The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： The Career of Stanley Kubrick： Part IV

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Stanley Kubrick Part 4. Unfortunately Harry can't be here

00:00:05.240 with us, he's got to record the podcast, but he will be here once again, Rip Harry.

00:00:11.400 And to refresh your memory, in Part 3 we discussed the controversial film A

00:00:17.880 Clockwork Orange, we talked about the Scrap Napoleon project, as well as Barry

00:00:23.520 Linden, which was an IRA magnet apparently, and now we're going to be 0.94

00:00:28.520 picking up where we left off, as well as talking about the film The Shining, as

00:00:32.900 well as Full Metal Jacket, two of my favourite films and I'm really looking

00:00:36.380 forward to talking about them. And I'm of course joined by proper horror show, Chloe, 0.94

00:00:41.420 and thank you very much for taking the time to join us today and I'm really

00:00:45.260 looking forward to what you're going to tell me about this stuff because you

00:00:48.560 know all of these details about the process of the filmmaking and Kubrick as

00:00:54.080 a man and what he was doing behind the scenes that I just don't know. I sort of

00:00:57.760 know a lot about the films and the director himself, but not much else really.

00:01:03.140 Where else can I talk about his numerous speeding tickets? Some people have the

00:01:08.200 gall to describe that stuff as irrelevant minutiae. Here we deal in irrelevant

00:01:14.740 minutiae. No, it's an absolute pleasure and we are getting onto the period that I

00:01:20.620 really enjoy his 80s films and since we are talking about 80s filmmaking I thought maybe we could do it in,

00:01:27.620 in proper style, you know, if you want. Oh well thank you very much. Carl will tell

00:01:34.000 me off for smoking it but it's here. Well no, it is 80s filmmaking so if you... Oh okay, a little pick me up as well.

00:01:41.000 Yeah, I know. I don't know if you're on a Notre Dame. Oh it's a dib-dab. Oh okay. 0.98

00:01:47.380 What do you think it was? It was powdering my face. I'm obviously too swarthy. Remember it's the 80s so...

00:01:56.380 Oh yes, of course, of course. That's what it is but here you are then.

00:02:00.380 Oh well, later, later. Perhaps, yeah. If we're flagging after The Shining.

00:02:07.260 Yeah, so as you said, Kubrick had just done Barry Lyndon which, you know, you've usually heard of a

00:02:13.900 box office bomb and well all the bomb stuff came before it hit the box office. He had to flee Ireland,

00:02:20.460 which was not particularly great. But following that, Stanley was at a bit of a crossroads. He was

00:02:29.580 in a bit of a dilemma because he had just had a very difficult run of films, especially with Barry

00:02:36.860 Lyndon not bringing any money in. That was a challenge for him, you know. He was... I find there's a bit of a

00:02:43.740 duality there. He is extremely confident in himself but Kubrick is also aware that he's not Spielberg

00:02:51.660 and he's not bringing in the box office smashes and that kind of haunts him. He's... I don't know if

00:02:57.660 you've seen any of the critical responses to him but there's a consistent thing in that the critics

00:03:04.060 don't get his films or almost none of them get his films and they come back to them a decade later and

00:03:09.420 say, actually, this is a masterpiece. Why did we slander it? Yeah, I've always found it strange

00:03:16.220 because there's so obviously something there in his films, even if you don't get it at first. I

00:03:21.660 remember watching, for example, 2001 A Space Odyssey at first and thinking, what on earth was all that?

00:03:26.780 There's obviously... you can sort of get the feeling of depth but you might not actually understand it.

00:03:34.940 But I think that also I think that film critics probably were... there was perhaps an incentive

00:03:43.660 for them to say these sorts of things beyond an objective reading of the art. Yeah, that's very

00:03:49.980 fair. Someone like Pauline Kael, I think, made a career for herself out of being excessively harsh. 1.00

00:03:57.580 You know, she was famous for deriding the sound of music as the sound of mucus. Just... she was needlessly 1.00

00:04:04.540 harsh and she hated Kubrick's films. A lot of them would do the thing of saying, well, Kubrick was

00:04:10.380 obviously trying to do this and he failed. What a bad filmmaker. And the answer would be more,

00:04:17.340 Stanley wasn't trying to do that. Well, a lot of people say this Stanley Kubrick film is about this.

00:04:26.060 And I'll probably catch myself out by saying, oh, I think the film's about such and such. But actually,

00:04:32.380 there might be a dominant theme in a film. However, I think that Kubrick, being the man that he was,

00:04:37.740 layered it with lots of other ideas. He wasn't content to just discuss one idea in isolation.

00:04:43.740 His films, part of the reason I enjoy them so much is because they're so rich with various ideas,

00:04:51.340 concepts and phenomena and things. Because he was very interested in the world. One of the things

00:05:01.020 for my research for this conversation, I found out is just how obsessively he tried to find out things

00:05:10.140 about the world and represent them in film. And this is, of course, reflected in his well-earned reputation

00:05:18.460 for numerous takes. But his obsessiveness towards his art and his perfectionism,

00:05:24.860 which I'm sure will come up quite a lot, is so evident. But I think it also pays off.

