THROUGH THE MIRRORFORM, PART 2: INTERLOCKS AND PIGGYBACKS

ON THE NATURE OF OVERLAPPING ROOMS AND THE HALLORANN JOURNEY

One thought I’ve had a million billion times: could you achieve what SK achieved with any of the techniques I’ve been studying (the absurdities, the shots that mirror other shots, or just all the buried art connotations and all the associated symbolism) if the film didn’t have such a limited range of locations? Almost every Shine Baby I’ve studied is either a literal cabin in the woods story, like Shutter Island, or a figurative cabin in the woods story, like Inception. A remote location or a dream world. Exceptions to this rule (yet to be discussed on this site) still have a stately way of dividing the story/action into easily distinguishable chunks, of which there tend to be few.

And yet, while The Shining only has three major settings (Boulder, the Overlook, and Hallorann’s rescue journey), there’s almost no immediate overlap between specific settings in the mirrorform. In fact, I’ll show you all 14 shots that take place in the same space right now.

1) Two exterior shots of the hotel (one heavily crossfading into the lobby); 2) the Overlook tour of suite 3 with Tony/Danny’s REDRUMing; 3-8) the kitchen tour mixed with Jack’s food jailing; 9) the All Work battle overlaid with Danny’s first triking journey; 10) Danny’s last shine mixed with Jack’s first day (not) on the job; 11) Jack goofing off while Wendy gets All Work’d up; 12) Jack’s first and last day of writing; 13) Wendy’s dead radio with Jack’s radiokiller death march; 14) Hallorann’s shine reception/middle of the movie

You might note that 7 of them (#3-8) are from the kitchen tour, 3 are from the All Work fight (#9-11), and the last one (#14) can’t help it, since it’s the middle of the movie (though it is cool that this scene starts and ends at the same moment, and goes for almost two full minutes). And if we were really puritanical we would strike out the 1st and 13th, since the two exteriors in the 1st moment are technically different structures (real and set), and in the dead radios overlap, Wendy is technically in the radio room behind reception while Jack is outside in the lobby proper (though this gives us one of the film’s rarest instances, which is of the same painting appearing at the same time, but we’ll get to that later).

So that would leave the 2nd (Wendy stepping into Danny’s exact spot in suite 3) and the 2nd-last instance (which is probably more about the fact that it comes quite close to a repeat of the same shot in the mirrorverse–see below) as the only two unconnected to the kitchen and All Work sequences. Were these incidental? Well, Wendy stepping into spot in Suite 3 is one of the most deliberate-feeling mirror moments in the film, so, I doubt it.

But why was this done?

(And just in case you’re thinking of other edits of the film, my feeling, based on all my mirrorform findings, is that those were meant to lead audiences away from suspecting he ever went to this trouble; he was being a good Danny Torrance and covering his tracks.)

I think when SK decided to make a mirrorform film (and I’m not ruling his others out entirely–especially Lolita, which others have noticed the mirrorform of–I just don’t plan on spending a year of my life on dissecting them–I’d like to keep some of the magic in this relationship alive), he realized that he would either be forced to go to extreme lengths to have every sequence match up perfectly by location, or he could go hard the other way, and make the overlap about contextual reflections, the likes of which I study exhaustively in the first mirrorform analysis.

When he selected The Shining as the template for this experiment, he must’ve realized that certain elements demanded their own uniqueness. Hallorann’s rescue journey, for instance, would have to occupy the latter half. Ruling out flashbacks, the business in Boulder was best dealt with at the beginning. These passages would take time. Time that refused to be mirrored spatially.

SK doesn’t show us a part of the hotel that isn’t the lobby (45 seconds combined), Ullman’s office, or the Bloodfall/Twins/Eye Scream vision (23 seconds) until 20:30. Given that the midpoint is 70:45, that means he only had to minimize overlap for 50:15.

This could explain why Hallorann’s journey starts 0:55 before the middle of the film and carries through to the end. Almost every sequence of Hallorann’s arrival takes place (in reverse), between 20:30 and 70:45. His entire portion of the film in this section equals 7:25, or about 15% of the 50:15 runtime.

Here’s the runtimes for all of Hallorann’s rescue mission sequences:

69:50-71:40 (1:50) – Danny’s shine
76:13-76:52 (0:39) – No answer
81:26-82:19 (0:53) – US Forest Service 1
95:07-96:37 (1:30) – US Forest Service 2 into Airplane
96:58-99:31 (2:33) – Plane lands, Durkin’s Garage, The drive to Durkin’s
117:50-118:45 (0:55) – The Mountain Pass drive
124:34-124:52 (0:18) – The Final Approach
125:10-125:19 (0:19) – The Final Approach Part 2
125:30-125:35 (0:05) – The Final Approach Part 3
126:29-126:47 (0:18) – The 2^nd Entrance
127:33-128:46 (1:13) – The Fall of Hallorann
132:33-132:41 (0:08) – Hallorann’s corpsified

And watching the mirrorform, you start to notice how these scenes might’ve been used specifically to have certain other sequences line up better.

The best example I know of now is the way Tony/Danny’s REDRUM walk ends backwards just as forward Wendy is stepping into the same spot of the same room. Then we cut to an extended shot of Hallorann looking through his dashboard at the trees on the path at night.

Nothing in Hallorann’s driving sequence had to be the length it was for its own dramatic purposes (besides achieving a consistent tonality with the rest of the film, I suppose). It could’ve been shorter or longer, as needed be.

So that leaves 42:50 of the Overlook sequences to partition–about 60% of the film (Wendy’s chat with the Forest Service doesn’t even shave off a minute).

Part of how he achieved this minimal room overlap is by having as many extended sequences as possible. So consider the following extended scenes that occur between 20:30 and 69:50

20:30-22:47 (2:17) – Tony/Danny’s REDRUMing
23:42-26:58 (3:16) – Jack in the storeroom with Grady
28:11-32:00 (3:50) – Wendy locking up Jack
32:00-40:15 (8:15) – The All Work sequence
40:15-42:00 (1:45) – Wendy prepares to face Jack
43:05-46:00 (2:55) – Wendy “interrupts” Jack’s writing
47:11-49:17 (2:06) – Wendy radioing for help
49:50-56:00-59:13 (9:23) – The Ghost Ball (Lloyd into Grady)
59:15-62:45 (3:30) – Jack’s nightmare and Danny’s trauma
62:45-69:50 (7:05) – The Gold Room Seduction

Those all total up to 42:37, which, if they didn’t overlap with Hallorann’s scenes somewhat, would almost equal those needed 42:50. In fact, the Hallorann sequences that do overlap only total about five minutes. And three of those minutes are Hallorann’s own extended sequence of flying to the rescue and calling Durkin (which overlays with the writing interruption fight).

