King's Highway pt. 51: The Shining (mini-series)

Stephen King has never made a secret about his distaste for two things: being asked where his ideas come from, and Stanley Kubrick's version of his novel The Shining. When speaking to Playboy in the early 1980s, here's what he had to say:

"...Kubrick is a very cold man - pragmatic and rational - and he had great difficulty conceiving even academically of the supernatural."

First, let me say that if there's anyone in the world whose opinion I'll listen to on how the book failed to materialize onscreen in the Kubrick version, it's King. I have a lot of sympathy for his viewpoint. The movie guts much of what makes his novel his novel; I've argued elsewhere it's just part of the book-to-film process (and I still believe this) but it's easy to see where King's coming from. He wrote the thing, for crying out loud. Still, this statement has always puzzled me. Isn't Kubrick's The Shining a definitive illustration of the supernatural "conceived academically?" 

I can even see it being said dismissively of the film. (Though I don't think that's how King means it. Ironically, the version he adapted for the screen himself / the subject of this blog is very much an "academic" conception of the supernatural.)

Just saying, for better or worse, if there is a mathematical equation of "the supernatural rendered academically," it would describe Kubrick's The Shining, right down to his use of set design to convey the "wrong" geometric angles and proportions, etc.

But what makes King's statement even more puzzling to me is that if his beef with the movie is Kubrick's "inability" to warmly-convey the supernatural... how does bringing Mick Garris in as director improve the situation?

Before he directed the Shining mini-series from King's script, Garris brought both The Stand and Sleepwalkers to the screen. Do either of these scream "Master of Humanizing the Supernatural" to you? I suppose a case could be made for "personal taste," here, but this is like bringing a (legally unsound to begin with) case all the way to the Supreme Court and hiring Lionel Hutz to argue it.
 

Not that Garris doesn't have his defenders. Go to the threads of The Shining mini-series at the SK Forum for evidence of that. Or consider this enthusiastic blogger's take on Garris's visual style: "He has a very unique way of doing things, and it is evident when you are watching one of his films. He has such a talent for using music over scenes and making it effective. The man can craft so much from his visuals and he lets them tell the story, which is a great talent to have and I love him for it."

I gotta tell you - it disturbs me to read this. It's just... so off on so many points. I don't know where to begin.

Let's look at one example from The Shining. King's script flips the first and second chapters of his novel so that Jack's interview with Ullman takes place after Jack meets with Bill Watson (played by Pat Hingle). The camera (as accompanied by propagandist scoring) swoops over people playing "Denver Croquet" (more on that when I get to King's script) and moves across the lawn, showing the Overlook and the exiting guests. So far, so good. Then, it swings in so we have a moving shot of Jack and Stu talking, coming with them down the stairs and ending on this:

What is the point of this framing? The camera movement calls attention to itself as much as anything in Kubrick's version, but without any of the rationale. They are framed so that the Overlook has come between them. Is this really effective subtext for this scene? Or for anything that follows? Why even bother? 

Garris shares the curious opinion his fans have about his filmography and approach: "The Shining is one of my favorite things I've ever done. First of all, the production values, we were in one place for most of it. Well, a couple of places - a stage, a hotel. So, I was able to really use some filmmaking that I wasn't (able to) in the The Stand. The Stand was guerrilla filmmaking, and I everything I could, but we were rushed and on a much tighter budget with so many locations and so much cast that we were trying to just get it and put as much art into it as possible. But in the case of The Shining, I was able to really build some dread. I think that some of the filmmaking in there was much more sophisticated in the like."

There's so much wrong in that paragraph/ perspective I don't know where to begin. (The Stand is guerrilla filmmaking?) I'll just stick with "building some dread." The most noticeable aspect of The Shining mini-series is its absolute lack of dread. Who on earth could possibly be moved to dread from watching this version of the story?

