Speaker 1: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?
Speaker 1: You're not interested in armed now? No, look, we're going
Speaker 1: to do this thing. We're going to have a conversation.
Speaker 2: Hey, film Spotters were digging deep into the archive, going
Speaker 2: way back to episode four nineteen. Michael Phillips joined us
Speaker 2: for a Sacred Cow conversation about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining,
Speaker 2: which is forty five this year, and we thought it
Speaker 2: was only fitting because we're talking about Zach Kraiger's weapons,
Speaker 2: a huge influence on Craiger as a filmmaker. If you
Speaker 2: google his name, Josh, you will find Kubrick in The
Speaker 2: Shining mentioned almost in any conversation that this filmmaker has.
Speaker 2: And of course when you watch the film, you know
Speaker 2: that that time two seventeen comes up again and again,
Speaker 2: And I thought, well, is that the is that the
Speaker 2: room and the Shining? There has to be some relevance, right,
Speaker 2: And then I remember me, waight, no, maybe it's just
Speaker 2: random because the room is two three seven. Well I
Speaker 2: did a little bit more digging. Two one seven is
Speaker 2: the book, the Stephen King book The Shining. Turns out
Speaker 2: two one seven is the room.
Speaker 3: There Craiger trying to provey smarter than all of us.
Speaker 4: There you go with that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we didn't play a ton of spot the reference
Speaker 3: in our review of weapons, we name checked a movie
Speaker 3: or two, but definitely the Shining is in that mix.
Speaker 3: And yeah, never a bad time to talk about the Shining.
Speaker 3: And you know, if you are a member the Film
Speaker 3: Spotting Family, you have access to our archives, so you
Speaker 3: could listen to an older show like this any time
Speaker 3: you want, reviews, top fives, all that good stuff, going
Speaker 3: all the way back to two thousand and five. So yeah,
Speaker 3: archive access, it's just one of the benefits you get
Speaker 3: as a member of the Film Spotting Family. If you're
Speaker 3: not a member already, please do consider joining. It keeps
Speaker 3: us doing this show and you can learn more at
Speaker 3: Filmspotting Family dot com. From episode four nineteen, then here
Speaker 3: is that Sacred Cow review of the Shining.
Speaker 2: Crab.
Speaker 5: Here's Johnny, I'm coming down, come and play with us.
Speaker 3: How much does the Shining mess with our heads, Adam
Speaker 3: and Michael? So much that some thirty years later, a
Speaker 3: documentary has been made profiling the way fans of the
Speaker 3: film have been haunted by it over the years. Room two, three, seven,
Speaker 3: which was recently shown at the Chicago International Film Festival,
Speaker 3: digs into the various interpretations and conspiracy theories that obsessive
Speaker 3: viewers have come up with in their attempts to explain
Speaker 3: this deeply disturbing film. I wonder if these theories are
Speaker 3: in some sense of defense mechan a way to process
Speaker 3: the terror that the movie causes. After all, if it
Speaker 3: can be reduced to a puzzle that's been solved, the
Speaker 3: Shining is perhaps less troubling.
Speaker 1: Michael.
Speaker 3: The last time you were with us, we learned of
Speaker 3: your love for Jaws, So I know that great white
Speaker 3: sharks scare you. I'm not sure how you feel, however,
Speaker 3: about creepy twin girls decomposing bodies in bathtubs or elevators
Speaker 3: bursting with blood. Did the Shining get to you then
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty and does it still have the power
Speaker 3: to disturb you today?
Speaker 1: This is the question. This is the question. It's the
Speaker 1: essential question.
Speaker 5: Say this is the great It's a film. I honestly, Josh,
Speaker 5: I honestly don't have settled, fixed opinions on a lot
Speaker 5: of the Kubrick work that post dates two thousand and one.
Speaker 5: A space honesty, I know the films I absolutely adore
Speaker 5: of his and seem to get so much out of
Speaker 5: every new experience with them. They tend to be the
Speaker 5: They tend to be the period from nineteen fifty six
Speaker 5: the Killing up through and including two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: And I'm much more.
Speaker 5: Not ambivalent because he's too he's too distinctive a filmmaker
Speaker 5: to provoke ambivalence in a viewer.
Speaker 1: I think, but I'm much I tend to.
Speaker 5: I tend to slip around and change my mind depending
Speaker 5: on how many years have gone by on almost everything
Speaker 5: he made since then, up until his UH and including
Speaker 5: his final film, Eyes White Shot. I I did love
Speaker 5: going back to the Shining for this show because it
Speaker 5: had been years and years since I saw it, and
Speaker 5: just to kind of see and remember what that incredible
Speaker 5: elegance of those steady cam shots and and that really
Speaker 5: that's not a minor issue in this film. It's it's
Speaker 5: a major issue with so much of the film is
Speaker 5: spent barreling behind Danny on that big Wheel, which takes
Speaker 5: you just seeing the big wheel in action on all
Speaker 5: all through those amazing maze like quarters of the Overloak Hotel.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's.
Speaker 5: Why a lot of the lot of the film does
Speaker 5: feel hypnotic because it is visually casting a kind of trance.