The whole last 20 minutes there are virtually continuous. Wendy’s call for help ends 33 seconds before the ghost ball appears…

…which carries on in the Gold Room for nearly ten minutes(!)…

…and just as Jack is arriving at the ghost ball, forward Jack’s nightmare screams are being heard by Wendy, who’s starting to creep to the rescue…

…and the end of Wendy’s rescue is Jack’s befuddlement which crossfades right back into the Gold Room.

The gaps between other parts are just a minute here, a minute there. And that’s just inevitable when you’ve got short scenes like Wendy preparing the fruit salad, or establishing shots and placards, or the boiler room. Scenes that don’t need a tonne of time, but need to be there in order to convey the full drama. To avoid silly exposition that might’ve done the same work: “Jack, I heard you all the way down in the boiler room, what’s wrong?!”

As for Hallorann’s bits that precede the middle of the film, they’re interestingly singular. 24:18-34:11. Almost a perfect ten minutes. And there’s a 20 second clip right in the middle where he’s not on screen (28:52-29:12), ending almost exactly five minutes before he’s back out of the movie.

SPECIAL: THE COLOUR-CODED SHINING

In scanning through the film thousands of times, you start to notice that innumerable edits are made right on the :00 or :30 mark of a minute, while a good deal others are on :10, :20, :40, :50 and :15. Of course, there are plenty from other odd seconds, and I haven’t studied hundreds of films for this phenomenon, but it caused me to wonder if SK divided the story up into particular fragments, and if that’s why, as one of his performers (Patrick Magee) once quipped, the director’s favourite sayings were, “Do it faster. Do it slower. Do it again.”

The other thing is that a study of most commercial films might not prove much since, the majority of them (since the 1980s, anyway) don’t even feature one shot that goes on for 15+ seconds, let alone so many such shots that they’re more the rule than the exception. In fact, I just checked, and there are 62 30+ second shots in the film, or just under 10% of the 664-666 shots (depending on how you count darkness). Point being, when you have 10% of your shots reaching longer than any :00-:30 mark, but you still want to edit according to a geometrically exacting technique, you would have to be far more considerate than the average director, who could be editing sometimes multiple edits per second, any of which (or all of which) could land on the :00 or :30, and give the illusion of geometricity. In fact, I just did a quick survey of every :00 or :30 moment in the film, and found that 70 of the 280 applicable instances featured a cut (within a one-second margin of error–if I’d allowed for a two-second margin of error, that number would balloon greatly). Then I looked at which of these divided one major section from another, and not wanting to bore you with my various logics, 20 of those 70 divide apart what I would call the film’s 66 major sequences. So, a third of the film is aligned with these 30-second chunks. I wanted to tell you all that so you could have a finer appreciation of the colour charts to be found below.

COLOUR BY CHARACTER

For the record, there’s nothing in the following charts you can’t get from just watching the mirrorform, but these give you a faster sense of the zipper-like way that certain forwards/backwards sequences interlock. I should say that my prevailing logic was that, in cases where something bled over into the next portion, if it was under 10 seconds, I didn’t mention it. So everything isn’t quite as blindingly, brilliantly segmented as this chart would make it seem…except in the sense of the mirrorform analysis, in which case, yeah, the uniformity is quite blindingly brilliant.

So, in this one, the colours tell you who is in the scene. For the sake of clarity (and because you only have so many easily-distinguishable colours), I decided that ghosts and Hallorann were accent characters, so you’ll note when they were simply in a scene with other characters. All other non-Torrances were considered supporting players and not given colours.

Also, note how nicely a story with three main characters applies to this rainbow colour scheme, with brown representing all three.

COLOUR BY LOCATION

Hopefully all my colour decisions here are obvious, but in case they aren’t:

Ullman’s office is in the heart of the lobby and surrounding halls
The bloodfall happens near a hall that is clearly meant to resemble the Gold Room bathroom
The blowjob bear is at the top of a stairwell that resembles the staff wing; same with the twinhall
The Boulder apartment, and Hallorann’s Miami apartment are the two major non-Overlook interiors
Durkin’s and Stapleton Airport are both heavily connected to locomotion, and all the travel sequences are heavily connected to the outdoors/exteriors
While there’s no barrier between 237 and the Colorado lounge, I had a major colour leftover, so I separated them.
And just to note: the only rooms left over after all that tonal lassoing were the boiler room and the games room, which I thought was neat because those rooms are strictly about work and play, respectively.

SPECIAL: 30+ SECOND SHOTS

IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

The shot of the helicopter passing Jack’s car in the opening. (0:30)
The following shot on the highway by the steep slopes. (0:30)
Jack moving through the lobby to meet Ullman (1:08)
Ullman telling the Grady story (0:30)
First shot of the doctor interviewing Danny (0:30)
Wendy tells Danny’s abuse story to the doctor (0:54)
The 2^nd drive to the Overlook (1:25)
Ullman and Watson greet Jack for the tour (0:50)
The Colorado Lounge tour (0:56)
Suite 3 tour (0:44)
Gold Room Tour (1:02)
The Kitchen Tour – 1^st shot (0:52)
“How’d you know we call him doc?” (0:37)
Hallorann offers ice cream to the Torrances (0:45)
Hallorann explains the Overlook’s shine to Danny (0:30)
Danny trikes the lounge (0:39)
Jack receives breakfast (1:23)
Jack’s déjà vu (0:30)
Hedge maze dead end (0:39)
Wendy watches the news (0:37)
Danny trikes above the lounge (0:38)
Danny tries out 237 (0:41)
Wendy moves between radios (0:32)
Tony slams the Grady twins (0:30)
Summer of ’42 (1:22)
Danny creeps in (0:42)
Danny goes to Jack (0:30)
Danny and Jack discuss the Overlook (1:00)
Danny creeps to 237 (0:34)
Wendy in the boiler room (0:42)
Danny creeps upon mom and dad (1:07)
Jack enters the Gold Room (0:48)
Jack denies abusing Danny to Lloyd (0:46)
Jack confesses to abusing Danny (0:60)
Channel 10 Newswatch (0:33)
Hallorann watching Newswatch (0:30)
Hallorann receives a shine (0:42)
The 237 dreamwalk (0:59)
Jack approaches the Venus (0:57)
Hallorann’s 1^st call (0:40)
Jack returns from 237 (1:17)
Jack stalks to the Ghostball (0:39)
Jack enters the Ghostball (0:55)
Jack meets Grady (0:58)
Jack recognizes Grady (1:47)
Jack’s always been the caretaker here (0:34)
Wendy plots escape (0:55)
Hallorann’s flight (0:39)
Wendy leaves to fight Jack (1:47)
Wendy crosses the threshold (0:45)
Jack creeps up on Wendy (0:36)
Jack “needs” a doctor (0:38)
Wendy will bring back a doctor! (0:38)
Wendy finds a dead snowcat (0:36)
Grady wakes Jack (1:15)
Grady and Jack have a business meeting (2:01)
The REDRUM Walk (1:33)
The REDRUM Scrawl (0:37)
Jack creeps to kill Hallorann (0:45)
Hallorann’s last walk (1:06)
THE BJ Well Climb (0:30)
The photo Jack zoom (1:00)

