Dissecting every theory from Room 237

Okay, I'm glad you mentioned jokes, because I've actually got one that I've been working on. It's a bit of a long one, but I'm pretty proud of it. Oh, no. It's definitely related to our theory today. Oh, okay. One day, Ash Ketchum is out adventuring on his Pokemon journey, having a good time, when suddenly, in a flash, Mewtwo appears before him, looking frantic and carrying the limp, unmoving body of their friend Mew. he says you have to help us mew has become afflicted with an illness the likes of which this world has never seen before we've tried everything but it seems there is no cure that we pokemon are able to find you're our last hope ash so ash he takes one look at mew and then without a word he nods and sets off down the road gesturing that mewtwo should follow so on ash walks, with Mewtwo carrying Mew behind him and wondering just where they're going. Are you taking us to the Pokemon Center? Ash, I've already tried that. Nurse Joy's medicine

cannot help us. And Ash shakes his head, simply continues walking. Mewtwo just follows along, with curiosity building and building until suddenly he speaks up again. Ash, are you taking us to Officer Jenny? That's not a bad idea, but I'm not sure if the authorities will fare any better than... Ash cuts him off, shaking his head yet again, then gestures to keep following. Hours later, suddenly he realizes they're walking through the outskirts of Pallet Town, and an idea materializes in his head. It's so simple, he doesn't know why he didn't think of this before. Ah, I understand, Ash. You're taking us to Professor Oak. Of course, his great scientific mind will be able to concoct a cure from you in no time. But Ash shakes his head more emphatically than ever, and yet again gestures for the befuddled Pokemon to follow him. Eventually, they reach Ash's house, and they go inside, Mewtwo not having the faintest clue what

Ash has in mind. Without stopping, Ash marches directly upstairs to his room, opens one of his drawers, and pulls out a Pokeflute. What? Mewtwo scoffed. You think a Pokeflute can save our dear friend Mew? Are you joking, Ash? But Ash already has the flute to his lips. As he whistles the first notes of the melody to Mewtwo's astonishment, Mew springs to life. He somersaults through the air as if there was never a problem at all. Mewtwo gawks, then turns to Ash and manages to stammer out, How? How could you possibly have known that a melody from your poke flute would cure Mew's illness? And Ash just shrugs and explains, Mew sick?

oh my god oh wow was that good oh no hey it worked ash must be pretty smart oh man i guess it did hello and welcome to the popcorn isn't real the podcast where we tell bad jokes yeah we tell amazing pokemon jokes the podcast where we talk about fan theories and we've got the mother of all fan theories today or at least a movie that has spawned so many fan theories dude you might say it spawned this podcast yeah in many ways this movie that we're going to talk about spawned this podcast so what are we talking about today presumably something pokemon related yeah very very pokemon related well it's not actually just a movie in fact it didn't even start as a movie it's actually a novel it's a well-known renowned horror novel by legendary author stephen king the man who has been cursed to keep writing non-stop he cannot stop writing or he will die um that's that's my own personal fan theory about

stephen king yeah i buy it i think that uh he made a deal with the devil after his after he got run over by that van back in the 90s um and he basically promised that in exchange for his life he would never ever stop writing i mean it was a good deal for him well yeah and it's a great deal for the devil because he gets all these amazing horror books to pervade the world with evil right like i mean it makes so much sense i love stephen king i love his his his novels i love a lot of the movies that have been made into novels that he's written um but most of all i love the shining um the shining is my favorite book of all time it's like one of my favorite movies of all time by the way what are your thoughts on the shining uh i think you've only seen the movie do you think it's a good movie do you think it's a bad movie the first time i ever saw it i was really scared but i didn't see the whole movie i just happened to turn on the tv and it was the scene where

he walks into the green room room 237 and the woman is in the bath and then she hugs him and then she turns into the old lady and i thought that was pretty dang scary is it i mean i don't think the rest of the movie is all that scary but i think that one scene is pretty pretty scary yeah well she turns into a weird old lady she's not even like a ghost or a corpse she's just old yeah i know well no she is she's rotting she's got all these swatches of rot on her body could just be that she's old though i mean you know old people yeah oh they're scary oh man i don't like him i'm like oh every time i see him i'm like i want to run i think that the scene that preceded that with danny going into that room was actually somewhat scarier than when jack goes in but both are good in preparation for this theory i've been watching a lot of interviews and i've gotten the impression that i think a lot of people don't really like the shining as a horror they maybe

like it as like a kubrick movie every single interview shown in every like featurette every documentary i've watched they'll show like a famous person like steven spielberg and they'll be like what do you think of the shining and he'll immediately start with well you know i love stanley kubrick he's great he's an auteur he's a legend i love his work and you know the shining what can i say about the shining right like kind of beating around the bush it'll be like you know the first time i watched it i actually didn't like it that much but i've seen it about 20 times since and i I guess all I can say is I can't stop watching it. So, right. Like it's everyone talks about it like that. Every single person is like, I didn't like this movie at first, but I've watched it since. I'm just like, what do people not like this movie? I don't even I can't fathom that. How can you not like The Shining?

Right. Well, it's generally regarded to be one of the greatest horror films ever made. I think so. Because I used to be an archivist for AFI. They have a lot of clips of famous people that they interviewed about The Shining to get soundbites about why it's such a great horror film. And one soundbite that they didn't use was they interviewed John Carpenter. John Carpenter. I love that guy. The interviewer who was doing this clearly hated John Carpenter just couldn't stand the guy. He was like really annoyed with him because John Carpenter was being very dryly sarcastic as he is a lot. Okay, yeah, that's John Carpenter. That's how he is. There was one part where he asked John Carpenter, because they were doing this thing on horror movies, like the top 10 horror movies. This was there. They did one TV special that was about the top 10 in each genre. And so he asked John Carpenter, like, what makes a good horror movie?

How do you make a good horror movie? And John Carpenter was like, oh, well, you know, I am actually cursed so that I cannot ever reveal that information. Because there is one thing that makes a good horror film, but I made a deal with the devil and never revealed. The interviewer speaks up and he sounds so annoyed. He's like, yes, I can see that I've asked the wrong question and now I'm being made fun of for this question I have. And then he tries to rephrase it and he's like, So what is like just some things that you can do to make good horror film? And John Carpenter just says the same thing. He's like, now I told you, I can't, I can't tell you I made a deal with the devil. I mean, you got to double down on it. If you've already said that, you can't reveal a single thing now. Maybe John Carpenter is the one with the deal with the devil. Yeah. Everyone who makes horror, they're all cursed.

John Carpenter, Stephen King. Anyway. With The Shining, I think he was already annoyed with John Carpenter, because he asked him about The Shining, and John Carpenter very flippantly and insultingly says, The Shining is the most hilarious comedy ever made. It is, in a lot of ways. I agree with him. It's so good. The guy actually, the interviewer interrupts John Carpenter to say, please restate the name of the movie because they don't have the interviewer in the actual special. They only use soundbites. Right, right. So he has to say The Shining. John Carpenter clearly, they're not going to use this soundbite. But he restates it anyway. He's like, The Shining is the most hilarious comedy ever made. Oh, my gosh. And of course, they didn't use that clip. That's a great interview. I gotta work in an archive sometime so I can listen to all these never-before-seen clips of directors who just didn't want to be interviewed that day.

Before we get into our theories, I'd like to talk about Room 237, and I think you'll probably want to talk about that too. For those who don't know, Room 237 is a documentary about the fan theories that have sprung up around The Shining, which is just a really, really silly and fun idea for a documentary. And a lot of the theories that they have are pretty silly and fun themselves. I think it's actually a divisive film because I've heard a lot of people say it's a really good documentary, which is why I originally watched it, because I'd heard good things. but I've also heard the other that it's just like so bad and so stupid but I think the people who think it's so bad and so stupid and I could be wrong but I think that it's a tongue-in-cheek documentary I think it's kind of making fun of the theorizers the people with the fan theories but anyway so I watched room 237 and I thought room 237 was so much fun and I love the way it

just delved into these inanely stupid little details in every scene. These aren't the interesting parts of The Shining they're even talking about, you know? And I just thought that was fun. And I wished that this existed for other movies. And so I decided that should be our podcast. It should be Room 237. Give them the Room 237 treatment for other movies. It's tongue-in-cheek. It's funny, but in a weird, creepy way, because we're going into the strangest little details and making the most inane parts of the movie, you know, so much darker and weirder. Kind of like The Shining itself. I don't think The Shining should be taken all that seriously. I agree. And so, of course, a movie about stupid van theories of people taking The Shining way too seriously is like right up our alley. You know, that's what we do. We take movies way too seriously, but we're very tongue-in-cheek about it. I had that exact rollercoaster of emotions as I watched Room 237.

