Latest / All The Right Movies / The Shining (1980) | Ep. 2 - Part 1

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The Shining (1980) | Ep. 2 - Part 1 · All The Right Movies

0:04
All their old movies. Wendy, let me explain something
0:08
to you. Whenever you come in here and
0:11
interrupt me, you're breaking my concentration, you're
0:14
distracting me. And it will then take me time to
0:17
get back to where I was. Understand?
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Yeah. And we're going to make a new
0:25
rule whenever I'm in here. You hear me typing whether you
0:32
don't hear me typing what the fuck you hear me doing in here
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when I'm in here, that means that I am working.
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That means don't come in. How do you think you can handle
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that? Yeah.
0:43
Why don't you start right now and get the fuck out of here?
0:48
Jack Torrance moves his family into the Overlook Hotel for the
0:51
winter so we can concentrate on his book.
0:54
His son's special ability reveals a troubled history which
0:57
soon begins to impose itself on Jack, leading to a delusional
1:00
and murderous finale. Stanley Kubrick's multilayered
1:03
masterpiece was dismissed by critics, nominated for Razzies
1:06
and hated by Stephen King, but quick reappraisal established
1:10
The Shining as a pop culture icon and one of the greatest
1:13
horror movies ever made. My name is Luke, and with me
1:16
today are the Grady twins themselves.
1:17
Matt. On when my wife tried to prevent
1:20
me from doing my duty, I corrected her.
1:24
And Westie. You got 15 rib roast, 3010 LB
1:28
bags of hamburger. You got 12 turkeys, about 40
1:30
chickens, 50 sirloin steaks, two dozen of both gross and 20 legs
1:35
of lamb. You like them that.
1:37
All the Right movies credit is fine as we check into the
1:40
Overlook Hotel to talk about the Shine.
2:02
Hi everyone, you're listening to All the Right Movies, the best
2:05
goddamn podcast on classic and hit films from Timbuktu to
2:08
Portland, ME of Portland, OR for that matter.
2:12
We have a show for you today, a stuff full of terrifying tales
2:15
and even more terrifying conspiracy theories.
2:18
We're talking about the incredible, the chilling, the
2:20
one, the only, the shining. Before we step into it, nothing
2:24
can stop us talking about Patreon, and we're going to do
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it again. We're on there and we offer
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loads of exclusive podcasts, access to our podcast archive,
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and other content not available anywhere else.
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So fans of this show, you're bound to love it.
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So go to www.patreon.com/all the Right movies for more info and
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to sign up. What are you waiting for?
2:44
Well, exactly. There's loads of stuff there.
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Bang for your books. Also, this episode of All the
2:48
Right Movies is sponsored by A Life on the Farm.
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project and find out more. You can also find the link in
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the show notes as well. But for now, back to the show.
3:37
Matt, why do you want to talk about the Shiner?
3:39
I want to talk about The Shining because Westie is going to go
3:42
out of his mind. If we don't get around with
3:44
horror, he's going to absolutely lose his shit.
3:47
Like, shit's never been lost before.
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So we have to do it. For me personally, when I think
3:53
back to when we did the Cubic podcast, I said then this film,
3:55
it took me 3 attempts to watch it when I was a teenager.
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First two attempts I was too freaked out how to turn it off
4:00
like half an hour in. Soon as those twins stop popping
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up, I'm out of there. Finally made it through and even
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now when I watch it, it's still like shutters my nerves like
4:10
nothing else. I'm a big horror fan anyway, but
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the drawback to pretty much most horror films is the always best
4:17
on the first watch. Just when you go back to them,
4:19
you know where the Trump scares are coming, you know which bits
4:21
you can relax in, which bits you can't relax, and you know how
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it's going to end. There's only a very, very few, a
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handful of films that stand up to this day after repeat the
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incident. Of those handful of films, they
4:33
shine into the top one for me. Yeah, yeah, Wonderful.
4:37
What about you, Westie? Well, I mean, obviously, yeah.
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This film is like it's it's as you know, I just don't shut up
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about it. And I haven't since I first saw
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it when I was about 1516. This film is my best friend.
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And always like, that's weird if, but I know it is.
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But if I ever need like just something to just take us away
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or something to just relate to, not necessarily the story or
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anything else. Just the way it's shot, just the
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way it's constructed, just the technique behind it, just the
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balls behind it, just the the grandeur of it.
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It's just, it's a film with so many questions with very little
5:10
answers. It's got so much of A higher
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sense of intelligence that you just need to explore it.
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It's just this vast maze in itself, which is I think, what
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Kubrick wanted to do and wanted to deliver, and he did on every
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single level. It's literally one of the best
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films ever made, one of the best films I've ever seen.
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And like it rightfully states, it's a masterpiece of modern
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horror. Let's let's talk about it.
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Let's do it. Well, I loved it as a kid and as
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I've got older that has turned into fascination and kind of
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what you were saying, Westie near obsession about Kubrick's
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method and his approach. It's Nicholson and his zenith.
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An absolute genius from Kubrick. I love pretty much everything
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about it. The settings, incredible, the
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atmosphere, the music, the sound design and the almost like
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unfathomable puzzle that Kubrick's weaved.
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It's a truly masterful film. It is.
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It's the same age as us, and the difference is this is still
6:05
interesting. This still looks good.
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I will just clarify that we're going to be largely focusing on
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the international version of the Shiner that runs just under two
6:18
hours version that we're most familiar with being from
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England. However, we will make reference
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to the US version which is about 2425 minutes long as we go.
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The Shiner was produced by Stanley Kubrick, released on the
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23rd of May 1980. Filmed largely at Elstree
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Studios in England. It was Co written by Kubrick and
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Diane Johnson with Kubrick also on directing Judy's.
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It stars Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd and Scat
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Mancruthers. 20 legs. The beginning.
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We're in straight from the off as the first shots of The
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Shining track a yellow car through the rugged natural
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beauty of the Oregon Mountains. Mass opening titles.
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Yep, straight in there, foreboarding right from the off.
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Just my first frame. You're straight right on the
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edge already, aren't you? It's the music.
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It's the way that camera is moving.
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One thing I will say though is one of the many theories that
7:12
gets thrown above with The Shining is that in the sequence
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you can see cubics facing the clouds.
7:17
Yeah. You can't.
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No, I can't. Sorry.
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Sorry to throw that one out of the window through there, but
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no, you can't. You can see anything in the
7:25
clouds. Yeah, exactly.
7:26
Yeah. Whatever you want.
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So this comes from that Room 237 documentary that goes through
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all the crackpot theories. We'll go through them in a bit.
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But I was watching that and then came back to watching The
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Shining and I got like a millimetre from the screen and I
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couldn't find it. I could not find it for love nor
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money. So I may be there, but I just
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couldn't see it. I.
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Mean I doubt it's there. No, I really can't see you being
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there at all. But you don't even need half
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cubic space neck because this sequence is good enough.
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I mean, you know the theory about the brown note in music?
8:00
Yeah, you know where? If you don't know, what is it?
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It's that there's a certain frequency, like blow the range,
8:05
a human even, And if someone plays it or finds it, people
8:08
will automatically shit themselves.
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I think Floyd tried to do it in a gig, didn't they?
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Yeah, yeah, Pink Floyd, I do. So for me, this opening
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sequence, it's like twang in the brown note already because I'm
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the so on edge right from the start.
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And I don't know why. Something about this is really
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freaking me out. And I love just how that car
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just looks so small against that landscape, so isolated.
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And don't know if you notice, but it's the only car going
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forward as well. All the other cars you see,
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though, either pulled over to the side of the road or they're
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going the other way. So Jack's car is the only car
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that's heading towards the overlook.
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And it just sets up this for boarding atmosphere really.
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Really brilliantly. I love it.
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Very nice, Westie. It's the music that gets me and
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it always will every single time that I know that Kubrick wasn't
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even around for these shots. These were done by the producer
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John Holland and the second unit director, Douglas Milsen, who
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you know, Douglas Milsen, amazing.
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Anyway, he was, he turned into DP on Full Metal Jacket once
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John Alcott moved to America. So it's all a big family unit
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and everybody kind of trusts everybody else.
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So they might open did these helicopter shots.
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And I just absolutely love them. I love the way there's just
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reflection straight away, which is a theme all the way through
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the film. There's a duality, you know that
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They said that they had to wait three or four days for the wind
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to be absolutely perfect because if the wind was any higher,
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would it just shoot the camera? They needed it to be silky
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smooth. It gets me every single time.
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Just the absolute precision of this, how you are just, it's
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like you've been strapped in and you're just being taken
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somewhere and you don't necessarily want to go there,
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but it's taken you there anyway. And Stanley Kubrick spent four
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months debating the colour of these titles.
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Like four months. To get that, you should have
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been in. There and I was like, may just
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make it yellow, but he couldn't because the Beatle was yellow.
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So I let him off. It's still there in some way.
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He knows what he's doing and there's some of this is featured
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in the original cut of Blade Runner.
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So Ridley Scott got in touch with Kubrick and said, I know
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you, you would have shot the shit out of that.
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Can you send us a bit, a bit of footage over so I can use it at
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the end of Blade Runner for a happy ending?
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Do you know how much he sent over?
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How much? 17 hours.
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There you go. There you go, Ridley.
10:21
Lunatic. It's that open and pull as soon
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as we start with that, like kind of dreaded synth notes.
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They are absolutely amazing, fantastic.
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And that overhead of the car sneaking through the trees and
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the music throughout the film is is some of the best I've ever
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heard. So impressive.
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Yeah, it's amazing. It's incredible.
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It was scored by somebody called Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind.
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They scored the entire picture, but Kubrick only used a few cues
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in a few scenes. Yeah, with the majority of its
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excerpts from Polish composer Christophe Penderecki.
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Right. OK, Yeah.
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But the sound is absolutely incredible, and it's the noises
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in this scene, the kind of like weird skittish howls and
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screeches, and it perfectly reflects that doom that you feel
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throughout. Yeah, it's all the way through.
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This film is not about what happens.
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You know what's going to happen. You're told immediately it's how
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it's going to happen and when it's going to happen.
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This is the only film. The only Kubrick film that
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hasn't got directed by Stanley Kubrick is The Final Title.
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Really. But then he runs the he runs the
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front titles backwards, so the whole thing is meant to be a
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loop. It's all circular.
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It's all circular. Right.
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Nice. Love it.
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What I find amazing is that it was second unit who shot this.
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Kubrick didn't like to fly and lived in England so he didn't
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want to fancy coming over to Oregon to take some wonderful
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shots. Not fuck that, you do it.
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Exactly. Didn't care.
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But I don't understand, considering he's such as hands
11:53
on auteur with his fingerprints through all aspects of the
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filmmaking, that he was just allowed the second unit to go
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and shoot this. It's fantastic.
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He was really close with with like Dougie Mills.
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And if you watch, there's an amazing documentary I watched
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the other day called Staircases to Nowhere, and he's interviewed
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on that. And what a sweet man, what a
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lovely, lovely man. But you can tell he's just
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Kubrick just trusted him. The amount of direction that
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Kubrick would give you to go and shoot something, you know
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exactly what he wants. The exterior of the Overlook
12:22
Hotel is the Timberline Lodge in Oregon that was used just for
12:26
the exterior shots and then the majority of the rest of it was
12:29
shot at L Street Studios. Legend goes that Kubrick sent
12:32
over a three man team on a fact find mission to Colorado where
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they spent three entire months researching the whole history of
12:39
the entire state. Came back with all of the
12:41
information. What's he going to do with that?
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The great thing about them exteriors, you know, the,
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there's the, the kind of plush virgin snow exterior, there's
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the summer exteriors where you just see the hotel.
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It's just a static shot. It's just, it's just locked off.
12:58
That was Doug Nelson and the producer John Holland.
13:02
They went to the hotel and they stayed there and they had an RFX
13:05
camera. They had four magazines of film
13:08
and they had to get up early before anyone else did.
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And they walked around the back way so they didn't get any
13:12
footprints in the snore. And they said the waited long
13:15
enough to get an exposure at F2. And then they just shot that
13:18
scene. And if you look, there's two
13:20
lights on in the windows of the hotel.
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That's where they stayed. There were their rooms.
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They left the lights on intentionally.
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So every time you see an exterior after a title card,
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that's just them. Two guys, lovely, 22 guys,
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amazing. Fantastic, what a fact.
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I love it. So we're now looking at the
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scene directly after the titles as we meet Jack Torrance, who
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has an interview as a caretaker for the Overlook Hotel.
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Westie the interview. Great, wonderful.
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Once you introduce that hotel and there's that tracking shot
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that comes round, it swoops, lovely, talks to the
13:50
receptionist, then he's in, and then you've got Ullman who's
13:54
great. He's red, right?
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Hair. Yeah, great hair.
13:56
He's like very presidential. He looks a bit like JFK.
13:59
Yeah. This is all intentional.
14:01
He's, he's in red, white and blue.
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He's supposed to represent America in this kind of like
14:05
ideal. His, his performance is
14:07
fantastic. And I love the back and forth
14:09
between him and Jack. I love the way it crossfades and
14:12
goes back and he introduced to Wendy and Danny and then
14:15
crossfade. That's him.
14:15
Again, that's an exposition scene, but it just tells you
14:18
Lords about the family dynamic. Who tells you that we're going
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to live in this hotel for the winter?
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We'll get to meet Tony as well. And we established that bond
14:26
between Danny and Wendy that's really strong.
14:28
And that's all within for us in the UK version a minute.
14:33
Yeah, a few minutes. Fantastic.
14:34
That whole scene where Danny's talking with his finger, like
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Danny Lloyd came up with that in the audition, like that was his
14:41
idea. And it seems so genuine.
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You just say, well, that's how he's going to address what he's
14:45
doing. You know, the anxiety is already
14:47
there. Wendy's quite anxious.
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She's sitting and she's like just smoking, overeating.
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Permanently smoking. And just that back and forth and
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then you have that amazing story about Grady.
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But the thing that gets me in this version, in our version,
15:01
Bill Watson, what a fucking crazy.
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Fuck all, yeah. Horrible man.
15:06
He just sits there and just like looks at Allman, looks at Jack
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and then doesn't do anything. And even in the scenes after
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that said before I turn you over the bill to do what?
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He's creepy as shit. The only word he says is fine.
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I find that a bit creepy because of the cup, but that's all
15:27
right. I think Nicholson, once you see
15:29
him here and he gets that Grady story, I think that's just so
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brilliantly done when it's like, you know, just a horror film
15:36
addict. And that real slow crossfade is
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so amazing. Yeah, I love it because of how
15:43
it deals out this exposition. No mess and doesn't take any
15:46
longer than it needs to compact it on into this little story
15:49
coming from Almond. And I just love watching
15:51
Nicholson during this. Because.
15:53
You just get the sense that, you know, he's been really polite
15:55
and he wants to like, Almond. But even now I just get the
15:58
sense he just wants to be left alone.
16:00
You can really. He's kind of like, Itchy in a
16:02
cell. Like, yeah, let's get the
16:03
interview done. Let's get you all out the hotel
16:05
so I can just come here. And he doesn't even care about
16:08
this history that's been given him, which would freak most
16:11
people out. Yeah, he's cool with it.
16:14
Yeah, he's. But.
16:17
He's like, and I can see why your people in Denver waiting
16:19
for you to tell me fuck off. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:25
It's like for politeness, isn't it?
16:27
Yeah, I don't care. I just wanted to come here by
16:30
myself and just right can be pleased as end this interview.
16:34
So both powers just got that little bit of impatience to it.
16:36
Yeah. It's for just like a simple
16:38
dialogue saying to me, Wes, he's gone through.
16:40
Brilliantly there. Yeah.
16:41
I really like Omen in this, the way that he's kind of like half
16:44
embarrassed when he's talking about Grady chopping of your
16:47
life and kids and he's kind of like nervous laughing.
16:49
Great performance. Yeah, it's a bit, but he's like,
16:53
it almost feels like it didn't happen here, but it did all
16:59
right. It gets really lighthearted
17:02
about it and he goes into the details, like chopped them up in
17:06
little pieces and yeah, two barrels of a shotgun in his
17:09
mouth. I don't need that much detail.
17:13
Then they will say, well, rest assured, that's not going to
17:14
happen with me, but you know where it is, you know where it
17:18
is. As an audience, you're like,
17:20
that's what's going to happen that you should describe the
17:22
film without. Those aren't the reveals of it.
17:24
Yeah, amazing. There are a number of crackpot
17:27
theories that we've talked about already.
17:31
I'm going to give you a summary of a few of them that are
17:34
outlined in the Room 237 documentary.
17:36
And they're going to call them all crackpot.
17:39
Well, we'll see. Yes, then.
17:44
No time for any of them. So in this scene specifically,
17:49
you mentioned there Bill Watson, what's his purpose?
17:51
He says no words and just looks weird, Jack, the whole time.
17:56
And then you've got what people refer to as the false window,
17:59
the window behind Allman, looking at the structure of the
18:02
hotel and the hallways outside the office.
18:04
It's surrounded by interior hallways and apartment doorway
18:07
as well. And John Harlan, the exec
18:09
producer, said the set was very deliberately built to be offbeat
18:12
and off the track so the huge ballroom would never actually
18:16
fit in. The audience is deliberately
18:18
made to not know where they're going.
18:20
People say the Shining doesn't make sense.
18:22
It's not supposed to. Exactly.
18:24
So a lot of people have talked about the false window and what
18:26
does this mean, What are the interpretations of that?
18:29
And that is right in the structure and the architecture
18:32
of the building. It doesn't fit.
18:35
There's an undeniable undercurrent of reference to
18:37
Native American genocide throughout the picture.
18:41
The hotels built on an Indian burial ground that we're told
18:44
there are Native American artifacts and artwork all over
18:47
the hotel. The Calumet Bacon soda in the
18:50
storage units. And they were strategically
18:52
placed by Kubrick so that only certain parts of the label were
18:55
shown and a different part of the label on each can.
18:58
So meticulous must have meant something.
19:01
Obviously the blood from the elevator scene is the blood of
19:04
the Native Americans, and Wendy even has a nice little yellow
19:07
cord on with Native American symbolism as well.
19:09
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Also there's a strong Holocaust
19:12
subtext as well. There's German made typewriter,
19:15
the Stuffington Eagle designed T-shirt that Jack has on, the
19:20
number 42 pops up on Danny's shirts and Wendy takes 42 swings
19:24
of the baseball batter Jack. Wow.
19:26
Yeah, so 1942 was the year that number of Jews were taken to
19:30
concentration camps amid the the Holocaust atrocities.
19:33
Yeah, apparently there's 42 cars in the Overlook parking lot.
19:37
Fantastic as well, yeah. And in the extended cut, Wendy
19:42
and Danny are watching film on TV and it's called the Summer of
19:44
42. Lovely.
19:46
And if you look at the mirror theory, which in my opinion is
19:49
probably the most believable, is that every time there's a
19:52
reflection of something, you say a duality, which is what this
19:56
film's about. It's about learning who you are
19:59
really, your true reflection of yourself.
20:01
That's why I buy input so much as I think that's what it's
20:04
about. I'm on board with the genocide
20:06
thing. I'm on board.