IN LENGTH ORDER

Note how three of the four 30+ second shots feature Grady, #1, #9, and the one tied for #2.

The shot of the helicopter passing Jack’s car in the opening. (0:30)
The following shot on the highway by the steep slopes. (0:30)
Ullman telling the Grady story (0:30)
First shot of the doctor interviewing Danny (0:30)
Hallorann explains the Overlook’s shine to Danny (0:30)
Jack’s déjà vu (0:30)
Tony slams the Grady twins (0:30)
Danny goes to Jack (0:30)
Hallorann watching Newswatch (0:30)
THE BJ Well Climb (0:30)
Wendy moves between radios (0:32)
Channel 10 Newswatch (0:33)
Danny creeps to 237 (0:34)
Jack’s always been the caretaker here (0:34)
Jack creeps up on Wendy (0:36)
Wendy finds a dead snowcat (0:36)
“How’d you know we call him doc?” (0:37)
Wendy watches the news (0:37)
The REDRUM Scrawl (0:37)
Danny trikes above the lounge (0:38)
Jack “needs” a doctor (0:38)
Wendy will bring back a doctor! (0:38)
Danny trikes the lounge (0:39)
Hedge maze dead end (0:39)
Jack stalks to the Ghostball (0:39)
Hallorann’s flight (0:39)
Hallorann’s 1^st call (0:40)
Danny tries out 237 (0:41)
Danny creeps in (0:42)
Wendy in the boiler room (0:42)
Hallorann receives a shine (0:42)
Suite 3 tour (0:44)
Hallorann offers ice cream to the Torrances (0:45)
Wendy crosses the lounge threshold (0:45)
Jack creeps to kill Hallorann (0:45)
Jack denies abusing Danny to Lloyd (0:46)
Jack enters the Gold Room (0:48)
Ullman and Watson greet Jack for the tour (0:50)
The Kitchen Tour – 1^st shot (0:52)
Wendy tells Danny’s abuse story to the doctor (0:54)
Jack enters the Ghostball (0:55)
Wendy plots escape (0:55)
The Colorado Lounge tour (0:56)
Jack approaches the Venus (0:57)
Jack meets Grady (0:58)
The 237 dreamwalk (0:59)
Danny and Jack discuss the Overlook (1:00)
Jack confesses to abusing Danny (1:00)
The photo Jack zoom (1:00)
Gold Room Tour (1:02)
Hallorann’s last walk (1:06)
Danny creeps upon mom and dad (1:07)
Jack moving through the lobby to meet Ullman (1:08)
Grady wakes Jack (1:15)
Jack returns from 237 (1:17)
Summer of ’42 (1:22)
Jack receives breakfast (1:23)
The 2^nd drive to the Overlook (1:25)
The REDRUM Walk (1:33)
Jack recognizes Grady (1:47)
Wendy leaves to fight Jack (1:47)
Grady and Jack have a business meeting (2:01)

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KITCHENS/FOOD AND DRINK

In this section I spell out in excruciating detail (or at least some of you may find it so) how the mirrorform Shining doesn’t go two minutes (literally) without a reference to food or drink on screen (whether that’s a kitchen, a Coke machine, a Jack Daniels, or bacon and eggs). Scroll to the end for a deeper general analysis, but basically, I did this because I believe SK was concerned with the notion of famine and wanted to trigger our sense of how famine can be generated by more than just a dearth of food and drink.

1:13-1:51 – Because you don’t see anyone eating or drinking in Jack’s shot, I’m only counting the photos around him where everyone is seen eating and drinking. And while you can’t always make out that that’s what’s happening, I’m thinking of this like the kitchen and Hallorann: the photos symbolically represent what’s in them: eating and drinking.

3:03-3:25 – People seen around the lobby with food and drink.

3:45-10:35 – Jack enter’s Ullman’s office where we can see Clarence Gagnon’s Le Campement Du Trappeur, which shows a French Canadian man cooking with his dog sled in the snow. As this fades from view, Ullman asks Jack if he wants tea, and he says sure, and Ullman tells Susie to get that and Bill Watson. Fade to Boulder, where Danny and Wendy are seen at the breakfast table eating. Wendy’s Boulder kitchen is seen behind her during the talk with Danny. The next sequence is the interview, which includes their tea cups, and the photos of banquets and strung up livestock and fishing game behind everyone’s heads.

10:49-10:59 – Wendy cleans up after lunch with Danny

11:19-12:20 – Empty glass next to Danny in the bathroom. Water seen in the BJ and the Bear sequence. Clarence Gagnon’s Le Campement Du Trappeur appears both in the first bloodfall and in the BJ well right after this. Right after the last Gagnon disappears, Jack is seen stalking the hall behind the lobby where there’s vending machines for drinks and the like. And of course there’s the oral aspect of the bear’s funtimes.

The sequence between these two sequences (12:20-14:24) involves Hallorann approaching his death and being killed, and Danny being interviewed in his room, which contains a lunchbox and thermos. I feel like those probably count, but they’re the most tenuous of many of these. While in many scenes the water, tea, or whatever seems to be in use, here it’s more in disuse.

14:46-22:50 – Wendy talks with doctor in the all-purpose room. On the car ride Danny reports being hungry, and Jack scolds him lightly and Wendy says they’ll grab something when they get there. This leads into a conversation about people eating each other. Jack is interrupted eating by Watson and Ullman. He eats until they exit frame, and right then backwards Tony/Danny is doing the REDRUM scene, where there’s a glass of water on Wendy’s side table. Finally, Jack and Wendy pass the Suite 3 kitchenette on the tour. If you count Hallorann being a chef as a reminder of food, the shot of him carries right to the shot of Jack in the storeroom.

