The Shining (1980)

Matt (00:00:22):

This is one week rental a movie podcast where we spend a week with a movie and take you along on our journey. My name is Matt Stokes. I’m a recovering film Snop trying not to be so obnoxious.

Laci (00:00:32):

And I’m Laci Roth, a nostalgiaholic blossoming into a cinephile against my will and to my delight.

Matt (00:00:39):

Each week we dive deep into a different movie, watching it multiple times, reading interviews with the people who made it doing the research.

Laci (00:00:47):

Then we discuss the movie and we talk about what works and doesn’t work and then do some irresponsible psychoanalysis about the people who made it and the characters in it.

Matt (00:00:55):

We assume if you’re watching this show or listening to the podcast, you don’t mind the movie being spoiled. You have seen the movie or you just don’t care that it’s spoiled. And yes, we are going to spoil the shit out of the shining.

Laci (00:01:06):

And everything we’re saying comes from a place of love. Even if we don’t end up liking the movie, we never regret watching it. We want to celebrate it. We know we certainly could not make a movie ourselves.

Matt (00:01:16):

That being said, we know we can be rude and nasty, negative, obnoxious. These things are true about us. If we criticize a movie that you love, tell us about it. That’s what the comment section is for. We want this to be a discussion. We’re here to have fun discussing movies, but we know that we’re wrong all the time and we are not experts.

Laci (00:01:34):

Now we have no aspirations of working in Hollywood or ever making a movie of our own. And that is why we are totally comfortable being 100% honest about everything we say.

Matt (00:01:43):

And guys, Laci and I are married to each other, okay?

Laci (00:01:46):

Okay. So all inappropriateness has been pre-consented too. I’m used to it.

Matt (00:01:52):

So this week we checked into The Overlook Hotel to spend some time with Stanley Kubricks The Shining. It’s a movie that I’ve seen. It’s one of the movies I’ve seen the most, probably more than 30 times. How about you? I feel like you know it super well.

Laci (00:02:04):

I’ve seen it about a Laci’s 30, which is a 10.

Matt (00:02:07):

I’ve seen it

Laci (00:02:07):

Probably 10.

Matt (00:02:08):

But yeah, I mean, I think it’s one of the movies that you know the best, maybe from watching it in just pop culture osmosis, but this time we really, really looked at it and really, really looked into the story of how it was made. And we’re going to tell you all about it, tell you what we found in our history of The Shining. This is one of the most covered movies written about movies, researched movies of all time, The Shining. I mean, an enormous movie. So you kind of have to really hone in on what you want to cover. And we’re going to try to cover three main areas for this history segment. What we’re covering is Stephen King’s novel and then his unhappiness with the final product and his unhappiness with Stanley Kubrick. We’re going to cover Stanley Kubrick himself, his career, the way he evolved into the secretive, mysterious man he became.

(00:03:20):

And then Laci is going to tell us all about Shelly Duvall, secret MVP of the movie. And I think some misconceptions about her relationship with Kubrick and her relationship with this movie and then just maybe some stuff you didn’t know. I mean, she had an incredible career and an awesome life.

Laci (00:03:35):

Let us do preface though. We are one week experts. We are only asking you to spend one week with us because we spent one week with it. That means we are enthusiastic about the things we are talking about. We feel they’re very true, but we’ll get things wrong. And at the end of the day, it’s just partly opinion and partly the research we’ve done. Feel free to sound off in the comments to let us know how fucking smart we are or if we’re not. But be nice baby.

Matt (00:04:00):

So Stephen King, The Shining was his third novel. He wrote Carey that was published in 1974. Same year he finished his second novel, Salem’s Lot. And once he had finished it, he and his wife, Tabitha, they packed up and went over to Colorado. They wanted a real change of scenery and they stayed at the Stanley Hotel in Boulder, Colorado. And this was just as the hotel was closing down for the season. Stephen King and his wife were the only guests in the hotel. It was empty and scary and haunted feeling and he thought, say. And this would be his process for the rest of his career is say, that could be something safe. Scary.

Laci (00:04:37):

The dwindling vacation market of Colorado. Exactly.

Matt (00:04:40):

That

Laci (00:04:40):

Was the inspiration. No, haunted hotels that are big and we’re little.

Matt (00:04:45):

Stephen King said of where this idea for this story came from, he said in the Stephen King Companion by George Bame, he said, “Sometimes you confess. You always hide what you’re confessing to. That’s one of the reasons why you make up the story. When I wrote The Shining, for instance, the protagonist of the Shining is a man who has broken his son’s arm, who has a history of child beating, who is beaten himself. And as a young father with two children, I was horrified by my occasional feelings of real antagonism toward my children. Won’t you ever stop? Won’t you ever go to bed?” And Tyme had given me the idea, has given me the idea that probably there are a lot of young fathers and young mothers, both who feel very angry, who have angry feelings toward their children, but as somebody who is raised with the idea that Father knows best and Ward Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver and all this stuff, I would think to myself, “Oh, if he doesn’t shut up, if he doesn’t shut up.” So when I wrote this book, I wrote a lot of that down and tried to get it out of my system, but it was also a confession.

(00:05:38):

Yes, there are times when I felt very angry toward my children and I’ve even felt as though I could hurt them. Well, my kids are older now and they’re super kids and I don’t think I’ve laid a hand on one of my kids in probably seven years, but there was a time.

Laci (00:05:52):

That’s not that long ago I was expecting further. There was a time. There was a time seven years ago, sir.

Matt (00:05:59):

Yeah, I think he’s talking from the perspective of like, “Well, now they’re teenagers.”

Laci (00:06:03):

It’s fine. I feel like seven years is always a litle too recent to have hit anything.

Matt (00:06:08):

When he published Carey, it was a pretty much instant success, but he had been a struggling writer for a long time struggling to get stuff published and he and his wife both worked crappy jobs. His wife was a waitress. He worked as a school teacher. He was stressed out all the time. He has these two young kids, they’re struggling to make ends meet, but he is still writing in the evenings and you can really, I think, because I just reread The Shining to prepare for this. I’ve read it a bunch of times and I think he does paint a really good picture of the struggling writer who kind of has that level of doubt and almost embarrassment like, “What am I doing? Who do I think I am able to do this?

Laci (00:06:46):

” And the story of Little Danny spreading the papers all over the floor, that comes off as a true anecdote when you hear it that way. I’m sure one of his little shit kids did smear around the three thoughts he was managed to string together and write down on paper. You should rip one of their arms off maybe.

Matt (00:07:04):

Why is my kid is treating my papers like their toys and part of me thinks that’s secretly what they are. It’s me indulging and trying to be a play thing.

Laci (00:07:15):

Also, we can only afford this two bedroom house and I don’t have any real room to write. I need a real place to write, a place to space just spread out and just maybe the hugest reception area of a haunted hotel even. That should be my writing room if only.

Matt (00:07:33):

No, I mean, you’re right. The shining, a movie I’ve seen a million times and I’ve read the book many times is kind of picking up this time like it’s the writer who’s thinking or just feels like a writer. You know what? My only problem is the only reason I haven’t been able to get out my great novel. I just haven’t found the proper space to do it. Space and

Laci (00:07:49):

Time.

Matt (00:07:50):

The quiet, I need the environment to be perfect.

Laci (00:07:53):

Perfect wife, perfect child.

Matt (00:07:55):

Yes. Stephen King in real life, very distracted, very busy, very poor, but able to crank his workout and eventually made it happen for himself. But at a cost, he was a severe alcoholic, was all the way through the late 80s. And The Shining was a very personal book for him because Jack Torrance is in a way an on the page avatar for Stephen King and his struggles with alcoholism. So King wrote a screenplay for the movie and apparently Stanley Kubrick never even read this screenplay, was not interested in collaborating with King on a revision. Stanley Kubrick’s attitude with authors is like, “Your book is your book. Now I’m going to do my thing. Your role is done.” And I got to say, I think that that is almost always the right call. I know there are instances of authors successfully writing the screenplays for adaptations of their books or for authors who collaborated on the movie.

(00:08:54):

But I think that the author of a book is so attached to their original work that they can negatively influence how the movie is made.

Laci (00:09:03):

And they’re very different skill sets and it’s hubris to think that you can be such a great person, can be so good at painting a picture with words and be just as effective at using pictures to paint feelings. And there are two very different skills. Yeah,

Matt (00:09:20):

Two completely different skills trying to achieve novels have their strengths, movies have their strengths. Movies are about images and sound, novels are about words. I think novels are better for things like character studies and The Shining is a character study. And I think one thing Steven King was so unhappy with is you kind of took the character out of this. Now I think we feel these are really strong characters, but they are more fully formed on the page. I can tell Stanley Kubrick saw this, saw this is a very good premise and you have a very, very good super structure on which I can now play with my ideas and I can make them come across more cleanly to the audience because they have the basis of this really solid story. Stephen King said in a TCM documentary that he had a phone call with Stanley Kubrick where Kubrick … So one of the few conversations they ever had, Kubrick said that he thought ghost stories were fundamentally optimistic because they imply that there’s life after death and Stephen King’s like, “Well, what do you think about hell?” And Stanley Kubrick said, “Well, I don’t believe in hell.” And Stephen King was a little flustered by that because he does believe in hell, but also, yeah, he’s kind of like shutting him down.

(00:10:34):

He does feel like a sort of inflexible man to be going back and forth with about these ideas.

Laci (00:10:39):

You would think Stanley Kubrick would also be good at metaphor. So I mean, I think a ghost story is not always a hopeful one because I think sometimes ghosts aren’t meant to be ghosts at all. They’re just like your thoughts you’re fighting. So I guess I’d ask Stanley, “What kind of ghost story are you talking about? “

Matt (00:10:57):

Yeah, you don’t believe in hell in the real world, but at the hell of the movie you’re writing. Hell could be real in that movie.

Laci (00:11:02):

Right.That’s a blanket statement, Stanley. I don’t think I’m going to say you’re right here because I need more context, but are you trying to tell me that my story is hopeful because of these ghosts? Thanks. I’m going to tell you you’re wrong, but you know what? I sound like a real Stephen King head over here when I really think that Kubrick’s product was the right way to … It’s the better story, at least in pitches.

Matt (00:11:25):

Steven King said, “I think The Shining is a beautiful film and it looks terrific. And as I’ve said before, it’s like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it. In that sense, when it opened, a lot of the reviews weren’t very favorable and I was one of those reviewers. I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn’t care for it much. I feel the same because the character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie. Absolutely no arc at all. When we first see Jack Nicholson, he’s in the office of Mr. Ullman, the manager of the hotel and then he’s crazy as a shithouse rat. All he does is get crazier. In the book, he’s a guy who’s struggling with his sanity and finally loses it. To me, that’s a tragedy. In the movie, there’s no tragedy because there’s no real change.

Laci (00:12:04):

Oh, that’s where you’re wrong because you can see it all over Wendy and Danny’s faces that they are holding on to hope that their father and husband are going to keep their shit together and keep on that wagon and be the man that he seems to need to be in order to be the husband they need him to be. So I do see an arc. I do see hope.

Matt (00:12:24):

“The other real difference is at the end of my book, the hotel blows up. And at the end of Kubrick’s movie, the hotel freezes. That’s a difference. But I met Kubrick and there’s no question he’s a terrifically smart guy. He’s made some of the movies that mean a lot to me. Dr. Strangelove, Paths of Glory. I think he did some terrific things, but boy, he was a really insular man in the sense that when you met him, when you talked to him, he was able to interact in a perfectly normal way, but you never felt like he was all the way there. He was inside himself. “So Stephen King, very unhappy. We did on our it episode, I was sort of … I mean, I admire the hubris of Stephen King. You’ve published fucking Tubo. I wrote Carey in Salem’s lot, and now I’m like, ” Stanley Kubrick doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

(00:13:03):

“It’s like the man fucking made 2001 of Space Odyssey.

Laci (00:13:06):

Well, my books are at the airport.

Matt (00:13:07):

Right. All right. Well, Stephen King produced a miniseries adaptation of The Shining in the late 90s starring Stephen Weber as Jack and Rebecca DeMorney as Wendy. This is like seven hours long. It’s page for page and adaptation of the book. I don’t think anybody likes it. In 2013, he wrote a sequel, Dr. Sleep. Follow grown up Danny Torres. It’s now Dan Torrance struggling with alcoholism himself. One of the big differences between Stephen King’s novel The Shining and the movie The Shining is that the Overlook Hotel blows up at the end of the novel. It does not at the end of the movie. So when he writes his sequel, The Overlook doesn’t exist anymore, but then the novel gets adapted. Dr. Sleep gets adapted into a movie by Mike Flanagan who frequently adapts Stephen King books, but he kind of pulls off a miracle. It’s a great movie.

(00:13:58):

It really is if you’ve never seen it of merging the two worlds, of really capturing the look of Kubricks The Shining while also honoring the book and he has Danny Torrance. Dan Torrance played by you and McGregor revisit the Overlook Hotel. And the absolute best part is he gets actors to play Jack and Wendy Torrance from 1980. He does not do any deep fake bullshit. He just has the actor Henry Thomas dress up like Jack Nicholson’s character. It’s incredible. Hey, you can do that. You don’t need fucking computers to do that.

Laci (00:14:32):

I think it’s powerful to me that the hotel still remains. It’s been there ever since America was there and that’s the point. It’s there because that kind of person and that kind of addiction and abuser or whatever, there’s always room for you here. We don’t want you to get better. We don’t want you to leave the hotel. So of course, Dan, please come back. Please, we’ve saved you a spot next to your father. We can always use another keeper.

Matt (00:14:57):

That’s a good point. And it’s like a difference in their sort of outlooks, their approaches to art, Kubrick versus King. I mean-

Laci (00:15:04):

Well, but King’s also doing a story about himself and he doesn’t want to think he’s going to cause his own children’s alcoholism. So it’s self-serving. I couldn’t possibly be creating a cycle that’s actually going to harm my kids. As long as I stop harming right here and no more physical harm, I promise they’re fine. I mean, wish fulfillment. They’re not fine.

Matt (00:15:23):

And he’s looking at it so personally, he feels like he is Jack Torrance. So he wants to put a lot of caveats like, listen, he’s actually a good guy. He’s a complicated man. It’s complex. It’s nuanced. And Kubrick’s idea is like, we’re not even that concerned about him as a man. We’re concerned about the forces that create things like Jack Torrance. And those things, like you just said, Laci, those things are always going to be there. They’re not something you could … If you blew it up, there would just be another thing that would draw him in.

Laci (00:15:50):

Right. That’s why you need to actually work on the problem and not the symptom. The symptom addiction and alcoholism and rage and all those things they all need to be found the root of and worked from there. Otherwise, there’s always going to be something lowering to those tendencies.

Matt (00:16:07):

So Stanley Kubrick, we’re going to cover his career just a little bit. The ma only made 13 movies, but he’s one of the most celebrated, written about directors of all time. I’ve often said, Gun to my head, who’s the greatest director of all time, at least of English language movies. I would probably say Stanley Kubrick because I think he has the greatest sci-fi movie of all time, the greatest horror movie of all time, the greatest comedy of all time and maybe the greatest war movie of all time. I mean, it’s him or Alfred Hitchcock, but he’s just made so many fewer movies than all the other major directors. And he was so obsessive and has inspired people to be so obsessive about his movies. Though I really wonder if he would be annoyed by all the people in room 237 who dissect the shining like they do and I-

Laci (00:16:54):

That his obsessive tendencies caused obsession over his work?

Matt (00:16:59):

Yeah. I didn’t obsess over that so that you could treat it like a puzzle to song because it’s not.

Laci (00:17:04):

My obsession was to get it perfectly whole and delivered to you as I saw it, not for you to pick it apart and try to tell me what I’m not saying.

Matt (00:17:13):

Right. And in fact- But I’m

Laci (00:17:14):

Saying it.

Matt (00:17:15):

If you noticed it, it might mean I did my job poorly because you’re not supposed to notice all these things. You’re supposed to feel them. Right. Now repeated viewings, and this movie came out before home video was really a thing. Repeated viewings reveal all this weird stuff in the shining, oh, how many American flags there are, how much Native American imagery there is, how many astronauts?

Laci (00:17:34):

The Impossible Room. And

Matt (00:17:36):

It’s like,

Laci (00:17:36):

This is just a set. This is just a set. I don’t think it’s an impossible room. I think it’s a pretty cool set and there happens to be a window where you don’t expect there to be one.