20:07
I get that. I get that.
20:08
Can have a number of subtexts. You might be talking about the
20:10
duality of man, good versus evil and all of that in the film, but
20:15
there's also a few others in there as well that do by this
20:18
genocide the Native Americans. About that?
20:21
Like Oman's got an erection when he shakes Jack's hand.
20:24
What? Yeah, that's one of the most
20:26
ridiculous. Yeah, it's a paper tray.
20:28
Come on, you know, this this Kubrick didn't sit there and go,
20:31
let's get that shot, right? Just to what looks like he's got
20:33
an erection when he shakes Jack's hand.
20:34
Because that makes more sense. Yeah, it doesn't bring anything.
20:37
Does it No, it's intelligent, but he's he's more intelligent
20:40
than that. Like he's not a fucking idiot.
20:42
It's not American Pie, but like that's the whole point.
20:45
Like the stuff that you get from it is it is intentional, but I
20:49
think we make it like such a serious thing.
20:52
Where to Kubrick, that's that's nothing.
20:54
That's easy. Oh, it's the genocide of the
20:56
Native Americans. Yeah, that's easy.
20:58
Trey folder penis? Definitely not.
21:00
No, definitely not. She swings baseball, but he has
21:04
tomahawk axe. Yeah, fine.
21:05
America again. Yeah, I get it.
21:07
Duality. She tends it of a squaw all the
21:09
way through the film. She walks through the maze in
21:11
red, white and blue wearing cowboy boots, and then she turns
21:13
into a squaw at the end, defending him, who is then in
21:16
red, white and blue attacking her.
21:18
So yeah, I get it. Like it is there, but to him,
21:20
that's that simple. That's toast.
21:22
It's easy. It's serial.
21:23
It's not probably to us. The fuck, baby, How do you even
21:26
think of that? To him, he's just like, this is
21:27
chess, it's easy. Yeah.
21:30
So Damian Lennox, one of our patrons asked what our thoughts
21:33
are on this and that's the benefit of supporting us on
21:36
patron. You can ask us questions.
21:38
Damian, I hope we've answered your question then.
21:40
Yep. Did you ask it?
21:43
We didn't. You just took over.
21:45
Sorry, right about I'll. I'll read it in.
21:49
Knew this was going to happen. God, so something usual goings
21:55
on already at the overlook. It's going to get weirder,
21:57
though. Yeah.
21:59
Good. The director.
22:06
When I want to focus our attention on the one and only
22:08
director in Maestro, that is Stanley Kubrick.
22:10
So, Westie, what do you think of Kubrick's work on The Shiner?
22:13
Well, I mean, there's nothing else to say apart from absolute
22:18
silence, is there? Hushed, hushed response.
22:21
Soft tone, like I, I don't know if I'm worthy.
22:25
I don't know if I'm worthy to talk about how good it is.
22:27
Like I'm I'm not like as a director.
22:31
It's going to church on this one.
22:32
And to create this film that we're still talking about now,
22:35
we're still incredibly interested in, this is a trip
22:38
inside of Stanley Kubrick's mind.
22:40
This is a trip instead of Stanley Kubrick's technique,
22:44
this is a glimpse of what he's capable of as a human being.
22:46
And it's fucking amazing. It's the set design, the you
22:52
know, it's all on sound stages in England.
22:55
You wouldn't think for one second, would you?
22:56
No. You wouldn't.
22:57
The performances he goes takes and takes and takes famously
23:01
because he's looking for something that no one else is
23:04
looking for. Garrett Brown turned up with a
23:06
Steadicam and he told them how to use his own invention and
23:09
made it better. Like this guy was an absolute
23:12
revelation to this medium that we love called cinema.
23:16
And if it wasn't for this man, it would just be a lot more
23:20
boring and it wouldn't be as engaging or as interesting or
23:24
anything else. So his work on this is
23:26
absolutely monumental. It's fucking brilliant.
23:30
What a. Wonderful.
23:32
Now, Matt, I'm sure you can be as passionate as and as eloquent
23:36
as Westie, but can you be as tender with your vocals?
23:39
It's. Just in case he's listening.
23:43
As delicate as Westie. I thought that was a bit brash.
23:47
Earlier on I thought I'd like this comic.
23:52
No, his work, he is absolutely masterful.
23:55
Like there's never been a film before and there's never been a
23:58
film since where the appearance of title cards scare me.
24:02
Yeah, like the two here. When that Tuesday comes in, it
24:05
slams in with a bang. Yeah, and.
24:07
It just says Tuesday. That would be understand
24:10
everyone scared of Monday but like Tuesday a month later.
24:15
Bam. Yeah, yeah, fantastic.
24:17
It's just unreal how we thought of little elements like that.
24:21
And we've talked there about, you know, all these conspiracy
24:24
theories. They're in there because Cubic
24:27
has built a film capable of withstanding that kind of
24:30
analysis. And I can't even get my head
24:33
around how he built this film from the ground up, how we
24:36
thought of it on an intellectual level, what it was going to be
24:38
about, what it could be about. And he's going to let people
24:41
make up their own minds about that, how we thought of it on a
24:44
physical level at to think who else would think about the hotel
24:48
in the way that he didn't think, right.
24:50
I'm going to do this. Yes, that does make sense.
24:51
But I'm not going to, you know, flag it up.
24:53
If people realize it, great. If the if they don't, if they
24:56
miss it, that's absolutely fine as well.
24:58
And what he's done, he's made a film where you get out of the
25:01
Shining, whatever it is you bring to it.
25:03
If you just if you just want to watch a horror film and get the
25:06
crap scared out of you, it's going to absolutely deliver that
25:09
because he's designed this film to do that.
25:11
But if you're like us and you want to talk about it and you
25:13
want to investigate it and you want to find out what it means,
25:16
what it doesn't mean, which bits hold up to analysis, which bits
25:19
don't, he's put that all in there for you discover as well.
25:22
It's just it's on another level than it is the detail and the
25:26
thought process behind this. The stuff he's put in there
25:29
would only ever come from Kubrick.
25:30
Exactly. I totally agree.
25:31
And he's having so much fun doing it at the same time, he's
25:35
enjoying the craft, and he's using it to its absolute
25:38
advantage. Every single bit of this is just
25:40
so watchable. And it just seems to come as
25:44
second nature from Kubrick. I love those time stamps.
25:47
Like you mentioned. It goes from months to days to
25:49
hours. As the walls are closing in,
25:51
things are getting more claustrophobic.
25:52
Yeah, fantastic. And I think he's just messing
25:55
with us from the get go, on the edge of our seat and
25:57
disorientated by loads of things that are production design,
26:00
which changes around all the time.
26:02
When Jack's typing away. There's furniture behind them.
26:05
Then there isn't the iconic, like, hexagonal carpet upstairs
26:09
where Danny's playing with his cars.
26:11
That carpet changes direction when the ball comes rolled in.
26:14
Yeah. Keep an eye out for the hexagons
26:16
facing Danny as the ball rolls in.
26:17
And then when he stands up, it's pointed outwards.
26:20
That's just, I mean, just disoriented.
26:22
Who will put that level of detail in?
26:24
Yeah. And people are still saying,
26:26
well, what does that mean? Yeah, it's not for a reason.
26:29
What does it mean? It's a chess game.
26:31
This whole film is Stanley Kubrick playing chess with the
26:34
audience and he's about 5 moves ahead of you every single time.
26:39
It's such a joy to do and you don't mind losing at the end,
26:43
you just. Question because everybody.
26:44
Loses. Yeah, yeah.
26:46
And this first horror film as well, yeah.
26:50
Out the park first time, yeah. No bother, lads.
26:52
Done it. Yeah, done.
26:53
See you later. I think although it is a really
26:56
beloved film, I think that because it is classed as a
26:59
horror film, it doesn't necessarily get as much credit
27:02
as it should. I know that sounds crazy because
27:04
it's like massive film and everybody loves it, but the
27:08
level of technical prowess and the number of layers to the film
27:11
that we talked about just makes it one of the most like
27:14
incredible achievements in film history.
27:17
It's not talked about if people talk about like Citizen Kane or
27:21
or whatever, like in the annals of the greatest films ever, but
27:25
really the technical achievement it really.
27:27
Is oh, it's a bit monumental, 100% fantastic.
27:31
So out of all the genius moves that Kubrick pulls in this film,
27:35
have you got a favorite? Mine is the way he just every
27:39
single shot is like science. It's just, it defies what art
27:45
is, what creativity is. Everything's central, the frame.
27:48
There's such a symmetry to this film.
27:50
There's such a precision to this that you know that he's just,
27:53
he's got control of absolutely every element of it.
27:57
Thinking about this, the bit that always sends out to me
28:00
because it's one of the most iconic moments is that elevator
28:02
of blood sequence. Yeah.
28:04
Oh yeah. I mean, the way it looks, the
28:08
way it just splashes around the side of the wall, the way it
28:11
sprays up, just managing the physics of that, that just
28:16
trying to think what just makes me cry.
28:18
Don't. Stop talking about it.
28:23
Honestly, it does like how he did it, like getting the speed
28:25
right to move the furniture out the way and then slowing it down
28:28
because it could be so ridiculously over the top and
28:31
ludicrous. But it's not.
28:33
It just puts you on edge straight away and in the film
28:35
this bit the backlog of a place called Ballroom Wood and they
28:39
used so much fake blood that obviously they had to wash off
28:41
later on the nearby village of Ballroom Wood.
28:44
It's good as in it's range we're running red with this fake blood
28:47
days afterwards. 900 gallons or something wasn't.
28:50
It yeah, that's amazing. Yeah.
28:51
Can you imagine living there when that?
28:53
Happened the. River runs red in ballroom.
28:55
Wood, Yeah. How many takes that was?
28:58
33. 33 takes, right? So 900 gallons of blood.
29:02
And it took how long? It was about nine days to reset
29:06
and do it again. Wow.
29:08
So the Dead 3 takes a bit and the overall, because it took
29:12
nine days to set up again and the cougar had to be available
29:15
and Dougie Millsen had to shoot at that to crank the camera.
29:17
This shot took a year to do. Yeah, the planning of it.
29:24
So it's not just you show up on set for a couple of months, no
29:27
shoot and then the film's finished, it's pre production.
29:31
It's all of this. I mean, the whole thing must
29:33
have taken Kubrick about three years to do.
29:36
Must have done. Amazing.
29:37
Yeah, incredible. The original trailer for The
29:40
Shining. It's just that shot of the blood
29:43
spilling out the elevator. So it should be.
29:45
But the MPA didn't want blood to be shown, so threatened to
29:48
remove it. And Kubrick says that's not
29:52
blood, that's rusty water. So they went all right, OK,
29:54
fine. It was called Kensington Gore,
29:59
which is what they got a certain type of blood, but there is
30:02
rumours that it was taken from an abattoir and it was actually
30:05
cow's blood, real, real blood in the in the final take.
30:08
It's going to say it looks like the most realistic blood I've
30:10
ever seen, Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
30:12
I don't know, you know, three times that much.
30:16
No for the last take, because especially the last take it
30:18
didn't look like blood. So the Kensit and Go was
30:21
replaced and they put real blood in.
30:22
So what you actually see is real blood.
30:23
Well, Yousef actually, when filming stopped, he gave the the
30:26
twin girls as like a memento production.
30:28
You gave them two vials of it. That's nice of you.
30:34
Thanks, Stanley. We've been on set for 13 months.
30:38
Yeah, there you go. I've got a lovely little present
30:40
for you. A vial of blood.
30:43
Can I have a steady Cam? Or a try?
30:49
Can we anything? Or a rug give give them a rug
30:52
each. Really tie the room together.
30:57
Tie the hotel again. I think there are laws that we
31:01
could talk about and we have talked about and we'll talk
31:03
about, but what I'm mesmerized by is that this film's just
31:07
confounded everybody and every one of its viewers for 40 years.
31:11
Yeah, there are documentaries on it, whole films discussing every
31:14
tiny little detail, and it probably means nothing.
31:17
Or the majority of them might not mean anything at all.
31:19
And then Kubrick was just having a massive laugh, laughing into
31:22
his grave. Come 99, Billy Friedkin said.
31:25
Kubrick's films don't reveal all of their mysteries at once.
31:28
And I doubt this film will ever reveal all of its mysteries to
31:31
anybody. We'll be talking about it for
31:33
decades and decades longer, I think.
31:35
Well, of course the will. Yeah, of course the will.
31:36
Kubrick had this mantra at the time.
31:38
He would say it's a quote from HP Lovecraft and it is in all
31:42
things that are mysterious, never explain.
31:45
Amazing. Absolutely.
31:46
Fantastic John Baxter, Kubrick's biographer, said that Kubrick
31:50
felt he was being out pierced in certain areas of film and that
31:54
other people were doing things better than him so he wanted to
31:56
come in and do something great that would blow everybody out of
32:00
the water. So a film that exemplified this
32:03
is him being out pierced was The Exorcist.
32:05
Billy freaking film, right? OK.
32:07
And he was actually given the opportunity to direct that film
32:10
by. Warners.
32:11
And he also was given the opportunity to direct the second
32:14
one as well, The Exorcist 2, which I mean, he should have.
32:17
I mean, he definitely shouldn't have the source materials.
32:20
Not good enough for Cure Break, but it's a shocker.
32:22
Of a film. Would it take them ten years to
32:24
just, you know, iron out the fucking?
32:26
Crap. He couldn't make his passion
32:29
project Napoleon after the kind of relative failure of Barry
32:33
Linden, so he had to find a project that would make him
32:35
money. He'd grown an interesting,
32:37
ghostly gothic horror stories, and he told a friend that he
32:40
wanted to make the world's scariest movie involving a
32:43
series of episodes that will play upon the nightmare fears of
32:45
the audience. He'd read The Shining, loved it,
32:49
and called it one of the most ingenious and exciting stories
32:52
of the genre that he'd ever read.
32:54
Yeah, high praise. High praise.
32:57
Talked about multiple takes. He took this to new heights with
33:00
the shine and he had outlined a four month shoot, but it ended
33:03
up being around 13 or 14 months. I mean, that's a bummer, isn't
33:07
it? Yeah, it's that's long.
33:09
It seemed like fun. This had a not gone effect of
33:12
other films due for production at Elstree.
33:14
So real is The Lost Ark, Warren Beatty's Reds and The Empire
33:18
Strike Back were all delayed because Kubrick was pissing
33:21
about with a steady camera. Well, there is none, but there
33:23
was a fire that delayed them for six months, which will
33:25
obviously. Yeah, yeah, there is that fire.
33:27
It's not necessarily his fault. Well.
33:30
I know he was laughing about it. Yeah, he was laughing on.
33:33
Pissing himself. Yeah, he loves it.
33:35
Yeah. That photo was fantastic.
33:37
Yeah, it is brilliant. On those multiple takes, Kubrick
33:40
felt there was like a cycle of stages and actor goes through
33:43
when doing multiple takes. So for example, Nicholson would
33:46
bring his A game on take one, but then the next 10 might be
33:50
more pedestrian. So Kubrick discounted these to
33:54
get to takes 20s, thirties, 40s and beyond where there was a lot
33:57
more kind of over the top outrageous stuff going on.
34:00
And he liked the idea of mixing first takes with take 120 or
34:06
whatever to form what you've been talking about, Westie, that
34:09
duality and to give a sense of unease or imbalance to
34:12
proceedings. So an example of this, when Jack
34:15
has his nightmare about chopping up Wendy and Danny, he's on the
34:18
floor and he starts to drool. That was done in two takes.
34:21
Right. That elevator that was done in
34:24
three takes and then we'll get on as we go on to the instances
34:28
of multiple takes and multiple multiples and multiples of takes
34:31
as well. Again, really interestingly,
34:33
this was one of the first films that actually used kind of a
34:36
live feed, so you could see what was happening as it was getting
34:40
shot. So Kubrick had like a nine inch
34:42
monitor and he was watching on that, but he was talking to
34:45
people about technical elements, about the dollies and
34:47
redesigning wheels. He was telling Nicholson to just
34:49
go for another take. And there's a wonderful story on
34:51
that documentary that I was talking about from the
34:52
production designer who said that Nicholson came up.
34:55
Kubrick said, what did you think of the last one?
34:57
He's like, yeah, yeah, It was all right.
34:58
You want to do you want to do another one?
35:00
So did you notice the new ones that I put in?
35:02
The last one was like, what? What was that?
35:04
I shut one of my eyes because I feel it's more menacing if I've
35:07
got one of my eyes shut. And Kubrick just went, well,
35:10
yeah, OK, but do it again, but keep both of your eyes open.
35:14
So Nicholson was like, yeah, OK, so it did it again.
35:17
And then Kubrick was like, that's it, That's the take.
35:19
Nicholson said later. I didn't have one of my eyes
35:22
shut. He wasn't even looking.
35:23
So he said I just want to be getting over with.
35:27
So just brought his attention back to what I was doing.
35:29
As soon as he saw what I was doing, that's it.
35:31
Good print. Lovely.
35:34
Clever Jack. Yeah.
35:37
You mentioned as well, Wesley, that he was an avid chess fan.
35:40
Kubrick would get round many tricky situations with George C
35:43
Scott on Doctor Strangelove by beating him a chess.
35:45
Yeah, yeah. And Tony Burton, who's in the US
35:48
cut of this film but it's cut out of the UK cut, arrived on
35:52
set with a chess set he wanted to play in between takes.
35:55
I mean, he's in in it for a minute or something.
35:57
Like that? And Kubrick took one look at it
36:00
completely halted production so he could squeeze in some games.
36:03
Fold in. He showed that for a fold in.
36:05
That's it guys, right? Everyone go home.
36:08
Don't. Fucking brilliant.
36:10
He's got the steady Cam. He looks at Tony Burton.
36:12
Oh, chess is it? Yes, Sit down.
36:14
Garrett Brown. Lovely.
36:18
The one I suppose you would see a special effect shot in the
36:20
film is that kind of God shot of the maze that Jack is looking
36:24
into is Wendy and Danny walking around it.
36:27
Kubrick did this by building a replica of the middle section of
36:29
that maze and placing it next to a tall apartment building.
36:33
He got the camera crew to hang off the top of the building to
36:36
get the shot. And then that shot of Danny and
36:38
Wendy walking backwards and forwards that was superimposed
36:41
over the top of a scale model of the maze.
36:44
Wonderful. Can't tell can you at all.
36:46
Not at all. I was looking it was analyzing
36:49
that frame when I was watching it yesterday and you just can't
36:51
see. You can't see the break at all.
36:53
Not at all. No.
36:54
Wonderful. Looks incredible.
36:55
We've talked about Kubrick's career in detail on our Ranking
36:58
Kubrick podcast, which is still available to download, so check
37:01
it out after this. Yeah.
37:03
But in summary, Kubrick was already considered a genius
37:06
filmmaker at this point, with the likes of Paths of Glory,
37:09
2001 and A Clockwork Orange under his belt.
37:11
So a true author of work making one of the best films ever.
37:15
Definitely. You're not going to give Barry
37:16
Linden any screen time at all, are you?
37:19
Not at all. Fuck Barry.
