The Rewatchables - ‘The Shining’ With Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: October 31, 2019

All work and no play makes Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan dull boys as they rewatch Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror classic, ‘The Shining,’ starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With Halloween around the corner, it's the time of year I like to re-watch my favorite horror movies. That's actually true. I've got to remember to buy some popcorn. Hey, Google, add popcorn to my shopping list. Okay, I added popcorn. The Google Assistant is ready to help you get more done with just your voice in the car at home, and everywhere you take your phone, a little help, hands-free, just say, hey, Google, to get started. And now, the re-watchables.

Diddy? Denny boy! Did he! The Shining. A masterpiece of modern horror. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duval. Rated R.

Opens Friday, June 13. Check newspapers for local listings. All right. Well, it's almost the 40-year anniversary of the movie that my father never should have taken me to when I was 10. Oh, my God. Are you serious? Yeah, it was a bad job by him.

It's a bad job. Can I tell you something? We often make you go out on this island by yourself of what you're showing your kids and maybe what you saw it too young of an age. Yeah. Got to say, I think this might have been one of the first five naked female bodies I ever saw was the old lady in the shining. The old lady in the shining. Well, the ladies in the shining. The ladies.

You were more turned on by the old lady. The decomposing back really got you. Yeah. Well, I thought you were going to say that this explains why Bill keeps showing his kids Halloween at the age of seven because you were taken to this movie of 10 years old. Well, the dirty secret the shining is there's only a couple actually scarring

scenes for a kid. That's incorrect. If you can... Well, it's the mood of being scary, but it's not actually scary. So you can actually finagle this so that they don't actually see the bad parts. But going backwards to the summer of 1980, which was a great summer,

this ad started running and you can see it on YouTube. They actually have the TV ads that ran. And I didn't know what it was, but it starts with Nicholson, like, peering up after he's after he kills Scatman Crothers. That's the start of the ad. It was just this random TV commercial. Come on. And then he was like limping through the snow right before when he's chasing down Danny in the maze. And it was just the scariest half eye and Shelley Duvall's in the bathroom screaming. It was the scariest 30 second ad. And I would watch TV afraid the ad was going to come on.

And I would see him. I'd be like, oh, God, there he is. So by the time this actually came out, it was just built of something else. I didn't even know it had a great TV because it has one of the all-time trailers. You know, the trailer is just the voice over the blood pouring out of the elevator. And that's just the whole trailer. That's the only thing they showed you in the original first look at it. And it's just the shining. Also one of the great posters.

Truly. Yeah, one of the awesome. We're going to make rewatchable's history here. I'm going to show you guys the trailer. We can run this on the Eats. That fucking scared me right there. Look at Nicholson. How was this on television?

And what would they run this during? Like, what were you watching TV to watch? It'd be like during like a baseball game. Look at this. How is that something I wanted to see when I was 10? I was so scared. But on the other hand, it's exactly what you want to see when you're 10. Yeah, it feels so, like, wrong and illicit

and something that you have to like beg your parents to take you to. So when you guys were, you guys are a little younger than me, the movie was already established by the time you first saw it. Yes. It was like, oh, I am now old enough to see The Shining. Do you remember the first time you saw it? I don't remember the first time I saw it. My parents were big Stephen King novel readers.

And so I probably was aware of the book first. I remember there was a cupboard above my parents' bedroom, and they put all their novels in there, their books that they had read. And there were these, like, heavily leafed through copies of It and the stand. And I remember this book was one of them. And I remember never reading it, but being, like, sort of excited but terrified of that cupboard

because it held like genuine terror. But the movie, probably not until I was a teenager, I would guess. I only knew Nicholson from this movie. What did you know him from initially? Well, I mean, because of where my dad worked, I was aware of him probably for weird 80s stuff like Pritzies Honor. You know, like when I was growing up and my dad would be like, I'm going to go cover this movie coming out.

I think really I became aware of him at Batman. I was just going to say, the Joker is probably the first time I saw him. But I think I understood that there was this big movie star named Jack Nicholson. And I may have seen some stuff with him, but this is one of those really illicit VHS rentals for me, like when you were kind of like, you took a couple laps around that shelf before you finally picked it up

and tried to get away with renting it by yourself. And I can't remember how I got away with it, but I watched it way too young. I only knew him from this movie because I was 10 when it came out. And then there were no other Nicholson movies I really would have seen up to that point. Not checking out the last detail.

No, Chinatown. I know the guy had seen that stuff. So the 84 finals, which I was going to with my dad, Nicholson flew in for some of the Laker games and the Boston fans were going fucking bonkers because he was right in the middle, he was giving people the choke sign, all that stuff.

And I'm like 14, I'm like, is that the fucking dude from the Shining? I was so confused. I didn't know enough about him. That's the Shining guy telling us. That's incredible. And then he eventually became, obviously, Nicholson. But this was a weird point of his career

where you have, you know, He has Chinatown and one floor over the cuckoo's nest in back-to-back years, which is arguably the most powerful one-two ever. In movie history, it's in play. It's in the conversation. And then it gets a little weird for him. The Missouri breaks in 76, last tycoon in 76, going south in 78, the Shining 80, postman always rings twice 81, Reds, the border 82.

The caveat would be there was a lot of partying going on in Hollywood in that 77-83, so it's hard to really understand any decision that was made back then. He seems like the Keith Richards of... He clearly was having a good time, though. Yeah. During this period. I mean, frankly, it seems like all his life he's been having a good time, which is part of what makes him such a fun movie star.

After The Shining, he goes into full... Like, he is actually the great Dion Waders actor of the 80s because he shows up in movies for about 15 to 20 minutes and owns them. His performance in Reds is fucking sick. Broadcast news, terms of endearment. Right. He's playing third, fourth leads. And you're just like, well, you just just...

destroyed like everybody else in this movie in like five minutes. Maybe because of what you're talking about, Bill, where he has those movies in the 70s culminating in one flow of the cuckoo's nest, Chinatown, and then The Shining, where you're like, all right, no one's ever going to be bigger or better than this, so I can kind of pick my spots, which is interesting. It's kind of like what Vince Carter's been doing. Right.

Well, I mean, this movie was not critically well received. His performance wasn't that well received. He wasn't even nominated for Best Actor, which seems crazy. Now we'll get to that category later. It was a movie that seemed to build. And I think, you know, we're talking about the rewatchables here. This was a really weirdly rewatchable movie. It's so different and it's so intense and it's so well done that I think the repeated cable viewings.

I've seen this movie enough times over my life that when I watched the unedited when he's screaming at Wendy, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to bash your fucking brains in. I know the parts when they had to dub it out and use like. you know, either silence it or dub some other word in because that was what was on TV for 20 years. I think that, you know, it's a good point. We're talking a little bit about like what was going on with Nicholson leading up to this. But this movie is taken on. It's almost like the JFK assassination of movies. It's like it happened. And now there's been like decades of scholarship and conspiracy theories about what it's about.

And you can just rewatch it entirely looking for the Native American stuff. You can rewatch it entirely looking for the imagery within the rugs and stuff like that. and trying to break down the numerology. Or you can just watch it just to have fun and watch it as like a ghost story, you know? Wouldn't you say that the internet has helped this movie as much as just a vanity movie? Yeah, but it's a precursor for a lot of the things

that people have since, you know, like, there's no Twin Peaks without The Shining, right? Like, there's no kind of like where you're obsessively trying to understand the sort of symbology of a movie. The thing is, I've always thought, I think it's interesting in that documentary Room 237 is really interesting and what people project onto movies, I think, is a fascinating part of doing.

It says more about them than the movie. That's it. That's it. And this movie, I think, is really not complicated at all. Like, it's about a few things. It's about writers' block. It's about guys who don't know how to be in a family and who hate their wives. It's about parenthood, fatherhood, and being a son. And it's about, like, alcoholism. And it's just not a super complicated book, and it's not a super complicated movie. But it's so creepy.

And there's so much impending dread the whole time you're watching it that you feel like you have to almost investigate. I think that... Investigate what else is there. Because we know what we know about Kubrick's process and the way in which there's nothing on screen that he didn't want to be there and he would do 125 takes of something because he wanted it a certain way.

You have to then make the assumption that like, yeah, it is just exactly what you're talking about. But I think that a lot of people, like, have... I think that there's just like a lot more going on underneath of it. Like, dude's getting blown by another dude in a bear costume. What's your Freudian interpretation of that? I don't know, but I mean, you got a mask on. How are you performing the blowjob?

I don't know. Do we know it was a blow job? We don't. Maybe he was just like banging the guys growing. Yeah, exactly. So the internet really pushed this movie to another level because even when I was in college in the late 80s, early 90s, if we had all been hanging out having a few midnight talking about movies and the shining

came up and somebody was like, this movie. actually about genocide and the Indians. Everyone would have been like what are you talking about, dude? Don't you think you would have taken a bong rip and been like tell me about it? I don't know. I just would have been like... You would have been like party fell? One took over the line?

We just didn't really talk that way about movies. I didn't feel like until the internet. The internet really started even we talked about on Tarantino when he had that cameo and sleep with me when he had the theory about how Top Gun was about a gay fighting army. or gay fighting Navy.

And it was like, my God, I never thought about it. There was a lot of moments like that. And by the end of the 90s, I felt like the shining was really in the vortex of one of the first movies people were like, hey, let's actually look at this a different way. I think that makes sense. I think because visually there's a lot of patterns. There's a lot of things that are unanswered.

It's not really, it's not a logical movie. And so when movies aren't logical, people go hunting for the solution. Yeah, two plus two does not equal four in this movie. Exactly. And all the gradey stuff is like people are still sort of trying to be like, well, how good, is it too? mean, yeah. I know we're going to talk about this later, but I kind of buy the Indian thing a little bit. There's a lot of clues laid out.

Even like with some of the dialogue and the dialogue choices and the, you know, the bartender, Steve and Lloyd that we're going to talk about later. But I don't think it does seem like he's trying to hit that home. But it's also in King, though, right? Because it's in a lot of King stuff. And it's also not, to me, that doesn't seem very complicated. Like there's a scene in which. The man who runs the hotel explains to Jack that they say that this was built on an Indian burial ground. And immediately when he says that, you're supposed to infer that that is obviously like the unholy act of colonizers coming and killing people and then building this edifice to wealth and power.

So it's not like, you know, the patterns in the carpet, you could be, you could, you know, do some hairbrain scheme about what that means. Right. But it's just in the text literally of just like, this is about how Native Americans were murdered in this country. Like, it's not super complicated. But then I think there's also, like, you know, like there's the cans and the pantry with the chiefs. It's like, he never leaves it alone. No, no, no. It's not just like a setup for a spooky story.

But I feel comfortable just believing that that was part of his intention. Sure. You know, that he just wanted to make that a part of the story. I think it was part of his... Is called 237 because it's 237,000 miles to the moon, and he faked the moon landing? Well, he... There's a reason why it's 237. Danny is wearing the Apollo Lovit shirt.

The question... Do you want me to tell you why it's 237? Because it's 217 in the book. Yeah, yeah, they had to flip it because of the hotel. Yeah, sure. No, you're saying moon landing? Whatever you think, Sheepel. That's what they want, you think.

You should do crackpot, Chris, this whole pod. It's a coincidence that when Danny gets roughed up by the lady in 237, his Apollo 11 shirt is all torn up. Yeah, shredded. My guess is that he was fascinated by the Indian part of this. but also want to throw some other red herrings for some other things in there. Because that's what he does.

