Room 237 Page #4

and you get to see...

as Jack moves across the lobby,

you see the elevator beyond.

And you see beyond that,

a hallway.

You don't see yet how far back

it goes, you know,

the other things back there,

but you have an impression

that this place is towards

the middle of the hotel.

You just have that

impression that it's towards

the middle of the hotel.

And you go from the lobby into

the general manager's office

and then into Ullman's office,

and there's this window.

And the window's

a powerful window.

I mean, the light coming

through there is glaring.

It's like a character in itself.

It takes over.

And you've got these tendril-y,

sinister kind of trees

that are outside the window.

And you've got...

it's just such

a forceful presence,

this light

that comes over everything.

And, you know...

And there's

something wrong with it.

There's something wrong with it,

and I think it registers

as something wrong.

This is an impossible window.

It's not... it is impossible.

It is physically impossible.

It cannot be there.

It should not be there.

There's no place in the hotel

for this window to exist.

It's only toward...

finally,

towards the end of the film,

that you have the realization

that there are several hallways

in succession behind the office.

You see it when Wendy,

when she's later down there and

she sees Dick Hallorann's body

after he's been killed.

You have her behind... in that

hallway behind the office.

So really, now, what

can I tell you about the maps?

No, I did not sit down

with graph paper.

I did not even begin to attempt

to do them to scale.

Let me see.

I can't say which room

I started off with.

I don't remember.

I just went through

and decided I was going to do...

try to do as much as I could,

feeling that...

I felt, eventually,

that there were places

that I could plot out, such

as where the girls were killed.

I was not absolutely sure

at that point,

when I started out

doing the maps,

where the girls were killed.

But I felt that it was

somewhere back around

the area where they lived.

Suite number, what?

They lived at

suite number 3.

- When Jack is sitting,

typing at his typewriter,

and Wendy comes in

and interrupts him

while he's working...

and in one shot of Jack...

- You get a lot written today?

- Sitting at the typewriter,

a one shot,

you look back behind him.

And of course,

you can see very clearly

'cause Kubrick was the master

of depth of field.

He kept everything in focus

so he would have lots of space

in which to puts things

that he wanted you to notice.

And in the first shot, behind

Jack sitting at his typewriter,

back against a wall, behind him

probably 10 or 12 or 15 feet

is a chair.

And then there's a switch

to a one-shot of Wendy

saying something.

- Hey, the weather forecast

said it's gonna snow tonight.

- And then the camera

switches back to Jack,

and the chair is gone.

- What do you want me

to do about it?

- And my students and I

always have fun with that,

saying,

"Well, continuity error?"

Could be.

Or it's not,

and the answer, if it's not...

or if it was originally

and then Kubrick saw it

and decided to keep it,

is that he's

parodying honor films

in order to remind you that

this isn't just a horror film.

And there's another one

in The Shining that's, I think,

less well-noticed.

And I think it's even more

clearly substantive.

When Danny has his first vision

of the elevator gushing blood

and the camera

is tracking toward him,

past the open door

of his bedroom

and toward the hall

and the bathroom,

the open bathroom door

across the hall...

and his bedroom door, as you

would expect a kid's door,

has lots

of cartoon characters on it

And, the one

who is most apparent,

because it's right

at the edge of the door

and it's the largest one

that you can see

and it's the last one you can

see as the camera moves past it,

is one of the Seven Dwarves.

And it happens to be Dopey,

okay?

Subsequently,

after Danny has passed out,

Wendy and the pediatrician

leave Danny's room.

And as they do, they,

of course, go out his door.

And you again see the door,

the open door with all

the cartoon characters on it,

and Dopey isn't there.

Now, again continuity error?

I don't think so.

I think what Kubrick

is saying is that before,

Danny had no idea about

the world, and now he knows.

He is no longer a dope

about things.

He has been enlightened.

- Anything you say, Lloyd.

Anything you say.

- The the advocaat is spilled.

There's the accident.

Kubrick is setting it up

as where they come around

in a circle,

'cause I feel like

that's what the camera does.

I feel like the camera

brings us around in a circle

so that we're coming back.

The bathroom seems to be

overlaying the Gold Room and...

so that

the advocaat situation

in the bathroom

is occurring about

in the same area

that it did in the Gold Room.

- They use the camera

to create an emotional

architecture in your mind

but at the same time,

showing you that it's false.

The set is complete...

so completely plastic

that its contradictions pile up

in your subconscious.

Hallorann is showing...

showing Wendy, you know,

the place where she will,

you know, basically,

entrap Jack...

entrap him both physically,

but also, like, that will be

the last straw for him,

last straw for

the management of the hotel.

It's in the store room

that he finally is like,

"Okay.

Now I'm gonna do it."

And, you know,

the opening of that door

is the famous, like,

only thing that's supernatural

happens in the movie that can't

be explained any other way.

Yeah.

But except that it can be

explained another way,

in that Danny lets him out.

I do have this idea that Danny

is a lot more consciously

murdering his father

than the narrative lets on.

I don't know.

It's weird.

Like, you notice how, like,

Wendy's walking backwards

when she's having

that confrontation with Jack

in the lounge, you know.

And she's being drawn up

to the hexagonal hallway room.

And you see Danny shining

at the beginning of that.

He's in his room,

and there's, like,

lights flickering in his eyes.

Like, is Danny drawing...

you know,

drawing his mother up the stairs

so that she can, you know,

sacrifice Jack on top of that,

you know, weird pyramid?

- When I had a chance...

when I was doing a story

out in Denver,

we went up to Estes Park.

It was in the off-season.

Went into the Stanley Hotel,

and I asked to see the manager.

And he came out, and we were

just having lunch with him.

And I said, "Can we talk to you?

I write about The Shining."

He said, "Really?"

This fellow told me

that he got a phone call

from Stanley Kubrick, who said,

"I think I want to make

a movie about The Shining."

And then he would keep

this fellow on the phone

for a long time.

He said, "We had many

long, long conversations

in which he picked my brain

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