37:27
The cast. Me and cast of The Shining,
37:31
we're going to focus solely on the Torrance family in the cast,
37:34
so only one place to start and that is with Jack Nicholson as
37:37
Jack Torrance. Oh yeah.
37:39
Matt Jack Torrance, Jack Nicholson, Go He's.
37:42
Just so intense and I just don't think anyone else could have got
37:47
to that like intensity that he gets to in this and the way he
37:50
does on such a flick of the switch almost.
37:53
Even when he starts to lose it, there's still just like those
37:55
little elements of the man maybe he was back in the day before
37:59
kind of the the pressures of being a family man got.
38:01
Yeah. But he doesn't overplay that
38:04
because I don't think that there's room in the story for
38:06
that. I think you have got to get to a
38:07
certain point of madness with Jack the character and Nicholson
38:11
gets you there better than anyone.
38:12
Anyone else I think could have done.
38:14
Yeah, absolutely amazing. What about USD?
38:17
Yeah, there's such a precision to this role and a real personal
38:21
undertone that I think has been well documented.
38:24
But I don't think people knew it at the time.
38:25
You know, the divorce he was going through involved in, you
38:29
know, writing a scene and saying the cougar, I need to put that
38:31
in there. And I think Jack Nicholson in
38:33
this is personally my favorite performance.
38:36
There's a loads to go off. I mean, Cuckoo's Nest is
38:38
amazing. Chinatown is amazing. 5 Easy
38:41
pieces is amazing. Even as good as it gets, it's
38:45
probably as good as it gets. You know, for that type of
38:48
performance from that guy, he's the best person I've seen.
38:52
Do the Kubrick stay? Nobody else that's.
38:55
Amazing. It nails it.
38:57
He doesn't do anything. It's one look and a push in and
39:00
that pushes it. That could go closer for me.
39:03
It was great on set. He was lovely with everybody.
39:05
You know, he would basically would take his time doing his
39:08
lines and doing his performances because he knew it was take off
39:10
the take off the take. So he would delay a little bit
39:13
and get at 8:00. Once he got to 8:00 at night, he
39:15
was on all the time, so his pay just went through the roof.
39:18
So he's got 8:00 at night and every member of the crew got a
39:22
glass of champagne because, hey, John Nicholson's on overtime.
39:25
But everyone enjoyed it. How wonderful.
39:27
You know, it's just, it's just great.
39:29
He's absorbed by this performance as Jack Torrance is
39:31
by the hotel and you're told you get it.
39:34
It's it's superb. Love men.
39:36
Embassy watchable, Fantastic. Yeah, I think it's an amazing
39:40
performance. Few things that I've picked out.
39:42
And this the film was shot in sequence, which is unusual for a
39:46
film to be shot sequentially and attracts Jack's gradual decline.
39:50
But Nicholson is kind of able to jump seamlessly from this
39:53
decline back to an A relative normality.
39:56
So example of this is when he's been to Room 237 and like the
40:00
worst of the worst has happened, horror of horrors.
40:02
And he's no coming back from that, but he goes back to the
40:06
the hotel room he sees. Sees Wendy and and says that
40:09
Danny did it to himself and he's normal Jack that we kind of saw
40:13
in the interview. So he's able to flit between the
40:17
insane Jack and the normal Jack amazingly.
40:20
And you mentioned about the cubic stare.
40:22
That's one of the most impressive shots I've ever seen
40:24
where it's that slow push in when Wendy and Danny are out in
40:29
the snow and Jack's just looking out, like up through his
40:33
eyelids. His eyebrows are raised up as
40:35
well. That's them dead eyes.
40:38
What a what a shot. Think about that scene as well
40:40
as just that light. The way it's lit, it's just such
40:42
a white light. And that's the only part of the
40:45
set that was lit from an external source.
40:47
Everything else uses practicals. So John Alcott used practicals
40:50
and built them all in so that the whole set was lit by what
40:53
you actually see. But outside of that window,
40:56
there was 70,000 watts worth of light pumped in.
41:02
And it looks legit, doesn't it? In perspective?
41:04
Like if you stick that the light on in the sitting room, that's
41:06
15 watts and they wondered why there was a fire.
41:13
No idea how that burned down. Oh, fuck me.
41:15
I don't know, probably because of that, but that's just the way
41:19
that's lit And obviously he's looking directly at the lights
41:21
as well, which would be completely disorientated, but
41:24
nails it nails on every level. It's and he's changed the way I
41:28
eat peanuts forever when I saw this.
41:31
The bites says he just, like, makes that.
41:34
Yeah, like that. It's just this really bombastic
41:37
performance. He's so happy to be at the bar.
41:38
It's fucking excellent. He just, he he's really cool.
41:41
And then he just flips and you just think, Jesus Christ.
41:44
And I've never seen an actor act so well with just the rise, just
41:48
the eyebrows. Yeah, it creates such.
41:50
Eyebrows. Yeah, just.
41:51
His eyebrows create, yeah, just such an emotion through it.
41:55
Where do you stand on eyebrow work, Nicholson or Roger Moore?
42:00
Roger uses 1, Nicholson uses 2. So Nicholson for me.
42:05
Different eyebrows, different needs.
42:09
So. If you want to be scared, let's
42:11
go with Jack. If you want to be charmed, let's
42:12
go with Rog Cider. Sometimes lager bond, sometimes
42:20
torrents different. There's some really what I think
42:28
are amazing character nuances in Nicholson's performance of Jack
42:33
Torrance and comes up a few times in the film when he's
42:37
trapping Wendy in the Colorado lounge up the stairs and she's
42:40
swinging the bat. When you give me the bat, give
42:42
me the bat and he goes. It's that nice.
42:46
And then when he's gesturing when you go into the gold room
42:49
after she's just accused him of of beating Danny or by
42:52
strangling Danny. He's kind of he's gone crazy
42:55
with his hands and. If you notice on that scene as
42:58
well that every time he passes a mirror, so it's like the
43:01
reflection of himself, like he sees himself and he reacts to
43:04
it, that he doesn't want to see himself.
43:05
He doesn't. He doesn't like who he is, which
43:07
is wonderful when he sticks his tongue out when he's talking.
43:11
Wendy with the bat. Wendy brilliant.
43:17
About when he's in the storage room and he's he's sounding like
43:21
go and check out the Snowcats and go check it out.
43:23
And say tap on the door, it's not coming to you.
43:26
That cover on the floor as well. Have you seen the behind the
43:29
scenes of Kubrick? Just like underneath them.
43:31
With a light bulb. Yeah, shooting up super.
43:33
Yeah, fantastic. I love all the little passive
43:36
progressive bitty house going with Wendy through film.
43:38
Like when she brings him the eggs, it starts off quite nice
43:41
and charming and quite like, but then she gives me advice on how
43:44
to write. Oh, it'll be fine.
43:45
He's like, Yep, that's all it is, shut up.
43:50
Stop telling me my job. And Stephen King didn't like
43:53
Nicholson as Jack because he felt that people would already
43:56
identify him as a loony in his words because of one flew over
44:00
the Coos nest. And he felt that you should see
44:03
Jack's gradual descent into madness as opposed to already
44:06
being mental. Yeah.
44:07
What do you think of that? I think it comes from a
44:10
perspective where he's quite bitter about it, what his novel
44:14
have been transformed to in the film.
44:15
But I've got a quote actually from Jack Nicholson and he says
44:18
you come up against somebody like Stan Hughes says, yes, it's
44:21
real, but it's not interesting. And I think that's absolutely
44:24
key for Nicholson performance here because what you've got to
44:27
do, you've got to realize this is a 2 hour film.
44:30
You don't have the time to chart the slow, gradual descent into
44:33
madness. You just don't, you have to use
44:35
shorthand in this film. And that's what Nicholson's
44:36
performance gives you because you're going to this and you've
44:39
seen Nicholson in the past, you know, he's an actor, some very
44:42
dark roles in the past, not just cuckoos.
44:44
And I see, you know, he's to interview with him.
44:45
So when he snaps, I absolutely believe it.
44:49
Whereas if you'd cast someone else who may have taken a more
44:52
subtle approach, I wouldn't necessarily bought it so much
44:56
and I certainly probably would have been anywhere.
44:57
And he was scared. No.
44:59
I think maybe Stephen King saw a little bit too much of himself
45:02
in Jack Nichols's performance. And quite possibly semi
45:04
autobiographical. Isn't it?
45:06
Yeah. King wanted an everyman actor
45:08
for the role and suggested a few names, Jon Voight, Christopher
45:12
Reeve and Michael Moriarty. Imagine Christopher Reeve
45:16
walking in there. Flying in there, flying out the
45:20
maze at the end. Kubrick had, on the other hand,
45:25
considered Robert De Niro, Robin Williams and Harrison Ford for
45:29
Jack. No.
45:32
He discounted De Niro after watching Taxi Drivers because he
45:35
said that he wasn't psychotic enough, which I mean, did he
45:39
watch it? But on the flip side of that, he
45:42
dismissed Robin Williams after watching Morgan Mindy because he
45:46
thought he was too psychotic. Really.
45:49
Yeah, That makes these two things mix up.
45:51
Not sure about that. That's what he thought very
45:55
strange. Kubrick said that Nicholson was
45:57
one of the best actors in Hollywood, perhaps on par with
46:01
the greatest stars of the past like Spencer Tracy and Jimmy
46:03
Cagney. Yeah, I mean, he got the royal
46:05
customers originally cast in his Napoleon biopic, yes.
46:08
And he? So he thought he'd be great.
46:11
He had him down as Napoleon. Yeah.
46:12
So it kind of carried on from that when that fell through and
46:15
he said what's the next thing to do?
46:16
And he just kept Nicholson on board because, you know, it's
46:19
Jack Nicholson. Yeah, of course.
46:21
What you going to do to get the kind of required manic persona
46:25
of his character? Nicholson only ate cheese
46:28
sandwiches for two weeks straight before production
46:30
started because he really fucking hated cheese sandwiches.
46:38
He grew increasingly frustrated that the script changes, which
46:41
happened on a daily basis. He ended up not reading them
46:43
knowing that they would like to change before shooting started.
46:46
So his line reading was done on set just before the cameras
46:48
rolled. And there's a behind the scenes
46:51
doc, quite famous, shot by Vivian Hubrick, who was Stanleys
46:55
daughter. And it's really incredible to
46:57
see the behind the scenes footage of Nicholson reading his
47:00
lines with an assistant. And then the camera sweeps over
47:02
to Duval, who's doing the same thing while getting their makeup
47:05
done. And then the camera sweeps
47:07
around again to Kubrick on the typewriter doing rewrites.
47:10
That's all captured in one camera.
47:12
Yeah. That's absolutely incredible to
47:14
see, yeah. She captured 80 hours of
47:16
footage. And it's 1/2 an hour Doctor.
47:22
So a six time Golden Globe winner and one of the few actors
47:25
to be awarded 3 Oscars. He was pretty much at his peak
47:28
at this point is now considered probably one of the best.
47:32
Basically everybody loves Jack Nicholson.
47:33
Well, they. Do and as he was at his peak
47:35
both in physical and mental and emotional performance.
47:39
But he asked for two days off because he had back pain, he
47:42
told Stanley Cooper. I've got severe back pain.
47:45
I need a couple of days off the shutdown production for two days
47:48
so that Jack Nicholson, a huge tennis fan, could go to
47:51
Wimbledon with two girls and Kubrick saw him on the telly.
47:59
Oh, busted. Eddie was fucking furious
48:02
apparently. Nicholson man, what a guy. 2
48:09
girls O2 Wimbledon. One Nah 2 So we'll move on to
48:17
Shelley Duval, who plays Wendy Torrance.
48:20
What do you think of Wendy Matt? I think time has been very, very
48:24
kind to her in this. I think she got such a bad Rep
48:28
for the performance in this film, and I can understand why.
48:33
But Wendy is a character that is designed to get on people's
48:37
nerves, and Shelley Duval can only read the lines that she's
48:40
been given, and she can only act according to the directions that
48:44
she is given by Cubic. And it's that classic thing of
48:49
just because you find a character really, really
48:50
irritating or annoying or whatever, it doesn't mean that
48:53
it's a bad performance. No, you're right.
48:55
I think if it's a bad performance, you don't want her
48:58
to get out at the end, and I absolutely want her to get out
49:01
in the skate and live at the end.
49:03
Good point. Great.
49:03
And you only do that if Default's good enough to make
49:05
you care about Wendy, despite the the whining and how, like,
49:09
Mousy she is and how she won't stand up herself and she's taken
49:12
all this shit. Yeah, you do care about it.
49:15
You do think there's a really decent person there.
49:17
And that's all due to the performance that Duvall gives.
49:20
And I, I do think it's taken time for us and for people in
49:24
general probably to come around to that and look past the kind
49:27
of initial impression you get over.
49:28
And I think it's a great performance.
49:30
Yeah, and it's a very good point.
49:32
What about you, Westie? Yeah, I feel there's a real kind
49:35
of repressed emotion to Wendy that she's seen something that
49:38
you don't know she's seen. She's gone through something
49:40
that you don't know she's gone through and there's a real back
49:43
story and a depth to her without having that exposition or that
49:46
explanation. I do know that Shelley Duvall
49:49
was, you know, she didn't have a great time on set.
49:52
She was pushed a lot harder than everyone else was.
49:55
You know, it's a hard rule to do.
49:57
It's a hard rule to take on. But the more I watch this, the
50:01
more I realise how rude she is by Jack, how governed she is and
50:07
how she can't make any decisions for herself and she can't really
50:10
do anything for herself. She's completely trapped in an
50:13
abusive relationship. And you get it from the trip up,
50:16
from her convincing Danny that it's a good idea to go to the
50:19
hotel. I don't really think she knows
50:20
it's a good idea, You know, you kind of get all that from that
50:24
performance and she is very on edge and scared all the way
50:29
through the folk, even when she's talking to Hollywood at
50:30
the stars. I have to leave a trail of bread
50:33
crumbs just to find me way out, you know.
50:35
And I know I said in that it was one of my things that I didn't
50:38
like about the film when I talked about it in the Kubrick
50:40
episode was her performance. But, you know, haven't watched
50:43
it so many more times since then and researched into it and look
50:47
more into it just to talk about it.
50:49
I realised that this performance is absolutely amazing
50:54
considering the circumstances. Like she, it's amazing that you
50:58
finished it. It's amazing that you got to the
50:59
end. And she has since thanked
51:02
Kubrick for it. He's got that performance out of
51:05
her. She's allowed him to do that,
51:07
and she's allowed herself to be this open.
51:09
And I think it's nothing short of fantastic.
51:11
It should just be applauded for how good it is really.
51:14
Yeah, yeah. God bless Shelley Duvall's heart
51:16
too, right? I'm very much the same as as
51:20
you, Westie, that this has been a performance that I've often
51:24
really disliked for years and years.
51:27
And even when we did the Rank in Cuba podcast, not a fan, not a
51:32
fan of a performance. But the more you watch it and
51:34
the more you understand what happened.
51:35
But to the casual viewer, you're not going to get that.
51:38
It takes a lot of re watches and it takes to understand more
51:43
about what went on behind the scenes to understand this
51:46
performance. There are still a few parts that
51:48
I can't get away with. But how would you react if your
51:51
family's like in gradual mental decline as you're trapped in a
51:54
snowbound hotel? You'd crack up like she does.
51:57
So I mean, it's a perfect performance.
52:00
She's not one-dimensional. But when she screams at Jack and
52:03
says you did this to him, you did this, that's blood curdling
52:07
and that's a really good performance.
52:10
And her reactions to Jack axe on the door down, those are those
52:14
are fantastic. And when she burst into the gold
52:17
room. Yeah, just at the end of her
52:19
tether, just completely exhausted and you can tell.
52:21
Well, Kubrick cast Duval because he thought she had this
52:24
eccentric quality and would be able to play the type of
52:27
character that would put up with Jack's shit.
52:31
The Kubrick's behind the scene treatment, like we've said, has
52:33
kind of become the stuff of Hollywood folklore.
52:36
The film was shot in sequence, like we said, and Kubrick
52:39
intentionally used this as a way to slowly break down Duval so
52:42
that her frustration, illness, mental breakdown, whatever,
52:46
that's right there on the screen.
52:49
Kubri had problems with her line delivery, her reactions, pretty
52:51
much all aspects of her performance.
52:53
And she said from May until October, I was in and out of ill
52:57
health because the stress of the role was so great.
52:59
Stanley pushed me and prodded me further than I've ever been
53:02
pushed before. It's probably the most difficult
53:04
role I've ever had to play, which isn't, it's not nice to
53:08
hear. And on that documentary that we
53:10
talked about, there's a point where Duval, having just come
53:13
round after fainting, is complaining that her hair is
53:16
coming out in clumps, and that's due to kind of mental
53:19
exhaustion. And Kubrick says don't
53:21
sympathise with Shelley, which leads me to the next point that
53:25
we've covered on previous episodes when talking about
53:27
difficult directors. We talked about it with David
53:31
Fincher. We talked about it with Billy
53:33
Freaking as well. But a question that comes from
53:36
Jamie Russell on Patreon, he says, how far should a director
53:39
be allowed to go in order to get his or her vision?
53:42
So we have touched on this, but what are your thoughts on this
53:46
matter? I think the keyword in that
53:47
question is allowed because who is going to stop the director
53:51
short of, yeah, a producer coming down on set or God
53:54
forbid, like actually please getting involved?
53:58
Who was going to stop a director pushing an actor as far as he or
54:02
she wants them to go until you get to the point where that
54:05
actor will stand up for themselves?
54:07
So for me, it's always going to be a judgment call and it's
54:10
always going to be essentially getting that consent from the
54:14
actor as to how far they can be pushed.
54:16
You know, one one thing we don't know, for example, is how much
54:19
did Kubrick realise he was pushing the valve?
54:22
Maybe he thought she's going to be tough enough to take this
54:25
because, you know, probably Jack Nicholson quite possibly was.
54:28
So I think there needs to be more of an effort made from the
54:31
director to basically check in on every actor.
54:34
If they are going to push them and keep pushing them as far as
54:37
they can, that they're going to be OK at the end of it because
54:39
some actors will take it, some won't.
54:41
And if some can't, I don't think there should be judged for that.
54:44
Nice point, Westie. I totally agree with Matt.
54:47
I think it should be a collaborative effort because
54:50
Phil Megan is a collaborative medium.
54:52
It's about everybody coming together and doing the best that
54:54
they possibly can. And if a director is trying to
54:58
push that kind of performance out of an actor or an actress,
55:02
there's a difference between, you know, keeping a secret and
55:06
pushing for what you want to see and then revealing it to
55:08
everyone. Like, aren't IA master of my
55:10
craft because I've pushed this person to a certain area?
55:13
On the other hand, yeah. Because that is an area that
55:16
they're not expecting to go. So if you tell people this is
55:19
where you need to go and keep pushing them to get there,
55:22
they're going to automatically not think about their
55:25
performance. They're going to think about
55:26
getting to that place. So it is, it is hard, but I do
55:30
think that it is a sign of the times, I think Kubrick.
55:34
It is. Yeah, you know, late.
55:36
I mean, there's no way that it happened.