So do you like that we've gotten to that place with the internet and movies? Yeah, I think this movie, specifically from a rewatchability standpoint, with all the theories over the years, it is completely reinvented the movie. And you watch that scene when he gets, what is it called, the refrigerator?

What is that giant thing? He gets locked into the storage locker. And I've watched that scene a million times and not until I saw the documentary when they laid out why those things were placed and then there's that picture of Kubrick moving the things around

so it seems disheveled. I'm like, oh, shit, what does this mean? Yeah. And also it really does seem like he was, you know, the word genius gets thrown around, but he really does seem like he was a legitimate genius who had something in his head

that was completely meticulously spelled out that only he could see. And he also knew how to execute it. So that he saw a way of seeing the world that he was actually able to put up on screen, which is, what, 10 people could do that in the history of film. But what's interesting is he didn't have confidence in this movie because when it wasn't received all in America, he kind of panicked.

Like he did a cut. He took out 21 minutes. There's been three different director cuts, I think, of this movie. And I think he seemed genuinely surprised and wounded that this movie didn't do well here. And he took some shit for it. And he recedes. I mean, it's years before he makes another movie.

Like, there's a long time. Full metal jacket. Full metal jacket is eight years later, I think. I mean, it's a long time that goes by. And he obviously is really meticulous and takes his time on everything. But it is kind of shocking that it wasn't deemed like in maybe not an out-in-out masterpiece. And I think it was not helped by the fact that Stephen King disowned it instantaneously. I want to talk about that.

But yeah, I mean, I think the other thing, too, Chris, about what you're saying was how he was able to do it was he was able to convince hundreds of people to execute his vision. Yeah. There was this great movie that came out last year called Filmworker. I don't know if you guys saw it. It's about this guy named Leon Vitale. to his Kubrick's like right-hand guy. The whole movie is just about him and why he turned his whole life over to Kubrick.

And he's a person who would do anything for him. He plays one of the druid guys and eyes wide shut, but he also was like Danny's life coach throughout the whole filming of The Shining. And he must have just had this intellectual power over people where he could convince them, like, you have to help me make this. There's a really cool moment happening right around now,

right around this time when The Shining gets made. I mean, obviously Kubrick is kind of unique among most modern filmmakers in terms of the leeway he had. He shot in a specific way and had a certain crew so he was able to undercut some of the strictures that were placed in America.

I think that's why he shot a lot of his stuff in London, right? So they didn't have to deal with some of the same rules that American filmmakers did. But if you look at this, and I believe, Blade Runner's right around this time, right?

It's two years later. Two years later. You get like these very artistically minded directors doing somewhat genres. stuff and kind of having this weird moment after Star Wars where we're like, okay, well, like, we're messing around, but it's also like a huge like artistic statement. And you get really, truly bizarre, weird, awesome movies like this, like, like, Blade Runner and to some extent, like, Dune, you know, like where, where people are like allowed to kind of go

off and make these really bizarre versions of what should be blockbuster material. It's also the tail end of the golden age of horror, of 70s horror. You know, it's after the X. It's after Rosemary's baby. After Alien, right? It's right around the same time. Yeah, it's Alien 79. He's probably shooting it well,

because he shot it for so long. For years, yeah. But, I mean, all those movies took all of that artistic, tour-driven stuff and put them in, like, blockbusters. You know, all those movies, like The Exorcist was a straight-up blockbuster.

This is one of the great movie years of all time. It never gets mentioned. I'm just going to read some movies from this year. And it goes back to Chris's point about someone reinventing a genre movie, Like, Raging Bull is the same thing. That's a quote-unquote sports movie, but it's not.

It's something else. So just in 1980, Empire Strikes Back, 9 to 5, stir crazy, airplane, any which way you can, which was the sequel to every which way but loose. And it's hard to explain how that movie made like $200 billion. It's so funny that they were like, let's make a sequel to that. Private Benjamin and Coal Miner's Daughter, where you had these female heroes that were just not commonplace in a movie. Blues Brothers, an expensive disaster. Ordinary People, which ended up being the Oscar winner, which if you look back now, that wouldn't be the one you probably think.

It's a good movie. It's a good move in there. It's a good. That's what people want to make is like, I just want to make my ordinary. It's really good. The Shining, Urban Cowboy, Popeye, Robert Altman's in this year with like the biggest bomb he's had. Caddyshack, Friday of 13th,

Dressed to Kill. Elephant Man, Raging Bull. American Gigolo. Very cokeyer. My bodyguard fame, cruising without Pacino. Very cokeyer. Yeah, coming up on the 203 watchables.

And a whole bunch of other ones. But my point is, I think cocaine was becoming a real factor, starting around 77, 78, and there were real benefits the first couple years. And then it went wrong. And I think the movies reflect that as you get to like 82, 83.

It just, they're just like, whoa, why'd they make that? Ooh, why'd that guy do that? But in 80, there were still the good benefits of cocaine where you're just up all night, coming up with crazy ideas, writing scripts. Caddyshack is basically just fueled by cocaine. I mean, they were filming scenes as they're making the movie

that they're just adding two hours before where they're going, hey, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray aren't in a scene. We should come up with one. What if he's playing night golf? And they just start filming it. And that was what this era was. It's one of those things, though, timing-wise.

It's after Star Wars, but it's before the hype. hyper-cokey 80s, like the mid-80s. Yeah. So you've got this moment where... Like the Brockheimer-Simson. Exactly, yeah. But so all the movie studios are now officially owned by big corporations. They're no longer owned by these, like, single entrepreneur guys.

And we know that you can make a movie as big as Star Wars or Jaws. So everybody's trying to make it, but they still have all this vestigial tale of movies have to be driven by filmmakers. So you get Friedkin getting to make cruising for like $15 million, even though it's the weirdest fucking movie you could. imagine, you know, dressed to kill is like such a, such a perverse movie and such a, it's a fun movie, but it's like pretty out there for 1980. But De Palma, you know, he had had a bunch of hits. And so he got to take chances. The Shining's the same way. The Shining's like, this seems like

it's going to be a big deal. It's a big book. We're going to let Kubrick do what he wants for two years with a lot of money. And you get a really and they're thinking, hey, we're doing with Jaws, right? Yeah. Like, yeah. I have a really, this is like the first great movie year I really remember. It was old enough to have seen most of these movies. We had like, I think we had HBO at that point and WHT, which you'd get, you know, is basically before Blockbuster and stuff like that. But we didn't have, we probably had like seven channels at that point for TV.

But they showed this on network TV? They would show the edited version on network TV, but they would also have, you know, HBO and WHT places like that. But movies just felt more important because we had less to do. And as you said, you know, if you look at like box office mojo for 1980, it's Fox Columbia Pictures, Paramount Warner Brothers Universal. That is our top 23 until we get to Walt Disney with Lady and the Tramp, which was a re-release. But it's basically five studios making all these things. There is no 824 Merrimax and all those things.

And they're making big bets and they're spending a lot of money and then they know they can make the money back. and when somebody like Kubrick has an idea and he's like, I'm doing this, it's going to take a year, I need Nicholson, I'm going to go way over budget. Like they're just letting him go. And he was with Warner Brothers basically his whole career

after his second or third movie and Warner Brothers basically gave him a blank checkbook for 40 years making movies. It would be basically what it's... I mean, I guess there are certain people like Nolan, like Tarantino who still get this kind of leverage,

but it would essentially be like if the master or phantom thread was the biggest movie of the year. Exactly. It's like the biggest direction. working with a huge star who's also an acknowledged acting genius and everybody clearing out like this is like the huge event. But a horror movie.

That's the other thing that's so crazy about it is like this guy who is the genius of his era, of two eras was like in the middle of his career in which people were telling him he was a genius and he had made Barry Lyndon. He was like, I want to make a horror movie. That's really cool. That's really cool that he did that. You know, that if Paul Thomas Anderson just announced he was going to make a horror movie, I think we'd be psyched, but we'd be really surprised because it just seems like an unlike

thing for somebody like sully themselves and that genre been. It's great. Mad Max came out this year too. Oh, wow. Yeah. Now we're reliving it in the Hollywood area. He wanted to make a horror movie. There's a famous story about his he basically ordered

every horror book there was and was reading them and his assistant said she could hear him just getting mad and throwing the books across the room and hear the books bouncing against the wall and she'd be like, oh, that one's out. that one's out. And then she gave him the Shining. And the book never went crashing against the wall. And he was into it. And then that was the one. But that leads us to Stephen King, who disowned this movie basically from the get-go.

And was really, really upset about it and looked for any reason to take shots at it. And finally stopped in the mid-90s because he had to buy the rights back because he wanted to do his version of it to do a miniseries. and as part of the deal, Kubrick writes into this thing, you can no longer slander this movie. You can complain about Jack Nicholson, but not me, is in the actual agreement. Interesting. I didn't know that. But why did Stephen King hate this movie?

All right. First of all, it's kind of, Stephen King's always creeped me out. I don't know how you guys feel about it, but he's been my number one celebrity of like, oh, that guy killed 20 people. I'm just not being surprised. If it ever came out, there was a trail of bodies in New Hampshire.

He'd be like, oh, all right. Well, he was trying to tell us for 50 years. So is that feeling informed by... By all his books. Okay, but it's not by, like, just his general vibe. Well, he's a little creepy, but he's owned that in movies. Yeah, that's true. Yes, that's true.

But the way his mind works. If you see a creep show or maximum overdrive or any of the movies that he's been in, you're like, oh, that guy's weird. But he does the shining, partly, and he's admitted it, It was at a really dark period of his life when he was a recovering alcoholic and his family was this huge obstacle to him wanting to work. And he was really frustrated by not being able to drink and by how annoying his family was to his whole process.

And that led to the shining. And he was in a hotel and said, oh, man, he was the last person to check out of a hotel. And somebody had said, yeah, you're the last day. And he started thinking about what happens to the one person who stays here. And that becomes the book. Do you think we could probably talk about this and within one of the categories, but I wanted to know

if we could talk a little bit about writer's block in this movie and this movie has a portrait of a writer because it's something that I did not appreciate probably the first time I saw it mostly because I was being traumatized by the old woman with the patches falling off of her back.

But the older I get and the more writing becomes something I grapple with as a more existential level, I think that the more it kind of speaks to me in a strange way, especially, I also, my wife is also a writer. So I watch our moods fluctuate

depending on whether or not we have to write something, either one of us. And it's actually like a pretty disturbing portrait of that. Well, what about being interrupted? And when he goes off on Shelly DeValle and she's just completely clues, hey, honey, made you a cup of coffee? And he's like, he's like,

we're going to make a new rule. Whenever I'm in here, you hear me typing. Whether you don't hear me typing, what the fuck you hear me doing in here When I'm in here, that means that I am working. That means don't come in. How do you think you can handle that? And then he finally just snaps.

It's like the thing anybody who's written who's been interrupted wants to do but doesn't because we're normal human beings, not human beings that are about to try to kill our family in three days. But that scene, and there is a piece of that where you're like, oh, man, I've always wanted to do that. Well, I think if you watch this movie at a young enough age, you get an awareness of something like writer's block. And so like for me, when I'm writing, just not that frequently,

but when I'm writing, I tend to put on noise-canceling headphones. It's usually late at night. I usually have a drink, which is probably not great if you're a fan of The Shining. And I kind of don't want my wife to be near me. Not because I wanted to not annoy me,

but because I kind of, I do need to be completely enveloped. Is there anybody who's like, I love having, like, tons of distractions while I'm writing? I mean, that's the thing about being a writer is that it is essentially like a painful, alienating, frustrating process.

