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I’m going to forego mentioning when I’m talking about the Twice-Folded Shining, since that seems to be all I’m interested in doing now. Hopefully there’ll be enough room in my storage to contain the remainder of the images we’ll be needing to add.
- As Dead Jack says, “It’s his mother…she, uh…interferes…” backwards Q Wendy is trying to smuggle Danny out the window. Also, the forwards Q action has put a mere 13 seconds between the disappearance of Summer of ’42 and the reappearance of that same magic, cordless television set which sits behind the mountain of Torrance luggage. So, Wendy doesn’t just interfere by getting Danny out the window, she interferes by trying to show him the greatest movies of all time. We might also note how Danny’s trike–the device through which he receives his lessons–appears directly beneath the magic cordless TV.
- Also, it’s hard to make out in this shot, but one layer of this image is the giant head of Danny, who’s talking to Tony after having just survived the Grady twin vision. Tony’s telling him that it’s just like pictures in a book, and that it isn’t real. The shape and size of Danny’s head is encompassing every other character in this moment. So, if we’re meant to be holding on to this idea of of Danny’s “very great talent” being connected to the idea of storytelling and filmmaking, perhaps there’s a subtle suggestion here about people like Kubrick and King who bring all these characters in all these moments to such vivid life.
- As for pictures in a book, there’s a copy of Philip Ardery’s Bomber Pilot here, which was probably a fairly horrifying read about the horrors of the second world war, and was about very real things. On the other hand, Jack was reading a Playgirl, which probably contained some pictures that weren’t so real, like what appears to be a cigarette ad on the back, suggesting a rather deadly unreality. This brings me back to the concept of Wendy’s interferer status. The cover of the Playgirl promises to explain why some parents want to sleep with their children, and Wendy was showing Danny an R-rated sex drama. So yeah. Jack’s not completely wrong about her. (Also, Grady just finished turning “wilful boy” into “naughty boy”, which goes well with all the sex imagery.)
- Also, since this is the tail end of Danny’s fourth lesson, this means that the Twice-Folded Shining connects the first appearance of Danny’s trike to the last appearance of him using it.
- When the word MURDER appears in backward Q, it’s written across Dead Grady’s lips right as he’s saying “a good deal more” in the line, “Perhaps they need a good talking to, if…you don’t mind my saying so…perhaps a good deal more…” Not the cleverest thing in this whole shebang, but worthy of mention. We know what Grady means, of course, but this is the first time he’s referenced the virtues of murdering one’s family. As the action switches to Tony/Danny writing REDRUM in a moment, he’ll be using the euphemism “corrected” when he means to say “murdered”. So when Wendy sees MURDER Grady’s euphemism is less guarded, and when the word is backwards, his euphemism relaxes into something more officious. Meanwhile, forward Q Jack is saying “I better collect my family first” which always struck me as a soft “correct”. In case you’re reading this in a Google translation, in English the word “correct” looks exactly like the word “collect”.
- Also, I wanted to point out how the mirror on the front of the Playgirl with the incest story is the exact same shape as the one Wendy is seeing MURDER in. So, this might be suggesting how Tony knows about why some parents sleep with their children, and he’s using this mirror to let Wendy know he knows.
- Also, again, it’s very difficult to see, but this image features Danny peaking through his fingers to see the empty hallway, after the twin ghosts have vanished, so it’s neat that MURDER would appear after they’d gone. Perhaps that’s a nod at the fact that the twins aren’t Grady’s actual daughters, just as this isn’t actual Charles Grady.
- Oh man, check this out: there’s two moments in the film where someone says “quick”, as in The Quick and the Dead. Wendy says it at 18:06 into the Twice-Folded Shining (“Run, quick!”), Tangerine Beach ends at 19:06, and Ullman says it at 20:06 (“Well, in view of all the ground we have to cover today I suggest we go have a quick look at your apartment and then get started straight away”). So just as we have Danny say “Dead end” at the end of the Twice-Fold, we have two characters say “quick” one minute away from the middle of the album. Also, 19:06 is one second away from 1907, the year the Overlook was built. Also, on an autobiographically narcissistic note: Ullman says “have a quick look at your apartment” from 20:18-20:20 in the film proper, and I’ve been working on this project from September of 2018 to May of 2020. In fact, in two days it’ll be the 40th anniversary of the film coming out. Spooooooky.