INCLUDED IN THE LAST SEQUENCE: 15:25-15:38 – Jack stalks the kitchen on his way to get Hallorann. 17:50-18:15 Jack pretends to be the Big Bad Wolf, who wants to eat the three little pigs. This actually almost perfectly bridges the gap between the Wendy kitchen scene and Danny saying he’s hungry.

23:42-34:10 – This is one of the most interesting phases is that every kitchen sequence, front and back occurs within this space. Moreover, the sequences with just the storeroom are some of the most intricate in the film. The sequence of Hallorann showing off the storeroom to Wendy fits almost perfectly within the space made between the two sequences of Jack being locked in there. Also, forward Hallorann appears 36 seconds into this passage, and remains in the scene for all but 20 seconds of this passage.

34:21-37:55 – Wendy brings Jack breakfast, Danny trikes around Colorado, which includes the service hall with its water coolers and coffee machine trolleys, then Jack eats breakfast and chats, and then Jack is in the Colorado lounge himself with a tray of food and drink. 39:45 – Wendy walks by the pillars in Colorado, which shows photos of banquets in close up.

40:15-42:00-46:25 The first timespan there refers to the breakfast Wendy is serving Danny in Suite 3, but if, again, you count Hallorann as a symbol of food (and there’s plenty of food and drink references at Durkin’s, on the plane, and at Hallorann’s apartment, not to mention Wendy telling Jack she’ll bring him a couple sandwiches later), the time extends to the next code, there.

48:08-48:16 – The twin 7Up bottles at the US Forest Service.

49:17-49:36 – Danny seen triking past a bunch of water coolers and vending machines and then a coffee trolley near the twins. If you count Wendy’s smoking, then the 47:13 to the following sequence would count.

49:50-60:16 – This entire sequence involves the smoking/drinking Ghost Ball, the two small bowls of olives and nuts Lloyd hands Jack, and the spilled advocaat. Followed by the US Forest service sequence, which includes the ranger’s cup of coffee and Hallorann’s alcohol collection. Finally, Jack passes a sign on his way to the Ghost Ball advertising cocktails. In the forward realm it includes Wendy’s brunch Coke and water glass during the Summer of ’42 viewing. Also, the scene of Summer of ’42 is about a young boy being offered doughnuts and coffee. Later, when Wendy’s in the boiler room, there’s a tea kettle and some tea bag containers.

60:43-61:12 – Jack messing up a bunch of kitchen equipment (next to a bunch of 7ups), and storming past the Suite 3 Kitchenette.

61:40-61:45 – The Gagnon appears next to a bloodfall.

63:22 – Jack enters the Gold Room alone for the first time, turning on all the lights just as, backwards, the Jack who’s returned from 237 is about to walk with Wendy past the Suite 3 kitchenette. Just as the kitchenette leaves the frame, the Gold Room bar appears again in the forwards tracking shot. The bar scene lasts until 69:51, at which point Hallorann bursts onto screen in close up, and remains onscreen all the way to the middle of the film, 70:45.

So, besides the incredible storeroom sequencing, it does seem pretty wild that food or drink is made almost omnipresent within Redrum Road. The longest period between instances isn’t even two minutes. That’s incredible. If we expanded the definition to include smoking, it might almost be a seamless wall of consumption.

And what’s the significance of that? Well, I think Kubrick understood that this is not a story about what happens when we suffer for want of sustenance, rest, or luxury. It’s about the existential void created when one only needs to want for greater society. It’s about what we turn to when everything we can control, is controlled by us. But Jack can’t control who he is as a character, or the characters of his family. He can’t make his wife forget his past abuses, he can’t make his child trust him implicitly, he can’t make Wendy feel romantically toward him. We almost never see them in bed together, except to bring food, or to discuss 237.

Wendy’s want for someone to replace a Jack in dereliction of loving husband duties (not just sexual ones, for the record) causes her to get too close to Danny. Which is exacerbated by Danny’s traumatized retreat within himself.

Danny starts out in social famine, with “no one to play with around here”, and finds that when “someone” does show up to play, it isn’t always the cure-all you’d hope for.

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CARS/VEHICLES

The longest gap in vehicle references is 6 minutes (the Dick and Danny shine talk overtop Wendy locking Jack in the storeroom). And while there are other similar gaps here and there, cars, canoes, planes, tricycles, snowcats, and the Apollo 11 rocket, are a major feature of the film, which has a grand subtext about the role of conquest in our global society, and its sometimes glorious/sometimes harrowing role it plays in our herstory.

In The Shining, vehicles take the Torrances into their worst nightmares, but they also can’t help rescuing them.

00:32-4:20 – There’s an interesting thing about vehicles at the beginning. First we see Jack driving for about three minutes straight, and that ends right as the first shot of Wendy and Danny driving off in the snowcat is ending. And there’s the Overlook parking lot aerial shot, which has its snowcat. Then, we get backward Jack stumbling around in the maze, which has all these bright lights that somewhat resemble headlights. That’s intercut with shots of the snowcat being driven by Wendy. Upon entering the building, Jack also passes a magazine with Bruegel’s Tower of Babel painting on the cover, which features boats, and the painting on the wall behind Jack includes a horse drawing a sleigh, and another overturned sleigh. As forward Jack sees Ullman’s office for the first time, we see the backward snowcat stopped in place as backward Wendy and Danny are running out of it, embracing, and then running back away. As backward Wendy is running back from the stopped snowcat, we see the parking lot in Boulder. Incidentally, this takes about the exact length of Come Together. It’s also worth noting that the entire interview scene has Clarence Gagnon’s A Trapper’s Camp in the room, which contains a dog sled team. Also, the lobby contains two paintings with old fashioned modes of transport in them.

8:38 – The GREAT PARTY ghost scene contains the ghost standing by a painting called The Makah Returning in Their War Canoes, and the painting behind Wendy, Mist Fantasy, contains two canoes, reflecting in water.

