Room 237

2

- The poster

that came out in Europe,

at least in England,

I believe,

before the movie was released

in Europe said,

"The wave of terror

that swept across America."

And Kubrick controlled

the posters very carefully.

Now,

it made you do a double take.

I remember seeing it in Europe.

I was the Rome Bureau Chief

at the time for ABC News.

And I remember looking at it.

It said, "The wave of terror

that swept across America."

What's he talking about?

And you'd sort of think

that he was talking about

the impact

of the book The Shining.

Maybe.

The impact of the movie

that had just opened over there?

Maybe.

It didn't quite fit.

The wave of terror

that swept across America

from Portland, Maine,

to Portland, Oregon,

was the genocidal armies

and the white men with their ax

clearing it all and bringing in

extractive industries,

among many other good things

as well.

But that was the wave of terror

that swept across America,

terrifying, of course,

the American Indians.

- I went in to see this movie in

Leicester Square Movie Theater,

right near

Leicester Square in London.

And I remember it

quite clearly from...

I can even remember the seats

we were sitting in.

If I went back to that theater,

I could point them to you,

sort of near the back

and over to the left.

From the moment of the opening

astonishing helicopter shot,

I was terrified.

I had no idea what was coming.

I remember sort of sitting

on the front edge

of my theater seat there

to keep from falling off.

And I remember gripping my

belt buckle with my left hand,

I think it was...

yes, my left hand,

sort of to keep from falling off

the edge of the seat

and to try to control my terror

as I watched this movie.

I had no idea what was coming.

I hadn't read the book.

I had barely seen

any of the posters.

And I remember that I was

stunned when the movie was over.

We left the theater, went in...

down into

our underground car park

to get into the car to leave.

And as we were driving up

out of the car park,

I was sitting

in the back left seat.

I was thinking, "What was that?

What was that?

"What was it?

What was it?

What was it?"

And I think

my visual imagination

looked at that

Calumet baking powder can,

the one right behind

Hallorann's head

when he was talking to Danny.

I knew what "calumet" meant.

It meant "peace pipe."

And I thought to myself,

"peace pipe, Indians.

"Oh, my goodness,

they're all over the place

in that movie."

- The loser

has to keep America clean.

- And I suddenly

said to my friends,

"That movie

was about the genocide

of the American Indians."

And they said,

"What are you talking about?"

And I started explaining it,

because I'd noticed

the Calumet baking soda can.

In the first... the first time

we seen one,

it's a single

baking powder can straight on.

And you can see the whole word,

"Calumet,"

so there's no duplicity,

like the little girls

represent later.

This is an honest truth,

an honest peace pipe

between them.

The other time we see

the Calumet baking powder cans

is when they're

very carefully placed

behind Jack Nicholson's head

when he's talking to Grady.

- No need to rub it in,

Mr. Grady.

I'll deal with that situation

as soon as I get out of here.

- There's about six

or seven of them stacked up,

and they're

all turned different ways,

and you can't read

any one of them completely.

It's... I've always interpreted

those as being broken,

dishonest peace pipe treaties.

They're not... these two guys,

Grady and Jack,

are not being honest

with each other.

Grady is trying to get Jack

to go kill his family

and commit genocide,

in the larger sense

of the movie.

You know, I mean,

Kubrick often,

in many of his movies,

he will end them

with a puzzle

so that he forces you to go out

of the theater saying,

"What was that about?"

And he would put things

in the scenes

that he knows will be,

among other things,

like confirmers when people

start to try to figure out

what the movie is about.

And we know he took

this kind of care.

There's a photograph

in one of the books

that actually shows Kubrick

carefully arranging

objects on the shelves

in that dry goods room.

I thought afterwards,

"How come I saw this and

a lot of other people didn't?"

And I've thought about it.

It's a combination of factors.

First, I grew up in Chicago

and, therefore,

just north

of the Calumet Harbor

and spent summers up

in the sand dunes of Michigan,

around on the other side

of Lake Michigan.

My father

took me and my sister out

to collect little bits

of Indian pottery.

I'd already...

I'd already covered,

at that point in 1980,

five years

of the Lebanese civil war.

I was, at that point,

covering John Paul ll.

I was the Rome Bureau Chief.

And listening

to what he was saying about...

because he had experienced

the Holocaust at its epicenter

and also other horrors.

And so all of those factors

were very much alive in my mind

when we went

to see The Shining,

which I just thought was going

to be some kind of horror movie

by this great moviemaker.

And all of those coming together

along with the little key,

the Calumet baking soda can,

is why I just happened

to tune to it

as we were driving up out of

that underground parking garage

just off Leicester Square.

- I first saw the movie in 1980

when it first came out

and saw it probably two times.

I can say that I remembered

the skier poster.

That is one thing

that really stuck with me.

And the window.

The window in the office,

that's another thing

that really stuck with me.

I remember, you know,

in the newspapers afterwards,

people being disappointed.

And I remember people

that I knew,

yes, in dialogue afterwards,

being disappointed that it was

not more a horror film.

Well, no Kubrick film's

really just a regular movie.

I understood that from,

well, when I was 10 years old

and I first saw 2001.

I walked away.

I thought, "This is a film

that's supposed

to make me think."

- I had my first

religious experience

seeing the film

2001:
A Space Odyssey in 1968.

I was a smart kid

and liked art,

but I really

did not like movies

and thought that they

were really a substandard art.

And, you know, films like

My Fair Lady

and Doctor Dolittle were out.

And it was a rather pathetic

time in the '60s for films.

And my girlfriend,

she pulled up

and told me that she'd

seen a movie the night before

and she wanted to see it again.

So she took me to the theater,

the Cinerama Dome,

and I watched it.

And I had never in my life

envisioned that a movie

could do what this movie

was doing.

And it was showing me things

that I had never seen,

and it was

intellectually challenging.

And it was an artistic

masterpiece in every way,

from the soundtrack to

the visuals to the story line.

And when the movie ended,

I couldn't get out of my seat.

I was frozen in the seat,

completely paralyzed

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