He also displays a troubling lack of understanding of how deals are routinely made in Hollywood when discussing getting the rights to make this:

"...Part of the deal was that Kubrick had the rights. Kubrick got paid a lot of money for the rights to that. He got a million and a half bucks for the rights for us to do this. And part of the Kubrick’s deal was that King could not say anything critical about his movie…"

I have heard that before re: "King can't bad-talk the movie," but I strongly suspect that's BS. I have no evidence of it either way, but until I hear Kubrick's side (which seems impossible, him being dead and all) I don't buy it. But yes, Kubrick paid a lot of money for the rights to the film, those rights appreciated in value, he got paid an amount commiserate with this. Is that underhanded? Or anything but routine?  It might seem weird to someone not in the business, maybe, but it certainly sounds like standard business practice. Maybe Garris is just bitching about the money eating into his production budget. Whatever. Disney/ ABC has deep pockets.

One more thing before I move on to casting/ the script. As Karina Wilson noted in her book-to-movie-to-mini-series review: "It takes most of Episode One for the Torrances to get settled in to the Overlook, they don't get snowed in until partway through Episode Two, and Jack doesn't get anything but tetchy until Episode Three. Proceedings aren't helped by cheesy 90s special effects (the CGI topiary animals are particularly laughable...

Indeed they are.

The decision to make them actually move rather than suggest movement/ dread with photography is so baffling to me.

As it is, onscreen, it's like being menaced by slow-moving, choppy broccoli.

"...and low-grade Halloween make-up on the ghosts (which looks comic on a modern HDTV."

It looked comic on my shitty-old-TV-from-1997, as well.

I mean, come on.

Karina continues, "King wanted to shoot interiors and exteriors at the location that inspired him - The Stanley Hotel. While it's interesting to see the original, an actual physical location often has disadvantages over a specially-constructed set. A corridor is just a corridor. Unfortunately, from the opening moments, the fancy wedding cake architecture of The Stanley is too pretty to be sinister, lacking the low-lying menace of the Timberline Lodge in Oregon used by Kubrick. And the interiors... were never going to live up to Roy Walker's custom-designed sets."

Lets' move on from Garris and get back to King, who shares an equal amount of blame for this. (And if I seem too snarky, I apologize - God knows I love and support the man's work, nor am I"out to get" Mick Garris. But having watched all agonizing what-felt-like-fifty-five hours of this for the purpose of writing this blog, I at least earned the right to a little snark. Life is short.) Again, from his Playboy interview:

"(Kubrick) used to make transatlantic calls to me from England at odd hours of the day and night, and I remember once he rang up and asked, 'Do you believe in God?' I thought a minute and said, 'Yeah, I think so.' Kubrick replied, 'No, I don't think there is a God' and hung up. Not that religion has to be involved in horror, but a visceral skeptic such as Kubrick just couldn't grasp the sheer inhuman evil of the Overlook Hotel... This was the basic flaw. Because he couldn't believe, he couldn't make the film believable to others."

First, it is worth noting that King's story of these transatlantic calls/ Kubrick's questions has changed over the years. YouTube clips abound of King telling other variations of it, but usually it's that Kubrick called to say any tale that suggests an afterlife is fundamentally optimistic and that King responded "What about Hell?" and Kubrick said "I don't believe in Hell." Kind of a big difference/ implication in those two versions, if you ask me. But as with the rights-thing, Kubrick's side of the story is unfortunately not preserved.

Second, I agree that religion, whether God or the afterlife-in-general, need not be involved to make effective horror, but I'm not exactly sure what Kubrick is an alleged skeptic of, here. The supernatural itself? But Kubrick's film is such overwhelming evidence that the supernatural can be conveyed by a "visceral skeptic" and that audiences believed it, easily. Ask your parents. 

Or ask mine! "We believed it," say Dona and Farrell McMillan.

The horrors of the novel share some key (one might say "the essential") borderlands with the horrors of the film, like some unholy Venn diagram, but they are offspring of different fathers, to be sure. So... again, Mick Garris? That's your solution? I mean, like him or hate him, his filmography simply doesn't merit him as the expert witness for the rebuttal King has in mind, here. Put another way, I like Jack Nicholson as an actor, but I wouldn't cast him as Nelson Mandella.

Also, for what it's worth, Garris is an atheist, i.e. the kind of skeptic King intimates about Kubrick, here. Which I wouldn't even mention - hey, more power to you/ atheists-everywhere, I don't care or think it has to have any bearing on how you direct - but since King brought it up, I mean, what is he seeing in Garris's work to persuade him Garris is a "believer?" It makes me wonder if King is even capable, I'm afraid, of properly evaluating these things when he says things like this.