00:05:31.900 I'm, you know, I'm less sympathetic for the whining actors. And, you know, I like to look at the outcome

00:05:38.940 and say, actually, it shows that he cared. You have a Kubrickian outlook. He didn't like

00:05:45.020 actors either. They were very troublesome. They were the worst part of filmmaking to him.

00:05:50.300 Well, I see a bit of Kubrick in myself. You know, I too want a nice English country

00:05:55.100 estate where I can lock myself away. Lots of boxes of information and just work on a masterpiece

00:06:01.180 in private. Really emerge when I have to. You've given me about the best segue you could there.

00:06:07.100 I don't know if you intended to, but one of the things I was going to start with was we discussed

00:06:13.100 how when he moved to England, which was for the quick check. It was for Lolita in 62 or 61. And he

00:06:24.300 moved into a place called Abbotsmead. I was going to lead in with one of the unintended, highly

00:06:31.180 influential things that he did just after Barry Lyndon was he moved house to, well, where the Kubrick

00:06:38.940 family resides today, which is a place called Chillickbury. For Americans, that's spelt

00:06:45.500 Childwickbury, because we have to do these things to catch foreigners out, you know? 1.00

00:06:50.860 Yeah, that's why it's Worcestershire, by the way.

00:06:53.420 I was going to go for that example, yes. Yeah, so he moves to Chillickbury, which has a much,

00:07:01.820 it's much bigger, it's got far more room for him to work with. He was able to make this place,

00:07:09.980 which was actually fairly maltreated, underused, not in a great state. I wouldn't say dilapidated,

00:07:16.780 but it needed a lot of care. It wasn't being lived in when they bought it and he moved his whole family,

00:07:22.540 he and Christiane and their three daughters, Katerina, Vivian and Anya in, as well as his assistants.

00:07:31.180 And that might sound a bit odd, but Stanley was not very good at separating work and family life,

00:07:37.980 or rather he was so committed to his work that he didn't want the problems of going to a film studio

00:07:46.620 if he could avoid it. He wanted to do as much as he could when he needed to do it, which meant

00:07:53.500 having his research at home, having his editing suites at home, which was a practice he'd started

00:07:59.260 in Abbotsmead, where he'd got the massive Moviola editing decks in the converted stables. In Chillickbury,

00:08:07.100 he set up another editing suite. He converted the stables into storage for his massive,

00:08:12.060 ever-expanding archive you hinted at. Christiane had to fight to get a few of the rooms for her art,

00:08:21.180 although I get the sense of her as someone who is very confident and isn't ashamed to

00:08:26.460 tell Stanley, no, you can't have this room. Yeah, I got the impression that although Stanley was very

00:08:33.740 dedicated to his sort of art, he didn't let it necessarily consume him in terms of, you know,

00:08:41.260 his interpersonal relations. He wasn't necessarily a diva in his own home, although many actors and

00:08:47.260 actresses report him being so on set with some of the recordings being particularly insistent and

00:08:52.700 pushing them to their limits. But I found it quite interesting that, you know, one of Stanley's daughters

00:08:59.900 said, oh no, he was never like that with me. And so it sort of speaks of a certain duality that

00:09:07.340 he brings a very different attitude to his work than he brought to his personal life at home. And I think

00:09:14.780 sort of empathising with Kubrick here, that's part of the reason he liked his working from home style

00:09:20.700 approach, is that it kept him more grounded, perhaps. That's just my armchair psychologising.

00:09:29.740 Yeah, you can read a lot where he's portrayed as this absolute hermit. And it's fair to say there's

00:09:37.900 a certain amount of paranoia in him. But at the same time, I think he sees it as just good to have family

00:09:46.460 around and that he knows the attention his work needs. But if he's working at his house, he can

00:09:53.180 attend to his family, he can just drop in and out of things. And there's also a clear segregation.

00:09:58.460 This room, this area is for business, this room is for family. And I think with that he manages to

00:10:05.660 keep it separate. Although sometimes it did run over. There's an incident where the former clock tower

00:10:12.220 room is taken over for script drafting for Full Metal Jacket. And Christiane has to sort of very 0.98

00:10:19.260 tactfully, once people have been moved out, immediately fill it with art equipment to stop

00:10:24.140 it being taken again. But one of the maybe unintended aspects of moving into Chillicberry,

00:10:31.740 as well as getting the additional space, is that it gives Stanley a much greater amount of privacy,

00:10:37.820 particularly because Chillicberry is surrounded by hedges. And he actually takes the time to increase

00:10:46.860 the height and thickness of hedges. These big, thick hedges surrounding everything, while you could

00:10:53.900 almost get lost in them, you might say. I'm not being very subtle, but I just figured I would lay that