- “Faster than a bullet/Hot from a gun” – Grady telling the story of how one of his daughters tried to burn down the hotel. Also, we’ve got a toy tank here on top of the aforementioned book about war, Bomber Pilot, to go with this “hot” “gun” imagery.
- Also, how cool is that jaggedy stair effect on Jack’s face, eh? It’s like this was the real moment the hotel broke him down, when it gave him this person to feed all his feelings of rejection into. Grady’s daughters didn’t like the hotel at first–my family didn’t like it at first…and don’t like me! Just because I go out drinking with ghosts, and type the same phrase 1000s of times. But do I ever kill anybody? No. I’ll show them. By killing them!
- Also, I have this theory that the women about to nonsensically carry heavy luggage up the stairs toward room 237 are an expression of the real Grady girls, who Ullman describes as not being twins, but “about 8 and 10” years old. You can read the Real Gradys theory here.
- “Well, who is he?” As Jack is hypnotized by Grady’s murderous self-assurance, the singing has this hilarious reverence, as if Jack can’t believe he’s in the presence of someone so supreme he could hack up his own daughters, which is just what we’re seeing the backward Dead half. Note too how the Real Gradys are walking up the stairs back there, just above the twin corpses.
- Oh man, this is complex but well worth pointing out. There’s a painting beside the murdered Grady twins which I haven’t ID’d yet, but the only two artists whose style it resembles are AY Jackson and Ralph Wallace Burton. I haven’t ruled out Burton, but the series of paintings it most resembles is the series Jackson did on Port Radium, in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Now, there’s a copy of the biography of William Shakespeare on a bookshelf next to where Tony/Danny just wrote REDRUM, but it’s in Russian, which means the name Shakespeare on the spine is written in Cyrillic. The REDRUM Tony just wrote features a backwards D and R, which are proper letters in Cyrillic, the D still sounding like the English D, but the backwards R sounds like “yuh”. So a Russian might see this door and read it as “redyum” which in English sounds a lot like “radium”. Now, Jackson sounds like “Jack’s son”, so in the scene of the Grady girls dying, it’s like the hotel is implying that Jack’s son, Danny, will meet a similar fate, and, of course, Delbert Grady is here suggesting he do just that (incidentally, Delbert is considered the male equivalent of Alberta, the Canadian province directly south of the Northwest Territories). But remember Tony/Danny’s doing the REDRUM shuffle right next to a copy of Philip Ardery’s Bomber Pilot (Grady is played by Philip Stone, and Ullman wears a bomber jacket), which is about dropping bombs in world war two, some of which were radioactive, like radium. In fact, Port Radium is on Great Bear Lake, and minerals like uranium were mined there as part of the war effort.
- Also, note how the head of the axe rests on the writing desk in the below moment. Also, Grady’s axe is appearing here just moments from Jack slamming his into Suite 3. Where did he ever find that axe? Was it plucked out of the Twice-Folded Shining?
- Also, back to the lyric of “Who is he?” here: Q Wendy is saying “My…god!” in this moment, in amazement over the splendour of the lounge. But there’s a running theme about how murder connects us to the gods. So maybe Jack is seeing something godly in his new friend.
- “This dude is fast” On “fast” we get a split-second shot of Danny reacting to the bloody twins, which features the handlebars of his trike in the bottle corners. Also, I love all these references to the incredible speed of the racing driver while Tony/Danny shuffles around in super slow motion.