10:16-11:18 – 11:43-14:25 As for the other snowcat shots: I’m not sure if there’s a defensible pattern to them, but first there’s a few shots around 10:00 of Danny hiding behind it while Jack is looking for him, at which point, Jack is at the end of the interview, and then we transition into Danny’s bathroom chat with Tony. There’s an interesting moment there where two Danny’s bent about the same angle are standing butt-to-butt. Then there’s a really neat moment where Woman and Terrier is behind Wendy, which contains a tiny 747 airliner in the distance, which looks exactly like the one Hallorann will ride to Danny’s rescue, meanwhile the Hallorann’s snowcat is in the reverse, behind Wendy’s chest here. Then backward Jack stalks past the two Krieghoffs with the sleigh and horse in them. Also, note the air balloon that Woodstock is riding on. Not long after this we see Gagnon’s Trapper’s Camp (which contains a dogsled) twice, once in Danny’s vision, and the second the blood washes over the screen, on the wall behind Wendy in the BJ well. And a few seconds later we’re in Danny’s bedroom where there’s a lunchbox for the show EMERGENCY!, which is about paramedics and ambulance drivers. There’s red vehicles on the box. This appears when backward Jack begins his stalk on Danny, and ends just as he’s hearing Hallorann. There’s also a hot air balloon in that scene, above the doctor.

14:30-16:55 – First, backward Jack is passing the two paintings with the various canoes, while in the forward Wendy and the doctor are passing Horse and Train. The shots of Hallorann approaching in the cat and then walking from the cat to the hotel all happen when things are still pleasant between Wendy and the doctor.

17:40-24:00 – The shots of cars that goes from the aerial shot of the VW driving the family up, to the exterior shot of the hotel all take place between Jack’s first blows to the Suite 3 door and his first blows to the bathroom door. Oh, then we see Danny’s trike behind Jack for this whole scene, and just as it ends we get to the 2^nd REDRUM scene, which has a giant toy tank in it, among other toy cars laying around. This cuts to the shots of Hallorann driving the snowcat up start as Wendy and Jack are touring the Suite 3 bedroom and bathroom, and go to right before Ullman introduces the snowcat. That sequence fades as backward Jack is in the storeroom with Grady, and the tour goes to the Gold Room.

27:06-28:11 – Wendy studying the cut out heart of the snowcat while Hallorann shows off the storeroom. By the end of this sequence Wendy will be racing past the two Krieghoffs with the sleigh and the horse. Also, behind Danny’s head in the storeroom, while receiving Hallorann’s shine, is an image of a man riding a donkey. There are also trolleys and such throughout the kitchen on the tour, but I’m skipping those for some reason.

34:13-35:56 – 39:16 – 40:15-44:35 – 44:54-45:40 – 46:24 – There’s a series of forward shots that all have types of wheeled things that starts with the exterior of shot of the hotel and Jack’s VW parked outside, into Wendy pushing the breakfast cart, and Danny triking the Colorado lounge. In the backwards realm, this all plays over the Jack and Wendy Colorado stalk. There’s also another shot of the Tower of Babel painting while Jack’s throwing the ball in the lounge. In the lobby, Jack throws the ball over Danny’s stopped trike while Wendy is not finding Jack in the lounge. Not long after this, Danny’s firetruck shows up in the background of the scene where Wendy leaves Tony/Danny to face Jack. This scene runs into shots of toy vehicles next to the tiny TV where Wendy’s watching the news. Which plays into Danny doing the 237 trike, which means passing the Berczy-Panet painting with the boat in it. When that ends, we’re in both Staplenton airport and Durkin’s garage, which are both places committed to vehicles. What’s really neat about this section is the infamous disappearing chair behind forward Jack here disappears only during this shot of Durkin’s snowcat, which Wendy and Danny will escape in. That leads to the shot of Hallorann’s plane arriving backwards. Shortly after we see Hallorann in the place asking for the time. So in that sense, Hallorann’s whole flight story from the plane to the end of the Durkin conversation, takes place over the entirety of Jack’s first freakout scene with Wendy, and a good part of Danny’s first 237 sequence. Finally, Wendy and Danny are sprinting past the first snowcat while Hallorann’s copy of Car and Driver is on the table beside him.

48:56-58:37 – First, Wendy is pacing around the Scientific American, with Tower of Babel on the cover, which includes many ships and wheeled things. Then we go from Danny’s final trike ride to Danny playing with his vehicle toys in front of Summer of ’42 to him going to look for his fire engine, and in that scene with Jack, there’s a red toy car in the back of the shot. That leads into Danny playing with his vehicles outside 237, and of course he has a giant rocket on his chest at that point. Backwards, this plays over Jack walking up to Lloyd for the last time, his entire interaction with Grady, and a bit of Wendy’s escape plotting.

59:25-59:41 – As Wendy sprints past some trolleys, Hallorann’s copy of Car and Driver appears beside him for a few moments.

60:16-62:41 – First, Jack passes the two canoe paintings (Mist Fantasy and The Makah Returning in Their War Canoes); this all occurs while forward Jack is confessing the murderous content of his nightmare. Then, Danny appears again in his now-ripped rocket sweater. This plays over the harshest parts of Jack bitching out and doubting Wendy after his 237 trip, but also the Trapper’s Camp painting appears again here to connect to the dogsled.

64:55-65:01 – The first (though final for this analysis) appearance of Hallorann’s Car and Driver magazine.

69:52-70:02 – The Newswatch intro contains numerous shots of vehicles and aircraft—planes, windsurfers, boats, schoolbuses, and trucks. And recall that 70:45 is the middle of the movie, and also that Glenn Rinker’s news babble is largely about travel conditions due to the snowstorm.

There’s also moments of paintings and magazines being in shots with boats in them, and I’m probably overlooking a few shots with Danny’s toys laying around, but look at that. At this point, the longest passage that doesn’t include a direct reference to vehicles is around six minutes, which is the scene of Danny and Hallorann doing the shining talk, and Wendy beating Jack and locking him in the pantry.

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ANIMALS

If you read my section on all the animal imagery in the film, you know you can’t swing a bloody roque mallet without hitting some bit of artistic fauna in the Overlook hotel.

Areas that never have any animal imagery or inherent symbolism seen within (or which conspicuously lose that imagery): the 237 bathroom (though the other fox painting is visible over Jack’s shoulder); the Suite 3 bathroom (though Jack does make a hiding Wendy/Danny into “little pigs”); Stapleton airport, unless you count the cops as “pigs”; the hall outside Suite 3, and the twins hall, unless you count them as connected to the BJ well (also, all three areas contain at least one Oxborough painting). The Boulder bathroom has a duck in it before the Tony visions, but the duck flees into Danny’s room after the visions.

Danny is the only character who we know has been in each (real) bathroom, and bathrooms frequently reflect unconscious thought by a character, and Danny experiences three very different traumas in each one. In the first he sees the bloodfall and twins and Hallorann’s murder, in the second he sees the crone ghost, and in the third he’s pursued by a man who would murder women and children in cold blood, regardless of their being his family.

