WAMG At The ROOM 237 Press Day

Many movies lend themselves to dramatic interpretations, but none as rich and far-ranging as Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING. In Rodney Ascher’s new film ROOM 237, we hear from people who have developed far-reaching theories and believe they have decoded the hidden symbols and messages buried in the late director’s film. Recently, I got the chance to sit down with director Rodney Ascher, as well as producer Tim Kirk in a small roundtable discussion about the film. Check it out below.

What do you think it is about this movie that has inspired so many people to study it after 30 years?

Rodney Ascher: I think a big part of it is that THE SHINING is that it’s a puzzle that’s missing a few pieces. Even at the simplest level of story, there’s huge gaps in at, and what goes on in it. The central event in the film, what happens to Danny in room 237 is never explained, let alone shown. The black and white photo at the end of it is presented like some sort of answer to some sort of puzzle that we had all along… if anything, it’s an entirely new question about what’s happening in the film. I think people are attracted to watch it, and rewatch it to try to solve those sorts of puzzles – and then they find all of these new ones. I mean, a lot of horror movies end by giving you a shock answer that explains everything, and that way you can leave sort of satisfied. SHUTTER ISLAND is a really interesting movie, but the twist ending in that movie puts everything into perspective, and you kind of get it. THE SHINING you never quite get. It’s troubling because it seems, on the surface, to be a simple story. Three people in a hotel, over the winter – and then they start to see ghosts. Then we’re trying to find the point where it, kind of,  breaks up. It’s endlessly complicated. It’s kind of a horror movie, but it’s also a fun, entertaining film. People watch it just because they want to watch it, and not like it’s a homework assignment, like some difficult, challenging art films might be. When they find things that add up they’re compelled to rewatch it.

Do you think it also has, sort of, a Kubrick factor because this is a departure from what he had done previously? Linking up with King, who was kind of this populitist novelist, do you think people are trying to figure out why he would do this?

Tim Kirk: I think so. People who are familiar with Kubrick, and his other films, are interested to see him do a take on that film genre. Just because he was known to be so meticulous, and such a perfectionist with the multiple takes, I think there’s this feeling that if there’s anything in the frame, he put it there, and there’s a reason – and that reason can be determined.

RA: … and if you don’t understand something, it’s not his mistake. It’s your problem.

Have you had a reaction from Stephen King about ROOM 237?

RA: Not yet, but he’s one of the people that I’m most interested to hear a reaction from, because, in some ways, you can sort of see this as a game of telephone. You know, he’s the one who started it.

In the film it was stated that Kubrick had an IQ of 200, which is past genius…

TK: Yeah, that’s actually Jay Weidner saying that. Fact checking wasn’t a major part of our film. In a positive way… (laughs)…

RA: This is not a hardcore, behind the scenes film. This is more – what are people saying about THE SHINING? How are people struggling to make sense of this problem that’s been tucked in their lap.

TK: And that leads to a bigger point. When Rodney and I were discussing this film, and what it would be like, before we interviewed anyone, one of the decisions was that we weren’t going to talk to people who worked on the film. It was not going to be a behind the scenes film – here’s the answer. As much as Rodney and Tim would love to know that, it didn’t seem appropriate as the filmmakers.

There seems to be some sort of subtly though. As you’ve said, he puts things in there for a reason. ‘Catcher in the Rye’, marketing, advertising – that placement all seems to come across in his films. From PATHS OF GLORY, THE KILLING…

RA: They all contain pretty unusual choices at a pretty early time. A film noir with that scrambled chronology – it’s a pretty radical choice. At one point, they had worked on a cut of taking that out, but somehow they came to their senses and said “Let’s leave it. Let’s leave it this more complicated way.” But certainly, with a partial exception to SPARTACUS, he’s always been a filmmaker who’s done things exactly to his own vision. So, there is more reason to assume that his unusual choices, and the small details in a Kubrick film are intentional that with another filmmaker.

There are so many different conspiracy theories that the film delves into. Some of them make complete sense, others are completely outlandish, such as the paper tray erection… (laughs)

RA: You can totally see that! (laughs)

I’m just wondering how many times he watched it before he went “Yes! There!” and found it. (Laughs) What is the most outlandish, or over the top theory that you heard during the making f this film?

RA: That THE SHINING is the story of three people trapped in a hotel over the winter… (laughs)

Was there anything that you rejected because it was too outlandish?

TK: There were people that we wanted to interview that we couldn’t, for one reason or another. There were two big fish that got away. I don’t think outlandish was ever a yardstick. It was more if it was less persuasive, or didn’t grab us in one way or another.

RA: Outlandish is a hard thing to dismiss when you’re talking about a symbolic interpretation of a horror movie that’s drawing on things like Freud’s sense of the “uncanny”.

Once you developed the main theories that drive the film, why did you choose to have one voice represent each one, rather than having several to back each of the theories up?