Still, like I mentioned before, I do sympathize with where King is coming from on Kubrick's movie, so let's continue:

"The second problem was in characterization and casting. Jack Nicholson, though a fine actor, was all wrong for the part. His last big role was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and between that and his manic grin, the audience automatically identified him as a loony from the first scene. But the book is about Jack Torrance's gradual descent into madness."

Far be it from me to disagree with the guy who created Jack Torrance, but... I'm going to. And sometimes, that's reasonable; a proud mother holding up her child's painting probably shouldn't be on the committee that decides whether or not it belongs in the Louvre.

As I mentioned last time, I think Nicholson's casting is if-not-perfect, then so close to it that the difference isn't worth mentioning. King underestimates the "angry dry drunk" aspect of his own creation. Jack Torrance is introduced as close-to-snapping from the very first, and we see him struggle with it. Most teachers don't attack their students and break their child's arm; these things alone mark him as borderline. Kubrick/ Nicholson picking up on that and translating it to screen simply shouldn't provoke these concerns. That they do is truly weird to me. Tho, perhaps understandable... he himself has said, "Alcoholics build defenses the way the Dutch build dikes," and since he's also on record as saying "I'm the guy who wrote The Shining without even realizing I was writing about myself," I think I see some denial in this comment (repeated over the years, but again from his Playboy interview, which, I should note, he gave while slamming beers back, as noted by the interviewer.)

But, okay. That's from where I'm sitting, and we're talking about from where King's sitting, right? So, his answer was (to paraphrase his own wording) to get... Brian Hackett from Wings? i.e. "though a fine actor, someone whose last big role was the smirking-other-male-lead on a laughtrack-sitcom, instantly recognizable to the audience of the time?"

My friend Mark cracked me up by saying they should have got the whole Wings cast for this mini-series. That would have been something. Particularly if Thomas Haden Church has played Danny and David Schramm played Tony.

Granted, King's first choice was Tim Daly, i.e. the other male lead from Wings. Let me just say - I was surprised in this re-watch to discover Weber's performance was actually better than I remembered. He never sells the "descent into madness" King mentions, but that's not really his fault. Garris and King structure the mini-series in such a plodding takes-forever-to-get-places way that by the time Weber "snaps," it's just very fake, very Lifetime-movie-esque.

(Need proof? Watch the very beginning of this scene, or from 2:19 through 3:27 of this.)

Visually-designing the story as an ill-conceived rebuttal to Kubrick's film was bad enough. (And no matter what Garris/ King say, it certainly comes across that way. It's like Ray Manzarek's version of The Doors story - it might be closer to what he thinks/ knows about "what really happened," but Stone's version is a film, utilizing every aspect of the filmmaking process; Manzarek's is not.) Adding awful CGI and make-up further ruined it. But the unbelievable amount of time given to "dramatic tension" scenes between Jack and Wendy (which never once seem dramatic; in fact, Wendy never seems terrified of Jack at all, even after he snaps, and Courtland Mead is just playacting. Tough to criticize child actors, I know, but the difference between Danny's terror in Kubrick's movie and in Garris/King's version is very, very great.) and establishing Jack as "not a bad guy" and basically giving him a few too many hours to not be intimidating makes the transition something sub-par to Discovery ID crime-scene re-enactments.

Ironically, in real-life, Weber's passive-aggressive, barely-concealed rage on Real Time with Bill Maher or his angry snaps to people on Twitter suggest the casting for the dry-drunk/ out-of-control part of Jack Torrance wasn't so far off. Too bad he didn't have a script/ direction to help him focus. Without it, I'm afraid, his theatrics come off as just bad / unbelievable. Particularly everytime he bellows "COME TAKE YOUR MEDICINE" or "MIND YOUR FATHER."

As someone noted somewhere (again, forgive my lack of citations - lost my notes) it has the effect of watching an episode of The Flintstones where Fred suddenly starts playacting-crazy. The main difference between Weber's performance and Nicholson's is, if Nicholson is too-crazy from the get-go, he is genuinely intimidating; Weber is neither. Though there are glimpses of what-might-have-been.

