper story.

And this deeper story

has its birth, I guess,

in the idea

that Stanley Kubrick

was involved with faking

the Apollo moon landings.

In fact, I contend that

2001: A Space Odyssey,

in part, was a research

and development project

for the Apollo footage

that was sh*t.

I'm not saying

we didn't go to the moon.

I'm just saying

that what we saw was faked

and that it was faked

by Stanley Kubrick.

And I've had Hollywood

special effects people

from the '60s and '70s who were

front-screen projection experts

tell me that I absolutely

have nailed the Apollo footage

as being the result of

front-screen projection.

Just go to any Apollo site

and look,

and you'll see that they have to

hide the bottom of the screen.

And you can always see

the set/screen separation line

in every Apollo footage,

every Apollo image,

and the video footage

that has a background.

And Richard Hoagland,

the researcher,

has looked

into the Apollo imagery.

And he has found

all sorts of problems with it

because in the sky

around the astronauts,

he's found reflecting lights

and refracting things and...

kind of a junk

and geometry of things

that are in the sky.

And he concluded, wrongly,

that there are gigantic

alien cities made out of glass.

What he's really seeing

is the reflections of light

of the tiny beads

on the scotch light screen

which is being used in the

front-screen projection process.

And so, once I nailed the

front-screen projection process

inside the Apollo footage,

then I became interested in

seeing if Kubrick left any clues

in the rest of his career

to his possible involvement

in faking

the Apollo moon footage.

And I was overjoyed

about two years ago

when I received my

Blu-Ray copy of The Shining.

And I put it

in my Blu-Ray machine

and sat down one night

to watch it.

And I realized that all of the

things that one could imagine

that Stanley Kubrick

would have had to go through

to fake

the Apollo moon footage...

and there in the movie,

every time that Stanley deviated

from the Stephen King novel,

he deviated

into those exact questions.

You know, what was it like

to make a deal

with the U.S. Government?

What was it like to accidentally

tell someone what you were doing

and to watch them possibly

have to suffer the consequences

of your lack of integrity?

What was it like

to lie to your wife

and tell her

that you were doing one thing

when you were doing another?

What was it like

when your wife found out

what you were really doing?

These are the questions

that I had long before

I had seen The Shining again

after a maybe an eight...

or nine-year absence.

And I didn't... wasn't sure

I was right for the first hour.

I wasn't sure

that I had actually...

you know, I wasn't sure

if I was blurring the line

between what I wanted to see

and what I was seeing.

And then at about

58 minutes in the film

is the famous scene where

Danny's playing with his trucks,

and he stands up

and he's wearing

the Apollo 11 sweater

with the rocket taking off.

Then I knew I'd nabbed it.

And then I started watching

the film with an intensity

that I don't think I'd

ever watched a movie before,

and every line

began ringing true.

You know, "Wendy, that is

just so typical of you.

"Don't you... don't you know

"I have obligations

to my employers?

"Do you have any idea

what a contract is?

Do you know

what an agreement is?"

jack Nicholson's whole tirade

against his wife...

that's Stanley.

That's Stanley telling his wife

that after she discovered

what he was doing,

which was the Apollo footage.

No, that's actually not true.

If you call

the Mount Hood Resort

and you ask for room 217

you will find

there is no such room.

So that's just not true.

That statement's not true.

And so what...

Stanley was lying.

Its not the reason

that he changed the room number

from 217 to 237.

The reason that

he changed it from 217 to 237

was because the room,

room 237 in the film is...

represents the moon landing

stage where he worked.

And the moon, the standard

science textbook said...

and they still say...

but now with lasers, we've

gotten a little better reading.

But... is that

the mean distance of the moon

from the earth

is exactly 237,000 miles.

So he changed that

so that you would understand

that this was the moon room.

So Danny stands up.

He's got

the Apollo 11 sweater on.

He begins

walking down the hallway

towards room 237.

And there's a key in the lock.

And on the key are...

is the words "room"

and then the word "n-o,"

which is an old acronym

for "number."

