Room 237

[Noodle Lizard]

If we're going to get on to the ill-fated Napoleon film, my dad's got this amazing gigantic volume which contains pretty much everything to do with it - the script, photographs, designs, letters and other such correspondances.  It's amazing, and only £30 evidently:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stanley-Kubricks-Napoleon-Greatest-Movie/dp/3836523353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368119089&sr=8-1&keywords=napoleon+kubrick

I was also lucky enough to visit the Stanley Kubrick exhibition at LACMA (must go again before it finishes at the end of the month) where they have, among other things, his entire library on Napoleon - two tall bookcases just full of books on Napoleon.  And it's not as if it's for show - some of the books are open on display and there are more of Kubrick's notes than there are words on the pages.  If anything, his reputation for being obsessive in his research underplays how mental he actually was.

I don't know if that exhibition will move on to London at some point, but if it does you should all make your way down to it - it's really, really great.

[Steven]

I'm sure somebody will try and resurrect the Napoleon project at some point, making use of all that stuff. The added vogue of a new 'Kubrick' film will garner such a preordained controversy/audience, it's too juicy a premise for some LA cunt director to ignore; probably starring Mads Mikkelsen kneeling on his shoes.

[Johnny Townmouse]

It's pretty old news now: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/04/steven-spielberg-stanley-kubrick-napoleon

Some of my favourite material in the Kubrick archive relates to Napoleon - a fascinating insight into a phantom film.

[Blumf]

Just noticed this up on MySpleen:

The Shining (overlayed and reversed)
It has been suggested that The Shining is meant to be watched with the film playing in reversed overlayed on top of itself. Reference to this can be found in the documentary Room 237. I have created this copy and hope to share it with those who are curious. There are some very eerie sync ups and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

eeh, thanks, but no thanks.

[Kane Jones]

Crikey, I bet that's absolute shit.

[Hank Venture]

Yeah, super weird how two faces overlap. It's not like a shot of a face talking is particularly common in movies.

[mcbpete]

It has been suggested that The Shining is meant to be watched with the film playing in reversed overlayed on top of itself

Suggested by whom, a cunt ?

[Kane Jones]

Suggested by whom, a cunt ?

Indupitably. The jury is still out over whether it was a complete cunt, or just a bit of a cunt, though.

I'm plumping for the former, myself.

[Steven]

Can't remember if this is the one I watched, it's been a while, but I think this video shows Kubrick spliced in himself saying the word 'Shone' at various points in the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1v9EKLQD_g

I can't remember but I think it then goes on to analyse the time stamps for them all and come up with some theory or other. But at least that tid-bit is something interesting I hadn't noticed before.

[phantom_power]

I thought this was a great documentary. It was clear that you weren't meant to believe any of the theories. It was just a study of what happens when you get a film made with as much background detail and genuine oddness as The Shining and some people with some strange beliefs.

I really enjoyed how it showed the genuinely interesting background detail that you might miss if you haven't seen the film 50 times. The odd layout of the hotel and the fact that the people crossing the road at the beginning are about to get run over before the film cuts to another angle are a couple that spring to mind. For anyone else you would put it down to bad film-making but Kubrick was so meticulous that this seems unlikely. I am not saying I believe any of the theories but it is fascinating to see how much effort Kubrick seems to have gone to disorient and disturb the viewer.

[Pepotamo1985]

But the only direct reference to it is Danny's jumper, everything else is a tangential reference of such verve that you might as well be staring at a magic eye painting.

Blinding. +1

I'm one of those people who does believe they maybe faked the moon landings, because a lot of the photographs and films are demonstrably fake which puts everything else into question

WTF?!

which coincidentally occurred 666 days before January 1st 2001

PLEASE SELL ME SOME CRACK

[Custard]

Heh, I watched this the other day, and Kubrick - A Life In Pictures (which is pretty great), and I actually enjoyed most of it.