Perhaps, if animals generally represent guardians to Danny, the absence of animals in bathrooms reflects the vulnerability he feels during his intense experiences there.

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ART

You know, there’s no point in wondering how big the gaps are between art pieces. I just did a scan of the first/last 30 minutes of the movie, and there’s not more than a few seconds between appearances of art forms, and of those gaps, there’s music on the soundtrack, so, yeah, this is a movie about art and media. It might make sense to go through the film straight and try to find sequences devoid of any art form. But again, I doubt any of those passages would last longer than a few moments. What I will do is see if I can spot any overlap between art pieces.

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ART OVERLAP

6:28-6:49 — Clarence Gagnon’s Trapper’s Camp appears mostly out of sight in two areas in this scene – Ullman’s and the bloodfall hall

10:30 – There’s a very loose, very obscure one here. Thunderbird’s Flock of Loons is behind both Jacks here, just out of sight. For forward Jack, it’s in Susie’s office, right through the wall, and for backward Jack is actually right behind him on the wall to the left. And as he passes it backwards visibly (11:15), forward Jack is on the phone in the lobby, which is only a few steps from Susie’s version.

11:15-11:19 – Backward Jack passes between the two Krieghoffs at the 2^nd Entrance at the same time as forward Jack is in the lobby with the two Krieghoffs. Again, every instance of every one of these paintings is incredibly difficult to make out, or obscured entirely in these shots, but we know they’re there. Same with the mystery Monahan, which is ahead of Jack in both shots.

12:05 – For a split second here, Trapper’s Camp appears again simultaneously in the first bloodfall vision and Wendy climbing the BJ well backwards.

19:41-20:30 – The tiny cabin paintings in the reception radio room and in Suite 3 are, again, hanging out of sight of one another, but both very much in the same room at the same time here.

NOTE: It’s interesting that while there’s a seeming overlap between the storeroom shots for a second the boxes are all different in the relevant shots. So we could say, with a similar philosophy as before, that all the corporate art shared by what remains the same in the two rooms, still shares a room for a moment, and that much is true. 28:12-28:15

28:22-28:48 – There’s a box of Frosted Flakes in the kitchen proper at both points in this section. Now, we could assume that this fact continues until the end of the Danny/Hallorann shine talk, in which case, this period would extend to 32:00.

34:40-35:19 – In this section, Danny trikes around Colorado while Jack pursues Wendy there, so technically, this is all artistic overlap, but for the exact moment when both shots are looking toward the same architecture at the same time, that would be 34:59-35:00.

35:56-36:09 – No same art is seen, but Danny is tripping balls in Suite 3 at the same time as Wendy is bringing Jack breakfast in bed. So, room share art share. Although, we don’t actually see the butterfly or cabin art in this room at first, and we do see the cabins in the radio room past the forward action here. So the only art overlap that we can be sure of is the Paul Peel, the halo landscape and the autumn forest beside the fridge.

37:30-38:02 – Same thing with the Colorado Lounge. It’s the sequence where Jack’s throwing the tennis ball, and Wendy is finding the All Work papers. From Wendy’s point of view, we’re only seeing the ceiling above her, and the pages. And, again, it’s worth pointing out that some of the rugs have disappeared, and the typewriter has changed colours.

40:37-41:15 – This one’s real, real loose, but I thought it was neat that there are two TVs playing in this scene, one in the kitchen, one in Suite 3. And by the angle, they’re sort of facing each other, the one playing news, the other playing Road Runner. Also, the two Wendy’s in this scene are both kneeling over Danny at about the same angle. Thanks to the TV on the kitchen table, it looks like mirror Wendy’s staring right at Danny. And he’s looking all annoyed, like, ugh, two moms!

44:32-44:56 – Two Colorado lounge scenes that don’t share art visually, except for Jack’s beautiful dark wood chair.

46:04-46:10 – One of the two postcards beside the ranger here connects to the postcards in the labyrinth kiosk, which are off-screen, but sharing an environment with Wendy and Danny cavorting in the snow, here.

47:00-47:30 – At first there’s a highly-obscure crossover here. Backward Jack is walking through Susie’s office, which has the Tunnicliffe frost ducks painting in it, and there’s a wide shot of the Colorado lounge, which shows the upper floor balcony, which means that the repetition point for the Tunnicliffe is once again on screen and out of sight in both cases. The Colorado shot carries into Wendy trying to call for help, and so, as backward Jack keeps retreating, he’s passing the area where Wendy is. There’s a very close call for Tom Thomson’s Northern River to be on screen at the same time here.

47:27-47:30 – Oh! No, I’m wrong, it actually can be seen, obscurely, right in front of Wendy’s face here. Well, it’s frame, anyway. Still. That’s a screen share and necessarily a kind of room share. What’s also cool there is that this is the moment when each Abbey Road ends. So there’s silence during both of these.

47:30-47:56 – The dual cabin paintings are in the radio room, and in Suite 3, though not seen together here. I’m gonna say once she’s in Ullman’s it no longer counts. But if you wanted to keep counting it because they’re very close to each other, this crossover would endure until 49:34, when Danny trikes past the radio room area on his way to see the twins. That would be an interesting take, since forwards they’re most visible at the beginning, and backwards they’re most visible at the end.

59:12-59:15 – There’s an interesting closeness here, but no overlap. At first we see backward Jack moving toward the Gold Room, and the photos at the end of the hall are behind him there. These same photos, many of them, appear in the Colorado lounge beside Jack’s writing desk, where we can hear him screaming from. And we see him having his nightmare on the other side of the above mentioned 3-second gap. Perhaps this collage represents something of a pushing force from the hotel onto Jack.

60:04-60:32 – Again, the mystery Tunnicliffe is very near both Jack’s in this passage.

NOTE: 64:39-69:50 – I just wanted to point out that this passage struck me as interesting because it takes place almost entirely in the Gold Room and 237. And while Jack does walk past the Tunnicliffe briefly (out of our view), it’s interesting to note that none of the 237 art repeats anywhere and there is no art in the Gold Room (except for the bloodrug, the glamour photos, and the Jack Daniels, which Hallorann has here and Lloyd has there). And as of yet, I’ve only ID’d the Colville in the antechamber, and I think that’s deliberate in a way. The all mystery art and the no art at all rooms are paired at length.