At the end, you kind of get what you get and you're rarely happy with it. Well, I think that's what King wanted from the movie because it seems like his problems were, he had a real problem with the Nicholson casting because he felt like the whole point in the book was that this was a normal, good, regular person. Which is why I'm going to do the miniseries.

It's Tim Daly. Or Stephen Weber, I'm sorry. Right. I'm now the millionth person who's confused those two. But Stephen Weber. who normal guy, happy guy, and then slowly has this descent. And then the other issue he had

was the Shelley Duvall as an actress because he didn't want that character to be so meek and just like run over. He wanted like somebody who was a little bit defiant so it made more sense. That's why they did Rebecca D. Mornay in the miniseries. I actually think Shelley DeVal works really well. It makes it's so perfect because

in the movie, Torrance is a jerk off. You know, and he probably isn't a good writer. Like, there's not, there's not even that much, you know, exposition about whether or not he's written before, whether or not he's a... We only, we only see these six words that he writes. Yeah, and his fallback is working at a car wash and shoveling, shoveling yards in back in Denver, right? Well, he's a failed school teacher, too. Yeah, right. So, but it's obviously, like, he's not, like, working off of, like, the...

I'm under pressure because I wrote a great first novel and the second one has to be as good. It's like, this is just a... This is a guy who's, like, up against the... his intellectual capabilities. He's a loser. He's definitely a loser. Yeah, he's the typical jerk-off loser who doesn't know how to say what he does. So he's like, yeah, I'm a writer.

Like Noah in the affair. And then the affair, of course, made Noah a best-selling author. So King hated the movie. He hated those two things and reeled against it. And I think he did turn the Stephen King people against the movie for a while. I don't remember when it had the Renaissance. I think Cable had a lot to do with it. somewhere late 80s, I think people really started to appreciate it.

Big, big film school dork. Yeah. As that becomes like a thing that people start really doing again in the late 80s, early 90s, because obviously like all the late 70s guys were film school products, but I think film school became a much bigger thing to do. Like right around when I was graduating high school was like people were trying to go to NYU and people are trying to go to USC to be the New Link Later or Spike Lee or Kevin Smith or something. and that really breeds a lot of like you and five friends are like obsessively going through movies.

I think the other thing too is that a straight adaptation of King's book, and we saw it if you ever watch the miniseries, which is fine. It's not bad, but it's just needless, is books are one thing and movies are another thing. It's a different medium. And the story works way better if it's hysterical, if there's an insanity. Books are internal, you know, they're happening inside someone's head and you're creating the image. The fact that the movie is so outsized and that everything is so loud. and the Nicholson is so over the top makes it work so much better. It's so interesting that the person who created the whole story, all the characters, this vision of the Overlook Hotel can't see past his own creation.

And he's like really kind about some adaptations and not so kind about others. But this one in particular is probably the most, might be the most hotly contested author being angry at the way his book was interpreted, like in the history of movies. And it just so happens to be one of the all-time, at least in a genre masterpieces. and if you're being kind, like, one of the greatest movies ever made. Just so interesting that it would happen that way. I went through a whole Stephen King book phase in the mid-80s,

like I'm sure a lot of people have, where it was just like the shining, Kujo, Fire Starter. Tommy Knockers? What was the one with Walking? Dead Zone. Dead Zone. Banging out of them. This was the best.

In my opinion, I thought it was the best book. It was the weirdest. It was the most satisfying. And seeing the movie before the book, actually made the book better reading it because I saw the movie then read the book and the book was like a different interpretation of the movie

I think that's what probably bothered him Yeah This was probably his favorite book And I think it was the most personal book to him The best Stephen King adaptations are the ones That are either the least Stephen King Like Shawshank and Stand By Me You know they're not about this horror

Or they're ones where there was a real like Divergence between the filmmaker and the author Probably I mean it is probably the most, you know, traditional Stephen King adaptation, right? The most, the first it. The one he's probably the happiest with.

Yeah, I mean, it's the biggest. The first it or the new it? The new first it. The first movie and the most reason to... Yeah, it gets the spirit, but like the thing about all of Stephen King's books, I feel like this is kind of lost because he's such a big pop cultural figure and he seems mainstream. But like the first it and the shining and Carrie and

the stand and all of these books and even the fantasy books he wrote Dark Tower, all that stuff. Fucking weird. They're weird. And they're like very sexualized. Yeah. And they're very gross. Like if you read the Tommy Knockers or any, like any of those weird books or weird

stories, there's something like visceral and sexualized. Like the end of it is obviously so crazy in the book about all the kids having sex with the one girl. Like it's, he's so out there. But when he gets put into like a mainstream studio system where he gets adapted for TV, it becomes anesthetized in a way. I think that people. really he really hit on something, especially with the run of novels that were largely about Derry, that are about set in Maine. It's such a great setting. It's such a great

location for horror movies. And then once you get past the setup, I think a lot of people grapple with how to actually film the crazy shit, often which does not make sense on screen. That's it. Yeah, because it's just an uneval that lurks beneath and it's hard to like visualize that. Wasn't misery? That was another scene. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that was about his fear of his own fans. Right.

I think that was the other really personal one. But that one is not supernatural. And so it works really well, just like Shawshank, stuff like that. Our guy, Raj. Pro? Initially critical. Oh. Rallied back, inducted the film into his great movie series saying, quote,

Stanley Kubrick's cold and frightening The Shining challenges us to decide who is the reliable observer? Whose idea of events can we trust? It's this elusive open-endedness that makes Kubrick's phone so strangely. Siskel did not like this movie. Ciskel didn't. Ebert didn't either. Can I ask you a little? An Ebert question?

Yeah. Why does he suck so much? No, that's not. I'm going to ask you. No, I'd like Ebert. I'd like to. How do you feel about him doing what you just described there? Well, 20 years later, after writing a middling review of a movie that we all understand to be a masterpiece?

He's like going to recalibrate and do a new one. and I'm actually going to say it's a masterpiece now. Because he's done this a lot. You're going to give Craig Elo the credit he deserves. Well, that's what I was going to ask you as somebody who documented something over a long period of time and maybe you were harsh on some people. Would you ever go back and be like, actually, I was wrong about this guy? It's funny you should bring this up, Sean, because I want to talk about the new book of

Basketball 2.0 podcast. Boom. Right there. Yeah. Segways. Launching November 6th, it is my chance to reinvent the basketball book that I'll never write because my fingers don't work anymore. Because all work and no play makes Bill a dull boy.

So much about basketball change over these last 10 years that it kind of made me wonder was I write about some of the opinions I had in the past and how does all the stuff that has happened in the last 10 years affect what I think about basketball and the secret and all these different things. A good example of that is Reggie Miller, who I did not think was a superstar.

And now when you look at the three-point boom in 2019, you go, oh, maybe he was just born too soon. Maybe that was my Roger Ebert. I don't know. I put that on the T. and you hit it 340 down the fair way. You can subscribe to that podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. $19 million budget made $44 million to Shining.

I would say it's probably made $100 million cents in all the cable stuff. Before we get to the categories, I want to do two things. First, true story. Saw the Shining with my dad, 1980. It was the same summer. We decided to see as many baseball parks as we possibly could in two weeks. So we flew to like New York, Cincinnati, Houston, went to all these different places.

You guys did air. Yeah, basic flights. Just flying. Yeah, basic flights, whole thing. The first hotel we stayed at, which I think was like a month after I saw this movie, we were in room 237, and I was fucking freaked out. And wanted my dad to change the room. We didn't want to.

So, yeah, that was great. Second thing, we almost had one of the great best actor categories of all time, if they had done the right thing, and nominated Nicholson and Pacino for Cruel. losing. De Niro wins for Raging Bow. Duval, Great Santini.

John Hurt, Elephant Man. Peter O'Toole, the stunt man. And then Jack Lemon for tribute. I don't even remember tribute. I don't know what that was. I think that was,

we all like Jack Lemon. So just if Nicholson is in that spot, we get De Niro, Nicholson, Duval, Hurt, and O'Toole. And then I'm fine with bumping John Hurt for, Elephant Man?

Yeah, I'm okay with it to put Pacino in. Yeah. But we could have had De Niro, Duval, O'Toole, Nicholson, and Pacino. Oh. That would have been amazing. Yeah, that's Freshmore. Ironically, O'Toole is amazing in the stunt, man. He's fantastic.

You can make it like a really good case for him. He never won. I know. He died without having won, which is a fucking sin. It's crazy. All he needed was like eight times. Lion winner. I mean, this one, Duval not winning for Santini is kind of amazing, too.

It was just like one of those unfur years where they should have had like three Oscars? Didn't he, did he went for the Apostle? What movie did he win for? He won. He got his makeup. He got his makeup. All right. We're going to do the categories. Most rewatchable scene. I got to put the opening credits in. Oh yeah. Right? Oh, yeah. The long tracking over the helicopter shot? I've never seen anything like that in a movie before since. It's amazing. And what sucked is when it was on TV for years and years with the Square TV, it just like lose, it lost 100% of its effectiveness. And now that we have the widescreen TV is in the HD.

It's fucking awesome again. Do you ever see it in theaters? Yeah. Like since you were 10? Yeah. They re-released it. I'm going to say, it must have been so many anniversary.

Like 15th anniversary, 20th. I know I saw it in the theater as an adult. It's such a cliche to say you got to see it in theaters. But this is one of those movies where if you can see it in theaters, the design and all, like, especially all the interior stuff. Make it so loud and the score being so loud. The font for the titles is they're driving up, though, is like, it's funny how that's gone from like cool to cheesy.

and now it's cool again. It's literally the Jesus' King font from the new Kanye album. It's that like very simple non-serif. Sean, I'm giving you, I'm getting my clock. Oh, no.

Giving you 50 seconds to talk about the importance of the steady cam. No, that's what's the best. You want to do that then? Yeah, we'll save. We can save it. We can save it.

50 seconds. Chris is going to want to double team on that, I think. I mean, I'm happy to just be the chorus here. Steady Cam double team? Wow. Happy to the Supreme.

I had a dime for every time that happened on the rewatchables. Greatest opening credits ever. Shades of Peter North. The room 237 has some controversial thoughts about the credits. Uh-huh. My son watched the entire documentary with me. Jesus Christ. And was so into it.

That actually seems like it would be really boring for him. No, he loved it. The thing with Kubrick's beard potentially being in the clouds for one frame, he's like, Dad! He put his face in the clouds. Your son is such a weird... He'll believe anything. He's such a YouTuber, you know?

Yeah. He's probably watched going down rabbit holes every day. The thing that made me laugh is he knew most of it because this is YouTube now, right? So he knew a lot of like the moon- Oh, yeah. He loved the Shining. My kids have always loved the Shining.

And it's really... I mean, let's talk. The worst possible scenes are the gross dead lady in the bathtub when she becomes gross. Elevators full of blood. Elevators full of blood is not that tough. How about the children chopped up by an accident? The children chopped up is tough.

Yeah. And Scatman taking it. Yeah. Cuthers. It's funny. Like when they watch The Shining, do they just give you a look? Like, eh, you're sure Dad's okay? Now they...