King's script is definitely a huge part of the problem. It is simply a novel ill-transposed to screen. Novels require the kind of compartmentalization Kubrick and Diane Johnson performed (or any other number of examples); none is on display here. Characters spend four minutes saying what should be expressed in ten seconds, far too much time is spent on nothing-things, (like explaining the rules of Denver Croquet. Really? First of all, it's roque in the novel; why change it? Particularly something that also has no bearing on anything except putting the mallet in Jack's hand?) and R-rated material is shoehorned into PG sensibilities: all of which ensures it comes across as a very-special-episode of Beverly Hills 90210.

How about the other performances? Some aren't bad.

Probably among the best things Rebecca DeMornay ever did, although I prefer Shelly Duvall's palpable-terror/ suffering-mother-archetype. Still, "AT LEAST SHE WAS BLONDE!" as someone wrote - yes, in all-caps - on the SK Forum.

Courtland Mead is awful. As Film Threat noted, "(He's) a sitcom-kid. He's acting for the camera. He knows it, and more importantly, we can see it. It's just little things like the tone and volume of his voice or the way he looks at the other actors. It's a dead giveaway." Particularly in any of the "Why are Mommy and Daddy fighting?" scenes. I know, he's just a kid and all, but... so was Danny Lloyd, right? The difference between directors is at volume ten, here.

The less said about Tony, the better:

Particularly the God-awful decision to have him float like this, or this tacked-on ending where Danny is graduating from high school, as-smiled-upon by Dick Halloran and his mother in the audience, as well as a ghostly-end-of-Jedi-ghost of Jack Torrance:

Holy dear God in heaven and/or Hell.

And Elliot Gould has given some fine performances over the years, to be sure, (I for one grew up with The Devil and Max Devlin and enjoy his take on Philip Marlowe in Altman's The Long Goodbye) but his turn as Stu Ullman is bad with a capital "B."

He over-enunciates each and every letter of every word he delivers as if he's trying to make sure his granddaughter in the back-row can hear Grandpa "play make-believe."

Some of the cameos are fun, particularly Frank Darabont as one of the ghosts (a screen-shot of which I couldn't find, unfortunately), or

Sam Raimi as the gas station attendant who gives Dick the snowcat, or

King as bandleader of the "Gage Creed Orchestra"

But ultimately, this whole mess belongs in the same discussion as George Lucas's alterations to the original Star Wars trilogy. Both the novel and Kubrick's version of it are masterpieces, pure and simple; this Garris/ King version of the same tale is like Greedo-firing-first for five-and-a-half damn hours.

NEXT:

Misery

King's Highway pt. 50: The Shining (the movie)

The last blog (KH49, The Great Lost McBlog of 2012) was supposed to be the foundation-stone for this and the next one; I'd defined-my-terms so I wouldn't have to keep defining them, I'd referenced the relevant quotes, I'd parsed the reviews for the direct-quotes-to-which-I-planned to respond... tough to reconcile myself with having to do it all over again.

But, You go back, Jack, and do it again.

This may be a little on the long side. Don't forget to change your jacket before the fish and goose soiree...

Much has been written about this film (here's a great review, one of thousands out there), and even more about Kubrick-the-man/ Kubrick-the-auteur. Additionally, much ink has been spilled by King fans who seem to view the book-vs-film discussion as their own personal Roe v. Wade. I'm not going to get into any of that. Frankly, a) it's stupid. This isn't a case of "Everybody Comes to Rick's" vs. Casablanca, or more specifically to Kubrick, Burdick-and-Wheeler's Fail Safe vs. Dr. Strangelove. Both the novel and the film are well-recognized masterpieces. b) It may be instructional to discuss how they differ (and I don't dispute this) but there are enough side-by-side comparisons and reviews out there that I feel no need to add my voice to that chorus, and c) I'll save King's specific criticisms of the film for next time, as they definitely inform my personal bias against the mini-series.

And as if all the above wasn't enough, there are so many different interpretations of the film that they warrant their own film (Room 237). So, what I'll do here is just focus on only two of the interpretations.

