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5/ Who was Kubrick's co-writer? After rejecting King's own efforts at turning his novel into a screenplay Kubrick turned to Diane Johnson, an American novelist and critic who published a number of novels which Kubrick admired, including "The Shadow Knows" which he considered making into a film (1) As Johnson tells it: "Kubrick was thinking of making either the Stephen King or my novel, "The Shadow Knows." And, you know, he ultimately decided on the King. "The Shadow Knows" had some problems like being a first person narrative, the only other one that I've done actually . . . well, almost . . . and, but anyway, he and I, in talking about it got along better than he and Stephen King, I guess. (Laughs). So, he just . . . he would call me up for about a week or two. It's very much a story that other of his writers tell. You know, you get these calls from Kubrick and then he proposes a meeting, and then he proposes you come in and write a script. And, so I did. And I spent, oh, I don't know, a couple of months . . . I guess eleven weeks all together, so almost three months in London, working everyday with him." (2) Kubrick was also interested in Johnson because he learnt that she was giving a course at the University of California at Berkeley on the Gothic novel and could bring a scholarly knowledge of literary horror to the script. He called her the ideal collaborator for The Shining .
Note (2) Quote taken from Diane Johnson interview in the New York Times King had the chance to "do everything different" with the I997 TV movie adaptation of The Shining which he wrote and produced. However the TV Shining was poorly received and generally considered to be vastly inferior to the Kubrick's version. Friction between Kubrick and King was probably further exasperated because Kubrick refused King the rights to release his version of The Shining on video.
Recently it has emerged that King used to be an alcoholic, and that parts of The Shining are, if not autobiographical, then very personal for the author. King was annoyed because Kubrick's adaptation, in his eyes, marginalised the book's most important theme, that of an good father can be turned into a monster through alcohol abuse. In November 1980 Monthly Film Bulletin ran a piece itemising the differences between versions (1) . Here is a summary of that article: (1) A two-minute sequence was deleted from the end of the film in the first
weeks of its run. A coda to Wendy and Danny's escape (which followed the shot of Jack frozen in the maze). This showed Wendy being visited in hospital by Ullman, and his complimenting her on having survived. (2) Scenes cut from the international version:
(1) Part of Jack's interview at the Overlook Hotel.
(2) Danny's examination by a doctor (Anne Jackson)
(3) Part of the tour of the Overlook with Ullman, Jack and Wendy,
including the dialogue in the Colorado Lounge and The beginning of the
scene where Ullman shows Jack and Wendy the hotel grounds and the scene leading up to Dick Hallorann's first appearance where Ullman shows off "The Gold Room"
(4) Part of Danny's conversation alone with Hallorann
(5) The end of the Torrances' first scene in the hotel, when Wendy
brings Jack his breakfast
(6) Immediately after the scene in which Wendy and Danny explore the
maze, a sequence has been cut in which Wendy is seen working in the
kitchen while a TV announcer talks of a search in the mountains for a
missing woman
(7) THURSDAY title card
(8) Wendy and Danny watching the Summer of '42 on television.
(9) dialogue from the middle of the scene in which Jack first goes to
the Gold Room
(10) Wendy is seen crying and talking to herself about the possibility
of getting down the mountain in the snowcat, and of calling the Forest
Rangers
(11) Dick Hallorann again tries to get through to the Overlook by
calling the Ranger station.
(12) 8AM title card
(13) Hallorann asks a stewardess what time they are due to land in
Denver; she tells him 8.20 and he checks his watch. Jack is seen
typing in the lounge of the Overlook. Hallorann's plane lands at the
airport. Larry Durkin (Tony Burton), a garage owner, answers his phone and talks to Hallorann, who asks for a snowcat to get up to the
Overlook.
(14) GS: "A whole scene where Danny is watching TV (a Roadrunner cartoon). After talking to Danny (I think telling him to stay there) Wendy picks up the baseball bat and exits (on her way into the Colorado lounge). I was particularly proud of the way I 'choreographed' the cartoon music on the TV with Wendy's movements. There was then a long dissolve, as the cartoon music faded, to Wendy entering the Colorado lounge. After a pause I then gently faded in the start of the Penderecki music as Wendy walks towards Jack's desk."