00:11:00.460 groundwork early. I believe that did have quite an impact on The Shining. But there's a fair old

00:11:09.660 while before he even knows that The Shining is going to be his next project. As I was saying,

00:11:16.380 he was kind of haunted by the fact that he didn't have... Maybe haunt is too strong. He was bothered by

00:11:21.500 the fact that he hadn't had a big box office hit. And I think consciously after this, especially with

00:11:29.900 the financial failure of Barry Lyndon, he is thinking, I need a hit. And weirdly enough, one of

00:11:37.180 the things he starts looking at is the sci-fi direction again. And he hits up a chap called Brian

00:11:43.980 Aldis to adapt a story called Super Toys Last All Summer Long. This is the film that he would never

00:11:51.020 actually get to make. It would eventually become AI, artificial, sorry, bungle that completely.

00:11:59.500 Artificial intelligence brought fully into making by Steven Spielberg after Stanley's death.

00:12:06.620 But this was one of the first places he went. It was very troubled. He was picking up with all this

00:12:12.140 over and over again. Can we try it this way? Can we adapt it that way? He couldn't really make it work.

00:12:17.900 I don't want to fully go into it here, because a lot of work carries on after Full Metal Jacket,

00:12:25.580 so I'll probably save that for the next part. But it's a direction he's trying. And when Star Wars

00:12:33.500 comes out in 1977, even though negotiations with Aldis have broken down, and broken down rather badly,

00:12:40.860 I would say. Kubrick sees Star Wars make a lot of money and says, Brian, can we try and do that sci-fi

00:12:49.340 story again? He really is concerned that he wants a big hit. I should say for continuity's sake,

00:12:58.380 one of the reasons I sort of described things breaking down unfairly is Kubrick, as I said every

00:13:07.660 time. We're not doing hagiography here. We're just trying to paint a complete portrait of the man.

00:13:12.940 Kubrick totally screwed Aldis. He wrote the court contract himself, and one of the clauses he wrote

00:13:21.100 in was that if Aldis were to leave the country for any reason, then he would void the contract. And

00:13:29.100 they had completely stopped working on Super Toys for a while. Stanley was actively working on other

00:13:34.860 projects. And so Aldis then went to a convention in America when he was invited. He then gets back

00:13:44.540 and finds Stanley's written him a letter saying, you've voided the contract, so you won't be paid.

00:13:50.780 That is a very slimy thing to do, really. Yes. Michael Hare, who was co-author of, or I should

00:14:00.540 say maybe co-writer for Full Metal Jacket, sort of notes this tendency as well, notes that Kubrick

00:14:05.740 tried to get him with that, with writing the contract, and said, he's almost disappointing,

00:14:12.060 like, Stanley, did you have to try? Come on. His book's quite short, but it's quite a

00:14:19.740 loving and interesting and more personal treatment of the man. You get a picture of his character,

00:14:24.860 because Stanley very much is a businessman. Ever since he's moved to England, he's really trying to

00:14:33.980 be as outside the studio system as he can be. And you'll probably recall from the troubles he had

00:14:42.380 with Spartacus and so on. He wanted to avoid working with Hollywood if he could.

00:14:48.300 It would continually give him problems. So he saw himself as having to be, I think,

00:14:55.020 quite canny in the business realm. Something else that gave him trouble in that area was

00:15:04.540 something that would maybe make any businessman shake in their boots was the election of a Labour

00:15:08.940 government. I thought I would cram this in. But yes, the election of the Wilson government was not

00:15:17.340 a good omen for Stanley.

00:15:20.460 Yes, of course, because around that time, the top band of tax was ridiculously high, wasn't it?

00:15:26.860 Yes. They were talking about a proposed wealth tax as well.

00:15:30.780 And he was, you know, the usually politically disengaged Kubrick actually started a little

00:15:39.180 campaign among US filmmakers who were in Britain to sort of write to the government and say, look, if you

00:15:46.380 raise the taxes, these are going to really hit us. It's going to hit the industry. We are going to leave.

00:15:51.100 There's going to be a huge exit of US filmmakers.

00:15:53.500 I think he actually changed in the draft exit to Exodus. Interesting word choice.

00:16:01.100 And many US filmmakers did actually leave, but Kubrick ended up staying.

00:16:07.740 Reasons we can speculate, but I think he did find himself, how can I say?

00:16:14.220 I don't think he ever integrated into Britain, but he did remain fond of the place.

00:16:19.260 So he was very comfortable. One thing I did notice is that a lot of his senior members of staff were

00:16:28.460 very traditionally English people. And I think he appreciated the way in which we conducted ourselves.

00:16:36.620 We sort of were a bit more standoffish perhaps, and then left him his space, which he appreciated.

00:16:43.420 Yes, certainly that sort of more reserved character really worked for him.

00:16:48.860 He may have hated our tea breaks, but so does every US director.

00:16:54.380 Yeah, I remember hearing an audio clip of him arguing about tea breaks.