Matt (00:17:46):

Because he knows that that will disorient you, but he doesn’t want you to be like, “Oh, because there must be some sort of code about what that’s what he’s trying to do right here.” But yeah, I mean, probably the best director, whatever. It doesn’t mean Scorsese, Hitchcock, Kubrick. Who cares? Stanley Kubrick born in 1928 in New York City. You think of him as a snooty Englishman, but no, he’s Bronx, born and raised. Traveled the world as a photojournalist, then started making documentary shorts and his first feature film was Fear and Desire in 1953. I’ve seen all his movies. I’ve even seen Fear and Desire. It’s not a very good movie. It’s a strange movie. It doesn’t have much of a narrative. It’s shot documentary style and a lot of his early movies have this documentary style that feels like the opposite of what you think of when you think of a Stanley Kubrick movie where the acting style is like the opposite of naturalistic.

(00:18:33):

Everything is heightened and weird and everyone talks. You want me to go behind enemy lines? So Fear and Desire, his first movie, but he considers his proper debut to be Killer’s Kiss, which is a film noir about a boxer and this movie rules. He follows it up with the killing. Another movie that rules, if you’ve never seen it, it’s like a heist movie. A bunch of low level crooks do a heist, steal the winnings from the racetrack. And it’s awesome.

Laci (00:19:04):

I love a non-pro heist. Love it.

Matt (00:19:07):

Yes. And then Pads of Glory in 1956, seven he makes with Kirk Douglas. And again, to this point, his movies have all been like smaller scale, shot with this sort of documentary and realism. The performance is very naturalistic, but it’s the next two movies that I think mark his evolution that he kind of gets forced on him because in 1960, he makes Spartacus, which is the only movie he ever made as sort of a gun for hire. Kirk Douglas was producing that movie and Kirk Douglas fired the director Anthony Mann a few weeks into production and then hired his friend Stanley Kubrick. But all the decisions had been made for Kubrick ahead of time and he wasn’t happy with that movie at all, even though it was an enormous hit and people love it today. But I think this movie sucks. I think it’s his worst movie.

(00:19:57):

I think that that really laid the groundwork for him with the idea that he didn’t want to ever have to bend his will to anyone again, started becoming obsessed with control. And then that only hardened when his next movie was Lolita and came out in 1962, an adaptation of Vladimir Nabakov’s controversial novel about a man who develops a sexual fixation with his 12-year-old stepdaughter.

(00:20:25):

Hollywood sensors and just social norms at the time meant that they had to censor most of the more explicit sexual themes. It’s an interesting movie. It’s a creepy movie. It’s definitely not …

Laci (00:20:40):

The way happiness is creepy, but dealing with real things. I’m not going to put you on the spot. I’m sorry.

Matt (00:20:48):

I mean, that’s not a terrible comparison. They’re both actually kind of funny. I mean, all of Kubrick’s movies are for … The Shining is funny as hell, but that one’s kind of a black comedy. So it’s these two movies back to back where he feels really interfered with and he is just like, “I’m never bending to anybody’s will again. I’m going to be very deliberate about what I choose to make. I’m going to take a long time.”

Laci (00:21:09):

One way ticket to England, please. I don’t

Matt (00:21:11):

Remember when he moved to England, but once he got to England, he never left again, which also just adds to the mystery the allure of Kubrick. What was he hiding from? Was it the CIA, NASA, Jeffrey Epstein? I feel

Laci (00:21:23):

Like everyone knew where he was.

Matt (00:21:25):

But for whatever reason, they couldn’t touch him in England.

Laci (00:21:27):

Ah.

Matt (00:21:28):

The British would never turn over an American.

Laci (00:21:30):

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Matt (00:21:32):

No, that’s not no. Oh, you’re being

Laci (00:21:33):

Funny.

Matt (00:21:34):

Okay.

(00:21:34):

So I mean, he would live and work for another 40 years, but his career, the number of movies he’s made is already halfway through. 196 where he makes Dr. Strange love based on a very sincere novel about a doomsday scenario where the US and the USSR get involved in a nuclear confrontation and it’s like a warning, “Don’t ever let this happen. This would be so bad.” And he turns it into a very dark comedy about just the biggest, dumbest buffoons who run the world and it has the very amazing insight that these people are all horny to bomb the world and sex and bombing-

Laci (00:22:10):

Give them

Matt (00:22:11):

A red phone. … are inextrinkably linked.

Laci (00:22:12):

Give them a red button. They want to use the red phone. They want to use the red button.

Matt (00:22:17):

And I think that to this day, earlier this summer when it really seemed like we were going to go to war with Iran and every single journalist on CNN was like, “Come on, come on, do it. Just do it. Just do it. I just want it. ” Watch Dr. Strange love. It’s all in there. They want this to happen so bad. Just we need to start dropping our big beautiful bombs. 2001 of Space Odyssey follows 1968, Clockwork Orange in 1971, Barry Lyndon in 1975, then we get to the shining. Every one of these movies gets released to sort of mixture reviews and then a few years later people will be like, “Hey, we were wrong about Barry Lyndon. It’s actually great.” Which is what happens with the shining. People dismiss it at

Laci (00:22:57):

The time. Which is insane. I can’t imagine experiencing that on screen and being like, “Meh.” But Full Metal Jacket and Eyes White Shut also treated this way. I was blown away by both of those after I saw them. I guess I’m special.

Matt (00:23:10):

I think that at this point he is taking so long to release his movies. These movies are shrouded in secrecy and so much anticipation builds up. So when they come out, you’re like, “Oh, that was it. ” It’s kind

Laci (00:23:22):

Of like Mike Chamelan. We’re all hankering for another one. Do it again, Chamilan. And then we see it and we’re like, “That’s not what I wanted you to do. ” But then later, you kind of were doing it.

Matt (00:23:33):

What it reminds me of is The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson because people were like, “Oh my God.” Because he took a long time to make another movie after there will be blood. And people were like, “Did you know he’s making a movie about Scientology? He’s going to blow the lid off the whole thing.”

Laci (00:23:46):

Everyone’s going to know it’s weird.

Matt (00:23:48):

And then instead it was just like a intimate character drama set within a sort of Scientology world and it was kind of sympathetic to the Al Ron Hubbard character. So people were like, “Huh, I don’t know what to make of this. ” And then a few years later they’re like, “Oh, it’s a masterpiece. Okay. All right. Well, he died in 1999 at age 70. I was wondering if he had lived … We talked on our AI artificial intelligence episode about this, how he was developing that movie for a long time, was kind of trading back and forth with Steven Spielberg. Sometimes he’s like, “I want you to direct this. ” Sometimes he thought he wanted to direct it, but I think if he had lived, he’d probably make one more movie in 2017 and then he would die and people would be like, “It kind of sucks.” And then a few years later they’re like, “No, we were wrong.”

Laci (00:24:30):

COVID’s now and I like this movie.

Matt (00:24:32):

Yeah. So Kubrick, during this period, he is always looking for stuff to … He just employs a team of readers. Just read books for me. Just tell me if you think I’ll like something or not and if it’s something I can make a movie out of.

Laci (00:24:41):

As a dyslexic, I enjoy this. I’d like to hire a reader.

Matt (00:24:46):

Yeah. We’re taking applications for readers right now. So he gets sent The Shining by Warner Brothers, which hasn’t been published yet, but he thinks this might be the way I can make my scariest movie ever made. And he co-writes a screenplay with a novelist named Diane Johnson. She gave an interview in 1978 to the New York Times citation in the description, but I think she has the absolute best quotes about Kubrick and what he was thinking. So here’s what she said at the time. “Almost all the substantive decisions were made before we wrote the script. We talked for one month before we wrote anything at all. Stanley uses the Socratic method. Is the husband a nice man? Does his wife love him? What kind of clothes would she wear? In an attempt to understand the seriousness of the genre, we discussed Withering Heights and Jane Ayer.

(00:25:30):

Edgar Allen Poe. We read Freud a lot. In his essay on The Uncanny, Freud says specific things about why eyes are scary and why inanimate objects like puppets are scary in their animate shapes. We talked a lot about the role of memory and wish in making you a phrase. She went on to say,” I think Stanley wants to make the best horror film ever made. He sees a certain amount of intellectual challenge in doing a horror film right. The film must be plausible, use no cheap tricks, have no holes in the plot, and no failures of motivation. It must be a scary horror film without insulting the intelligence of the audience. A father threatening his child is compelling. It’s an archetypal enactment of unconscious rages. Stephen King isn’t Kafka, but the material of this movie is the rage and fear within families. To be completely scary means that your suspension of disbelief can never be tampered with by some implausibility.

(00:26:16):

There were ghosts in the film. We had to decide if these were actual ghosts or the projection of people’s imagination. Either way, there are implications. Kubrick always envisioned Jack Nicholson in the role. I reread The Shining for this and I don’t see it when I read the book. I don’t see a Jack Nicholson. He’s not a movie star. Jack Torrence is not a movie star. But

Laci (00:26:38):

Jack Nicholson is, you’re saying. Okay.

Matt (00:26:39):

Yeah, yeah. But Kubrick said, Jack Nicholson, he’s like one of the best movie stars of all time. We got to get him. For Danny, they wanted a non-professional, so they did a nationwide casting search. They said it on Danny Lloyd, six years old and Kubrick was thrilled with his performance. He was very protective of him and he told Danny Lloyd that the movie was a drama, not a horror movie. Danny Lloyd acted in one more … He acted in a TV movie in 1982 and then he retired from acting. He now works as a biology professor in Kentucky.

Laci (00:27:12):

That’s so interesting whenever we get to the Shelly Duval of it all.

Matt (00:27:16):

There’s a 2020 interview with him where he said, “I don’t do many interviews, but when I do, I try to make it clear. The shining was a good experience. I look back on it fondly. What happened to me was I didn’t really do much else after the film, so you kind of have to lay low and live a normal life.” He said that at first he would tell his students, “I’m the kid from the shining.” And then they would just never let him forget it. They’d be doing rad ram, rad ram to him. So he says he just kind of keeps it to himself.

Laci (00:27:44):

Nice that they believed him. How nice.

Matt (00:27:47):

I mean, it’s easy to verify I guess. My name is Daniel Lloyd, and you can look at my IMDB. So in that same 2020 article, the author says, “Lloyd only watched the uncut version of the film years later when he was a teenager and he immediately realized that the twins who he played with on the set were ghosts and that his father in the film was trying to murder him with an ax.”

Laci (00:28:09):

Did he feel it was the right decision to wait?

Matt (00:28:13):

I’m sure he

Laci (00:28:13):

Did. I feel he did.

Matt (00:28:14):

Jack Nicholson also helped Scatman Cruthers get the role of Dick Hollerand. They had worked together on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Scatman Cruthers. Coolest

Laci (00:28:22):

Name ever?

Matt (00:28:22):

Well, coolest name ever, absolutely. I always say, I think one of my favorite things about movies is actors like Scatman Cruthers who just bring a very specific energy, but are otherwise just, I’m just a character actor. I’m in a billion movies and TV shows. This is my job. He plays Scat the Cat and the Arista Cats, but he’s all over movies and TV from the era. Still, he had no idea who Stanley Kubrick was and it was very tough on him to have to do a million takes for every … He wasn’t aware that is what Nicholson is putting me up to do.

Laci (00:28:54):

Oh, that’s a bad friend, Scatman.

Matt (00:28:57):

However, I’m just going to play this for Laci so she can-

Laci (00:29:01):

Don’t tell me he’s the scatman. No, he’s not that guy. Good. Great. How did you find working with this little guy, Danny Joydon? Was it enjoyable?

Speaker 3 (00:29:14):

It was beautiful. Just like my son. If you see tears, it will be tears of joy because I thank the Lord I’m here was able to work with such beautiful people. I’ll never forget this.

Matt (00:29:39):

So he was very grateful.

Laci (00:29:41):

You got to warn me when a sweet man’s going to cry.

Matt (00:29:44):

He was very grateful for getting to do … I mean, just understood this is going to be a movie people are going to watch forever. I got to be a part of I’m Immortal basically because of this. After a career of being in tons of stuff Right. And I think that the dovetails with Laci’s Shelly Duvall profile coming up, but nevertheless, his next movie was he went to work for a director who was the literal opposite of Stanley Kubrick and Clint Eastwood, who even in 1980 was like two takes at most. Launch is coming up.

Laci (00:30:20):

Got to go fart my piano. Hey wait, Skyman, you ever heard of this? Ding ding. I wrote that.

Matt (00:30:31):

The movie is Bronco Billy and Scatman Cruthers plays this master of ceremonies, character. So the movie opens with him giving a big rousing like, “Welcome to the rodeo,” or whatever. So he gives the big old speech. Clint yells cut. Scatman looks over at him expecting like, “All right, now let’s move on to do 1000 more takes.” And Clint is like, “Okay, good, Brennan.” And he said that he cried a little. Maybe he’s always crying, but he cried tears of joy at that moment. Oh my God. He’s like

Laci (00:30:56):

My stepdad. There’s only tears.

Matt (00:30:59):

So the movie is filmed in London, L Street and Pinewood Studios outside London, all the hotel interiors, all the hedge maze interiors. These are creations of a sound stage, but they’re complete, meaning you can move around in them. Hallways are connected with.

Laci (00:31:15):

Oh,

Matt (00:31:15):

Wow. And the movie’s maybe most important visual element is the innovation of the steadicam, meaning you get very, very long takes where you watch these actors uncut exploring the interiors of this set.

Laci (00:31:28):

So glad they gave Danny the big wheel, which is probably why, right? For child labor laws. If we’re going to follow him through the hall and we’re going to do it a bunch of times, he needs whales.

Matt (00:31:38):

Yeah. And I wonder, at what point do you realize, you know what will be amazing is if we hear the wheels and then we don’t hear them when they go over the carpet and how that will just seep its way into people’s brains and just how scary that is by itself, you don’t know why.

Laci (00:31:57):

Another little thing and you know this actor has been riding this the three-wheeler a lot, like has practiced is that he knows how to start it on the carpet. It’s such a realistic moment. He knows to get out of there fast. He has to roll the wheel with his hand and then it makes it go. And it’s like, I had to do that with my Big Will too. Those things did not have good traction.

Matt (00:32:18):

And again, it’s like all of those things contribute to the atmosphere of the movie there, why this movie sticks with people so much, even if you don’t really notice it. And it’s why I think Kubrick would be annoyed with people who are trying to dissect every frame of it.

Laci (00:32:31):

Just live in it.

Matt (00:32:33):

Exactly. Just vibing my shit. And I think why I’m on Kubrick’s side and his feud with King is like, movies are different from books. King thought that this movie was all style over substance, but the style is the substance.

Laci (00:32:45):

It’s the substance, right. The sound. You literally have no sound in a book so I guess you cannot understand, Steven, but that’s a hugely important part of a movie experience. It’s why they have special theaters just to make things too loud.

Matt (00:32:57):

Yes. Plot is important, but plot is a component of the big stew. The stew has all kinds of other equally important components. Characters are a thing in the stew, but so is sound design, so is set decoration, et cetera. Shelly Duvall. Let’s learn about Shelly Duvall.

Laci (00:33:18):

Shelly Duvall is so charming that she was tricked into becoming an actress. She actually wanted to be a scientist. She was a straight A student, which put a pin in that. You’ll see that in the way that she approaches acting. But she saw the Vivis section of a monkey in her community college and immediately left and gave up science. She shortly thereafter married her first and only husband also divorced that husband but never got married again. And he was a painter and she threw a party to try and sell some of his paintings and three crew members from a movie called Brewster McLeod just happened to go to that party were so taken with her that they pretended to want art and asked her to come show up at a place where Robert Altman and Lou Adler were going to be actually doing auditions. So she comes to the audition and just whatever holding two paintings under her arms, not at all prepared to do any kind of acting and had never acted.

(00:34:13):

This is not a theater kid. This is not a person looking for limelight. This is a regular Texas scientist. You know those NASA bound really. But Robert Altman was so taken with her. She got the part and this was the auditions were at the Houston Zoo. I’m just going to guess that Bruce McLeod had animals in it. Or else they just wanted some scenery while they were looking at actresses to take on this part. She got the role and from there kind of became Robert Altman’s muse. She hardly skipped a year after that.

Matt (00:34:48):

So he was an incredibly prolific director, especially in the 70s, just cranked out movies.

Laci (00:34:53):

A pulp fiction writer, just cranking him out. The opposite of a Kubrick.

Matt (00:34:58):

Well, he was the opposite of a Kubrick in that he was an actor’s director. He loved actors and he wanted to capture naturalism from actors.

Laci (00:35:06):

And she had that in droves.

Matt (00:35:08):

It was big for him to have these big ensemble movies. And if you try to watch them now, and they’re great and you should watch them, the sound design will have it so that you can’t always hear clearly their dialogue because you’re not necessarily supposed to. You’re just supposed to feel like you’re living in the room with them and you will hear people in the background talking. And I think that that is why he wanted a variety of people in terms of looks and sounds and energy. And like Laci said, she was not your typical Hollywood beauty. She looked like a real life person who you would meet.