So "room number 237,"

except that the only

capital letters on the key

are r-o-o-m and then the "n"

from the acronym n-o.

And if there's only two words

that you can come up with

that have those letters in 'em.

And that's "moon" and "room."

And so on the key, the tag,

it says "moon room."

And that is the moon room.

This is where

everything happens,

and none of it's real.

And it all has to be lied about.

And he can't let anyone know

what's really going on

in room 237.

And there's many, many other

deviations from the book

to the movie.

- It isn't real.

- The deviations drove

Stephen King out of his mind.

He just ranted

and ranted for years

how much he hated The Shining.

And he hated it

because he'd given Kubrick

all this great source material

and Kubrick threw it out.

And the whole idea of this

is best exemplified

by the scene

where d*ck Hallorann

is driving up the highway,

trying to get to the Overlook

during a winter storm

and he passes a wreck.

And in the wreck,

a semi has crashed

and crushed a red Volkswagen.

And this is a direct message

from Kubrick to King,

because in the novel,

Jack Torrance's car

is a red Volkswagen.

But in the movie,

it's a yellow Volkswagen.

And what Kubrick

is saying in that scene

is a big "F you"

to Stephen King.

He's saying,

'This is my vehicle.

"I have wrecked your vehicle.

And everybody in the world

can see it.'

And this drove King crazy.

And it should have.

But what was really going on

and what is just much more

deliciously fascinating

about all of this

is that, in fact,

Kubrick was faking the making

of the Stephen King novel

in order to reveal the idea

of what he went through

to do the Apollo moon footage.

- My argument,

as far as Kubrick goes,

is that he was a

preternaturally observant child.

He read omnivorously.

He went to movies all the time.

And I think if you're going to

movies and reading in the 1930s

and the 1940s, a lot of what

you're seeing and reading

is h*tler and the Nazis

and the w*r.

So as a sensitive kid, he must

have been alive to these things.

And I don't think he ever forgot

anything, and this is...

which is why his films

are so rich.

- Little pigs, little pigs,

let me come in.

Not by the hair

on your chinny-chin-chin?

Then I'll huff and I'll puff...

- And I'll blow your house in!

- Well,

The Three Little Pigs,

I mean, I don't remember...

That might have been one of

the things

that Jack Nicholson

might've ad-libbed initially.

Kubrick was a great believer

in that.

But even if it was,

I think the selection

of that particular little rhyme

certainly fits in

with the time periodization

I've just been talking about,

because Kubrick

would've run across that

when he saw

The Three Little Pigs

as an Academy Award winning

cartoon in 1933.

And so it comes

out of that period.

And so the whole idea of a wolf,

which, during the 1930s,

gradually transformed itself

in popular mythology

and popular culture

from being a symbol

of want and of hunger

in the Great Depression

into a symbol of enemies;

Enemy nations,

enemy peoples,

m*llitary aggression.

And of course, this reflects

the rise of fascism

and Nazis in Europe.

But initially,

the wolf at the door

was an anti-Semitic

stereotype and caricature

that... initially the wolf

wears a disguise.

And the background music

is clearly Eastern European

sort of klezmer

or Yiddish music.

And it's a classic example

of early 1930s

Walt Disney anti-Semitism.

So I think there

are layers of meaning

in The Three Little Pigs. "

And since Kubrick

was a Freudian

and we know

that he used Freudian work

in doing the screenplay

for The Shining...

Bruno Bettelheim's

The Uses of Enchantment...

and it's a Freudian analysis

of the meaning of fairy tales.

And in The Shining,

we can see the fruits of that

when they're constantly making

references to Hansel and Gretel.

- I feel like I'll have

to leave a trail of bread crumbs

every time we come in here.

- The witch in the oven

and children being b*rned

and so forth,

which of course,

is also perhaps, suggestive

when it comes to the Holocaust.

- The blood

is one of the main ghosts

and perhaps

the overarching ghost,

in a certain sense,

in this movie.

We first see it when Danny,

at the beginning of the movie,

is at the sink

in the little apartment

down in Denver or Boulder

or wherever it is.