Halloween is just worse. Halloween, which they saw pretty early too. Anyway. Next scene, Jack yelling at Wendy not to disturb him when he's writing. You're distracting me! Wendy, explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me,

You're breaking my concentration. You're distracting me. And it will then take me time to get back to where I was. Understand? It's amazing. Her performance in that scene is really great, where she's honestly hurt. She's trying not to cry, but there's like 10% of her like,

all right, this is a little weird. The things that she says, though, the dialogue that she has is so perfect. Because in that scene, she says something to the effect of, you know, he's kind of on the edge. before he snapped. And she's like, Okay, I understand. I'll come back later on

with a couple of sandwiches for you and maybe you'll let me read something then. And like the one thing I do not want to hear is can I read what you've written when I'm in the middle of writing something that sucks? That is the worst. You really just get, you really are just like, get out of my face immediately.

So that being the kind of breaking point for him is so perfect. And she is so innocent and yet 12% annoying. Like you just feel... 12%? She's just got this shell. Duval weird energy the whole time. You think more than that.

Oh, it's like 58%. Oh, she always is... She's so annoying. Yeah. The whole time... She's weird like the second she walks on the screen. It's what's so good about it. I mean, like, the best part about this movie to me

is how even in the interview scene in the beginning is so weird. You're just like, run for your life. Yeah. When this guy's like, by the way, the guy who did the exact job you're doing killed his family because he had cabin fever, but welcome to the overlook.

It's like, get the fuck. fuck out of here. It's so weird. And I love the fact that that is one of those scenes that people overanalyzed too, the anime scene with the American flag and everything. And then when she, I didn't put this in most rewatchable scene, but when she's talking to the therapist

or whoever that person is after Danny passes out, she's like, yeah, you know, this one time, Jack had been drinking and, you know, the papers were on the ground, he yanked his arm, and you know, but he didn't mean it. And you're just like, you should be running from this guy, this fucking loser.

It's not what you want. Tough one. Next one. Jack having a drink with Lloyd. Want to do it? So I was, you want me to do... Which Jack quote do you want to do from this? White man's burden, Lloyd.

You set them up and I'll knock them back, Lloyd. One by one. White man's burden, Lloyd, my man. White man's burden. The best damn bartender from Portland Maine to Timbuck. to and Portland, Oregon. He has maybe the greatest Nicholson moment of his entire career

in this scene when he drinks the drink and finishes it and his whole face goes blank like he had like an orgasm. I don't know how he did that, but if like you're, if you're just making the two-minute montage of here's why Jack Nicholson was one of the five best actors of our lives, that would be

in there for me. He has the most expressive face of all time. Obviously his eyebrows are like two arrows bouncing up and down. And he, you know, he's also just like he's really handsome but also not handsome. He's in this weird state of like his hair is really thinning.

He's got crazy eyes but you're just mesmerized by him. He's such a unique face and it is moving in all directions at all times especially in this movie as he's losing his mind. It's amazing. And also you know like he's not talking to anybody. There's no one there.

Yeah. You know? So the idea of him having to perform for nothing and we're like you guys talked about on The Few Good Men episode, when he would do the big courtroom scene as Colonel Jessup. He would do it every time. And you know, you can imagine him being super hyper committed to this the whole time. These Kubrick movies take forever to make. He's always looking for a million shots. But you never get the sense that he's breaking. You know, he's always on the dime. There's a YouTube video. There's a bunch of YouTube videos for The Shining, obviously.

But there's a YouTube video of Nicholson waiting for them to be ready. So he's just like pacing around a bedroom. And he's basically like psyching himself up. And he's like, okay, Stanley, you got to get your lights ready. And he's just like pacing back and forth between like and joking around with PAs and putting a jacket on and taking it off. Who made that? It was his daughter, right? Kubrick's daughter. Yeah.

And there's some tough Shelley DeVall footage of that one. Yes. Yeah. We'll talk to her. That's going to be in what stage is the worst. The next one for most rewatchable. Most of my most rewatchables are toward the end of the movie. Wendy discovers Jack's novel.

How do you like it? How do you like it? The whole sequence all the way up the stairs you're talking about. I think that's one of the best eight or nine minutes scenes ever. On rewatchables, we can sometimes go into the impression zone,

but I have a feeling like if we do Jack Torrance doing Jack Wolts from the Godfather, we're going to hit some sort of singularities. I don't think I can get to that level. I don't know if I have enough energy for that. I can't afford to look ridiculous. Wendy, darling, light of my life. Wendy, darling, light of my life.

I'm not going to hurt you. You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just going to bash your brains. I'm going to bash him right the fuck in. It's so tough. It's great. Bash him right the fucking.

So good. He's, uh... Oh, you want to talk about Danny. You're worried his life might be in danger. It's so good. He's so special. He's so... I don't know how many takes they did for that.

But he's throwing... He's like Chapman in the 2016 World Series. He's throwing like 104. Her too. I mean, she's really good. You really believe she's absolutely fucking terrified of this guy. You know, that shot of her and she's swinging the back crazily. She seems so out old and so worn out. Yeah. That's like that whole sequence is unbelievable. And going up the stairs, that's hard to do. You know, it's hard to shoot that. They got to go both angles, both times. And there's the pulled back shot. It's really such an amazing scene. He's warming up for steady. Sorry. No, it's okay. Okay. Wendy? Darling. Love of my life? How many times did she swing the bat in the scene? 11? 41.

Oh, my God. She's kind of like Aaron Judge in a playoff. That's a stray shot. I got a snort from Craig. Stanley's secretary, God bless her soul, spent weeks, if not months,

typing dozens of pages all work and no play makes Jack a full boy, a dull boy. Wow. Tough beat for her. Poor gal. I mean, her work was memorialized in one of the most famous scenes of movie history.

So I guess we're going to have to do grunt work. Stanley, so I sent you your schedule for next week. Is there anything else you need? Yeah, I usually said 600 pages of the same sentence. But I want each page to be different. I have notes about where to put the paragraph breaks. Which leads me to my next question. What was your favorite page of the manuscript?

I've thought about this. I have a specific favorite. I like the one that's in like the teardrop shape. Oh, like a pyramid? Yeah, yeah. I like the one where it's it, but then there's a big quote indentation. Like he's citing someone else's work. But it's all working.

Oh, my God. That seems unbelievable. And then when she actually hits him, it seems like she really hit him. In the head with that part. That one looks like, yeah, because he goes down. I don't know how they fake that one. It's an amazing scene. The discovery of the manuscript is just the same sense.

it's over and over again is one of the all-time holy shit moments I can never remember in a movie it was we've numb to it now but

Holy shit moment is a good is a good new category it's just too bad that It's not every movie though

I know Yeah it's too bad that the holy shit Hall fan would be fun Jack Torrance didn't have

Wi-Fi because you know he could have just been blasting off takes from there you know oh yeah

he'd be an incredible like a Joe Rogan-esque podcaster Why Joker is the most well

That would be, wouldn't that be the Shining in 2019? He's a podcaster, but it turns out the podcast is never going on the internet. He's podcasting with a ghost. It's just one sentence. Apple has rejected the feed a hundred times. Yeah. How many pages in? But he's still doing like Simply Safe ad reads?

And then he's just going. We're brought to you by Simply Safe. All work and no play. How many pages in? The undies, darling. How many pages in before she. realizes that this is the whole manuscript. I think it's the first page.

You think that she's like, I wonder if in chapter two he I think she's like seven in like maybe he was just playing a game. And she's like, oh, now there's indents. Oh, boy. Oh, my God. Like by the 20th page, you're having a stroke. I think you'd be a little concerned after page one. Page one is a little intense.

Next scene, the bathroom scene. Not by the hair on your chin, chin, chin. then I'll hoth and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in which is in the running for greatest horror slash thriller do you consider this a horror movie or a thriller

I think it's horror Chris not actually just had this conversation on a podcast but it's like it's a supernatural movie it's a ghost movie yeah this is in the running for one of the best horror scenes of all time trying to get through the when the axe going through the door how fucking crazy he is

her trying to get the window. Danny goes down the window. Yeah. She can't get out. So, I don't, I'm not trying to troll here. But because I was aware of this scene before I saw the movie. The bathroom, the woman. And here's Johnny and all that. Wait, you're talking about the scene with the two women? Are you talking about it?

The bathroom scene. The bathroom scene, okay. Yeah, we're talking about the axe, right? Here's Johnny. Not the bathtub. Not the bathtub. It's the one moment in the movie because I knew it was coming because I'd seen it on like The Simpsons and iterated all over the place.

It never actually had the same effect that I bet it did for people who were seeing it like you for the first time when you were a kid in a movie theater. Because that shot in that moment is so iconic that it's not as terrifying as the first time you see, I don't know, like Lloyd with the blood running down his head later in the movie. Not Lloyd, but Delbert Green saying like Great Party. It was already a cliche by the time I got to it. I just thought he was killing her and then it was going to come down to him versus D. Danny the first time I saw it. Like, how was she going to get out? She can't get out of the bathroom. Dude has an axe. Had you read the book beforehand?

No, it was after. Okay. Okay. It mean, it's amazing. I mean, the way that he shoots that with that swivel shot of like the axe going back and you see it going all the way back and then forward and the way that the camera moves is fucking crazy. It's amazing movie making, but I just knew it already. I knew it. Yeah. And if you know it, it doesn't work as well.

It's some amazing axe swinging by Nicholson. Oh, yeah. Great job by him. Duval. That's her best scene in the movie. Like, she's... Pure terrible. She's so just screaming. It's like she actually thinks she's going to get murdered. And then I really enjoyed Danny sliding down the snowbank, a little envious.

Like, wow, that seemed like it was fun. Look fun. That seems amazing. I have some questions about why he didn't just finish it off over, oh, I hear a snowmobile. I'm going to go downstairs. Like, he was really like one second away from ending it with Wendy there. In fairness, he's completely. insane. Okay, fair enough.

Scatman Cruthers getting killed is out of control. Yeah. Hello? Anybody here? One of the most shocking things I've ever seen in a movie. Out of control. Plus, I don't know how he filmed it. I've watched it a hundred thousand million times. They hide Nicholson behind that last pillar. You really don't see him. And then when he comes out, it's so fucking scary. Every time it's scary.

It's cut so quickly. The knife going into his chest. is the fastest cut you can imagine in a movie. It's supposed to shock you and scare you so much. And it's built up to it too. It's like the cross-cutting and making, having Scatman still be in the movie for a lot of it makes you think that there's going to be much more of this, like he's going to play a much more important role

towards the end of the movie or that their confrontation is going to be a lot more drawn out. Little known fact, he actually kills him in that scene. He's dead. That's crazy. Skatman Crowther was never done anything again. The ending. The maze?

Danny takes him into the maze. A couple great things about this. First of all, incredible flex and move to use all this boring time he's had to figure out how the maze worked against his dad. Really? Big Belichick move from Danny. It would be like Ben,

it would be like Ben taking me into the basketball trampoline to have night of my eyes. I have all these trampoline tricks I've been working on. He lured into his trap. He lured me into the trampoline. And then retracing the steps. one of the great decisions anyone's made. Smart kid.

Also, he's retracing our steps with the Indians. Yes. American Indians. Sure. That was Ethereum in room to 37. There was a lot of retracing. Yeah, why not? But that was awesome.