Laci (00:35:45):

But still was magnetic. And she had that mod like 60s look with her page boy haircut and the fake eyelashes on the top and the bottom and like an impossible figure where she just looked good in everything, the smallest things. She even did some modeling. So in the early 70s, she goes on to do several more movies for Altman and it was during Thieves Like Us in 1974 that he pulled her aside and was like, “Hey, you’re a great actress.” There’s just something so effortlessly natural about her. Her accent, she just kind of becomes that character, but that character also just becomes Shelly Duvall too and in not a boring way. You don’t get sick of her. So after about five Altman movies, she then feels confident to try for something else and she ends up getting the Pam role in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.

(00:36:39):

And she has very good memory. She’s a sweet person and she seems to see people sweetly. She’s got nothing but nice things to say about pretty much anybody. I haven’t read anything where she talks. She’s not a shit talker, but really liked Woody Allen. He was very good with actors.

Matt (00:36:57):

And she’s very, very funny in Woody. In Nanny Hall, she’s only in like

Laci (00:37:01):

Three

Matt (00:37:01):

Scenes.

Laci (00:37:01):

Yes. She’s the one that says that having sex with him is Kafkaesque and that everything that she’s talking about and seeing at this art gallery is resplendent. Is that the word?

Matt (00:37:13):

Yeah. And she keeps talking about the Maharishi.

Laci (00:37:15):

Yes. I was going to wait till after you and I have sex again in the recent future to then tell you.

Matt (00:37:21):

It’s a very Kafka-esque experience. Right.

Laci (00:37:23):

Doing your dick. So she then goes on to do another Altman movie after that. It’s cute. It’s like she … Altman, Altman, Altman, new director. Altman, safe place to land and then try something new. But she does three women and she’s opposite Sissy Spacek and that and she’s got like a real meaty role here and she got the notice of lots of people including Roger Ebert and this is the role she was nominated for a BAFTA for. She ends up losing to Diane Keaton, Diane Keaton in any hall, but still very impressive that Ebert says-

Matt (00:37:54):

There’s an openness about her as if somehow nothing has come between her open face and our eyes, no camera, dialogue, makeup, method of acting, and she is spontaneously being the character.

Laci (00:38:06):

And in the interviews I’ve heard where she’s actually speaking of in present day-ish that there’s no pretension, there is no nothing. She just would never guess she’s a movie star and whatever it is that means. Not only did she not pick up all the bad habits of having lots of money because she didn’t end up with a lot, but she also isn’t a theater kid. I don’t know what it is. She just didn’t mean to be an actress, happened to be a good one, but not because it was natural. She took it so seriously. So the same way that she wanted to be a scientist, she got straight A’s in school. She’s a worker. She’s a Hermione. You give her something to do and she’s going to do it the best that she can. Her favorite books were Farmers Almerac and Encyclopedia Brown. She wanted to know things.

(00:38:56):

She’s a nerd and a rule follower.

Matt (00:38:59):

Encyclopedia Brown.

Laci (00:39:01):

Is that what I meant?

Matt (00:39:02):

Britannica.

Laci (00:39:03):

That’s what I meant. Whatever. I just love that you can do something really well even though you had no inkling to do it before just by fucking trying really hard and not trying in an annoying way, Jared Leto. On the side of Annie Hall is where she meets Paul Simon and then they start dating and she moves to New York. So from Texas to LA and now to New York and she’s there for a couple years, but then she hears from Stanley Kubrick. She gets a call from him because he’s now got his hands on a juicy little script and he saw her in three women and really liked the way she cried good. So he sent her a copy of The Shining and she read it and that was it. She got the part. I don’t even think she auditioned. You know what? The man knows what he wants.

(00:39:53):

If he’s going to give you a plane ticket, he’s already sure of you.

Matt (00:39:56):

This is from him seeing three women.

Laci (00:39:59):

There’s a part in three women. Her name is Millie in that and she is forced to deliver her own stillborn child while her friend just stares at her and not doesn’t … She’s begging for her friend to go get medical help or whatever and she just kind of doesn’t help her and it’s just a really horrific scene in a dramatic movie and Stanley thought, “That’s my crier.” There she is.

Matt (00:40:28):

But her experience up until this point is working with very like actor friendly directors. A monster, but actors always liked him. They liked working with him. He makes things easy. And Robert Altman, the actor’s director. She has never done anything like work with Stanley Kubrick, who even then was known for, I’m going to ask you to do a hundred takes of the same thing over and over and over.

Laci (00:40:53):

Right. Only with directors that have either grown with her, like watched her grow meaning or with something like Woody Allen who was only going to put her in her comfort zone. So I think three women was probably not too big of a stretch for her, but that scene was, and that’s all it took for Kubrick to be like, “That’s my crying angel.” So she goes to Hartford Shire, England meets Stanley and his daughter, Vivian. They have dinner and then that’s it. 56 weeks of just labor. She gets a flat that’s like right there by the studio and then you’ve got Jack Nicholson who gets a place in London, which is, I don’t know, it’s not that far, but it’s where things are happening. No one wants to stay in England all the time.

Matt (00:41:40):

Imagine the fucking swanky parties Jack Nicholson is throwing at his swinging pad.

Laci (00:41:44):

With girlfriend Angelica Houston, they’re just living it up. They’re working six days a week, sometimes 16 hours a day, but he sure does take that off day and goes get fucking milkshake wasted out there in fucking Londontown. I don’t know.

Matt (00:42:00):

Give me another

Laci (00:42:01):

Shit. I know. I didn’t want to be. This quote is from an article in the Hollywood reporter from 2021. I suck at reading quotes. So do your best, Shelly. This is what Shelly replies when asked if she was treated poorly while making the shining.

Matt (00:42:18):

“He’s got that streak in him. He definitely has that, but I think mostly because people have been that way to him at some time in the past. His first two films were Killer’s Kiss in the Killing. “Then the author says,” I presed on her what she meant by that. Was Kubrick more Jack Torrence than Dick Holleran? The kindly chef played by Scatman Cruthers. “Shelly says,” No, he was very warm and friendly to me. He spent a lot of time with Jack and me. He just wanted to sit down and talk for hours while the crew waited and the crew would say, Stanley, we have about 60 people waiting, but it was very important work.

Laci (00:42:50):

“He sounds like an asshole just for making the crew wait. But yeah, we learned on our AI episode with Steven Spielberg that this man can chirp. He loves a talk. So yeah, he had a very specific way and she appreciated it. She knew that he was going to get the very best out of her. She didn’t want to be doing this for nothing. She didn’t want to be a joke and this is a big leap in her career and he pushed her to do something she never thought she could do. I mean, she says that it was really hard. She spent over a year crying every single day and would wake up and wonder how the hell would she manage to cry that day for that long and just the thought of that would make her cry. So I mean, from an outsider, I think you would think she had a hard time, but she had a hard time doing a good job or doing a good job meant for her to feel hard feelings for a very long time.

Matt (00:43:51):

It was hard work. It was definitely getting pushed well, well, well outside your comfort zone. But when she died last summer, there were articles that were like, was Shelly Duvall abused by Stanley Kubrick and she always pushed back on that and there was just never any … I think it takes credit away from her to assume that she couldn’t take on a role like this knowing this is going to be difficult. This is going to be hard work, but that doesn’t mean I can’t handle it.

Laci (00:44:22):

Well, and it’s just like an enticing narrative. It’s one that we don’t need a lot of evidence to believe that big, bad, scary director, smushed, tiny little petal delicate flower,

(00:44:34):

Beautiful innocent Shelly Duvall, but that’s not true. She was no flower. She was a bookish nerd that studied the fuck out of this movie and nailed it. The whole movie’s on her back. You think of Jac when you walk away from this movie, but it’s really almost entirely Shelly because she didn’t love the limelight. She says in an interview I heard that the day that the shining debut, she was driving herself, just stopped at a red light and one of those jacked up cars with this fuzzy dice pulled up next to her and just started going, ” Wendy, Wendy, Wendy. “And then she just realized all in that moment like, ” Fuck, people know me now. “So she dealt with that and she powered through for 22 years. She was practically in a movie every single year from that point on until 2002 and she produced a ton of shit.

(00:45:33):

She did TV. She didn’t go anywhere. Stanley Cooper didn’t scare her out of anything. She had a full career. It was really just she got sick of LA and it was a pretty big earthquake that was like the last straw. And not because she’s scared of earthquakes, they happen all the time. It’s because FEMA is annoying and would show up and ask questions and then the insurance adjuster and living in a place like we do where there’s constant hurricanes, it’s a lot if something actually is a disaster in your home. The disaster is the time it takes afterward. Just give me my fucking money.

Matt (00:46:09):

Yeah. And it’s like a sort of Mandela effect that’s taken place where it’s like, she did the shining. She was so tormented that she never acted again.

Laci (00:46:16):

It’s really to her credit. All they’re seeing is the torment in Wendy Torrance. No, you’re remembering the actual performance. Don’t take that away from her. She so convinced you that she was tortured that you decided the actress herself couldn’t be that good. That’s like a huge compliment and a backslap that is … It’s not nice, people.

Matt (00:46:38):

When I was a teenager, I remember the first time I saw it as a, “She’s so bad. She’s so annoying.”

Laci (00:46:45):

Good job, Shelly.

Matt (00:46:46):

And she was nominated for a golden razzy for worst actress, worst actress, Shelly Duvall.

Laci (00:46:52):

That’s fucked up.

Matt (00:46:53):

The razzies are stupid. Don’t take them seriously.

Laci (00:46:56):

But I will note that right after The Shining, she did go back to her happy place and did another Altman movie, which was filmed on a remote Mediterranean island and the set they set up to be like the harbors, this kind of town for Popeye, it’s still there. You could still go visit it.

Matt (00:47:15):

The Popeye village in Malta, you can go right now if you want. It

Laci (00:47:18):

Looks like the best kind of Jimmy Buffets.

Matt (00:47:22):

And she runs like olive oil in the shining when she has the knife.

Laci (00:47:27):

And she runs with a knife up and downstairs actually kind of for a timely amount for a good amount of time in the actual movie. When you think that she had to do that a hundred times, I’ll bet she might’ve gotten cut. I’m hoping it was a fake knife.

Matt (00:47:42):

Oh, she got cut.

Laci (00:47:43):

Did she?

Matt (00:47:44):

As in got jacked.

Laci (00:47:46):

From holding that big knife. I got you.

Matt (00:47:52):

That is our history segment about the shining. If you want to hear Laci and I discuss the movie in full, subscribe to one week rental wherever you listen to podcasts. Discussing Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, discussing reviewing, theorizing, analyzing, the shining. And it’s like one of the most disgust theorized about movies of all time, right? Sure. And Laci and I have, I’d say, reads on what the movie is about or what we’re really responding to in terms of what’s going on beneath the service of the movie. And I don’t think they contradict each other, but we’re just kind of responding to different things. So I think maybe we should just say upfront what we think the shining is really about. What’s it really about?

Laci (00:49:08):

Well, I think that the overlook is a metaphor for the part of your brain that is addicted to something bad. And in this case, alcohol. So I think it is a story of how a abusive alcoholic can bring their loved ones into their web, do the things that they wanted to do anyway and make it seem like the other’s fault and just the cycle, the mechanics of it, the inner workings of your brain as you’re fighting yourself to not do what you really, really want to do.

Matt (00:49:43):

And the overlook is the perfect playground for that. All of those things, all of those dynamics, the dynamic with the wife, the dynamic with the child to play out and you can see the abuse of the alcoholic or the addict

Laci (00:49:55):

In

Matt (00:49:56):

Full force.

Laci (00:49:56):

Even the alcoholic setting himself up for failure, even though he keeps proclaiming out loud to be setting himself up for success. It’s just a selfish drive to do exactly what it is that that person wants to do when every day with an alcoholic, at least as a child and as a wife, I have both experience, not with that guy. Every day is whatever that guy wants to do. That’s the feeling of it. Yeah.

Matt (00:50:19):

And you’re going to be like, “I’ll literally be physically removed from the alcohol. I will be in the mountains. There will be no alcohol.” Yes. So my problems will be solved. Problem solved.

Laci (00:50:27):

No, as we’ll find out.

Matt (00:50:29):

To me, the overlook does represent a sort of addiction and it is Jack’s addiction to wanting to climb Mount America, but not just be successful. He wants to join the ruling class. They describe the overlook as the place where the best people gather presidents, royalty, movie stars. And he gets there and he’s like, “I feel like I belong here.” And it is like if you accidentally get bumped up to first class on a flight and you’re saying like, “Finally, this is where I’m supposed to be. “

Laci (00:50:59):

When that exact thing happened to me and I felt really out of place and like they were going to be kicking me out at any moment.

Matt (00:51:06):

Yes. Jack doesn’t understand he is allowed to be among these royals because they’re not there because this is the off season and you can clean up after their shit basically.

Laci (00:51:22):

Right. You’re there on their terms.

Matt (00:51:23):

And also it’s not even in its heyday. They say back in its heyday when things are really going great. Set

Laci (00:51:28):

Setters. I do love that they say royalty, famous people, presidents, all the best people. And then those three categories to me, I’m thinking asshole dick, asshole, dangerous, asshole dick.

Matt (00:51:43):

Right.

Laci (00:51:44):

Right. Interesting. But anyway.

Matt (00:51:49):

All the American flags in this movie and all the imagery of Native American appropriation, we conquered them, we stole the land from them. Now we’re going to quote unquote honor them. And this is how basically the ruling class of America accumulated everything and accumulated.

Laci (00:52:02):

Right. Sorry I moved into your house, but what if I also use all your stuff?

Matt (00:52:06):

But I’m doing it in a way to honor your sacrifice. Yo played a part two.

Laci (00:52:11):

We left your pictures on the wall and we put a little heart by it and like we really, really appreciate that matriarch and that patriarch for buying this sofa set.

Matt (00:52:20):

And we’re honoring you by putting like your imagery on our canned goods. See, that’s how much we honor you.

Laci (00:52:26):

This is Betty tomato paste. Thanks, Betty.

Matt (00:52:29):

What is Calamet? What is that?

Laci (00:52:30):

I thought it was ketchup. It’s an Indian tribe, but

Matt (00:52:34):

Are you- No, I know. There’s the

Laci (00:52:36):

Can. I think it’s ketchup.

Matt (00:52:37):

Okay.

Laci (00:52:38):

I’m making that up because there’s also Heinz. I’m really making that up.

Matt (00:52:43):

So I think as we go, we’re going to go through the plot of the movie and try to advance our cases and just respond to all the other stuff that’s going on in what I think is the greatest horror movie made at least by an English language director. And this opening is terrifying. It’s hard to explain why.

Laci (00:53:00):

It’s the music. It’s just that daunting, you’re my insect and I’m bringing you on that long walk to the car where we’re isolated, that long drive to my house where we’re isolated. I know right now it’s just Jack driving out there and he couldn’t feel more free than right now, but later that long winding ride feels like the way an abusive person needs to isolate.

Matt (00:53:30):

And you can even see that in the way that the environment’s changed. You can see how it gets colder, the snow appears just the higher he ascends up.

Laci (00:53:37):

Yes. And then not everyone can even reach it. You have to have a vehicle, you have to have a demendable vehicle. There’s like all these things that get in your way of like who gets to come out here and who gets to leave here? A person of driving age, a person with a car. So Danny, you are fucked once you get up here and then you add the snow. But yes, so this is Jax, he’s driving to a place where he’s completely in charge. If he’s going to go and work at the overlook, it’s him deciding to do that. So he’s feeling like he’s on his way to exactly where he wants to be to do his worst.

Matt (00:54:13):

And he gets there, he has the interview with Mr. Ulman played by Barry Nelson. And I think this is honestly my favorite scene in the movie is the interview because it is so fucking weird. The way that Barry Nelson is playing it with his fish hands-

Laci (00:54:28):

Little pippy pause.

Matt (00:54:29):

Yes. Well, and his little American flag next to him and the way he delivers the information about like, oh gosh, they didn’t tell you about the whole murder thing.

Laci (00:54:39):

He delivers it like a game show host. And when you think of him as like a game show host, he looks just like one. It looks like he’s about to go kiss all the women on the lips, whether they want it or

Matt (00:54:48):

Not. And you are right about that. Yes, this is a Pat Sajak sort of schmarmy.

Laci (00:54:52):

Look what you’ve just won assuming you’re worth it. Are you worth it? Okay, great. And here’s $1,000 plus 7% in taxes.

Matt (00:55:00):

Because it is like a, “Hey, you won. You got to come join the wealthy elite.” I mean, they’re not here right now, but they work here. They’re

Laci (00:55:08):

Not going to smell you.

Matt (00:55:09):

You get to feel like you belong amongst them.

Laci (00:55:11):

Also, go ahead and live in the help quarters. It’s just better. It’s easier to heat over here.