(15) The beginning of the scene in which Wendy finds Jack's type-written pages covered with "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" (GS: This then is really cut (14), i.e. the second half of the dissolve plus a few more seconds of Wendy walking into the Colorado lounge)
(16) A tableau in which skeletons are sitting at a table with a
champagne bottle and glasses.
Notes (2) GS thinks Ullman's hospital visit was cut out after a preview in America, just before the film was released. (back) A mock up of a facade of the rear of the Timberline Lodge complete with hedge maze was constructed on a back lot in Elstree Studios, England. The real Timberline does not have a maze.
Kubrick and Walker wanted their hotel set to look authentic rather than
like a traditionally spooky movie hotel. Kubrick believed that the
hotel's labyrinthine layout and huge rooms would provide an eerie enough atmosphere. A realistic approach was also followed in the lighting design, and in every aspect of the hotel's decor. Kubrick took his inspiration from Kafka's writing;
his stories were "fantastic and allegorical," but his writing was "simple and straightforward, almost journalistic."
Adapted from Michel Ciment interview
Notes Thanks to Bryant Arnett for the link (back) GS adds: I am sorry to disagree with Diane Johnson, but I think this is a
complete myth. I have clear memories of Margaret Adams, the production secretary, telling me how she and several other typists had to type all those pages out.
According to the internet movie database, several foreign language
versions of Jack's novel were also typed out. Although GS states this is incorrect too: "To my knowledge these different versions were simply used in the subtitles for the foreign versions." However Vincent Pappalardo writes: In the French version, there actually is the shot of pages typed in French (with a different sentence typed). I don't know about other versions, but I guess it wasn't just done for France. And Francis Catellier-Poulin adds: The translation for "All work and no play..." is "Un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l'auras." In English it can be roughly translated as: "One certainty is better than two possibilities."
Andrea Ronza writes: The phrase in Italian is "Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca", which literally translates as "The morning keeps gold in its mouth". The meaning is something like "You have to start your day in the right way, because the morning is the most propitious moment". This has resonances to the themes in the film; McLuhan's definition of media was broad, it was any technology that extended human physical and sensory capability: the wheel was an extension of the foot, clothes of the skin, weapons of teeth, books of the eye, radio of the ear, the computer of the brain, etc. He was especially interested in how technologies differed from one another and the way in which they amplified, integrated or isolated different senses (creating different sensibilities). McLuhan viewed history in terms of the effects on humankind of the invention of the phonetic alphabet, followed by the printing press, and in the 20th Century by electronic communication and information media.
Here is David Kirkpatrick's McLuhanesque analysis of The Shining. In it he pays particular attention to his 1962 book "the Gutenberg Galaxy - The Making of Typographic Man" (Johan Gutenberg was the inventor movable type which allowed for mass reproduction of printed texts) For more information on McLuhan and his ideas, a very good introduction is provided by Philip Marchand's biography: "Marshall McLuhan: The Medium And The Messenger."
Wendy, Danny and later Halloran are all seen watching television -- they
are all comfortable living in the electronic age. Wendy is also shown
greatly enjoying the use of the CB radio and the human contact it
affords. Danny and Halloran's "shining" gift emulates the
empathy-enhancing properties of the television-dominated world.
"Telepathy" is what we experience when we effectively communicate with each other by non-verbal means.
Jack is associated with the age of print both by his connection with his
typewriter and having been a school-teacher. (Reading and writing has to be taught.) Jack is also associated with linear "left-brain"
abstracting-rather-than-integrating "rationality" by his unhinged tirade
against Wendy after she sees his "assembly-line" manuscript. "Do you
know what a contract means?!", I think is one of the lines he used.
1. The climactic discovery of Jack's "All work and no play..."
manuscript can be taken as a metaphor for the horror of Gutenberg
technology - the typographic mass production of words on a page.