And I got to say, like, I think that's way harder. I would almost like to reenact that to see if, like, we could do that. Can you do... To go backwards, 12 steps without falling over. Do you get freaked out, like, getting lost in, you know, If you were done like a hedge maze or like a corn maze or anything like that? I wouldn't like that. No.

You don't find an interesting challenge? What about you, Sean? I love it. I'm in a corn maze six days a week. I wouldn't like it at night during a blizzard would probably be where I drew the line. Right. But if you were being chased, I suppose. I think the move is to build a little snowbank so you can go then on top of the snowbank and see where you are in the maze.

It's craft. Classic. Classic. Build a snowbank. Maize gate. So I can beat the maze. Most we watchable same, what was it? Can I throw in one or two more?

I really like the second gold room, the second time he goes to the gold room and winds up in the bathroom with Grady. That's... Oh, yeah, I should have put that in that. I had to correct her. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, corrected her.

Yes. Yeah, that should have been in my bad. What's he drinking? He's like, uh, advocates. What are those? Advocats. I don't know what it is. But he gets it in his burb.

He's like, I'll just put down my bourbon with advocate, you know. I'm not going to do that too much more. Delbert? Delbert Grady, you said? Does he be the caretaker here? I really like just now, I think one of the more rewatchable scenes is the tour that they get in the beginning of the entire hotel. Because it's so, it's so good for you in terms of, like, learning spatially about the hotel. But it's also where a lot of the, like, little kernels of conspiracy nuts get their stuff.

Yeah, I like all that stuff. I think the first scene between Skatman Crothers and Danny, just explaining The Shining to him a little bit. The ice cream scene. That's when the movie, you realize that we're going to talk about it, you know, that it's not just going to be one of those ghost stories where nobody... You know when you're watching a horror movie and somebody... No one ever says, like, isn't it fucking weird how there are vampires in our house?

And we've been reading books and watching movies about Vampires Forever. But in that scene, they're like, we're going to say the words shining. like that it's clear that there is something deeper going on here in this movie. My son likes that scene. So the two... Hey, Doc. What's some ice cream?

Man. That's a really creepy thing. Crothers is great, man. Crothers is really good. He's perfect for this. So what do we got for most rewatchable? What do you pick? I think it's got to be the staircase

and Wendy discovers the book. I think that's on the most rewatchable scenes of all time. What's age the best? Dick Halloran's bedroom. The fucking pain examines. are amazing. You may or may not have sent us a couple of screenshots.

I screenshadowed both of them to you. Holy shit. That is a real... Like, so you know how when you're in your 20s and you're decorating your own place? Yeah. And like when I was living

with a bunch of guys in Boston, we used to just put like a fucking table hockey table on the wall like it was art. Yeah. And, you know, you just have like posters. It's like a Kirby Pucket picture

and then like a Goodfellas poster or whatever. This is like if you never met anyone and you just, you just like continue to decorate and maybe refined your taste a little bit. It's like, I'm going to get an airbrushed picture of a naked lady above my bed because

it's like you're such like a lifetime bachelor. I'm not mad at him. I love it. He's definitely seen Foxy Brown like 130 times. And he just has a look. But I think that if it's like you lived alone, you would have like a Farah Fawcett mural in your bedroom. Oh, no question.

The best part though is he's got the bed with the poster of the naked lady above him. Not poster out, picture, like a painting. Painting, yeah. And you're like, how? That's great. And then it cuts to the TV and there's another one. The second one went over the TV. He doubled down.

It's a series. Two for one sale. Dick Caller. Two things about that. One, he's doing a slick move here, which I respect, which is he's got the pillow under the feet, which is very underrated if you're laying on a bed. Two, why is there a painting of a nude woman above the headboard where he'll never see it? Because it's the first thing. It's the thing you see when you walk in.

Beds on the other side of the room. So he's making a statement. indicate to all of his partners? It's like the reverse first reformed. Instead of having a cross above the bed, you have like, you know. Oh, that's his Christ.

Yeah. That's what you're saying. If he ever brings a woman back, it'll go great. Red Rum and the Mirror has aged the best. And I remember the first time seeing that movie not knowing what Red Room was. I think you'd have to be pretty good

to know instinctively that that was murder backwards. And then in the mirror seeing the Red Room. That arguably could have been our most rewatchable scene too. Although I guess that leads into that. axing, but the murder spelled backwards is just fucking creepy. Same thing as the axe where the cut is so fast and the music hits so loud at the same time. So then when it flips and shows us the mirror and shows us the word spelled, you kind of don't see it coming even though it makes it that much more shocking.

Danny's not here, Mrs. Torrance. That's really age the best. What would be the name of the little person living inside you that tells you things? Larry Bird. Jack Waltz. Oh, you stole mine. Oh, no, really? Sunny Corleone.

Another what's age the best. Gotta blow her brains out. The whole concept of correcting, Dobert's like, he doesn't just say I killed my family. He's like, and I had a problem. And my little daughter tried to contact the outside world, so I corrected her. And then the other daughter had a problem,

and I had to correct her, too. He's not peeped possible. in the town. I gave her a little taste. I had to correct her. That's the character. He's like, I had to correct her. The maze is age the best.

The maze is one of my favorite things, favorite man-built things that have ever been in a movie. Oh. Yeah. What else is on that list? I don't know, but the fucking maze is amazing. One of my favorite man-built things.

Man-made weird, random things in a movie. As opposed to like alien-built or natural occurrence is like Death Valley, you know. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So what are some other, what are some of your favorite? It's all I have so far. It's all I have.

It's a ship from the Titanic? No. No. Okay. No. I don't know. The Nostromo. I haven't really workshopped this one. No.

Long enough, obviously. As you can tell. No other recommendations. The Maltese Falcon. No? You didn't let me finish my sentence, Sean. You're distracting me. Darling.

You're distracting me is a great. The scary twin sisters have aged the best. I don't know. Whoever cast them, just give them the Oscar right now. Perfect. They're so creepy. They're perfect. They seem so angelic.

And yet it makes sense that they're not. Nicholson's drool after Wendy wakes him up from the nightmare. That's aged the best. It's just, I don't know how he had that much drool in his mouth. It's Nicholson's really committed. It must have been the 70. It's category just drifted to stuff I noticed. That's true.

Did you see how much drool he had, though? It's like a pound of drool. What else he got for what stage is the best before we do the steady cam? Do you want to do it now? I was just going to say the overlook. Not only the exterior shots. So he did somebody, is it all? Timberline, right, in Oregon and a hotel in Yosemite, I think.

And it was based on the Stanley Hotel, which isn't even in this movie. And then he built the interiors on soundstages, right? What's the famous soundstage in London? Is it Pinewood? L something? No. E.L. I'll get to it when we get to the...

Okay. Well, in any case, the hotel is age the best. And a quick straw poll, would you guys stay there? Yeah. Yeah. My son actually asked to go stay there this summer. Yeah, I was looking at reservations. Oh, I have one more. What's stage the best? Okay.

Would you go in the winter or the summer, though? To the Oregon one. You want to go to summer? Winter's creepy. I know. I mean, if you're going to do, commit to the bit, you know? No, you could do summer. It's happier.

I'm more of a winter guy. Okay. I like the ski. I have one more. what stage the best before we get to the steady camp. You've got a big surprise coming to you. You're not going anywhere. Go check out the snow cat in the radio and you'll see what I mean.

Go check it out. Go. Go check it out. Wow. Thank you. You've been waiting to do some Jack for a while. You've got a big surprise waiting for you, Chris Ryan. You've got a big surprise coming to you.

You're not going anywhere. Go check out the Snow Cat and the radio and you see what I mean. Go check it out. Go check it out. Go check it out. Why do you go to your office? Go check it out. All right, do the steady cam.

I'm taping you. 50 seconds. If Chris is involved, I'll give you. 120 seconds. There's not much to say. It's the invention of a technology that changed movies forever. And it made shooting difficult things significantly easier. And it also made movies significantly more creepy. The most famous shot, obviously, is from behind him when he's riding the big wheel. But there are a lot of different setty cam shots in the movie. It's not the first time steady cam ever appeared, but the guy who invented it, Garrett Brown, worked on this movie. And so the

Steadycam operation that you get is some of the best in the history of movies. And it's just completely haunting. And it feels like you're on top of a person. It feels like a character in the movie. And it's like you said, it's best known for the shots behind Danny when he's riding his big wheel. And he's crucially riding his big wheel on a carpet. So the Steady Cam actually recreates the experience of what it's like, honestly,

to ride a big wheel on carpet because you do you have that like, like that slight little motor sound. But essentially it's this. smooth, soundless experience. And the camera really... Carpet, floor, carpet, where there's no sound, sound, sound. And then essentially, the Steadicam takes on the character of a ghost.

Exactly. It takes on the hunting of the hotel. And if you're just doing cuts, I'm sure you would have been able to do something approximating it, but not nowhere near as atmospheric. Can you name the first three movies that use the Steadicam all released in 1976? Bound for Glory is one.

Rocky is one. I don't remember the third. Marathon Man. Oh. Yeah. My choice for what stage is the best I haven't said yet. Marathon Man's a rewatchable, by the way. Marathon Man's great.

Oh, that would be good. Yeah. I have Dick Hallor and bedroom as my gold medalist. And then the Steadicam is silver medalist. And then the Big Wheel as a bronze medalist. Nice. Yeah. Solid. Big Wheel.

Is it a big wheel still in rotation? Really underrated. No, they are not in rotation. Really underrated. 70s, 80s thing, and I'm not sure why they went away. Those fucking, I honestly, like, if they made, they should make adult big wheels. Like, screw the e-scooters. Or having, like, why isn't there, like, a big wheel 2.0?

But, I mean, you have kids. You didn't have, like, some, like, trucks that you would buy for them. I feel like they just got all got motorized, you know? It's this lazy generation, you know? They don't want to pedal. They need, they need motors. Craig's, no? Craig's generation.

I did have a big wheel. Craig's generation killed the big row. Yeah. You had a razor scooter. Yeah, that's not. That's not like a big wheel, though. You're not like sitting down. I'm saying I had a big wheel and a razor scooter.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Hot wheels, loved it all. Damn. What age the best for you guys? Steady cam? Steady cam. Yeah, I'm with that.

What's age the worst? I'll just read two things that I wrote down that I actually typed. Old Scary Naked Lady and the bare costume blow job. These are age the worst. Age the worst. I think that the one thing I would say for Old Scary Naked Lady is that there's a lot of, I don't even, I could be wrong. But I think there's a lot of untapped meme potential with hot naked. naked lady, old scary naked lady for like...

Yeah, me before Trump, me after Trump. Brooklyn fans in the first month of Kyrie. Brooklyn fans after the All-Star break when he starts phoning it in. That's good. That's good. We gotta get that going. I do... I like the old scary naked lady.

It's just the back is really tough. Great performance for her. I've never really gotten over the green skin in the back. You mean it just, it doesn't look good anymore? No, it's just so disturbing. And is it the same naked lady in makeup? Or different actresses, do you think? I don't know.

I think it's different. No, it's different actresses. And neither of them have ever been in another movie. Really? Yeah. And is that, that's not Grady's wife? I don't, I'm not sure. What do you think?

Maybe. It's Grady's wife. You think Grady was room 237? I don't know. Didn't Grady kill everybody with an axe though? Yeah. She seems to have been like drowned or, yeah, she seems to be rotting in the tub.