00:17:00.380 Quite excessively, I thought, wow, this is really going on. No wonder you alienate people, Stanley.

00:17:06.860 But yes, this country was built on tea.

00:17:11.420 Absolutely. Yeah, so let's see. His letter writing campaign in panic about the Wilson government,

00:17:21.180 we've covered that. We still got him searching around what's he going to do, what's his next project

00:17:25.100 going to be. And I think something very interesting was that he considered doing a war movie and he was

00:17:33.340 looking at various things. He was looking at, could I adapt the Iliad as a war movie? He looked at some

00:17:38.380 World War II material and he'd considered doing a project with John Milius, director of Conan the

00:17:46.300 Barbarian, which I find absolutely fascinating. You wouldn't expect that crossover, would you necessarily?

00:17:51.820 No, no, not at all. That's fabulous. But I think one of the keys to explaining what he did next was that he

00:18:01.580 was given the draft copy, a galley draft of The Shining from Stephen King before it went out into general

00:18:10.780 print when it was still called The Shine and he got this in 1977. And I think in Stanley's brain there

00:18:18.700 was a sort of memory of 1973 and The Exorcist. Now he had been offered The Exorcist and he had turned it down

00:18:28.540 And that had gone and scooped up a whole load of Oscars, which Stanley had not managed. When he had won

00:18:36.540 an Oscar for his work, it was actually attributed to someone else. So that happened on Spartacus

00:18:42.620 because he'd taken over the role of the DP. And then unfortunately, because of union rules,

00:18:48.940 the credit was still on the guy who then ended up scooping that Academy Award. So kind of unfortunate.

00:18:54.700 So I think another example of unions causing problems. Oh, is there any end?

00:18:59.980 So I think that was in Stanley's mind a bit, seeing it as a way of, okay, I can do a horror movie.

00:19:07.820 It can be commercially successful and critically successful. And so I think that probably made him

00:19:15.580 quite interested in taking on The Shining. So this is an area that I don't really know much about,

00:19:22.460 but I don't know whether Stephen King had as much of a name for himself by that point. I don't,

00:19:27.660 that's a genuine question because it would strike me as a good move from Kubrick's end to

00:19:34.540 take a novel from a well-known writer and adapt it because then you've got two different draws to

00:19:40.380 that same movie of two sort of different forms of brand recognition, if you will.

00:19:46.300 Yeah. Well, it was early in King's career, certainly, and the adaptations had only started

00:19:54.540 rolling off. So the first one that really got attention and possibly the first one overall was

00:20:00.700 1976 Carry by Brian Palmer. And after that, they were just rushed out. So there was a bit of a feeding

00:20:07.980 frenzy. And King didn't actually have that many novels out at that point. Hence this one being snapped

00:20:13.980 up in its galley draft form. And Kubrick was quick to get on it, but I wouldn't say he was the juggernaut

00:20:21.420 that he would become. Okay. But he was still sort of an up and coming name, which would have been

00:20:28.620 probably enough for Kubrick, I think. Although he certainly didn't do a faithful adaptation of the novel.

00:20:39.020 No, no, he was commercially extremely canny. Just as you said, there was name recognition,

00:20:44.620 but there wasn't so much power. But also, we've already touched on Kubrick and his contracts.

00:20:51.660 He was a smart guy. This is kind of well-known, but Stephen King is not happy with the Kubrick

00:20:57.820 version of The Shining. We will cover this more, I'm sure. But he thought, okay, well, I can still shape

00:21:05.580 this. So he'd got it written that he was contractually allowed to provide the first draft

00:21:10.860 of the screenplay. And so he thinks, okay, I can shape this. I was like, that's great.

00:21:18.780 You can write your screenplay. Stanley doesn't have to use it. So walked into that one. We talked about

00:21:26.940 this before. Kubrick never writes anything fresh after, you know, killer's kiss. After that, it's

00:21:35.260 all adaptations. He is preferring someone to do the blueprint. And then he will adapt extremely freely,

00:21:44.940 almost hollow out. And in fact, there's a really good kind of visual metaphor for that in that when

00:21:50.380 he's adapting it, he and the co-writer, Diane Johnson, were literally just tearing the pages

00:21:57.500 out of the book and cutting it up and then sticking it into envelopes for, you know, this is this scene.

00:22:04.860 They really broke it down to the bare bones and moving parts and then built it up again. But just,

00:22:11.180 I like this image of them just cutting the book apart. If you go into the Stanley Kubrick archives book,

00:22:18.780 you can see quite a few of these annotated pages, which are quite fun to look at, I think.

00:22:23.420 There's also a good analogy in the film itself. I'm not sure if we're going to get onto this, but

00:22:30.220 the Torrences drive a Volkswagen Beetle, but a yellow one. And Stephen King, because he often wrote

00:22:37.260 himself into his books, had a red Volkswagen Beetle, which we see crushed under a lorry. And I think that's

00:22:47.900 an excellent metaphor for the original screenplay and book that Stephen King wrote. It was sort of

00:22:57.740 a subtle middle finger that only he would be able to pick up on, I think.