Because it came very highly recommended from you. And I was like, oh, this is going to be fun. I'm going to learn some awesome theories about The Shining. I'm going to catch some really tiny little details and stuff. And I was watching it and I was like, these are the dumbest theories anyone has ever come up with. The one guy was like, oh, this movie is actually about the subjugation of the Native Americans. You know why? Because he throws a ball at a Native American tapestry. Oh, it's like, okay, maybe. And then another guy was like, this movie is actually about demons that are sexually attracted to humans. And the best evidence he had of this was three frames of the movie where one random dude stands up and there is a box behind him, like a rectangular box sideways so that it looks like it's pointing out from his crotch. And he's like, it's his cock. He's a sex demon. I was like, no, he's just standing in front of a box.

he slows it down so this guy that guy is actually crazy and I don't believe that this movie directed by Rodney Asher could be made without it wanting to poke fun at that guy but subtly because it doesn't want that guy to realize that guy says that yeah at the moment when I think his name is Olman shakes hands with Jack to welcome him into the hotel if you slow it down frame by frame and then pause it there's like a black box that sort of blends in with his black slacks and he's like it's a massive erection he's wearing he's wearing navy blue it doesn't even blend in but anyway it's a massive erection and then he says it's a joke that Kubrick put in there on purpose yeah I'm like Kubrick was hugely into attention to detail so I can give some of these some credit just that it's Kubrick okay but he wasn't slowing this thing down frame by frame and like haha there's an erection right there well and he definitely wasn't slowing it down frame by frame

in real life as he filmed it i mean come on like i don't you don't put that sound bite in your documentary unless you want to make fun of the crazy guy who is saying it well my favorite part of this movie because after talking to you about it i stopped watching it i had a chat with you and you're like it's tongue-in-cheek and i was like oh it is then i watched the rest and had a great time it's a great movie everyone should watch it's hilarious which i also think that is how you should watch the shining yes like it is as john carpenter i love the shining the greatest comedy ever made say this it's it's great but um uh my favorite part of room 237 was every single one of them every single theorist in that documentary basically first they would talk up They would point out some random tiny detail that they latched on to because it was whatever they were thinking about at the time. And then they would say, without fail, every single one of them then launched into a huge dissertation about how Stanley Kubrick is a genius.

He is a, you know, literally Einstein level of intelligence. He's so smart. He knows so much more than the rest of us. He puts us all to shame. He's above human. He's like a god. and then using that as a springboard they would say he's so smart that whatever i'm thinking must be true i was like what how does you're basically you're essentially just talking yourself up by exactly you're like you're you're you're using some sort of reverse awful idiocy logic to say i'm really just as smart as stanley kubrick because i noticed this random thing that i'm sure he did and i'm just like no oh i gotta love the absolute hubris of fan theorists how literally they they think they're right no matter what they can't be wrong they'll even go to the director themselves have them on their podcast say complete idiocy that the directors never intended with such force of will we are playing the role of the idiots who are making fun of ourselves

No, it was so much fun after I understood, oh, these guys are me.

This is me in this movie. Oh, man. It's a good documentary. Another source of inspiration for this podcast was another podcast called Lizard People. It's a comedy podcast about conspiracy theories. The host, Caitlin Hempstead, has said that she's sort of trying to raise awareness of how stupid and ridiculous conspiracy theories are. And so that's kind of part of what our podcast is, too, is just kind of shining a light on... Oh, shining. The shining. Oh, my gosh. On sort of the pareidolia that drives, you know, the human nature. Look at you with your $600 words there. Oh, man, Mr. College. of finding uh patterns where there are no patterns which then turns into these stupid conspiracy theories where the people coming up with them think they are so smart just like you were saying just absolute hubris and um and it's funny i mean well conspiracy theories aren't necessarily funny because you know they've really gotten out of hand these days but like

it can be funny that's i used to be so into like the illuminati conspiracy theories because it was funny because it's so stupid but it is kind of fun to see all the dumbass connections but then the illuminati conspiracies just became the q anon conspiracy theories which were like mainstream with 50 of the united states somehow well and like 50 dumber in every way but yeah yeah the theories in room 237 the the theorists they they do hone in on really tiny details and really small little things in the movie which is kind of fun but to our credit i feel like we go beyond that where we not only are looking for details but we're also looking for ways that our theories actually tie into the plot or into the character development we're telling a story right well no we're just trying to find something that actually fits in the movie itself these people are just throwing random shit at the wall and seeing what what stuck right like i haven't watched any of the

directors other documentaries he's made a lot of other documentaries rodney asher about kind of conspiracy theory related things so it could be that it's it's not tongue-in-cheek he's not so he really likes conspiracy i don't know but i feel like it's got to be a little of that right like i think he's just like us i think he likes but also i believe like 99 of the theories that we say come on did he ever talk to uh to to joseph kaczynski did he ever talk to michael minor creator of robocop did he ever talk he just talks to people like us we're his guest yeah exactly oh man i wish that'd be great we should be another thing that i wanted to point out about room 237 a lot of these things that these theorists were focusing on and basically saying aha this was included in the movie. And Stanley Kubrick is a genius who has unparalleled, flawless attention to detail. Therefore, he must have decided to put this in to indicate that the movie is about the

subjugation of Native Americans. Right. Right. A lot of those details that they were pointing out were not put into the movie due to Kubrick. They were put into the movie because of the source material, because of Stephen King, because he wrote it. Right. Like all of the Native American imagery is in the movie because Stephen King wrote the original novel that says that the hotel was built on a Native American burial ground it's not it wasn't Kubrick's decision I mean yes he he could have taken all that out but then it actually would have been like a conscious decision to remove the Native American imagery not to to to put it in right like it was already there he just he just didn't remove it. Room 237 starts out with the soundbite setting the tone of the whole documentary of this guy saying that before the movie even released he saw the poster and the poster said like the horror that swept across the american continent or something i was so confused because

that was that was that was tom cruise looking at that poster yeah no i love that dude i love that was that room 237 from eyes wide shut yeah just takes random clips from other kubrick eyes wide shut mostly eyes wide shut and constantly has tom cruise this shot from eyes wide shut where he just walks up and like watches things on this screen yeah yeah i know look it's showing the shining yeah which wasn't in the actual eyes wide shut had a lot of tom cruise watching the shining in it i didn't know i haven't seen it my main thought was that as much detail as these theory fan theorists supposedly paid to the movie none of them had the follow through to actually read the book or they would realize that they were way off base but anyway i mean with the with the native american theory i kind of like the detail where he's saying that this was before the movie released the horror hadn't swept across the american continent like the book i think he kind of says the book wasn't

that that huge i don't know if that's true i think it was it was stephen king book it's always been stephen king's like biggest book but i cut i like the tone of him essentially saying that because kubrick can't have been prophetic then his advertisers yeah he must have been talking about directed by him to put that detail in there because the actual horror that swept across the american continent was the killing of native americans native americans pretty great logical leap there the other great detail this is like the popcorn isn't real level please don't tell me stanley kubrick's face in the clouds because that was so stupid no that one was there was no face in the clouds there's no face definitely didn't airbrush his own face i don't i don't know that guy's name but he has made like a lot of like like podcast episodes and yeah he also talked about the book he was gonna write which by the way never came out he never wrote that book

well he's just like an old man but anyway yeah he's probably rotting oh no old people always rotting what's wrong with them i like the detail where is it uh what's the brand name of the sauce is it calumet oh calumet yeah it's something like that yeah but it has like a native american native american logo how like the first time that they are in the walk-in freezer they're all of all them are facing forward and you can see all of the native american logo faces on the front but the next time they're all turned away that couldn't be because the first time they went in there was closing day where they had just organized everything to leave and the next time they went in there was like three months later after this family's been living there using the stuff for months and months i think either way it was good attention to detail by the prop department to change things, you know, between shots. Whether or not that means that it's about Native Americans