55:38
Now, these early 80s and I don't see a massive difference in
55:42
these films that warrants this kind of, you know, technique in
55:46
which to work. Like I can watch anything by the
55:48
corns or Clint Eastwood, who are classically known for like
55:54
that's it. Boom, print the cobra.
55:56
Those don't be like, that's it. Perfect.
55:58
In my mind, I think he would have done this with any actress.
56:01
I don't think it was Duval, it was Kubrick.
56:03
I think this is this is quite ugly behaviour, this for me, I
56:06
think this is all pure ego from Kubrick, that he thought that
56:10
this is the way, this is the only way I can do it.
56:12
In my head, this is the way I have to get the job done to get
56:14
the desired effect. And in more aspects of movie
56:18
making, I absolutely love that. His fingerprints are everywhere
56:21
and I love that. But when it comes down to having
56:23
an impact and a long lasting impact on somebody's health, I
56:26
don't think that's good enough. And I also think he's been a bit
56:29
of a bully here because he didn't do that to Jack that were
56:32
best mates. If somebody's just telling you
56:35
that you're shit every day for 12 hours a day, then you must be
56:39
shit. So I must have to do something
56:40
better. And I mean, to be fair, I don't
56:43
really think of Shelley Duvalle and anything after this.
56:46
I don't know if this. Roxanne.
56:48
Yeah. Roxanne.
56:50
Yeah. Steve Barton, Roxanne.
56:53
Yeah, she's with the Big 19. 87 Classic, Yeah.
56:56
Yeah, it's Daryl Hannah, though, is the loving dress right?
56:59
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, of course.
57:00
Yeah, well, I we're talking about Roxanne when we should be
57:02
talking about The Shining. What the fuck?
57:04
You asked, but you look. That's it, Roxanne.
57:08
Yeah, good call. Yeah, so learning all of this,
57:10
going through all this shit, being Roxanne.
57:17
Well, I mean, it may well be that Stanley Kubrick was a
57:19
direct result of her not getting any great performances.
57:22
After this she's thought, fuck that.
57:24
Well, yeah, it's very. It's arguable.
57:26
Stephen King wasn't a fan of the character of Wendy either.
57:29
He called her one of the most misogynist characters ever put
57:32
to film. She's basically there just to
57:34
scream and be stupid, and that's not the woman I wrote about him.
57:38
So Shelley Duvall made a debut in Robert Altman's Brewster
57:41
McLeod in 1970, which was the start of a six film back-to-back
57:45
run of Ultimate Films. She got her Best Actress award
57:48
at CAN for a performance in Three Women in 77 and she also
57:51
starred in Annie Hall before her role as Wendy Torrance.
57:54
Continued to work in the 80s and 90s, but just didn't get the
57:56
same critical or commercial success of her 70s output.
57:59
Definitely not, unless you're talking about Roxanne.
58:03
Oh, Popeye. Popeye, fuck me.
58:06
Finally in the Torrance family, we're going to talk about Danny
58:09
Lloyd, who plays Danny Torrance, Danny Boy I.
58:17
Think he's wonderful. He's really watchable.
58:19
He's really lovable. He's great.
58:21
And he, he's just like a, he's like me when I was five or six
58:24
to have that, to have that. Big praise.
58:28
And himself on him. He's a wonderful man, just like
58:32
me. It's how I thought I was when I
58:36
was five or six. It was an absolute fucking
58:37
nightmare. But have that freedom to just
58:41
like ride around on a big trike, Like that's all you want to do
58:44
when you're that age, right? It's great.
58:46
And like Garrett Brown made a like a sling for him and hung
58:49
him off the Steadicam and carried him around because he
58:52
was the same weight as the camera on the Steadicam.
58:55
Like just like carried around the whole set.
58:56
He had a wheel of a time. And Kubrick has said that he
58:59
didn't want him to know what kind of a film he was in, and he
59:02
thought he was in a drama and he was just doing all these things.
59:05
Yeah, How has he done that? Incredible.
59:07
All these, these bits of the performance act when he's
59:09
screaming, when he sees that, you know, the elevator of blood
59:11
and he's did you get that shot of him, like just screaming
59:13
silently? Yeah, How how do you say, oh,
59:15
you're just in the drama, Just scream.
59:17
But it's just that element of like, there's that look on his
59:20
face. But he's been caught as saying
59:22
he's shown his kids this film since and they just take the
59:25
piss out of his haircut. What's your hair like?
59:29
That? Ridiculous.
59:31
Absolutely brilliant. Yeah, I don't know why his
59:33
performance doesn't get talked about more when people talk
59:35
about great child performances because I think, OK, Cubic
59:39
shielded him from the horrific stuff.
59:40
But but Even so, he's still got to bring a level of intensity
59:44
for a young kid that age. I think he does really well.
59:46
I don't think he makes him overly.
59:47
Cutesy. No, no, not at all.
59:50
I don't think you know, he's too sugary sweet or anything like
59:53
that. Did you know when he found out?
59:55
When he got the role though? It was in the middle of his 5th
59:58
birthday party. But he got oh.
1:00:00
Nice. What amazing what a present that
1:00:02
is, Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to take you to
1:00:05
England for 13 months. Happy birthday.
1:00:09
Loads of blood heading awards, Yeah.
1:00:10
Enjoy, yeah. I love it, actually.
1:00:14
I think it's the moments when when he's shining that really
1:00:18
impressed, when he's staring into space and he's having these
1:00:21
horrendous visions and then kind of a shake and he's almost gone
1:00:24
into spasm. And there's a moment in the US
1:00:27
version where Danny has been completely overtaken by Tony.
1:00:30
And he's seen in that tawny voice, Danny's not here, Mr.
1:00:33
Torrance. That's some performance by a 5-6
1:00:36
year old. That utterly chilling.
1:00:38
And the part where he sat down and the ball comes rolling to
1:00:41
him and he stands up and he shouts out, he shouts, Mam, he
1:00:45
shouts out. It's full of fear and kind of
1:00:48
reluctance to search, but he needs to go and have a look to
1:00:50
see where that balls come from. That's amazing.
1:00:53
Really, really great, great moment.
1:00:55
The moment where Wendy's shouting at Jack and the
1:00:57
Colorado lounge. The you did this, you this, that
1:01:00
isn't Danny Lloyd. That's a life-size dummy.
1:01:03
Do you think you can tell I? Can tell itself because I've
1:01:06
seen it 3000 times so. Yeah, I'd never noticed until I
1:01:09
found out. And then when I found out and
1:01:11
looked at it, yeah, it's ridiculous.
1:01:14
Probably the best relationship that Danny has at the Overlook
1:01:17
is with Dick Halloran, played by Scatman Brothers.
1:01:21
What do you think of this dynamic and Scatman Crothers as
1:01:24
Dick Halloran? I love him, I love him.
1:01:26
He's the greatest he's. Just so trustworthy and he's so
1:01:28
genuine. Like when he's like, do you want
1:01:30
some ice cream? And he takes his hand.
1:01:32
Like I would definitely leave my kids with Dick Halloran all day.
1:01:36
Go. Go and learn how to cook shit.
1:01:38
Like, you know, go and get some ice cream.
1:01:41
It's absolutely fine. Like, what a wonderful man.
1:01:43
He wasn't necessarily the greatest actor in the world.
1:01:46
He was brought on because he knew Jack Nicholson and they
1:01:48
worked together and cooked his nest.
1:01:50
This is classic because it set the Guinness World Record of the
1:01:57
most amount of takes for a single medium close up, which is
1:02:00
when he's talking about The Shining and his grandma was 148
1:02:05
takes. That's crazy.
1:02:12
What are you doing? 148 close.
1:02:14
UPS Danny Lloyd wasn't even there when he was doing that
1:02:17
close up. Everyone had gone to bed.
1:02:19
It's just Kubrick just rubbing these temples, just going do it
1:02:21
again, do it again. But if you watch it now, I don't
1:02:25
even know what take that is. I'd love to know.
1:02:27
It was like take two or something but.
1:02:29
He does the same, he does the same or a similar kind of thing
1:02:32
when when Halloween's at these hotel in Florida.
1:02:35
Firstly, Aaron loves massive pictures of naked women.
1:02:39
Yeah. What kind of hotel is that?
1:02:43
But that's that close up and it just starts out medium shot and
1:02:47
pans in. Yeah, he's not doing anything.
1:02:49
No, just his face. Yeah, 60 takes just his face.
1:02:55
There's only so much he can do with your face.
1:02:59
What more did he want? Every time I see him, though,
1:03:01
it's just such a joy when he's walking around that kitchen and
1:03:04
then he calls him, let's just set me quote at the start and he
1:03:06
goes with the dried goods in the can.
1:03:11
Fucking yes. I've just, I feel automatically
1:03:14
comfortable when he's on the screen.
1:03:15
Yeah. We've got dried Peaches, dried
1:03:18
raisins, dried prunes. You know, Mrs. Terence, you
1:03:21
gotta stay regular if you want to be happy.
1:03:23
That's my favorite line I want to put.
1:03:28
I want to put a smile on your face.
1:03:30
Go and have a shit fucking. Great and.
1:03:37
He's right. Well, what do you think of
1:03:43
Brothers, Matt? What I love about him is he's
1:03:45
so, so like, avuncular and friendly and straight away you
1:03:49
trust this guy. Out of everyone you've met so
1:03:51
far in the film, he's by far and away the most like, comfort and
1:03:54
presence. And you feel, oh, you know what?
1:03:57
As long as he's on screen, I think I'm going to be OK.
1:04:00
And I love how that's seen between them when they're
1:04:02
talking in the kitchen. It's the second bit of
1:04:04
exposition you get in the film after the interview, which has
1:04:07
explained the history of the Overlook, and now you get an
1:04:09
explanation what The Shining is. And again, it's really simple,
1:04:12
it's really elegant. There you are.
1:04:14
Boom, we're done. And in particular, Oliver, when
1:04:16
Danny's talking to him and he mentions Room 237 for the first
1:04:19
time and it's so imperceptible, but you can just tell his blood
1:04:23
has frozen and you say, oh shit. I love.
1:04:27
That he's scared of it. He's like no aid.
1:04:30
Yeah, yeah, definitely is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:04:32
Yeah, his delivery of that when he's talking about room 237 and
1:04:37
he says stay out. Stay out.
1:04:39
Yeah, that's really, really, really good.
1:04:42
Love that. Yeah, it's brilliant.
1:04:44
So like when he tries to persuade him, there's nothing in
1:04:46
there. Nothing like no, There's clearly
1:04:48
something in there. Yeah, there obviously is.
1:04:51
That's the least one big change. Nothing of ever.
1:04:55
The continuity editor is in that documentary that I spoke about
1:04:58
earlier on, and she has a really great story about Scott Mancro
1:05:01
that she goes up and she's like, because he never knew his lines.
1:05:04
So Kubrick says to her, June, can you go up and speak to Scott
1:05:08
Mancroft, make sure he knows his lines.
1:05:09
So she goes up to him and he says, I'm not doing my lines
1:05:13
with anybody except Stanley Kubrick.
1:05:15
So she comes back. Kubrick said, does he know his
1:05:17
lines? She said, well, he said he won't
1:05:19
do them with anyone but you. Kubrick calmly walks over to him
1:05:22
and said if I send June to ask you to read your lines, that is
1:05:26
law. You do what I tell you to do on
1:05:29
this set and Skype across. Yeah, I'm sorry.
1:05:31
I'm sorry, Mr. Kubrick. I'm sorry, Mr. Kubrick.
1:05:34
Mr. Kubrick said couldn't fucking get rid of him for the
1:05:36
rest of the shoot. He's currently saying do you
1:05:39
want to ask? Maybe lines with you are
1:05:40
normally lines now constantly hounded.
1:05:45
I like to say I couldn't get rid of him after that.
1:05:49
Amazing. Moving back to Danny, the
1:05:52
Shannon is Lloyd's one and only major film role.
1:05:56
He starred in ATV movie a couple of years after and does have a
1:05:58
brief cameo in the Shannon sequel Doctor Sleep.
1:06:02
But after trying and failing for other roles, he gave up the
1:06:04
dream when he was around 14. Cut through a business.
1:06:07
Yep. Fair enough.
1:06:09
Seems happy guy though. Oh yeah, wonderful man.
1:06:12
Just like Westie. Yep.
1:06:14
There you go, we're both growing a double Rd.
1:06:21
He started me safe. So a small cast with varying
1:06:27
degrees of success throughout the career.
1:06:28
The Shining was a high point for all involved, though.
1:06:31
Absolutely. Yep.
1:06:35
The middle. Into the middle of the film, the
1:06:40
Torrances move into the hotel, but the ghosts of previous
1:06:43
patrons begin to reveal themselves to Danny.
1:06:45
Jack shows his first major signs of mental instability is Wendy
1:06:48
interrupts him while he's at work and Danny appears all
1:06:51
busted up. Yeah, having been accused of
1:06:53
attacking Danny, Jack visits the Gold Room and manages to unwind
1:06:57
with a little drink before going to investigate the Terrify in
1:07:00
room 237. So 2 little scenes back-to-back.
1:07:04
Firstly, the gold room, Westie. Yeah.
1:07:06
What are your thoughts? Like I said before, just he's
1:07:09
walk up to that when he reacts to himself in the mirrors and
1:07:12
then turns and goes in and you just get this huge grandeur and
1:07:16
the set designer. What a set.
1:07:19
Yeah, he spent, he said five to six days painting tiles gold, so
1:07:25
every just by himself and he was just used every day just
1:07:28
painting these small tiles that be stuck on the wall, stuck on
1:07:31
the ceiling. It comes back the mirror theory
1:07:34
of Jack looked at himself in the mirror covers his eyes and sell
1:07:38
his soul for a glass of beer. This is where it spins.
1:07:42
So he sells his soul to the hotel and then when he opens his
1:07:45
eyes, the mirrors are completely covered over by Lloyd, by booze,
1:07:49
can't see himself. And then he can completely just
1:07:52
come into this character, come into this role.
1:07:54
It's an unrecognisable Jack. It's like he's so happy when
1:07:58
he's straight into the camera and he's like, but slow at
1:08:00
night, isn't it? And then that laugh.
1:08:02
And then you couldn't Lloyd from Norway every single time.
1:08:07
I'm like, that's so unsettling but so amazing at the same time.
1:08:12
I mean, to talk about that approach of the hallway when
1:08:14
he's walking past the mirrors and it's obviously just the
1:08:16
angle of the cameras up. If you watch it again, his
1:08:19
reflection appears in the mirrors before he draws.
1:08:22
Equal with the mirrors. Yeah.
1:08:24
By the time he is what looks like equal to the mirrors, he's
1:08:27
got no reflection. Right.
1:08:29
Nice. Amazing, lovely little touch.
1:08:31
And again, yeah, the Gold Room, it's an incredible set.
1:08:33
Again, it's playing tricks for your head.
1:08:35
Because that doesn't seem like it should fit into what we've
1:08:37
seen with the Overlook so far. It's absolutely massive.
1:08:41
This is the one where he makes a pact with the Overlook, isn't
1:08:43
it? When he says he'll give his soul
1:08:45
for a beer, that's it. He's gone.
1:08:46
He's done now. And everything spins off from
1:08:49
here. And I love how this scene, you
1:08:51
can watch it and you forget you're watching a horror film.
1:08:53
Yeah, because the performance is so good and the writing's so
1:08:56
good, and you're watching this guy, but he kind of spill his
1:08:58
soul out and kind of confess what's been driving him out.
1:09:01
Yeah, you do. You completely forget he's
1:09:04
talking to either a ghost or talking to himself.
1:09:07
Yeah. Yeah.
1:09:08
Yeah, It's like if you've ever made a mistake in your life and
1:09:10
you're trying to admit it to yourself, this is how you do it.
1:09:13
You go, I did hurt him once, OK. You know, you try to reason with
1:09:19
yourself. And it is then Lloyd doesn't
1:09:20
give him any feedback whatsoever.
1:09:22
Oh, no. Yeah, it's, it's incredible.
1:09:25
That's great. When he does, he looks kind of
1:09:26
like I never touch one God damn hair in his head and then he
1:09:29
kind of looks side to side. OK, I did touch him.
1:09:33
OK, there's three God damn years ago.
1:09:35
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's just like shaking the
1:09:38
ice around in the glass, just like thinking about whether we
1:09:40
should see it or not. A few extra foot pounds of
1:09:43
energy per second per second. Yeah, yeah, so good.
1:09:47
Wonderful. The guy who plays Lloyd the
1:09:50
bartender is called Joe Turkle. Bonus points for name in the
1:09:53
film that he's in two years after 1982.
1:09:58
It's not weird. Is this he?
1:10:00
It's 81. 81. Yeah, Martin.
1:10:04
He is Doctor Tyrell in Blade Runner.
1:10:07
Of. Course he is.
1:10:11
Lovely. Yeah.
1:10:12
All right. He said that they rehearsed this
1:10:14
bar scene for six weeks and that the shoot lasted a whole day,
1:10:18
9:00 AM to 10:30 PM Yeah, there's not that much in there
1:10:22
that needs to be done in the whole day.
1:10:24
Well, there's 40 takes each. Let's be honest, it's a bit.
1:10:28
Well, Philip, I love just the end of the scene as well, where
1:10:31
Wendy comes in and she's running down, she's screaming, she
1:10:34
interrupts everything. She completely sparks him out of
1:10:36
what he's talking about, whether he's talking to himself or and
1:10:39
everything disappears. But you don't question it.
1:10:41
And then he says to her, are you out of your fucking mind?
1:10:45
What have you been doing totally yourself?
1:10:50
Imagine the Butler, Jack Daniels.
1:10:52
Totally. Fantastic.
1:10:55
So Wendy comes down the hallway, says there's a crazy woman in
1:10:58
one of the rooms who tried to strangle Danny.
1:11:00
Yeah. And then Jack goes to
1:11:02
investigate. So Room 237.
1:11:05
Room 237, for me is still the hardest scene to watch in the
1:11:10
film because it's just so slowly built.
1:11:17
And the mirror that you see Jack in when he's in their apartment,
1:11:19
if you look on the floor of 237, there's that outline which looks
1:11:23
exactly the same as the mirror that Jack sees himself in,
1:11:26
right? So it's almost like a reflection
1:11:28
of himself and, you know, dealing with the past and
1:11:31
dealing with what he sees and the reflection of what he sees.
1:11:34
And what he sees is his idyllic life and this idyllic woman.
1:11:38
And he sees himself as attractive and approachable, and
1:11:41
he can get away with anything. And then when he sees the
1:11:43
reflection of what he's really like, it becomes horrific and
1:11:46
bloated and disgusting. But there's a lot of the set
1:11:49
design. I think the set design 237 is
1:11:51
incredible. I think, you know, the just the
1:11:54
colours used, it's all just really big for boards on purples
1:11:57
and dark greens. And it's the doors open.
1:12:00
Come on in. She's, you know, she's beautiful
1:12:03
coming out with the bath. Well, yeah, wonderful.
1:12:05
I buy into this as well. But then you're punished for it.
1:12:07
Yeah, it starts well, doesn't it?