- “Oh, the top of his class” While Grady rhapsodizes about “correcting” his family, the lyrics sing about someone who’s at the top of their class. Jack was a school teacher, but (in the novel) lost his job for beating up a student named George Hatfield. Correcting someone, the way Grady says it, sounds like something an officious teacher would think toward a student. And in case you’re lucky enough to have come up in an era when teachers are not allowed to abuse the students, that wasn’t always the case. A teacher used to be able to perform “corrections” to a degree that would probably strike a youngster of today as absurd. Jack probably wished he could return to those days, because he’d still have his job.
- Also, this is the last time we’ll see the bloody twins, for the record.
- “Nobody else can pass” Ullman is just about to say, “Unh, this old place has had an illustrious past” but it would be cooler if the past/pass were better synced. More significantly, in the Pillars of Hercules context, Danny encountering the twins has a very “ne plus ultra” subtext to it, a Latin phrase that means “nothing further beyond”, and sure enough, we never see Danny passing the spot where he sees the twins. The only time he sort of does this is by entering room 237, since he got a flash of them by touching it. But that’s the danger of going “further beyond”, something Danny will ultimately survive.
- Actually, by the way, after the singing ends we get our last visual of Delbert Grady in the Twice-Folded Shining.
- One really cool thing is how, as backwards Dead Danny trikes away from the Grady twins, the paintings I call the Grady Twin paintings are passing by Forward Dead Wendy’s head, as she plots her (failed) escape mission. So, right as Danny starts to turn away from the twins, they’re overlapping with the one painting, which is right behind Wendy’s head there, and right as they’re about to vanish off the screen they overlap with the other painting for a split second. 5 seconds later, the shot cuts to Danny in the games room, with the twins probably behind him, but definitely with two sets of Grady Twin paintings flying around in both the Quick and the Dead halves. Actually, these are the first and last scenes that those paintings appear in (from their position in Suite 3–they do appear elsewhere in the hotel) so it’s kind of amazing that they would float atop each other, and at this crucial moment where we’re about to go from Danny’s first to his last physical encounter with the twins. Twins are flyin’ all over the place!
- “People stare” On this line we’ve got both sets of Grady Twin Paintings on screen at the same time, but they’re hard to see, so I square them up–red for the snow and horse painting and blue for the Arnegger piece on the Austrian Kaiser mountains. But the reason they’re in opposite order on opposite sides of the Twice-Folded Shining is because the blue one over a REDRUMing Tony/Danny is actually in the makeup mirror, while the ones beside escape plan Wendy are being seen straight on. But yeah, not only do “people stare” and not only is he “aware”, but those eyes are like mirror eyes, like a Cheshire cat’s eyes, rolling and inverting.
- And just for fun I’ll point out that Q Danny’s throwing darts at a bull’s-eye.
- “Doesn’t care about what she wears, no” We’ve covered the Alice in Wonderland bit, but radio room Wendy is wearing a sort of gaudy yellow sweater covered in indigenous motifs. Wendy’s seen appropriating indigenous culture a few times, but maybe Danny’s unperturbed by this. Cuz he’s a superstar?
- I should point out that both Wendy’s here are trying to plot some kind of escape from the hotel, and both are on the Dead side of the film. Two dead Wendys. And while I think the twins are more about Jack, Wendy has a certain twinness about herself as well, and this moment expresses that nicely.
- Also, one cool thing the Twice-Fold is doing here is it’s putting the minotaur/killer from the SKI MONARCH poster inside radio Wendy’s head. It won’t be long now before forward Dead Jack is going to come kill this radio. Also, this MONARCH poster is overlapping with the painting/knitting of butterflies that have appeared in Suite 3.
- Also, the poster for Steamboat Springs is advertising for a place in Routt county, and the map of Colorado behind Wendy has the country of Routt outlined with some sort of fine nearly invisible tracery. Monarch Mountain is in Chaffee county, which is right next to the other county outlined on the map, Pitkin. If there’s a more direct reference to Pitkin in the games room, I haven’t found it yet. And just so you know, Routt derives from an old word for “red”, so this happening over all the REDRUMing is pretty apt.