Matt (00:55:18):

Yeah, I noticed

Laci (00:55:18):

That. You wouldn’t like it amongst all the good stuff.

Matt (00:55:21):

You don’t need to go live in a suite. Room 237 is huge.

Laci (00:55:24):

It’s so big and I would like also to have a bathroom that way. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Come on. Now let’s

Matt (00:55:32):

Get

Laci (00:55:32):

Back to that interview.

Matt (00:55:33):

The way that Jack Nicholson is responding, I love all of his … Whenever other people are around and he is putting on the like, “I’m like a normal guy.”

Laci (00:55:41):

Yes. He’s putting on, “I can help change your tire face.” Would

Matt (00:55:45):

You like some coffee? Well, if you’re going to have some coffee, I wouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t say no to a cup of Joe if you’re having some.

Laci (00:55:52):

I wouldn’t want to put you out, Miss. I really respect women’s rights to do their work.

Matt (00:55:56):

He is a former school teacher and he’s like, “Nah, teaching’s just something I, just a way of making ends meet. I’m really more of a writer.”

Laci (00:56:03):

It has nothing to do with being good at the job and helping steer children into the right path along there. It’s so funny how dismissed. It’s just some shit job where I teach the youth of America. Well,

Matt (00:56:15):

Because he does not feel like what I really am as a writer. I know. And I think after seeing the movie 50 times, I only realized the significance. It’s not just that he’s turning into a crazy ghost that he writes all work and no play. It’s that he has no talent and he knows it. And that feeling like a writer is not enough to actually make you a writer. And he can’t even say like, “Yes, I’m working on a book.” It’s, “I’m outlining a new writing

Laci (00:56:39):

Project.” I’m letting a new, a writing project. My guy, that could be the instructions to a lawnmower. What are you

Matt (00:56:45):

Talking about? I’m writing my to- do list of things to get ready to prepare for my writing project.

Laci (00:56:49):

Pack pencils.

Matt (00:56:51):

And this is a pretty significant departure from the book because in the book he has sold some short stories. He is working on a play. Stephen King makes clear he is a talented writer. He’s sort of a Stephen King type who if things went a certain way would have success.

Laci (00:57:05):

Sort of has the jawline of a Lego, that kind of type.

Matt (00:57:10):

Right, exactly. Just like a

Laci (00:57:11):

Stephen King Easter Island statue face.

Matt (00:57:14):

They start cutting between the interview and then Wendy and Danny at home. And I started noticing that the way Ulman is talking about the murders that happened, just one of those things about nine years ago.

Laci (00:57:28):

Little something the old timers called cabin fever. You know where else they had cabin fever and a huge spike in domestic violence happened? COVID. And that’s not because all the healthy people were around all the other healthy people and started just slapping each other around. You put someone with some shit they haven’t processed and worked through in therapy and they’re going to start taking it out on who’s around them, especially when those people can’t get away. Looking at you, Grady.

Matt (00:57:57):

But what he does is he turns that into a positive. He’s like, “You know what? I kind of like that. In fact, my wife is a confirmed horror film and ghost story addict.”

Laci (00:58:07):

She’ll love it.

Matt (00:58:08):

Which is totally made up. No, she doesn’t. She would hate horror movies. But

Laci (00:58:12):

You know who does love horror ghost stories are people with high anxiety, people who are like into that whole murder porn thing because it’s their way of controlling it. It’s like, no, Wendy’s the exact person that would be into this because she’s living a horror show. People in haunted houses are the only ones that can really understand the way that she feels around him

Matt (00:58:32):

Looking

Laci (00:58:32):

Around every door and hoping tonight’s not one of the nights where all the cabinets are open and the chairs are upside down.

Matt (00:58:38):

You definitely get the sense he has never told her about the murders. He’s not like running home like Wendy. Wendy, guess what I learned?

Laci (00:58:44):

Oh yeah. I half expected because of the way that they move throughout the movie, I always forget he says she’s into it. In my head I’m like, we just won’t tell the misses. That’s what I’m waiting for. That’s the fucking, that’s where we’re at

Matt (00:58:57):

Here. No, I think this is Kevin McAllister when you realize he never told his parents what happened to him when they left him home alone. And you’re like, Jesus.

Laci (00:59:02):

Fucking psychopathic. You

Matt (00:59:05):

Fucked up. I’m

Laci (00:59:05):

Saving that.

Matt (00:59:07):

But they’re sort of cutting between these two scenes and Wendy has her own like, well, it’s just one of those things when she’s explaining to the doctor that Jack dislocated Danny’s soul. So

Laci (00:59:18):

Many important elements, things happen in what’s going on at the back of the apartment. You’ve got the very insightful child and I submit to you that the ability to shine is just the ability to know when you’re around someone else who knows who might have been through things that you’ve been through. Stephen King does this. He plants little helpful adults all along the way. So I’ll get to that whenever we get to Mr. Hollowin. But Danny’s made … What a special boy. All he is is a boy that manages to speak up and speak out at some point. That’s the special shining he can do. Shining is knowing what’s coming because you’re with an abuser and Standing up for yourself, it’s the intuition you develop when living with an abuser. It’s not special, it’s not magical. It’s just you notice patterns, you have to notice them to be safe.

(01:00:12):

And so he’s the one at the breakfast table that says, “Do you really think we should go to that hotel mom? Do you think it’ll be okay that we go? Do you think dad’s actually going to get that job?” And then Wendy serves as a perfect enabler with her sugary sweet voice and her big warm smile. Although she’s got the stare of a thousand yards, which is exactly what she would have. And she, I won’t say minimizes what Danny’s saying, but it’ll be great, hon. It’ll be … And Danny’s sitting there like, “I’m the only fucking adult in this family. Wendy, you’re full of shit, but all right mom, you’re the good one.”

Matt (01:00:46):

No, her attitude, her interactions with both husband and son are like, “Okay, what do I say to make you exactly happy and okay and normal?”

Laci (01:00:52):

Yeah. She just wants everything to be okay and she doesn’t realize that what she can do to make things be okay is to get away from her husband. That would never even cross her mind.

Matt (01:01:01):

Their little apartment in Boulder, we first check in on them eating their white bread mayonnaise sandwiches and she is just smoking a fucking cigarette. Big old glass of white milk and she is reading The Catcher in the eye. See, she doesn’t like ghost stories. She likes stories about catcher and he starts like, “Mom, you really think we should move over to the hotel for the winter?” But like Laci, you were saying on our it episode, that sort of thing of being a parent to a young kid and not understanding or not realizing too late, I said things in front of my kids that I shouldn’t have. There’s a way in which Danny’s shining is just like, I’m just a kid in the next room hearing my parents talk. It’s just he’s telepathically hearing them talk.

Laci (01:01:41):

That’s part of it. That’s part of it. But Danny’s also experienced a traumatic injury that happened to him because he was a toddler on the floor playing with papers he didn’t know he was supposed to be playing with. He knows that his dad is a beaver in a backpack, right? He doesn’t understand what will set off his dad, but he knows that every now and then is going to come out

Matt (01:02:01):

Of it. A beaver and a backpack will …

Laci (01:02:05):

Most times that beaver’s fine. You give him a snack, he’s happy, but every now and then you open that backpack and he’s going to attack the fuck out of you. And to survive in that kind of situation, you grow up fast. Yo become Tony. You become a person who knows a lot and you don’t tell people you know a lot. That would get you in trouble. But you do just try to know the lay of the land and I’ll get to that when we get to the three-wheeler.

Matt (01:02:29):

So this apartment, it’s a little crappy, a little, I don’t know, it’s beautifully decorated in terms of set decoration. You know how this apartment smells and it’s so cluttered. There’s books everywhere. This is a bookish family.

Laci (01:02:41):

And look, there’s moving boxes in the background, which then goes to the … Yes, when Wendy later states, she’s been there, they’ve been in Boulder for three months. That’s the correct timeline. So we’ll get to when Jack says three years and then we’ll unpack that shit.

Matt (01:02:53):

Danny goes into the bathroom and he starts talking to Tony and he’s like, “Do you think dad’s going to get the job? Danny.” He’s going to call Wendy and then he asks Tony a question about what’s going to happen when they go to the overlook. He sees the blood elevator. I think he might see the twins, but then he passes out because we next see him in bed with a doctor visiting him at home. And she just, “Hey, can you tell me about Tony? Tony’s a little boy lives in my mouth.” She’s like, “Yeah, perfectly normal. Every child goes through this. Yes, yes, yes.” The doctor leaves the room and I noticed Wendy says, “Shall we go to the living room?” And this is juxtaposed with Jack getting the tour of the overlook of the grand overlook, but this is her guiding this doctor four feet away into the living room, which is also the kitchen just to juxtapose the material shittiness of their life compared to the splendor of the overlook.

Laci (01:03:47):

Oh, I took it as like, let’s get away from the earshot of my kid who I’m pretending doesn’t understand things who I’m trying to keep in as much in the dark as I can because that boy’s too smart for his own good. Come tell me the bad stuff out here, doctor. It’s just more of a parent not trusting their kid to know what’s going on with them.

Matt (01:04:05):

Well, it is that too. Just in a movie full of mirrors, you get the inverse versions of so many things and it comes right directly after a scene where Jack is given the big grand tour. Now she is acting like, “Well, I need to show you the way into the living room.”

Laci (01:04:20):

Right. You’ll never find it.

Matt (01:04:21):

Tell me about Danny’s history. She tells her about this injury and then has the way of explaining the story. It’s just one of those things. You do it a billion times to a kid, but just the rotten luck this time of pulling on his shoulder and oops, Daisy dislocated it.

Laci (01:04:36):

Just happened to have come home three hours late. That’s an interesting detail and he had had something to drink. But it’s good thing. His hasn’t touched a drop since. And it’s like, okay, so your alcoholic husband came three hours late, found a toddler playing in papers, yanked him so hard that it dislocated his fucking arm. Normal day. Okay, keep talking.

Matt (01:05:02):

Yeah. And she said, and he hasn’t touched a drink in five months. I’ve always thought this was, she’s kind of obfuscating that this thing happened years ago and he’s continued to drink and it was only five months ago from now that he stopped drinking.

Laci (01:05:15):

Which would make a lot more sense. So when you think of it that way, Danny was two when he took his arm out like

Matt (01:05:19):

That.

Laci (01:05:20):

But she’s saying that they took him out of school for an injury. When you live in a place like that, you know how to lie and to keep people at bay, you don’t want people telling you that you can’t have your child or you can’t live with a man that you love or whatever it is. So her story’s fallen apart and that doctor sees that, but it’s a different time. That

Matt (01:05:42):

Doctor’s not

Laci (01:05:43):

Going to push too hard.

Matt (01:05:44):

No, this is a family matter. Back at the hotel in the interview with Jack and Ulman, he’s like giving some of the history of the hotel. This hotel was chosen for its seclusion so people could go off and do their Bohemian grove shit without anybody noticing. All the best people in the world can come here to sacrifice and eat babies and stuff.

Laci (01:06:03):

Exactly. And it’s beauty. Okay. So they need nice stuff to look at while they’re torturing, whatever the fuck it is they brought with them.

Matt (01:06:09):

Cool. Yeah, the whole tragedy of the winter of 1970, Charles Grady, he had a wife and two daughters ages eight and 10. Now later we’ll meet Delbert Grady so the names are different and we keep seeing girls who look like they’re twins, not two years apart. And because it’s Krubrick, it’s like, what is that? Ooh, is this a mistake or is this intentional? What does it all mean?

Laci (01:06:29):

Well, then that’s exactly why I said Danny has a place ready for him at that hotel whenever he’s ready because for all we know, that’s Grady’s dad, Grady, right? Grady Senior or whatever.

Matt (01:06:41):

So we see the family together in the car ascending Mount Doom and just Jack is just boiling with fucking rage, just at them being there.

Laci (01:06:48):

He’s already on one and it’s very interesting and it’s the first time I noticed it, but Wendy’s out of it. She yawns and she seems tired and she even mentions like the air’s different here. So the movie’s literally showing you Wendy disassociating, detaching and becoming less available for Danny, less available for herself. Her senses are literally dulling because she knows where she needs to be mentally to survive where she’s about to go or it’s at least her body telling her what she should do, which is hibernate, Wendy. And Danny asks one too many questions and Jack entertains some of them, but then Danny asks one too many and says that he learned about cannibalism on TV. And so Jac uses that as a opportunity to be like, he learned it on TV and he delivers it in a way that’s funny. But what you know is he’s saying, “Windy, you suck as a fucking mom.

(01:07:45):

I hate this kid.”

Matt (01:07:46):

You’re being too indulgent. And also, I’m a very serious writer. You saw all my books. Why are we rotting the boy’s brain?

Laci (01:07:52):

Right. I don’t have to actually make him watch or read and do school work. Why are you fucking up with the TV, Wendy? Lazy slut.

Matt (01:07:59):

I love her saying, she says the air feels so different and just the way he just goes.

Laci (01:08:08):

But he’s creating this. He’s got an anxious kid that has a million questions because of him and he has the most detached wife ever because he’s detached her.

Matt (01:08:18):

And it’s a dreadful feedback loop. Every single thing they’re going to say, they’re trying to minimize annoying him, but it just annoys him more.

Laci (01:08:24):

Because that’s, at the end of the day, what he wants.

Matt (01:08:26):

Which just begs the question, why didn’t he just go up alone? That’s what he wanted.

Laci (01:08:30):

Because part of being an abuser is that you got to have something to abuse, baby.

Matt (01:08:35):

They get to the hotel. Mr. Ullman comes up to Jack and he’s like, “My son’s discovered the games room,” which is just one of those line readings that will stick with me. There’s like five of those in this movie, the games room. And we get the tour of the hotel. Now, because we watched this movie a bunch of times this week and I’ve seen it so many times, but this is the first time where I felt like I actually understand the geography of the hotel and that there’s only actually like three rooms really. The gold room, the Colorado room and the lobby.

Laci (01:09:05):

Right. And I always thought like, well, you can’t heat the whole place at the same time. I mean, in fact, that’s not your job. You’d be running the bill up the wazoo if that’s what you were doing. So I always took it as like, this is the part of the hotel that they can stay in because it’s not too cold.

Matt (01:09:19):

Yeah.

Laci (01:09:20):

But also set

Matt (01:09:22):

Design. And just, I mean, one of the great sets of all time too. It’s

Laci (01:09:27):

Amazing.

Matt (01:09:28):

And it is so incredible, but that is why eventually you start to feel like, boy, this is smaller than it exists in my memory.

Laci (01:09:35):

Right. How are they down from the staff quarters so fast? And now Danny’s been running forever, but he’s in the kitchen. Jac just turned a corner now. He’s right by Danny. How is this … It’s all just … They’re in the bottom of the ship, right? They’re in the place where things happen. Kitchen, staff quarters. I don’t know why I’m trying to figure this out.

Matt (01:09:59):

Yeah, the parts of the ship. You got the mask. You got

Laci (01:10:03):

The sale. They do a good job of making you feel like a hotel is huge and tiny.

Matt (01:10:07):

Yeah. The Colorado lounge, that’s where you said he chose to write in the center of the hotel.

Laci (01:10:15):

The most elaborate, beautiful, most things to break and the only way to not be able to get away from him and he wants to see you cross his path.

Matt (01:10:23):

Yeah. And they’d be like, “God damn it, what are you doing here?” But that’s the room with all the Indian decorations. Go

Laci (01:10:29):

Around the hotel

Matt (01:10:30):

If you

Laci (01:10:30):

Want to get to your bedroom.

Matt (01:10:32):

And Wendy’s like, “Oh, Indian design’s authentic.” It’s

Laci (01:10:35):

Poor fucking schmuck. This damn hill, Billy, they let her keep her Texas accent and maybe that’s just part of Shelly Duvall’s charm. Or I think she’s just supposed to be kind of like bringing his class down. That’s exactly it. Yes. She doesn’t know what to say. In fact, she’s saying all the wrong things. He’s been doing everything he can to make it seem like he fits in and she’s like, “Golly, I’ve never been in a place mass as these.”

Matt (01:11:02):

Laci, again, I’ve seen this movie 50 times. I never even picked up until this viewing exactly that like, “Oh, he’s embarrassed by everything.” She’s saying, “She’s a roof. She’s a haysie.” Just like, “Gosh, it’s about the most beautiful hotel I ever

Laci (01:11:15):

Seen.” Yes, yes. And I mean, he rolls his eyes, he escorts her away. He wants to do all the things that make him look like a dad, like, “Huh, my son’s found the games room. Boys will be boys.” And, “Oh, little lady, why don’t you go see the kitchen?” “Oh, wouldn’t you know it? Here’s my lovely wife. She’s back. “It’s all just performance. He doesn’t know how the fuck he wears human suit.