turning away or whatever. I don't even remember what the theory was there. It's something about Native American genocide. Again, it doesn't like, yeah, it's fun little details, but it doesn't fit into the plot. He never tied it into the actual plot. So I'm like, no, the theory fails. It's a complete failure so there's a lady who her theory is that it's all sort of a maybe allegory for the story of the minotaur which honestly that allegory i could buy uh yeah because they go through a labyrinth they go into the maze he's chasing him in the maze yeah yeah like that was that totally makes sense but the detail that it starts her with is the poster where there's like a skier and yeah the skier looks a little weird it's like a it's like a silhouette of a skier maybe but still she says that it looks like a minotaur no and i got news for you ladies stanley kubrick did not make that poster that's just a poster it's he he didn't make it he just someone included

it in the scene it's a poster that existed there's no way i don't know he had a prop department i have no idea but no stanley kubrick was known for not making his props he would use things that already existed he wouldn't like try and make a new wardrobe he would go and have them buy clothes that existed he wouldn't build sets he would have them scope out actual rooms that existed and then pick the room and say build this room for me and the reason for that was he was like hey there's already architects product designers you know fashion designers there's already people out in the world actually designing products and outfits and rooms i don't need to do that i'm just a director i'll use what exists and then i'll direct my movie so he wouldn't have made his own poster he would have just said hey go get a poster of a skier because we're in the mountains i think though that because stanley kubrick is so genius level intelligence oh no that he would

just see that poster he would see how that skier resembled a minotaur and he'd be like this is it and he would like that represents what i want so that's why he picked it so he's so smart that that lady is right he's so smart that she's smart that's right he's intelligence bolsters her own in every way it's so cool how when i believe something other smart people make me feel correct because i think that they think i'm right originally when we started this podcast we had the thing where we would argue against each other we tried to make it more of a debate and we ended up taking that out because first of all the theories are so flimsy right okay of course you can argue against them yeah well and then the other thing is we love basically uh pumping each other up because then we both feel great yeah we're both so smart yeah well and thus you have the the story of the the legendary failed original name for our podcast the mask debaters

we were originally going to wear masks and debate each other so we were the mask debaters i don't remember that but that sounds great and there's no no other reason that we abandoned that name dude it really is a double meaning there the way we're just you know agreeing with each other and i know building each other dude that would have been a perfect name it would have been great oh man you gotta start the mask i thought you were gonna say well we did originally we considered popcorn poppers we also considered no no those were our fans our fans oh okay we considered firing the head cannon that one's good we should have done that that i mean as i love the popcorn isn't real i would never change it but firing the head cannon i think has more easily understood meaning well see with the popcorn isn't real everyone always asks us why is it called i know everyone's like why did you name it this to me though that's the point because because of what

i wanted to do with the podcast how it's tongue-in-cheek i wanted yeah you wanted to make a podcast something weird and stupid it's incomprehensible you know just like the fan theories i will say this i think that anyone who listens to our podcast regularly probably understands the idea of enjoying a fan theory because of how incomprehensible it is and uh enjoying a podcast because of how incomprehensible it is so uh you know you're all you're all you're all popcorn poppers that's basically what i'm trying to say in my heart you'll always be the popcorn that's popping but isn't real you're all mad because you're not real because no one listens to it oh no so the the one theory from that documentary that i don't think originated in that documentary it's been a theory for a long time and this one is definitely true is that in In the book, The Shining Jack drives a red beetle. Yeah. In the movie, he drives a yellow beetle.

In the movie, also, there is a random shot, unrelated to anything. Drives past a wreck, which just so happens to be a destroyed red beetle on the side of the road, on the sidewinder, all the way up to the hotel. that Stanley Kubrick was basically giving the middle finger to Stephen King saying this is not your story this is my story which is absolutely what he was doing Stephen King hated this movie and it's very different from the book in many ways no it's not, I want to get into that my personal theory is that people who say it's way different from the book haven't read the book because it's not that different including Stephen King, dude's never read his own book jerk yeah moron no but i mean i think that that's totally confirmed kubrick definitely was saying this is my movie if we're going to talk about that then we also have to talk about the other theory that is actually widely accepted and shouldn't be the theory that stanley kubrick

faked the moon landing yeah now i mean that's a full conspiracy theory it's crazy dumbest thing anyone's ever come up with and i just craziest thing is that theory has almost nothing to do with the shining it's just no moon landing deniers well listen the dumbest thing is that you'd have to be a complete idiot to come up with this theory you'd have to be so stupid that you would be like who would nasa hire to fake footage of the moon aha the director who filmed 2001 a space odyssey stanley kubrick because that was about space so therefore he must have been the director of the moon land no that's idiotic there's a huge difference between making a movie and filming like footage of an event there's no reason that they would go out and get a hollywood director at all if they were going to fake footage from astronaut cameras and if they were going to get a hollywood director they definitely wouldn't get one as big and

powerful as kubrick they would get like the least well-known director who they could basically like blackmail if they wanted to keep it but it's because at the time he had made 2001 so he was like the only director who could do space movies no that's dumb that's idiotic that's so stupid well he does it shoot a shot on the moon in 2001 though he does a lot of cool spaceships yes they go the first thing they do in that movie is they coach the moon i don't blame you no i'm i'm not mad at you i'm not making fun of you i'm making fun of the movie nobody in their right mind would ever remember that they go to the moon and yet it takes up 40 minutes of the movie oh it's ridiculous that movie is insane you gotta watch my cut of it there i took out all the moon stuff i took out a lot of i took out i took out stanley kubrick's name and replaced it with my own wow dude oh my gosh you're a genius you're just like a conspiracy theorist i love it the credits are my favorite

part it's like a film by torvald johnson i'm like yes yes yes wow oh man also the the movie ends um i think in in my version i just ended it like when he's unplugging all the things and and he's singing Daisy, Daisy, and then it all goes black. That's when I turn off the movie. When Hal's gone, the movie's over. Yeah, that should be the end of the movie. It shouldn't go past that. Hal is the only relatable character. The humans are more robotic than Hal. Yes, they are. Along with this NASA fake the moon landing thing, a lot of people say Stanley Kubrick was trying to drop hints that he faked the moon landing. Why else would he have Danny wear a rocket ship shirt at one point in the movie in the shining Danny is wearing like a sweater with a rocket ship on it and they say oh he's trying to tell us that NASA hired him to film rocket ships going to the moon no maybe just maybe Danny is wearing that shirt because every little boy in the entire world was

wearing that shirt because NASA had just landed on the moon and everybody had space fever the moon landing for people who weren't alive during that period me included you have to understand the moon landing was as big as it gets it was bigger than marvel it was bigger than star wars like any craze that you can imagine having lived through it was bigger than that therefore if you go outside and see a kid wearing a spider-man t-shirt you shouldn't be at all surprised to find out that in the 70s kids wore rocket ship t-shirts that was the big news at the time everyone wore them and it makes perfect sense for him to have included that in his movie that's what danny would have warn yeah it's not some secret hint it's so well so about what you were saying about people saying stanley kubrick must have faked the moon landing there's this uh other podcast i listened to called skeptoid this guy uses scientific facts to debunk stupid conspiracy theories and it's really good i

like i like the podcast but he always talks about how people will constantly say like i have just upturned the whole scientific world with this one random thing i found out i an untrained non-scientist you know who hasn't been working my whole life studying these things doing controlled experiments or anything like that he says that they'll always say people's name like this goes like above einstein right he's like why do they always reference einstein when there are so many people who have done really good work in this field since then in the past like however many decades have passed and he's like it's because that's the only name they know it's just like famous actor and well-known idiot terence howard saying that he discovered that one times one equals two and publishing his own paper calling it like terence howard math because he believes that he is just the the one genius who understands how math works and no one else does

Yeah. Anyway, so it's just basically he's just saying these people have done so little research that they only know the name Einstein. They don't know any other scientists. So that's the example they use. And I think that's kind of the same thing with Kubrick faked the moon landing. At the time, he was the big director. They don't bother looking up any other directors. It was Kubrick. No, I mean, honestly, I think you'd have to be pretty simple minded to believe any sort of theory. Yeah, stupid theorists, fan theorists. Anyway, let's stop badmouthing ourselves. One more thing I wanted to mention from room 237. This is a popular detail that obviously goes beyond that documentary. The layout of the Overlook Hotel purposefully doesn't make sense. It's not purposeful. It's just the way movies are made. Right. Every layout of every house in every movie doesn't make sense. There's no difference from this in The Simpsons.