- “Ain’t got no monkey on his back” I’ve long thought (as part of my Snow White analysis) that the two US forest Service rangers were meant to represent the two sides of Jack’s personality, his bashful side (which we see during the tour and interview) and his grumpy side (which we see a lot). But they’re working men, with solid careers, so they evoke Wendy’s longing for the part of Jack that she really loves, and wants to succeed in life (if only because she’s married to him, and afraid to leave). But yeah, this line about him having no monkey on his back perfectly underscores this as the “bashful” ranger appears for the first time in the Dead side. And the fact that he appears with the twins inside him is icing on the cake.
- Oh, and speaking of Chaffee county, there is such a thing as an M24 Chaffee, a light tank that strongly resembles the toy tank sitting on top of Bomber Pilot, which just so happens to be directly beneath the MONARCH poster in this moment. The American flag in the Forest Service is drawing a straight line between them.
- “One seventy five/And he’s still alive” I’m not sure the significance of the way the number from the song would play into the number I’m about to reveal in the movie, but I thought it was worth noting how forward Dead Tony says nine REDRUMs total, and he completes his ninth at the exact same moment as backward Q Tony is saying his ninth REDRUM (while feeling the sharpness of a blade, no less). The Grady girls were murdered 9 years ago, and are not still alive, so I’m guessing that’s the significance of that. As games room Q Danny is seeing the twins leave for the last time in the Twice-Folded Shining, this was a good time for nine REDRUMs to sync up.
- Also, just in case I’m right about Port Radium and Great Bear Lake (and after this you might be more shocked if I’m not), there’s two unidentified paintings above Tony/Danny’s bed here, one of a bear dancing near a sitting bear, and one of a snowy winter scene. The closest thing I’ve found yet to that other piece is of two men ice fishing on a frozen lake. Bear-lake. A fitting combo to see as our twins depart for good.
- A second after the last lyric in the song (and the last on the album), “Watch him go”, Tony speaks directly to Wendy for the first time, sans Danny, when he tells her that “Danny’s not here, Mrs. Torrance.” He’ll follow this up with “Danny can’t wake up, Mrs. Torrance.” And “Danny’s gone away, Mrs. Torrance.” What’s neat, too, about this, is how Bill Watson is curiously absent from this part of the tour. This would be another chip in the pile favouring Watson as a source of good, with his Bugs Bunny-style garb. Since Danny is also good, and has also gone away.
- Actually, hey, that bear and lake painting combo appears between Tony and Wendy in this moment (inside the head of the bashful ranger, curiously–he’s just asking “How you folks getting on up there? Over.”), while backward Dead Tony is still chanting his last few REDRUMs. Wendy is instructing Danny to wake up, right now, and that he’s just having a bad dream, and that’s all it is. Again, how perfectly does that go with what Tony tells Danny during the other (potential) Great Bear Lake scene? It’s just like pictures in a book, Danny. Only this time the trauma is quite serious.
- Actually, the last time we saw Danny in a bed, he had a pretty great bear pillow behind his head. And wasn’t it against that very image that Hallorann took that axe to the chest? And isn’t the painting that’s right next to Hallorann when he gets the chop Stormy Weather, Georgian Bay? And isn’t Georgian Bay part of lake Huron?
- Here’s a pretty amazing one: as Ullman says, “I believe they actually had to repel a few Indian attacks as they were building it” tour Jack’s head overlays with the Calumet can, with its chieftain logo (which has just appeared thanks to the vanishment of Hallorann’s snowcat rescue mission, which just ended). But this all also overlaps with Wendy’s yellow indigenous-motif yellow sweater. Also, right over Ullman’s head are the photos in the radio room that resemble the opening and closing shots of the film. And those mountains were largely named after indigenous people. But these images are specifically of Mt. Hood by the look of it, which means it was formerly known as Wy’east, and thought to be the physical transformation of a Multnomah warrior. Again, not that the Multnomah word “east” meant the same as the English “east”, but this album is called East Wind.