RA: I think it was about wanting to dive deeper down fewer holes – not assemble something that’s a thousand soundbites, but to let someone take the time to lay the groundwork and expand on it. There was someone who actually had something negative about the film, but I took it as a compliment, comparing it to a late night dorm room conversation. I remember really loving those conversations, where “I have a class at eight in the morning, but we haven’t really figured out the implications of this song, or DAWN OF THE DEAD yet. So, although it’s three in the morning, we’re going to take another look, and dive deeper” and it’s that excitement that’s kind of contagious. I wanted to spend more time with these folks, and let them go further. Let’s go deeper down these five holes than just cover the surface.

TK: There was a point in the research of this where we were thinking of this as more of a comprehensive overview of every theory that’s out there. It became clear that it was just insane, but I do have this spreadsheet that was an attempt at each one, and where they overlapped, and all the different people that I could talk to that would compliment, or disagree on these various things. Ultimately, once we started interviewing different people we realized that these people were so compelling, and so engaged to the materials – let’s let them talk. Let’s try and be as persuasive, on behalf of them, as we can.

What was your thinking behind not showing their faces?

RA: It was a style that I had started with a short film that I had done a year or two earlier which worked in some interesting, and rather unexpected ways. I might have started it that way because it was a no budget, ten minute film, but it did a lot of things that I was interested in. One was when I didn’t have a talking head shot to go back to I had to struggle harder to find imagery to illustrate these ideas. Sometimes it would be very, very literal, but other times it would open up the doors to use something subjective – something interesting that would stretch the original intention of the footage in a cool way. I think, stylistically, sometimes when we see the talking head shot it’s like coming up for breath, or coming down for a landing and it’s like “Ok, now we’re back in reality, and then we’re going to go into the montage.” I just wanted to stay in that dreamlike world of ideas, and pictures, and let the movie take place in outer space, and the old west, and not in somebody’s office, or a hotel room.

Who were the two big fish that got away?

RA: One was identified on screen as The Mstrmnd. He’s amazing. He was one of the big fish that got away. The other might be this British guy named Rob Ager who has a website called ‘Collative Learning’ which goes deep into THE SHINING and other films. He’s (The Mstrmnd) is kind of this intimidating guy. I talked to him on the phone for about 25 minutes and just felt like an idiot. His vocabulary is so far beyond mine, and I don’t know a whole lot about him personally, but he seems like, kind of, an academic guy – some sort of MIT background. I could understand what he said, but if I tried to come up with a follow-up question I just felt incredibly self conscious. His site, which talks about THE SHINING is kind of a mind-blowing thing where he describes it, in some ways – and I’m not going to do it any sort of justice to his thoughs – as working to compare and contrast the power of pictures over the pictures of words to demonstrate their superiority in a way that draws on Marshall McLuhan and folks. In a lot of ways I was, sort of, disappointed that we weren’t able to get him, but again, there was a moment in the beginning of making this film when we realized what we were going to be able to present was only the tip of the iceberg. There’s that moment when it says that he didn’t want to appear, or we see web pages from other people who have written about THE SHINING to try and suggest that. In a way I think there’s something interesting about that, because when you hear that this is a 140 minute exercise in studying the symbolic layers of THE SHINING you think “Man, they must have stretched it to fill up that much time” but it’s actually the opposite. This thing could have been 10 1/2 hours and kept going. Whenever we had a chance to give an implication that “You think there’s a lot here, but look over the cliff. It goes forever.” It’s kind of an interesting idea to wrestle with.

When you think about Kubrick’s high IQ, and the intelligence of The Mstrmnd, it’s almost as if one mind understands the other –  in a way that the average person doesn’t.

RA: I think there’s a quality in everyone that we talked to, and in us too, to recognize a kinship with something that Kubrick has done. You know, we all focus in on different areas. I was especially interested in his editing process and the way he scrambled chronology – going back to THE KILLING, and that  scene in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY where the caveman is looking at the monolith, and those flash forwards of the wild boars getting knocked down. Is that the idea, or is that the ramification? What time are we looking at? Is the scene with the monolith a flashback? This also informed the way I looked at THE SHINING… wondering how much of it is skipping through time. Even things like when you see the ghosts. Is that some sort of weird flashback where you’re seeing what happened in the hotel earlier? There’s a scene that I think is edited out of sequence, and since I was teaching an editing class at that time, I would see Kubrick as one of the most accomplished film editors in the way that he used film editing language. Our composer said “That’s really weird because I think of him as the ultimate music supervisor”. If you think of the choices of music that he’s made in his films, it’s both so powerful and so influential – using “The Blue Danube Waltze” over the spaceships in 2001 is incredibly bold. It’s an incredibly bold choice rather than some sort of generic science fiction soundtrack. I’m sure The Mstrmind, Kevin, recognized a kindred soul in him and so do the people that we talk about.

TK: I think, on the intelligence thing… There was one point early on when I realized that everyone we were interviewing thought that Kubrick was just a little bit smarter than them. Bill Blakemore spent his whole life reporting on genocide, and struggling with why this keeps happening in our world, so he thinks that Kubrick struggled with the same things, but maybe Kubrick had an answer. Jay Weidner sees that Kubrick would have faked this moon landing. Jay Weidner can see those clues.