Matt (01:11:40):

No, and that’s why every interaction is so uncomfortable, but why I love it. And when they’re showing their apartment, perfect for a child and then mash the bed and cozy.

Laci (01:11:50):

Yes, but this is the first viewing where I realized how disappointed he is that they thought that he should be in this area. Look at his face. He’s devastated. He’s in the nicest hotel he’s ever seen and he is being put in the cozy little thing that looks just like their fucking apartment. It looks just like it. Danny’s bedroom’s in the same spot. The kitchen is sort of … I mean, everything’s connected by the TV and it’s just, he’s like, ” Okay, I came up here to get away and become a better version of myself and you put me in my same fucking apartment, which brings me to one point I did want to make, which is that the actions, the reason why someone like Jack Torrance wouldn’t go up there alone, it’s because he thinks he can get away. It can’t be him that is the problem.

(01:12:38):

So it has to be people or it has to be this setting. If only he wasn’t in this cramped apartment, if only he wasn’t with this bumpkin or he could be with this bumpkin if it were a bigger house they were in, which is what he will get after getting the money from being at the overlook and the overlook has so much room to spread out, only it fucking doesn’t. You can’t get away from this family. It’s your family. They’ve just shoved you in the tiniest little hole they could find and you thought it was going to be something very different, Jack.

Matt (01:13:05):

And he’s in fact even destined in the eternal afterlife of the overlook to also be a member of the help. The only ghost he talks to- Cruise director. … are the butler and the bartender.

Laci (01:13:19):

Yes.

Matt (01:13:20):

And they’re just hiring him as the caretaker. And that picture at the end of the movie, Laci said he’s like the cruise director

Laci (01:13:27):

Of this. He’s standing in the very front as if to look at all these fine folks that came on this cruise at the Royal Caribbean. He’s not mixing and mingling. No one’s touching him. He’s not looking at anyone. He’s not allowed to talk to

Matt (01:13:41):

Him. No, he is still a bug to these people, but he can amuse them.

Laci (01:13:43):

And he’s been told to smile nice for the photo. He’s the only one looking as if they’re taking a picture. The rest is a fucking party behind him. He’s like, “I am representing the hotel.” And everyone’s like behind him.

Matt (01:13:57):

We get to go check out the games room, which is just some boring darts. But Jack is like, “You get tired of bomb in the universe.” Which I always thought, isn’t it an arcade? No, it’s just some boring shit.

Laci (01:14:08):

Right. Did you give me any quarters, father? No, you cheat bastard. And I love this detail. I’m sorry, what is the man’s name that is like the-

Matt (01:14:18):

Allman.

Laci (01:14:19):

Yes, Mr. Allman. He’s the most important person that Jack ever meets, right? And he’s not even very important. He’s just a manager of a hotel. Okay. So at every chance that he gets, Mr. Ullman is passing him off to somebody that is the help, right? He’s getting most of his tours and most of his walking around by someone else, but when he is being taken around by Hellman

Matt (01:14:40):

Holleran.

Laci (01:14:41):

No, this guy-

Matt (01:14:42):

Ulman.

Laci (01:14:42):

By Allman, he’s wearing his jacket.

Matt (01:14:45):

He’s

Laci (01:14:45):

About to fucking go. Even the manager of the hotel doesn’t have enough time for this fucking scum.

Matt (01:14:51):

Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, yeah. Mr. Ullman is wearing his cool leather jacket like, “Let me just take care of this before I scoot out. ” Right.

Laci (01:14:58):

I’m about to jump on my Harley like fucking Johnny from Dirty Dancing and you’re just the last of the schmucks at the fucking Kellerman’s while no one’s here during the summer break.

Matt (01:15:08):

Dick Holleran, Scatman Cruthers arrives. He’s the head chef and he takes Wendy on a tour of the kitchen, talks about the importance of staying regular when you’re up here in the mountains. And they make a bunch of … They literally say, “Boy, this is like a maze. It’s almost labyrinthine. What is that a meniscar? I need breadcrumbs to get around.” And in the pantry he’s explaining all this shit. “Oh, we got so myGod. 80,000 pounds of lamb. You like lamb duck, but then he starts having a mental conversation with Danny like ice cream duck.

Laci (01:15:39):

Okay. Why are you going to make it so sexual? It’s actually one of the sweetest things. It’s one of those magical men and magical adults that Stephen King will implant in a child’s life in his books.

Matt (01:15:50):

Yes.

Laci (01:15:51):

And I think it is obviously intentional that he is black, just like in it where the helpful police officer is a Irish immigrant.

Matt (01:16:04):

Yo have to be a little bit removed from the dominant social order to be able to get a better view of it.

Laci (01:16:11):

You know what it’s like to be talked down to and dismissed and because you are constantly put back there, you are an observer. All you’ve had to do is look around and look for your in to get in. That makes you way more observant than someone with say pretty privilege walking around getting noticed constantly. They don’t know how to be noticed. They just get noticed.

Matt (01:16:32):

Right. So he explains the shining. He has the shining too. You have this special power. Hey, some people have it. A lot of people have a little bit of it, but we got a lot of it. My grandmother had it. She called it shining. And Danny, you can see he’s like somebody who may get it. Do I dare start sharing? He’s scared, but he says,” Tony shows me stuff and I’m not supposed to talk about it.

Laci (01:16:59):

“Tony doesn’t … Tony to me is the part of Danny that was forced to grow up too fast, which happens when you’re the kid of an alcoholic and you’re taking care of the enabler and the alcoholic. No one’s really taking care of you. And so he lets Tony go back to his stomach and it’s his stomach because that horrible pit, that feeling where you’re like, ” Fuck, I’m going to need Tony for this. “And Tony comes up and I think it’s interesting that Holleran’s grandma had it, right? So it didn’t skip a generation. Hollering was probably the very protective and alert and capable son of a mom who was an abler and a dad who was an abuser. And the grandma can shine because I’m sure her husband is who passed it all along to the dad and then to holler. It’s just that we don’t all respond the same way to the cycle.

(01:17:55):

Some of us completely go the other way with it.

Matt (01:17:59):

We

Laci (01:17:59):

Will never be abusive.

Matt (01:18:00):

So it’s literally, it’s just the supernatural embodiment of the protective self within you. Right. And

Laci (01:18:06):

Seeing it in someone who’s gone through what you’ve gone through.

Matt (01:18:08):

Dr. Sleep makes it a little too literal. I don’t like how much it makes it like that. I’ve seen that. Yeah, I know. I’m explaining. Tony is Danny in the future who’s protecting his past self.That’s not in this movie, that’s not in the original shining book. But you can watch this movie and see that Tony is actually a protector because his ultimate role is alert Danny and Wendy so that they can escape Jack right before he can murder them. And put the knife into Wendy’s hand.

Laci (01:18:38):

Tony is the protector the entire time. That’s why I say he is the older version of Danny that … But Danny’s still trying to hold onto being a child. It’s just Tony comes up more and more and more and he can’t. For all we know, Tony never went away after this. I know she hugs Danny. We runs to her out of the labyrinth, but I’m just saying we’ve got no way of knowing that.

Matt (01:19:01):

I think as soon as Jack acts as the door, Danny is back. I think it’s in the performance that Tony has done his job. That was his ultimate mission, is literally put this knife in my mom’s hands.

Laci (01:19:13):

So it’s not Tony figuring out how to back trace his

Matt (01:19:16):

Stuff. Right.That’s Danny. He’s acting differently too. Yeah. Yeah.

Laci (01:19:19):

He seems like a little child while he’s doing all that.

Matt (01:19:22):

So Holleran’s like, look, nothing in this hotel can hurt you. This places have memories. The thing about like somebody burns toast, the smell of a toast lingers and this place has been open a long time. A lot of president’s mistresses died in bathtubs here. A

Laci (01:19:36):

Lot of burnt toast in those bathtubs.

Matt (01:19:38):

And they kind of linger, but they’re like pictures in a book they can’t hurt you except one thing. Don’t ever go into room 237. Oh my God. That bitch can

Laci (01:19:45):

Hurt. That’s one of those pop out books. I don’t know how she does it.

Matt (01:19:49):

Yeah. You are literally staying in a hotel with the sins of the past of the American ruling class.

Laci (01:19:56):

Yeah. And sins of your father.

Matt (01:19:58):

And we just cut to a month later, just abruptly cut one month later. And this place is deserted and it really just feels so fucking ominous. And Wendy is, she has got the best fucking face on this. She is pushing the cart around and just pampering her husband who’s sleeping till 11:30 in the morning.

Laci (01:20:13):

Right. She’s using the little holder of toast. She’s not just putting it on the plate. She’s doing the best she can to make sure he wakes up on the good foot because he’s going to bed later and later and later and she knows that that is his pattern. This is where we’re going. That’s why I think it’s important that he came home three hours late the day he injured Danny. And that’s why they keep mentioning how late he’s going to bed.

Matt (01:20:38):

But this is the best movie’s in the entire movie and probably the only time he is nice at all to Wendy. He forgets that he hates her like, “Oh, I’m bacon okay.” Until the

Laci (01:20:48):

Egg’s a litle runny, he’s like,

Matt (01:20:49):

“Fuck.” Yeah. But she’s like, “Huh, I just think this hotel soda.” Funny how fast you get used to big old place. I love it. I feel like I’ve always been here. I knew it’d be around every corner. Ooh. It’s like the only joke he makes to her the entire movie.

Laci (01:21:08):

But it’s fucking creepy as shit what he’s actually saying.

Matt (01:21:11):

Well, yeah.

Laci (01:21:12):

Just sleeping right into that addiction.

Matt (01:21:14):

But he’s at least aware of what he’s sounding like. Okay, let me lighten this up a little bit. Because either he has, I mean, he has been here before and just like he was allowed to leave to go start a family or he’s like getting absorbed into the hotel unstuck from time.

Laci (01:21:29):

No, he’s an echo of his dad. He’s slipping right into whatever it is his dad was. That’s how I read it. I think these are generations of men who are here. Wendy’s making the best of it, chasing Danny around, making sure that kid has some outdoors time.

Matt (01:21:42):

Well, and she’s like, “Oh my God, he’s in a good mood. Hey, how about we go do something together like a husband and a wife

Laci (01:21:47):

Too?” For a walk. Yeah, you know, I need to write. You fucking … Did you already forget your manners?

Matt (01:21:53):

I got to get some writing done and- What have

Laci (01:21:56):

You been doing this whole month, Jack?

Matt (01:21:59):

And it cuts, but we see he’s not writing. He’s violently throwing a ball against the wall. Right.

Laci (01:22:03):

This is how you know it’s amping up. That’s why we’re like these dumps in time are going to get shorter and shorter. We go from a month of a jump to a new day and then we go hour by hour because this is just a powder keg and he’s dying to hit some sort of artifact that can’t be replaced. Look at this fucking bone structure thing that’s on this table. He is violently throwing a rubber ball in the most ornate room. Even if you’re just putting little scuffs and dents all over the wall, you want to be pissed later, then you’re going to have to paint that. That’s what you want. You are asking for it.

Matt (01:22:37):

This is how they can not pay you your full salary and then I can just never catch a break.

Laci (01:22:42):

Exactly. Because you want to be the person who only has the luck. That means you get to drink that one off. Oh, you should go have a drink.

Matt (01:22:53):

But Wendy is, she is having fun with Danny. They’re playing games. Loser, the slower one has to clean up America. Oh no, I don’t want to clean America.

Laci (01:23:02):

That’s too much.

Matt (01:23:03):

They go into the maze. They’re having fun. There’s no maze in the book, by the way.

Laci (01:23:07):

Interesting.

Matt (01:23:08):

There are topiary animals, no maze at a croquet course. And Jack doesn’t use an ax, he uses a croquet mallet.

Laci (01:23:14):

Oh, that’s somehow worse. That’s

Matt (01:23:16):

Going to

Laci (01:23:16):

Take a while.

Matt (01:23:17):

I guess, but yeah, but it’s so much less cinematic.

Laci (01:23:20):

Hint Kubrick knew to make a couple little changes. And I take the entire hotel to be the labyrinth that is Jack’s mind and I think they just literally gave you a labyrinth too because Wendy and Danny, they go in it so bra that you know they’ve been doing this daily. You don’t even know you’re doing it, but you’re learning the ins and outs of the abuser’s mind. You’re looking for the minefields, knowing how to carefully step over them, when to appease them, when to leave them alone, all these things. That’s what I think the labyrinth is. And Jax is, they start to realize you’re learning them and they don’t want to be gamed. That’s just a new thing to be pissed about. And it’s how I take … I mean, number one, having a Big Wheel is amazing. And if I were a kid and I could go anywhere in a hotel on a Big Wheel and it did a lot of surf, I would do that.

(01:24:09):

But the way I read it is that he’s a hypervigilant boy who likes to know where his surroundings are, where the exits are, where just he’s learning the terrain because that’s the one advantage he can have. He’s the only one doing it.

Matt (01:24:23):

Even why he would see room 237 was like, “I need to know what’s in there. I need to know what I’m up against.” Right.

Laci (01:24:29):

If dad’s got a fucking cache of military armor in here, let me just say it.

Matt (01:24:36):

I’ve never paid attention to the titles in the movie, the Tuesday, Wednesday. So I wrote them down this time and realized, I guess the rest of the movie takes place over the course of eight days or so. So a massive snowstorm is moving into the area. Danny tries to go into room 237, but it’s locked. And then he gets back on his bike and does that awesome little trick Laci pointed out of pushing the wheel with his hand to get going. But Jack is just clacking away on his typewriter and Shelly Duvall just comes in to bother him.

Laci (01:25:05):

How you doing, hon? It’s like, you know better. Shelly, he’s been in here for three days. Don’t do it.

Matt (01:25:10):

There’s a testament though to her performance that you’re kind of on Jack’s side right here.

Laci (01:25:17):

I’ve been both of these people. It’s just hard.

Matt (01:25:21):

Yeah, she is lonely. There is nobody.

Laci (01:25:22):

There’s nobody.

Matt (01:25:23):

But know your holidays wonder.

Laci (01:25:26):

An audience of one.

Matt (01:25:28):

But she comes in, she’s like, “How are you doing?” And he’s clearly not receptive. And then she’s like, “Uh-huh, don’t be grumpy.” And he’s like- I’m not

Laci (01:25:35):

Grumpy windy.

Matt (01:25:37):

She’s like, “Well, I’ll come back with a few sandwiches and you can maybe show me some of what you let me ride. What you bring?”

Laci (01:25:43):

Bitch, you can’t read.

Matt (01:25:45):

And new rule. When I’m in here, I’m working. And

Laci (01:25:49):

My skin crawls. My skin crawls when he announces new rules because they literally give you rules.

Matt (01:25:55):

They give you new rules. It’s like always being on Bill Mar show. A new rule of the woke liberals need to cut it out.

Laci (01:26:02):

My dad wasn’t as transparent, but you knew when a new rule was being laid down and just got that one. Father won’t come in here asking about your fucking day. Sorry.

Matt (01:26:17):

And she’s fucking so good at receiving all of this and being so hurt and scared. She’s like, “Uh-huh. Okay.”

Laci (01:26:24):

But not enough to set him off, right? Because if you make him feel guilty, he’ll be mad at you. So you have to look just pleasant enough and just compliant enough so that if you start all emotions are held against you. So you just have to start giving off that blank face. Try to read this bitch as I slowly back away with the blanket faces.

Matt (01:26:45):

Fine. Now why don’t you start right now and get the fuck out.

Laci (01:26:49):

Sounds good. Okay. I’m going to go kill myself.

Matt (01:26:54):

On the desk next to him is a giant scrapbook of newspaper articles. In the book, in the shining the novel, there’s an enormous subplot about Jack learning about the history of the overlook. Its ties to the mafia and stuff. It’s so unnecessary for the movie, but it’s interesting that it is literally in the movie on the screen and later when he’s talking to Grady, he says, “I saw your picture in the newspaper.”

Laci (01:27:15):

Oh, okay. I thought he was just lying about that. That was just way of introducing thing.

Matt (01:27:20):

But it’s also like- But

Laci (01:27:21):

You’re right, those are newspaper clippings.

Matt (01:27:23):

Yeah. And he talks about maybe writing a book about the history of the overlook. So maybe that is what he is thinking about doing here and it’s just another thing to distract him from, “I have an idea for I’m outlining a writing project.” Oh, how about I’ll write a history of a boring hotel no one will care about?

Laci (01:27:42):

It’ll be a coffee table book that she put in the lobby of a hotel.

Matt (01:27:45):

It is snowed. Wendy and Danny, once again, outside playing, she’s being a good mom. Also seems to be doing all of Jack’s work, is doing all lighting the boilers and stuff. And Jack is just watching them catatonic. Just fuck it.