- So we’ve arrived again at that weird musical phase that might be the continuation of Superstar, and might be the start of Loxycycle. I think I prefer to think of it as neither and both, if you know what I mean. Especially given how we’ve already seen the way it almost perfectly contains Jack’s pantry talk with Grady. And while the way the opening drums pair with the transition to the Gold Room leaves something to be desired, the timing with Jack entering Ullman’s office to kill the radio couldn’t be more smooth. There’s an intro drum roll which pairs perfectly with the appearance of Jack typing in the lounge on Saturday morning, while the other Dead Jack flips on the lights in Susie’s office, and on the final cymbal crash, the shot cuts to him strolling into Ullman’s to do some killin’. How amazing, then that this would overlay with Ullman introducing the snowcat, Jack’s other murder target?
- Also, at the very first moment of this, there’s a roaring blaze seen overlaying with the snowcat’s hood. As the shot continues to move, the fire shifts over, to overlay with a giant wood pile beside the snowcat, which is just a cool visual image, I guess.
- Saturday is named for Saturn, who, among many things, was the god of wealth and harvest. So it seems perfectly apt that this name would appear along with the Gold Room and the storeroom. Not to mention that the Gold Room sign is wedged between two boxes of Golden Rey. But also, it’s overlaying with the middle box of “SLICED PEACHES” and forward Q Wendy is here saying, “Well, he sure did a wonderful job. Pink and gold are my favourite colours.” Forward Q Jack is about to get very bashful as Wendy does a little dance in the Gold Room, so maybe pink is “bashful” and gold is “grumpy”, since storeroom Jack is very that.
- Actually, another cool thing about Saturn is that he’s based off of the Greek god Cronos, who famously killed his father to be the granddaddy god, siring Zeus, who eventually grew up and took him down. So Greek mythology had this interesting thing going on where rulership, while patrilineal, was still murderous along father and son lines.
- THURSDAY Jack crashes onto the scene with a splash in the music, dominating this Gold Room path, and for a fun few moments we the most Jack that I think we ever get in the Twice-Folded Shining. It’s almost like the goldness of this space summoned them all together, radiokiller Jack, storeroom Jack, tour Jack, and crazyballs THURSDAY Jack. Actually, all three grumpy Jack’s are being seen on a Thursday. Tour Jack is on a Tuesday (October 30th, 1979).
- And doesn’t the Gold Room path ceiling give giant face Jack a sort of eagle face, with that sharp triangle carving down to his nose? Could that be another Prometheus reference? If so…
- …it would go nicely with the fact that we just left that one raging fire 9 seconds ago, and in this shot, as it zooms out, we’ll see that THURSDAY Jack has another one right behind him. This fire will rage on till it’s lighting Ullman’s back on fire, while Hallorann approaching for the first time. Jack is right here saying “We don’t drink.” Remember, Prometheus gets his liver pecked out by an eagle everyday. And your liver is what drinking damages the most. And yeah, forward Dead Jack is ripping the guts out of the radio, making the eagle statuette behind him on Ullman’s window sill very proud, I’m sure.
- The next and final of the three times fire appears in the film is 84 seconds after this one vanishes, hovering across the dead meat in Dick’s meat locker (see below) right beneath a Golden Rey box marked with the number 237.
- But I was getting ahead of myself to make a point there, let’s get back to the blow-by-blow.
- Going back to eagle face Jack, storeroom Jack is saying “There’s nothing I look forward to with greater pleasure, Mr. Grady” in reference to slaughtering Wendy and Danny. Meanwhile, Dead Jack is seeming to relish this opportunity to rip the guts from the radio. And Q Jack is seconds away from encountering his actual murder victim.
- Hallorann first appears in the distance here, and the fire never touches him, as both images float through the screen. In fact, none of the three fires ever touch Dick.