And he's talking to Danny,

"Why don't

you want to go there?"

And then suddenly

Danny shows him blood.

And as we learn

a little bit later,

the Overlook was built

on the Indian burial ground

between 1907 and 1909.

- Construction started in 1907.

It was finished in 1909.

The site

is supposed to be located

on an Indian burial ground,

and I believe they actually had

to repel a few Indian att*cks

as they were building it.

- So presumably,

we can imagine the elevator

shaft sinks down into

the very bodies of the Indians,

so to speak.

And that's where

the blood is coming from;

Literal blood of the Indians.

And this movie is a movie about,

among other things,

the blood on which

nations are built;

Certainly the United States,

with the genocide

of the American Indians.

But it's not only that.

This is a complete metaphor

for what Kubrick is on about,

because the elevator's doors

remain closed.

In other words,

it's as if it's like a symbol

of the repression.

We don't want to admit to it.

But in spite of our attempting

to stay repressed about it,

blood will out,

m*rder will out,

as Chaucer says

in one of his tales.

And so the blood comes

squeezing out from the side

and overwhelms us.

And it keeps recurring

over and over through the movie.

And it's...

And finally Wendy, when,

at the very end of the movie,

she starts seeing ghosts.

She sees the blood.

It's the symbol

of what we all have in common.

And there's

lots of symbols in here

of what all humans

have in common.

- 42 shows up in other places.

Wendy and Danny

watch The Summer of '42

on a hotel television.

And there are

a number of other

little references

to that number.

And it's within a larger context

that Kubrick uses involving

numbers in The Shining.

And they're all

multiples of seven.

The hotel was built in 1907.

The party in which Jack

is pictured at the end of film

occurred in 1921 in July,

the seventh month of the year.

These multiples of seven,

I think,

also reflect the fact

that Kubrick was aware

of the importance

of Thomas Mann's novel of 1924,

The Magic Mountain,

which similarly concerns

a sanitarium...

though not a hotel...

high up in the mountains.

And Mann uses the number 7

there as a matter,

a symbol of

the sort of dangerous fate

that seems to have been

stalking Europe lately.

And in the novel Lolita,

Nabokov uses the number 42

as a symbol of fate

and Humbert's paranoia,

the idea that

he is constantly being tracked

and that his life is doomed.

And even though Kubrick,

in his film of Lolita,

only uses the number once,

interestingly enough

on a hotel room door,

I think at some level

of consciousness,

Kubrick was always

also drawing from Nabokov's use

of that particular number

as a symbol of danger

and malevolence and disaster.

- The opening sound

is from the great funeral mass,

Dies Irae,

which is the day of judgment,

which announces,

"This is going to be a funeral.

"This is going to be about

a judgment on the human race."

It's about the past.

But I think I remembered

that my impression

from the opening scene

in which that astonishing

helicopter sh*t

gives you

a totally creepy feeling.

You're looking at great,

beautiful nature,

but you know

you're following something.

You're, like, flying along

on top of this little,

tiny, insignificant car.

It's the ultimate

point of view sh*t

without telling you

who the point of view is.

If you want

to stop and think about it,

you think,

'This is a helicopter sh*t"

But for the general audience,

all you know is that

you are like a ghost.

You are like an angel.

You are like something

that flies

with supernatural abilities

across the landscape

of the planet.

And the soundtrack had

that skittering...

I can't imitate it...

but that skittering music

that sounded to me...

and I was conscious of this

the first time I saw the movie...

like the thousands

of voices from the past.

"The cloud of witness,"

as the phrase is in...

Dorothy Sayers uses it

as the title for some story.

The cloud of witness,

all the ghosts from the past;

And I didn't know.

Were these the voices

of the many crowds

of aliens or of ghosts or...

I didn't know what.

But already that

skittering, high music

with that follow sh*t

across the lake

and then across the car itself,

it was the ultimate in spooky

because you had the feeling

this car is being followed

and it doesn't know it,

and we're following it.