I don't know. Another one stage the worst. I think the three of us could cut 15 minutes out of this movie and like three minutes. You think that we know better than thank Kubrick. Just explain this. I know I know Kubrick's a genius.

Every decision makes sense. Dick Calleran written a snow cap for five minutes on the phone calling his buddy. Hey! So this gets into whether or not you think every single thing in this movie matters or not. Because then it's like, why do we need to see him asking the stewardess what time they're arriving in Denver? Because it has to be established he's going to Denver. We know he's going to free in Denver.

Okay. But next scene, he could just be in the snow cap. Hey, Bob. How are the roads up there? Gotta, gotta go. Yeah, I'm five hours away. Need a snow cap. Okay, cool thing, scatman.

So you got it. His character is not named Scatman. You said 15 minutes. I think that takes about 40 seconds in the movie. No, that scene is at least three minutes long. Three minutes? Him calling Duke from Rocky, who we'll get to later. I can call it up if you want.

That scene is three minutes on. They have a whole conversation. So you got three out. Why is this in here? Well, I think what they're trying to do is get you out of the hotel every once in a while. So then when you go back into the hotel, it's like that much more grace thing. Oh, good case. Okay. You would talk me into it. Another one stage the worst.

There's definitely like a 10 second shot of him going from his car into the gas station to make the phone call. It's long. Yeah. It would be my first idea for a fact. So you guys have decided you're smarter than Kubrick. No? No. Nobody's above that. I'm just here to poke some holes. Okay.

The Shelley Duvall stories are really rough and what's age the worst. She became so overwhelmed by the stress of the role. She was physically ill for months. Her hair fell out. The script kept kidding change. And Kubrick was miserable to her. And people seemed to think he was being miserable to her because he wanted her to break down because it helped the role because they filmed this sequentially, which is crazy. It was so much more time money.

But he actually wanted her to deteriorate. over the course of the filming, which she does. And I don't know if she was ever the same. I think she was really, really damaged by this movie. You mentioned the movie that she made immediately after this, which is the exact opposite, which is Popeye. She was olive oil almost immediately after this. She goes to Malta to make Popeye with Robert Altman,

which is one of the all-time fiascos, like you mentioned, his biggest bomb. And could there be a more different role than playing Wendy than playing sweet olive oil falling in love with Popeye? you know, I think in a certain context you'd be like he abused her. But she did sign on to do The Shining. I mean, it is going to be one of the most terrifying movies you're ever going to make and probably psychologically terrorizing in general to make movies like this.

It's tough. He's like, Shelly, I know you've done 79 takes and smoked seven packs of cigarettes in the last eight hours. The John Hamm herbal cigarettes died back then. I need one more of you reacting to Danny Redding Redding Red Rum. the mirror. Just one more. This might be it. Take 80. He was obsessive. He was obsessive. Nicholson seemed to handle it a lot

better than Shelley did. Yeah, because he's fucking crazy. Yeah. He's like, yeah, Stanley. One more. Let's go. What else is age the worst for you guys? Not a laugh for me. I really love this movie. I really like an age the worst kind of movie. I think it's,

there are a lot of there are a lot of like bad takes about the movie. I think the takes about the movie age the worst. So you're really anti- get this shit out of here about your

movies about the Holocaust or whatever or this movie about the moon landing. We were working together

when Room 237 came out and I think that that's an interesting movie that is not really all that charitable to the

crazy people that interpret movies and it's an interesting document of what people can do with a movie

if they pull at it and try to shape it into the thing that is interesting to them but I don't think it's

necessarily approving of any of those theories and I think a lot of people walked away from room 237's thinking

like, oh yeah, this is about the moon landing. And that wasn't the point of that. About of the movie or of the shining? No, the documentary was, it was more like, look how crazy these people are. See, I guess I am a little bit more affectionate towards it because there was a period of time before. I think that there was like a period of time an online film fandom and scholarship that was a little bit more like, like, really off menu like that. Whereas like, I'm going to take this thing and I'm going to twist it. Well, I'm not against that in general.

That's not, I think it's more like with this movie. I think I'm a little bit more forgiving about it because I'm nostalgic for that time where people were like, now I'm going to like read Starship Troopers as an anti-fascist movie. You know what I mean? That's the point of that movie. I understand that. No, I know, but like you don't get to determine what is and isn't the point of that. And if people want to look at it and say like, oh, okay, well, I see this thing or that thing.

I think that the level of scholarship about this tends to like at least whether or not the people who are like behind it or a little bit nutty. I think that it tends to be a little bit more thoughtful. And kind of like, I respect the originality of thought. You know what I mean? It doesn't necessarily... There's never been a movie where I'm like, actually, this movie is about this,

and that's what makes it good. I'm always going to react to the actual texts. Yeah. I guess at the risk of overdoing it, like, it sometimes leads to, like, seriously unwell people doing crazy shit because they become obsessed with articles of pop culture and the messages that they send them.

Right, you were talking about the taxi drivers. Yeah, and then they fucking kill the president. You know what I mean? Like, there's, there's, like a weird, there's a weird line there where if you want to say, well, I think that Kubrick had a lot to say about the Native American genocide in this country. You could

credibly say that. There's plenty of stuff in the movie that supports that. But the minute you start going into like crackpot theorizing, it gets a little bit dicey to me. And I think that that documentary is about unearthing the levels that people will go to. And then that, that behavior was much more subterranean. Right.

You know, before. It was before there was like YouTube and Twitter and these places and like that those people got like their voices amplified in a way that they didn't before. I would argue that that documentary spelled out exactly what was going to happen over the next eight years. With like 4chan and shit like that?

Fucking crazy people conspiracies that really believe them and that completely got out of hand. And Pizza Gate and all that shit. Yeah. It all started with like the Shining documentary. And then it kept going and going and then it goes to Sandy Hook at 9-11 and people saying planes didn't

hit the towers even though we obviously saw planes going into the towers and then buildings being detonated and It's true. It's true. There's a connection to it. I hate deciding on what stage is the worst, but I feel bad for Shelley DeVall knowing all the stories, I guess. It's tough, yeah. Hey, let's talk about Luminary for a second. A podcast subscription service is some of the best content around.

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You don't like that one? In this metaphor, is the key arena, the Overlook Hotel? I think it was. I like that. We also have breaks up the story of Woodstock 1999 and the rewatchable spin-off. The rewatchable is 1999. Luminary app free to download

gives you access to way more than just their own content. Your first two months of access to Luminary's premium content for free if you sign up at Luminary. com slash rewatch. After that, it's only 799 per month. And again, we have the 15 movies that we did

on rewatchables 1999. You can get that to Luminary.com slash rewatch. Cancel anytime. terms apply. Casting what-ifs. Jack Nicholson wanted Jessica Lang for the role of Wendy. Hmm.

Different movie. Kubrick talked him out of it. He ended up doing Postman always rings twice with her. Were they dating? I know. He was with Angelica Houston or in the Shining. A little sweet on her. Angelica Houston lived with them when he filmed the shanning.

And her sister. According to Stephen King, Kubrick briefly considered Harrison Ford. That would have been weird. a very different vibe for Harrison Ford in the 80s, although I guess he did do some pretty creepy. He did what lies beneath where he basically plays... Presumed innocent.

I mean, like... The flip. But I don't think it would work. He also considered Robert De Niro and Robin Williams pretty seriously decided... Decided against De Niro and thought Robin Williams

would be too psychotic in the role. I agree. I think they both could have done it. De Niro is interesting. That's a sliding door is De Nero not doing Raging Bull. It's also... It's pretty funny because Williams

would do Jack and a team A lot, right? It's true. He does it in Aladdin as the genie. This is a good one for Chris Ryan. I think you're going to be really excited. The role of Lloyd the Bartender. Originally to have been played by

Harry Dean Stanton. Oh, shit. That would have been great. Unable to take the role because of Alien. He was filming that and get done in time. I'm honestly really happy he was an alien. Win some, lose some. There you go.

Best That guy, aka the Joey Pants Award. Tony Burton. That's who Scatman calls to get the Snowh Cap. That guy, yeah. He's Duke. Apollo Creed's trainer in the four Rocky movies. Tony Burton, what an actor. Who's the actor who plays the proprietor of the hotel? Oman?

Yeah. I don't know. I'll make it look at him up. Oh, that guy? Isn't he also a that guy? He's not in contention here? I don't know. Who's the guy from Barry Nelson? Barry Nelson. Yeah, he's a good that guy. He's kind of that guy from this movie. Tony Burton's that guy from Rocky, who was also weirdly in this movie.

Saul Rubinick, they new award. Oh, what do we name this, the Linda Partridge, overacting award? Julian Moore, yeah. Yeah, Julian Moore. Sorry, so there's been in the last rewatchable as 99 we did about Magnolia. We decided to pass this award off from Saul Rubenick to Linda Partridge, Julianne Moore's character in Magnolia.

It commemorates the best overacting over-the-top performance for a scene and movie. I'm going for this one. You guys can pick your own choices. Nicholson at the tail end after Danny's gotten out of the maze and Nicholson for some reason has frostbite already, even though Danny's just wearing a sweater and say, boom, run around full speed.

And things are like, what was it, minus 80? I have a theory that you like doing this podcast just so you can yell a lot. You're just, you go and it's like, uh, uh,

uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, He dows it up. I mean, Nicholson is going for it the whole movie.

He might have CTE from the Fall Dad in the Stairs is the only thing. I would guess that a stuntman did that. Anything else for you? Overacting? I mean, Shelley Duvall is like pretty hysterical throughout the whole movie. And it's very on the nose. Yeah, I think that if, honestly, I think that if Nicholson and Duval, if one of them was trying to do an understated, like, I'm really unnerved by all this. It would have, it would not have worked.

But the fact that they're both on 11, neither is over. overacting. Deanne Waiter's Award for Best Heat Check. Skatman. Right? Can I make the case for Lloyd the bartender? Yeah, you absolutely can. Okay.

I think he's really good. I like how he plays it. He's super creepy and he's like this and he's kind of looking down with this weird smile. Your credit is always good here, Mr. Torrance. On the house. See, I think that, I think it's. Philip Stone. I think it's Delbert Grady. Oh. Because he has the most

contained. He basically has one scene. He corrected? You want to correct me on this choice? And that is when when he drops the N-word Yeah, it's tough. And it's like the movie turns. And you're like, this is evil. Yeah.

What is going on? Now, when he's talking to Lloyd the first time and he's getting a drink, you're like, okay, Jack's losing his mind. But when he starts talking to Delbert Grady, you're like, there is an evil spirit in this. house and shit's about to go fucking bad shit. Recasting couch. You can recast one part of this movie.

I have a great one. Did you guys do this one? I forgot about this one, but I'm also just, I'm so excited to hear what you say. Merrill Streep is Wendy, young Merrill Street. Deer Hunter, Merrill Street. Deer Hunter, Kramer versus Kramer. We don't even totally realize she's a great actress yet, Merrill Street. What about if we recast Danny with Gary Coleman?

Would that work? You didn't like young Merrill Street? I love it. Better or worst movie with Merrill Street? I can't. This is just one of those movies which's really hard to imagine it without the two leads.

She's so still, though, as an actor. This is Kramer versus Kramer and Deer Hunter and her superpower at that time is like quiet intensity. And Shelley Duval is so off the rails the whole time. Half-ass internet research. The idea for Danny Lloyd to move his finger as Danny?