- Whoa, check out the horns of light growing out of storeroom Jack’s forehead here.
- Ullman’s eagle statuette seems to be perched on his shoulder as he announces that the room can seat “up to 300 people very comfortably”. This reminds of the ghost ball, of course, which goes nicely with the way storeroom Jack’s talking with the man he met there, and, again, Hallorann has just appeared.
- The closest thing to Jack ripping out a plug that overlays with Hallorann’s arrival is in this moment, where the tendrils of the last plug overlay with Dick’s head and torso, which is pretty sweet. Also, note how Dick is walking up through the Calumet cans. Also, note how Watson is just about to cross in front of Dick, as if his heart’s being ripped out too.
- There’s a cool bit where Dick Hallorann’s introducing himself to the grumpy ranger for the last time while Ullman is introducing him for the first time. But the music kicks up into this new realm of awesome on the shot of the ranger appearing, which coincides with the Overlook snowcat appearing behind Wendy and Danny capering in the snow. Meanwhile, backward Q Grady is accusing Jack’s “heart” of not being “in this”. And of course, we’re about to see Wendy holding the snowcat’s cut-out heart in about a minute.
- It might also be worth observing how the American flag is now hanging between Dick and the Calumet cans.
- Also, the ranger is saying how maybe the Torrances are all somewhere where they can’t hear the radio, and all the sequences here feature characters playing outside, or locked in pantries, or taking the Gold Room tour, and about to head even further into the belly of the beast. Kind of a minor point.
- The Forest Service flag disappears the second Danny interrupts the scene, at which point his head will float in place with the chieftain design with its war bonnet for a moment. This is also happening a second after the THURSDAY placard disappears from view, meaning there’s our first close-up shot of Jack typing All Work papers happening buried in this image.
- This is also our last shot of Hallorann’s Car and Driver magazine, and it’s accompanying the shot of Danny blowing in from the east side of the room (if my understanding of the hotel’s layout is right, and I think it is).
- Right as the 8am placard appears Ullman has just finished saying, “Dick, if you’re ready to do it now, I think it’d be good idea if you could show Mrs. Torrance the kitchen while I continue on with Jack.” The 8am section of the film will contain all of Wendy’s business boxing Jack away. But also this “if you’re ready to do it now” goes well with the decision forward Dead Dick just made to hop a flight for Denver. Dick doesn’t realize that Ullman mostly just wants him to come get murdered.
- Also, backward Dead Jack just finished telling Wendy to “start right now, and get the fuck outta here”, which she’s doing. Earlier in that scene she was saying that she’d come back with a couple sandwiches to read whatever Jack had written, meaning she’d show herself to the kitchen, which might be where she’ll head now that she’s banished anyway. In fact, the next scene with her that follows from her scene interrupting Jack’s writing will be the one of her making the fruit cocktail while reading the news. So actually, every scene of Wendy in the kitchen follows from Ullman’s direction here in the Twice-Folded Shining (all of which only take 6:37 to happen out of 38:43-worth of music, making that an almost even 6th of the film). In fact, the music that started over Dick about to receive Danny’s shine in Florida will end just as Wendy’s clubbed Jack down the stairs in the lounge, so none of her kitchen scenes will ever repeat.
- But this also means that within 73 seconds (23:50-24:40-25:03) we’ve had the placards for SATURDAY, THURSDAY and 8am, so this shot of pantry Jack grabbing his head as if reacting to the chaos of time changes feels apt.
- I’d often thought of this FIRE EXIT MUST BE KEPT CLEAR sign as a nudge at the fact that Kubrick was going to change King’s ending, in which the hotel explodes in flame. This is hardly confirmation of that, but I like how it overlays with Hallorann’s massive head, not only because Hallorann lives in the book, but because the Twice-Folded Shining can be viewed in reverse direction, which would make the middle of the movie, where we get our other giant close-up of Hallorann’s face, a sort of middle-end. The FIRE EXIT was KEPT CLEAR in exchange for something much less emotionally satisfying, but something vastly more intellectually satisfying. To quote Stephen King’s review of the film, it’s the difference between hot and cold. (Actually, at the risk of sounding like the complete obsessive I am now, after Ullman says he wants to take Wendy to the boiler room, he and Jack and Wendy and Watson head down a hall that would take them straight toward this FIRE EXIT sign. So there’s a joining of the boiler room (which was King’s ending), and these words.)