I mean, I could go on

for a long time

about the symbolism of that

with regard to what The Shining

really is.

And The Shining,

as we come to understand it,

is seeing through

all the layers of history

and the horrors of history,

even autobiographically

in that scene

where Grady and Jack talk

in the blood-red men's room

and Grady says, "Your son

has a very great talent.

"I don't think

you realize how great it is.

He's a very willful boy."

And Jack says, "Yes, he is..."

- A very willful boy.

- Did you know, Mr. Torrance,

that your son is attempting

to bring an outside party

into this situation?

- That's Kubrick.

What he's trying to do

is bring the audience

and humanity

into this situation.

In this movie, he is trying

to get through to us all...

the human race in the movie

theaters watching this...

that we are doing these things

but don't see it,

that we are committing

these horrendous things

over and over again

and then forgetting them...

which is... of course,

he represents

many, many times in the movie...

by having characters

seem to know something

and then not know it

and forget it.

- You, uh, chopped your wife and

daughter up into little bits.

- I don't have any recollection

of that at all.

- That's like the human race.

We commit atrocities

and then forget it.

- Bill, I'd like you

to meet Jack Torrance.

- How do you do?

- Bill, how do you do?

- It's nice to meet you.

- It's a pleasure to meet you.

- Some people think that,

like, not all

of the interview is real.

Some of it is Jack's

imagination or fantasy

of what the interview

would be like.

Like, also, Bill Watson's

clothes change.

Like,

his pants change patterns.

And what's also weird is,

he plays Pontius Pilate

in Jesus Christ Superstar.

- Crucify him

Crucify him

Crucify, crucify, crucify

- Really playing against type

and just being

this sort of cipher.

I mean, in a way he's,

he's kind of Jack's double

kind of in the same way that

Bill Hartford has a double

in Eyes Wide Shut.

You know, he goes

to that blonde woman's house

whose father just d*ed

and her fianc looks

exactly like Tom Cruise,

has the same haircut.

- I've always thought that Bill

Watson, the little assistant...

and by little, I mean that he's

sort of a shrunken figure...

to Ullman, who's brought in

and sits there

looking sort of dour

and resentful and quiet

and whose skin color

is sort of a half...

it's not white.

It's sort of toward brown.

I've always thought that he

sort of represents a subdued...

somebody from a subdued race.

He seems a little bit diffident

when Ullman says,

"Will you go

collect their luggage?"

He says, "Fine."

- Fine.

- And as they're given the tour

around all the hotel,

Bill Watson

is always trailing behind,

like somebody who's going

to be a little factotum

to go get things.

I've always thought

he sort of maybe represented,

you know, the condition in

the dominant arrogant culture

that the Indians

had at that time.

- He is the silent guardian

for the government.

Stewart Ullman represents

the face of the U.S. government.

And that's why Kubrick

gave him the toupee

that makes him look like

John F. Kennedy.

And I think that he is the guy

who's silently watching

everything and, you know...

CIA, I guess.

Kind of NSA guy.

And he probably represents

the real managers of the house,

of the Overlook,

and Barry Nelson is the...

just the person

that's out in front.

- He doesn't say a thing.

He's the summer caretaker.

And he seems to me

to have certain

correspondences with Wendy.

Jack really doesn't

work around the hotel.

Wendy gets in there,

and she does all the work.

- You do get the feeling

that he's going...

that Jack's going

to be doing his work,

because he seems a little,

like, leery of Jack.

Like, I've been

in job interviews,

and I've always found

that that second person

they call in is,

like, the person

you're actually

interviewing for.

He's making the decision,

like, that silent person,

that, like...

kind of, like, glare...

like, squints at you.

Yeah, and he sighs when he's

asked to move Jack's luggage.

- Bill, would you have

the Torrances' things

brought to their apartment?

- Fine.

- There's a dissolve

which fades from a wide sh*t

of the, you know,

final black-and-white photo

to a close-up of Jack's face.

And just for a second there,

his hairline fades in

to form a h*tler moustache.