Before I get to those, a couple confessions: 

Kubrick is my favorite filmmaker, and The Shining in particular is one of my favorite films. Let me get that bias out in the open straight away. Much has been made of Kubrick's alleged "coldness," lack of human empathy, over-cerebralness, etc. Reviews of The Shining in particular mention this often, but one finds the same reaction to most of his other films, as well. I've confessed my bias, sure, but... give me a break.Kubrick's work is filled with deep emotion. If you failed to be moved by the end of Paths of Glory, when the German girl (Kubrick's eventual wife, incidentally) is thrust onto a table and bullied into singing for the French soldiers and whose simple, innocent song shames the crowd, or by the tortured cries of Private Pile after he's savagely beaten by his platoon-mates and the one friend he thought he had in Full Metal Jacket, or by Alex's improbably heartwrenching post-rehabilitation eviction from his parents' flat in A Clockwork Orange, or by the bedside father-and-son moments during the latter's death in Barry Lyndon, or the comeuppance of the title character, or by roughly three-dozen other such moments from across his films, there's little chance you'll identify any which filmmakers are "cold and cerebral" and which ones aren't.

Anyway, there is more speak-directly-to-your-soul emotion in The Shining via musical-choice alone than there is 90% of other movies. Literally, 90%! I've done the math.

Another of my biases is towards the casting of Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance.

I'll get into this more next time when I address the casting of Steven Weber and King's reservations, but let me just say that this is one of my all-time favorite performances, ever.

Granted, so's Bruce Campbell's in Evil Dead 2, so take it with a grain of salt, if you must.

Consider this, as recounted (among many other places) here:

"Stephen Spielberg tells a story about talking to Stanley Kubrick about The Shining. Spielberg felt that Jack Nicholson went over the top. Kubrick asked him to name his top five greatest actors. Spielberg named people like Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Clark Gable and Cary Grant. Kubrick noted that he hadn’t listed James Cagney. Spielberg realized this was true and Kubrick pointed out that even though Spielberg liked Cagney he didn’t consider him to be in the top five greatest actors of all time. Kubrick did and it’s why he doesn’t consider Nicholson’s performance to be too much. It made sense to Spielberg and does to me too."

When I defend Nicholson as an actor to my friend Alex, whom I bring up only because we talked about this over pitchers of beer for like three hours the other night, he always counters with Gary Oldman. I love Gary Oldman; Gary Oldman's the man. But to expect a Gary-Oldman-like performance from Jack Nicholson is like expecting Wade Boggs to pitch a no-hitter. Different actors, different approaches. And although I don't think much of Nicholson's acting after a certain point in his career, when he was on, back in the day, he was on.

As Good As It Gets, while certainly not terrible, is  from that period of Jack's output of which I don't think too highly, but it's absurd not to notice Nicholson's spot-on portrayal of a man with OCD-symptoms. Yes, he's playing Jack Nicholson. He's also playing a spot-on man with OCD.

Take this bit of physicality of Nicholson's performance in The Shining, as one of many examples:

After being accused of hurting Danny, Jack storms off down the hall...

As Ager points out in his analysis (which I'm getting to) nearly all of the ghostly-interactions Jack has are accompanied by mirrors or reflective surfaces. In this sequence, Jack's reflections in the mirrors as he walks by them is immediately followed by...

spasms of physical anger. He is clearly exhibiting the classic body language of someone in denial, disgusted with himself.

I defend wholeheartedly the casting of Nicholson as Torrance, despite many opinions to the contrary. (Not the least of which is King's, himself.) Personally, I agree with Kev's:

“As early as the opening line – “Jack Torrance thought, officious little prick.” – Torrance comes across as adversarial. He is a damaged man whose deep flaws have damaged others. A recovering alcoholic, Jack is given to fits of temper and rage; addiction seems less a cause than a symptom of his deeper character issues… Alcohol is not necessarily a trigger for these outbreaks, merely an accelerant.”

And as Karina Wilson writes: “There have been many literary portraits of drunks, but it’s unusual to see a dry drunk in all his glory. Jack’s a textbook case: full of anger, denial, self-pity, blame, grandiose ideas of his worth to society, and prone to secrecy, self-isolation, and blaming others for his failure, all without a drop of liquor having passed his lips in fourteen months.”