Speaker 5: But I also, Josh, do feel that I haven't changed
Speaker 5: my opinion in one way in that the common complaint
Speaker 5: about Nicholson's performance in The Shining that it goes bug
Speaker 5: House too early, and that you see the documentaries and
Speaker 5: you read a little more about you know, you know
Speaker 5: the dozens and dozens of takes that Cubrick was taking,
Speaker 5: and he tended to I believe, correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 5: He tended to always select the nuttier, more outsized editions
Speaker 5: of whatever Nicholson was coming up with, and sometimes he
Speaker 5: would do align a scene or set a tone in
Speaker 5: a more sympathetic, comforting way, and Kubrick would never.
Speaker 1: Choose that take. It was always the crazier one. Sam
Speaker 1: at them.
Speaker 5: In the same time, he was always trying to get
Speaker 5: Shelley Duvall to play it a little less nuts. And
Speaker 5: the film has a very strange tension because really it's
Speaker 5: not a horror film. I mean, I don't even know
Speaker 5: what I think of it. Frankly, again, I.
Speaker 3: Just saw it, but even after seeing it recently.
Speaker 5: Is not a horror film. It is just it's a
Speaker 5: black comedy about an America, a particularly American kind of
Speaker 5: family that deserves what's happening to them.
Speaker 3: Okay, I know Adam that it terrifies you, at least
Speaker 3: in references that you've made on the show. We hadn't
Speaker 3: really dug into it at any point. Is that something
Speaker 3: that it did for you right away when you first
Speaker 3: saw it? And when did you first see it? Because
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty hopefully you were a little young to have
Speaker 3: seen it then. But I'm assuming this is a tear
Speaker 3: you've had sent your childhood at some point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. My parents, I've said this before on
Speaker 2: the show. They didn't really stop me from watching anything.
Speaker 2: I had a TV in my bedroom pretty early. I
Speaker 2: had HBO pretty early. I was lucky, and so they
Speaker 2: didn't shield me from watching things like The Shining that
Speaker 2: I shouldn't have been watching. And I saw some of
Speaker 2: this stuff.
Speaker 1: And how were you then?
Speaker 2: I was probably eight or nine or ten when I
Speaker 2: saw the Terrific Yeah, exactly explained everything it does. But
Speaker 2: I probably never saw the entire film. I just saw
Speaker 2: parts of it, partly because I was too terrified to
Speaker 2: watch the entire film. I don't think I actually saw
Speaker 2: the film in its entirety until I was in and
Speaker 2: was going through a little bit of a Kubrick phase,
Speaker 2: as I think we all went through at some point
Speaker 2: in our cinematic lives. So this was fun for me
Speaker 2: to go back and revisit. And in terms of whether
Speaker 2: or not it still scares me, it didn't this time, thankfully,
Speaker 2: because I had my wife sitting next to me, So
Speaker 2: even though we were sitting bars a part in my
Speaker 2: basement in the dark, and when those twins come on
Speaker 2: screen and those strings, that eerie music leaps up on you,
Speaker 2: I didn't jump out of the couch because my wife
Speaker 2: was there to protect me, so she kept everything on
Speaker 2: an even keel, which is great. But I love what
Speaker 2: you said about the cinematography. I think you can't help
Speaker 2: but talk about the film without mentioning John alcott cinematography
Speaker 2: and the steadycam used. They actually got the guy who
Speaker 2: invented the steadycam to run the steadycam on this film.
Speaker 4: And hypnotic is the right word.
Speaker 2: But it's not just in terms of what the steadycam
Speaker 2: is doing in the movement and how fluid it is.
Speaker 2: It's also even in I think the dialogue scenes, how
Speaker 2: he calms the camera down in scenes like the meeting
Speaker 2: with Olman when he takes the job and has offered
Speaker 2: the job early in the film, he doesn't do anything
Speaker 2: really crazy with the camera at all. It settles into
Speaker 2: this really simple back and forth shot reverse shot style,
Speaker 2: the same shots every time that almost luwly you to
Speaker 2: sleep a little bit, the same way the steady cam does.
Speaker 2: And the deep focus, of course, here is another fascinating
Speaker 2: part of the film, and they're using these wide lenses
Speaker 2: to make the characters look so dwarfed inside the overlook.
Speaker 2: But then you realize what he's doing in the close
Speaker 2: ups where he deliberately tries to get rid of all
Speaker 2: the deep focus he can, which is pretty normal with
Speaker 2: a close up anyway, but there's no focus at all,
Speaker 2: So all you can see in these moments is the face.
Speaker 2: Those shots that you've see in a lot of Kubrick
Speaker 2: films are that close up straight on of the face.
Speaker 2: I love how we get that jexposition of all that
Speaker 2: deep focus and then no deep focus at all, and
Speaker 2: you just look at the face there. So right from
Speaker 2: that opening helicopter sequence, you know you're in for something
Speaker 2: really interesting with this film and what the camera is
Speaker 2: going to do, And I just want to mention that,
Speaker 2: going back to Nicholson's performance, we could probably spend the
Speaker 2: whole show just talking about that performance and what we
Speaker 2: make of it. There's no doubt he goes a little
Speaker 2: crazy and he's big right away in this film. But
Speaker 2: watching it again this time, it occurred to me that
Speaker 2: there's actually a sense from the very beginning that everything
Speaker 2: here is preordained, which makes sense when you get to
Speaker 2: the end of the film. But you think about some
Speaker 2: of the references that are made early in this film.