Seriously, The Simpsons house has random rooms in it that don't make sense. They don't fit into an actual layout. In every movie, you do have someone in charge of continuity, but they might not be paying attention to the blueprint. In some movies, you will make an actual blueprint because you're not filming any of these shots in like the same locations. You don't actually have this house built. So you need to know where things logically would be in relation to each other. However, you know, maybe Kubrick just didn't do that. Or maybe he did it intentionally to give you like this very subtle sense of unease that something's not right. I do like the detail where they look into Ullman's office and there's windows where windows shouldn't be because, you know, we kind of see the lobby and the office should not be on an outside wall. The exterior shots of the Overlook, I think they were all at some actual hotel.

I don't remember if it was actually in Colorado, but it is in the mountains somewhere. And then the interior shots were all on a soundstage in the UK and in England. where they had built sets for the interior of the hotel, and they built these sets to look like actual hotel rooms that Stanley Kubrick liked, right? But he said, hey, let's include this room in our movie. Therefore, of course, they didn't make any logical floor plan. They were just random rooms that he wanted to have scenes in, right? And I'll tell you one thing about Stanley. He's a very visual director. He just liked the way things look. That's exactly what I was going to say. As good as he was of a director, he was just as good of a cinematographer. Like, the man is nothing if not able to make a striking scene right and i think it doesn't it take that much of a leap of logic to say that he cared far more for creating a striking scene that looked

interesting either visually pleasing or visually sickening or you know having some impact on how you feel rather than caring about the continuity of the freaking layout of the hotel he didn't care about that and this is another thing that kubrick would say often and the people who work with him would say this too realism is good but interesting is better and that was something that kubrick was actually well known for because it was sort of interesting and sort of counterculture to the movies that were coming out at the time where a lot of the auteurs a lot of the steven spielbergs and you know the other big directors at the time were pushing for realism they were saying if we make jurassic park you know with dinosaurs in there we want realism we want you to feel like these dinosaurs are real. Whereas Kubrick would say the opposite. He'd be like, well, realism's great, but I'd rather if my movies are interesting, I will sacrifice realism for

interesting. Therefore, he didn't care about the layouts. He just wanted interesting shots. Yeah. One detail that I love, Wendy and Danny are watching the TV in the middle of the room on a stand and there's no cord connected to the tv and it's on and people say maybe that kubrick did that just to give us this very subtle sense of unease like something's not quite right or maybe it's just a cool shot and a cord coming out of somewhere would obviously would like right not have looked as good yeah yeah either way though i do think it's very cool and i like the idea Of course, as a popcorn isn't real host, that's the sort of detail that I love, where it's just like, how is the TV on? It makes no sense. It can't be in the middle of a room with no cord. Kubrick would definitely do things during like the setup and during the shooting of his scenes to add either a sense of unease or a specific feeling or just, you know, visual pleasingness, right? Like something he thought looked cool. The scene where Jack is pounding on the door of the pantry, trying to get out and pleading with Wendy. There's actual behind the scenes footage of Kubrick filming that scene. And as like they're acting it out, they're basically rehearsing it.

kubrick just like flops down on the floor like between jack nicholson's legs and he's like you know what would this look good and then he just lays down between jack nicholson's legs looking up his nose with like a telescope and he's like okay jack now try and give your lines and jack nicholson's like uh okay and then he does the lines and kubrick's like yeah yeah but actually i want you to look down the camera more while you're giving your lines and the scene's great Like in the movie, it's an amazing scene where all of a sudden the camera's looking up at Jack Nicholson from the ground as he's banging on the door, pleading with Wendy. It's a great scene, but it's very, very striking and strange and something that he came up with on the fly and tweaked to make it seem more surreal and odd. And so, yeah, he could have definitely done stuff like that. Well, my theory is that The Shining runs in the family.

Wendy had The Shining. Jack had The Shining. Danny's entire family shined. It wasn't just Danny who was making that hotel come to life. It was Wendy and it was most of all Jack. So I'm going to go through all of my theory related evidence and we can discuss the film as well. And we can see where we get from here. I don't know what Stephen King is on about. I don't feel like Stanley Kubrick's version of his story is that different from the book. Stanley Kubrick took out a few things like the topiary animals coming to life but like how was he supposed to do that in like the late 70s and then also he changed it it was supposed to be a roke mallet that he's coming after them with roke basically being the precursor of croquet so he's basically chasing them with like a flimsy croquet mallet and that doesn't make sense and axe is way better i love the book but that was a good change man yeah so we've got

jack we've got wendy and we've got another main character in this story we've also got the much forgotten tony the little uh finger that sometimes speaks to danny danny says that tony lives in his mouth and goes all the way down to his stomach i don't know exactly what that means but uh in the book and in the movie we never really find out who tony is it seems like he's just sort of a figment of uh of danny's imagination i think tony is an actual person i think tony is basically the uh mental manifestation of jack of his father um and i think this is happening because jack is so powerful with his shine and danny is so powerful with his shine that they're sort of getting their wires crossed all the time just keep that in mind as they make their way to the hotel first of all fantastic movie i love how it sets the stage jack nicholson is the perfect actor to play jack danny lloyd is the perfect actor to play danny

and i say this entirely because they are both named jack and danny just like the characters Which I think is just perfect. I wish every movie would do that. I think it's amazing. Oh, and Shelley Duvall is perfect casting, even though she doesn't have the name Wendy. I can't believe I didn't say, Shelley Duvall, there is no one better to play Wendy than Shelley Duvall. She is so good. And I won't accept any criticism. It's not fair to Shelley Duvall, a legend of actors. Most people who don't like this movie always cite Shelley Duvall as like, no, she's too much. I love Shelly in this movie. I want to be Shelly in this movie. But I love her costume. I love her makeup, just the way she's always just crying, dehydrated because she's in a heightened state of panic for literally every scene she's in. She's so perfect and she's such a pushover. She's just like going along with everything Jack says

as he berates her for no reason. And she's like, can I bring you a sandwich? And he's like, every time you come in here, you break my concentration. She's just trying to be nice. You break my concentration. And I have to go through all my work and get back on. She didn't do anything. She just came in all nice and happy and said, how are you doing, Jack? Can I read some of your play? And he's doing nothing. He's just sitting there writing all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy over and over. How much do you need to concentrate, Jack? he's doing no work his job is to take care of the overlook which wendy is doing doing it she's taking care of the boiler she's cleaning up i love it oh i love this movie it's such an amazing portrayal of those two and i hear that stephen king especially did not like wendy in the movie because wendy is like he thought she was a strong independent woman in the book she's not

And in the movie, she's just like this abused housewife kind of thing. No, I think she's just as strong in the book as in the movie. And I think in both of them, she does come into her own and save the day. I actually think Wendy's essentially the hero of the book and the movie. Yeah, definitely. They get to the hotel. Jack is sitting in the lobby waiting for his boss reading a porno. Yeah, I love that detail. I just love it. That's a good detail I learned from Room 237. That was the best detail they pointed out. It's an actual issue of Playgirl, of all magazines. It's a Playgirl magazine, and he's reading it on his first day of work. Just sets it down as though it was already there. But he definitely brought it there. Yeah, they wouldn't just have that laying around, or would they? Actually, they might have, because the Overlook has a sultry past. Mr. Ullman, the hotel manager, he's leading them around the ground.

he's showing them everything they need to see basically they're walking across the street and a car is coming directly towards them uh it's just coming right down the road after him it's about like three feet away from them not slowing down and then the scene changes and the car is gone and they're still crossing the street no car and uh that could have just been you know a random scene change that happened to include the car and the next one didn't but i like to think of it as a vision it's a vision of their death it's a vision of their fast approaching car you know the car represents the car wasn't there and they were shining right then which who was shining danny's not here this is just jack and wendy and ulmer so therefore this vision must have come from one of danny's parents um i think that's actually good evidence there well my understanding is that it lets you see ghosts and it lets you communicate telepathically

with other people who shine and it can let you see the future. Yeah. Is that all right? So shining is basically the 1970s phenomenon known as ESP, okay? No one really calls it that anymore, but back then it was called ESP, Extrasensory Perception. Unless it's like an anime or 999 because they always, they love the word espers. Yeah, they love that. I've never heard the word esper used. Basically, I believe the phrase was coined by the CIA and they were doing research into it. because they wanted to see if they could reproduce that. That's a good use of money. I know, how great. They weren't just like a literal money dump of a department. But anyway, yeah, they were doing a lot of research into it, trying to induce extrasensory perception in various individuals. And they categorized it as a number of things. They thought that extrasensory perception could be seeing ghosts. It could be sensing something that you shouldn't know about.