- I think a lot of things

happened right here

in this particular hotel

over the years

and not all of 'em was good.

- He once said,

"How do you get all of that"...

meaning the Holocaust...

"into a two-hour movie?"

I think he found the Holocaust

of such evil magnitude

that he just couldn't

bring himself

to treat it directly,

which is why he used

the form of a horror film

to treat it indirectly.

- I believe Kubrick,

possibly consciously,

has solved a kind of problem

that history has,

which is that

it's very hard for many people

to connect emotionally

to a gigantic big k*lling

we hear about in the past.

People who don't have

direct family experience

of it themselves

may hear the statistic.

You know, h*tler,

among other things,

k*lled 6 million Jews

in his Holocaust.

6 million's a number too big.

I mean Stalin is reputed

to have said, you know,

"You k*ll one person,

it's a m*rder and a tragedy.

"You k*ll a million people,

it's a statistic."

He was talking about

a psychological fact.

And, you know, Stalin himself

was... what is it...

starved about 3 million people

in the western Ukraine

in the '30s on purpose.

My point is

it may be that Kubrick

was conscious of having

offered a kind of way to bridge

that inability to feel for those

gigantic statistics in that,

if you go and see The Shining

innocent the first time

and are terrified...

you're just terrified

and you'll always remember

being terrified...

and then go back

aware of what the symbolism

and the general larger pattern

meanings of the movie are,

then you can begin to make

something of a connection,

saying, "Oh, my God."

I remember being terrified

for the individual

little Danny and Wendy here.

And that feeling is actually

being...

is for people who are symbols

of victims

of all kinds

of horrendous genocides.

And of course, his wife

has subsequently talked about,

you know, how close he came

to making his Holocaust movie,

The Aryan Papers,

but that he got mom and mom

and more depressed

and was relieved

when he had an excuse

not to do it.

He used Schindler's List

as saying,

"Ah, it's already been done."

I mean,

that struck a bell with me.

And I've done a lot

of stories as a journalist

about people who study...

either talked to people

who are victims of horrors

or study it.

And there's... Freud talked

about it as the contagion.

The depression seeps into you.

It's... you know what...

Kubrick had a wonderful comment

about this

when somebody asked him.

"Isn't it true that

your movies are showing us

"just the horrendous side

of humanity.

You know, that's awful bleak."

And Kubrick said,

"Ah, but there's something

very positive about it as well.

"And that is,

it shows at the very least

that we can get our minds

around what that horror is."

And Danny,

from the beginning,

has his mind

all over the problem.

He's looking at it.

In a way, Danny's

big wheeling back and forth,

up and down the hallways...

Danny is learning that hotel.

He's learning all the horrors.

He's seeing them.

But they're just in the past,

and Hallorann

gave him the secret.

He said, "Remember, Danny."

Remember what Tony tells him.

Remember

what Mr. Hallorann said:

"They're just like

pictures in a book.

They're not real."

Now, that's

a really important lesson.

People who shine,

who see through history,

understand that the past

simply does not exist

except in one place.

And that's the present tense

instant of the mind,

remembering.

That is, exactly... that is

a place you can go to somehow

and yet it doesn't exist.

And so Hallorann tells Danny,

"You're gonna see

some horrible things."

Apparently, he told him.

"You're gonna see

some horrible things,

"but remember,

they're not real.

"They're like

pictures in a book.

They no longer exist."

That's a key to not

getting depressed about it.

And that's...

You see, this is a movie

about what the past...

how the past impinges,

any past,

and about

how to get over that

and how not to be

a victim of history.

You know, if you doubt

what I've written about it,

just go see the movie.

I've figured all this out

from just seeing the movie.

It's there.

It's obvious, and most people

who went and saw the movie said,

"Oh, my goodness.

It is there."

- Okay.

Yeah, I was, I mean, obsessed

with The Shining

and reading all

the online analyses of it

and was particularly

a big fan

of the MSTRMND's lengthy

analysis of it.

And he had one phrase

that kind of stuck in my mind,

that The Shining was a film

meant to be seen

forwards and backwards.

