Room 237 Page #2

by what I'd just witnessed.

And the usher actually

had to come and get me out.

And I was the last person,

me and her.

And I staggered

out of the theater

completely changed

as a human being

and decided at that moment

that the only thing

that I wanted to do

for the rest of my life

was to make films

in one fashion or another.

And so I have done that.

So I owe Stanley Kubrick and

his film 2001:
A Space Odyssey

everything for everything that

I have become in my life, so...

- I saw a number

of Kubrick films

before I had

an academic interest in him.

And then I went to see

The Shining in 1980.

And frankly,

I didn't think that much of it.

I thought the other

Kubrick films that I'd seen

were far superior.

But as I thought

about the film afterwards...

and even when

I wasn't thinking about it...

there were things

that bothered me about it.

It seemed

as if I had missed something.

And so I went back

to see it again.

And I began to see

patterns and details

that I hadn't noticed before.

And so I kept watching the film

again and again and again.

And since

I'm trained as an historian

and my special expertise

is in the history of Germany

and Nazi Germany in particular,

I became

more and more convinced

that there is,

in this film,

a deeply laid subtext

that takes on The Holocaust.

I think

it probably was the typewriter,

which was a German brand,

which might seem arbitrary,

but by that time,

I knew enough about Kubrick

that most anything in his films

can't be regarded as arbitrary,

that anything...

especially objects and colors

and music and anything else,

probably have some intentional

as well as

unintentional meaning to them.

And so that struck me.

Why a German typewriter?

And in connection with that,

I began to see the number 42

appear in the film.

And for a German historian,

if you put the number 42

and a German typewriter

together,

you get the Holocaust,

because it was in 1942

that the Nazis made the decision

to go ahead and exterminate

all the Jews they could.

And they did so in

a highly mechanical, industrial,

and bureaucratic way.

And so the juxtaposition

of the number 42

and the typewriter was really

where it started for me

in terms of the historical

content of the film.

Of course "adler"

in German means "eagle."

And eagle, of course,

is a symbol of Nazi Germany.

It's also a symbol

of the United States.

And Kubrick

generally has recourse to eagles

to symbolize state power.

Kubrick read Raul Hilberg's

The Destruction

of the European Jews.

And Hilberg's

major theme in there

is that he focuses

on the apparatus of killing.

And he emphasizes

how bureaucratic it was

and how it was a matter

of lists and typewriters.

Spielberg picked that up in

Schindler's List, of course.

I mean, the film begins

with typewriters and lists

and ends with a list,

of course.

And so that informs...

and I had a chance

to talk to Raul Hilberg.

He visited Albion College.

And he said that he and Kubrick

corresponded about this.

And the fact that he read it

then, in the 1970s,

when there was a big wave

of interest in Hitler

and the Holocaust and the Nazis,

I think...

I think just tells us

that that typewriter,

that German typewriter...

which by the way, changes color

in the course of the film,

which typewriters

don't generally do...

is terribly,

terribly important

as a referent to that

particular historical event.

- I worked in a film archive

for a decade,

kind of like

fast-forwarding

through World War II

ten times a day.

But, you know, like,

when you see things

over and over and again,

their meanings change for you.

Like, when you see these... see,

like, World War ll newsreels,

like, after a while,

you come to realize

that it's all faked on film.

You are not seeing troops

storming Normandy.

You're seeing troops

storming a beach in Hollywood.

You know, like, you're not

seeing a plane flying to Japan.

You're seeing a plane flying

over, you know, New Mexico.

What you're really being shown

is, like, staged heroism.

You know, like, you're seeing

men moving with machines,

but you're not seeing what

they're talking about.

And I think that that's

something that Kubrick plays on.

Like, he plays on your

acceptance of visual infor...

and also your ignorance

of visual information.

Like he'll often, like,

put little special clues

that you see,

like, in the corner.

Every scene,

there's an impossibility,

like the TV doesn't have a cord

or even something as simple as,

like, them...

they, like...

they bring too much luggage up.

They, like... Jack, you know,

glances over at a pile

of their luggage

that they brought,

and ifs about the size

of a car.

You know, a lot of it is jokes.

Like, they're taking the tour.

They're crossing the street

from the maze

to go check out the garage.

Like, a car

is just about to hit them.

And then it cuts right before.

- I had anticipated the film

and had read

the Stephen King novel

before the film came out and

found it a very appealing story.

And I had spent

a lot of time

at the Stanley Hotel

in Estes Park, Colorado,

which is where he was inspired

to write the book The Shining.

And so I, you know... I knew

a little bit of the background.

And when

Kubrick's film came out,

I was first in line to see it,

of course.

And I was just

really disappointed

and walked out of the theater

wondering what the hell

I had just witnessed.

And, I... actually,

my reverence for Stanley Kubrick

diminished after that.

I was disappointed, but I still

watched it every few years.

I couldn't understand why I was

so attracted to watching a film

that I actually didn't like.

And now

in all these years later,

I know why it is a great film.

It is a masterpiece,

but not for the reasons

that most people think.

We are dealing with a guy

who has a 200 IQ.

I believe

that when Stanley Kubrick

finished with Barry Lyndon,

he was bored.

He had conquered

the filmmaking landscape.

He had succeeded in making

masterpiece after masterpiece,

and he was bored.

Barry Lyndon

is a boring movie.

It is wonderfully shot.

It is beautifully costumed.

But it is a film

made by a guy who is bored.

And I could see that.

And so I think Stanley

retreated after Barry Lyndon.

And he began working on

a new kind of film,

a film that

had never been made before,

a film that was made

by a bored genius

who had thoroughly

emptied the jug of everything

that could be done

in filmmaking.

And he was looking

for the next thing.

And what he did was he began

reading Subliminal Seduction

and a number of other books

which were about how advertisers

were injecting...

injecting images,

subliminal images,

into advertising

to sell products more.

- Suggestible trends.

- You know, there'll be

an ad for Gilbey's Gin,

and inside, the ice cubes

will be various sex organs

and things to add

a subliminal appeal to the ad.

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