Speaker 2: There's the Donner party conversation as the family's driving to
Speaker 2: the overlook, the music that is eerie right from the
Speaker 2: beginning of the film, with the helicopter sequence, the fact
Speaker 2: that we learned that the hotel's built on a burial ground,
Speaker 2: an Indian burial ground, and you even get things like
Speaker 2: Shelley Duval being shown the freezer and the storage room
Speaker 2: down in the kitchen as if it's foreshadowing that she's
Speaker 2: gonna end up using this room later. So there's a
Speaker 2: sense that this family's doomed from the very beginning. It's
Speaker 2: not really about any kind of suspense building on whether
Speaker 2: or not Jack Nicholson is going to lose his mind.
Speaker 2: It's just a matter of when and how many casualties
Speaker 2: they're going to be.
Speaker 3: That's funny that you say you watch it in bits
Speaker 3: and pieces. First, I think I probably did the same thing,
Speaker 3: catching it on TV maybe or something like that, or
Speaker 3: turning it off as a kid when I couldn't take it,
Speaker 3: And I think that probably fed the power of it
Speaker 3: because this is a very sub liminal movie. You get
Speaker 3: quick shots of horrifying things, and that's how it works
Speaker 3: when you sit down and watch it from start to finish,
Speaker 3: So even watching it in bits, you get a sense
Speaker 3: of that before you're ready for the whole thing. My
Speaker 3: recent watching experience, believe it or not, was in an
Speaker 3: off season hotel. We were recently in northern Wisconsin on
Speaker 3: vacation and we put it on in a hotel that
Speaker 3: thankfully had other guests, but I did think it was
Speaker 3: a little too close to home for the subject matter.
Speaker 3: Still terrifying stuff. I mean, this is a really frightening movie,
Speaker 3: and watching it again, I realized one of the things
Speaker 3: that's most impressive about it is that it doesn't really
Speaker 3: need suspense to terrify you. That's a little bit what
Speaker 3: you were getting at, Adam, in that it's clear from
Speaker 3: the beginning this guy's gonna go off his rocker. The
Speaker 3: family is gonna get it in some way. I guess
Speaker 3: there is that suspense that, okay, are the mom and
Speaker 3: kid gonna make it out alive? But Kubrick doesn't really
Speaker 3: seem to be all that interested in whether or not
Speaker 3: they really make it out alive. He feels the need
Speaker 3: to serve that story, I guess, and I'm sure the
Speaker 3: studio demanded it, but you get a sense that it's
Speaker 3: all gonna go really badly here.
Speaker 5: Well, and that's part of the joke. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 5: he's got a pitiless sense of humor. He always has.
Speaker 5: And and you know, it's not about creating this any
Speaker 5: kind of conventional suspense speeds. It's all about, as Adam said,
Speaker 5: you know what you get visually out of a film
Speaker 5: like that that has all this sort of wide lens
Speaker 5: dread in every frame and you don't really know what
Speaker 5: these details are even adding up to, But you know
Speaker 5: that heavy, as you say, that sort of heavy methodical
Speaker 5: back and forth and sort of the simple dialogue scenes
Speaker 5: There's always been a lot of deliberate sort of a
Speaker 5: half second or second of dead air around every piece
Speaker 5: of dialogue in almost every Kubrick film that just makes
Speaker 5: you feel like something is amiss, something, And no one
Speaker 5: was more amused in the most heartless way by banal
Speaker 5: small talk than Kubrick. You know, when you think of
Speaker 5: some of the conversations in two thousand and one early on,
Speaker 5: or that meeting with Barry Nelson as the hotel owner
Speaker 5: where it just or even just shots of Shelley Duvall
Speaker 5: and the boy I'm forgetting the bloody like Danny Lloyd.
Speaker 5: Of course, mister Danny is sitting in front of the TV,
Speaker 5: which is always on at the worst moments, while she's
Speaker 5: smoking like it's nineteen eighty, which it is, and smoking
Speaker 5: two inches away from him.
Speaker 2: My wife commented on that too, It said, hey, it
Speaker 2: was nineteen eighty.
Speaker 5: It is like coffee tea or me with the cigarettes there.
Speaker 5: I mean, it is very smoking, and Danny is eating
Speaker 5: the whitest bread whites. It's like a shade of wonderbread
Speaker 5: that's beyond white, right, it's and this is I think,
Speaker 5: not to make too much of what's encoded in this film.
Speaker 1: At least we will talk about that with the documentary.
Speaker 5: But it's that's what's kind of Yankee Kubrick's chain with
Speaker 5: this material.
Speaker 1: It's that it's a way of.
Speaker 5: Getting at this family that's already corroded from the inside.
Speaker 5: We hear that Nichols, and you know, Jack Torrance's character
Speaker 5: in a drunken rage yanked his son's dislocated.
Speaker 4: His sons momentary laps, the momentary.
Speaker 5: Lapse of extreme violence which we don't see what we
Speaker 5: do hear about and in a sort of a weirdly casual.
Speaker 3: Way, there isn't really that much violence. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: another traditional horror tool that he sets aside. He doesn't
Speaker 3: rely on the suspense, he doesn't rely on that much violence.
Speaker 3: And yet I count this for me personally as probably
Speaker 3: the most frightening movie I've seen. It's all about those
Speaker 3: little It's all about those little subliminal shots of things
Speaker 3: that don't necessarily even matter for the main narrative at hand.
Speaker 4: Like the elements the elevator and also I do elevator.
Speaker 3: Things that are just when you look at them in
Speaker 3: the larger span of the story, they're not really necessary.
Speaker 3: Yet they are the things that haunt me. And maybe
Speaker 3: it's because they aren't necessary, you know, they aren't these
Speaker 3: obvious tools that I'm used to when I'm watching horror films.