2. Television and other electric forms of communication appear through
film and are associated with Wendy, Danny and Hallorann whereas Jack
lives with his typewriter. Wendy, Danny and Hallorann watch TV,
Hallorann uses the telephone twice and Wendy seems to particularly enjoy using the two-way radio. For the good guys, communication is
community-preserving, whereas for Jack it is a way of establishing
identity, even isolation - if he can succeed as a writer, then he afford
to live the lonely life of a writer.
3. Jack represents book culture not only as an aspiring writer but also
as a former schoolteacher. His disdain for television is shown in the
sarcastic way he says (in the car) "It's OK, he saw it on television!"
By contrast, he makes a sanctimonious appeal to a "written contract"
when Wendy suggests that they should leave the Overlook Hotel in order
to get help for Danny.
4. The theme of telepathy is central to the story; McLuhan often said
that the non-verbal communication afforded by electronic media was a
kind of telepathy. Communication with images instead of words.
5. Another central theme is reincarnation. The Indian Burial Ground
motif is one that Kubrick added to the story. Bill Blakemore has drawn
connections between the murders in the hotel and the genocidal heritage
of the Americas, but parallels between the Native American notion of
Vision Quests and modern day ESP are suggestive of McLuhan's "Global Village" notion of electric technology "re-tribalizing" man after
Gutenberg technology has created nations of individualists.
6. The title "The Shining" can be taken as a metaphor for electronic
media. The name of the Overlook Hotel is suggestive of McLuhan's theory of sense-ratios and how media affect them - Gutenberg technology makes us over-look and under-listen.
7. The yellow poster (and album cover) for the movie resembles the
dot-matrix of a television screen. McLuhan made much of the
low-definition image aspect of television.
8. McLuhan's detachment versus involvement theme: Jack relates to the
maze only at a visual level whereas Wendy and Danny immerse themselves in it; when Jack chases Danny through the maze, he is essentially "reading" the footprints. Danny's escape by using multiple senses - hearing his father always just behind him in the maze he recognizes that his footprints give him away, he retraces his steps and then visually follows them back out of the maze. McLuhan often cited the ending of Poe's Descent
into the Maelstrom as an appropriate fable about salvation through detached understanding of media we take for granted, and Danny's escape is a similar insightful dodge from the linearity of doom.
9. Even if McLuhan's theories did not inspire deep subtexts in Kubrick's
filming of The Shining, (2) the film unquestionably has built into its plot the basic themes of community versus isolation and communication versus secrecy. Communication is a central theme, so different communications theorists might find their own ideas illustrated in the film.
DK
Notes DM, GS
Notes See Martin Hart's American Widescreen Museum site for more information of film formats. He makes a number of interesting observations to support his case. You
can read the entire essay on-line by visiting The Kubrick Site, but here
are a few salient points:-
(1) The profusion of Indian motifs that decorate the hotel, and serve as
background in many of the key scenes represent the fate of the Indians
in the USA, woven into the very fabric of the country although denied a
voice.
(2) the insertion of two lines, early in the film, describing how the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground.
(3) The Calumet baking powder cans, in the food store, with their Indian chief logo that Kubrick placed carefully in the two food-locker scenes. (A calumet is a peace pipe.)
(4) Blakemore calls these observations "confirmers" such as puzzle-makers often use to tell you you're on the right track. He goes onto say, "The Shining is also explicitly about America's general inability to admit to the gravity of the genocide of the Indians -- or, more exactly, its ability to "overlook" that genocide. Not only is the site called the Overlook Hotel with its Overlook Maze, but one of the key scenes takes place at the July 4th Ball. That date, too, has particular relevance to American Indians. That's why Kubrick made a movie in which the American audience sees signs of Indians in almost every frame, yet never really sees what the movie's about. The film's very relationship to its audience is thus part of the mirror that this movie full of mirrors holds up to the nature of its audience."