69:50 – There’s an interesting moment here where we understand that Hallorann and Danny are seeing the same vision at the same time, so, in a sense, this momentary shot of the 237 Colville is like an art crossover scene, since two minds are experiencing it independently. We’ve also just heard Jack say, “Which room was it?” so we know he’s going there. And so in the mirrorform we get that added bonus of realizing that Jack will see the Colville, and it becomes like a triple vision.

69:50-70:45 – Takes place entirely within Hallorann’s bedroom, so all the album covers, TV show, books and photographs are shared by force. The only visual art that overlaps visually, though, is the red The Old School Inc. photo.

So! Art that visually overlaps:

Trapper’s Camp, Gagnon (12:05)
Colorado Lounge décor (35:00)
Northern River, Tom Thomson (47:30)
Not Supernatural Dream, The Old School Inc. (70:38)

The timing goes 12 minutes, 23 minutes, 12.5 minutes, then 23 more minutes to the middle of the movie. Which means that the same pattern repeats backwards for the second half–almost like one of the symmetrical, sawtooth-esque Navajo rug patterns.

12 23 12 23
23 12 23 12

And for anyone paying very close attention, yes, there are two other lounge room-shares that occur at 37:30-38:00 and 44:30-45:00. Putting them exactly 2.5 minutes from either side of the second 12 in the above graphic. Could count them and make a pattern that goes:

12-23-2.5-6.5-2.5-23

But all three of the art shares there are more room shares about the lounge, and only the one that makes my first pattern features the same art in the same shot. The one with the two typewriters features two different typewriters, and none of the same desk supplies. So that one is basically only repeating the table. And the other interrupting one only features the same chair. So it’s probably safe to amalgamate those.

What, though, is the significance of 12-23-12-23, other than symmetry and geometry? I’m not sure exactly. One thing you can say is that each successive number is 11 digits off from the next: 12 + 11 = 23, 23 – 12 = 11.

As for the paintings as having symbolic relation to the technique, note which three artworks act as these markers: Trapper’s Camp, Northern River, and (Not) Supernatural Dream. The first one features a character who looks like Hallorann does when he gets killed, and may represent the hotel’s plot to destroy him. The second is behind Hallorann when he gets killed. And the third is one of two naked ladies (possibly the same model) above Hallorann before he gets the shine that gets him killed. And the Supernatural Dream twins seem to reflect the 237 ghost’s nudity and duality, and she’s the one who abuses Danny and warps Jack’s mind, two of the most significant events in setting up Jack’s mind for total hostile takeover, leading to the murdering of Hallorann.

As for Northern River, while that might be a nod at the bloodfall (it does hang right next to some washrooms that resemble the elevator design), which has its connection to Death, I’ve been reading that curator Charles Hill thinks Thomson painted the piece as an amalgam of Algonquin-area motifs, and painter David Milne praised it for its dense, multilayered style and execution. So perhaps this piece speaks to Kubrick’s own immensely dense weave.

Most poignantly, Northern River is, perhaps, the last thing of beauty Hallorann ever laid eyes on, as he rounded the corner into the lobby, eyes darting around for a trace of Jack.

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ART AND ARTISTS THAT REPEAT (BY ROOM)

In this section I’ll look at all the instances of art repeating throughout the hotel, by the artist. This will bear great similarity to the section on lobby connections, but this will also include when a particular artist made it into several areas, even if their individual pieces were not duplicated.

The Krieghoffs (Lobby, 2^nd Entrance)

The Cabins (Lobby, Suite 3)

Group of Seven Stuff (Lobby, Lobby Back Hall, Bloodfall; possibly—Games Room, twinhall, Suite 3, BJ Well)

Gagnon (Ullman’s, BJ Well, Bloodfall)

Oxboroughs (Suite 3, Outside 237, Twinhall, 2^nd Entrance, Lobby Lattice, BJ Well)

Colvilles (Torrance Apartment, Colorado Lounge, 237, BJ Well)

Dog Heads (Lobby Back Hall, 2^nd Entrance)

Monahan’s Birds (Lobby Back Hall, 2^nd Entrance)

Tunnicliffe (Ullman’s, Outside 237)

Morrisseau Loons (Ullman’s, 2^nd Entrance)

Postcard Mountains (Lobby Radio, US Forest Service, Labyrinth Kiosk)

BLOODRUG (Gold Room, 2^nd Entrance, Lobby Back Hall)

WAVERUG (Bloodfall, Lobby Back Hall, possibly 2^nd Entrance)

Lobby/Ullman’s – (15)
2^nd Entrance – (6/7)
BJ Well – (3/4)
Bloodfall – (3)
Colorado Lounge – (2/3)
Suite 3 – (2/3)
Twinhall – (1/2)
Gold Room – (1)
237 – (1) (Possibly more)
Torrance Apartment – (1)
US Forest Service – (1)

So what can be gleaned from this?

Alex Colville is the only of the confirmed-to-be-repeating artists who doesn’t appear in the lobby. Perhaps SK knew people would recognize his work, and wanted to draw attention away from the lobby. And perhaps SK didn’t want to associate absolutely everything to the labyrinth, which, by avoiding the lobby, Colville is not. This could be a commentary on the greatness of Colville’s achievement as an artist. Perhaps SK saw him as one who had escaped life’s labyrinths.
While the lobby has the most connections to other areas, the 2nd Entrance only contains art that appears in other areas. In that way, the 2nd Entrance is utterly unique, though the Bloodfall Hall is the next closest.
Repetitious art seems heaviest in the three areas most associated to death and murder: the lobby, where Hallorann dies; the 2nd Entrance, where Wendy goes to find the dead snowcat and where Jack goes to kill Danny and die in the snow; and the bloodfall hall, where all the death of all time floods into view.
There’s something to be said for the art that have been the hardest to put names to. 237, ignoring the foyer Colville, is completely obscure to me as of this writing, with 11 paintings to go. There could be numerous connections running through 237 into other areas. But that doesn’t mean this area wasn’t still the most difficult to research. Each painting in the film represents hours and hours of time spent pouring through databases, or leafing through collections, but none more so than the ones left to get. That makes 237 feel special to me.
The areas that have been the hardest to ID are the areas closest connected to the idea of sex: 237, Suite 3, the boiler room, and the blowjob stairwell. I’m including the boiler room simply because it’s littered with nudes. The areas that’ve been easier to ID are most associated within the film to the idea of murder and death. So perhaps this was to create a sense of imbalance between sex and violence, creation and destruction. Or perhaps just a yin-yang.