It could be an advanced form of that, an actual premonition of something that's going to happen in the future. It could be knowledge of the past that you weren't privy to. It could be knowledge of something happening where you are not. Like, for example, if your brother just got in a train wreck and you're a thousand miles away and you feel it, that's ESP. And then it could also be probably the most fantastical representation of ESP would be actual telekinesis, like being able to move things with your mind shining can be all of those things that i just described for most people it represents itself in just a feeling basically letting people know or giving people a hunch of something they shouldn't know about for danny shining is all of the above except for telekinesis in this movie but not in the next one but yes uh no it's uh shining is everything for Danny because as far as shining goes, you know, most people have a candle. He's

got a floodlight. He's got it all. And I think his parents also show instances of being able to shine. And I think that this premonition they had of the car barreling down on them was one instance of shining. Jack either didn't pick up on it or or actively ignored it. And that's actually an important thing in this movie. Well, and in the book, and I think very deliberate in the book, is that Jack does shine, and he always explicitly ignores it. If the shine does represent alcoholism, then it is inherited because... It does represent alcoholism, by the way, in my opinion. And also, yeah, well, and then when he's not ignoring it, when he's talking to the ghosts is when he's giving into his alcoholism, right? Yep, it sure is. We see some instances of shining in Dick Halloran, the cook. He can shine in that he knows that Danny's nickname is Doc. He can talk to Danny in his mind. Okay. My favorite.

Oh, go ahead. I learned that some people actually. You were just about to say some people shine and some don't. Yeah. It's what? Like, whoa. I was like, I thought one or the other, but it turns out it's like both. No, I found out that some people did not like Scatman Carruthers. in this movie and i'm like what how could you not he's like perfect for the role he is the perfect dick all around my favorite scene of him in the shining is when he starts going and he's just like scatting because he's like a scat man from robot chicken did a sketch where they're showing all the best scenes all the best shots from the shining and one of them is just randomly scatman crothers scat singing which he did not do in the movie i've always loved him in this role i don't think there could have been a better casting he's just like an awesome guy and the dick holleran was just an awesome guy so it's perfect right

so wait but i just realized something because if the shining represents kind of our vices and our alcoholism that's why dick holleran is staring at that naked picture on or there's that naked picture on the wall behind it in front of him and behind him he's got two of them dude the dude's got vices too in his in his room so he's got he's got his bed which is facing the tv on the wall above the tv is a giant picture of a naked uh lady behind him above his bed is a giant picture of a naked lady and then next to his tv in the corner rolled up are like 16 more posters of naked ladies all rolled up so he must like swap them out once a week he's like time for another naked lady oh yeah that makes sense so kubrick knew that these two had the shining so that's why they're both looking at porn essentially there you go and then wendy wendy has the shiny because the very first scene we ever see her in she kind of awkwardly just offers a cigarette

right well and it's really weird i love the way she does it is it's kind of weird so i think wendy Her shine is mostly related to Danny. Dick Halloran explains this. He says that I think all mothers shine a little bit. And I think that's especially true for Wendy. But I think in a higher degree than most mothers. I think that she can shine when it helps her to protect Danny. And I think Danny kind of is her vice. Danny is why she's staying with this abusive drunk asshole. He's the addiction in her life. She just can't get away from Danny. Therefore, she can't get away from Jack. My one evidence that I had really for all of them shining was just that why do we know initially that Dick Holleron shines? Because he calls Danny Doc, which was their nickname for him, which he shouldn't have known because he just met Danny. But the thing is that Wendy must shine as well because they're not calling him Doc because of, I don't know, Bugs Bunny or something like that.

They're calling him Doc because of the future. Doc, because he will be Dr. Sleep. He's going to be Dr. Sleep. Whoa. She knows he's going to be a doctor. Either that or maybe he became a doctor because they called him Doc. Because Stephen King knew back when he wrote The Shining that he was many, many decades later would write a sequel. Absolutely. Stephen King, he's a genius. Therefore, we're geniuses. Because we caught it. That's how it works. We know. So, yeah, Wendy is calling him Doc because she knows he's going to be a doctor. Yeah, she had a premonition. In her mind, she saw Danny growing up being a doctor and she's like, oh, my little doctor boy. It couldn't be that he became a doctor because they gave him the nickname Doc because of Bugs Bunny. No, because he's not a doctor. No, he doesn't have a doctor. He's an orderly. He didn't give the nickname Doctor Sleep to himself. Other people did.

So it has to be a premonition with her calling him Doc. The nickname Doc did not precipitate his future. It came from the future. You have no idea how much I'm with you. So I always loved Scatman Carruthers as Dick Holleran. I think he's perfect for the role. But when watching the featurettes that I was able to find for The Shining, I just now love him immensely more. They were flashing through some interviews like they show them talking to Dan, Daniel Lloyd, Shelley Duvall, Jack Nicholson, asking a bunch of questions, all kind of stuff. Then they get to take all around and they only show one single question. The interview only asks him one question. He talked tons to everyone else to to to Scatman Carruthers. He has one thing and he just says, so how was it working with Danny Lloyd? And then Scatman Carruthers is like, oh, you know, he's he's like a son to me. And then he stops, and he gets that shining look in his eyes,

and he's staring directly at the camera, and he's like... And then the next thing he says, but his mouth doesn't move. Yeah, and I was like, I can hear his voice, what's going on? No, he's like, now I may cry, and if these tears come, then they're tears of joy. And then immediately, his face is just streaming waterfalls of tears, like anime style. Like, he had an actual premonition that he was about to start bawling. And then he continues and he's like, I am just so lucky that in my life, I was given the chance to work with all of these wonderful people. And he's just going off about how amazing everybody is. And then they cut away into a different interview. We never see more of him. And I was just like, whoa. Yeah, my brothers really is just like the nicest, most wonderful person ever. He just loves everyone. What a cool guy. As they are settling into the hotel, Jack actually tells Wendy, he turns to her and he says, I feel like I've been here before, like I know every room, which is clearly a psychic premonition that he has had.

Later on, for some of the crazy things that happen, you could say maybe this is the hotel working on Jack, like it's wheedled its way into his brain enough that it can give him visions without him having any powers or anything. it definitely didn't have the chance yet like there's no possible way the hotel was working on him before he came there we know that the hotel will never ever affect someone who doesn't have the shining right it's never affected manager ullman who lives there every day and loves the hotel the hotel is his life he goes way deeper into it in the book the man lives for that hotel and he is completely unaffected by it he does not care about the ghosts um because he doesn't shine the hotel cannot get to him it definitely gets to jack therefore jack the man shines the little girl ghosts the twins i was like why are they british they're grady's kids grady the caretaker yeah and i don't think grady was british there's little chance that like some random british

dude came all the way to america just to be a caretaker but then when he shows up later as the butler he's british he actually is british and then i was reading the book and in the scene where he shows up in the book it specifically says that grady speaks with polite clipped english the dude's british and it talks about how like he's he talks in a very like educated manner and like jack is surprised by it and he's like i thought you were just like the uneducated caretaker and grady goes on in the book to explain he's like oh the hotel has educated me and it can educate you the hotel is so great and i was like well that's odd kubrick really was just he really did pay attention to the book he paid more attention than me i i couldn't believe it like that was amazing attention to detail uh jack uh as he you know starts to fall more and more under the spell of the overlook hotel he starts wailing in his sleep thrashing around having a nightmare clearly

having some sort of premonition and then when he wakes up he confirms this he says i was having the most terrible nightmare and he describes how he murdered them he chopped them up which is exactly what he's going to do which is 100 a premonition and then danny comes in all strangled from room 237 stuck in his thumb you think maybe he needs to go to the doctor i love that oh my gosh oh man okay yes he does so well let's talk about this whole thing i love how jack then jack starts seeing ghosts he's he's shining he talks to lloyd the bartender immediately just starts bad-mouthing his wife she's done nothing and he's like ah the old ball and chain no he calls her he calls her the old sperm bank that's true even worse than ball and chain way worse yes so gross he goes up to check room 237 and he gets attacked by the old drowned lady ghost in the book they go into detail about how that room the drowned lady is there and anyone who