1:12:10
But it's the way he backs out and he, you know, he's pulled
1:12:13
away from it, which mirrors him and Wendy at the end, going up
1:12:17
the stairs and her back and away.
1:12:18
Her arms are out, you know, out in front.
1:12:20
His arms are out in front at the end.
1:12:22
It's all this duality and all this kind of mirror theory comes
1:12:26
together in 237, which I think is fantastic.
1:12:29
Matt, you're getting over the nightmare of 237.
1:12:33
No. Well, yeah, basically, no.
1:12:36
I will never, ever get over the scene.
1:12:39
My anxiety just goes through the roof watching this bit.
1:12:42
Everything about it is horrible. Everything about it is telling
1:12:45
me to just turn the film off, watch a Pixar film or something,
1:12:48
skip the scene, come back later. Everything is just off in a
1:12:51
really, really weird way. You can't quite put your finger
1:12:55
on there's. There's like too much furniture
1:12:57
in the room. It just all feels really cramped
1:12:59
and constricted. The penis shaped carpet.
1:13:03
Yeah. Lots of penises on the carpet,
1:13:05
awful. The big like booming heartbeat
1:13:08
sound that's overlaid over the top of it as well.
1:13:11
And then when he goes in that bathroom, don't if you guys
1:13:12
wait, but the bathroom to be also looks like it's painted in
1:13:15
the same shade of green that Denny's bathroom is like when
1:13:18
he's first talking to Tony. Yes, same shade.
1:13:20
Agree. The the shower curtain is pulled
1:13:23
over again to say that. So I think it's meant to mirror
1:13:25
that scene. So it takes you back to then.
1:13:28
And it's it's the one time in the film where it gets a bit
1:13:31
arty and a little bit experimental.
1:13:32
Because once he stopped necking on with the attractive woman as
1:13:35
she turns to that hack that's coming to water, it starts sort
1:13:38
of cutting with her still in the bath and kind of rice and part
1:13:41
of the bath going like back and forth between the two, Which,
1:13:44
you know, obviously that doesn't make any logical sense, but it
1:13:46
gives it a sense of a nightmare. That's what the scene feels like
1:13:49
to me. That just the worst kind of
1:13:51
nightmare that you just you just want to wake up out of it.
1:13:54
You just want to get out of that room as quick as.
1:13:56
You can't. Yeah.
1:13:57
He can't get out there quick enough, can he?
1:13:59
Or you can't. Understand you like when you
1:14:00
just fucking get out of there. I know.
1:14:02
Yeah. I mean, it's incredible.
1:14:04
I think that's the one that stands out.
1:14:06
This scene, when I first watched it, I mean, Jesus Christ.
1:14:10
Yeah, it's, I mean, just one arse cheek rotten on that old
1:14:14
hag. Awful.
1:14:17
And the editing, like you said, Matt, the editing in this scene
1:14:19
kind of reminds me of that you're talking to me scene from
1:14:22
Taxi Driver. Right.
1:14:23
Yeah, yeah. Snaps away and goes back.
1:14:25
She's she cuts from Jack's terrified face, like terrified
1:14:29
face to her comet wards and with her arms out and she's in the
1:14:32
bath and she's riding out all the while there's this like
1:14:34
insane cackle over the top. Oh.
1:14:37
That. Sound man.
1:14:38
And then that oppressive noise of the score as well.
1:14:41
The whole thing is just an attack on the viewer.
1:14:44
Yeah, yeah. And hope that she's awful.
1:14:48
She's, you know, she's not pretty.
1:14:51
We mentioned some of the theories earlier on, but one of
1:14:54
the most talked about is that the 1969 moon landing was faked
1:14:58
and filmed by none other than Stanley Kubrick.
1:15:02
So what I'm going to do now is hand over to Westie.
1:15:06
I'm sure he's got some well-rounded but assertive
1:15:08
thoughts. So Westie, what do you think of
1:15:10
the moon landing theory? Right.
1:15:11
Well-rounded, right? OK, so.
1:15:15
Here he goes, right everyone? Everyone shut the fuck up.
1:15:20
Honestly, right was really bought into this to the point
1:15:24
where I was obsessed with it. Like I thought that this is what
1:15:27
this film is about. Obviously, like there's so many
1:15:31
things. The point would be in true that
1:15:33
I want it to be true more than it actually is.
1:15:35
Like it is batch it and it is. I've matured right that.
1:15:40
Was two months ago that we had a conversation.
1:15:43
I do believe that there is elements in here, but if you
1:15:46
look at the facts, there is fact.
1:15:48
But it's just it's it is mental. But like you shoot in 2001, a
1:15:52
space Odyssey at the time in London, right?
1:15:54
Look at 2001, right? Yeah, fucking massive back
1:15:57
protection. Yeah, it looks.
1:15:58
Amazing. Looks amazing, right?
1:16:00
Do that, but less quality. All right, Yeah.
1:16:04
Cool. Written.
1:16:04
I can do that. Yeah.
1:16:06
Moved to England, never travelled again, never went back
1:16:08
to America again, Shot every film in England.
1:16:10
Scared shitless, right? Yeah, we've got the Apollo 11
1:16:14
sweater that Danny wears. Yes, right.
1:16:16
So he rises up from the spot. He moves to room 237.
1:16:20
Apparently it's 237,000 miles to the moon.
1:16:24
Yes, it isn't. It's it's filled at that, but.
1:16:27
It's just a little bit more 238 at.
1:16:30
The time, that's probably Kubrick's analysis of it.
1:16:32
That makes sense. The changing from 2:17 to 2:37,
1:16:35
because that's the amount of distance to the moon, right?
1:16:39
I don't believe we'll land it on the moon.
1:16:41
I'm putting that out there. I don't believe, I don't believe
1:16:43
that happened. It is bollocks and I but I would
1:16:46
love it to be Stanley Kubrick who made that film.
1:16:48
That's but. You don't think it was?
1:16:51
I don't think it's in this film to say that he admitted that he
1:16:54
did it, but I do think he did. I'll totally come around.
1:17:01
That's the moment that I wanted. Yeah, yeah, I'm not.
1:17:04
No. Right.
1:17:05
This this. The moon landing was directed by
1:17:08
Stanley Kubrick without shadow of a doubt.
1:17:11
I don't care. I tried to be mature about it.
1:17:13
I don't care. He definitely did it right.
1:17:16
The twins are the failed Gemini missions, right?
1:17:19
Gemini twin, Fair enough. 7 missions went up, 6 landed the
1:17:24
six crates of seven up in the storage room.
1:17:27
Coincidence. I don't think there is.
1:17:28
All right, holler. Do the math.
1:17:30
Do you do the math? Where does Hollerand live?
1:17:32
Florida. Where did they launch it from
1:17:33
Florida? You got the eagle on the window
1:17:35
sill of ullman's office, right? Which is constantly obscuring
1:17:40
with these lovely hair. But the original module was
1:17:43
nicknamed the Eagle. But that's been covered up by
1:17:46
America because he represents America with the red, white, and
1:17:49
blue. Looks like JFK.
1:17:50
He's got the hair. He's covering it all up.
1:17:52
It's fucking fact. It's all here.
1:17:54
You know, it's all here. It's all here in the notes that
1:17:57
you wrote. Yeah, that I've just got off the
1:17:59
Internet, which everyone knows is absolute fact. dot net.
1:18:07
I've spoke to Jim Poorer about this at length.
1:18:16
It's the most interesting theory.
1:18:18
There's lots of elements. Look it up yourself.
1:18:19
I'm not going to sit here and sound like a tinfoil hat moron,
1:18:22
which I already do. Yeah, totally.
1:18:24
Don't undusted Stanley Kubrick directed the moon landing.
1:18:29
It's here as fact in The Shining.
1:18:34
Your take on that? A repost, if you will.
1:18:39
Fucking repost. You'll have to lure yourself to
1:18:41
that. Come on.
1:18:44
Absolutely ludicrous it is. Have you not seen the footage of
1:18:47
someone accusing Buzz Aldrin of it being fake and then Buzz
1:18:50
Aldrin actually punched the guy in the face?
1:18:52
Yeah, that's real. That's the only thing that is
1:18:54
real. Yeah.
1:18:55
If someone have pointed out a lie in my life, I would punch
1:18:57
them as well. Well, I would.
1:18:58
I would pay good money to see Wesley say this to Buzz Aldrin's
1:19:01
face. That's.
1:19:01
All I will, I will get him on get him on the next episode.
1:19:05
I'm not going to invite Buzz Aldrin on the show so you can
1:19:08
have him out. He'd be on the phone, be like
1:19:16
both. What do you think about the
1:19:17
Shiner? Not this again.
1:19:25
Oh man. So that's a no for you man.
1:19:27
That's a no for me, sorry. I'm even entertain that both at
1:19:31
all. Well, W, he's gone through some
1:19:34
compelling evidence there. And there are a few other
1:19:36
things. The drink Tang, which is closely
1:19:39
linked to the space traveled, they used it on the Mercury
1:19:42
Space Flight in 62 that's seen in the hotel pantry.
1:19:45
The key fob for room 237 has the word room number 237.
1:19:50
The only capitalized letters are ROOM for room and N for the 1st
1:19:56
letter of the number, and it's argued that the only words that
1:19:59
these letters can make are moon and room, moon room.
1:20:03
However, the theorists of field are identified that the word
1:20:06
mono can also be spelled from that and also the word moron
1:20:09
which is appropriate. Well, not really.
1:20:12
I mean, mono means one, which is one theory.
1:20:15
All working, all play makes Jack a boy.
1:20:17
All ALL at Apollo 11, right? Come on, guys.
1:20:25
Wait. Wake up.
1:20:26
Wake up. Jack's dialogue as well when
1:20:29
he's talking to Wendy about his responsibilities to his
1:20:32
employers have signed a contract that's actually apparently
1:20:37
Kubrick talking about his responsibilities to the US
1:20:39
government of. Course it is.
1:20:41
Well, the Room 237 thing, it was supposed to be 217 and that's
1:20:46
where it is in the book, but it was changed to Room 237 at the
1:20:48
behest of the Timberline Lodge, the actors as the exterior for
1:20:52
the Overlook Hotel. They thought that the film would
1:20:54
put future guests off staying in that room if they used a number
1:20:58
that was in existence, so they chose a number that they didn't
1:21:01
have in the hotel. Yeah, how convenient.
1:21:04
Well room 217 is the most requested room at the hotel now,
1:21:09
which is strange. My thoughts on this though, if
1:21:12
Kubrick did stage the whole thing and it's all massively
1:21:14
hush hush and no one's supposed to know about it, why has he put
1:21:18
so many over references into a film with a major star that he
1:21:22
was hoping for huge box office success That'll definitely keep
1:21:25
everything under wraps that. He doesn't want to keep it under
1:21:27
wraps though. He wants to explain it, but then
1:21:29
this is everything he's done here.
1:21:30
But not. But do it cryptically.
1:21:32
Do it cryptically, because everything he's put in here is
1:21:34
probably like a complete opposite of what the contract
1:21:37
states. You can't say this, but you can.
1:21:40
But he's found a way. He's that intelligent that he's
1:21:43
underwritten the contract with Vision.
1:21:44
Full of shit. You're full of shit.
1:21:52
Wonderful. OK, we'll draw a line under that
1:21:55
one then and move on. So at this point, Jack's
1:22:01
completely flipped heads back to the Gold Room, but there's a
1:22:04
different atmosphere about the place.
1:22:06
He meets Delba Grady, who spills advocate under his bourbon.
1:22:10
So, Mr. Grady, back in the Gold Room, Matt, what do you think?
1:22:16
I wish I wasn't back in the gold room because again, it's just
1:22:19
getting far too intense for my liking.
1:22:21
The same it's done to play with your head again, because once
1:22:26
they start talking, I love how Grady is just so polite and so
1:22:30
genteel. You know, couldn't.
1:22:32
Be. Couldn't be a nicer guy to start
1:22:34
off with. But how that conversation turns
1:22:37
on a dime so subtly, so quietly, and all of a sudden you realise
1:22:41
it's the Overlook talking to Jack, persuading him and putting
1:22:45
the words in his mouth what he needs to do to Wendy, what he
1:22:49
needs to do to Danny and made it all seem like it's his idea.
1:22:52
And it's the narrow thing to do. The paint in that room, the
1:22:55
shade of red is the red. Yeah.
1:22:57
Striking, striking, absolutely ludicrous.
1:23:00
Just that puts you on edge, isn't it?
1:23:02
In the scene where the break the the 180 reel as well?
1:23:05
Yeah. Yeah.
1:23:06
So that, again, just throws you off even without necessarily
1:23:09
calling your attention to it. It's just another step in, like
1:23:12
ramping up the tension. I think it's so cleverly done in
1:23:15
that performance from Ma'am. It's Philip Stone, Please.
1:23:17
Moving, yeah. Yeah, the guy.
1:23:19
Phillips. Phillips on his performance
1:23:21
here. It's really something for just
1:23:24
this one scene he's got. Oh, cleverly plays it.
1:23:27
Yeah, I love the same. Can't get enough of it, Westie.
1:23:31
Yeah, okay, well, I love this whole sequence.
1:23:35
I love the gold Room. I love the how it's just full of
1:23:38
people and there's just, you know, party time and Jack's
1:23:42
enjoying it and he's just let straight in and he's straight at
1:23:44
the bar and he then he's questioning who's buying his
1:23:47
drinks and the house is buying his drinks and you're kind of
1:23:49
throwing off a little bit. This whole sequence from the
1:23:51
gold room to the bathroom is a game of chess like the whole
1:23:54
film is, but this is a more condensed version of it.
1:23:57
Have you noticed the girl who knocks over Grady into Jack has
1:24:00
got that handprint on a dress? No, no bloody handprint really.
1:24:04
Which people say is the hotel pushing her into Grady for Grady
1:24:08
hit Jack. Oh, wow.
1:24:10
Right. So watch it again.
1:24:12
Yeah, it's a love address. There's a red bloody handprint.
1:24:15
And haven't, you know, haven't gone through the whole moon
1:24:17
theory and sound like a fucking moron, But from a continuity
1:24:22
point of view and watching interviews with the crew and
1:24:24
everything else, like Kubrick wanted them to to talk in the
1:24:27
middle of the party. They wanted this whole dialogue
1:24:30
to be when everything was going on around them.
1:24:32
But they couldn't afford for all the extras to be there.
1:24:35
Over 200 extras. The scene was massive and it was
1:24:38
just going over budget. Kubrick wasn't bothered our
1:24:40
time, he was bothered our budget, which is why he kept his
1:24:42
crew small to about 10 people and he kept the cast down to
1:24:45
about two people having a dialogue scene.
1:24:47
So they realized that we can't afford to do this in this room,
1:24:50
so they built the bathroom separately as they were
1:24:53
shooting. So this whole scene, this whole
1:24:55
bathroom scene was done on the fly.
1:24:57
Amazing. They're going to the bathroom
1:24:59
just because they couldn't afford to keep it all in the
1:25:01
gold room. They couldn't afford to pay the
1:25:02
extras. They couldn't afford to keep our
1:25:04
grandeur and the break the 180° rule, because we go into that
1:25:07
bathroom and it's mirrors. There's just mirrors everywhere.
1:25:09
And Jack susses out Grady by looking at them in the mirror
1:25:12
and sees his true reflection of themselves.
1:25:14
So there's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot talked about
1:25:17
Charles Grady and Delbert Grady and that they're both, you know,
1:25:20
different versions of the. Humanity again.
1:25:23
Exactly. So we've got Delbert Grady in
1:25:26
1921, which is apparently when that scene was, which is the
1:25:30
July 4th party that you see at the end.
1:25:32
But then Charles Grady becomes Dell.
1:25:34
But Grady, after he kills his family and kills himself, that's
1:25:37
the person that he is, which gives the whole ending because
1:25:40
Jack, when he died, becomes the caretaker.
1:25:42
He's always been the caretaker. They recognize him.
1:25:45
And this back and forth in the toilet is probably one of my
1:25:48
favorite scenes of all time. I adore it.
1:25:51
And that bit when he's just like, married man.
1:25:53
Are you Mr. Grady? It's like, I've got your fucking
1:25:59
source here at that point where he thinks he's got them.
1:26:02
So still, he's like, yes, yeah, 2, two children.
1:26:04
And then the break the 180° rule.
1:26:06
Do you know why he does that? Shoot, if you look into a mirror
1:26:10
and you break the 180° rule, it's a complete reflection of
1:26:14
yourself. It's a reflection of the scene
1:26:16
that you're seeing. So you're seeing that scene in
1:26:18
the mirror as Greedy becomes who he is and starts explaining to
1:26:22
Jack where he is and what he needs to do.
1:26:24
You're in the mirror in this reflection.
1:26:27
Love it. Wow.
1:26:28
That's why he breaks it. Fantastic whole point.
1:26:31
It's like, oh, Brits don't agree.
1:26:32
Well, what for? Because you are then the
1:26:35
reflection of them characters. He is Charles Grady.
1:26:39
One task flips. That's where you are.
1:26:41
And that's how he overpowers Jack because you become that
1:26:44
reflection and you're pushed into that.
1:26:46
And there's the bits where even at the start when he's talking
1:26:49
to Wendy and he changes, he's like that's all it is.
1:26:52
Like Matt touched on Watch, the camera pushes in and you are in
1:26:55
that mirror. That's the reflection of who he
1:26:57
is. And even when Danny's talking
1:26:59
into the mirror, it pushes in. So you are Tony, you are a
1:27:03
different character. So this sequence is a mirror
1:27:06
image of the sequence. It's so clever.
1:27:09
It makes us want to Just Dance around and walk out and tell
1:27:13
strangers how good this is. Wow, Just before he does go into
1:27:21
the bathroom. I love the little character
1:27:24
moments that Jack does here. He does this little dance after
1:27:27
he gets his drink, and I love, love, love, love that he calls
1:27:30
Grady Jeezy or Boy Jeezy Jeezy. And then he puts that big
1:27:36
advocate handprint on his back. That's, yeah, hilarious.
1:27:39
Which mirrors hilarious handprint on the dress.
1:27:41
Yeah, if you watch it again, yeah.
1:27:43
It's really clever. On this set, Kubrick told all
1:27:46
the extras in the Gold Room, the dance sequence, to only mouth
1:27:50
their dialogue, not to speak it because it just has an impact on
1:27:55
on the whole scene of firstly, that's really weird for Jack
1:27:58
Nicholson to walk onto that set where people are just mouth and
1:28:00
yeah, silence. But also I don't know this but I
1:28:04
wonder why That's why he told them just to mouth it because
1:28:07
speaking parts would get paid more. 30 Possibly.
1:28:10
Yeah, Yeah, quite possibly, yeah.
1:28:12
He's not concerned about time, but he is concerned about
1:28:14
budget. So the film is reaching its
1:28:17
final act as Jack has been given instructions to correct his
1:28:20
family if. He may visible.