Mm-hmm. He did it spontaneously during the first edition. Kubrick was like, cool, let's add that. Good ad. Yeah. Nicholson said Duval's performance was the most difficult role he's ever seen an actress take on and really respects how well she did with it. The Here's Johnny scene took three days to film and 60 doors.

Wow. Yeah. Kubrick was highly protected. He probably had it in like eight doors, but he was like, let's just get another. Imagine re-hanging it. Let's get another 60 times. Tell the doors guy to put it up. It's a huge fucking pain in the ass.

to do that. The doors guys are like, will be done? It's like, no, one more. Put it back on. 60 doors. Kubrick was highly protective of Danny. They made Danny think they were filming a drama. He didn't know it was a horror movie.

Oh, my gosh. When Wendy carries Danny away while shouting at Jack in the Colorado lounge, she's carrying a life-sized dummy, not Danny. He did not know the truth until several years later that it was a horror movie. Interesting. Yeah. It's funny that Stanley Kubrick was so, like, careful about what happened to the kids on the set,

and your dad was like, let's go see you the shiny. My dad was like, hey, good news. We're staying in room 237 in Cincinnati. You're the perfect age. This one's really for Chris Ryan. You know who had a tough time doing this movie?

Scatman Crothers. Oh. Stanley Kubrick made him do over 100 takes for one scene, and he was so rattled and done by the end of it. His next film, Bronco Billy, directed by Clint Eastwood, famous for being one take only. And he thought he had won, he thought he won the ladder.

Yeah, I bet. From Kubrick to Clint Eastwood. Incredible. Can you imagine? He's like, yeah, I think we're good, scat, man. He's like, what? I was ready to do that. 98 more times.

What do you think the snow and the maze was made out of? Oh, cocaine, for sure. Snow brought in from Oregon and freeze-dry packages. 900 tons of salt and crushed styrofoam. Oh, God. Do you know how uncomfortable that must have been? Yeah. Salt?

Kubrick's like... More styrofoam. Throws it down. The guy's fucking dude. Get my door guy. I mentioned they shot the movie in order. Shelly Duval ran out of tears from crying so hard for so many days in a row. Is that a thing?

To overcome it, she kept bottles of water with her at all time oncent to remain hydrated enough so she could actually cry and tears would come out. Can one run out of tears? This is half-ass internet research. bodies are 70% water. I got some websites you want to check out some cool internet theories. Some good stuff about the moon landing.

The film was filmed at the Elstree Studios, which is apparently a famous place in London, was supposed to take 17 weeks, took 51. It ran so long. That's a year. Supposed to 17 weeks took 51.

Yeah. Imagine. Put that in the context of the ringer and deadlines. If we were like, yeah, this piece is due on. Tuesday and then four months later

someone was like, I got it. I'm going to do that this time next year I'm going to publish a take on last night's Warriors Clippers game. It's good content strat. The night we knew the Warriors were done last year. People knew the Warriors were done this season last week on the Bill Simmons podcast. You were shining

it, man. Yeah, I shined it. So the film was delayed. You want some ice cream, Doc Rivers. You and Rissillo should shine every week. We were shining there. We could actually do a A video pod of you guys just looking at each other and then VO your actual podcast over it. I bet it would do numbers.

Riscilla, you want a smart water? I've got one for you. I love that you're trying to be like a ventriloquist. That's not how it's shining works. Ryan, who is Tony? You think Ryan likes this movie? I don't know. It's a great question.

He probably has some hot takes. I actually wouldn't mind if that was a category and we just called Rissila on speakerphone and be like, do you think you like the shining? He'd probably be like, somehow have a chip on his shoulder about something in this movie. It didn't do justice to Colorado or something.

Are we sure Kubrick is good? Shelly Devald just knows how to drive a snow cap. So the movie was delayed. 17 weeks took 51. Two movies were delayed because it took so long. The movies? Reds? Raiders in Lost Ark.

Just Spielberg on the phone. Like, is he done yet? No. Incredible. He's like, doesn't matter. I'm just going to take over AI after he dies. When Jack, when he shows up on closing day, they have this in Room 3,37,

and Allman and Bill Watson approach him, he's reading a January of 1978 Playgirl magazine. Yes, that is an amazing moment in the movie. I don't even know how to interpret that. Yeah. Why is that in a hotel lobby? That's a real like Kubrick is fucking with us, kind of a joke. Is he trying to insinuate Jack?

There's no, usually there's not Playgirls sitting around in hotel lobbies. So he brought his own 19708 playgirl? Who knows? And you mentioned the Timberlane Lodge Timberline Lodge they

specifically requested 217 wasn't in this changed the 237 and now 217 is their most requested room by people by Chris Ryan he's like put me in the shining room Classic

Apex Nerd Culture Apex Mountain Shelly DeVau Yeah. Yeah. No? Nashville?

Nashville? Yeah. Nashville? Maybe Annie Hall. There's like times when people saw her on screen in the 70s and they're like, who is that? I got to put her in my movie. Like, did she get to do whatever she wanted after The Shining? Like, did it get...

She got Popeye. Yeah. Okay. It could be Shelly DeVal. You're pissed off. Jesus. Fitter because we're taking... The treasure of the Shelley DeVall fan society, Bill Simmons.

Caretaker. Yeah, nice moment for them. Where was it like, what is this the best caretaker movie? Yeah. This movie is a tough look for Airbnb, I feel like, in general. You know, careful about letting a stranger into your home. They may destroy it and kill their family. Apex Mountain for bartenders named Lloyd?

Axe murderers? No. No. I feel like Slashire. I think so I married an ex-murder. Yeah, that's true. It's definitely not for Nicholson. It's definitely not for Kubrick unless Sean disagrees.

Mm. No. Definitely didn't put his career in a better place. I would say 2001 is. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Other than that, I don't really have anything.

Pickin' nets. Boy, Danny's neck bruises sure cleared up fast, didn't they? Man. This thing's just went right away. It's a good note. Huge red splotches and scratches gone immediately. But if you believe that there's something like a haunting happening happening in this hotel, maybe it did go away.

Okay. Are we doing ghost logic? Why didn't Danny get cold in the middle? Mayes. Four-degree weather just bouncing off him? Adrauling? Yeah, also maybe a little healthier than his dad. Okay.

Not carrying around all that white man's burden. So Stewart tells Jack during the job interview of this story about a previous caretaker named Charles Grady, who in 1970s succumb to cabin fever, murder his family, killed himself. Jack later means Grady, who says his name's Delberg Grady. Not Charles Grady. and Nicholson's like Ah, Delbert Grady? Do you have a little problem with your family once in a lot of time?

But earlier the guy said it was Charles Grady. So why the two Grady's? I mean, this is a huge point of debate among people in their readings of the movie, whether or not it's the same person, whether there are doubles, whether there's like, you know, what that means. That scene is so incredible. So did you notice that Bill's pitched it like, why the two orders? Why the two Grades?

Why the two Grades? Why the two Grades? Why the two Grades? So the theory that I... You cut these guys loose! So the theory is, you're coming back, you're reincarnated this different piece. And the catch would be like the name Grady, the name Jack. So when we see Jack at the end of 1921, his name's not Jack Torrance.

It's like Jack, wow. And that they're all servants of the house in some ways. That this structure somehow is like in command. So there's a Grady, there's a Jack. Right. So on and so on. What do you, what did you think of that? I haven't really looked too much into it.

It's just, I tend to think that the movie is about like a cursed, haunted building and that there's a lot of inconsistencies with who represents what. There's two other weird things that they mentioned in the documentary. One is that when Danny passes out early in the movie when he's brushing his teeth and the camera is slowly creeping in, there's all these Snow White and the Seventorf type of things on his wall, including dopey. But then

as he's getting carried out after dopey's gone from the wall. Oh, really? And one of the weirdos in documentaries is like, that's to signify that Danny is now awake. He's no longer a dope about the people around him. And it's like, or they just filmed it out of order

and they had forgotten to put the dope. And if that were true, why wouldn't they remove sleepy instead of dopey? If he's wake, right? And then there's another scene. One of the... Dwarfology here. One of the times when Wendy goes in to see Jack,

when he wakes up from the nightmare, the chair is behind him. And then it's not the chair. It's a continuity error. But the weirdos are like, Kubrick's saying that chairs are a symbol of... And it's like, maybe they just forgot to put the chair back. Well, it's hard to imagine him being like, I forgot to put the chair back, right? I do think he did things to fuck with people. For sure.

And I just want to... I think Grady is in some ways just kind of like, fuck you guys. I'm not going to explain this. I just want to get to the point creatively where people are picking apart the rewatchables like this. Did you notice Bill had the

smart water? But then it wasn't on the table anymore and then it was back? Was he saying he was smarter than Chris? When you're Kubrick, you just did Robert Lee's beard in the sky there? I got to be honest, I really don't want people doing that with the rewatchables. Because that's how Bill gets assassinated.

It's true. Somebody's like, I listen to enough rewaters. to know that Bill needs to go down now. He did what he needed to do. He's actually asking us to kill him. That's the 100th episode. Right after we finished the reheat. And then like you die and I'm holding hands with you at LAX.

We recreate the end of heat. And then the 200th episode is us recreating Dead of Thieves. It's 200 the re-reheat? We just do it a third time with like a celebrity. Oh, you're right. Maybe that might be one. We shall all be dead before we get to 200. Best quote that we haven't mentioned yet.

That's not a signal to people. No. Any other nitpicks, by the way? No, I have some unintercible questions, but no, not more than nip. Best quotes that we haven't mentioned yet, I would give my goddamn soul for a glass of beer. A beer. Kind of telling.

He might have been the moment he actually gave up his soul. That's when the ghost were like, we've got him. Good call. Wendy? I'm home. Wendy? I'm home. Very well done.

Yeah. Here's Johnny was great during an iconic Johnny Carson run. Here's Johnny! Where it was like the perfect year almost to have... They have that one TV. They probably only... To a younger generation, is Here's Johnny more famous than Johnny Carson.

Than Johnny Carson. Oh. Well, there's a Johnny Carson serious channel now. Is there? I'm not sure. I heard an ad traffic by young people. Is that just like... audio of Johnny Carson shows?

I think it's for people over 70 right before they rear-end the person in front of them. They're listening to a swami bit. I can't wait to get old. Just get to... Don't worry. The old Seinfeld joke. Just pulling out of the driveway. I'm not looking back.

I'm coming out. Fortunately for you, crazy rewatchables listeners may have something to say about that. Yeah. We have to kill Bill before cruising. I'll be dead. Some places are like people, some shine and some don't. You know, some places are like people. Some shine and some don't.

I guess you could say the overlooked hotel here has something about it's like shining. That's a good one. Yeah. I feel the way about the ringer building 20. Yeah. When the termites were falling out of the ceiling, I'm like, some places shine. I still wrote in that building. Yeah, that's your office in there.

That's when we knew it shined. It was when, yeah, when the termites struck. Coming back to their termite king. You've had your whole fucking life to think things over. What good's a few more minutes going to do now? I love this one. You've had your whole fucking life to think things over. What's good's a few minutes more going to do you now?