And, I mean,

he didn't mean at the same time.

He meant that in,

with the mirror form metaphor

that's central to the film

that things, you know...

that things

forwards and backwards

happen throughout the film.

That... people walk backwards

in the film, you know,

people talk backwards.

- Redrum.

Redrum.

- You know,

if you reverse the film,

it has a format similar to 2001.

All these kind of things happen.

At the end of The Shining,

he's reduced to a screaming ape,

just like in the beginning

of 2001,

there are screaming apes.

But I was talking to my pals

at the Spectacle Theater,

riffing about experimental ways

of showing films.

And they were like,

"Well, do you think

"you could

come up with something,

you know, to show here?"

I was like, "Sure, what we

should do is we should show

The Shining forwards

and backwards at the same time.

"You know not...

let's not be creative.

"Let's just actually

reverse the film

and show it exactly mirrored,

superimposed."

The first image

is of the reflective lake.

And the last image

is of the inscription

on the photograph,

in which Jack is frozen

for all time...

The "Overlook Hotel,

July 4th Ball, 1921."

So those superimposed make it...

kind of make it seem like

a postcard, like an invitation.

Like...

"Come to the July 4th Ball

here in Crater Lake."

There's a really cool part

where, like, you know,

the helicopters

are following his car

and his name scrolls up

in the credits

and, like, meets the car,

right...

right in the same position

where the grid of photographs,

right in that photograph

that he's trapped in.

So his car,

his name and his photograph

all line up for one second.

Pretty cool.

The interview has a, like...

it's great.

While they're talking about...

you know, very dryly about

all the murders that happened,

like, you know,

in the superimposition,

Jack's running around with an

axe going bananas, you know.

There's a lot of just great,

great, great superimpositions

of people's faces lining up,

like Jack's...

Jack's, like,

got the death look,

and he's staring

through Danny's face

as Danny's eating a sandwich.

Then there's a lot of things...

there's a lot of, like...

there's a... you know,

there's some fun jokes,

but then there's

serious stuff where,

like, you...

where the hallucination...

the visions that Danny has,

where you'll see them,

like, overlaid

on top of other situations.

Like the twin girls

are overlaid on top of Wendy,

which, if you study the film,

you see that the twins

are associated with Wendy.

They're like her,

like, visionary counterpart.

All the symbols

in the movie start...

overlap

in the superimposition,

backwards/forwards

superimposition.

The m*rder*d twins

are overlaid across Jack's face,

and he looks like a clown.

It makes like a clown mask,

and there's blood everywhere

and, like, blood on his lips.

And blood

coming out of his eyes.

And, like, you know,

Danny takes it...

you know, like, Danny

has his hands over his face,

and it's... Jack is looking out

from his head,

and then he open... he, like,

peeks out and he sees Grady.

And then Grady and Jack

continue their conversation

into the next scene,

which is where

he's watching television.

And it's like they have this...

their lips

are, like, in the TV.

Jack and Grady's lips

are in the TV.

And these masks

are formed by the windows.

And ifs like

Danny's envisioning this.

Danny's envisioning...

you know, envisioning the pact

between Grady and jack.

Like, he goes into...

he sneaks into the bedroom,

like, right through

Jack's head,

right in between them.

And just like that scene is...

that's the scene

where Danny is testing

his father, like,

"Do you really, you know!"...

"Do you like this place?

You're not gonna hurt us,

are you?"

Like, Danny kind of knows

that his dad has lost it.

The last sh*t is 1921,

and the first sh*t

is of the road.

Ullman mentions

that it was finished in 1921.

So it's, again, it's a way

of returning the narrative

back to the beginning.

- Mr. Hallorann,

what is in room 237?

- Nothing.

There ain't nothing in room 237.

But you ain't got no business

going in there anyway,

so stay out.

- In the sex room, 237,

where we see this beautiful,

sexual temptress,

who then becomes

a rotting body...

realistically depicted

as a rotting body...

the design on the rug shows

basically the most...

in geometric form

with round curves...

the act of intercourse itself,

one after another

after another after another,

sort of like a picture

of down through the generations

of what produces life.