1:28:26
The crew. Amazing behind the scenes work
1:28:30
on the Shannon that helped Kubrick perfectly capture his
1:28:32
vision. We're starting with a screenplay
1:28:34
which was written by Stanley Kubrick himself and novelist
1:28:38
Diane Johnson. Matt Writing What do you think
1:28:41
of the writing on the Shiner? I think it's probably the most
1:28:44
underrated part of it. They've taken this novel, which
1:28:48
it's full of history, it's full of back story for all the
1:28:51
characters. It's got loads of texty to it
1:28:54
and they've had to pray for you to go, Nope, don't need any of
1:28:56
that through pretty much 90, maybe 80% of that out the window
1:29:01
and they've just kept the framework because they realize
1:29:04
that's all we need. The framework gives Cubic as
1:29:06
director all that ammunition he needs to do what he wants to do.
1:29:10
It's that classic thing. What works on the page isn't
1:29:12
necessarily going to work on the screen.
1:29:14
I guess the script, I don't even think it has your typical three
1:29:17
act structure. And I think that's why a lot of
1:29:20
people don't view it as the strength because it maybe
1:29:23
doesn't stand out like in say like the writing in The
1:29:26
Exorcist, the way that that stands out.
1:29:28
You know, there's loads of like lovely dialogue and character
1:29:31
moments in The Exorcist and they maybe they don't really care
1:29:33
about that in The Shining. All they want to do is get that
1:29:35
framework right, give Cubic the ammunition that he needs to do
1:29:39
what he wants visually. But it's also given that space
1:29:43
for people to bring their own theories to it.
1:29:45
And that's why there's so much interpretation.
1:29:48
That's why we're talking about it so much, because the writing
1:29:50
just gives so little way in terms of explanation.
1:29:53
Yeah, I totally agree, Wesley. It's visual.
1:29:56
It's it's written as a as a visual medium.
1:29:59
And I think that's why it differs so far from King's
1:30:02
novel, because it's, it's written as a film and this film
1:30:06
is a journey. It's not a destination because
1:30:08
you don't ever get there. There's no ending.
1:30:11
It's ambiguous. It's just a lesson in anxiety,
1:30:14
and I think the best thing that the script does is it builds
1:30:17
tension through ambiguity and anxiety in the unseen.
1:30:21
It's everything you don't see. Lovely.
1:30:24
Like another thing that that isn't in the script at all, and
1:30:27
it's a massive part of the film because we always talk about it.
1:30:29
It's those geographical inconsistencies in the overlook.
1:30:32
It's a massive part of what we talk about.
1:30:34
It's not in the script at all. Nobody walks down that corridor
1:30:37
and goes, hang on, how can there be your room here?
1:30:39
There, there's some space room, There's a stairwell on the
1:30:42
opposite side. No one ever flags that stuff up
1:30:44
because the script is given those ambiguities in there.
1:30:47
Cubic can add those on a visual level and he doesn't have to
1:30:50
have the characters point them out.
1:30:52
And I think Kubrick had a lot of visual cues and dialogue cues.
1:30:56
But I do think Diane Johnson needs a little bit more of a
1:30:59
kudos for this, for tying it all together and make it into some
1:31:03
kind of story and make it cohesive.
1:31:05
Because it could just be a collection of really incredible
1:31:08
visuals with no real punch. Even now, 40 years later, we're
1:31:14
talking about it evolving even more, new ideas, new things put
1:31:18
in there. What was he talking about?
1:31:20
It's a constant evolution. It's a constant cycle.
1:31:23
It's a constant reflection. This film doesn't end.
1:31:27
This will go for the rest of your life once you're obsessed
1:31:29
with this, This is going to be me.
1:31:30
This is going to be me. Last words.
1:31:32
We'll just be like, can you just tell us what the chart is about
1:31:34
and I'll die. Can.
1:31:39
You imagine that as well. That's rewrite after rewrite,
1:31:42
and that's every day. And this shooting was 1314
1:31:47
months, so how many rewrites fucking.
1:31:51
Thousands. Thousands.
1:31:52
Nicholson just stopped. Reading the script, yeah, just
1:31:54
give us. It in the morning.
1:31:57
As we said earlier, Kubrick love to Shannon from the Gecko.
1:32:00
The legend goes that when Kubrick was scanning books for
1:32:02
some source material, his assistant would hear the third
1:32:05
of discarded book of discarded book being slammed off a wall in
1:32:08
Kubrick's office. This happened for weeks until
1:32:11
she didn't hear anything at all. Kubrick had discovered The
1:32:13
Shining, a lovely anecdote, something which Stephen King
1:32:17
doesn't believe happened for some reason.
1:32:21
So based on the Stephen King 1977 novel, he actually wrote a
1:32:25
whole screenplay draft for the film, which Kubrick completely
1:32:28
ignored. Didn't even look at one page of
1:32:31
it. What a Dick.
1:32:37
Not interested though. Like he's he's got his own
1:32:39
vision of it. I think what he loved about the
1:32:41
novel was the idea. Yeah.
1:32:43
Instead, Kubrick decided to adapt the book himself with
1:32:46
writer Diane Johnson. He'd read her novel The Shadow
1:32:49
Nose and thought she'd be perfect as a writing partner.
1:32:52
Kubrick and Johnson started out of the collaboration in 1977,
1:32:55
and for the first month, they didn't write a thing down.
1:32:58
They just started out asking questions to really understand
1:33:01
the characters. Questions like, is Jack a nice
1:33:03
man? Does Wendy love him?
1:33:05
What kind of clothes would Wendy wear?
1:33:07
That kind of thing. So that completely mapped out
1:33:09
all of the characters within the screenplay.
1:33:11
It's made it visual. Yeah, that's right, Yeah.
1:33:14
King said that he would get calls from Kubrick in the middle
1:33:16
of the night asking him questions.
1:33:18
Like, do you believe in God? When King replied yes, Kubrick
1:33:21
slammed the phone down yelling and knew it.
1:33:28
Madman. Stephen King's vocal dislike for
1:33:31
the film, one of the most famous stories in Hollywood, saying it
1:33:33
was the only adaptation of his novels that he hated.
1:33:36
He was happy with things like the Langoliers and the Tommy
1:33:39
Knockers though, but he didn't like.
1:33:41
This one. Yeah, crazy.
1:33:43
But it was a few reasons why he didn't like it.
1:33:46
We mentioned the characters of Jack and Wendy, but he also said
1:33:49
that the film lacked the passion and emotion of his novel and
1:33:52
that it was style over substance.
1:33:53
He called it a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside.
1:33:57
You're going to be pissed off if you've written something and
1:33:59
someone's adapted it and they've left so much out that you've put
1:34:02
in that's personal, that's going to hit home.
1:34:05
And I think that's why he reacts the way he does to it.
1:34:08
Yeah, I think obviously everyone's allowed an opinion on
1:34:11
everything and I think particularly the the author of
1:34:14
novel, you should give them more attention than anyone else.
1:34:18
But I do think as soon as any author signs the rights way and
1:34:23
takes up money for a novel, they do lose a little bit of their
1:34:27
right to voice an opinion on A to the extent that King has over
1:34:30
the years. And the main difference between
1:34:32
the two is torn. There's actually a lot of warmth
1:34:35
in that novel between the family.
1:34:38
It actually feels a lot more like a tragedy.
1:34:40
And it's actually quite a redemptive novel because at the
1:34:42
end, Jack manages to break free from the influence of the
1:34:45
Overlook and get Danny out of the hotel before completely
1:34:48
claims. And so he saves Danny's life.
1:34:51
But I think it's a little bit naive on King's part to even
1:34:55
think that that wouldn't have happened.
1:34:57
And at some point, he does have to kind of get over it.
1:35:01
Yeah, I think so as well. I think that strong words, but I
1:35:05
think he should maybe be a little bit embarrassed about his
1:35:07
comments now. I think it was fine to have
1:35:10
those thoughts on initial viewing because everybody had
1:35:13
those thoughts. It was derided by critics,
1:35:15
Nobody liked it. But then it's gone under
1:35:18
immediate reassessment. People weren't given what they
1:35:21
were expecting and there was a reaction to that.
1:35:23
And that's what I would put Stephen King's reaction down to.
1:35:27
But not now. The more you begin to realise
1:35:30
that it's stuffed full of all sorts of substance.
1:35:34
And he didn't think it was full of any substance whatsoever.
1:35:36
So I think you need to stop banging the drum about it.
1:35:39
Yeah, he shook up King. Well, there's a scene laid on
1:35:45
when Halloran is on his way to the Overlook and he passes a
1:35:47
wreck on the highway and it's a red VW Beetle, which is what
1:35:51
King drove in real life with Jack drove in his novel.
1:35:55
As we've mentioned, the novel semi on a biographical because
1:35:58
King had struggled with alcoholism, family issues as
1:36:01
Jack drives a yellow beat than the film.
1:36:03
A lot of people have taken this is kind of like a fuck you to
1:36:05
King. That's what I think of your
1:36:07
novel. It's shit.
1:36:09
It's a wreck. And I do buy this because that
1:36:12
seems not essential to the plot. There's an insert later with
1:36:15
Hallerin driving in the snow, so we know he's on the way to the
1:36:18
overlook in that scene. So I don't really know other
1:36:21
than that why that scene would be in there.
1:36:24
There's a lot of yellow to red conversions and red to yellow
1:36:28
conversions. There's Jack walking into the
1:36:30
gold room wearing red. There's a girl in a gold dress
1:36:34
with a red handprint on the back.
1:36:35
There's the yellow handprint from the Advacar.
1:36:38
Could be any drink has to be Avacar, which is yellow, which
1:36:41
is goes on Grady's back. There's the red of the toilet
1:36:44
sequence. And then there's the red beetle.
1:36:46
And then there's the the yellow one.
1:36:48
So it always signifies a change in a shift.
1:36:51
And I think what he did was he was like, well, that red beetle
1:36:54
was the novel and the ideas that King had.
1:36:57
But he's crushed it and he's created some The new.
1:37:00
It's the same skeleton, it's the same model car.
1:37:03
It's a different colour. That's what you're saying.
1:37:06
Like I'm taking your idea. I love your idea, I love your
1:37:08
car. I want to drive it, but I don't
1:37:10
like the colour of it. That's pretty much it.
1:37:14
Lovely. Do you know where the title The
1:37:17
Shining comes from? No, don't.
1:37:20
Instant karma John Lennon song. Oh, really?
1:37:23
Features the line we all shine on.
1:37:25
Yes, very nice. Another question from one of our
1:37:28
patrons, Matt Lomasks. Do you guys think The Shining is
1:37:33
King's best adaptation of his books?
1:37:35
Also, is this better or more true to life than Say It or
1:37:39
Misery? I think sometimes people when
1:37:43
the top of what makes a great adaptation.
1:37:45
I think the the confused are with or equal in that to being a
1:37:48
faithful adaptation. Another thing the two
1:37:50
necessarily go hand in hand. A great adaptation can be like
1:37:53
The Shining where it's as I said before, it's just the framework
1:37:57
and cubic fills that framework with what he wants to do with
1:37:59
it. And to my mind that's a great
1:38:01
adaptation. Equally, there can be
1:38:04
adaptations where they change too much and they do lose the
1:38:06
spirit of what the original source novel had.
1:38:10
The recent version of Pet Cemetery that just, it tries to
1:38:13
stick so faithfully to the novel and it just doesn't work.
1:38:17
That's a great example of what works on the page doesn't
1:38:19
transfer to something working on screen.
1:38:21
So is it the most faithful? Not by a long shot, but it is
1:38:26
probably the best adaptation of taking that source material and
1:38:30
then transforming it into what we get on screen.
1:38:32
Yeah, I haven't not read any Stephen King novels at all, but
1:38:37
doing research for this, my key take away from it and stop me if
1:38:41
I'm wrong here, fellas. But the difference between the
1:38:43
source material and the film is that the novel's kind of more a
1:38:46
straight up supernatural story. They're kind of like the ghosts
1:38:49
of the Overlook, whereas the film is like a psychological
1:38:52
study delving deep into the duality of manners.
1:38:55
Westies been seen throughout, and the hotel's macabre passes.
1:38:59
Kind of a metaphor for that. Yeah.
1:39:01
And that duality is reflected throughout Mirrors, the Grady
1:39:04
twins, two women in Room 237, Danny and Tony.
1:39:08
Yeah. No, it's definite.
1:39:09
You're not the best interpretation of a Stephen King
1:39:12
novel at all, but it is the best interpretation of a Stephen King
1:39:15
idea. Nice, lovely.
1:39:18
OK, move on to John Alcott, who was the director of photography
1:39:21
on the film Aid in A Better by Garrett Brown.
1:39:25
Obviously there's loads of amaze and camera work.
1:39:27
What do you think of Alcott's work in the film Westie?
1:39:31
A pure technician, and I think John Alco as a technician,
1:39:34
Garrett Brown on Steadicam as a technician.
1:39:37
Nail it. Yeah, absolutely nail it.
1:39:39
Nail his vision 100%. Because if they didn't, you
1:39:42
wouldn't see it, of course. Yeah, I think cure because the
1:39:45
kind of director who knows everybody's job better than they
1:39:48
do from the top down basically, even down a catering probably.
1:39:52
Yeah. I absolutely think All Court
1:39:55
will be part of that. But even if you don't know that,
1:39:58
I think you're going to be impressed with what he delivers
1:40:00
on screen, which that's my success.
1:40:02
It's obviously going to be what Kubik wants him to do to the
1:40:05
absolute NTH degree. And I always think the shine in
1:40:08
it. It's obviously a film about a
1:40:09
family trapped in a hotel, but it's also a story about a guy
1:40:12
trapped in his own head. And I think this.
1:40:15
The Cinema Trophy just captures that so well, how it's so
1:40:18
comfortable in the big open spaces like the Gold Room,
1:40:20
Colorado Lounge, the scenes outside.
1:40:23
But it also really works in the claustrophobic sense in like
1:40:26
Room 237 in the Torrance's room. There are little bits that like
1:40:30
stand out, and obviously they're going to come from Kirby, but I
1:40:33
love how the camera moves with Jack's swing of the axe when
1:40:36
he's the way it just slams with it.
1:40:39
That's remarkable, isn't it? It is.
1:40:41
It just adds so much that's savagery and so much power.
1:40:44
Oh yeah, Yeah. That was Kubrick operating.
1:40:46
How did the pull focus on that then, Westie?
1:40:48
Well, he's in one focal plane, so he doesn't move, so the focus
1:40:52
is going to maintain him. And then all you're getting is a
1:40:55
whip pan, so you don't need to pull focus on the whip.
1:40:57
Pan. Basically just you find your
1:40:59
start and your end point and you're kind of just with the.
1:41:02
Sort of thing. Which is fun to.
1:41:04
Oh, it's fantastic. There's an amazing tracking shot
1:41:06
of Wendy outside in the snow as she goes to check out the snow
1:41:09
cat that's absolutely stunning and that's captured by the
1:41:13
Steadicam, relatively new invasion in the world of film
1:41:17
making. It's mounted under a gyroscopic
1:41:20
arm which protects the camera from movement and allows the
1:41:22
camera to fluidly move up and down through the scenes.
1:41:25
It was used in films like Bound for Glory, Marathon Man, Rocky,
1:41:29
Halloween. We talked about it in that
1:41:30
episode at length as well. It's used almost exclusively in
1:41:34
The Shining, and the inventor of the Steadicam, Garrett Brown,
1:41:36
was on set to work his magic. What do you think of the
1:41:39
Steadicam use? Big Wheel is suppose the one
1:41:41
that really stands out, doesn't it?
1:41:44
It's pioneered everything, and I think what he did with this is
1:41:48
just elevate it to a new level. I think if the steady camera had
1:41:52
not been introduced on The Shining, I don't think it would
1:41:55
have been as popular as it is now.
1:41:57
I think it would have taken a lot longer for it to be
1:41:59
recognized as an individual technique.
1:42:04
But Garrett Brown was famously quoted as saying on the set of
1:42:08
The Shining, on that shoot, that's where he learned to
1:42:11
control the damn thing. That's where he learned how to
1:42:15
use it properly because Kubrick wanted him to do things that he
1:42:18
didn't think was necessary or he didn't think would work.
1:42:21
But Kubrick pushed him and pushed that technique even
1:42:24
further. And the production designer has
1:42:26
been said he'd wake up in the morning, he'd go down to set
1:42:30
half five in the morning. Derek Brown be running around
1:42:32
the set, through the corridors with an oxygen mask on just to
1:42:35
get enough, just to get his fitness up so we could do the
1:42:39
Big Wheel tracking shots with the kid.
1:42:41
Holy shit. So Kubrick had the idea and
1:42:43
Barry Lyndon to instead of using tracks, which he built in on
1:42:47
passive glory, he built into the trenches.
1:42:49
Yeah, So you see the tracks. He didn't like that.
1:42:51
So he just got a wheelchair on Barry Lyndon and started doing
1:42:54
tracking shots on a wheelchair. So he didn't see the dot, he
1:42:56
didn't see the track. He then got a one of the
1:43:00
production designers to come in and one of the camera operators
1:43:03
to come in and work with Garrett Brown and adapt the wheelchair
1:43:07
to hold the steady camps. Garrett Brown was in a
1:43:10
wheelchair on the steady camp, so he made it even steadier,
1:43:12
even faster, without anyone running around.
1:43:15
There's another quote by Garrett Brown because he he was one of
1:43:18
the few people who actually really liked these multiple
1:43:20
takes like Cubic would do because as he said, it allowed
1:43:22
him to master this. And he said it was like trying
1:43:25
to move a piano and play it at the same time.
1:43:29
But it's so vital this the success of this film because
1:43:32
when you are on the big wheel with Danny, it just adds so much
1:43:36
of like an ominous, threatening atmosphere because it gives a
1:43:39
real sense of speed and you don't know what Danny's going to
1:43:42
say whenever he comes to a corner.
1:43:44
And it just adds tension and it just adds real sense of danger
1:43:48
to the film, I think. Yeah, it's the Big Wheel shots
1:43:51
where it goes over the rug and the silence and then that
1:43:54
crescendo of noises that hits the wood floor.
1:43:58
Absolutely amazing. Kubrick was said that he was
1:44:00
completely shocked when he discovered that alternating
1:44:03
sound between the wheels going over the carbon and the hardwood
1:44:05
floor when reviewing the dailies.
1:44:07
George Anderson, one of our patrons, he said, would we have
1:44:11
gotten as iconic a film if the steady Cam had not been
1:44:14
invented? What do you think, Matt?
1:44:17
I mean, it's it's one of those questions.
1:44:19
It's hard to say because what would have been there instead?
1:44:22
And I'm sure a cubic would have come up with something, but it's
1:44:26
so integral to that story. It's so integral to the
1:44:29
character of Danny. It's one of the the big kind of
1:44:33
woman's that always gets me is when he does round the corner
1:44:35
and it's the twins standing there.
1:44:37
Oh yeah, and he stops. He just stops dead.
1:44:41
What could he have done that would be the equal that I
1:44:43
really, really struggle to think when the thing about the other
1:44:46
camera techniques that we used before.
1:44:48
To answer George's question, no, it probably wouldn't have been.
1:44:51
I'm sure we would have gotten something, and I'm sure it's
1:44:53
something I would have still enjoyed.
1:44:55
But it's so integral to the effect of the film.
