The Shining

xxpost sarahell they do briefly show the stacks of 7-up when they cover some of the "42" theories/patterns

There is a brief homage in iron man 3 where tony fights an extremis warrior in a restaurant kitchen and we get a brief ide glance of a can of Calumet.

Found an online version of the original article Steadicam guru Garrett Brown wrote for American Cinematographer back in August of 1980, entitled 'The Steadicam & The Shining'

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/ac/page2.htm

It's pretty great reading

oh that rules vg thanks.

Although Stanley knows an astonishing amount about an astonishing number of things, his grasp of antenna theory is weak. He is, however, a formidable opponent in an argument - with or without the facts - so some bizarre theorems were actually tested and a disturbing number of them actually worked. By switching to various antennas hidden behind the walls, we were finally able to provide Stanley with acceptable remote wireless video nearly anywhere within his sets. To annoy him we would indicate the forest of TV antennas aimed at the studio from suburban Borehamwood and imply that the TV signal was escaping the sound stage and being watched by a gaggle of "Monty Python" women every morning:

"Ooooh, poor Mr Brown!... That take seemed perfectly good to me!"

Somewhat later, our imitation ladies got even more sophisticated:

"Ooh, must be the 24mm Distagon!, see how it's vignetting in the viewfinder!"

god i would kill for a 24mm distagon

xpost yeah that cracked me up

and this:

Although he would admit that I could produce a printable take by any reasonable standard within the first few tries, Stanley would seldom respond with anything but derision until about take 14. He did not appear to be comfortable until we were well beyond take 20.

Now the entire contraption [used for the Big Wheel shot] got to be quite difficult on the high speed corners. Dennis had to enlist relays of runners to get us around the course. Finally we had an explosive tire blow-out and the chair "plummered in", barely avoiding a serious crash. Afterward we switched to solid tires and carried no more than two people.

Stanley contemplated this arrangement and decided that the chair should have a super-accurate speedometer, and while we're at it so should the Moviola dolly and the Elemack.

lol I like this analogy: The only tricky aspect of shooting from the chair is that starts and stops tend to be dramatic. It is a little like carrying a full punch bowl in a decelerating rickshaw!

As Danny backs up stepping in his own footprints to fool Jack, I had to back up ahead of him also in bis footprints! To accomplish this I had to wear special stilts with Danny-shoes nailed to the bottom so I wouldn't make the footprints any bigger!

I HAVE ALWAYS WONDERED ABOUT THAT.

HOLY SHIT. DANNY-SHOES.

so awesome

I watched that Viv Kubrick making-of documentary...I love seeing Kubrick decide to lie on his back under Nicholson for the kitchen show-down when he's shouting through the door at Duvall.

Garret Brown's commentary on the blu-ray is a delight. Don't know if it's on previous DVD versions, but find a way to watch it if you can.

Somehow I went to see this in Totowa NJ 33 years ago tonight, which is the scariest thing of all.

Finally saw this. Love that it reminds me of 70s-era conspiracy movies. If I was teaching a radical sociology class I would totally show this during "ways of seeing" week.

"But a lot of these movies have been pretty darn good. 'Carrie' was pretty good. Frank Darabont did a great job with 'Shawshank Redemption,' and also with 'The Green Mile.'

"You didn't mention 'The Shining,' " Mason said.

"No, I didn't mention "The Shining,' " replied King.

"You've never been a fan."

"No, I never liked that movie. I always thought that 'The Shining,' the Kubrick version of 'The Shining,' was like this big beautiful Cadillac that had no engine inside of it."

In the film "The Shining," Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, a writer who becomes possessed by the ghosts of a haunted hotel, and tries to kill his wife and son.

"I never liked Shelley Duvall in the Kubrick version; I thought she was just sort of a scream machine," King said. "And there's something very misogynistic about the way she was presented."

He disliked Stanley Kubrick's version so much that he bought back the screen rights, and in 1997 made his own miniseries.

"Part of the deal was that I would not say any more nasty things about the Kubrick version," King explained. "For a long time I hewed that line. And then Mr. Kubrick died. So now I figured, what the hell. I've gone back to saying mean things about it," he laughed.

Moron.

"I never liked Shelley Duvall in the Kubrick version; I thought she was just sort of a scream machine," King said. "And there's something very misogynistic about the way she was presented."

i've def watched this movie w guys who lol at how stupid or hick-y shelley duvall is (and "any ideas yet?" rly is the worst question ever) but i feel like this is the last horror movie to accuse of misogyny: she saves her life and her little kid's life basically all by herself, through presence of mind and at one point physical strength. feel like what's distracting is that she's shuddering and sobbing the whole way through, but that just shows you how much fear she's up against.

like, by the time of the pantry scene, she would have the situation 100% defused and under control if GHOSTS didn't cheat.

The Kubrick Shining, more so than the book, isn't an example of misogyny. It is a depiction of misogyny.

it always bummed me out re King/The Shining film. one of my favorite authors, one of my favorite films...

;_; can't we all just get along???

"No, I never liked that movie. I always thought that 'The Shining,' the Kubrick version of 'The Shining,' was like this big beautiful Cadillac that had no engine inside of it."

I mean, for what it's worth, I'd say the film powers along mercilessly, like a ruthlessly efficient machine. It's totally got an engine.

Maybe what we're seeing here is, beyond the obvious authorial jealousy and protectiveness, resentment at film as a medium being able to 'send chills down the spine' in a way that written fiction can't anymore?