You go back out in the hallway,

in the larger society,

and the round curves

of that very same design

have become hexagons,

not so nice and round,

and a little bit more

like the beehive hexagon

but down the whole corridors

of history.

I think he's got

an image of it there,

so he's talking about

the family of man,

both in

an individual nuclear family

and in the whole course

of our genetic history.

- Once Denny enters room 237,

like, that's...

that kind of is, like,

the activation

of the rest of the movie.

Like, that's what causes Jack

to go insane finally.

That's what brings Hallorann

to the hotel.

Like, the room 237 is, like,

is sort of this...

I mean, I compare it

to the mysterious hotel room

at the end of 2001,

where there's...

It's this strange,

strange place

that somehow, like, transforms

the rest of the narrative.

The Shining takes place

on the top of a mountain

in kind of like a, you know,

magical shape-shifting

environment.

And, like, travel is...

traveling out of it is...

You know, instead of 2001, where

you're traveling to something,

the point of The Shining

is to escape, is to travel out.

And room 237 is, like...

it's kind of like

the escape pod of...

of the hotel.

- If you multiply the numbers 2,

3 and 7, you get 42.

Now, I admit, perhaps

I'm grasping at straws there,

but it is consistent

with the pattern of reference

in the film.

- Another thing which

my film Kubrick's Odyssey

really reveals

is the carpeting on the floor

during the famous Danny scene,

where he stands up

with his Apollo 11 shirt.

The patterns in the carpeting

exactly match launch pad 39-A.

You know, even the driveway

and everything.

And if you notice in that sh*t,

the pattern on the rug changes

when Danny stands up.

- The carpet's reversed,

and there's

no pathway there anymore.

The pathway that the ball took

rolling down towards Danny

is gone now.

It's no longer there

'cause it's reversed.

And you get

a sense of a closure.

Now the hexagon is closed.

It's almost like

he's been closed in.

- Seven years after

The Shining had come out,

to my surprise,

nobody had written,

as far as I could tell,

about what the major themes

of the movie were,

beyond the delightfully scary

immediate story

of the family

and the hotel itself.

And I was actually doing a story

somewhere over in Europe,

and I was told over the phone

that the posters were out

for Full Metal Jacket.

I asked about the description,

and I was told it had a peace

sign right next to the words

"Born to k*ll."

And I said,

"Oh, my goodness.

His next movie's gonna be

about some of the same themes."

Anyway,

I thought, "My goodness."

I had presumed that

it would have become obvious,

so I thought,

"What the heck?

"I'll just see if I can write

an article about it

to give people more fun

when they see Full Metal Jacket,

to know what

his last movie was about,

in larger senses.

- I've gotten a lot of flak

from people who work for NASA.

And, you know, I want to tell

them, that I, you know,

I'm not saying

that we didn't go to the moon.

And I'm not saying

that their technology

that they helped build

isn't great and awesome

and everything.

I'm just saying

that what we saw was faked.

And I know I have it proved

with the front-screen

projection process.

As far as what

the government has done,

I fully expect my taxes

to be audited next year,

to be honest with you.

And, you know,

I've had visitations, you know.

And they're definitely

watching me for sure,

and they're not too happy

with what's going on here.

And I think

they're probably very worried

about the next film.

And that one will be

the really expl*sive film.

- We were walking

along the beach on vacation

with some people

in Costa Rica.

I had

this delightful experience.

We were walking along

with a young couple

who were from San Francisco.

And it was a long walk.

We'd gone through

this big, beautiful jungle.

And were coming

back on the beach

to walk back

to where the tent camp was.

And the guy started...

we started chatting

about Kubrick.

I said, "Oh, Kubrick's great,"

And the guy said, "You know,

The Shining, it's actually

about the American Indians. "

I said, "Really?"

And he went on talking,

and I said, "Really?"

And I just couldn't resist

just playing dumb for while

while he told me

the whole thing.