Some of the theories are laughable, but never less than interesting to hear, and I loved the pointing out of visual things Kubrick stuck in there, like stickers on Danny's door moving, or the corridor carpet turning direction. Clearly not accidents, and makes you wonder why a perfectionist like Kubbers would do it

The film doesn't give answers, but I think it was fun. Maybe I just like listening to weirdies harp on about their favourite film

But yeah, I heartily recommend A Life In Pictures. That was a real joy

[vrailaine]

like stickers on Danny's door moving, or the corridor carpet turning direction. Clearly not accidents, and makes you wonder why a perfectionist like Kubbers would do it

Answer for both: to create a sense of hard-to-determine unease about the surroundings? A more blatant example being his breaking of the 180 degree rule.

[Custard]

Yep, most probably. Everything in that film feels specifically designed and laid out to cause unease in the viewer

Or maybe the carpet only exists in Danny's mind?

OR OUR'S?!

[Noodle Lizard]

I saw it on Netflix again recently and have sort of changed my tune.  Once you get over the inanity of a lot of it, there's some things to take away from it.

I don't really agree with any of the theories except the obvious ones (Indian burial ground stuff, deliberate continuity errors to fuck with us etc.), but for me what the documentary shows more than anything else is that you can really deconstruct any movie, not just 'The Shining', and if a movie is subjected to such deconstruction then it's probably something special.  So it felt like it was less of a documentary about 'The Shining' and more about fandom and the impact movies can have on people (whether you think it's good or not). 

So it's not the most amazing thing ever, but it's a worthwhile documentary and my initial ambivalence was probably due to me approaching it the wrong way.

[Thomas]

I watched some of this earlier, and that's the impression I got, with it going from stuttering fan to stuttering fan[nb]not bashing the ol' stuttering community, of course, just noting that the narrations aren't exactly polished.[/nb] for us to hear the next wacky take on The Shining.

I liked the reconstruction at the beginning of 'I moved my left hand' or however he was setting the scene.

[Noodle Lizard]

There's one narrator who gets interrupted by his screaming baby and has to go and take care of it.  Some people on IMDb thought it was shoddy filmmaking to keep that in, but it makes sense given the tone of the whole thing.

Or maybe I'm just looking into it too much ... oh God, it's contagious.

[Thomas]

Perhaps there'll be a documentary about various takes on Room 237.

[phantom_power]

There's one narrator who gets interrupted by his screaming baby and has to go and take care of it.  Some people on IMDb thought it was shoddy filmmaking to keep that in, but it makes sense given the tone of the whole thing.

Or maybe I'm just looking into it too much ... oh God, it's contagious.

I think the distant sounds of the baby add to the eerie atmosphere the documentary was successful in maintaining. There was some great music (created for the documentary I think) and the footage from Demons and Demons 2 throughout was a nice touch.

[SteveDave]

Clearly not accidents, and makes you wonder why a perfectionist like Kubbers would do it

Maybe he was just tossing this one off & not putting that much effort in.

[Noodle Lizard]

Some of the theories are laughable, but never less than interesting to hear, and I loved the pointing out of visual things Kubrick stuck in there, like stickers on Danny's door moving, or the corridor carpet turning direction. Clearly not accidents, and makes you wonder why a perfectionist like Kubbers would do it

The one thing I'd say is that they don't consider that Kubie isn't responsible for everything on the set, and even the most OCD directors will produce films full of continuity errors due to the prop department, having to do re-shoots without easy access to the original footage or even just a lazy script supervisor.  I'm sure a couple are intentional, but I don't know if it's worth analysing every single one since you could do that for almost any movie (which sort of ties into that point I made a little while ago).

I'd be curious to know if any of these theorists have spoken to people who worked on the film, including actors.  Has anyone asked the guy who plays the manager whether Kubie instructed him to stand next to the paper tray in a way that makes it look like he's got a massive old boner?

[phantom_power]

The director is pretty responsible for continuity as there will always be photos taken of each set so they can be matched when scenes are split over different days. Stuff like the stickers on the doors would have to be done on purpose as well, so there would be photo references to match. This is all doubly so of someone like Kubrick who does ridiculous amounts of research and tests before a frame has even been shot.

[Noodle Lizard]

The director is pretty responsible for continuity as there will always be photos taken of each set so they can be matched when scenes are split over different days. Stuff like the stickers on the doors would have to be done on purpose as well, so there would be photo references to match. This is all doubly so of someone like Kubrick who does ridiculous amounts of research and tests before a frame has even been shot.