I'm thinking of how the unpleasant physical spine-chilling effect of the novel Frankenstein was something critics at the time held against it.

I don't remember much about King's miniseries version except coming away with the impression "Well, that sucked."

he's just not very good at knowing what will work on tv/movies

kubrick's adaptation worked because it wasn't precious about what would and would not work on the screen.

i can't really resent an author for not liking an adaptation of his work -- i mean, it was HIS book -- but it's really baffling to me that king, a guy who's got like 50,000 shitty movies with his name stuck on them, persists in hating on kubrick's 'shining.'

i seem to recall an older king quote where he said that one of the reasons he didn't like the kubrick film was that it genuinely upset him -- singling out the fact that torrance went after his family with an AXE rather than a croquet mallet, for some reason. weird guy.

he's OTM about the de palma 'carrie' -- i assume everyone agrees that's at least the second-best king film, right?

i'm a big fan of Cronenberg's The Dead Zone

Kubrick said some fairly uncomplimentary things abt King's book - and about 'horror' in general - in the interviews he gave around The Shining, which I'm sure didn't amuse the author much.

IIRC, Burgess was fairly pissed off with Kubrick, too (maybe esp because of 'Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange'-type credits)

Carrie wasn't on King's top 10 list of his favorite King films from a few years back, either. 1408 was.

Moron.

Worst of Stephen King's 10 favorite adaptations of his own fiction

he's OTM about the de palma 'carrie' -- i assume everyone agrees that's at least the second-best king film, right?

Probably... to The Dead Zone.

Maybe what we're seeing here is, beyond the obvious authorial jealousy and protectiveness, resentment at film as a medium being able to 'send chills down the spine' in a way that written fiction can't anymore?

this is preposterous

but ya so is stephen king re: the shining

Yeah, we saw Dead Zone again in 35mm a few months back. Walken actually acts in it. I remember finally reading the book a coupla years ago and realizing how perfect it was to get him and Cronenberg to adapt it.

I don't mind King hating The Shining film at all - it's an amazing film but any author is probably going to view these things through a really distorted lens. I would rather hear him saying "It's great - totally different from what I did, but a film is its own thing and he hit it out of the park" but I can't really expect him to.

re: Duvall's character - I was totally impressed with all her heroism and getting-it-together in the last act - I think I was just sort of soured on her earlier drippiness, which was just an exaggerated case of the usual horror movie audience response - "no no no GET OUT OF THERE you DOPE what are you DOING, RUN!!!!" It makes total sense, story- and character-wise, that she doesn't run and it really allows it to catch the intense dread and horror of the abusive-husband story as opposed to the creepy haunted mansion story. But it still can be hard to take.

the shining's one of king's big books, only the stand definitely looms larger (maybe it), and it has totally been supplanted in the popular imagination from now until the end of time by kubrick's film. having one of yr major works be reduced to little more than a footnote by a larger talent has to suck, some real 'you made it a hot lyrics, i made it a hot song' type thing. throw in usual writer unhappy w/ hollywood adaptation stuff plus artists being horrible judges of their work plus king's often questionable taste in general plus many ppl just not liking the shining period or not finding it scary/effective and it's not weird at all.

i think every living author who got kubrickized wound up getting somewhat pissed off with what he did to their work -- the only ones who seemed fairly contented were clarke and, oddly, nabokov (who actually said there were scenes in kubrick's film he wished he had thought of).

having one of your major works be reduced to little more than a footnote by a larger talent's lesser works...

Clarke and SK collaborated p closely... "The Sentinel" only has the germ of the plot, then ACC wrote the novel after the script (at least a draft) had been written, right?

yeah clarke's more a collaborator, i think the '2001' novel was written more or less simultaneously with the script. '2001' is prob closer to being a non-adaptation than any other kubrick film (except 'fear and desire' and 'killer's kiss').

I remember King talking at length about his problems in an old Playboy interview. Here's a link to the full interview on a PDF file, and some scans of the relevant section:

http://algonquinsidetable.com/1983-playboy-interview-with-stephen-king/

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/kubrick1_zps145992ae.png
http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/kubrick2_zps14496066.png
http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/kubrick3_zpsd1e909fb.png

I'm just the messenger here. The only King novel I ever read was Carrie (after seeing the movie), and I didn't like it nearly as much as the film. I'm sure I'd feel the same way if I were to ever read The Shining, which I won't.

As I've said before -- on this thread -- King doesn't understand his own work at time. Jack Torrance in the novel is a man barely holding it together on p.1. His descent into madness is a very short one.

Torrance is a dude with demons in the book, but in The Shining its amazing they even got to the hotel. I enjoy Kubrick's but I can see why King would feel the meat of the story from his pov had been altered if not eradicated. It's like if Johnny Cash did "Hurt" but lived for another decade and told everyone it was about Jesus.

haha ok that's a horrible comparison but still. While the shining mini-series was weak and tv mini-seriesish, I can see why King would prefer the relative modulation of Steven Weber's performance.

still Jack being nutz (as in, pulling faces) from the start has always bored/irritated me.

King's probably just pissed because they didn't include the evil hedge animals

i've never quite understood the 'jack is crazy from the start' criticism, the character is obv an abusive asshole but nicholson plays him as more a guy struggling to hold on to his temper than a guy who's out-and-out nuts.

i mean, until he actually does go nuts.

Which is exactly how he is in the book! The first words in the book are "Officious little prick," describing Jack's thoughts as he sits through his hotel interview with Ullman, who he would like nothing more than to punch in the face.

Moron.