I was delighted!

Dies irae, dies illa

- Kubrick just sets up

synchronous space.

His movies are...

they create synchronous

situations in themselves.

There's this man who says,

you know,

"Quite a party, isn't it?"

Why did Kubrick put him there,

with the split down his head?

Why did he put him there?

And I was contemplating that.

And in comes my son.

And he was nine years old

at the time.

And he didn't know

what I was working on.

And he came in,

and he began to tell me a story.

And he said,

"I've just thought this up."

And his characters head was

split open with a chaos bolt.

And the character says, "Talk

about a splitting headache."

And out of the contents

of his head

leaps a small person

who is his real self.

And it goes running off,

saying in a high, squeaky voice,

"Forget this.

I'm going home."

And, yeah, I thought that was

really stunning synchronicity,

I mean, 'cause you've got

all the elements there.

You've got the a*.

You've got the whole idea

of the lightning bolt,

the chaos bolt,

striking the person's head,

the splitting headache.

You've got Tony...

Tony's squeaky voice, yeah.

I thought that was

quite a synchronicity.

- One can always argue

that Kubrick

had only some or even none

of these in mind.

But we all know

from postmodern film criticism

that author intent

is only part of the story

of any work of art.

And those meanings

are there regardless

of whether the creator

of the work

was conscious of them.

- I think... if you want

to know what I think,

I think the hotel

is so whacked out

that I don't have any clue

what's going on

from the beginning.

When you really sit

and think about it, I mean...

because the whole thing

is so whacked out,

and it's so not put together...

it's so... everything

is so wildly out of place

that when you...

the more... the closer you get

into looking at things,

the more you look at them.

It's kind of like, you know,

the scene in Eyes Wide Shut

where Bill goes... you know,

he returns.

He retraces his footsteps,

and he goes back

to the mansion where he was.

And he's told, you know,

to stop your inquiries.

They will serve you no purpose.

It's almost like it gets to that

with The Shining.

The more you magnify things,

the more you look at them,

the less purpose it serves

'cause it's so out of whack.

None of it makes sense

from the beginning.

- There must be

a lot of stuff in there

that nobody has yet seen,

so people

ought to keep watching it.

- But why would he make

the movie so complicated?

- Yeah, I mean, but why did

Joyce write Finnegan's Wake?

It's a way of, like,

opening doors

from, like, a hermetically

sealed reality

into possibilities.

And it's also a way of trapping

someone like me.

Like, who goes looking for clues

and, like, keeps finding them.

And next thing you know,

you're like, "Man, I've been...

"I've been trapped

in this hotel forever.

I'm dreaming about this place."

You know, I'm like Jack.

I'm, like,

all work and no play.

Or the other way around.

It doesn't really matter,

like...

You're, like, in this loop.

But, you know, there are

escape routes, like the...

like, I think

he puts escape routes

into it, into this maze,

into this trap.

I mean,

there are ways out of it.

And Danny finds a way out of it,

you know,

by retracing his steps,

by going backwards and forwards.

And once you start, you know,

studying, you know,

synchronicity and symbolism,

then, like, suddenly, like,

you're noticing

in your own life,

like, things start popping out.

Things that you hadn't noticed

before, you know, like your...

point of view is being altered

by your study.

And, you know, it's the...

It's quantum physics,

you know, like,

the act of observing,

like, affects

you know,

the thing observed.

- Hi, Lloyd.

- Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it gets weird

because, like, I'd... you know,

as I've been obsessing over this

thing, you know, I've been home,

like, I'd been out of work

for a while, like...

I have a small son.

You know, we're thinking

of moving out to, like,

somewhere isolated.

I mean, things get strange,

you know?

Like, you're...

like, wow,

my life has actually become

The Shining, you know?

Dies irae

Dies illa

Solvet saeclum in favilla

Teste David cum sibylla

Dies irae

Dies illa

Solvet saeclum in favilla

Teste David cum sibylla

Dies irae

Dies illa

Solvet saeclum in favilla

Teste David cum sibylla
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