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THE LABYRINTH/LOBBY CONNECTIONS

It occurred to me that the area with the most art objects that repeat in other areas is the lobby.

There’s group of seven paintings that repeat in the bloodfall hall.
There’s Trapper’s Camp, which appears in the blowjob well.
Everything that appears in the hotel’s 2nd entrance was earlier or later seen in the lobby.
What I call the Grady Twin paintings seem to move from the radio room behind reception into Suite 3 mid-movie.
There’s Hans Bierbrauer cartoon posters that also appear in the snowcat garage.
A yet unidentified painting moves from outside Ullman’s office to a wall that gives us a view of both the Colorado lounge and the hall outside room 237 (there’s a few other things that move between these areas).
A set of Dorothy Oxborough paintings connect us to the halls outside Suite 3, including where Danny sees the twins.
There’s two wall rugs that appear at the end, one of which that I call the “bloodrug” appears in the antechamber between the Gold Room ballroom and the Gold Room bathroom.
There’s even a little black bear doll (which I recently realized could be a golliwog) that appears behind Wendy’s shoulder in Boulder, and on the floor of the lobby while Jack’s throwing the ball around.
And while there’s no artwork connection between the lobby and games room (that I know of–there could be a tourism poster by the same artist, and there are a few unidentified landscape paintings there), they do feature the same furniture.

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That leaves the kitchen and the boiler room as the two places without any overt artistic connection (they do all have the same RESCUE BREATHING instruction poster, and there’s NO SMOKING signs painted on the walls everywhere, but, I don’t know, those feel more incidental to me).

So, I had the idea to look to see how long the gaps were between mirrorform references to the labyrinth, with the rule being that any gap under 60 seconds would be discounted, and that any reference was good so long as it was two degrees away from the labyrinth. So, for instance, you could say that the twinhall is connected because there’s a likely AY Jackson painting hanging near the slaughtered girls, and there’s an AY Jackson hanging in the lobby, around the corner from the model labyrinth. That sort of thing. Using that approach, there wasn’t a single gap that long, or even 20 seconds long. So if the point of all the repeating, connecting lobby art was to create the omnipresence of the labyrinth’s influence…mission accomplished.

If we get more specific and look for sequences that don’t include a scene in the lobby (with its model) or a scene by the outdoor labyrinth, the gaps becomes much more numerous, the longest gap is from 60:55 to the middle of the movie: 9 minutes and 50 seconds. But that hardly seems pointed; of course the entire movie doesn’t take place in the hedge maze. We don’t need a methodology to know that.

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PEOPLE WATCHING TV

There’s five instances of people watching TV.

I’m gonna discount Durkin’s old Merry Melodies cartoon because no one’s actually watching it. But it’s interesting maybe that Durkin’s TV is seen in the sequence right before Danny’s Roadrunner. Same with Carson City and whatever’s playing in the lobby as Wendy passes between radios, because nobody’s watching what’s on.

What is interesting about all those, though, is that they all have to do with telephones. The first and last feature a screen playing behind someone on a telephone, and the middle one occurs when Wendy is walking between radios. Hallorann’s telephone call to the US Forest Service occurs right after his shine from Danny, and for all we know, he left his news program running in the bedroom.

4:17-5:12 – Roadrunner
40:38-41:14 – Wendy’s News
51:20-52:40 – Summer of ‘42
69:50-71:40 – Hallorann’s News
99:30-101:15 – Roadrunner

First off, you’ve got a palindromic quality there. Cartoons bookend, then newscasts, then Summer of ’42. So there’s a symmetry between fantasy and reality, as well, though in all instances it seems like something educational is going on. Whether it’s Danny preparing to outsmart his father, or Danny and Wendy learning what their relationship should not be, or Wendy and Hallorann learning of oncoming storms.
The two Roadrunners are actually the same episode, Stop! Look! And Hasten!, heightening the symmetry.
There’s a wide array of watching behaviours throughout. Wendy ignores Roadrunner in favour of Catcher in the Rye, then seems utterly gripped by the news story, then seems like she’s strongly trying to gauge her interest in Summer of ’42, and then seems desperately interested in/oblivious of the final Roadrunner. Danny is first transfixed by Roadrunner, then freaked by Summer of ’42, then utterly miserable about the later rerun, as Tony. And Hallorann’s sleepy eyes newswatch shows the way some people use TV to lull themselves to rest.
And I just want to note how, when Danny flees Summer of ’42, he says he wants his fire engine. Well, during the Boulder doctor scene, we see that Danny owns an Emergency! lunchpail, so perhaps the R-rated film made him realize that he’d rather be watching one of his favourite shows, and that’s partly what drove him toward that security object. What’s more, though, when he comes upon zombie Jack in search of his security, he finds that what his father is doing (though this is never made clear to the audience) is staring at an off TV. I’ve always liked this detail for the way it underscores Jack’s increasing isolation, and his general hypocrisy about the “low arts”. It’s as if he knows he should want to watch screen media, but can’t go back on the position he’s staked out for himself, as the intellectual above such fluff.

So there’s also an interesting dynamic between the number of people watching each event, and who’s watching. The number is 2-1-2-1-2 (depending on how you define Tony), and the names go:

Danny/Tony, Wendy
Wendy
Danny, Wendy
Hallorann
Tony, Wendy

So, when it’s a single person it’s Danny’s two guardians. And when it’s more than one, it’s always some different combination of Danny, Tony, and Wendy. And if it seems like, “well, but the film only has four major characters,” consider this: a) Jack never watches TV, and TVs are only ever off in his presence, b) Jack quotes from TV possibly four times in the “Here’s Johnny” sequence, and speaks about TV in the sarcastic line, “See, it’s okay. He saw it on the television”, and c) Durkin, an extremely minor character, is almost only seen in the presence of a cartoon show. Ullman and Watson are also seen arguing next to an off TV. So, of the film’s speaking parts, only the ghosts and the US Forest Service aren’t seen with a TV at some point.

There’s also an interesting relationship between the TV moments in the mirrorform. First, there’s an overlap between Wendy’s news and the last Roadrunner. So that feels like a nice moment of geometric editing. The first Roadrunner plays over the entirety of Danny’s escape from the maze. As previously discussed, all the shots of ignored TVs are set during phone calls, and they mirror over moments of nervous disconnect (Durkin mirrors over Danny touching the handle of 237 and being locked out, the obscure lobby shot mirrors over Tony saying “Danny’s not here, Mrs. Torrance”, and Carson City mirrors over Jack scanning the exterior for Danny, with his axe in hand, not seeing him).