00:23:01.580 Would Stanley go out of his way to do that 100%?

00:23:04.540 Yes.

00:23:05.420 100% he would. I love that. You know, talk about writing yourself in. I do find it quite amazing

00:23:14.140 that Stanley, he would struggle to know what to adapt. He would look around for ages until he

00:23:22.300 found something that had a good core that he could relate to, even if it was quite buried in the story.

00:23:29.740 But I do find it really interesting that after really struggling to know what to do,

00:23:36.060 he picks up The Shining, which is all about this guy isolated away in a big house with his family,

00:23:45.020 struggling to write, you know. Funnily enough, the table that was in the grand lobby

00:23:50.700 in the Overlook Hotel set is now in Chillicbury itself, used by Christiane.

00:23:59.500 Well, there we go.

00:24:00.300 It's a fantastic little detail. So I pulled that straight from this new biography that's out

00:24:06.060 just this year with a very stern looking Kubrick on it.

00:24:10.380 Yeah, he looks like he's scowling into the distance there.

00:24:15.340 Yeah, like some kind of stern academic, like you don't know whether he's going to lecture you on

00:24:20.700 Evola or 80s TV rodent mascots. It could be anything, but it's a striking image of him.

00:24:26.060 But yeah, I find that maybe that's something he could relate to. But I don't know, did you want to

00:24:36.540 maybe talk about some of those tensions with Stephen King? Because I find that quite fun territory.

00:24:43.500 Well, I don't know too much about it other than I think that from what I can decipher,

00:24:53.980 Kubrick basically used Stephen King and Stephen King left with a sour taste in his mouth, even though

00:25:03.020 the film that comes out of it is excellent and a great bit of promotional material for his book,

00:25:10.300 because it's also different. One of the problems for an author, I think, when their book is being

00:25:16.620 adapted into film is it removes an incentive to read it. But if the film is very different,

00:25:22.780 but dealing in similar themes to the book, it can actually act as an advert. So in many ways,

00:25:27.580 Kubrick had done him a massive favour, but just in a way in which seemed insulting to Stephen King,

00:25:35.740 I think. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's a fair take on it. Certainly. And

00:25:43.740 I wouldn't say he was sort of 100% disparaging of the film. But when he talked about it, he would say it's,

00:25:51.340 you tend to say it's sort of like maddeningly perfect or a maddening film. Generally, you would say that

00:26:00.940 it's a great film, but it's just not his. It's made wrong. It's infuriating. So there'd be sort of

00:26:05.820 admiration mixed in with consternation. Well, I think it was sort of in the uncanny valley between

00:26:13.100 what King wrote and what Kubrick adapted. It was sort of in that sort of zone. I'm sort of putting

00:26:23.020 myself in King's shoes here, his cocaine filled shoes. And it's sort of close enough to being an

00:26:31.740 excellent adaptation of his film that it's frustrating. But he's also glad that the film

00:26:36.860 is good and not insulting to him because it's linked to him. I think that would be how I would

00:26:43.580 feel in King's position, perhaps. Yeah. He did end up having to sign a non-disparagement clause

00:26:51.820 about the Kubrick film in order to get the rights back to make his own version in 1997,

00:26:57.740 about which, let's just say, it's more faithful to the books. But I mean, if you want the real cherry

00:27:06.860 on the cake, what really sat the man in the chair in the hotel room, you know the chair.

00:27:13.100 When Warner Brothers went and adapted King's sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep,

00:27:18.780 I mean, can you picture the guy's face? Imagine being in the meeting and they say,

00:27:25.100 Stephen, we're adapting your novel, but we are going to have to make it follow Kubrick's The Shining.

00:27:31.260 So we're going to change your novel so it follows that movie, you know, the one you hate.

00:27:37.420 It is wonderful. I haven't actually seen the follow up, but I was going to watch it after

00:27:43.740 this, this evening. Because I didn't want to actually, I deliberately haven't watched it

00:27:49.660 in preparation for this because I didn't want it to taint my view on the original film,

00:27:57.100 as it often could. Because it does, from what I've read, seek to provide answers to some of the

00:28:03.420 questions in The Shining, which I don't think actually needs them. I didn't go away from The

00:28:07.900 Shining saying, I wish this had been answered. But I'm sure we'll get onto that in due time.

00:28:14.140 Yeah. No, that's fair. I will be interested in what you thought of Doctor Sleep. I'm going to have

00:28:18.540 to ask you after you, we'll talk after you've watched it. Sure.