1:44:57
Yeah, I don't think it would have been as iconic.
1:44:59
No. Wesley.
1:45:00
My answer to your question, George, is I don't think the
1:45:04
Steadicam made this film. I think this film made the
1:45:07
Steadicam. Oh nice.
1:45:10
I'm thinking we can put that on the poster, can't we?
1:45:12
Yeah, great writing, great camera work on the Shiner, but
1:45:15
special mention also should go to the score by Wendy Carlos and
1:45:19
Rachel Elkind, the editing by Ray Lovejoy and the Ultra in
1:45:23
seeing Amaze and production designed by Roy Walker.
1:45:26
Yeah, unbelievable. The end.
1:45:33
Nearing the end of the film, Jack hijacks the radio and haler
1:45:37
and is on the next flight out to Colorado.
1:45:39
With the whole family fractured, Wendy quickly realises that all
1:45:42
work and no play has made Jack a dull boy.
1:45:45
Matt. Oh, jeez, who needs jump skirts
1:45:49
when you've got a scene like this?
1:45:51
I mean, everything about the scene, just everything that's
1:45:54
been laid in early scenes, it's all about pay off now.
1:45:58
Yeah, it's that creeping scene from Jack's pee review where
1:46:02
it's like creeping up behind her.
1:46:04
Hear that? I'm already on edge for that.
1:46:06
And then just the way that it draws out her looking at those
1:46:10
sheets of paper to find out what he's written.
1:46:13
You would read. Oh, it is.
1:46:14
That's the best way of focus. You're like, oh, what the fuck
1:46:17
is he written? What has he written?
1:46:19
I'm thinking it's going to be something really awful, really
1:46:21
awful. And I would never, ever, ever be
1:46:23
able to guess like that's what he's done.
1:46:25
But Even so, and even for such an innocuous phrase, it just
1:46:29
horrifies me when you realise how much Titan, he's done just
1:46:33
that one phrase and you say, oh shit, he's totally flipped.
1:46:38
And how long has he been flipped for?
1:46:40
How long did it take him to come up with those enormous reams?
1:46:44
I know it's the fact when you read through them or when you're
1:46:46
glimpsing at them and there's spelling mistakes in there and
1:46:50
there's grammar. Mistakes that's great and he's.
1:46:52
Put them in like different shapes, like some of them he's
1:46:55
got slanted. Everything about it.
1:46:58
It's just like, Oh my word. New pants please after this
1:47:01
scene. Brown note.
1:47:04
Yeah, the brown note has been well and truly played by this
1:47:08
point. Yeah.
1:47:09
God, it's amazing. Whisty yeah, it's that
1:47:12
deterioration, isn't it? Because you see deterioration of
1:47:14
the character through each page. The first page is well written.
1:47:19
It is, it's consistent, it looks good.
1:47:21
And then like Matt said, it's start.
1:47:23
You start getting spelling mistakes.
1:47:24
It's in different shapes. He's losing his mind, he's going
1:47:28
further and further down and it's that slow push in.
1:47:31
It's the music here. It's her reactions.
1:47:33
This is where Duvall shines for me.
1:47:35
From here, no pun intended, our performance elevates.
1:47:39
This is this is where she's like, it is the payoff and it
1:47:42
works. And I love the way he appears as
1:47:44
if from the photographs, from the background.
1:47:47
He is part of the hotel now. He is.
1:47:49
There's no turning back. It's all pushed forward.
1:47:52
Everything from this scene onwards, the camera moves
1:47:55
forward, it moves towards the end, the way Nicholson just
1:47:59
beats her and he's horrible and he thinks he's got the upper
1:48:02
hand and he's, you know, the tongue's out.
1:48:04
It's like Wendy, I'm just, you know, I'm not going to hurt you.
1:48:06
I didn't finish my sentence, which obviously harks back to
1:48:09
what he's writing. That you couldn't.
1:48:10
Finish what he's writing down. And she's got the baseball bat,
1:48:14
which again, people have said that's a symbol of America.
1:48:16
And he's got the axe, which is a symbol of, you know, the Native
1:48:19
America and the tomahawk and all that kind of thing.
1:48:21
Lovely. A behind the scenes story on
1:48:23
this which is absolutely amazing, Nicholson said.
1:48:27
Look, we're going to need a stuntman to do this, to do it
1:48:29
convincingly, to fall down them stairs after being hit.
1:48:31
I'll do the hit, but I can't do that fall down the stairs.
1:48:34
So they screen tested every single stuntman in London with
1:48:39
that jacket on and they did a screen test with the jacket on
1:48:43
to see how well they looked and how well they've ruled.
1:48:45
And it was the head of the union who ended up doing it.
1:48:49
It was like the boss of all the stunt, he'd got the absolute
1:48:53
best that he could find to do a roll down the stairs for 15
1:48:57
seconds. And that is just Kubrick.
1:49:00
It took like the 2 1/2 months to screen test all of these guys,
1:49:03
all of these people. I'm sure the first one was
1:49:05
fucking magic. But he's like, that does look
1:49:08
right. Let's do it again.
1:49:10
I feel really sorry for Wendy in this scene she sees.
1:49:13
I'm very confused. I just want to go back to the
1:49:15
room. But if you think about it
1:49:17
logically, she's having an absolute fucking nightmare.
1:49:20
Her son's been attacked, her husband's gone mental, and she's
1:49:24
snore bound in this hotel. She thinks there's a crazy woman
1:49:27
running amok as well. I mean, Christ and he's asking a
1:49:30
really big question. So what do you want to do with
1:49:32
Danny? Maybe we should take no, like
1:49:35
maybe you should take them. It is the visual and emotional
1:49:40
representation of what I would imagine is a really destructive
1:49:44
and violent relationship to be in.
1:49:47
Yeah, so toxic. Isn't it?
1:49:49
Yeah, it's it's. Horrible.
1:49:52
This is the moment where Wendy back and opened.
1:49:54
He's doing the whole I'm going to bash your brains in bit that
1:49:57
went into the Guinness Book of Records.
1:49:59
It took 127 takes the most for any scene with dialogue Jesus.
1:50:05
Christ. And a quote from Duval, she said
1:50:07
I had to cry for 12 hours a day, all day long, for the last nine
1:50:11
months straight, five or six days a week.
1:50:13
Oh God Almighty. That's mental torture, yeah.
1:50:16
Yes, it is. Yeah.
1:50:17
I think what's dizzying about when you stop and think about
1:50:20
it, it's kind of what you were touching on, Matt, is that
1:50:23
someone had to write out all of these pages line for line.
1:50:25
And they're not Xeroxes either, because they're all different.
1:50:28
They're all different structures and shapes.
1:50:31
And that somebody was Kubrick's assistant who spent months on
1:50:34
end doing this press. She didn't go mental.
1:50:37
Probably did. Particularly when you,
1:50:39
particularly when you consider how many takes Kubrick was keen
1:50:42
on. So she had to type out enough so
1:50:44
Shelly Duval could go through them and mess them up and tear
1:50:47
them up 8000 times whatever. And to go one further, the
1:50:51
foreign language versions of The Shining, so Spanish, Italian,
1:50:55
German, these pages were written out in that language as well.
1:50:58
Yeah. And none of them read all work
1:51:00
and no play. They all had kind of similar
1:51:03
things, but more relevant in that language.
1:51:05
So Spanish translation was although one will rise early, it
1:51:09
won't dawn sooner. Yeah.
1:51:12
OK, Italian was he who wakes up early meets a golden day.
1:51:15
Yeah, and then the French one was what you have is worth much
1:51:19
more than what you will have I. Don't know.
1:51:21
I don't really know what that means which.
1:51:22
Neither do I. No, I think we got the best
1:51:26
version there to be. Honest, I think we did.
1:51:28
After this, Wendy drags Jack into the storeroom, but he's let
1:51:31
out by Grady so that he can deal with things in the harshest
1:51:35
possible way. Danny writes Red Rum on the
1:51:38
bathroom door, but just as Wendy reacts, Jack bursts in the room
1:51:42
with an axe. So Westie.
1:51:44
Yeah, here's Johnny. Iconic scene.
1:51:46
Yeah, love. I mean, you all are.
1:51:47
But yeah, I mean, I'm not going to say I don't like this bit,
1:51:51
but like, it's fantastic. But I love the choice that
1:51:55
Wendy's got just before this scene.
1:51:56
Should put him in the storeroom, which she does, but also
1:52:00
introduced by Holdren to the freezer, where, you know, he
1:52:03
talks about all the meats and everything else that I said at
1:52:06
the top. So she's got the option here of
1:52:08
killing him or preserving him, which is a complete
1:52:11
representation of their whole relationship.
1:52:13
She always thinks if she just preserves his attitude, he's
1:52:15
going to get better, He's going to come back.
1:52:18
It's all about that preservation and that and moving on and that
1:52:21
cycle of things. She could have ended it.
1:52:22
She could have put him in the freezer and finished it, but she
1:52:25
didn't. Yeah.
1:52:26
And he comes back, but he comes back again preserved by the
1:52:29
hotel. So he comes back even stronger.
1:52:32
So she just preserved him in the wrong way.
1:52:33
And it's backfired. And a lot of this was ad libbed.
1:52:36
But he is Johnny Bit. But he is Johnny.
1:52:38
Yeah. I mean, Kubrick didn't
1:52:39
understand it because that was from US television.
1:52:41
He'd be living in England. He's like, well, but you know
1:52:43
what? You talk about Johnny Carson.
1:52:44
What do you? Get on the Johnny Carson.
1:52:46
Exactly. And the amazing thing about that
1:52:48
scene was it was like took 30 days to film and 60 doors.
1:52:54
I know that's crazy. Imagine having to take doors off
1:52:57
and then rehang it. Take doors off, rehang them,
1:53:01
What the fuck? Like on average that's what
1:53:04
that's two doors a day, but they're going through like more
1:53:07
than that. It took 30 days and then it's
1:53:08
the dialogue delivery just before this as well.
1:53:11
I love the sound design on Danny's voice when he's just
1:53:15
saying Red Room. And it's just the.
1:53:17
Pitch goes up, the pitch just increases, and then what do you
1:53:23
get? You get the mirror, you get the
1:53:25
reflection, you get to see exactly what's going on through
1:53:28
a mirror image and it zooms in and then crash zooms all the way
1:53:31
through the film. I've been touched on this, but
1:53:33
the crash zooms are just absolutely amazed.
1:53:36
Once Danny sees the Twins in the games room and it's just boom,
1:53:39
once you say murder written on that door, that's the world
1:53:42
you're in again. It's the Grady bathroom.
1:53:45
You're inside of his mindset and it isn't going to change.
1:53:49
It's so clever. It just makes us want to go to
1:53:51
sleep and not bother waking up. What's the point?
1:53:56
RIP Van Westy. But brilliant.
1:54:02
Matt, what do you think? So like, even before I saw The
1:54:05
Shining, like when I was a kid, I used to like, read all these
1:54:08
books about science fiction and horror films.
1:54:09
And so the image I was always obsessed with well before I saw
1:54:13
the film was that one of Wendy holding the knife like Karen up
1:54:17
in the corner of the bathroom. I was like, what the hell is
1:54:19
that? And it does, it absolutely pays
1:54:22
it off. What, like before with the when
1:54:24
she was locking him in the storeroom, it's because it's
1:54:27
been so tense. I think you just get a little
1:54:29
bit of comedy here when he's putting on that voice to try
1:54:32
and, like, pretend that he's all right.
1:54:35
He wants to doctor, he's calling it a Wendy.
1:54:38
Like, just because I've been so tense, that always gets like a
1:54:40
really nervous laugh out of me, you know?
1:54:42
He's clearly putting it on. That he switches it immediately,
1:54:45
doesn't he? Oh yeah.
1:54:46
Yeah, since he realizes it's not going to work.
1:54:48
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's just when you
1:54:49
think like the film can't get any more intense, it just ramps
1:54:52
it up one more time. Yeah, how loud is Halloran's
1:54:56
vehicle when he arrives at the hotel?
1:54:57
That snow cat? It's loud as the loudest vehicle
1:55:01
I've ever heard and slow as fuck.
1:55:02
It must have taken him hours to get there.
1:55:05
Yeah. Definitely.
1:55:06
It's unbelievable and then but a massive bummer on his part that
1:55:09
he's slept all the way from Miami to Colorado in the snow
1:55:12
through some horrendous weather conditions and then he's out of
1:55:15
there as soon as he reaches the overlook.
1:55:18
What a nightmare. Brilliant.
1:55:19
Though that scare comes from fucking Norway.
1:55:23
He's just walking through, you're trapping through with
1:55:25
him. And then once Jack appears from
1:55:27
behind that pillar and you get the the stabs of the music.
1:55:32
The last 20 minutes of this is just.
1:55:34
Incredible. It's incredible.
1:55:35
The Maze run is just fantastic. The use of that Steadicam is
1:55:40
fantastic. I really love those point of
1:55:42
view shots where it's Jack's point of view searching for the
1:55:46
footsteps and Danny's point of view when he goes back and he's
1:55:49
covering like it's the trailer. Bread comes again, isn't it?
1:55:51
Yeah. Yeah, there's just so much going
1:55:53
on here that you just pick up on on Lady fiance.
1:55:57
After Jack leaves Wendy in the bathroom, she gets all right the
1:56:00
next time you see her. Bearing in mind she knows Danny
1:56:02
got out of the window and has slid down.
1:56:04
She's running upstairs. Why would she be running
1:56:06
upstairs? The least logical thing you
1:56:08
could do, which is obviously where she sees the two guys in
1:56:10
the room. Yeah, Yeah.
1:56:13
Then when she's downstairs and she sees Halloran's body and
1:56:17
then the the ghost with a drink. Great party.
1:56:20
Yeah. And at this point, I'm not even
1:56:22
sure how many elevators they're supposed to be.
1:56:24
It's like that elevator seems to just been about 3 different
1:56:27
places all the same time. And she's running towards her.
1:56:30
And if you notice, in the middle there's an exit door I can't
1:56:34
work on. Why?
1:56:34
How an exit door could even be in between 2 elevators.
1:56:38
Yeah, I know what you mean. I know what you mean.
1:56:39
And you can see it's a little bit open, so you can see there's
1:56:42
something through there. And it's either the floodlights
1:56:44
from outside or it looks like could lead into the kitchen,
1:56:47
which case it's not an exit door.
1:56:49
She gets there, right. The next time you see her, she's
1:56:52
just running down the middle of a corridor.
1:56:54
So she clearly hasn't left through an exit that's taken.
1:56:56
Yeah. Yeah.
1:56:57
Except deep in the overlook. It's literally just rearranging
1:57:00
itself a while windy at this point just to mess her up and
1:57:03
trap her inside. It's amazing.
1:57:05
It's. So cleverly done.
1:57:07
Blows my mind. The thinking I went in there,
1:57:09
editing that whole sequence together, it's brilliant.
1:57:12
The snow was made of 900 tons of salt and expanded polystyrene.
1:57:17
The maze was built at around maybe 2/3 of the actual size,
1:57:21
and an airfield nearby Cuba thought it would be easy to
1:57:24
solve. He wasn't too happy with it, so
1:57:27
he went in to see if he can get out of it and he wound up
1:57:30
getting lost and. Everyone said they got lost in
1:57:33
there, but they couldn't. He said he figured it out and he
1:57:37
was the only person who could get out.
1:57:38
There was. Crew members said it was
1:57:40
pointless shouting Stanley because all you heard was he's
1:57:43
laughing. You're lost.
1:57:48
You're lost in there. Looks like we are in the film.
1:57:52
It's amazing. And in the novel as well, there
1:57:55
isn't a maze, but animals made of hedges that come to life in
1:57:59
attack. Is that right?
1:58:00
Boy, that's right. It is.
1:58:00
Yeah. So this was impractical from an
1:58:02
effects point of view. So Cuba came up with this maze
1:58:05
idea himself, which that's. Fast.
1:58:09
This is the end of the film, save for that pull into the 4th
1:58:13
of July 1921, Four Door. But there was an additional
1:58:17
scene at the end when originally released, and that was when
1:58:20
Ullman visits Wendy in the hospital to tell her that there
1:58:22
was no Jack and no evidence of anything out of the ordinary of
1:58:26
the Overlook. May then hand standing a ball
1:58:29
from the Overlook, which is the one that he's playing with, the
1:58:32
one that Jack's playing with as well.
1:58:33
It ends with the text. The Overlook Hotel would survive
1:58:36
this tragedy as it had so many others.
1:58:39
It's still open each year from May 20th to September 20th.
1:58:42
It's closed for the window, Yeah.
1:58:44
Kubrick removed this after it had been released in cinemas
1:58:48
like it was it was actually out there and he hired an editor to
1:58:52
go out and go to each of the theaters and cut the last two
1:58:55
minutes. Yeah.
1:58:56
So that's gone. So there's no physical remains
1:58:59
of that. You can't get that in a word
1:59:01
print or anything like that just being snipped.
1:59:02
Out it's gone for the end on the picture is the best way it could
1:59:06
end. Definitely.
1:59:07
So on that picture, what's your interpretation in the final
1:59:10
shot? The more I think on that scene
1:59:13
in the Gold Room where he says he'd sell his soul for a beer,
1:59:17
the more and more I come around the idea that that picture, it
1:59:20
can't be seen by anyone and what it is.
1:59:22
That picture is just the collection of who the Overlook
1:59:26
has gotten over the years. So that picture will get bigger
1:59:29
and bigger and more full of people.
1:59:31
Jack's the new one. He's the latest one, so he's
1:59:33
front and sender until I find someone else to replace him.
1:59:36
That's how I read it now. What's the different here?
1:59:39
No, I think because of what Kubrick said about it, it's
1:59:43
pretty similar. But I do, I think it's a
1:59:44
reincarnation thing. I think you've got that from
1:59:47
Delbert Grady going into Charles Grady, then going into Jack.
1:59:52
You know, there's all, they're always looking for people to do
1:59:54
certain things in this hotel. And I think the hotel's looking
1:59:57
for certain people to do certain things.
1:59:59
And what we're focusing on is this one story of the caretaker
2:00:03
over the winter who kills his family.
2:00:06
You know, it's happened before and it happened again.
2:00:08
Charles Grady did it. Jack does it now.
2:00:11
Bill Blakemore, who's a writer for ABC, one of the first kind
2:00:14
of writers who would start to build a really strong theories
2:00:17
about the meaning of The Shining, said the answer to this
2:00:20
puzzle, which is a master key to unlocking the whole movie, is
2:00:24
that most Americans overlook the fact that the 4th of July was no
2:00:27
ball nor any kind of Independence Day for Native
2:00:30
Americans. That the weak American villain
2:00:33
of the film is the reembodiment of the American men who
2:00:36
massacred the Indian in the early years.
2:00:38
So he puts it all down to this Native American genocide that we
2:00:42
were talking about earlier. Also to give another slant to it
2:00:47
to back up the Holocaust theory as the camera dissolves into a
2:00:51
closer zoom of the photo of Jack, Jack's hairline makes a
2:00:55
small Hitler like mustache on his upper lip.
2:00:59
In the closer up image has the two with his oven into each
2:01:01
other. Of course it does.