Speaker 1: Instead, I get these.
Speaker 3: Odd images, the twin even just standing there, that I
Speaker 3: can't quite process or fit into the normal horror trajectory,
Speaker 3: and so it sets me off a little bit. I
Speaker 3: don't quite know what to do with them.
Speaker 5: Let me say two things. First of all, I've stayed
Speaker 5: at much worse hotels. Secondly, do you guys both love
Speaker 5: this film?
Speaker 1: I do not.
Speaker 4: I'd say I'm pretty close.
Speaker 3: Mom is a hard word to use for it. I
Speaker 3: feel manipulated by it in a way. I admire. Let
Speaker 3: me put it that way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of love it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was more intrigued than I remember, because it's
Speaker 5: not a film I saw more than once or maybe twice,
Speaker 5: back when I was in college. But it does strike
Speaker 5: me as awfully minor Kubrick, it does.
Speaker 1: It does. I don't know why.
Speaker 3: I think it's minor in terms that is, what is
Speaker 3: he really after here? And maybe that's part of what
Speaker 3: you're getting at, in the sense that here's someone who's
Speaker 3: just playing with a horror story that maybe he's not
Speaker 3: all that interested in I do get a sense of that.
Speaker 3: Yet at the same time, that doesn't mean he set
Speaker 3: his craftsmanship aside. And so all the intricate care that
Speaker 3: is going into those tracking shots with a big wheel
Speaker 3: or even the who are at the beginning, it's all
Speaker 3: to set up the geography of this hotel, and just
Speaker 3: to admire the amount of care and attention and how
Speaker 3: it pays off later when we are running through that
Speaker 3: hotel too, now this time for our lives, and it's
Speaker 3: very insidious because he's given us so many tours of
Speaker 3: it with his camera that we think, Okay, we should
Speaker 3: know where to go, we know where is a safe place.
Speaker 3: But then they start running and it happens early on
Speaker 3: which room two three seven nods too, where Danny is
Speaker 3: on his big wheel downstairs and without explanation, suddenly he's upstairs. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And suddenly we become disoriented and we're thrown off because
Speaker 3: we should know this place but we don't. He's screwing
Speaker 3: with us again, and that's just impossible not to admire.
Speaker 2: I think, though, there is this larger question that we
Speaker 2: have to ask, which is what is this film about?
Speaker 2: What do we take away from this film beyond maybe
Speaker 2: just being scared by it or reflecting on and really
Speaker 2: admiring the craftsmanship. But one of the things that struck
Speaker 2: me this time that I certainly didn't notice when I
Speaker 2: saw it originally back in college for the first time
Speaker 2: in its entirety, was that this really is a film
Speaker 2: about repression. There is this psychological terror I think Kubrick
Speaker 2: is exploring that can come from someone repressing themselves, from
Speaker 2: stifling their natural urges and desires. It actually made me
Speaker 2: think recently of our discussion of The Master, the Paul
Speaker 2: Thomas Anderson film. I see a little bit of that
Speaker 2: same kind of broken quality to Jack Torrance as I
Speaker 2: do in Freddie Quell. Someone who's kind of haunted by
Speaker 2: his inability to be the man slash husband slash father
Speaker 2: he wants to be, or thinks he should be, or
Speaker 2: think society expects him to be. And so you think
Speaker 2: about the ways Jack Torrance is repressing himself. We know
Speaker 2: he can't drink anymore, and later he can't wait to
Speaker 2: get a drink. He says, I think he'd give his
Speaker 2: soul to have one drink. He's a writer, but he's blocked.
Speaker 2: He can't say what he wants to say, he can't
Speaker 2: get that out there. And his relationship with his wife,
Speaker 2: of course, is interesting too, because they don't seem to
Speaker 2: be that affectionate, they don't seem to be physical in
Speaker 2: any way with each other. And when Ulman is showing
Speaker 2: them around early on, when they're getting the tour originally,
Speaker 2: I love this little throwaway moment where two block blond women,
Speaker 2: attractive blonde women are checking out and they go by
Speaker 2: and they say goodbye to him, and of course Jack's
Speaker 2: the last guy to go, and he has to look
Speaker 2: back at it to watch him go. I mean, he
Speaker 2: notices the blonde women, and of course he notices the
Speaker 2: naked blonde woman in room two three seven, which seems
Speaker 2: to be this room where maybe you get to explore
Speaker 2: those desires, you get to finally let it all out,
Speaker 2: whatever you're feeling. And I think that the key part
Speaker 2: for me is that conversation with Grady, who is the
Speaker 2: waiter I think in the gold room and the actor
Speaker 2: I had to write his name down, Philip Stone. I
Speaker 2: think he's so good, he is so fun to watch,
Speaker 2: just really relishing every single line. But when he talks
Speaker 2: to him later in the film, when Jack is trapped.
Speaker 2: The phrases he uses are really telling. He talks about
Speaker 2: how Jack is failing to take care of the problem, failing.
Speaker 2: She seems to have gotten the better of you. She
Speaker 2: needs a good talking to. It's this constant suggestion that
Speaker 2: he has to assert himself over her, and he even
Speaker 2: says at one point, you don't have to rub it in.
Speaker 2: So I feel like Jack is this character who feels stifled.