So, to the charge that the audience identifies Nicholson as wackadoo/violent too early on, I can only say, verily again and again, the barely-restrained-rage/simmering-anger is self-evident to me from the novel's first chapter. It's compartmentalized in the film, but it's not a mistake.

You can take issue with the absence of last-minute-redemption in the book ("Go. And remember that I love you." before smashing his own face to smithereens with the roque mallet) - actually, take issue with whatever you like, of course. Go forth and blog the gospel. But for me, the death of Jack in the film is as engaging and mythological (perhaps even moreso) as it is in the book, and I have little reservation with the changes made. That said, I can certainly understand King's being upset at the omission of his carefully-constructed backstory/ motivations for Jack Torrance in adapting the novel to film (all the stuff with his Dad is gone, the agonizing over his beaten-former-student, etc.), but it is simply incorrect to say the character changes all that much. Different flavors of the same cola. 

One last thing - go up to anyone and say "Heeeeeeeere's Johnny." (Go on. I'll wait.) Ask them where it's from/ who said it. Most people answer "Jack Nicholson, The Shining." Not that it really proves anything, but it's telling of how deeply Nicholson's performance has permeated the collective unconscious. As some-review-I-read-but-lost-to-the-Blogger-ether pointed out, Ed McMahon said that (his catchphrase/ introduction of Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, for those young'ns in the audience) roughly a million times, night after night; Nicholson said it just once.

Okay, so on to the two interpretations I wish to discuss. The first is Rob Ager's "Gold Room" analysis. It's worth watching all 4 parts of, trust me (and quite fun), but I'll summarize:

1) The film, like Cronenberg's Naked Lunch or the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink, must be viewed as a story-within-a-story. What we see is partially the story of the Torrances at the Overlook and partially the imagined-story within Jack's novel, or both, as mixed-as-metaphor-for-writers block.

This is most-explicitly expressed in this next shot, where we see Wendy-and-Danny "emerging" from Jack's typewriter:

It's an intriguing idea. As he notes, the original draft of the screenplay - as seen in the Kubrick archives - ends with a close-up of the Overlook scrapbook, where Jack's story is laid to rest, and an unidentified hand closing it. Suggestive, to be sure, but does this alone prove the whole thing is or was at-least-once-conceived-as a story-within-a-story-within-a-story?

Ager argues that many of the continuity errors throughout the film are also meant to convey this. I forget who said it, but when a hack makes a continuity error, it is proof of their hack-ness; when a great artist like Kubrick does, then verdammt, it must be a clue.

I don't necessarily buy this. While Kubrick's meticulous attention to detail is a legend in the industry (and for good reason), I'm of the opinion he was not a perfection-machine. Even 2001 was the result of a five-year ongoing collaboration; he preferred to find the subtext in the filming-of-it. So, I don't see disappearing chairs in the background or mismatched carpet-colors to indicate anything other than what Jan Harlan (frequent Kubrick collaborator) said when asked about them:

"Kubrick, he explains, was always intent on pushing the form, on leaving the work open to multiple interpretations, like the French impressionists or the Cubist painters that went before. 'A straightforward horror film was not what interested him,' Harlan insists. 'He wanted more ambiguity. If he was going to make a film about ghosts, he wanted it to be ghostly from the very first to the very last. The set was very deliberately built to be offbeat and off the track, so that the huge ballroom would never actually fit inside. The audience is deliberately made to not know where they're going. People say The Shining doesn't make sense. Well spotted! It's a ghost movie. It's not supposed to make sense.'"

That may be too glib for some, but to me, it fits Kubrick's approach. (Incidentally, a disappearing-blue-sweater in 2001 is referred to on-screen by an intercom voice-over. Ager uses this as evidence that Kubrick would in no way not be aware of any continuity errors. I tend to agree, but I see Harlan's explanation, above, as more probable.)

The second part of Ager's theory is that the entire film is a metaphor for monetary history of the twentieth century, something a) definitely happened "offscreen" or hidden away from surface-level-history, and that b) Kubrick was unarguably interested in/ knowledgeable of. (There is some fun evidentiary support for this in Michael Herr's Vanity Fair piece on Kubrick, something Ager curiously doesn't reference.) He devotes considerable screen-time to said history. I won't get into it, but to back up this point, he references the famous photo that closes the film:

In Ager's view, the man with his hand on Jack's arm is "undeniably" Woodrow Wilson...