Laci (01:27:56):

Beyond catatonic, he is seething because we keep hearing these news reports and even Wendy was like, “I need to tell you, honey, it’s going to snow.” A big old storm, the biggest they’ve seen. And she’s just trying to make some fucking conversation. I thought you’d feel like a handyman. If I came and told you, you should be handy and protect us from the storm. The storm is Jack’s brain, however, and she’s supposed to be scared, not him. And then when her and Danny are frocking their asses off, he is pissed. He’s in there cooped up in the largest room of the hotel and he can’t get out of his mind. He is obsessing. We know by now he is typing over and over and over again the same fucking thoughts and somehow no matter how much he abuses Wendy, she’s still able to be a good mom.

(01:28:43):

He has everything he could ever want and can’t figure out how to be a good dad. He could damn it Wendy.

Matt (01:28:49):

It’s such a great testament to Duval and to Kubrick that she seems like the most frail bird, sick bird character in history, but when Grady later says we weren’t expecting her to be quite so resourceful, it is totally earned. You’ve seen how tough she actually is even as she is so vulnerable and even will say like, “I’m so confused. I just need to go sit and think. ” It doesn’t mean that she’s weak.

Laci (01:29:19):

No, and all of it is strategy because she’s got a gwendoly inside of her mouth. “Oh, misses me. Don’t tell him you have a brain and you know how to carry 190 pounds a man after you knock him out with a bat. Oh geez, why am I from the Midwest? “What else do you have to do but prepare for the inevitable,” I need to run away from my husband moment.

Matt (01:29:44):

“I just realized why you said Grendelyn.

Laci (01:29:45):

Yeah, because Winnie. Boo, that’s her

Matt (01:29:47):

Name. Winnifred.

Laci (01:29:49):

Whoa, right, whatever. But I mean, yeah, who else was going to take care of the hotel? And yeah, she doesn’t want her husband to not get the money and then he’s really mad at the end, so someone’s got to do it, but also she She knows all the shit about the hotel. She’s being resourceful like Danny is.

Matt (01:30:04):

He’s fucking losing his mind both and he’s losing his fucking mind because of the alcohol withdrawal, because he’s in a ghost palace and because he’s just like, I just don’t have it. I don’t have any fucking ideas. I don’t know how to be a writer. I feel like I belong in this luxury hotel. I feel like I should be among the best people, but they’re going to kick me out in May because I don’t belong. I’m just here because I was the only guy who was willing to come fucking light the boiler.

Laci (01:30:29):

Also, the only people talking to me are the people who help. The people I am looking at in these books are of all the fancy people. And then the bad shit that happens is of all the people who work there. Why am I relating more and being talked to more by that? He’s just more and more realizing his place. At the end he seems to just wholly accept it his place, which is Murder Men.

Matt (01:30:55):

I will get to the eyes wide shut through line, I guess when we get to the party. But Wendy gets on the radio, contacts the forest station because the phone lines are down and they’re like, “Yeah, sorry about that. ” I don’t know. It’s going to be like a couple months or more maybe. I don’t know. Even I’m getting annoyed watching her. She’s like, “Boy, this winter storm sure is something. Over.” And he’s like, “Yes ma’am, anything I can do to help you over.”

Laci (01:31:25):

But she’s the kind of nice that makes you annoyed and then feel guilty because you know she’s just a sweetie and she …

Matt (01:31:32):

Yeah, it’s me interacting with everyone. I know you’re just

Laci (01:31:34):

Trying. You know what I want to know about? I want to know about the fucking nine people in between Grady and Torrance. Who’s been taking care of the Overlook this whole time? How did that go and why don’t they come back? Or is it that someone will get through this season and just never apply for the job again?

Matt (01:31:51):

This is like a defense against the dark arts at Hogwarts situation. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. Ever since Valdimore didn’t get the job, the job’s been cursed. It’s like every book you have, Harry, there will be a different teacher in this position. Same thing with Caretaker. Same sort of thing’s going on. Ever since Grady did that, no man has lasted longer than one series.

Laci (01:32:11):

Do they say that?

Matt (01:32:12):

No, they don’t.

Laci (01:32:15):

No. No,

Matt (01:32:16):

I don’t fucking know.

Laci (01:32:17):

Okay. But anyway, it just occurred to me. You got all those winners, all those people who won the winter. Why not have them back? Why not double their pay?

Matt (01:32:26):

Or just get hollering. He seems like he’s got it together.

Laci (01:32:29):

He’s fucking smart though and he’s with it and he knows how to make a damn good menu and he needs Miami for five months out of

Matt (01:32:35):

The year to come back. He’s sharp. The best fucking life. I feel so bad for him that he has to get taken away from it.

Laci (01:32:40):

Why does he … And he doesn’t even get to … He ends up saving their life because he brings them the snowcat. But it always seems so unnecessary to me that he needs to die.

Matt (01:32:51):

And there is an extended … I’ve never seen it, but apparently there is a sequence of him visiting Wendy in the hospital afterwards. So there was at least a version of the movie that was shot where he survives and he survives in the novel as well.

Laci (01:33:03):

Yeah.

Matt (01:33:03):

But he seems fucking dead in this movie.

Laci (01:33:05):

I mean, the acts went to the heart area.

Matt (01:33:09):

He is old. I mean, you could be like, “Well, this is how we take care of each other. I’ve lived along in good life and now I give my life for this young child and one day he’ll have to do it.

Laci (01:33:19):

Oh, that man just got up a mountain on a snow cat.

Matt (01:33:23):

Yeah.

Laci (01:33:23):

Fine.

Matt (01:33:24):

The effort was hard. Anyway, anything else I could help you with? Over. God.

Laci (01:33:29):

It’s almost my lunch break.

Matt (01:33:32):

He’s the best joke in the Simpsons. My husband’s trying to kill me. Over. I’m glad that’s over. Danny fucking sees the twins near the servants headquarters. It’s like the ghosts are getting closer and closer to where they live. Come and play with us, Danny.

Laci (01:33:46):

Well, he’s only ever seen them in the servants quarters.

Matt (01:33:48):

That’s not true. He saw them in the games room and he saw them riding his little bike around.

Laci (01:33:54):

But he’s riding his bike around the servants quarters.

Matt (01:33:56):

No, he was riding around the nice hotel part.

Laci (01:33:58):

Is the nice hotel part the patterned carpet?

Matt (01:34:01):

Yeah.

Laci (01:34:02):

You win.

Matt (01:34:03):

Thank you. You’re

Laci (01:34:04):

Welcome.

Matt (01:34:04):

Play with us forever and ever. And then Danny and Wendy are watching the TV that is famously not plugged into electricity because it’s just in the middle of the ballroom.

Laci (01:34:14):

I see a cord running to it.

Matt (01:34:16):

No, you don’t.

Laci (01:34:17):

Right here.

Matt (01:34:18):

No, that’s not a cord.

Laci (01:34:20):

I don’t see going up into the back of it,

Matt (01:34:22):

But yeah. And Danny’s like, “Mom, can I go up to our apartment and get my firetruck?” And she’s like, “Well, your dad’s asleep, so please God. No, please my wife.”

Laci (01:34:28):

We’ve got like 20 rules and you know them all and one of them is you don’t go near your dad when he’s asleep.

Matt (01:34:33):

All I’m asking is that you memorize our 900 rules.

Laci (01:34:37):

Read them out loud every morning and pledge allegiance to the flag and then to your father and then never ask me to do something that’s hard, Danny. No.

Matt (01:34:45):

He’s like, “I’ll be so quiet, I promise.” And she’s like, “Okay.

Laci (01:34:49):

Okay. You deserve your beating. Bye.” He

Matt (01:34:52):

Goes up into the apartment, but his dad is just sitting there, sitting up seething in Fiori.

Laci (01:34:57):

You think so? I always take it as he’s just, he can’t even sleep anymore.

Matt (01:35:04):

Or maybe he’s discombobulated. His mind’s always getting torn between the … Well,

Laci (01:35:09):

You know when you’re using … At this point in the movie, they’re hinting that he’s drinking again because he’s already visited the bartender and stuff.

Matt (01:35:15):

No, he hasn’t.

Laci (01:35:16):

At all?

Matt (01:35:17):

No.

Laci (01:35:17):

Not even one time?

Matt (01:35:18):

No. Not

Laci (01:35:18):

Even a little bit? Oh,

Matt (01:35:20):

A little bit, yeah. No, no, no. He’s not.

Laci (01:35:24):

Well, he seems to have insomnia or something. He ain’t right. He doesn’t seem mad. He seems despondent.

Matt (01:35:31):

But Danny, seeing his dad, he said something earlier in the movie that when Tony will show him these visions, sometimes he doesn’t remember them, but they will kind of come back in his waking life. And it’s like seeing his dad is shaking something loose. So his dad is like, “Come sit with me, damn.”

Laci (01:35:50):

And so being this old when my dad finally left my life on a regular basis, saw him in summers and stuff, but I was this age and this brought back such a fucking chilling … This is what you do. You know your dad is not in a good state and you know he will not take no. All you can do is be compliant. And so you muster up the courage to walk over there, hope it’s nothing weird. Of course he’s going to put you on his lap. Of course he’s going to ask you how much you love him and do you know how much he loves you and is everything okay? Is it alright that I’m alcoholic? And in so many words, that’s what they do. And you just have to fucking catatonically but compliantly and somehow cheerfully sit there and wait for it to pass.

(01:36:37):

It almost-

Matt (01:36:38):

Yes, dad.

Laci (01:36:39):

It’s

Matt (01:36:39):

Perfectly

Laci (01:36:39):

Observed.

Matt (01:36:41):

I agree. But I think the reason I think something shook loose in him is because he then decides, I’m going to go ahead and ask him. You would never hurt mom and me, would you?

Laci (01:36:49):

Right.

Matt (01:36:49):

While I’ve got

Laci (01:36:50):

You here.

Matt (01:36:51):

Do you feel bad? Because that is not something you would ask as like a defensive don’t.

Laci (01:36:56):

Yes, because that can be read two ways, right? Jack decides he’s asking if he has a cold, but I think of as Danny being like, “Do you feel bad for what you did to us?”

Matt (01:37:07):

Or I’m getting hints of what you’re doing. I’m seeing you in a rage. Why is that? Do you feel bad? I don’t have the language to understand like domestic violence. And then, do you like this hotel or would you ever hurt mom and me? And he’s like, “Did you fucking bitch of a mother tell you that I would?

Laci (01:37:25):

” I was only ever calling you over here to mine you for something to be mad about and I’ve just won the jackpot.

Matt (01:37:30):

Bing, bang. And yeah, it gets so scary and menacing. And then Danny’s like, “No, no, no, good. Y’all good. Yes. Love you. Love you. Okay, bye.”

Laci (01:37:41):

Kisses to mom or I’ll do that. Okay, bye.

Matt (01:37:44):

Danny goes, he finds room 237. It’s open. The key is in the door and he goes in and then Wendy, who’s doing all of Jack’s work, suddenly hears Jackie yelping.

Laci (01:37:55):

But with long pauses in between, right? It sure does take her a long time to get up there. And I think this might be the first time watching it that I was like, “Maybe Jac did that. ” As a way of blackout drunk acting kind of … But you always take it as the woman did it. All right then.

Matt (01:38:16):

I mean, there’s no answer. It’s always like-

Laci (01:38:20):

In the

Matt (01:38:21):

Book though? No? I don’t know. The movie is more … You can read the movie as there are no ghosts, that these are all just projections of their mind. That’s not the case in the book. I meant to read this quote. There’s three possibilities. It’s like there are real ghosts. There are no real ghosts. They’re just suffering like psychological delusions, or they’re suffering psychological delusions that are causing ghosts.

Laci (01:38:43):

Or that they are suffering psychological delusions that are causing them self harm, which maybe that’s the same category.That’s the second one. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I would buy that Danny did this to himself or that Jack did it. He’s

Matt (01:38:55):

Screaming in his sleep and she’s, “Jack, hun, go ahead. I’m so sorry I entered your room without your permission, but permission to speak, sir.” He’s like, “What’s up? Oh, I had a bad dream. I dreamed I killed you and Danny.” But no, he is actually playing it truly traumatized. Truly traumatized. Yeah. Feeling bad and regret and need to share this. My wife, who I love, I got to tell her. Yeah, it’s a moment. I chopped you up into little bits and pieces and I ate your brains.

Laci (01:39:20):

Is it exactly what you dream of all the time?

Matt (01:39:23):

And then Danny comes into the room and he’s sucking his thumb

Laci (01:39:28):

And

Matt (01:39:28):

Wendy’s like, “Oh my God, Danny.” Well, first, Danny, nothing’s wrong. Everything’s great. Mind me, Danny. Yeah, mind me. Mind me, Danny, go play with toys.

Laci (01:39:38):

But she knows. She knows that Danny does mind. So obviously something’s wrong or I need to get closer up. What the fuck’s up with this collar?

Matt (01:39:44):

Yeah. And she’s doing this with a giant American flag in the background because this is about a man giving in to the demands of America, which are going to destroy yourself and your family. And he has the marks on his neck and she picks him up and she’s now holding a full size dummy because Stanley Comfort did not want- Yes, this

Laci (01:40:02):

Is the only time I noticed the dummy.

Matt (01:40:04):

Yeah. Did not want Danny Lloyd to know this. Which

Laci (01:40:06):

Is really sweet.

Matt (01:40:07):

It is really sweet. He’s a sweetheart he is, but we finally get to meet Lloyd.

Laci (01:40:12):

Lloyd, you’re always the best of them.

Matt (01:40:16):

What do you say about this movie? I mean, every fucking second of it is magical, but the way that he goes into the gold room, it’s empty, flicks on the lights, I give my goddamn soul for a glass of beer. And then in one underbroken take, we are on Jack Nicholson’s face. It totally changes. He becomes Jack Nicholson movie star and he’s like, “Hi, Lloyd.” And the camera waits a little while before we go and reveal, “Oh, Lloyd is there. He’s talking to a man. Oh my God. Joe Turkel is Lloyd. He’s been in, I think two other Stanley Kubrick movies. Also, he’s Mr. Tyrell and Blade Runner.

Laci (01:40:51):

I was going to ask, is he also the Mr. Snortgrather with … And Charlie the

Matt (01:40:57):

Chocolate. Schnalden.

Laci (01:41:00):

You knew who I meant.

Matt (01:41:01):

I don’t know which one you mean. The

Laci (01:41:03):

Whispering guy.

Matt (01:41:04):

Oh, Mr. Slugworth.

Laci (01:41:05):

Say Snortgraff. Yes. That’s what I said.

Matt (01:41:07):

Mr. Klockwatch Golf Dopper, he’ll get it. So yes, Lloyd, just incredible. Lloyd, you’re the best goddamn bartender from Tim Buck too to Portland, Maine.

Laci (01:41:20):

Portland, Oregon for that matter.

Matt (01:41:22):

Thank you for saying Josa.

Laci (01:41:24):

He’s being treated like we don’t know. He seems like he’s being treated like a patron, but he could just be being treated like a higher up, a middle manager.

Matt (01:41:34):

Yeah. I mean, submiddle manager. He’s like, ” I outrank you, Lloyd, but …

Laci (01:41:39):

“We happen to be wearing the exact same outfit, but that is not what I meant to wear

Matt (01:41:43):

Today. Kind of are, yeah.

Laci (01:41:44):

Well, I mean, obviously it’s for a reason, right? And even they go into the bathroom and it’s red. There’s something about-

Matt (01:41:50):

The color red.

Laci (01:41:51):

Well, no, he is staff. You’re never going to go above the station, my guy.

Matt (01:41:57):

Laci and I have been in positions where in professional capacities, we go to a lot of conferences. We get to kind of hobnob among not the wealthy elite, but successful corporate people.

Laci (01:42:09):

People who have more money than us.

Matt (01:42:11):

But it’s also clear we’re interlopers. They’ll be nice to us, but we don’t belong in this world. We

Laci (01:42:16):

Are literally the help.

Matt (01:42:17):

Yeah. And then what does Jack Nicholson say? White man’s burden. Lloyd, white man’s burden.

Laci (01:42:26):

I guess because once you’ve achieved enough where you can become an alcoholic, you must have already got shelter, food, a job. Alcoholism is the one thing that can keep a white man down. If it weren’t for that, we’d be really living our best dream.

Matt (01:42:42):

Well, white man, that expression- That’s what I

Laci (01:42:44):

Take.

Matt (01:42:45):

But that expression specifically refers to like, it is the burden of the Englishman to colonize India and stuff to tame the savages. That’s the white man’s … We hate to do it, but we have to. It’s our burden to do it. What

Laci (01:42:57):

Are they going to do? Just walk around?