Speaker 2: He feels like she's largely holding him back, and that's
Speaker 2: why he really can't abide her then holding his one
Speaker 2: his one mistake, his one eruption of violence against him,
Speaker 2: the way he perceives that she does, and that misunderstanding.
Speaker 2: Remember when she says you did this to him, she
Speaker 2: thinks that he put his hands on him and choked him.
Speaker 2: That's really what starts the slide where all the violence
Speaker 2: in this film comes from.
Speaker 3: I think that's all there, and maybe this is what
Speaker 3: you're getting at, Michael. I think it's there on the surface,
Speaker 3: but for whatever reason, I don't really feel that the
Speaker 3: movie cares that much about it or is that invested
Speaker 3: in it. It's there narratively and to add a little
Speaker 3: bit of context, but I don't know that we can
Speaker 3: truly say that's what the movie is about. To me,
Speaker 3: the movie is about its own technique, and I don't
Speaker 3: know if you're looking for doesn't I think it might
Speaker 3: be a pretty shallow movie.
Speaker 4: I didn't feel that way done movie.
Speaker 3: But possibly a shallow one. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 3: makes it bad, but that's maybe part of my distance
Speaker 3: from it. And I don't know if that's where your
Speaker 3: level of.
Speaker 5: Engagement this time through. I thought, okay, what would make this?
Speaker 5: And I do I was kind of semi entranced by
Speaker 5: a lot of the thing visually, and that's nothing new
Speaker 5: for Kubrick, but there's something about the match of that
Speaker 5: director's meticulously obsessively controlled a visual approach when you match
Speaker 5: that up with an actor as kind of methodically crazy
Speaker 5: as Nicholson. I mean, there's not a lot of surprise
Speaker 5: in the Nicholson performance, and I find that anytime Nicholson,
Speaker 5: even more recently, and something is very different is about
Speaker 5: Schmid when he might more profitably play normalcy or sort
Speaker 5: of a neutrality and then kind of give you the
Speaker 5: intimations of the ripples of sort of you know what's
Speaker 5: going on behind the facade or whatever. He can't convey
Speaker 5: that because he doesn't have a lot of that in him.
Speaker 5: I mean, somebody I forget who was. Stephen King suggested, well,
Speaker 5: it should have been John Voight, you know, like nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty era John Voyd, somebody who can kind of start
Speaker 5: here and then go there. But you know, once he
Speaker 5: got Nicholson in and certainly didn't hurt. You know, the
Speaker 5: film was not a big success at the box office,
Speaker 5: but it's grown in the reputation, like most of kubrick
Speaker 5: stuff has grown with the passing years. Whatever one thinks
Speaker 5: of it, it's once you get Nicholson in there, he
Speaker 5: responded to Hubrick responded to the more operatic approach, and
Speaker 5: I just don't know if the film to me is
Speaker 5: fantastic in those flourishes you mentioned, Josh, just in that
Speaker 5: image that it comes back to a lot, and I never,
Speaker 5: without getting lazy, that image of the blood, you know,
Speaker 5: sort of seeping through these closed elevator doors and then gushing,
Speaker 5: you know, with the gallons and gallons. There's only I
Speaker 5: learned in the making of film that his daughter, Kubrick's
Speaker 5: daughter made the documentary, that there's really only one actual
Speaker 5: special effects shot in that film where Nicholson is looking
Speaker 5: at the model of the maid and then you see
Speaker 5: two tiny character yeah, and that that was actually you know,
Speaker 5: two stand ins, real actors shot from a great height
Speaker 5: in kind of a recreation of the Amazon, and then
Speaker 5: that super imposing that was madded in, and that that
Speaker 5: is a genuinely mysterious moment to really think, Okay, what's
Speaker 5: going on?
Speaker 1: Can he really see them? Is he imagining?
Speaker 4: It's like he's the lord of this sea?
Speaker 1: I know, but it's not. You don't get a literal explanation.
Speaker 1: And that's what Kirbric is living for.
Speaker 4: He lives for that right.
Speaker 3: I'll say this about Nicholson's performance, It's probably the least
Speaker 3: frightening element to me in the movie. I enjoy it
Speaker 3: in terms of its comedy, really not bad comedy, but
Speaker 3: just it gets you laughing, and in that way it
Speaker 3: maybe releases some tension. But if there was a way
Speaker 3: for the shining to be scarier, it might be with
Speaker 3: a different lead actor, because then that whole attack the
Speaker 3: family sequence, which to me, I start to feel like
Speaker 3: I've seen this, you know what, I've seen variations on this. Again,
Speaker 3: not saying that it's bad or doesn't entirely work, but
Speaker 3: I wonder if the shining would have been scarier with
Speaker 3: someone like John Voyd in the lead that took a
Speaker 3: different task.
Speaker 5: This is what cubric makes you, even if you feel
Speaker 5: a little not dismissive, but more like, Okay, it's a
Speaker 5: minor work in my view, but even so many of
Speaker 5: his films provoke enormous objections, and you can kind of
Speaker 5: have objections to your own objections. Like in other words,
Speaker 5: Barry Linden is a film that I feel like, like anything,
Speaker 5: as I say Anything Posts two thousand and one, I'm
Speaker 5: not even sure where I stand on all these movies anymore.
Speaker 5: Barry Linden I did see two or three times when
Speaker 5: it came out. I was sort of just knocked out
Speaker 5: by it as a period piece. But at the same
Speaker 5: time I thought, Okay, any actor in the world would
Speaker 5: be better than Ryan O'Neil. And I still believe that
Speaker 5: that was purely for box office insurance, and he can
Speaker 5: barely get by, I think in that picture. And it's
Speaker 5: too bad that that film didn't have and essentially more
Speaker 5: of an Albert Finny level a craftsman in there.