00:28:23.420 Yeah. So in terms of, I don't know, maybe if we pull back to sort of

00:28:30.780 why it enraged Stephen King so much, maybe one aspect I thought about is,

00:28:36.140 I sort of see it as a total conflict of visions where, because of Kubrick's personality,

00:28:41.980 how can I say? Essentially, the horror of The Shining in Kubrick's version is a sort of intrinsic

00:28:51.420 view, a Jungian view, in that the horror, the threat is within the person, whereas,

00:29:00.780 and maybe inherent to the person. So there's that Jungian shadow side, the part of you that can

00:29:06.460 always be violent, be oppressive. That's part of the reason that I use it as the sort of premier

00:29:13.180 example of a psychological horror. Because in many ways, the scary aspects of The Shining

00:29:21.900 are sort of aspects of human psychology.

00:29:24.940 Totally. But that's probably my very biased lens looking at it. But there's not necessarily

00:29:34.780 a big scary monster that's chasing people around the house like Scooby Doo.

00:29:38.220 No.

00:29:38.940 It's a very different approach.

00:29:40.940 There's no hedge animals coming alive and stalking people or haunted fire hose.

00:29:47.420 King's version is that. It's extrinsic horror. It's external. Or to put it the other way, basically,

00:29:57.180 if Jack hadn't got the job, if Arthur O'Malley had ended up in the hotel, then he'd have gone crazy too, 0.79

00:30:07.180 because it's an evil hotel that makes you crazy. In King's view, that's the idea of it. He wrote sort of,

00:30:14.860 Kubrick just doesn't get how evil the hotel is. He just can't get it. Stupid Stan Lee.

00:30:20.620 The idea of it's a really evil hotel. And it's like, I don't know. I think we can get the idea. 1.00

00:30:28.540 I think it's a less interesting premise, really, that if it's something external, it's less scary,

00:30:37.580 because something external, if you're safe, you're going to remain safe in all likelihood.

00:30:45.580 Whereas if it's internal, if it's in your own head, then it can follow you around everywhere.

00:30:50.460 And that's one thing that I think a lot of horror films have picked up on.

00:30:55.980 That people move from the house, because that's the obvious thing to do if you live in a haunted house.

00:31:01.100 It's not to live there.

00:31:01.900 But then they follow them as well. And then all of a sudden, the horror is being specific to the person and the people involved.

00:31:12.940 While if you're in those characters' shoes, all of a sudden, it's more scary because it's inescapable.

00:31:18.460 And if you're dealing with psychology and the human condition, well, there's no way of escaping that.

00:31:24.380 And so it makes perfect sense that you frame it in that way.

00:31:27.660 Yeah, completely. If you can just kill the monster, if you can just burn the hotel down and then it's a happy ending, you relax. 0.99

00:31:37.260 Whereas if the monster stalking you or the curse upon you can't be easily removed, has to be, it is doubtful. 0.99

00:31:47.580 You're never sure if it's gone or not.

00:31:49.740 You don't relax. It's more effective horror. It's deeper horror.

00:31:53.820 And it's talking about something that feels a lot more real.

00:31:56.460 I was about to say exactly that, that if you make the horror film feel realistic,

00:32:03.900 it makes it all the more scary because it makes it feasible.

00:32:06.860 And then we empathise with the people involved more because there's less suspending of disbelief.

00:32:16.060 Hmm. And that is very important in a horror film.

00:32:19.980 When you have, you know, some of my, you know, favourites, the things like The Leprechaun, for example.

00:32:27.660 Yes. There's a massive need to suspend disbelief.

00:32:31.500 Although I think it's sort of a bit on the nose, they know what they're doing.

00:32:36.140 But part of the reason you have these horror films that are so bad, they're good, is that they haven't done this properly.

00:32:42.620 And I think if you want to take a film seriously and see it as a piece of art outside of comedy, obviously,

00:32:51.980 that is how you would want to go about it.

00:32:53.660 And I think that that's why you get so many hit and miss horror films.

00:32:57.580 It's the ones that learn this lesson or not.

00:33:01.660 Yeah, it's a fair point.

00:33:03.260 A lot of horror films aren't aiming to actually horrify you as well.

00:33:07.100 They might go for a quick, get a quick jump out of you, like a roller coaster.

00:33:12.060 But they're not really aiming to unsettle you and keep you awake at night, are they?

00:33:16.300 Yeah, well...

00:33:16.620 Like things like Leprechaun, Friday the 13th, the conscious intention behind them is a lot more

00:33:23.900 sort of commercial and quick.

00:33:25.100 Whereas something like The Shining is aiming to be unsettling, to leave you coming back for more,

00:33:31.980 leaving you trying to work out what's going on.

00:33:33.900 It also doesn't watch like you're watching something that has been produced with the

00:33:39.900 sole intention of making money in the cinema.

00:33:43.980 And I think that some horror films do suffer that sort of, particularly in the modern day,

00:33:51.260 very formulaic.

00:33:52.380 They know what works.

00:33:54.220 They've seen which films have been a hit and just emulate the stuff that works,

00:33:58.940 which, you know, isn't a terrible philosophy, but it's not particularly creative or artistic

00:34:06.380 or interesting if you like film.