Matt (01:42:59):

So I’ve never totally understood what is causing him to say that. I know that the racism, especially with Grady, is a big deal. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Laci (01:43:11):

Well, and these are also men from a … I mean, it would be perfectly in place for someone in this year that the movie is made to also be making those horrible comments. But we are dealing with generations of men. This bartender is dressed like a person serving someone in the 1910s, 20s. That’s not a normal outfit there. So we don’t know what generation that Grady is when we go to … Not Grady. Yeah, Grady. Or the server that spills juice on him or a

Matt (01:43:42):

Covet.

Laci (01:43:43):

Avocado. Oh, that’s it.

Matt (01:43:44):

Which is like an egg cocktail.

Laci (01:43:47):

Oh, no wonder it stains.

Matt (01:43:48):

It

Laci (01:43:48):

Stains like

Matt (01:43:49):

Comb. It’s just yolk and vodka and cum.

Laci (01:43:52):

Your look of cum, sir. You don’t let me-

Matt (01:43:55):

Sir, sir. Got a drop of cum on you, sir.

Laci (01:43:58):

You seem to have the look of cum. Have you had a kave?

Matt (01:44:01):

Hate to have a look of cum.

Laci (01:44:03):

Me too.

Matt (01:44:04):

Or I love it. I don’t know which, but yeah. So he starts the kind of bartender you can unload your burns. Well, Lloyd, I love little fucker. I never lay my one goddamn time, and that was three years ago. So what the fuck is going on with time? Was Wendy lying earlier about the timeline or is Jack confused because he’s getting absorbed into the eternal temporal membrane that is the overlook? Who knows?

Laci (01:44:28):

And then my theory is that there’s been more than one incident. And so maybe the arm thing is the most traumatic thing and that’s the thing that they talk about, but maybe three months ago he also did something. You know what I mean?

Matt (01:44:39):

I could see that and he literally forgot about that.

Laci (01:44:41):

Right. Oh, what are we talking about that? Because he who shall not be named. Certain fights would get nicknames so that I could refer to them in later years if I needed to. And that person who I’m not saying the name of would be like, “What are you talking about? The time I did that with the shoes?” And it’s like-

Matt (01:44:59):

No.

Laci (01:44:59):

No, I’m talking about the one with the lighter and then the salad. It’s fine.

Matt (01:45:05):

So then Wendy comes olive oiling down the hall. Jack and she’s got a baseball bat.

Laci (01:45:11):

She’s snotting so perfect. Man Kupick was right. That lady can cry.

Matt (01:45:18):

She runs in. Lloyd has disappeared. Jack is just sitting at the bar. There’s someone else in the hotel with us. There’s a woman.

Laci (01:45:24):

Finally having a nice … Time, Wendy. I’m finally talking to my people, having a nice time and you come in here with this shit.

Matt (01:45:34):

I even feel embarrassed for her right here for saying it like that. I don’t know. Say like, Dann told me some really disturbing things. I don’t know what to think. There’s a woman in the hotel with us.

Laci (01:45:47):

She has a relationship with her son where he tells the truth. And I’d believe it too, I think. It’s better than believing your husband did this to him.

Matt (01:45:57):

Are you out of your fucking mind? He’s like,

Laci (01:45:59):

“Whoa. Coming in hot, Jack. I’m asking you for your fatherly support. I know you’re really good at ripping arms off. I was wondering if you could go rip off the lady’s arm. Thank you.

Matt (01:46:07):

So as Jack goes to investigate room 237, an enormous suite with the biggest bathroom he ever did see. We were cutting over to Dick Kyler in his incredible bachelor pad watching the news just the coziest you could ever be watching. He’s watching the local news in Miami where they’re like, weather report for the Colorado. Snowshoe. Having the

Laci (01:46:27):

Opposite problem here though.

Matt (01:46:28):

Could be really bad over- To

Laci (01:46:29):

Reiterate, we are in Miami.

Matt (01:46:32):

But he is picking up on a shine from Danny. Danny is trying to contact him. I can never remember. Does Holeran literally tell him if things go bad, get in touch with me, shine at me, or is that the book/the Simpsons?

Laci (01:46:43):

No. And again, Shine is just an intuitive person. That’s why the weather report has to say that for him to feel that. Fuck, they are stuck up there. I’ll bet the snow’s really making them feel stuck. They can’t even go outside and play or anything.

Matt (01:46:56):

No, but he is going into a trance and he cuts over to Danny transmitting to him.

Laci (01:47:01):

I know that Matt, but that’s because that is the metaphor in the movie. All it really means is this would be the perfect time to abuse someone. I should probably just do a phone call. I mean, imagine if it were that easy. If he actually had gotten through to the hotel, Wendy answers, things are good. Then he could just go back to watching

Matt (01:47:17):

His

Laci (01:47:17):

Awesome shit.

Matt (01:47:19):

Yet ideally that would be what happens.

Laci (01:47:21):

All he did was get a feeling in his stomach. He’s at Shannon, but anyway.

Matt (01:47:24):

Oh, sexy lady in the bathroom. Good. Exactly what I was hoping. Finally. Come and give me a big kiss.

Laci (01:47:30):

Finally. So 237. The reason why I feel like Holleran is so adamant that Danny should not, that is he has no business in that room.

Matt (01:47:41):

Not old enough.

Laci (01:47:41):

My read on it and the way you see this look, these millions of different kinds of looks washing over Jack, like he is down too clown when he walks in here. I don’t think that Jack is an adulterer. I think his father was. So I think Jack is prone to violence when drinking. I think his dad was prone to cheating when drinking. I think room 237 is literally the sons walking into the sins of their father. So that’s why I think Danny’s not supposed to go in there.

Matt (01:48:09):

Okay.

Laci (01:48:10):

So he doesn’t go down

Matt (01:48:11):

Into it. That’s interesting. So he sees this hot woman starts kissing her and then she turns into literally the decaying corpse of his dad’s mistress or whatever. Right.

Laci (01:48:19):

Someone old enough to have been there for that long.

Matt (01:48:22):

And

Laci (01:48:23):

Just the horror after you do it. The pre-sex you might want to get drunk and get laid, but after that you don’t feel good and you might want to get drunk and you hope you don’t abuse. But then if it turns out it’s one of those nights where you did, the horror on his face is that. It’s in my mind. I fucking did it again. I’ve gone too far again. I said I could control it. Shit.

Matt (01:48:48):

So he goes back to the apartment. She’s like, “Did you see anything?” He’s like, “No, nothing. Nothing at all. “

Laci (01:48:52):

And that’s my proof because of the way … He doesn’t want to leave the hotel, sure. But he also is like, “Nope, nope. Didn’t fuck anyone. That would be gross. Yuck.” And also there’s not any ghost. You know what it is? It’s easier just to say that our son’s insane because he’s going to believe him. I think our son’s crazy.

Matt (01:49:07):

And the way he is talking to her in sort of like he’s now being reasonable and he’s like being patient. I think that he might have done it to himself. Oh my

Laci (01:49:17):

God.

Matt (01:49:18):

When you rule out that what he said can’t be true, it only leads- When you

Laci (01:49:23):

Take out his story and you put in mine.

Matt (01:49:25):

But all it takes to flip him is her going, “Well, I think we should get out of here and take him to a doctor.” Responsibilities.

Laci (01:49:34):

Of course you want to bring in someone from the outside. The worst thing to do for someone who’s bothered to seclude you so I can abuse you and do what the fuck I want is if you bring someone from the outside with an opinion. You know what doctors like to ask questions Wendy.

Matt (01:49:47):

What he says is he’s so fucking typical of you to create a problem like this when I’m on the verge of accomplishing something. I have let you fuck up my life so far, but I am not going to let you fuck up this. Which

Laci (01:49:58):

Makes me think they got married because she got pregnant.

Matt (01:50:00):

Yes. Which I think is in the book textual in the book.

Laci (01:50:04):

Sure.

Matt (01:50:04):

And I think King had a problem with that because it’s like these people’s ages don’t make sense for that to be … They are supposed to be young and in over their heads.

Laci (01:50:11):

Okay.

Matt (01:50:12):

I mean, Jack, he’s 44 years old right here.

Laci (01:50:14):

Well, I mean, he was early bald guy. I mean, he always looks young to me. Always looks young and old at the same time.

Matt (01:50:20):

But

Laci (01:50:21):

I got you.

Matt (01:50:22):

He leaves and goes down to the gold room, but he really feels like a writer, really feels like he belongs among the elite and his wife is holding him back. That’s the reason. That’s the whole reason he’s not allowed to do it. Goes to the gold room where now it’s a swanky 1920s party going on and this is where I was really feeling the eyes wide shut comparisons. Well, and at the end too, when we see the fucked up bare blow job where-

Laci (01:50:43):

There’s that.

Matt (01:50:43):

Well, where it’s like you have to wonder, is Kubrick literally limited in the depravity he can imagine? Or is it just- He is a

Laci (01:50:51):

Sweetie.

Matt (01:50:52):

Or is it like we can’t … I can’t show fucking eating babies and pedophilia and stuff. So the most depraved thing I can imagine is a man giving a man a blowjob while dressed in a costume slash-

Laci (01:51:04):

Let me ruin things for furries for the rest of eternity.

Matt (01:51:07):

Or in eyes wide shut, Tom Cruise, I can’t even describe what I saw there. And what he saw there was women touching each other’s boobs.

Laci (01:51:15):

So softly. Whenever I see a nipple, I just go.

Matt (01:51:19):

And the scene that everyone says, the orgy scene, which is again, is just women being like- Swimming

Laci (01:51:22):

Touch and boot. People are just naked

Matt (01:51:24):

In this thing. Just touching

Laci (01:51:25):

Babes. No one’s having any sex.

Matt (01:51:26):

But he orders a drink at the bar, tries to pay for it and Lloyd says, no, your money’s no good here. Orders from the house. And so this is the time I’m watching the movie where I’m really trying to think of like, so how’s this ghost society organized? And it seems to like it’s organized the same way the overlook itself is where you have like your management who you’ll talk to, your oldman, but he’s not actually the power. The power is the owners, the investors, the board or whatever and you’ll never see them. Jac only gets to interface with the bartender, the butler, and they describe him. You’re the caretaker. You’ve always been the caretaker. He thinks of this as like his opportunity to rise in his station in life, but he will never be anything to these people other than a bug.

Laci (01:52:10):

And to me, my read is that caretaker means that he’s the only one, part of his brain that can say no, that he’s always had the ability to say no, that this is an impulse control thing. Me, Grady, I am the thing you want to say yes to. I’m the part of you that wants you to do it, but you’re the caretaker.

Matt (01:52:30):

Grady, just wonderful. I mean, Grady, Delbert Grady played by the actor, Phillip Stone, who spills the egg come on him. Oh, sir. Oh, come on to the men’s room here, sir. Fit

Laci (01:52:40):

Spot won’t be a moment.

Matt (01:52:41):

What do they call you around here, Jeepsy? Grady, sir. Delbert Grady. And Jack Nicholson’s reaction to hearing the word Grady is fucking Grady? Family man, Mr. Grady. Come on. Just tell me. Just

Laci (01:53:01):

Us girls.

Matt (01:53:03):

You chop them up into litle bits and then you blew your brains out. That’s strange, sir. I don’t have any recollection of that room.

Laci (01:53:09):

But see the way the bathroom’s painted its spots of blood on the floor and it’s just you can’t paint over it.

Matt (01:53:18):

Also looks a little clockwork orangy. Looks like this is not a 1920s bathroom, I don’t think. This is like a future bathroom.

Laci (01:53:25):

Well, I wouldn’t know.

Matt (01:53:28):

I’m just a

Laci (01:53:28):

Hayseed after all.

Matt (01:53:30):

You were the caretaker here. I’m sorry to differ with you, sir, but you are the caretaker. You’ve always been the caretaker. So Grady’s voice, we’re kind of only seeing the back of Grady, but then the camera abruptly turns and we’re looking at Grady head on and his voice kind of changes just a little bit.

Laci (01:53:47):

His dominance changes.

Matt (01:53:48):

Yes. Did you know your son is attempting to bring at an outside party?

Laci (01:53:52):

Every moment.

Matt (01:53:53):

A racial slur. A racial slur? Yes, a racial slur cook.

Laci (01:53:58):

The muffin?

Matt (01:53:58):

And even the word cook. It’s like ugh.

Laci (01:54:00):

I know. I know. He’s a chef. He’s the head chef and every time they talk about it, he’s just some fucking cook. And when they walk windy around that kitchen, it’s because she’s got a vagina. It’s just rude. Everybody wants to eat, right? You have a sperm bank upstairs.

Matt (01:54:15):

But he’s a fucking butler and he’s like a cook. Ugh.

Laci (01:54:17):

Right. Well, because even here there’s a hierarchy.

Matt (01:54:20):

Yeah, there’s a hierarchy. Yeah. Your son is being a very naughty boy.

Laci (01:54:25):

Willful boy.

Matt (01:54:27):

And Jac, it’s the mother. She interferes.

Laci (01:54:32):

Putting ideas in his head. He doesn’t have to be beaten all the time.

Matt (01:54:36):

So he says perhaps they need a good talking to perhaps a bit more. My girl, sir, they didn’t care for the overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of matches and tried to burn it down, but I corrected them. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I corrected her as well.

Laci (01:54:53):

Do you think that’s a nod to Stephen King’s ending, the fire?

Matt (01:54:56):

I don’t know. I don’t remember if in the book this happened or not. The daughter also tried to burn down the hotel.

Laci (01:55:02):

I’m not asking about that. I’m saying Stephen King’s whole thing was that at the end of his book, The Hotel Burns, Warmth versus Cold. Maybe it did. No, it’s like you just completely wiping out this whole idea of cycles and Stanley dealing with the fact that they stay.

Matt (01:55:18):

Yeah.

Laci (01:55:18):

You pussy? He’s

Matt (01:55:19):

A pussy. He’s a pussy. I will be on my deathbed thinking about corrected.

Laci (01:55:24):

I’m glad.

Matt (01:55:25):

Just wonderful. Just one of the-

Laci (01:55:26):

Yes. He is the tiger of the forest.

Matt (01:55:29):

And I noticed the way he … So the way he talks about you’re going to have to deal with your son, unfortunately, he will always preface it with like, “I’m afraid that we’re going to have to do … ” I hate to say it. You always have to couch it and it’s really a shame what we have to do, the kind of violence we have to do to live the lives that we need to lead and to just do our duty for our employers. Keep

Laci (01:55:52):

The power structure such as it is.

Matt (01:55:54):

Dick Holleran’s fucking fine. I got to hop on a plane and I just love this continental airline plane that he’s flying on. It looks incredible. I don’t know why.

Laci (01:56:04):

Because it looks like a living room. It’s so

Matt (01:56:06):

Spacious.

Laci (01:56:07):

That’s why everyone’s not crammed together. It’s just nice big-

Matt (01:56:10):

He’s in first class where he belongs.

Laci (01:56:12):

How do you know he’s in first class?

Matt (01:56:14):

Those seats are huge. No,

Laci (01:56:15):

Matt, that’s what-

Matt (01:56:15):

You’re telling me that was what it was like.

Laci (01:56:17):

Yes.

Matt (01:56:18):

We used to be a proper country. I know. Calls up Larry Durkin at Durkin’s Garage. Larry is played by Tony Burton from the Rocky movies. And here’s another line delivery that I’ll remember on my deathbed is Dick Holleran saying, “The people we tired to look up after the overlook, they turned out to be completely unreliable assholes.” Assholes.

Laci (01:56:37):

Let me say this away that you’ll understand that I need a Bobcat or whatever. They’re assholes.

Matt (01:56:43):

And that does it for Tony Burton. He’s like, “Oh, okay. Okay, Dick. Yeah, no problem. I’ll get the snow clap ready for you. “

Laci (01:56:47):

Clear up some mass holes. I

Matt (01:56:49):

Got you. So Wendy is trying to talk herself. She’s like, “Okay, get on the snow cap. Go down and if Danny doesn’t want to come, or what’s my husband’s name? Jack, he doesn’t want to come, that’s fine, but she hears Danny screaming red rum in the room. Danny, stop being weird.” Danny’s not here. I can fucking

Laci (01:57:03):

Relate to this as a mom of a kid that would get weird.

Matt (01:57:07):

Just tell me you have the shining, goddamn it.

Laci (01:57:09):

Tell me you’re shining right now.

Matt (01:57:11):

So it’s the next morning she’s watching TV with Danny. She’s watching Roadrunner like, Danny, are you still fucked up? Danny’s not here, Mrs. Tyren.

Laci (01:57:20):

Shit.

Matt (01:57:21):

Fuck. Okay. Though

Laci (01:57:22):

The Roadrunner would do it.

Matt (01:57:23):

Keep watching Roadrunner. Yes, Mrs. Darren.