Speaker 4: I guess I don't want to dwell on Nicholson too
Speaker 4: much more.
Speaker 2: I think we've covered it, but I do disagree because
Speaker 2: I think it fits in with how I'm reading the
Speaker 2: film in terms of this movie and the narrative being
Speaker 2: one that is preordained and a lot of the dread
Speaker 2: coming from not just that you know where it's going,
Speaker 2: but with him being so big and so clearly capable
Speaker 2: of violence, it then does become this interesting operatic question of, Okay,
Speaker 2: how big is the carnage going to be? How much
Speaker 2: damage is he really going to do? I agree that
Speaker 2: it would be interesting to see someone like John Voight,
Speaker 2: someone more subtle, go on more of a progression to
Speaker 2: that point, but I think it works just as well,
Speaker 2: or maybe is even more scary because it is so operatic,
Speaker 2: And just to close one small thing I was saying
Speaker 2: about his character and this kind of loser character that
Speaker 2: he seems to be responding to that line about all
Speaker 2: work and no play that she reads on the typewriter.
Speaker 2: If you think about it, though we've always kind of
Speaker 2: just joked about it, it's become a cliche. We know
Speaker 2: it's this nursery rhyme kind of line, but it does
Speaker 2: work in the grand scheme of this film, where he's
Speaker 2: saying all work and no play makes him a dull boy.
Speaker 2: This idea that he has to be just a father
Speaker 2: who has to collect a paycheck, who doesn't get to
Speaker 2: do the fun things that he wants to do. It
Speaker 2: is an expression of him being stifled in some way.
Speaker 2: So again I'm on board with Nicholson, but I do
Speaker 2: want to ask you guys about any of the aspects
Speaker 2: after probably viewing Room two three seven, as you watch
Speaker 2: the Shining, did you think about some of those things
Speaker 2: where you really focused in on some minor detail and
Speaker 2: maybe obsessed over it or tried to make too much
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: It was hard not to, but I really tried to
Speaker 3: avoid that, actually, because I didn't want to be caught
Speaker 3: in that place where the people who are profiled and
Speaker 3: that documentary are they're trapped by their theories and we'll get.
Speaker 4: To that film. Yeah, So yeah, I tried to avoid that.
Speaker 2: Well, there were three things that jumped out for me,
Speaker 2: and the first one is really really minor. I just
Speaker 2: thought it was kind of a funny joke where he's
Speaker 2: in the office with Olman and he says, well, I've
Speaker 2: got a writing project that I'm working on, And of
Speaker 2: course you think, well, I really hope he knows where
Speaker 2: he's going with this writing project, because he's going to
Speaker 2: be there for five months. So if you're a writer,
Speaker 2: writing's already hard enough, but if you know where you're going,
Speaker 2: you have a basic roadmap that could be very productive.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have a clue what he's doing. And I
Speaker 2: love the fact that he says he's got this writing project,
Speaker 2: and then what we learned is he didn't have a story.
Speaker 2: And Olmen says, well, I've got this little story for you,
Speaker 2: and it's the story about the gradies what went wrong there?
Speaker 2: And you almost have to think, if only Torn's been
Speaker 2: smart enough to go, well, that's an interesting story, why
Speaker 2: don't I write about that? I've just written it lived
Speaker 2: in Yeah, exactly, then he'd have something. But I love
Speaker 2: the fact you mentioned Michael Danny eating the Wonderbread, Shelley
Speaker 2: Duval smoking as they're watching TV. They're eating lunch there
Speaker 2: in that opening sequence, the first time we meet Danny
Speaker 2: and Wendy. Do you remember what else Wendy is doing
Speaker 2: in that scene As she's smoking a cigarette and talking
Speaker 2: to Dan, she's.
Speaker 1: Wearing her watch over the red.
Speaker 4: Pull over, which she looks looks interesting.
Speaker 1: Psychotic right there, but what is it?
Speaker 2: What I noticed was she's reading a book. She's reading
Speaker 2: a book and it happens to be Catcher in the Rye.
Speaker 2: And I just love the fact that she's married to
Speaker 2: a writer or an aspiring writer, and she's a reader.
Speaker 2: She's clearly a reader because what we also are oppressive
Speaker 2: and what we also see in the shot is behind
Speaker 2: Danny is a bookshelf full of books. Keeping with my
Speaker 2: theory about this pressure on him to be this certain
Speaker 2: kind of husband or man. She's a reader and he's
Speaker 2: a writer. And it also works nicely that it's Catcher
Speaker 2: in the Rye written by a recluse, a guy who
Speaker 2: basically shut himself in.
Speaker 4: Right. You have to wonder if.
Speaker 1: You're like the sixth guy that I know he really
Speaker 1: should have.
Speaker 4: Here's my last one though, and you can keep going.
Speaker 2: You can totally scoff at this one, but think about
Speaker 2: why does Kubrick spend so much time showing Scatman Cruthers,
Speaker 2: Dick Kaler and the chef show Wendy all the food
Speaker 2: in the freezer. He spends like five minutes going through
Speaker 2: the number of ribbis, all the different types of meat
Speaker 2: that are in the freezer, and I watch it and
Speaker 2: I was thinking, I think a lot of people wonder
Speaker 2: this as you watch the shining. What is all that
Speaker 2: blood in the elevator? What is this supposed to symbolize
Speaker 2: in some way? And I'm thinking about all the animals
Speaker 2: that must have been slaughtered.