Not necessarily.  Just for an example, if the psychologist scene was shot a month or two after the first scene, they may not have been able to get the exact same stickers again in time.  No matter how pernickety the director may be, films are still made on a strict schedule/budget which won't often allow for obsessive faffing, and such continuity errors can definitely be a result of that.

I think the sticker one may well have been intentional as a little bonus, though.  That being said, he removed the latter scene (with Sleepy missing from the arrangement) in his "preferred" European cut.  In fact, a lot of the scenes which get taken apart in 'Room 237' are missing from his preferred cut, so perhaps they weren't so important to him after all.  I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned more often in the documentary, if at all.

Basically, for the most part, the continuity errors in 'The Shining' aren't necessarily more remarkable or unusual than those in 'Dr Strangelove', 'Clockwork Orange' or 'Kevin & Perry Go Large', it's far more a case of them being held up to incredible scrutiny rather than what Kubrick actually meant to achieve with them (if anything) - that's what makes the documentary interesting for me, anyway.

[phantom_power]

I would imagine they would keep the door in storage if they knew they were going to use it again, rather than recreate it from scratch. At the least they would have duplicates for all the stickers needed. I am pretty sure at that stage in his career Kubrick would have been indulged in his obsessive faffing.

It is interesting about the bits that aren't in the preferred cut. Do we have definitive proof which he preferred?

[SteveDave]

Which version is on the DVD? Is it different on the Blu-Raymond?

I've only just seen "The Shining" after seeing it when a whole load of Kubrick's films came out on video in the late 90s. I think I watched it whilst drunk & tired so didn't like it very much at the time but bought it the other week for 50p & I love it now. Around the same time I also saw "The Exorcist" when inebriated & then when I got the DVD of that there were loads of scenes I didn't remember. So much it was like watching it all again for the 1st time.

God bless alcohol.

[Noodle Lizard]

I would imagine they would keep the door in storage if they knew they were going to use it again, rather than recreate it from scratch. At the least they would have duplicates for all the stickers needed. I am pretty sure at that stage in his career Kubrick would have been indulged in his obsessive faffing.

You don't always know you're going to need it again.  During the time between shooting on that bedroom set, it could well have been used for any number of other projects and had the stickers removed.  I don't know, of course, but it's not impossible for continuity errors to be genuine accidents.

It is interesting about the bits that aren't in the preferred cut. Do we have definitive proof which he preferred?

It's pretty well-known, but here's the first result from IMDb:

"Kubrick decided to further edit the film for its theatrical release outside the US. He cut approximately 31 minutes of footage, reducing the length to 113 minutes. The 144 minute 'US version' is often erroneously called the Director's Cut when in fact director Kubrick regarded the 113 minute version as the superior cut of the film. When the film was released on home video in the US, Kubrick endorsed the shorter version of the film as the 'official' version."

[Noodle Lizard]

Which version is on the DVD? Is it different on the Blu-Raymond?

I've only just seen "The Shining" after seeing it when a whole load of Kubrick's films came out on video in the late 90s.

You can only buy the shorter "official" cut in the UK as far as I know[nb]or import, obviously[/nb], which loses about 20 minutes (some of which is pretty vital, I thought).  However, the version commonly shown on TV is the longer US cut.

[Viero_Berlotti]

There's one narrator who gets interrupted by his screaming baby and has to go and take care of it.  Some people on IMDb thought it was shoddy filmmaking to keep that in, but it makes sense given the tone of the whole thing.

Ha, yes I watched this last night and had to pause the film at that bit because I thought my baby daughter had woken up and was crying upstairs.

The filmmakers obviously deliberately left that in, and that was the point I realised this film wasn't about uncovering any particular meaning in The Shining, but was more about the people being interviewed and how they can project any meaning onto a film if they over analyse it. It reminded me a lot of the ridiculous 'Paul is Dead' analysis of the Sergeant Pepper's artwork and Beatles lyrics

One thing I've never understood about The Shining though, is Stephen King's ambivalence towards it. Yes, Kubrick changed things from the original work, but he needed to do that to make the story work in a different medium. It's called adaptation, and happens all the time. King is obviously being precious about his work, but if he let go of that for a second, surely he'd have to concede that Kubrick made a great film out of The Shining.