(01:57:29):

She goes down. Danny Jack is not at his workstation. She’s like, huh. Like Marge says in the Simpsons, what he’s typed will be a window into his madness. Feeling fine. No, it’s so … The Kubrick apparently typed … The legend is he typed out everything all working no play. He typed out the 700 pages, but I just love it. It’s obviously terrifying. How long he has been working on this, how clearly he has never had an ounce of creativity in him at all. It is not just because he’s going mad. This is all he can actually do.

Laci (01:58:05):

I’ll say he’s a wiz with formatting though. All the different ways he found to type it out.

Matt (01:58:09):

Pretty good. Play with the format. Yeah. And this isn’t in the book. So many of the most famous things about the movie do not originate in the book.

Laci (01:58:18):

Right. I’ll bet that really burned his butt.

Matt (01:58:20):

I really think that is part of it.

Laci (01:58:21):

I think so. Especially after he goes and tries to make a faithful adaptation of his book into screen form and people are like, “Nope.” No, thank

Matt (01:58:29):

You. No, thank you. Jack Nicholson to Steven Weber. So the incredible shout of Jack coming in, seeing him slowly enter the frame and he’s so fucking hilarious and he’s like, “What are you doing down here? I just wanted to talk to you. ” On

Laci (01:58:44):

This floor, just the level floor.

Matt (01:58:47):

By here, I meant anywhere I would be.

Laci (01:58:50):

Right.

Matt (01:58:50):

Okay, let’s talk. What do you want to talk about? She gets so flustered. She’s like, “I can’t remember.” He’s like, “I think you want to talk about Danny.”

Laci (01:59:00):

Because now he’s been tipped off, right? Now he knows that Danny’s been working on a plan.

Matt (01:59:07):

Yeah. And I think another thing King was upset about is the whole thing about the hotel and about Jax. Jack falls in love with the hotel but then realizes the hotel doesn’t care about him. It wants Danny because Danny is special. Whereas in the movie, the hotel doesn’t seem concerned with Danny at all. It’s just like, we don’t want him bringing anybody else out.

Laci (01:59:27):

Well, because they know they’ll get Danny later.

Matt (01:59:29):

I guess so.

Laci (01:59:29):

Yeah.

Matt (01:59:30):

She says, “I’m worried about him. Are you ever worried about me? Do you have the slightest inclination about my contractual fiduciary reablications?”

Laci (01:59:40):

Yeah, that’s why I checked the boiler every day for you, you fucking idiot.

Matt (01:59:44):

But I mean, this is just great observation about an abusive person can turn this around. It’s just the most bullshit. Do you know what an ethical and moral obligation even is?

Laci (01:59:56):

Wow, hyperboleaholic.

Matt (01:59:59):

But I will tell you what I Like is he’s always very vulnerable physically because she just hits him in the hand with the baseball bat and he’s like, “Ah.” Yeah, the

Laci (02:00:07):

Normal.

Matt (02:00:07):

Yeah. And then she hits him in the head and that’s it. And he’s knocked out and she pulls him into the pantry and he goes through the stages of like, “What the fuck?” And then tries to bargain.

Laci (02:00:18):

And he’s doing a good job of being concussed, but it also is the way a stumbling, fumbling alcoholic sounds. So it’s dual purpose for sure.

Matt (02:00:27):

She locks him into the pantry and he tries like, “Windy, baby, you’re hurting me real

Laci (02:00:33):

Quick.” That upshot, that shot up just of his teeth, you could see his cavities and stuff, just Jack Nicholson’s … No, I mean, fillings. Any feelings. Teeth are gross. A normal man’s mouth, but- No one should have a mouth. Oh, geez. But the upshot of that and who was down there? How many times was Jack having Nicholson having to lean over like this and just not spit on that guy? It’s just a great shot.

Matt (02:00:57):

And then he turns into Scrub, “But I’ll fucking kill you, your bitch.” And then she’s like, “I’m going away now.” Now, Stephen King has done several different books or stories and I think this is a very good horror scenario of I’ve locked someone who deserves it and now I have to hear them yell and plead for their live and I can’t get far enough away to stop hearing it.

Laci (02:01:17):

Right. And at some point I become the monster.

Matt (02:01:21):

Dolores Clayborn is one of my favorite books. It’s a woman, kills her husband in a well and hears it in the middle of the night. How was

Laci (02:01:28):

I thinking of misery when you said this? Is Desores Clayman also played by- Cathy

Matt (02:01:32):

Bates. Cafe

Laci (02:01:32):

Bates.

Matt (02:01:33):

Yeah,

Laci (02:01:33):

That’s

Matt (02:01:33):

Fine. So I’m going to take the snow cat down to Sidewander and he’s like, “Ha ha ha, I broke the snowcat band.” Why

Laci (02:01:39):

Don’t you go and look at it? Won’t even tell her, “Look at it. You stupid. I want to get Cindy on an errand. Go burn some calories, bitch.”

Matt (02:01:46):

He wakes up in the pantry. We see the little meal he’s made for himself of crackers and peanut butters and orange.

Laci (02:01:51):

And Oreos looks delicious.

Matt (02:01:53):

There’s so many brands in this pantry. A

Laci (02:01:55):

Lot.

Matt (02:01:56):

So many brands whose logos are still exactly the same today.

Laci (02:02:00):

Calumat and probably because of this movie. Why change them? You have the most brand recognition. It’s tomato paste. That’s why I thought it was ketchup, but there’s Heinz in here too. Though they do make baked beans and vinegar.

Matt (02:02:13):

And maybe this is the stretch, but it’s like the ruling class, the wealthy elite outside are the people who fucking make these mass produced sloppy products that we just put away into the pantry. But he gets a knock on the door and he’s like, “Wendy? No, Wendy, it’s Grady, Mr. Torrance. Grady, what’s up, man?”

Laci (02:02:29):

Hey, bro. Just chilling in here. I

Matt (02:02:33):

Can see you hardly taking care of the business we discussed.

Laci (02:02:36):

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought I was your boss, Grady. We were wiping off the cum off of me.

Matt (02:02:42):

Then I and the others have come to believe your heart’s not in this, that you haven’t the belly for it.

Speaker 4 (02:02:50):

Oh.

Matt (02:02:50):

The belly. Just wonderful. Just in Ready Player One, the sequence where they recreate the shining, the Simon Peg character says the belly. It’s like not one of the most famous lines from the shining, but it’s like one I always remember. The belly.

Laci (02:03:04):

Well, it’s the one and only time I’ll allow that word to be used without my skin crawling because it crawls for the right reason.

Matt (02:03:09):

I’ve got the belly for it. Goddamn it, just let me out. So they do. If you want to view the ghost as not real, this is the only thing that you can’t explain is how he got out of the pantry. But of course it could just, he figured out a way something.

Laci (02:03:23):

Right. He just came to, right? Well, and my theory is like he’s pushing on that thermometer a lot while he’s in the back of it. I thought he was trying to lure her over to like push it through or something. I always

Matt (02:03:36):

Think that. I always think that’s what he’s trying to do.

Laci (02:03:37):

But he’s just concussed, right? He’s not thinking thoroughly. Those things and maybe not back then, they for sure have a way to get out from the inside just in case you get locked in. So yeah, you don’t have to believe in the ghosts.

Matt (02:03:52):

But I do.

Laci (02:03:52):

Okay.

Matt (02:03:54):

Wendy is sleeping and Danny’s like dressed himself up into a very sharp sweater and collard shirt combination.

Laci (02:04:00):

That’s all he ever wears bat.

Matt (02:04:01):

But he’s like going-

Laci (02:04:04):

That’s his pajamas.

Matt (02:04:05):

Those are not his pajamas. I’m making

Laci (02:04:07):

A joke because you only ever see him in this in layers. They both layer all the time.

Matt (02:04:11):

He was not wearing this when he was watching Roadrunner.

Laci (02:04:13):

Every outfit he is in this entire movie is at least two to three layers.

Matt (02:04:18):

I just love the idea that Tony decided to put this on.

Laci (02:04:20):

Like he’s going to go for a

Matt (02:04:22):

Job interview. Yes.

Laci (02:04:22):

Okay.

Matt (02:04:23):

Because this is Danny in the future. So he’s rad ram and he picks up the lipstick, writes it on the door while he’s holding the giant knife. I wonder how many times Daniel Lloyd had to write this to Kubrick’s satisfaction. I know. But Wendy wakes up, sees red rum in the mirror, “Oh, it’s murder.” And then Jack slams the accent on the door. But this is what snaps Danny back into place and he is in the right space to give his mama warning, give her the knife, which she will use to ward Jack off. Jack’s off and you all know this is one of the most famous things in movie history. Here’s Johnny. So Wendy, I’m home. And again, he’s vulnerable because she just slices his hand and he’s like, “Oh, fucking hell.”

Laci (02:05:06):

You got a knife. How’d you get a knife?

Matt (02:05:09):

Danny is able to get out the window, but one of the most incredible moments of the movie that I never think about is how everything stops because Holeran arrives and they just hear it. And it’s just we hear another person exists.

Laci (02:05:21):

We’re all experiencing the same ghost or there’s a fucking other person here. Hello.

Matt (02:05:25):

So he leaves to go deal with Holleran. Holloan comes into the hotel. So it’s like we’re cutting between all four of these people who are just bewildered, just wandering around by themselves, running into all kinds of crazy shit. And Holleran is wandering around the empty hotel. Hello. And Kubrick shows that Jack is in the vicinity, but you don’t know where he’s going to pop out from. So I think this is the scariest woman in the movie for me.

Laci (02:05:48):

You think he’s going to at least get to lay eyes on Danny. At least have some kind of like, “Okay, I got here in time moment before he dies.” No, nothing just to ax to the heart.

Matt (02:05:58):

Yeah, it is. But he did his, he saved them.

Laci (02:06:03):

He did, but he doesn’t get to know that before

Matt (02:06:05):

He

Laci (02:06:05):

Dies. White man’s burden my ass.

Matt (02:06:08):

Wendy is olive oiling around and seeing all kinds of crazy shit like the bear. Now, how do you give a blowjob with this kind of mask?

Laci (02:06:14):

It’s got a full mouth. It can open. Yeah,

Matt (02:06:17):

But you have to go really far down. Also, there’s like an opening in the behind. This man’s ass. Okay. Yeah, that’s nice. That’s nice for them.That’s

Laci (02:06:27):

Good. They do both. You got to wet the dick with the mouth and then you put the butt sex stuff.

Matt (02:06:31):

That’s how it works.

Laci (02:06:32):

Yeah. They didn’t have lube back

Matt (02:06:33):

Then. And she’s like, “Oh my God,

Laci (02:06:34):

No.”

Matt (02:06:35):

Not that. She runs away.

Laci (02:06:38):

That’s going to stain his fur.

Matt (02:06:39):

Jack is turning into a little animal just screaming.

Laci (02:06:44):

It works really well because he hurt his leg on the fall. He heard his head on the fall. All of his incapacity stuff already happened. He’s not going to turn into some super villain thing. He just is just going to keep being a scary dad and that’s enough.

Matt (02:07:00):

Yeah.

Laci (02:07:00):

Enough to make you run outside in the cold and run through a fucking hedge maze.

Matt (02:07:05):

Which Danny does. I saw this movie when I was like, I saw a few minutes of this movie when I was like nine years old on TV, not knowing what it was, but being captivated. Kids are fucking fascinated by the shining for so many reasons. My dad might kill me. I’ve

Laci (02:07:21):

Been feeling that.

Matt (02:07:22):

But watching Danny outsmart his dad was the most validating thing I ever saw as I was a kid. I was like, “Holy shit, go kid.”

Laci (02:07:29):

You’re scared of a drunk. You spend so much time being scared of them, but you forget that it’s nice sometimes when they have no faculties and you still have all yours.

Matt (02:07:37):

Just by backtracking, stepping on his own footprints and Jac just gives up and just slinks down. Wendy reunites with Danny. Danny’s normal again. Danny and Wendy get in the snowcat and go off and then we just abrupt, just such an abrupt cut. Oh, we forgot the moment where Wendy’s running through the hotel and it turns into a spirit Halloween. There’s skeletons at Spooky Spider-Webs everywhere. Oh no.

Laci (02:08:01):

And then that’s the famous blood elevator real part, right?

Matt (02:08:04):

Oh yeah.

Laci (02:08:05):

She was asked in an interview if Shelly Duvall, if she thinks that Wendy could shine. And I think the answer is yes, because again, I think it’s just intuitive defensive skills you gather from being in a dangerous situation for a long time. But Shelly Duvall does not think. She’s like, no, Wendy’s not shining during all those moments. That’s when it all becomes real.

Matt (02:08:27):

So

Laci (02:08:28):

That’s interesting. I don’t read it like that. I just …

Matt (02:08:31):

I’ve always thought she’s not shining. The ghosts are real and now they’re making themselves known.

Laci (02:08:36):

Okay. So I’m a little bit wrong here. There is a man touching Jack and we’re sorry. Now we’re at the final scene where they Zoom, Zoom. I mean, they really fucking hammer the point in this is going to be Jack, right? We’re Zooming a million times into this photo and people are aware of photos being taken, but no one’s interacting with Jack except for this man trying to get Jack’s attention. It’s almost if like, you need to come pick up something, someone’s vomited. He doesn’t.

Matt (02:09:05):

Has Jack always been here? Is he literally from the 1920s, but he got to leave and go have a family? Did he get absorbed into the history of the hotel? Or this is now what I think I’m leaning toward is this is not literally Jack. There’s just always going to be a fucker like Jack. There’s always going to be a guy who’s willing to literally murder his family in order to just move him in the same room to get to smell the farts of the rich people of the world. And we’ll think he belongs, but like Tom Cruise and Eyes Wide Shut who thinks I’m a successful doctor. I’m friends with Sydney Pollock, who’s like a trillionaire. We’re like the exact same, but no, to Sydney Pollock, you are exactly as useful to him as the sex worker who he lets die at his party.

(02:09:53):

You just perform a service for them. He

Laci (02:09:56):

Called you in. And you know the guy that plays piano. You don’t know someone that’s at the party. You know someone that’s working at

Matt (02:10:03):

The party. And you know someone who is working. Yes. And what I’m reminded of in eyes wide shut, when Tom Cruise goes to the sex orgy and everyone can tell he’s an interloper, but you the viewer don’t know how they know that. It’s got to

Laci (02:10:17):

Be his shoes or something.

Matt (02:10:19):

Just everything. Do they reveal like, “Well, you came by taxi and you’re not wearing a nice enough mask.”

Laci (02:10:27):

Oh, I think it’s because he gives the password of the help.

Matt (02:10:30):

But then they ask for the second password. They’re like, “There is no second password.” So it’s all like you’re not even a species that would know things like that. I think it’s like the scene in parasite when the poor dad is laying under the sofa of the rich dad and the rich dad’s like, “I can still smell them here.” You guys

Laci (02:10:50):

Just have-

Matt (02:10:51):

You think that you’re successful. We can smell you. You work for a living that’s gross.

Laci (02:10:57):

You smell like your own house, which is just the food you cook and that’s not the food we cook.

Matt (02:11:02):

Gross. We’re on different planets. And it ends on the 4th of July celebrating America. That is why this is about the American ruling class. I’ll be

Laci (02:11:11):

Goddamned if I’ll let you lead us all the way to the end and say it’s about your theory. It is mine.

Matt (02:11:35):

Final thoughts on the shining star ratings. Said it a bunch of times. I think it’s a boring thing to say, but yeah, it’s probably the best horror movie I ever made. Five Stars Easy and A Heart on Letterboxd. It’s just one of my favorite movies. Listed Kubrick movies. I think I put it number three. 2001 is number one. Strange Love is number two, but he’s got like 10 five star masterpieces. So check out The Shining.

Laci (02:11:58):

Check out Kubrick, won’t you? My final thoughts are I think it’s a rare movie that gets the experience of living with an abuser just exactly right while managing to make it entertaining and compelling as fuck. There’s nothing trite or trophy about it. There’s nothing like it and it’s existed forever. So if there was going to be something like it, it would exist by now. I think that is a true testament to real originality and creativity and I give it a five.

Matt (02:12:29):

And just a testament to adaptation. Somebody sees something that exists and says, “I want to push this further. I want to take what I like, but maybe find a different approach to it. ” And like you just said, it has always existed. Jack has always been at the hotel and it’s better that the overlook does not get destroyed. It’s still there. It’s still out there on the mountain just waiting for someone to come find it.

Laci (02:12:49):

Because they always will.

Matt (02:12:51):

Right. Check us out on our social media. Look in the description for links to all of those and my band Rural Route nine does the music for the show, including the song you’re hearing right now.

Laci (02:13:02):

Okay.

Matt (02:13:03):

Okay.

Laci (02:13:03):

I still love you. Goodbye.