Speaker 4: Right, just.
Speaker 2: What you're saying, not necessarily, but I wonder if there
Speaker 2: is a little bit of visual playfulness going on, or
Speaker 2: textual playfulness on Cubuck's part to suggest that think about
Speaker 2: the number of animals.
Speaker 4: Forget the Indians.
Speaker 2: That they they've clearly the people who built that territory slaughtered,
Speaker 2: but then the people they've dug up the bones to
Speaker 2: build the hotel on that burial ground. But then we've
Speaker 2: got the animals as well. The sheer quantity of animals
Speaker 2: that have to be slaughtered to keep that place running.
Speaker 4: That's the blood eye it.
Speaker 5: I just assumed it was some of those early New
Speaker 5: Year's Eve parties in the twenties that got a little
Speaker 5: lot of hands.
Speaker 2: Maybe so guy with the rabbit suit we see later? Yeah,
Speaker 2: what about then, any major aspects of the film. We've
Speaker 2: covered a few of them. But what about things that
Speaker 2: maybe clearly didn't work for you? Beyond Nicholson's performance, were
Speaker 2: there aspects of the film that didn't.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of it is hooked up for
Speaker 5: me with nick questions about the casting of Nicholson and
Speaker 5: devolve frankly, although right these days, of course, whatever one
Speaker 5: thinks of that movie, their faces in extremists were either
Speaker 5: reacting to or causing some horrifying moment of the you
Speaker 5: know is it's part and parcel of the movie's image,
Speaker 5: and it's why we we kind of rolls around in
Speaker 5: our heads even if we don't really know what we
Speaker 5: of it. I guess I find Kubrick's not I wouldn't
Speaker 5: say sending up the.
Speaker 1: Material, but he it comes close, he looks.
Speaker 5: He's not interested in you know? But what is Eyes
Speaker 5: Wide Shot? What is is that a conventional you know,
Speaker 5: hinerance to any certainly now I got a huge issue
Speaker 5: with Eyes Wide Shot that I'm eager to revisit in
Speaker 5: a few years when I see it again, or maybe sooner.
Speaker 5: In that I think that story not necessarily with those actors,
Speaker 5: but that story came from a different period. I think
Speaker 5: it would have made more sense than a different I
Speaker 5: don't know. I just always had these enormous questions with
Speaker 5: Kubrick in the later stuff about either casting or some decision.
Speaker 1: But at the.
Speaker 5: Same time you have to admire how how damn far
Speaker 5: he went with every single choice, often in you know,
Speaker 5: the direction he always went. But I mean, when you
Speaker 5: look at the visual quality of the Shining and you
Speaker 5: have to go straight back to the trenches and pass
Speaker 5: the glorium.
Speaker 1: He was doing amazing.
Speaker 5: Things in nineteen fifty seven with the camera. Never a
Speaker 5: subtle filmmaker in many ways, not a subtle He didn't
Speaker 5: view humanity or humans in extremists under attack in any
Speaker 5: particularly subtle way. But he somehow turned these simple parables
Speaker 5: of good and evil into the stuff of if not
Speaker 5: necessarily numbers, but it's stuff of the kind of.
Speaker 1: Very unsettling dreams. And that's why he's still the filmmakers.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't have any major criticisms for the Shining, but
Speaker 3: with your interpretive skills we've seen on display here, I
Speaker 3: do want you to explore why do we get so
Speaker 3: much of Dick hallerin traveling. One of my notes, we
Speaker 3: get him in Miami on the plane, we get him
Speaker 3: in the car. I'm surprised if there were computers around
Speaker 3: we would have gotten him placing his order on experience
Speaker 3: for his.
Speaker 2: Playing tak You're so right. It's one of my notes.
Speaker 2: That's one of the things I didn't understand about the movie.
Speaker 4: It's absurd, it's just misdirection.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really detract from the film. But you're right,
Speaker 2: it's interesting that they show so. And you wonder me
Speaker 2: if he is trying to make Maybe he's trying to
Speaker 2: make a sort of ironic joke out of it, because
Speaker 2: how much time does he devote to seeing scatman Crothers
Speaker 2: get to the overlook and then once he gets there,
Speaker 2: he's killed in thirty seconds. It clearly seems to be
Speaker 2: a joke on his part. But you're right, I don't
Speaker 2: know why we had to spend that much time with him.
Speaker 2: The two things for me, and I'll just quote you
Speaker 2: directly from my notes as I watched the film, WTF
Speaker 2: the Dog the Dog? Do you remember the sequence when
Speaker 2: Wendy's losing her mind and she finally sees the blood
Speaker 2: come out of the elevators. Is at the end of
Speaker 2: the film, Danny's being chased by Jack through the maze.
Speaker 4: She's looking for them.
Speaker 2: In the overlook and she goes upstairs and there's a
Speaker 2: sequence where a character in a dog out for.
Speaker 1: About outfit.
Speaker 2: I think it's a dog because I did some Google
Speaker 2: searching today to be like, there must be something on this.