- On a more concrete level: Jack is here telling Wendy to get the fuck out while storeroom Jack is saying “I’ll deal with that situation as soon as I get outta here.” Meanwhile, Dick is asking Wendy is she’s “a Winnie or a Freddie”. Wendy will get stuck in the Suite 3 window just like one of her in-film avatars, Winnie-the-Pooh, when he gets stuck in rabbit’s hole. Hallorann, who is frequently compared to rabbits, is the one who gets her unstuck, just as rabbit gets Pooh unstuck, and here we see the genesis of Hallorann’s physical rescue mission. Rabbit is coming to pop Pooh out, just as Grady has come to pop Jack out. And remember, Grady pops Jack out in the Twice-Folded Shining between the start of the introduction of the hotel snowcat, and the end of the shot of Dick driving Durkin’s snowcat up Mt. Hood. And there’s an issue of Businessweek beside Dick (and Rabbit wrote Bizy Backson on his door once, I think, which made the others think this was a person’s name), and I haven’t ID’d the exact issue, but many of the available covers online from the era were talking about “bulls” and “bears”, in the economics sense.
- Also, there’s just a really cool music part that kicks into gear as the kitchen tour starts, which coincides with Dick’s flight really sweetly.
- The music shifts away from its earlier intensity just as backward Q Jack is passing the pantry shelves back to his sleeping space.
- Also, Wendy just said her “leave a trail of breadcrumbs” line, and as Hallorann replies, storeroom Jack is moving into place to show all his cracker crumbs. So the shift in music draws our attention to the fact that these things don’t overlap, probably because Jack doesn’t know how to leave breadcrumb trails. As I discuss in the Lessons and Escapes section, Jack has four scenes that seem to reflect Danny’s lessons, and he’s inert in all of them, this being the first of those (the last in the Twice-Folded sense). But what’s even cooler is how what he’s ranting about specifically in the backwards Dead half is how when Wendy interrupts him, she’s breaking his concentration, and that it will then take time to get back to where he was, uselessly ripping up a page as he does so. And demonstrating that he doesn’t have the cognitive capacity to do what Danny’s already done three times with his lessons at this point (in the film proper).
- Also, right as Jack’s rant winds down (not pictured here), forward Dead Jack is seen typing his All Work papers for the last time. At that point, forward Q Hallorann is saying how they “could eat up here a whole year and never have the same menu twice”. I like how Hallorann’s praise of the fresh and exciting clashes with Jack typing the same thing over and over. Backward Dead Wendy at that point is saying how maybe he’ll let her read something when she comes back with sandwiches, foreshadowing her discovery of the All Work papers which is actually how one quarter of The Rum and the Red ends, with her last moment of discovering the All Work papers in reverse.
- If you’ve read the section on disappearances, you’ll remember that a chair and table disappear behind backward Dead Jack at the same moment as there’s Durkin’s snowcat parked outside his garage in the same spot in the forward Dead action. Note here how forward Q Hallorann is hovering over the snowcat, as if grabbing it while sealing up the meat locker. And note how Durkin’s sign fits almost perfectly inside the doorframe beneath the EXIT sign. So the FIRE EXIT is KEPT CLEAR, but the DURKIN EXIT is open for business.
- Also, I like how Jack is saying “What do you want me to do about it?” in reference to Wendy’s news about a coming storm, while forward Q Wendy is about to ask Dick how he knew Danny’s name was Doc (and while a storm rages upon Larry Durkin). Dick Doc Durk. What do what me to do about it?