Please. Stay with me. Please. Could this be remade as a 10-episode Netflix show? I mean, it kind of was with the miniseries. And I don't think it worked. that I think weird as this sounds

I would be fine spending more time in the lead up to him to the week you know what he mean the week that he loses him drunk

I was gonna say before they move we get a little drunk Jack yeah loses his job a little like Jack working at a car wash I mean the other thing

that probably mention here is that the sequel is coming and it's a movie it's not a series it's a movie you like the sequel I liked it it

something really interesting to this conversation. I don't want to spoil anything. Okay. But just it's trying to acknowledge both the book and the movie and putting the book and the movie together. So there's stuff from the, because the book and the movie of The Shining diverge a lot. For example, the hotel at the end of the Shining burns to the ground. That is not what happens in the movie. In the sequel, they're putting that back up because is that for an Easter egg?

That's good. That's good. I would say I would recommend Dr. Sleep. That's the movie. It's interesting. It's fun for Shining fans. Some people are going to have problems with it as they do all Stephen King adaptations. Yeah, okay. Okay.

This is creepy. This is awesome. You have a good, you have a good, weird vibe right now. Thank you. Appreciate it. Here's my case for the Shining. Chris, darling. Light of my life.

This is such bad audio, though. I know. I was about saying. No one knows what's happening. We're taping at YouTube fans. We don't. do run these on YouTube. I know.

For the people of that YouTube.com slash... Only two hours in. Yeah. 5,000 of you guys who watched... We're obeying the rule that... Not going past the movie. Can never be past the movie length.

We have a lot of leeway here. Here's my case for 10 episode Netflix show for this movie. I think you said it in 2020 with the internet. Mm. And you have the kid... He's tweeting. He's tweeting through it.

You have... You use all the modern stuff. You have Shelley Deval, Googling stuff on the... about the hotel. Like, that's how you monitor. So she wouldn't Google before she moved there. No.

So Jack is a Reddit moderator? What's his gig? He's like, I'm busy, Wendy. It would be- moderating these threads. It'd be amazing, though, if you made a shining sequel about a guy who's obsessed with a shining. Oh, that's good.

And it's like a shining conspiracy guy and is so into it that he takes a caretaker job. Oh, yeah. We're good. So sell this. That's great job. A reset and let's pitch it. See, fucking R.

That is good. Probably in answerable questions. What was the scarier usage of La Bohem? Bohem? La Boeem. Baum? That's up there with Tone and Furtado. I needed a good...

Toulman Furtada. Sleeping with the enemy, that the Julie Roberts' creepy husband would put that on before he had sex with her that she didn't really want to have, but she was terrified of him. Or how it's used in the Shining. I'm going to go shining. I'm going to go shining.

I'm going to go shining. Okay. All right, good. What's the point of the impossible windows? That's a big thing with the weirdo conspiracy people with this movie. The hotel rooms have windows that shouldn't be there. So when he has the Allman's interview at the beginning, Jack goes in there. Alman's office has a window.

But then one of the conspiracy weirdos was like, if you lay out the hotel, there's no way there can be a window there. Because that's in the middle of the hotel. It's like to the left of the reception desk. I just think that's a continuity. between interiors and exteriors and what we see when we look at the hotel. Notorously sloppy

stand that way. They feel like Kubrick doesn't make mistakes. When they come to the ringer to kill Chris, I'll talk to them about it. No, I'm their king. No, you're the termite king.

We've established that. I just think that of the three of us, if they're coming to get somebody, I'm going to probably make it through. You're not. We already have conspiracy bill. We know that he is the overlord. So what am I?

The dead termite king. The dead termite king. I mean, what else could you be? What are you? I'm just a guy. I'm just the guy who's like, I like movies, okay? I know what I see in the screen. That's what it is.

I'm Lloyd. I've always been both in the caretaker, Mr. Simmons. This question's unanswerable and it's for both of you. What's the proper reaction from me, from you, from you, if you're standing in a hallway and blood starts pouring out of the elevators. What would you do? That's the appropriate reaction.

What would you do? I would run. Would you stare and go, or would you just be like, I'm fucking out of here. I would be like Usain Bolt wherever the end. I'd be like vaulting off a Scatman

brother's dead body like it was a trampoline. I'd jump off it and just bounce. I'd be so fast out of there. Big look for trampoline. in this podcast. Yeah, it's trampoline-heavy thing. Can you imagine, though? Yeah.

I think that would be the single scariest thing that could ever happen. What did he use for the blood again? Wasn't it some crazy concoction? Yeah, it was like red corn syrup across with... That was his... He made the door guy donate the blood. Well, in the movie... Hey, I'm glad you finished that 98th door.

I have one more job for you. We're going to hook you up to his fucking... In the trailer and commercials, he lied to the people because they were like, you can't show blood in a trailer. And he's like, that's something. blood. It's red water. And they were like, okay, cool. And they ran it. Yeah. Staley's like, oh,

he didn't say, he said it wasn't blood. This is tough. This is going to change the tone of the pod. Was Danny sexually abused? Because that's a theory of this movie. I didn't read it that way. No, I didn't either. I just always read it as physically abused and like kind of traumatized by that.

Being like hurt by his parents. Because in the book, Dick Caller is sexually abused. Right. So that shining as a skill is somehow like a result of that? I don't know. I didn't read the book. Who knows? I don't think that that is the long term.

I mean, go see Dr. Sleep and then draw some conclusions. Okay. Because there's a lot more about the mythology of what it means to shine. Was there too much or too little when the hotel turns right at the end when Shelley DeVal is walking around and we get the bare costume blow job? We get all the skeletons and cobwebs. We get the blood out of the elevator. If you could have added one other thing.

indicate to Shelly Duvall, this hotel has lost its mind. What would you have thrown in there? I have my answer. It's Chris dressed up like a giant termite reigning as the termite king. That's how I would know that this place is fucking haunting.

It's Kyrie Irving playing one-on-one with the old lady getting out of the bathtub. Or a mummer's parade. Pumpkin patch loving termite thing, Chris Ryan. Yeah, Chris sitting on top of a giant pumpkin dressed like a termite, cackling. I would have had... I'm glad that this is happening.

because it shows how, like, do you actually understand any of the inside, the Russian nesting dolls of those jokes? You have to be a conspiracy freak. You have to get into it. You just have to listen to a lot of podcasts. I would have added something with the big wheel,

big wheel, either the big wheel driving itself. Oh, yeah. That would be good. Or one of the grown-ups, like the guy who had the bleeding head, Grady, like him ride in the big wheel, but he's got like an accent and said.

I have an answerable. Corporate in the big wheel would have been cool. I have an answerable. So I wanted to ask you guys, was there any point in your life or would you ever consider taking this job to like go write a book, quote unquote? This is like a cousin of Rusillo's worst year ever. Would you do this job? Thinking your worst year ever, you're like, yeah, so got this gig at the Overlook, four months.

But if you were ever looking to like disconnect from it all, like I once thought about moving to Vermont to write a novel. Yeah. Not since I've been working for you. What was this like last year? And then you killed your family assumed a new identity and moved to New York? That idea of like getting away from it all to like do one thing like that. I've thought about that. This job in particular, I think the reason that the people who keep coming to that hotel

to kill people is because crazy people are drawn to jobs like this. I like it. So maybe it's a little column A, a little column B. I'd like to move somewhere nice and have a quiet life. Do you think you would be into having a hotel to yourself? No. I would rather have my family and other people there so I could ignore them as I wrote the book because I've done that now twice.

In a different place? No, I just in an abandoned hotel. So I can do. You're distracting me. Andy. Last in answerable question, what's the ending mean? We have to talk about this. I mean, Nicholson's in a fucking photo from 1921.

It's a little weird. But I think it's like, like he says, I mean, he's a ghost. He has been there. He's always been there. Some version of him, his soul, whatever, and he's been reincarnated a couple of times. Now the question is whether or not that's predetermined or not. That's what people argue about.

I think it's that the hotel like eats souls and it absorbs them and takes on a new person. You know, it's also kind of like a Faustian bargain to come in there and take that job. And what it means, and like over centuries because of the desecration of the people that were living there when they built the hotel, it's like the penance that you have to pay

for that hotel to continue to exist. The real question is, who's the next guy? Right? Like when Ollman has to go back to the next fall, when the place closes again, and Ollman's like, I've got to get a winter caretaker for this place. Does he say, fun fact about this position,

two caretakers have lost their minds and tried to kill their families or killed their families. Well, and they don't really reckon with that. And the movie, obviously, and in the book, like I said, it burns. So, like, you don't have to worry about that. In the book, it burns down. Yeah.

What do you think the ending? That would have been the obviously, obvious sequel. Yeah. It's just next year. The next character. Bill Murray. Yeah.

Bill Murray. The Blues Brothers are the characters. I think the ending is that, yeah, it's Grady, Delbert, and Charles. It was always somebody named Grady reincarnated. Something for Jack. Bonus. Unanswerable question.

July 4th, 2000, do we throw a 100th over the Kotel anniversary party? Just the three of us? Yeah. For four months? Alone? No, no. it's just in that picture,

It's July 4th, 1921. The 100th anniversary is coming up. Yeah. And hire a Lloyd. Yeah. Craig could be Lloyd. We actually, we, we, we, Craig's gone insane during this podcast.

Yeah. I think that would be a fun party. That would be really fun. The Overluck 100th anniversary party. I'm not, I'm not really super interested in recreating anything from the Shining just in my life. I'm trying to, just trying to avoid getting hexed in any meaningful way. Who won the movie?

Nicholson. I think it's Kubrick. I think it's Kubrick, too. I've been losing these recently. I've been getting voted down. There are no losses. Until you're murder. There are no losses on the Ruaz.

We're all friends. I'm like, you're the termic game. Sean's the caretaker. And I'm going to die. Here's why I think Kubrick game. All right. Here's why I think Kubrick, because I think it's actually a pretty uneven Nicholson performance for the first hour.

I actually think he gets better as the movie goes along because he's also probably insane. Yeah. That's fair. The first 45 minutes, I don't think he was able to play it straight enough because he's Jack Nicholson. He has all the Jack Nicholson baggage. But even in the car, when they're driving toward the hotel, and Danny says the thing, he's like, he saw it on TV. There's like that Nicholson Edge where it's like, he might kill them later. Yeah.

It's not going to be a feel-good movie. Yeah. It's also not subtle. Yeah. You know, there's no slow turn here. And it's Kubrick, too, because it's got all the maneuver. Bellowing bells and whistles of a genius filmmaker, but it's also just a genuinely entertaining,

fun movie in its own disturbing way. And that's why he so often gets called, like, the grandmaster, the greatest filmmaker, because most of his movies are just incredibly watchable. They're all different, and you get different things out of them. But this is just pure genre popcorn movie that also happens to have some of the most disturbing visual images ever put to screen.

Any last thoughts, Chris? No, I'm thinking a lot about how you guys see me right now, just my relationship to termites. You've always been the termite king, Mr. Ryan. I was going to play the scary theme song, but I couldn't find it. We have, punch it in a post. Midnight, the Stars and You? I don't know what it was.

Oh, yeah, midnight. That was it for the rewatchables. Don't forget about the Book of Basketball podcast launching next week. Book of Basketball 2.0, the watch still cranking along. The big picture? Yeah. Yeah. And it's formative years

of crank along? Yeah. Mid-crank. Yeah. The BS podcast. And then we have a whole bunch of rewatchables coming for you. I'm not going to, I'm not on the next one, but we have, I think, seven left. And it's all culminating in Godfather 2 at the end of December.

So looking forward to all that. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Bill.