Room 237 Page #9

of voices from the past.

"The cloud of witness,"

as the phrase is in...

Dorothy Sayers uses it

as the title for some story.

The cloud of witness,

all the ghosts from the past;

And I didn't know.

Were these the voices

of the many crowds

of aliens or of ghosts or...

I didn't know what.

But already that

skittering, high music

with that follow shot

across the lake

and then across the car itself,

it was the ultimate in spooky

because you had the feeling

this car is being followed

and it doesn't know it,

and we're following it.

I mean, I could go on

for a long time

about the symbolism of that

with regard to what The Shining

really is.

And The Shining,

as we come to understand it,

is seeing through

all the layers of history

and the horrors of history,

even autobiographically

in that scene

where Grady and Jack talk

in the blood-red men's room

and Grady says, "Your son

has a very great talent.

"I don't think

you realize how great it is.

He's a very willful boy."

And Jack says, "Yes, he is..."

- A very willful boy.

- Did you know, Mr. Torrance,

that your son is attempting

to bring an outside party

into this situation?

- That's Kubrick.

What he's trying to do

is bring the audience

and humanity

into this situation.

In this movie, he is trying

to get through to us all...

the human race in the movie

theaters watching this...

that we are doing these things

but don't see it,

that we are committing

these horrendous things

over and over again

and then forgetting them...

which is... of course,

he represents

many, many times in the movie...

by having characters

seem to know something

and then not know it

and forget it.

- You, uh, chopped your wife and

daughter up into little bits.

- I don't have any recollection

of that at all.

- That's like the human race.

We commit atrocities

and then forget it.

- Bill, I'd like you

to meet Jack Torrance.

- How do you do?

- Bill, how do you do?

- It's nice to meet you.

- It's a pleasure to meet you.

- Some people think that,

like, not all

of the interview is real.

Some of it is Jack's

imagination or fantasy

of what the interview

would be like.

Like, also, Bill Watson's

clothes change.

Like,

his pants change patterns.

And what's also weird is,

he plays Pontius Pilate

in Jesus Christ Superstar.

- Crucify him

Crucify him

Crucify, crucify, crucify

- Really playing against type

and just being

this sort of cipher.

I mean, in a way he's,

he's kind of Jack's double

kind of in the same way that

Bill Hartford has a double

in Eyes Wide Shut.

You know, he goes

to that blonde woman's house

whose father just died

and her fianc looks

exactly like Tom Cruise,

has the same haircut.

- I've always thought that Bill

Watson, the little assistant...

and by little, I mean that he's

sort of a shrunken figure...

to Ullman, who's brought in

and sits there

looking sort of dour

and resentful and quiet

and whose skin color

is sort of a half...

it's not white.

It's sort of toward brown.

I've always thought that he

sort of represents a subdued...

somebody from a subdued race.

He seems a little bit diffident

when Ullman says,

"Will you go

collect their luggage?"

He says, "Fine."

- Fine.

- And as they're given the tour

around all the hotel,

Bill Watson

is always trailing behind,

like somebody who's going

to be a little factotum

to go get things.

I've always thought

he sort of maybe represented,

you know, the condition in

the dominant arrogant culture

that the Indians

had at that time.

- He is the silent guardian

for the government.

Stewart Ullman represents

the face of the U.S. government.

And that's why Kubrick

gave him the toupee

that makes him look like

John F. Kennedy.

And I think that he is the guy

who's silently watching

everything and, you know...

CIA, I guess.

Kind of NSA guy.

And he probably represents

the real managers of the house,

of the Overlook,

and Barry Nelson is the...

just the person

that's out in front.

- He doesn't say a thing.

He's the summer caretaker.

And he seems to me

to have certain

correspondences with Wendy.

Jack really doesn't

work around the hotel.

Wendy gets in there,

and she does all the work.

- You do get the feeling

that he's going...

that Jack's going

to be doing his work,

because he seems a little,

like, leery of Jack.

Like, I've been

in job interviews,

and I've always found

that that second person

they call in is,

like, the person

you're actually

interviewing for.

He's making the decision,

like, that silent person,

that, like...

kind of, like, glare...

like, squints at you.

Yeah, and he sighs when he's

asked to move Jack's luggage.

- Bill, would you have

the Torrances' things

brought to their apartment?

- Fine.

- There's a dissolve

which fades from a wide shot

of the, you know,

final black-and-white photo

to a close-up of Jack's face.

And just for a second there,

his hairline fades in

to form a Hitler moustache.

- I think a lot of things

happened right here

in this particular hotel

over the years

and not all of 'em was good.

- He once said,

"How do you get all of that"...

meaning the Holocaust...

"into a two-hour movie?"

I think he found the Holocaust

of such evil magnitude

that he just couldn't

bring himself

to treat it directly,

which is why he used

the form of a horror film

to treat it indirectly.

- I believe Kubrick,

possibly consciously,

has solved a kind of problem

that history has,

which is that

it's very hard for many people

to connect emotionally

to a gigantic big killing

we hear about in the past.

People who don't have

direct family experience

of it themselves

may hear the statistic.

You know, Hitler,

among other things,

killed 6 million Jews

in his Holocaust.

6 million's a number too big.

I mean Stalin is reputed

to have said, you know,

"You kill one person,

it's a murder and a tragedy.

"You kill a million people,

it's a statistic."

He was talking about

a psychological fact.

And, you know, Stalin himself

was... what is it...

starved about 3 million people

in the western Ukraine

in the '30s on purpose.

My point is

it may be that Kubrick

was conscious of having

offered a kind of way to bridge

that inability to feel for those

gigantic statistics in that,

if you go and see The Shining

innocent the first time

and are terrified...

you're just terrified

and you'll always remember

being terrified...

and then go back

aware of what the symbolism

and the general larger pattern

meanings of the movie are,

then you can begin to make

something of a connection,

saying, "Oh, my God."

I remember being terrified

for the individual

little Danny and Wendy here.

And that feeling is actually

being...

is for people who are symbols

of victims

of all kinds

of horrendous genocides.

And of course, his wife

has subsequently talked about,

you know, how close he came

to making his Holocaust movie,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes