Room 237 Page #5

about everything."

And at that point, he said,

"Kubrick was talking about

maybe coming here

to make the movie here,"

which I expect, at that point,

that fellow liked the idea of,

so it would

make his hotel famous.

And Kubrick said, "I'd like

to send out a research team."

And so he then sent out...

the man said it was something

like two or three people

who came out here

and stayed here

for two or three months,

taking photographs everywhere.

And they spent a lot of time

also down in Denver

in the Colorado state archives,

finding out,

as I would now expect,

the full history of Colorado,

which... the flag of which

plays a part.

And the gold rush,

the Colorado Gold Rush

was also a very big event.

And there's all...

there's still a lot

of American Indian/white people

tension in Colorado

with Navajos and Arapahos

just to the south.

This research team found out

absolutely everything

about Colorado,

about Estes Park,

about the Stanley Hotel,

about its entire history,

took photographs

all over the place.

Three months was

the impression that I have

of what he said about

how this research team

gathered absolutely everything.

Kubrick unearthed an enormous

amount about the real history

of Colorado,

where this takes place,

because what he has done

is found a way to dig

into all of the patterns

of our civilization,

our times

and our cultures,

and the things that

we don't want to look at.

And this movie is very much

also about denial

of the genocides

that we committed...

we white folk from Europe...

committed here and not that...

not that white folks are the

only people who do genocide.

All humans do, as Kubrick

makes clear in this movie.

He would research everything

and the full history and nature

of everything you're gonna see

in the movie on the screen

and then

boil it down and boil it down

until he got the universal

human and global patterns

that make it so real.

- White man's burden,

Lloyd, my man.

White man's burden.

I like you, Lloyd.

I always liked you.

You were always the best of 'em.

The best goddamned bartender

from Timbuktu

to Portland, Maine,

or Portland, Oregon,

for that matter.

- Thank you for saying so.

- What does it mean?

Jack saying, "You always

were the best of 'em."

Starting in Timbuktu?

Jack the schoolteacher

was never in Timbuktu,

but Jack

the universal weak male

hired by armies

to go commit atrocities

has always been there.

Now, of course,

the word "Portland"

is neat because

it means where we landed

or where the British

or the Europeans landed.

And Portland, Maine... Oregon is

where they may have taken off

from to go further west.

Kubrick is thinking about

the implications

of everything that exists.

You know, the power of the genie

is in its confinement,

as the great American poet

Richard Wilbur said.

Boiling it down, you know,

10,000 years in a little lamp,

you got to get

your act together.

But that's the essence

of great art.

It's like a dream.

It's boiled everything down

to an emblematic symbol

that's got all of life in it.

Now, if you'll allow me to make

a little bit of a link here.

As I've thinking of this more

in recent years,

what we now understand to be

the nature of what dreams are,

I mean, it seems to be,

the general theory is,

that it's a way

for the brain to boil down

all of the

previous experiences

and then add in

that day's experiences

as well to see what kind

of overall universal patterns

there are to be found,

so that you can be aware of what

the patterns are out there,

so that your subconscious

will be all the more ready

to react suddenly when you see

something dangerous happen

or something important

happen that may lead you

to a mate or to some food

or away from danger.

And therefore, the way Kubrick

made movies was not unlike

the way, according

to these current theories,

our brains create memories

and, for that matter, dreams.

That's the ultimate shining

that Kubrick does.

He is like a mega brain

for the planet

who is boiling down with

all of this extensive research,

all of these

patterns of our world

and then giving them back to us

in a dream of a movie...

because movies

are like a dream...

and that's related

to why I think

there's a lot of evidence

that what Kubrick

also gave us in The Shining

is a movie about the past.

Not just any past.

The past.

I mean past-ness.

It's a movie

about how the past impinges.

That's what ghosts are.

That's what those skitter-y

voices in the opening shot

that are following are about.

There's two phrases from T.S.

Eliot that I often think of

when I'm thinking about

The Shining.

One of them is "The night"...

I think they're both

from T.S. Eliot...

"The nightmare of history...

how can we awake from

the nightmare of history?"

- And the other is his phrase...

T.S. Eliot's phrase...

"History has

many cunning passages."

And I think both of those

phrases are directly apt

for The Shining,

in which we see

many cunning passages in the

maze and in the hotel itself

and in which the past

becomes a nightmare,

and in which Kubrick

shows us how you escape

from the nightmare of the past

by retracing your steps,

as Danny does

in that last line,

which means

acknowledging what happened

and learning about the past

and then getting out,

only if you are

going to be able to shine

and see what the patterns are

so you know

to get away from them

and avoid them

and go for the good things.

I mean, The Shining is his movie

about how families break down,

whether they are

an individual family

or the larger societal family

that tries to break up

individual families.

And his hat movie,

Eyes Wide Shut is the opposite.

It's about

a family sorely tried,

Bill Hartford

and his wife and child,

that survives

all the horrible temptations

that are in our DNA.

- This is our famous hedge maze.

It's a lot of fun.

But I wouldn't

want to go in there

unless I had an hour to spare

to find my way out.

- I did not look at it again

for a number of years

until it came out in rental.

And then I picked it up

a couple of times.

And, what, you had three days

in order to watch a rental?

And so, I can remember watching

it over and over again

during those three days

and really taking

a good look at it then.

And I was able to think "Oh,

yes, this is what I remember.

This is what I thought I saw,"

and then catching more things.

But it wasn't, of course,

until DVD came out

that I was really able

to sit down

and take a good look at it as

far as just running through it

over and over and over again.

Kubrick presents these things

where it's, you know, real...

you know, it's realistic.

You're not supposed to see

what's actually going on.

You've got Danny.

He's in the game room.

He turns around.

We're supposed to be focused

on the two girls there.

And than you... I saw...

over on the left,

I see this skiing poster.

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