shines a little bit is going to see her or feel her anyone who doesn't shine will not like olman the manager who's gone in there and checked didn't find her but one of the maids did one of the maids who shined just a little bit went in there saw her got scared told everyone about it got fired dick holleran went in there saw the the evil dead lady decided to quit he doesn't want to work there anymore jack goes in there gets attacked by the evil dead lady doesn't just see her she couldn't attack dick dick specifically says he's like they're just like pictures they can't hurt you they can hurt jack you think that dick wasn't lying about them not being able to hurt you just that he doesn't shine enough to for them to be able to hurt him well exactly and in the book they go into more detail about that he very specifically is thinking this he tells danny that they're just like pictures in a book they can't hurt you and then in his mind he's thinking to himself i hope

that's true for this little boy they can't hurt me but he shines something like i don't shine so you know he basically is confirming exactly what you're saying jack goes back to his room and is just like lying to wendy being like there was nothing there he's like but but but what about the marks on his neck and jack's like i think he did it to himself of course danny went in there and strangled himself and then came in all traumatized that makes sense that's like possible it's not it's so silly i love it i love it and then someone says that danny's sleeping and then the camera pans over to danny with his eyes like unbelievably wide open in bed very much not sleeping i just love that that's very very kubrick wendy basically comes downstairs trying to reason with jack and he's like you want to talk about danny you want to talk about what should be done with danny she's like no i don't want to talk about it and he's like what should

we do with danny and she's like i think we should take him to the doctor you think you want to take You should take him to the doctor. Very reasonable. Like the kid was hurt. Take him to the doctor. You had asked what my impression of The Shining was the first time I watched it. And I told you about when I just saw the old lady scene. My actual first viewing of the whole thing, my main takeaway was that The Simpsons did an amazing parody of The Shining. well and very true to seven minutes very true to life yeah they covered everything it's so good just like every and like homer's not even exaggerated in that scene that's exactly how cartoonish homer is jack nicholson is in the holding back give me the bat bat bat yeah i know no simpson's really on the head simpson is less cartoonish because you know marge isn't doing like the whole Wendy like the whole Shelly Duvall thing which is like like weakly swinging this bat

when Simpsons does here's Johnny they they also do a bunch of other ones like he says I'm I'm whoever I'm whoever and I'm Danny Carson all tonight on 60 minutes right like this actually is what Jack was doing like Simpsons isn't even out of line here Jack was literally just quoting a random tv host for no reason right like here's johnny was like johnny carson's phrase right why did it became like one of the most famous horror quotes in history exactly it doesn't make sense because he's not johnny no he's jack i wouldn't be surprised if people who haven't seen this movie in a while thought his name was johnny i always did before i saw the movie for the first time i thought it was johnny torrance at afi i listened to all of shelly duvall's like i sought them out because i love shelly duvall and i i no one had assigned me to do this i listened to shelly duvall's all of her interviews shelly duvall who's just such a sweet nice person

was just talking about like yeah i was in that scene where he was swinging the axe and uh you know he was really jack was really psyching himself up for it and saying all these profanities and yeah just saying there's these really nasty things that that i can't repeat here i'd get sued well it's true there's you can see uh behind the scenes like footage of them getting ready to film that scene he like scares the the production assistant who walks past him because he's swinging his axe right production assistant like he's just standing there like jumping around the room and then he just starts playing around with this axe which is like i don't know if it's a real axe but it's hefty enough to damage the door like he chops through the door with it he's just swinging it around and he's like saying all kinds of like horrible things he's like axe kill murder like whoa jack nicholson you're you're getting into the into character and uh shelly

duvall talked about how like the robe that she wears and goes out in the snow in uh during that final sequence you know where she's running because it has to have snow on it but they didn't want the snow to melt they put this like weird like salt stuff all over that they glued to it and she had like an allergic reaction to that at the end of a really long day there was a fire on set she had to like run back to her dressing room because apparently she always traveled with like a menagerie of animals oh no she had to get all her animal pets out because of this fire and then she went back to her like trailer at the end of the day and she was so tired and then another director that she worked with a lot altman called her up on the phone and he's a really like happy fun guy and was like hey shelly how you doing i just got the best role for you to play and she's like and he's like guess what it is and she's like i don't know and he's like no no you have

to guess and she was like i have had the longest day i'm tired i'm dehydrated there was a fire on set you know i'm having a reaction from the salt on my rope just tell me and then he said oh it's olive oil in the popcorn oh it's so perfect for it she's the perfect and then apparently yeah she was perfect for olive oil apparently she went um and recorded i guess an audition reel like altman already wanted her but he had to convince like the producers and the financiers of course he had her record the it's just singing the song he needs me he needs me oh that's a good song it's got like three lyrics it's like three words in it all at once i knew at once i knew i knew i knew at once i knew he needed me such a good song guy in charge executive whatever he was wasn't sure but then as they were watching this video of her singing it, his wife came in and she pointed at the girl on the screen because he was suggesting other people. And she pointed at Shelley Duvall and was like,

well, that's olive oil. And so then he was like, oh, yeah, yeah. How much did the director pay her to do that? That's incredible. That's so good. And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, that is olive oil. We'll go with her. That's how she got the job. Oh, man, that's like the most boomer story I've ever heard that's that's ridiculous that's so good she said that she didn't think she was that good of an olive oil for a few reasons one of them was like i just can't do the things that she can like with her arms like turning into rubber bands like noodle arms no one can do that so she was like i actually tried to play her a little bit more like stan laurel from laurel and hardy was that she was trying to be like a goofy tall yeah like a goofy silent film character that makes sense basically i heard all kinds of stories about how they were abusing shelly duvall to get a you know great performance out of her and i've been hearing more and more in the

past few years that that was pretty much just a rumor and that all if you watch the interviews with Shelley Duvall she wasn't like ecstatic about her it was a stressful shoot for sure it was stressful but she never says that they were abusing her and she specifically isn't like going off on Stanley Kubrick an interview that a lot of people point to where they're like and how do you feel about Stanley Kubrick and she says oh he's a wonderful man he just treated me and Jack Nicholson so nice he came and you know took us aside and gave us you know one-on-one time you know really pampered us let us know how important we were to the movie i mean if that's how she felt about him then i don't think he was abusing her however there's also behind the scenes footage of her in the scene where jack is chopping the door down and she's supposed to try and crawl out the window she's sitting there pulling like hairs off of her head and she's like uh mr kubrick uh i'm losing

my hair here it's it's getting yanked out by that windowsill i'm losing clumps and clumps of it and then he takes one of the hairs and holds it up to the camera and he's like ah losing clumps of hair a like basically making fun of her like this one hair is a clump and then the clip ends with him being like well i don't relate to this at all or something or i don't relate to your problem at all so he wasn't not a character in a movie right then you don't need to relate to her uh anyway um she actually said it more than once in the interview where she would say there were things that stanley kubrick and jack nicholson said or did that she couldn't repeat otherwise she would get sued so yeah i don't know but i also say at afi we did have one of the slates from the shining like framed in the window that shows like the slate is like the clacker board if you don't know thanks for saying that i didn't i was picturing like a big like a like a blackboard

like a slate sorry the slate is the clacker board where you write the director the scene and then you write the take number so basically how many times you've done the take anyway if you look at that clacker board it says it's from the shining director stanley kubrick and then the take numbers is like at 237 uh-oh well sorry that's room 237 i'm not gonna use that number number no the take is really high it's like 246 or something like that um so the rumors are true that he did keep doing take after take after take yeah definitely jack he's going crazy he's seeing ghosts everywhere he's attacking shelly duvall and then dick holloran arrives to save the day oh wait he's dead in the book uh jack does get dick holloran but dick survives and comes back and saves them after that it's not bad that they killed him off and in fact it empowers wendy even more in that she was able to save the day without a man saving her i i feel like jack kind of like

really sucked he could not do anything he couldn't beat wendy he just got bashed on the head and knocked out and locked in a pantry and the ghost let him out and he tries again and then he gets his hand all slashed up and can't get her out of the bathroom and then he does manage to get dick that's it but then he can't hunt down like a little five-year-old and he gets lost in the maze and then he dies isn't there some sort of implication that maybe the maze changes like the ghosts turned against him i mean the uh the topiary animals were changing in the in the books but in the movies i don't think there's really any implication that maze was changing so as wendy is running around the hotel trying to find danny to get out of there she is now she's seeing ghosts again you don't see these ghosts if you don't shine it doesn't matter how much of effect effect they've had on you if you don't shine you don't

see them end of story so wendy shines she sees that weird dog furry man getting on with that other guy. Now, this is interesting because I was going to mention this. I don't really understand what the dog man and the businessman ghosts are doing at the hotel. First of all, his mask has no mouth hole. So whatever he's doing to that man would be very unsatisfying for both of them. Those guys, as far as I know, they didn't die at the hotel. They just did some debauchery there and then moved on with their lives. So why are there ghosts there? Wendy sees even more ghosts. In fact, she walks into the lobby and sees an entire room full of Halloween plastic skeletons. And I love it so much. Those skeletons were so, so scary. They're great. I'm starting to feel like Dick Holleran should have said, most people shine, but some don't. Well, yeah, I mean, that is certainly the feeling you get, because especially in the book, on his way to the hotel, Dick runs into two people who definitely shine and potentially one more who probably shines.