History has shown, however, that in the carrying out this 'sacred duty,' settlers invariably made a mockery of the Christian values they were trying to teach. (2)
Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the human cost of colonialism, anti-imperialists in the United States latched onto the phrase "white man's burden" as a euphemism for imperialism, and Kipling was accused of justifying the policy as a noble enterprise. Notes (2) To find out about the history of the persecution of native Americans by white settlers read Dee Brown's classic account, "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee." (back) "When Ray Lovejoy, the editor, first introduced me to Stanley he was
shooting the insert on the hedge maze. It was a large miniature which
stood upright and the live action of Wendy and Danny was a VistaVision
plate. The 35mm 4-perf camera shutter speed was synchronised with the VV projector shutter, similar to a traditional rear-projection set-up." The Labyrinth was so skilfully designed that once a person was incarcerated there it was impossible for them to find their way out again. They would then become prey for the Minotaur (1) - a half-man; half-bull that lived in the Labyrinth. Daedalus revealed the secrets of its construction only to Ariadne, daughter of Minos, but she in turn told her lover, Theseus who used the knowledge to slay the Minotaur and escape.
The Labyrinth and Minotaur in Greek Mythology can be read as symbols of the dark side of humanity, the Minotaur represents the 'Beast' in the human psyche that we hide
away in the 'Labyrinth' of the unconscious mind. As Kubrick said: "One of the things that horror stories can do is show us the archetypes of the unconscious: we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly." The structure of a maze allows for just such an indirect confrontation of these dark forces.
Michel Foucault (2) articulated this characteristic of the maze in his 1962 essay 'Such a Cruel Knowledge' "To enter the gates of the maze," Foucault said "is to enter a theatre of Dionysian (3) castration, is
to undergo a paradoxical initiation not to a lost secret but to all the
sufferings of which man has never lost the memory - the oldest cruelties
in the world."
When Jack Torrence is trapped in the maze he ultimately takes on the characteristics the
Minotaur thus any specificity attached to his murderous actions is
removed of context, and occupies instead in the universal space of myth. Symbolically the maze transcends physical time and space, and the roar of Torrence's rage
echoes down its myriad pathways to connect right back to the origins of
rage itself.
Foucault called the Minotaur the very near and yet also the absolutely
alien - the emblem of the unity of the human and inhuman. All the
imagery of 'the Shining' is suggestive of Labyrinths, the long
mountainous roads that lead to the Overlook, the corridors of the hotel
and finally the maze itself, its as if we are being drawn deeper and
deeper into the mystery and yet at its heart what do we find? A demon?
Something unknowable and alien to us? No, we find an insane man stalking his child. Kubrick seems to be saying that the evil beings that inhabit our collective memories, Satan, the Minotaur, etc.. are just projections of our evil selves: whilst the devil, if he exists, resides in the ordinary, the banal, the everyday. (4)
RM
Notes (2) Michel Foucault was a celebrated and controversial French philosopher (he died of AIDS in 1985). In his work he tried to uncover the mechanisms of power in society especially when applied to the control of 'deviant' behaviour. Notable books include: "Madness & Civilisation" - a history of mental illness and a critique of Society's efforts to treat it and "Discipline & Punish" - a similarly structured critique of societies handling of criminals. (back)
(3) Dionysian comes from a Nietzschean categorisation of two opposing types of human behaviour which he named after the Greek gods Dionysus and Apollo. Apollonian describes characteristics of searching for order in chaos and the control of irrational and emotional impulses within ourselves, whilst Dionysian describes the relinquishing of control and the celebration of passion and emotion. These characteristics were later modified by Freud as the basis for his definitions of the Ego (Apollo) and the Id (Dionysus) although Nietzsche's terms are not completely synonymous with Freud's. (back)
(4) GS: This seems, frankly, an incorrect reading. To identify the 'dark side of human nature' with 'evil' is far too simplistic. I have always taken the Labyrinth in various myths to be relating to what Freud later termed the Unconscious. We see it again with Virgil's Aeneid (Orpheus' descent into the Underworld) and later in Dante, with his descent with Virgil through the Circles of Hell. Nietzsche develops the theme superbly and subtly in Also Sprach Zarathustra, where he talks at length of this need to 'Go Under', as opposed to being a religious ascetic, as a part of a necessary journey in 'overcoming' one's baser animal desires. But all this seems a long way from the maze in The Shining! (back) RM ME |