(aka the President who signed The Federal Reserve Act into law) You tell me.

Ager seems to identify several other financial luminaries in the photo, such as Benjamin Strong; apparently, the architects of America's shadow government are all hanging out with Jack in the Gold Room. These personages are visual indicators (i.e. things puzzle-makers insert into their puzzles to encourage people they're on the right track) to the audience that what we're seeing here is Jack (i.e. America's) seduction by a financial apparatus above and beyond all laws of man or charity.

"You are passionate, Mozart," says the Emperor in Amadeus, "but you do not... persuade."

I'm quite entertained by this view, but ultimately, I'm not convinced. Even if the people in the photo are who Ager says they are, what of it? The Overlook has hosted "all the best people," from celebs to Presidents to rich folks of all variety, both in the film and in the book. He goes into this much more than I am, here, and for all I know, he is 100% correct; if indeed the people in the photo are who he says they are, it certainly does suggest Kubrick is saying something about the personalities involved in unleashing what G. Edward Griffin describes as "The Creature from Jekyll Island," i.e. the Federal Reserve.

Your money's no good here, Mr. Torrance. (But your credit is excellent.)

Further to Ager's read are the shifting physical parameters of the Gold Room, indicating the deception over America's gold reserves:

But I think Harlan's explanation about deliberately playing tricks with the viewer's perception re: its proportions, etc. covers this.

and the "Midnight, the Stars, and You" song, which accompanies Jack's joining-the-party in the Gold Room, as well as over the final reveal that he has been subsumed into the Overlook:

"Midnight and a rendezvous" - referring to the top-secret trip to Jekyll Island to hammer together what became known as the Federal Reserve system, "your eyes held a message tender," i.e. tender=currency, and "saying I surrender..." loss of American sovereignty over its own monetary supply/ gold reserves.

As mentioned above, Kubrick was well-known for coming-at-a-topic in such a roundabout way. Strangelove and Lolita most particularly; the former can be read as the farce of male sexual anxiety (as can Eyes Wide Shut, but much more Freudian-ly, although this is an essay/ discussion-over-pitchers for another time) and the latter (both in the film and in the Nabokov novel) as the intellectual-European's "seduction" by this young, nubile language/ perspective, i.e. English. (Don't take my word for any of this, by any means; I certainly didn't, when these ideas were first floated by me.)

All of that said... I think this is a bit of a stretch. Also, it doesn't quite line-up with how Kubrick revealed to be approaching The Shining, i.e. as his "mainstream" film. I'm not saying he didn't put in any such subtext; I am saying, though that if he did, it's odd no trace of it exists in his archives, where he provided volumes of evidentiary support for all of his work. (Even his never-made work, like Napoleon.) What exists in the archives for The Shining is Jack's scrapbook, which does indeed detail various goings-on of the banking class of the Jazz Age, but no real "I was trying to talk about the Federal Reserve" smoking-gun.

In other words, there's some party here...

but the guests have all gone home. If you're into this sort of thing, though, here's another one. Like The Shining, The Wizard of Oz lends itself well to multiple interpretations.

The second interpretation I'd like to discuss is Bill Blakemore's theory that The Shining is about the murder of Native Americans and the consequences of that murder for the American psyche.

"If you are skeptical about this, consider the Calumet baking powder cans with their Indian chief logo that Kubrick placed carefully in the two food-locker scenes. (A calumet is a peace pipe.) Consider the Indian motifs that decorate the hotel, and the way they serve as background in many of the key scenes. Consider the insertion of two lines, early in the film, describing how the hotel was built on Indian burial ground.

"Not only is the site called the Overlook Hotel with its Overlook Maze, but one of the key scenes takes place at the July 4th Ball, (a date with) particular relevance to American Indians. That's why Kubrick made a movie in which the American audience sees signs of Indians in almost every frame, yet never really sees what the movie's about.

"Ullman says, 'The site is supposed to be located on an Indian burial ground, and I believe they actually had to repel a few Indian attacks as they were building it.' This bit of dialogue does not appear in Stephen King's novel.