2:01:06
Jack is Hitler calling so. So what an ending Jack now a
2:01:11
permanent fixture at the Overlook.
2:01:13
He's always been the caretaker there.
2:01:14
Amazing. Reception and awards.
2:01:22
The Shining Open Too much derision in the US, Variety
2:01:25
said. With everything to work with,
2:01:27
Kubrick is teamed with jumpy Jack Nicholson to destroy all
2:01:30
that was so terrifying about Stephen King's best seller.
2:01:33
Gene Siskel called it a crashing disappointment, and Pauline Kael
2:01:37
said again and again the movie leads us to expect something,
2:01:40
almost promises it, and then disappoints us across the board.
2:01:44
Negativity. Because of the negative
2:01:46
reaction, Kubrick removed around 24 minutes of footage for the
2:01:49
international version, which was released a full five months
2:01:52
later. The omitted scenes took away
2:01:55
most of the action that happens away from the hotel.
2:01:57
So Danny with the doctrine near the start, there's a longer
2:02:00
interaction with Jack in the interview scene, more footage of
2:02:05
Halloran's efforts to get back to the Overlook, which includes
2:02:07
a scene with Tony Burton's garage attendant, and also a
2:02:11
segment where Wendy's running around the hotel.
2:02:13
At the end, she stumbles into a room which is full of skeletons.
2:02:16
Straight out of a Vincent Price film.
2:02:18
Yeah. Looks ridiculous up it.
2:02:20
Yeah, yeah, it does look stupid. As mentioned at the top, Kubrick
2:02:24
was nominated for a worst director.
2:02:26
Razi. Unfathomable Crazy.
2:02:29
Can't explain it I'm. Not saying anything about that.
2:02:33
And Duvall got nominated for worst actress.
2:02:37
Scantman Crothers did win the Saturn Award for Best Supporting
2:02:39
Actor. Despite being released on the
2:02:42
same day as The Empire Strikes Back, it did make a profit on a
2:02:46
budget of 19,000,000 and returned 46.2 million overall.
2:02:49
Nice. As early as 1987, Roman Stone
2:02:52
magazine noted that there was a critical re evaluation of The
2:02:54
Shining in process, and in 2013 Timeout magazine called it a
2:02:59
masterpiece. Robert Ebert spun his initial
2:03:02
negative review into a positive by inducting it into his great
2:03:05
movie series. Not too little, too late, Rob.
2:03:10
Born of Contention, Raj and Empire magazine gave it five out
2:03:15
of five, saying it manages to reverse a complex world of
2:03:18
insipid madness, spectral murder and supernatural visions, and
2:03:22
also makes you jump. Empire also put it number one in
2:03:25
their best horror movies of all time.
2:03:27
Yeah, yeah. To say it's just a horror film,
2:03:30
though, is doing the film a disservice.
2:03:32
I think so. I guess so, yeah.
2:03:33
But you know, a lot's been said about the horror genre, and I
2:03:36
think it's a lot more important than people believe it is.
2:03:38
Currently, it has an 85% score on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.4 out
2:03:43
of 10 on IMDb. So I'm not doing too bad, no.
2:03:47
So a surprise and initial reaction even considering the
2:03:50
endless maze that Cuba created, the film now considered a
2:03:53
classic and one of the best of the genre.
2:03:55
Certainly is. Yep.
2:03:59
Sequels and influence. Permanently unhappy at Kubrick's
2:04:04
adaptation, Stephen King finally got the opportunity to put right
2:04:07
the wrongs of the Shine and by adapting his novel into ATV
2:04:10
miniseries in 1997, he wrote the Telly Player Act as his exec
2:04:15
producer as well, with Mick Garrison directing duties.
2:04:18
Shine in 1997 miniseries Have you seen it?
2:04:22
Yes, unfortunately. OK.
2:04:26
Yeah, I mean, it's just a case of thing and Stephen King really
2:04:31
should have showed up about it, because it's one thing to
2:04:33
complain about it, but then to go and announce that you're
2:04:36
going to make the definitive version in your head and then to
2:04:40
turn in what he did. Yeah.
2:04:43
It's just unfortunate, put it that way.
2:04:46
That is unfortunate. Universally agreed that it's
2:04:49
completely terrible compared to the film.
2:04:52
Awful. The acting is just atrocious.
2:04:56
It shows that King is He's a great novelist, but that is not
2:04:59
the same as a great screenwriter because he has cramped
2:05:02
everything in there. He's crammed in the fire hoses
2:05:05
that come to life. He's crammed in the hedge
2:05:08
animals. I've come to life and you sat
2:05:10
there and you watch anything and you know what?
2:05:12
Stanley was right all along. It's just terrible.
2:05:17
And it's over 4 hours long as well. 4 1/2 hours.
2:05:21
Yeah, too long. Shower of shit I've seen.
2:05:24
I haven't seen it, I'm not going to watch it, I'm not interested.
2:05:26
I've seen the best of clips on YouTube and if that is the best
2:05:30
of 30. Seconds long is.
2:05:31
It a shower of shit. It's like 2-2 minutes.
2:05:33
And you know what? It reminds us of the King's
2:05:35
attitude. Do you know when one of the
2:05:37
early episodes of The Simpsons where whom I get to design his
2:05:40
own car? Yes.
2:05:42
And it's it's a piece of shit. Yeah.
2:05:45
Everyone's like, what is this? And he's standing there.
2:05:47
He's like, yes, that's the Strider mini series.
2:05:51
I've always wanted to see it just because of this kind of
2:05:55
reputation that it has and the reputation that Stephen King's
2:05:58
given it. Bad.
2:05:58
Reputation. Bad reputation and I started to
2:06:02
watch it for this. Saw the first part and was
2:06:05
thoroughly disappointed. Couldn't get beyond that.
2:06:08
It's all like really melodramatic and like cheap,
2:06:12
really cheap and it looks really heavy-handed.
2:06:15
Despite King's protests at Jack being a psycho from the Gecko in
2:06:18
the film The Jack and This, played by Stephen Webber, he's
2:06:23
introduced as a drunk who's broken his son's arm and beat up
2:06:26
one of his pupils at school immediately in the first 10-15
2:06:31
minutes. So what the fuck's he talking
2:06:32
about? Yeah.
2:06:36
I also don't like the kid in who plays Danny.
2:06:38
He's played by Courtland Mead. He's a pale imitation of Danny
2:06:41
Lloyd. Terrible.
2:06:43
Yeah, what Melvin Van Peebles is in there is Halloran, and he's
2:06:46
dressed in like a full purple suit, like a pimp, which is
2:06:49
nice. Well, you'd love you love Van
2:06:51
Peebles. Let's be honest.
2:06:51
Yeah, of course. As part of the deal to get the
2:06:55
rights back for The Shining back from Kubrick, King had to agree
2:06:58
that he would stop pissing and mourning about Kubrick's version
2:07:02
right. He could still take shots at the
2:07:04
cast and at Nicholson, but that was the only kind of criticism
2:07:07
he could give it. Regrettably, Kubrick died a
2:07:09
couple of years after The Shining was made, so King just
2:07:12
resumed his complaining about the film.
2:07:14
Nobody cares. Exactly, it's a masterpiece man,
2:07:17
just just leave it. He's got your idea and he made
2:07:20
it better. Just deal with it.
2:07:22
It did get positive reviews when it was released.
2:07:24
TV Guide give a 10 out of 10 what?
2:07:26
However, the Washington Post advised viewers to avoid it like
2:07:29
the plague because it is the plague.
2:07:34
Crap. Fairpoint.
2:07:36
It won two prime time Emmys for sound and makeup.
2:07:39
Nowadays it's got a 42% score and running the models not good
2:07:42
enough. That's high.
2:07:44
Yeah. That's really high.
2:07:46
Then last year, a sequel to The Shining was released.
2:07:49
Doctor Sleep, based on King's novel of the same name from
2:07:51
2013, stars Ewan McGregor as an adult Daddy Torrance.
2:07:56
What are your thoughts on this one fellas?
2:07:57
It's nice to see it again. It's nice to see.
2:08:01
Lovely to see you again. It's nice to see you again.
2:08:03
Like I say, it's my best friend, so it is nice to see you in a
2:08:07
different kind of context. It's to me dependent upon the
2:08:12
original film too much. It's not a stand alone film.
2:08:16
You're not going to be like Doctor Sleep is one of the best
2:08:18
horror films ever made. It's too long, You and my great
2:08:20
father isn't great in it and it doesn't sit right with me.
2:08:23
It's all right. It's an homage if you've got a
2:08:26
spare 5 hours to sit through. I thought it was from lack the
2:08:32
courage of its convictions, because I'd read The Big
2:08:35
beforehand. So I knew what happened started
2:08:37
off and I was like, I don't care.
2:08:39
This is about it's actually kind of exploring or trying to
2:08:42
explore Danny as an adult and dealing with the trauma that he
2:08:45
went through. So, you know, I appreciate it's
2:08:47
not just, you know, rehashing what he went through in the
2:08:49
shine. And so that's quite interesting.
2:08:51
I thought Rebecca Ferguson was pretty good.
2:08:53
This is the villain of the piece.
2:08:55
She was pretty good. I liked her.
2:08:56
But it then deviates from the book because obviously if you
2:09:00
talk about the Book of the Shine and the Overlook burns to the
2:09:02
ground, which obviously follows on in Doctor Sleep, but
2:09:05
obviously that's not the case in the film.
2:09:07
So I thought once the film got him back to the Overlook, I just
2:09:11
thought you could have made something really distinctive,
2:09:13
you could have been really brave.
2:09:15
But you haven't. Now you're just making a film
2:09:17
that's just piggybacking on the success of The Shining.
2:09:21
I didn't really like the mystical elements of it.
2:09:24
Yeah, I wasn't expecting that. I hadn't read the book, of
2:09:27
course, so I wasn't expecting that.
2:09:30
It is a completely different film to The Shining, so if you
2:09:32
go on in expecting that I think you'll be disappointed.
2:09:35
I did quite like it. I'd like to see it again, but it
2:09:38
was over long. I actually did like the
2:09:41
recreation of the Overlook I. Did.
2:09:42
Yeah. Probably the only thing I did
2:09:44
like about it. King said of the film.
2:09:47
Everything that I ever disliked about Kubrick's version of The
2:09:50
Shining is redeemed here. Off man, honestly.
2:09:55
I know so, maintaining his dislike for the film still in
2:09:59
the afterword of the book Doctor Sleep, he writes.
2:10:02
Of course there was Stanley Kubrick's movie, which many seem
2:10:05
to remember for reasons I've never quite understood.
2:10:07
If you've seen the movie but not read the novel, you should know
2:10:10
that Doctor Sleep follows the Ladder, which in my opinion, the
2:10:13
true history of the Torrance family.
2:10:15
It's your opinion. Still banging on about yeah.
2:10:18
Well yeah, who gives a shit? It was a critical hit, 77% on
2:10:23
Rotten Tomatoes, but not a commercial one.
2:10:25
On a budget of 55 million in a return to mega 72 million.
2:10:29
I think it deserved more than that.
2:10:31
Finally, it was announced by HP or Max in April this year that
2:10:35
there would be a TV series prequel to The Shiner focusing
2:10:39
on the previous incumbents of the Overlook Hotel name.
2:10:41
Simply Overlook. I'm interested in that.
2:10:44
I'll be interested in that. I'm interested in any sequel to
2:10:47
any film that I love. Of course, 99% of the time let
2:10:50
down. Yeah.
2:10:52
So the history of The Shining is vast, with novels, TV shows,
2:10:55
prequels and sequels. But without Kubrick at the helm,
2:10:58
surely none will hold a candle to the 1980 classic.
2:11:01
Now should get Vivian Kubrick in there.
2:11:03
Do it. She knows what she's doing.
2:11:06
Or just release the full code of the behind the scenes.
2:11:08
Well, yeah, I'd rather watch that.
2:11:14
All the right movies ranking. The Shining has an iconic
2:11:19
ending, and that's what we're going to give this podcast right
2:11:21
now. OK, no pressure.
2:11:23
Unique all the right movies ranking.
2:11:26
So Matt, could you summarize The Shining?
2:11:27
Give us your score out of 10 please.
2:11:29
OK, so no other film has challenged me as much in the
2:11:34
horror genre as this one to sit through it in one sitting.
2:11:37
Nor the horror film stands up to as many repeat viewings as this
2:11:40
one, has it still shut as my nerves by the end of it each and
2:11:45
every time. And no other horror film has as
2:11:48
much to get into as this one and take it outside of the horror
2:11:51
genre. Very few of the films have as
2:11:53
much to get into whether it's there or not as this one.
2:11:56
It's just out there on its own. It's a very easy 10 for me.
2:12:00
Love it. I don't want to stop talking
2:12:03
about it like I don't, I don't want to, but I don't want to.
2:12:06
I can't have to though. But I'll I'll be like, OK, but
2:12:10
we'll stop. We'll stop the mics rolling.
2:12:14
You'll still be talking about just to me self as if it's like
2:12:17
Lloyd. Little slow tonight.
2:12:22
Little slow down, but like, honestly, I can adore this film.
2:12:30
I think it's incredible. I think it's an incredible
2:12:32
achievement. So many layers, and like I said
2:12:34
at the top, there's so many questions without any answers.
2:12:36
There's so many layers without you understanding what the
2:12:39
layers are. It's just a cinematic joy.
2:12:42
It's visual joy. Absolutely set the bar and it
2:12:46
continues to do so. It's 40 years old and we're
2:12:50
still talking about it as if it came out last week.
2:12:52
Performances are incredible. This is how you direct film.
2:12:56
This is how you make film. This is how it should look.
2:12:58
This is cinema. This is a tip.
2:13:00
Oh. Nice.
2:13:03
Wonderful. I wish it could be so dramatic.
2:13:08
So I don't. Know well, I mean, I'll echo it
2:13:15
exactly the same thing. Kind of mash your two comments
2:13:18
together and say that's mine. It's a wonderful film.
2:13:24
It's, on the surface a superb, superior horror film, but it's
2:13:29
got about 20 other layers that I'm still trying to work my way
2:13:33
through, and I know I'll never get there.
2:13:36
And that's what will keep me coming back again and again and
2:13:39
again. I'll always want to solve this
2:13:40
puzzle that Kubricks left us, and I think that makes it all
2:13:44
the more tantalizing. Come back again and again.
2:13:47
And from a technical film point of view, Kubrick like red hot,
2:13:52
red hot. Form.
2:13:52
Oh yeah, unbelievable. Unbelievable what he's done.
2:13:55
I'm always amazed. Mentioned it, but the production
2:13:58
design, the sound design, the acting and performances, the
2:14:03
sets, just everything about it. I mean, it's a 10 of.
2:14:07
Course it is. You know what it is?
2:14:09
It's it's a maze that you don't want to get out of.
2:14:12
That's what this film is. It's a perfect analogy of it.
2:14:16
Like, I'm happy to be lost in it.
2:14:18
It's just so entertaining. It's such a comfortable place to
2:14:20
be. That's you in the picture at the
2:14:22
end, isn't? It Yeah, it is.
2:14:25
He's always been there. What I really like there,
2:14:33
Wesley, is you give your analogy there, which was lovely, but you
2:14:36
said that's a perfect analogy of itself, reasoning.
2:14:43
Just just self Pierce from beginning to end in this
2:14:45
podcast. Yeah.
2:14:47
He was just because me back then.
2:14:48
Yeah. Listen to this.
2:14:50
This is a perfect analogy, OK? I'm sorry.
2:14:53
Don't listen to the other two clowns.
2:14:59
We had a poll going on Twitter as well to help us score the
2:15:01
shine in. Before we give you the score,
2:15:03
some red hot comments first. Laura Watson at Laura WA
2:15:09
65437530. She said it's an exceptional
2:15:14
film. Jack Nicholson's chilling
2:15:16
portrayal of a man's descent in the madness is mesmerizing.
2:15:19
You question what's real as you witness the force of the hotel
2:15:22
and the family's implosion in oppressive isolation.
2:15:25
Yeah, she's right. Yep.
2:15:27
Chris Watt at the Chris Watt said few horror films have
2:15:31
elevated the genre, yet Kubrick's mastery of torn and
2:15:34
style cuts deep into the psyche, utilizing iconic imagery, rug
2:15:38
pull, subversion, and she has cinematic confidence to bring
2:15:41
the story to vivid, terrifying life.
2:15:44
Yep, he's right. That he does.
2:15:46
And finally, concrete soldiers at Leon Doggy Dog said.
2:15:51
Oh man, The Shining. What's not to love?
2:15:55
That's right, a family stays in a big boring house for the
2:15:58
winter. The overworked father with
2:15:59
writer's block eventually gets frostbite.
2:16:02
Fucking brilliant. 10 out of 10. Fantastic.
2:16:08
True. And with hundreds and hundreds
2:16:11
of votes combined on Twitter, The Shining came out with the
2:16:13
score of. 10 please come on, for fuck's sake. 9.5.
2:16:20
Why 10? Why?
2:16:21
9.5 out. Of who give it a .5 Stephen
2:16:23
King. Loads of soccer counts.
2:16:32
So that means with our scores combined with the score from
2:16:34
Twitter, the Shannon has ended up with a score of 39.5 out of
2:16:37
40. I did have a feeling that this
2:16:39
would reach the snowy peaks of the 40 out of 40, but it just
2:16:43
missed out. Meaning that The Godfather
2:16:44
remains unchallenged at the top of the All the Right Movies
2:16:47
leaderboard. OK.
2:16:51
Go to alltherightmovies.com Leaderboard to see the rank and
2:16:55
order of all the films that we've covered on the podcast so
2:16:57
far. As mentioned at the top, Patreon
2:17:00
is available to all our listeners, so take a look at
2:17:03
www.patreon.com/all the right movies for our unique and
2:17:08
exclusive podcast experience. And a big one up to our
2:17:11
directors chair, Tia patrons, they are Adam Cowie, Adam Yates,
2:17:15
Damian Lennox, Anna Randall, Andrea Barker, Saeed, Matt Lom,
2:17:19
Graham Cheder, Just Joe, Kenny Morrison, Gary W, Jamie Russell
2:17:24
and Robert Shearer. Great guys listening to great
2:17:27
podcasts. Thanks guys.
2:17:29
Selfish. Thank you.
2:17:34
So we're off to the Gold Room to see if Lloyd can't slip us a
2:17:36
bottle of bourbon, 3 little glasses and some ice.
2:17:39
If he's not too busy, of course. For all show notes, credits and
2:17:43
references that we used in production of the podcast, you
2:17:46
can visit alltherightmovies.com/the Hyphen
2:17:49
Shiner. Join us next time in all the
2:17:52
right movies, provided Westie hasn't chopped us up into little
2:17:54
pieces. John Westie and I are on a
2:17:58
murder case in 40s Hollywood as we discuss who friend Roger
2:18:01
Rabbit. Nice as always, you can
2:18:04
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2:18:07
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2:18:20
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2:18:21
So hook us up on Twitter. We are at right under score
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2:18:28
We'll see you in two weeks time. Thank you very much everyone.
2:18:30
Thank you guys. Come.
2:18:35
On.