RA: Jay Weidner says flat out that 2001, as a kid, inspired him to be a filmmaker. He talks about Kubrick in our film, but if you go to his website, he’s made two of his own DVD’s with a third coming out. He’s also made a ton of his own documentaries and film projects. Kubrick launched him down that path.

Do you think there’s a tendency to see Kubrick as infallible whereas there are certain things that some people might put down as continuity errors in a convoluted and lengthy production process?

TK: I think for sure there is a tendency to think of him as infallible.

RA: He does have a pretty good track record (laughs) going into THE SHINING, and he did have more personal control over the details of his films than other folks. You aren’t the first person to suggest that some of those continuity issues might have just been errors, but there sure were a lot of them. (laughs) Even if some of them were, I can’t believe that all of them were. Coming at it from one of the most accomplished filmmakers of all times, if you see something that looks like an accident at first glimpse, there’s at least a reason to go and consider it and say “Was that really an accident?”

In A LIFE IN PICTURES Wendy Carlos mentions that she felt like a complete failure. How do you feel her music affected the film?

RA: I love the music in THE SHINING. I think her theme song at the beginning, her version of ‘Dies Irae’ is what scared me as a little kid. What’s really interesting about it is that there are a lot of people who search for things that were in the book that are only slightly in the movie, and I hear bee’s in her music – and there’s a big bee sequence in the book THE SHINING that didn’t make it into the movie, but they’re there through her soundtrack. I think he might have done the same thing to her that he did in 2001 which is replace her specially composed music with stuff from his record collection – which is something that happens to directors all the time while they’re waiting for their composer, they use music that they happen to have, and they fall in love with it. He also has a way of transforming it, and using music in interesting, opposite ways. In THE SHINING there’re even things, we weren’t able to get into it much in 237, but Geoffrey Cox, in particular, talks about the history of some of the composers of the music. Bartok had some run in’s with the nazi’s back when he lived in Germany. The version of it that he used was from a German orchestra. He talks about another selection of music called ‘The Dream Of Jacob’ which ties us into old testament readings of the movie. I love the music of THE SHINING. He might have put her through hell to get what he needed, but he did the same thing to Shelley Duvall. He might have shook her up, but she’s amazing in the movie.

What is the one thing that someone said during your interview process that really stuck with you, or opened your eyes to a whole new set of theories? Is there a particular fact, or theory that took you by surprise, or gave you a “woah” moment?

TK: I could listen to Bill Blakemore talk for 8 hours straight. He’s a really compelling guy. I remember reading Jay’s essay really early in the process, and being a bit dismissive about the moon landing thing. Then, I got to this part where he was talking about if Jack represents the caretaker of the hotel for the Apollo mission, the previous caretaker would representing the previous program from NASA, and it was Gemini, which are twins, and Grady had twins. I just remember my hand shaking. I had a couple of those moments during this film, but that one still stands out to me as – where I kind of left my body for a little while.

RA: Well, it’s that thing where if these were term papers, you’ve got the topic sentence, then the thesis statement and the overview, and as the facts pile up, they get more and more persuasive. Maybe it’s the third, fourth or fifth point, but at some point, at a certain level, it becomes totally persuasive. One thing that was really interesting to me, that kind of made me want to rewatch the movie again and pay attention to a very particular thread, was John Fell Ryan talking about the power of the dissolves, and how they weren’t just a transition between the scenes, and it wasn’t just a way to expand time, but the intermediary space between them would create a relationship that was meaningful, and saying something in particular. At one point, he saw those two pictures of Jack Nicholson come together to form the Hitler mustache, which is kind of amazing because I had seen that shot a hundred times, but I was never capable of seeing that image. What was especially eerie about that was it reinforced Geoffrey Cox’s story about the World War II themes in the film. Arguably, these guys are coming from two different worlds. When I watched the film again, paying attention to the dissolves, I don’t know if the things I found were things other than what John Fell Ryan found, but these were things that I never talked to him about, or I didn’t recall him reading, and I would find more of those relationships. There’s just the simple visual of the cars coming around the mountain, and then as the dissolve comes to the parking lot of the hotel, it’s as if the road is leading straight into the hotel from two different vantage points. Or, there’s one where as Jack is throwing the ball at the Navajo Prince, it dissolves into Wendy and Danny leaving the hotel, and she says “Last one in has to keep America clean” or “keep America beautiful” which is clearly a joke on the crying Indian PSA from the 70’s, which has aged to kind of a campy artifact now, but back then it brought every kid to tears. It was on the tip of everybody’s tongue. People knew exactly what she was talking about, so here are these two different Native American sequences, and we can see him throwing the ball against the tapestry as we hear them, kind of, make fun of it at the same time. So, that was really eerie – connecting those dots.

Carefully examining THE SHINING inside out, and forwards and backwards,ROOM 237 is equal parts captivating, provocative and pure pleasure. It gives voice to the fans and scholars who espouse these theories, reworking the film to match their ideas and intercutting it with layers of dreamlike imagery to illustrate their streams of consciousness. Sometimes outrageous, always engaging, the words of the interviewees are given full force by Ascher’s compelling vision.

For more information: http://www.room237movie.com

ROOM 237 is in select theaters now