"The film is about how the all-male British military establishment, itself forged in bloody empire-building, passed on to its offspring continental empire, the United States, certain timeworn army-building methods... yet we never meet an actual Indian. But we do get to know, and like, and then see murdered, a powerful black character, Chef Hallorann,, the only person to die in the film other than the protagonist, villain and victim, Jack. The murdered black man lies across a large Indian design on the floor, victim of similar racist violence.

"As manager Ullman says in the opening interview, 'It's still hard for me to believe it actually happened here... but it did.' The type of people who partied in the Overlook included 'four Presidents, movie stars...' 'Royalty?' Wendy asks. 'All the best people.' (Ullman responds) King's novel has nothing to do with any of these things."

"We never hear the rushing blood (that gushes from the elevator shaft). It is a mute nightmare. It is the blood upon which this nation, like most nations, was built.

White man's burden, Lloyd, white man's burden.

"As the credits roll, the soundtrack ends, and we hear the 1920s audience applaud, and then the gabble of that audience talking among themselves - the same sound the crowd of moviegoers itself is probably making as it leaves the theater.

"It is the sound of people moving out of one stage of consciousness into another. The moviegoers are largely unaware of this soundtrack, and this reflects their unawareness that they've just seen a movie about themselves, about what people like them have done to the American Indian and others.

"The opening music, over the traveling aerial shots of a tiny yellow Volkswagen penetrating the magnificent "West" wilderness, is the "Dies Irae." (i.e. REQUIEM)

"At the end of the movie, in the climactic chase in the Overlook Maze, the moral maze of America... in which we are chased by the sins of our fathers ("Danny, I'm coming. You can't get away. I'm right behind you.") Danny escapes by retracing his own steps (an "old Indian trick") and letting his father blunder past." i.e. (Bryan again) You are the caretaker here; you have always been the caretaker here...

"The Shining is explicitly about America's general inability to admit to the gravity of the genocide of the Indians - or, more exactly, its ability to "overlook" that genocide."

It's a fun theory. (Well, as "fun" as anything looking genocide square in the face can be) But does it work?

My problem is mainly with its inaccuracy. Kubrick didn't invent the "Overlook" as the name of the hotel. The novel (as discussed in the blog lost in the Phantom Zone) can be read as an overlook of personal alcoholism ("I was the guy who wrote The Shining and didn't realize I was writing about myself," King says in On Writing, something which should not be taken to indicate Jack Torrance is a stand-in for King-the-author, but as an externalization of King-the-father's fears? Probably.) but also the father-murders-child myth of countless-origins/ losing-control/ anger. Also, King might not mention Indians but the "Do you see the Indians in this picture?" motif is used more than once when describing how the ghosts may or may not be there. 

Additionally, to Blakemore's charge that the "all the best people" bit was invented by Kubrick, that is not so; the Overlook as indicative of a certain 20th-century-American-character is explicitly mentioned by Jack in the novel.

(Also, is "covering your tracks" really an old-Indian-trick? I'm pretty sure I've seen it elsewhere, in stories well-predating Columbus. The Minotaur from Greek Mythology, to name but one.)

The tying together Indian massacres with American racism thing, though, does provide a satisfactory frame around one particular image of the movie, which was Kubrick's invention:

A shot I've never been able to explain to myself satisfactorily, although it could just be color-coding. (No pun intended)

You get the idea. So, while ultimately I feel both theories above are not quite kosher, they are fun to think about. Personally, I agree with James Smythe's review in The Guardian: "(Both the novel and the film) are stories about hidden evil emerging when the snow sets in; when a family is isolated and broken, and when a man with buried darkness finally collapses and becomes what he was always, inevitably going to be."

"Symbolically," writes Kev, again, "the Overlook's preoccupation with its violent past mirrors Jack's destructive personality. Mistreated as a child by his father, Jack is unable to break the cycle of anger and abuse. (His) discovery of the hotel's scrapbook allows him to wallow in the hotel's past without being aware of its hold on the present, or is effect on his son; the scrapbook becomes a clouding addiction as destructive as his own alcoholism."

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The mini-series (God help me)