And those are all the people he runs into. So everyone he runs into most likely shined. So, yeah, the movie ends with Danny and Wendy escaping and Jack freezing to death in the maze. so two things in the uh in the book that were taken out that i wish they were in the movie uh one is the hornet's nest jack has to deal with a hornet's nest kill it get rid of all the hornets and then he gives it to danny as a present he's like hey danny take this hornet's nest it's yours and danny's like oh boy oh boy daddy thank you and the mom's like are you sure you want to give him a hornet's nest and he's like yeah let's put it right over his bed lo and behold that night the kid wakes up covered in hornets from the hornet's nest and uh i think that the hornet's nest is a metaphor for jack's alcoholism for all of his problems in their life in their marriage all the anger and pain hidden under the surface come to light okay i get it and he he passed it

on to danny oh yeah and essentially what what's happening is he's kicking the hornet's nest right That's why they used a hornet's nest, a hornet's nest for this in-your-face metaphor. To kill all the hornets, he burns the nest and he watches the bodies pop. The book actually ends with the hotel burning down and it kills Jack and it destroys the Overlook. As it's burning, he keeps talking about fire. Fire kills everything. And it turns out fire is the only thing that can kill Jack and the Overlook and the ghosts and can, you know, remove all this alcoholism, all this rage, all this pain from their life, this fire. And also, we learn that Jack had a very similar experience with his dad, who was also an alcoholic, who also beat his wife and kids. And he also found a hornet's nest, which he forced his kids to watch while he burned and taught them that, you know, fire is the only thing that can kill it.

Jack, in the book, he thought he killed the wasps, right? He thought the nest was safe. Just like he thought he had killed his drinking and his anger problems, right? He thought he was sober, but he didn't. He just hid it under the surface. And then, you know, they came back and hurt his son and his wife in the middle of the night. Just like the hornets came back. He never truly killed them. He lit a hornet's nest on fire and he didn't bother to, like, break it open? No. So I'll explain exactly what happened. Basically, he was re-shingling the roof. He found the hornet's nest. He used a bug bomb on it, killed all the hornets, shook them out of the nest, and then gave it to his son. That night, hornets came out. He grabbed the nest, put it in a bowl, burnt it, and killed it. Oh, okay. I thought they survived the fire. No, but... That would have been better for the metaphor, though. Ostensibly, they didn't even survive the poison.

He just didn't poison them. It is strongly hinted at that while he claims he poisoned these hornets, he actually just took the nest and gave it to his son full of hornets. He didn't do anything to them. Or he did poison them and those were ghost hornets. That's also strongly implied is that they might be ghost hornets. So there are a few times in this book where Jack lies. Where he's like, just a little too many foot pounds per second per second. Right, exactly. There's the story of how he broke Danny's arm. In the book, there's also the story of how he basically set up one of the kids at school for failure. Kid was on the debate team and he thought this kid was a pretentious prick. So he essentially set the timer forward while this kid was debating. He was wearing a mask at the time. He was mask debating, actually. No, he wasn't. He was not. no he set the timer forward essentially leaving this kid unable to finish his mask debatian

and he was blue balled as as the result no no blackballed oh no well jack got blackballed actually but um no he uh he yeah he basically set the timer at least this kid said that he set the timer forward jack said no i didn't set the timer forward you just lost track of time i would never do that and then as the book goes along he keeps you know coming back to that and being like i would never set the timer forward i didn't do that and he's like and if i did i only set it forward a little bit and it was only for his own sake so uh he definitely set the timer forward yeah and then in the same sentence he's like and i did use that bug bomb and kill those wasps implying that no he didn't he didn't kill those wasps he looks down on his son in the same way that he looked down this pretentious prick kid right and he sees danny as someone who didn't earn anything in life and has everything handed to him and he hates danny and he wants to kill danny he's like six

right yeah exactly yeah jack is so freaking unhinged like possibly more unhinged in the book than in the movie which is crazy the other in your face metaphor in this uh book is the boiler jack has to constantly maintain the boiler at the overlook he's introduced to it by watson the boiler man who tells him yeah the boiler she creeps so keep an eye on her if you don't keep an eye on it it's gonna boil over and explode and kill you and your family and destroy your life which is a direct mirror to his inner rage and alcoholism and anger it creeps until so that's why they do that at the end of dr sleep exactly so and that's i was going to get into that the end of Dr. Sleep the film, I didn't read the book, but the end of the film just plagiarized the end of The Shining. And I don't know how the book could have ended because in The Shining, the hotel burnt down. I think the director said that they had talked to Stephen King and he kind of pushed

back, but they told him that we need to combine this with The Shining movie universe, which I'm glad that it was a good only good parts that's the only good thing about it and so if if that whole ending wasn't in the book i can't imagine what good there was in the book because probably not much yeah so then there's the explosion the boiler explodes just like jack explodes he lashes out he loses control the hotel burns and when it burns the smoke rising off from the hotel looks like a swarm of hornets leaving the nest, bringing these two metaphors together, showing us that his anger beneath the surface was the hornets in the hornets nest as it boiled over and made the boiler explode in his heart. Anyway, I love it. It's so in your face. Dick Holloran tried to read Jack at the beginning of the book. He says, lots of people shine. He says, it seems to run in families. he says it runs in my family and he would have conversations with his grandma without saying a

word and then dick he asks danny he says your parents don't shine do they in a way that seems to imply that they don't but i think he was actually asking i think he just didn't want to lead danny on then dick he announces that wendy does shine he says she jumped a bit when i probed her whoa probed her dick probed wendy oh no oh no uh so yeah wendy does shine but he says you know all mothers shine a little bit i think he's sort of just downplaying it then he describes jack and jack is like ultra shining um he says jack he's like your daddy's not someone who does or doesn't shine he's like someone who's hiding something or holding it in so deeply that it's impossible to get to. And I think that this basically shows that Jack is so powerful, like that he's beyond Holoran, that Holoran can't actually get to him. His shining is jacked. At one point, Danny says, the things in the hotel, there's all kinds of them. The hotel's stuffed with them. I thought

it was my fault because of the way I am, but it's him too. It's daddy and it's you. He's talking to Wendy. He says, it wants all of us. It's tricking daddy. It's fooling him, trying to make it think it wants him the most. It wants me the most, but it'll take all of us. Basically, he's saying it's not just me shining. It's actually dad and you, Wendy. So I think that's sort of the best evidence that Danny's basically confirming it. He's saying all three of us shine. The last thing I wanted to discuss is Tony. They never really explain who Tony is in the book or the movie. I think Tony is sort of Jack combined with Danny. I think they both shine so much that their psyches got stuck together and he's like a subconscious mental manifestation of Jack's thoughts and desires and emotional state. Tony's premonitions, the things that he shows Danny, are all things that Jack knows. Jack specifically mentions

that he's going to teach Danny to read this winter and Tony very specifically always shows Danny premonitions in the form of written messages on signs. This is because Jack is subconsciously trying to teach him to read. Tony uses words and concepts that Jack knows, but Danny doesn't, such as murder, suicide, divorce, and road signs and caution signs. When Jack is thinking about suicide and divorce, it's exactly at this point that Tony starts showing them to Danny right when Jack thinks about them. I think that's basically Jack's thoughts permeating Danny's mind. Also, when Jack was thinking about having another baby with Wendy during the best time of their marriage, Tony showed Danny a premonition where he has a baby brother. But that didn't actually happen, which implies to me that that was not a premonition. It was literally just a thought from his dad's head about having a baby. Well, my theory with Tony was always that he is some sort of adult.