00:34:09.580 Yeah, yeah.

00:34:10.300 I mean, gosh, I feel the need to come to the defense of my beloved genre.

00:34:15.500 But yeah, there's a lot of...

00:34:16.860 I mean, I like horror films.

00:34:18.860 A lot of churned out...

00:34:19.100 Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that is churned out.

00:34:20.860 I feel a lot of directors and artists in their genre sort of, how can I say, have to sort of

00:34:26.460 smuggle the art in.

00:34:29.900 A lot of Hammer stuff is like that.

00:34:32.060 Like they were run on this brutal production schedule with almost no budget.

00:34:36.060 And still people try to find a way to smuggle something interesting in.

00:34:42.620 You know, unlike, well, unlike The Shining, which is one of the big overruns of production.

00:34:49.340 That's another thing we saw as a sort of continuity for Kubrick here is

00:34:53.500 we get our really long overrunning production happening here.

00:34:57.660 Very notably on this one, burning the set down did not help.

00:35:01.500 No, I remember reading about this.

00:35:03.820 Yeah.

00:35:05.100 People saying that the production itself was cursed and things like that.

00:35:08.540 Yeah, I mean, it's only looking into how it was made that...

00:35:15.340 It really surprised me that it wasn't on location.

00:35:19.100 In fact, almost nothing is on location there. Kubrick did not go out to America.

00:35:24.140 He had Leon Vitale and a couple of other assistants, their names escape me, I'm afraid,

00:35:29.500 go out there scouting, because by this point Kubrick really didn't want to leave Chillicbury.

00:35:37.340 You get a different impression from different biographies.

00:35:39.980 So the John Baxter has him portrayed as a lot more...

00:35:46.300 A lot more nervous, a lot more paranoid.

00:35:48.780 Whereas this, the Culker and Abrams really put the move on the decision onto his family,

00:35:55.740 that they weren't keen for him to go. I could go either way on it myself, to be honest.

00:36:02.700 I think also, if you're a man like Kubrick, who values precision, perfection and information,

00:36:12.700 he kind of just wanted to be where he'd centralised all of the information.

00:36:16.860 You know, he wasn't making films in the internet age where he could Google it.

00:36:21.820 He had files full of stuff, and I think that he would have justified it by saying,

00:36:26.860 well, the quality is contingent on me having access to the resources

00:36:31.260 that ensure that it's a quality film, because I portray my vision as accurately as I possibly can.

00:36:37.500 Yeah. And he'd probably already gotten... I get the feeling he'd already gotten used to

00:36:44.220 outsourcing work at that point, because he was considering so much. So why go out to Colorado?

00:36:50.700 Why go all over the United States when I've got a trusted assistant who can do this?

00:36:57.660 Also, if you're thinking like a businessman as well, it's much more efficient with your time.

00:37:03.100 If you send someone else out running errands for you effectively, then you can focus on

00:37:08.300 other things that might be more important in the grand scheme of things.

00:37:12.540 Yeah, absolutely. I'd maybe like to talk about one of those assistants, if that's okay.

00:37:18.700 Of course, yeah.

00:37:20.220 So we talked about... What's his name? I've got it. Andrew Birkin was our sort of wunderkind

00:37:25.500 last time in part three. We'd sort of followed him coming to the fore in 2001 by doing some scouting

00:37:36.620 that had really gotten Kubrick's attention.

00:37:39.900 Was he the person who scouted the locations in the beginning?

00:37:45.100 Yeah, the deserts for the ape shoots. Yeah, that was him. 0.88

00:37:47.820 Because I always had my suspicions that it could have all been done in a studio or something,

00:37:53.420 knowing Kubrick. I was thinking, would he actually go out to a desert or was this all done in the

00:37:57.820 studio? Because I thought tapirs in the desert, you know, they're jungle animals, but still.

00:38:02.780 It would have been easier, but you know, this is a guy who flew in trees specifically from

00:38:07.180 safari parks. But anyway, yeah, Birkin was on the scene for a couple of movies and then moved out,

00:38:13.820 and he had replaced a chap called Anthony Fruin, who took a break after 2001 as well.

00:38:19.580 And Kubrick is joined by someone who had become a hugely important figure in his life, Leon Vitale.

00:38:28.140 Now in Barry Lyndon, which I think you haven't seen yet.

00:38:31.580 But no, I haven't. I know a little bit about it.

00:38:34.300 Oh, I really want your take on it. I'm really interested.

00:38:39.180 I don't know whether it will infuriate you or not.

00:38:41.740 Well, I'm a massive Kubrick fan, so I imagine I'll be able to get what he's going for.

00:38:48.220 Yeah.

00:38:51.100 An underappreciated gem by many people, although the viewing time is absolutely punishing.

00:38:56.780 But it's about three hours long, isn't it?

00:38:59.180 A bit more than that, yeah.

00:39:00.300 Is it really?

