WFMU Midnight Matinee’s John Schnall sat through The Shining fourteen times when it first came out and lived to talk about it 37 years later for this week’s podcast.
Elstree Studios film historian Howie Berry dollops out some amazing inside scoops about the elevator of blood, continuity errors, and some scenes we’ll never see.
A map of where everything was filmed at Elstree Studios.
Watching the Vision Assist, which captured each day’s takes with Kubrick having to print the film. (He printed most of them anyway!)
A TV spot with alternate takes never used in the film.
A call sheet from The Shining.
Inspiration for continuity errors in the film?
From Stephen King’s The Shining
Danny lay awake in his bedroom, eyes open…
His glider floated overhead from a string. On his bureau the VW model, brought up from the roadway setup downstairs, glowed a dimly florescent purple. His books were in the bookcase, his coloring books on the desk. A place for everything and everything in its place, Mommy said. Then you know where it is when you want it. But now things had been misplaced. Things were missing. Worse still, things had been added, things you couldn’t quite see, like in one of those pictures that said CAN YOU SEE THE INDIANS? And if you strained and squinted, you could see some of them—the thing you had taken for a cactus at first glance was really a brave with a knife clamped in his teeth, and there were others hiding in the rocks, and you could even see one of their evil, merciless faces peering through the spokes of a covered wagon wheel. But you could never see all of them, and that was what made you uneasy. Because it was the ones you couldn’t see that would sneak up behind you, a tomahawk in one hand and a scalping knife in the other…
Marcus Pinn from Pinnland Empire and Zebras in America talks with me about this intense scene, plus the stuff that messed with our brains in childhood.
Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter, originally a short story and also adapted and directed by Alfred Hitchcock for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
The scene that almost got John Cribbs thrown out of a movie theater. “How’d you like some ice cream, Frodo?”
The beautiful Andreas Gursky photo to which John was referring.
Trailer for The Sentinel (1977)
Trailer for The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2017)
Trailer for Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses (1969), which influenced A Clockwork Orange.
This is low quality but a prime example of the creepiness of Federico Fellini’s Giulietta degli Spiriti (Juliette of the Spirits) (1965). [NB: On the podcast I mistakenly call it Juliette of the Spring] Bonus: Twins! I suggested this and other Fellini films that contain creepiness were an influence on The Shining, but heck, let’s throw in Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and most of David Lynch’s stuff as touched by Fellini. WARNING: Super-scary.
Statue of a Native American child riding a turkey at the Paramus Park Mall.
Diane Arbus’s “Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967”
Stanley Kubrick’s photo from a Look Magazine essay titled “Deaf Children Hear for the First Time” (1948) [NB: The colorized version also shown was not colored by Kubrick]
The twins’ dresses at the traveling Kubrick exhibit, photo courtesy Tula Jeng from her wonderful site Whorange.
Mrs. Grady’s head, from a scene in “Making ‘The Shining,'” a documentary by Vivian Kubrick. In this scene, Wendy would look in a mirror and see Mrs. Grady behind her, and then the mirror would shatter. [EDIT: This head may, instead, be a make-up test for the bathtub woman.]
Scene from Scorsese’S “Taxi Driver” (1976) in which the camera pans to the side, down a hallway, at about 1:02.
The facade of the Overlook Hotel, under construction
Kevin Maher and Joe Dator help me examine the road trip to Hell, plus a fun discussion of the bazillion parodies and comedy bits spawned from this beloved horror flick.
Actor Zandy Hartig talks about what it’s like to be directed by the likes of Soderbergh, and the good and bad of being directed by a genius like Kubrick.
Goofy doll in the background, Shelly reflecting the doll. Shoes, too!
Vivian Kubrick on the set of A Clockwork Orange.
The amazing Adrienne Corri, who starred as Mrs. Alexander in A Clockwork Orange.
Kubrick’s Lolita had her as a brat, completely complicit in the affair with an innocent (Kubrick’s words!) Humbert Humbert. I will soon post an essay on Lolita.
Article announcing Danny Lloyd’s casting in Kubrick’s film.
Danny Lloyd with Kubrick
One of Polanski’s innovations in Rosemary’s Baby was the odd cropping of framed subjects, or their being turned away from the camera. This added to a feeling of disorientation and paranoia for the audience. Kubrick may have borrowed this idea in his shot of Danny in the bathroom, with his face cut out of the scene.
Leon Vitali starred as Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon (enters this scene at 1:20, in green). He was also Red Cloak in Eyes Wide Shut.
Jack Nicholson with crazy hair at the beginning of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Jack Nicholson as The Joker trying to pass for normal.
Trivia that just occurred to me, post-taping: Pat Hingle, who starred as Bill Watson in the 1997 miniseries version of The Shining, played Commissioner Gordon in the Tim Burton’s Batman, which also starred Jack Nicholson as the Joker.
Grady Twins interview!
Kubrick’s take on ghosts.
Shelley Duvall talks about the unflattering lenses Kubrick used.
Star Wars Minute’s Pete the Retailer helps us explore the surprising overlap of Star Wars and The Shining, along with analysis of Jack, eagles, and the mysterious Bill Watson. Bonus: Plenty of arguing.
Megan Dooley and I stroll through the Overlook, hang out in the office, discuss some ghostly weirdness, and then have a terrible sandwich with Wendy, Danny and Tony.
One of many stories about Kubrick and his obsession with his cats and other pets.
This seems to be the painting outside of Ullmann’s office (or one version of it), titled “The Great Mother.” The Native American artist’s name is Norval Morisseau. More on him in another episode!
The conspiracy erection. We’re not buying it, although Ullmann certainly IS glad to see him.
Here’s a link to some evidence to my own Shining conspiracy theory, about Ullmann.
Danny’s phaser, which apparently will be of no use to him.
Kubrick’s constant use of cartoon characters and fairy tale references was likely influenced by his reading the 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim, which he studied with his co-writer Diane Johnson. Bettelheim turned out to be a fraud and child abuser. Ultimately, a fascinating story of sociopathic power that ruined countless lives.
We look at the first two minutes and thirty-seven seconds of Kubrick’s masterpiece. The music! The flying! The credits! More weird trivia than you can shake an axe at!
Joe and I take a wide-eyed jog (in less than half an hour!) through Kubrick’s life and films leading up to the release of The Shining. Good prep for episode one, coming soon!