I always thought maybe he was some kind of ghost, but someone who is an adult. Because when he's talking to Wendy in The Shining, the movie, he calls her Mrs. Torrance. He says, Mrs. Torrance, which is what a kid would call someone in the 70s. But then when he's talking to Danny alone in the mirror, he calls her Wendy. He says, like, Wendy thinks that we should, you know, which is, to me, says he's trying to act more kid-like around Wendy, but he's not actually a kid. He feels like he's an adult along with her. um, cause he'll call her by her first name. Towards the end of the book, Tony gets locked out of Danny's mind right after the hotel beats the last little bit of resistance out of Jack, right after he goes full crazy mode and decides to sabotage the snowmobile and falls completely under the hotel's control. Um, which implies to me that Jack can't get into his kid's head anymore. He's gone. Jack's not here anymore. Danny sees Tony one last time at the end of the

book and he sees Tony's face and he says he looks like Danny but 10 years from now he says he looks like sort of a he calls him a halfling but he doesn't mean like from J.R.R. Tolkien's books he means like half and half he says he looks like a halfling caught between father and son a ghost of both Jack and Danny a fusion is how he's described therefore I think that that kind of proves it That's what he is. Yeah, that makes sense.

Doctor Sleep. It's quite a movie. I didn't like it. It's garbage. I also walked out of it in the theater because I didn't like it so much, which I've never done before or since. Yeah, no, I was only able to palate it because I wasn't watching it in the theater and I could skip ahead. Well, we learn in Doctor Sleep that there are energy vampires that feed on the energy of people who shine. so stupid but anyway the hotel we learn is essentially just an inanimate energy vampire it sucks the energy out of shiners and uses that to strengthen itself and therefore its ghosts grow stronger and stronger from the people who stay at the at the hotel who shine and we also learn that kids shine the most pure adults who shine get smudged and dirty and grimy doesn't mean they don't shine as strong it just means they're less appealing to energy vampires so i think that sort of shows why the hotel it liked jack but it loved danny right like danny tasted better now why don't

i like the doctor sleep i feel like the movie takes forever to do anything and it's it's a real downer and it's just it's like two hours and 40 minutes and it's like geez it would be better to talk about what i do like about dr yeah exactly it has some good parts the beginning's great i love the beginning is amazing well not like not all of it but when he's still a kid and he's the kid part the lady they got to play wendy is insanely good at being shelly duvall i think they even got her prosthetic like teeth to look like shelly duvall possible like it's crazy and she's just like like when danny gets lost at the park or beach or whatever the way she's running she's like oh danny danny yeah danny where are you like and then she's always calling him doc and and just she does the voice so well and then the ending when he like hugs her in front of the boiler i thought it was just wonderful great she's she was amazing dick hollaran i thought he was great

he was channeling scat man I absolutely loved the guy that got to play Jack cause he's not like you can do an over the top Jack Nicholson like hey what you doing there kind of thing he's not doing it over the top but he's doing a pretty good Jack Nicholson he is not cartoonish and his monologue that he says about like your family they just take time and kids they're taking time from you and And he goes on and on as his son is talking to him at the bar where he went crazy. And then he's like, it's a sickness. It gets into you. And this here, and raises up his drink. This here is the antidote. It's the antidote. Yeah, it's the QR. Oh, man, he's such a good bartender. Just drinking his own stock. I know. I just, I absolutely loved that part. Really, anything after they go to the Overlook at the end is great. the guy who plays jack nicholson he's the kid from et like he's the main character from et

apparently someone knew that guy can do a good jack nicholson and got him that's so weird that's cool all the stuff where they do flashbacks is pretty good i feel like the movie didn't deserve it because it's yeah it could not be everything else is so bad from the shining leading up to the ending the best thing that happens is Danny and his best friend dig up a dead body and Danny's like ew this dead body stinks and then his best friend's like you know one time a long time ago I went out hunting and I shot a deer and I thought for sure it was dead but then that deer she disappeared I couldn't find her anywhere and days passed and I went out hunting again and then I found that deer i could smell her i smelled that deer i found her all curled up been dead four days and that deer smelled just like this body i was like wow what a very roundabout way of saying incredibly long story to explain yes dead bodies smell like dead bodies

oh man i love that that that was like actually good writing like that was getting into almost like steven king levels of good dead bodies stink you know what dead bodies smell like dead bodies bodies well and then the other good scene was one that you uh primed me for when sniping scene yeah essentially crazy he ain't dr sleep he's he's dr sniper he's dude's like a freaking sharpshooter marksman he has like 7 confirmed kills it was insane who apparently can just be killed they're not like yeah I thought they were like immortal nope bullets work well and then like I feel like Danny made the wrong choice trying to after killing all of the other ones with bullets and cars he's like I'm gonna have the final confrontation in the hotel that can hurt me and I'm going to use an axe. And I'm like, oh, Danny, you should have just used a gun and done it anywhere but here, right? The final sequence is, I feel like, just genius,

but I feel like they didn't quite go as far as they should have with it. With like, he needs to hide the girl while he goes full Jack Torrance mode because only his terrible dad can beat this evil woman. And I think in some way it kind of almost justifies the terrible scenes of this evil woman because you hate her so much. And if you've watched The Shining, you're like, I want Jack Torrance to just kill her. You want to see Jack murder this girl. And I want her to be terrified like Shelley Duvall, you know, hiding behind the door. And unfortunately, they didn't quite go that far. They go in that direction. The Jurassic World principle comes into play here. And they set it up perfectly. They bring back Danny, everyone's favorite. Everyone wanted to see Danny again, The kid who shines like no one else. And then they bring in this new kid, Abra. She shines even more than Dany does. She can move spoons.

She can enter the brains of vampires and hurt them. Whoa, she's even more powerful than Dany. All we wanted to see was them bringing back the T-Rex to beat the Indominus Rex. All we wanted to see was, hey, bring back Old Faithful. Bring back Dany. Show that he's still got it. They sort of did. But like you said, they didn't quite commit. Now, what I wanted to happen, Ghost Jack was there and all the other ghosts killed this energy vampire girl. Now, I have to believe that Ghost Jack wouldn't just sit there and let some energy vampire bitch suck on his kid while all the other ghosts save him. Like, how dumb was that? They should have had axe-wielding, unstoppable Ghost Jack burst in and save the day. I was like, why have him here if he's not going to do anything? I mean, it was already, like, halfway amazing to have the vampire girl get, like, terrified by the Grady twins, you know? Because, you know, they're iconic.

But, like, yeah, to have Jack with an axe show up. I know. Or, like, especially because Danny tells the girl to hide. I wish he had been like, I have to become an alcoholic, so I need to get rid of this girl. That's where the other half of what I was going to say, they should have had Danny drink some alcohol. and power up it makes no sense because it's a bad thing but still it's to become an even worse monster than her exactly that's this is the one thing that we know from the shining universe is that if you are in if you're a jack or if you're jack's son drinking alcohol at the overlook makes you unstoppable it turns you into an evil monster and i would have loved to see danny just like he could have gotten hurt he could have been dying he could have crawled back to jack on his knees and been like give me the antidote give me the medicine and jack could have been like take your medicine pup right and then he could have just super powered up and gone jack mode on her

ass and stalked her around the hotel it would have been amazing ewan mcgregor doing like a jack nicholson he's so good i know having all the ghosts of the overlook kill her come on we don't care about that it's okay i love to see him again they can or danny kill and help um that's everything i have to say i think we've pretty much confirmed that jack's whole family have the shining um they all shine shine on if you do watch dr sleep just like skip to the end skip to the overlook remember to like and subscribe if you enjoy what we're doing tell your friends tell them we got a cool little shining theory support us on patreon uh this recording is now at three hours long so i'm assuming a lot of content more than three hours long yeah we're gonna end up as outtakes on patreon for now remember the popcorn isn't real in a world of shadows and dreams nothing is quite what it seems we're the fools in a midnight

Reel the popcorn isn't real

Chasing clues through the silver screen wishing for a tale that's unseen

Through this hazy spiel the popcorn isn't real

The popcorn isn't real Caught in a moment that will never heal The popcorn isn't real The craft of fiction within fiction's mind Searching for secrets we'll never find Every clue, just a future we steal The popcorn isn't real We whisper theories But they all fade A fleeting ghost in a midnight parade Holding on to that surreal appeal The popcorn isn't real Behind the curtain There's nothing to feel The popcorn isn't real Caught in a moment That will never heal The popcorn isn't real

Bye.