00:39:00.860 Yeah. Now, Vitale is in there as a young actor. He's playing the young Lord Bullingdon,

00:39:08.140 who sort of gets the cuckoo in the nest treatment from our title character, Barry Lyndon.

00:39:15.660 He's young at that time and does a pretty good job. And Kubrick sees him helping with the shoot

00:39:22.300 when there's another child actor who's struggling, who's freaking out a bit.

00:39:25.900 Vitale is really good at talking to this kid, calming him down.

00:39:32.540 And afterwards, Kubrick says, OK, well, I need someone who can find me a child actor for Danny.

00:39:39.900 And from that, he asks Vitale to do this. And Vitale is inspired by it. He gives up acting,

00:39:47.260 basically, and then decides to just become Kubrick's assistant, starting with this role of going out

00:39:53.820 and scouting for a Danny. And he would carry on working with Kubrick long past his death. In fact,

00:40:03.820 he'd be interesting enough to get his own film made about him, which is Film Worker, if anyone wants

00:40:09.180 to see a bit more of him. But he's a really interesting guy. He's got a very unusual look.

00:40:15.260 He'd wear a bandana most of the time. And picturing him, he's got this long hair, sort of rough stubble,

00:40:22.540 and this guy working with a very straight-laced Kubrick. I love that picture.

00:40:30.060 But Vitale goes out to do scoutings very well. He auditions about 5,000 children for the role of Danny.

00:40:37.180 That's quite a lot.

00:40:39.180 Yeah. Although Hollywood executives are very good at finding... Actually, I'm not going to continue that.

00:40:47.100 Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. He sends a few hundred videotapes back to Kubrick and saying,

00:40:55.500 you might like these kids. And from them, they get five and a half year old Danny Lloyd,

00:41:00.140 who's never acted before, and is able to come aboard as Danny Torrance.

00:41:05.340 Well, he didn't have to change his first name. That's already a good start.

00:41:09.180 It's weird how that happens, isn't it? You've got Danny Lloyd playing Danny Torrance. Jack Nicholson

00:41:15.660 plays Jack Torrance. So it's a little weird. And yeah, after doing that, Vitale helps with the

00:41:23.740 scouting of hotels. Kubrick also sent one of his daughter's boyfriends abroad to do that as well.

00:41:31.260 Well, get away from her. Go and look at hotels. A few hundred of them.

00:41:36.220 Sounds like a good gig, going from hotel to hotel.

00:41:39.580 It's not bad. He wasn't allowed to take the daughter with him, I gather.

00:41:43.420 Oh dear.

00:41:44.060 Canny Kubrick.

00:41:45.100 Oh, that's how he operates though, isn't it?

00:41:47.660 Yeah. So, Vitale stays with the production after that, and then will stay on feature productions

00:41:52.940 and sort of effectively take up a role with the Kubrick archive. Vitale passed away in 2002,

00:42:01.740 still assisting with the screenings and transfers of Kubrick films. He's got these really striking

00:42:08.860 blue eyes. It's like he's had the spice from Arrakis, you know?

00:42:13.260 Yes, I know the one, yeah.

00:42:14.380 Yeah. Yeah, so they've gone and done the scouting. That's all done. Kubrick stays

00:42:19.900 in England and has everything built at Elstree Studios.

00:42:27.980 So, the huge exterior of the hotel, which to me looks absolutely lifelike. I would have just

00:42:33.260 thought it was location. No, that's all a set. Some of the aerial shots though make it look so

00:42:40.300 convincing. Well, yes, the aerial shots are real. They're done by the second unit, but they also

00:42:46.620 give us a clue to one of the really interesting theories about The Shining.

00:42:53.820 And I'm going to try and focus on stuff that I haven't talked about already. So, on my own channel,

00:43:01.180 I've got an audio commentary for the whole US version of the film, so the two hour 35 minute version.

00:43:09.180 So, I'm going to try and bring in stuff that I haven't talked about on that, but you can't go

00:43:13.820 without mentioning the fact that the external aerial shots of the hotel are impossible to match with the

00:43:24.540 sets. Of course. I get the impression that this was deliberate, or at least that's what people

00:43:31.020 say about it. Yes. This book says we're paranoid tinfoil hat wearers.

00:43:37.900 Okay. I don't go with that. I think a film about someone doubting their sanity, about different

00:43:46.460 versions of events. I think, to me, it's very clear that the continuity errors in it are deliberate

00:43:56.620 to mess with you. Just as the set, which is designed to be physically impossible, is designed to confuse

00:44:04.140 you and get you lost so you don't know where you are in the hotel, how things join up. When a maze is so

00:44:12.460 integral to the plot, I think it's deliberate. It's very obvious that the hotel is a maze. The maze is

00:44:21.100 a symbolic representation of the, I guess, uncertain sanity status of our protagonists.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 28, 2024

PREVIEW： The Career of Stanley Kubrick： Part IV

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