Speaker 2: Apparently it's in the book, and it was something Kubrick
Speaker 2: shot but otherwise didn't explain it at all, except for
Speaker 2: that one shot where we see a dog seemingly performing
Speaker 2: a sex act on a man, and that's one of
Speaker 2: those talking about Yeah, but that's one of those things
Speaker 2: that completely doesn't fit in with anything else we see
Speaker 2: in the movie. And I think that whole sequence with
Speaker 2: Wendy doesn't really work where things we see the cobwebs.
Speaker 2: It kind of becomes a little bit too conventionally horror
Speaker 2: movie there.
Speaker 5: It's weird because a lot of it almost seems David lynchian,
Speaker 5: and he was by by then Lynch had made a
Speaker 5: racer Head, and you know, I think The Elephant Man
Speaker 5: came out that same year, and and but but Cubrick's
Speaker 5: kind of the kind of rhythm he favors as a filmmaker,
Speaker 5: and and the kind of anal attention to a certain
Speaker 5: pacing and this methodical vibe. He's always kind of sort
Speaker 5: of like, you know, playing out. It's the opposite of
Speaker 5: the kind of really free floating dream imagery that Lynch
Speaker 5: is into. So when you when you get a moment
Speaker 5: like that and the shining, you have this sort of
Speaker 5: you know of all kind of coming upon this salacious
Speaker 5: sexual act going on it. It doesn't seem to be
Speaker 5: coming out of any kind of like subconscious or dream moments. No,
Speaker 5: you're right, it's a laid out with this kind of
Speaker 5: ridiculously heavy hand and a very matter of fact you're right,
Speaker 5: And at the same time it's all part and parcel
Speaker 5: of Kubrick just as a filmmaker. And I know, I
Speaker 5: don't know. I mean, I mean, I don't know. Where
Speaker 5: do you I want to ask this though, Where do
Speaker 5: you put it in relation to the films? It's nearest
Speaker 5: on the timeline, we have Barry Lindon and we have
Speaker 5: a full metal jacket on the inicide.
Speaker 1: But where does that go for you?
Speaker 3: Well, I've never seen Barry Linden, so I can't put
Speaker 3: it overall.
Speaker 1: And Kubrick's I'm sorry, I'm leaving.
Speaker 4: I would say you should, I don't.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would put it at the top, but
Speaker 3: for different reasons, and the films that I value more
Speaker 3: like two thousand and one would be way above it.
Speaker 3: That makes any sense, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Get back to me in bonus content. I'll have thought
Speaker 2: about it a little bit more in terms of where
Speaker 2: I rank this. I do want to mention one last
Speaker 2: thing though, that I'm curious how you guys responded to,
Speaker 2: which is something that I don't even know if I'm
Speaker 2: saying it as a criticism. It's more just an open
Speaker 2: question I have about the film, which is I don't
Speaker 2: know how I feel about the fact that a major
Speaker 2: aspect of the plot revolves around Grady, a character who
Speaker 2: clearly doesn't quote unquote really exist, letting Jack out of
Speaker 2: the storage room in the basement of the Overlook Hotel.
Speaker 2: Because if you think about how the film is set up,
Speaker 2: obviously you have to buy in a little bit too
Speaker 2: supernatural things going on. Clearly Danny has the shining and
Speaker 2: Scatman Cruthers has this ability to shine.
Speaker 4: You buy that.
Speaker 2: You also can buy very easily that everything that is
Speaker 2: going on in Jack's head is going on in his head.
Speaker 2: He's walking around the hotel he thinks he's meeting these characters,
Speaker 2: but they're not quote unquote really there.
Speaker 1: Well, well, is all that cut and dry.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think it is. But I think you
Speaker 2: can go with it if you want to just suspend
Speaker 2: disbelief so far. You can say, Okay, I get that
Speaker 2: certain characters have supernatural abilities. I get that this place
Speaker 2: is haunted.
Speaker 3: Bruce, Danny and Room two three seven.
Speaker 2: Well, exactly, you're right. So that's one of the things
Speaker 2: that comes up, and the other one would be him
Speaker 2: getting let out. Is just it takes it to a
Speaker 2: plane where a film that's already clearly bizarre and out
Speaker 2: there and supernatural, it takes it to another level where
Speaker 2: then these ghosts in this house it's not just haunted,
Speaker 2: or it's not just a place that that praise on
Speaker 2: your fragile mind. It can actually cause physical things to
Speaker 2: happen in the real world, like a ghostly character opening.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: Just not completely in keeping maybe with the rest of
Speaker 2: the film.
Speaker 1: It was Adam, why are you so little reminded?
Speaker 4: I don't understand what It's a curse.
Speaker 2: It's part of my fragile mind, unfortunately, Michael, Mom, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they really will go at Hotel for the Vader. Sure
Speaker 2: I do. It'll be a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 2: Good timing too, as we recently talked about Jack Nicholson
Speaker 2: and shared our top five Jack Nicholson scenes. We hope
Speaker 2: you enjoyed that dip into the film Spotting Archive. A
Speaker 2: reminder that archive access is just one of the many
Speaker 2: benefits you get by being a film Spotting Family member,
Speaker 2: and you can learn more at film spotting family dot com.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.
Speaker 3: The fine.
Speaker 2: Film spotting is listeners supported. Join the film Spotting Family
Speaker 2: at film spotting Family dot com and get access to
Speaker 2: ad free episodes, monthly bonus shows, our weekly newsletter, and,
Speaker 2: for the first time, all into one place, the entire
Speaker 2: film Spotting archive going back to two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: That's a film Spotting Family dot com
Speaker 3: Panicly