- Also, according to the good folks at the Internet Movie Car database, the car Durkin’s servicing is a Matador (which overlays Jack’s typewriter, and appears just as pantry Jack is falling asleep), while the one driving up inside Wendy is a Firebird. And remember, the meat locker was where the last shot of the lounge’s raging fire scrolled by, a moment ago.
- Also, there’s a shift back to sweetness in the music just as Jack falls asleep.
- The final triumphant movement from this Superstar extension/Loxycycle intro starts the moment backwards Dead Wendy kisses Jack in his chair, and when 4pm flashes on the screen. This will lead into that Wendy walking back away from Jack into the world where her husband isn’t a complete asshole, and into the moment where backward Q Wendy is holding the cut-out heart of the snowcat, a symbol of Dick’s sacrifice for her and her son, so this triumphant music is fairly appropriate here, really.
- Also, Wendy is kissing Jack while standing on what might be another, unidentified album jacket, for a black female singer who most closely resembles Irene Reid, in my searches. If it is her, that might go nicely with Wendy asking to “read” (sounds exactly like “Reid” in English) Jack’s All Work papers.
- As the recognizable part of Loxycycle starts, there’s a cool drum beat that kicks in as we cut to Jack furiously typing away. Part of why I love this is because in the documentary, as this track ends at 72:58, it cuts to a driver saying how the reason he loves his life is because he’s doing what every man on earth dreams of doing, he thinks: turning his passion into his business. And here, we’re getting our first shot of Jack really doing that, having shaken off his writer’s block.
- Also, Dick and Durkin are having similar moments: forward Q Dick showing off his luscious pantry, and Durkin was just gleefully inquiring about what the weather was like down in Florida from his work phone. Also, remembering that Danny is probably dreaming of becoming a paramedic, Durkin has a copy of something called Sirens & Lights which seems to be some sort of periodical on emergency services.
- Meanwhile, Kubrick’s passion was clearly screen media, and he chose to feature this cartoon behind Durkin of To Itch His Own, wherein a Herculean flea from a flea circus (the Mighty Angelo) goes to live on a nice friendly dog who happens to resemble the Perky Pooch dog-shaped air fresheners in the poster that’s overlaying with Wendy and Danny here. The dog in the cartoon is tormented by a bulldog named Butcher, who is tormented in turn by the invisibly small Angelo. This is obviously similar to the role Tony plays in helping them survive Jack’s butcherian efforts, and in just a moment, Dick will take Wendy aside revealing a large cache of Tony the Tiger cereal boxes.
- But here’s the coolest thing that this weird musical orphan/bridge between Superstar and Loxycycle does: it starts at the exact moment that the EYE SCREAM note vanishes off screen in the backward Dead half, and it ends as Hallorann opens the door to the room where he’ll say, “How’d you like some ice cream/eye scream, doc?” To date, this is the strongest connection that I’ve found between these moments beyond the obvious sonic similarity. Actually, there’s a secondary connection there, since both those locales feature an Oskar political cartoon.
- Actually, speaking of the Oskar cartoons, there’s three, and while two remain unidentified, the one appearing in this moment features a German phrase which first translated into “Why aren’t you shining, Gerhardt?” (referring to how he’s stumbling in late at night in the dark) to which the drunken Gerhardt replies, “Because I’m trying to save electricity!” And that’s a neat way of understanding all four layers here. Backward Dead Jack can’t tell that he’s typing the same phrase thousands of times because he’s not able to shine. The Dick/Durkin conversation speaks to how Dick is probably close enough to the Overlook now to be shining Danny to see how the boy’s doing (as he does in the novel). Forward Dead Wendy is seeing a destroyed electronic device. And of course Dick and Danny are about to shine, though his overlaying with the dead snowcat doesn’t bode well.
- I’ve analyzed this eye scream sequence to death already in other writings, but since it is all about shining, what’s cool about this moment visually in the Twice-Fold is how all the lights from the lounge and Stapleton airport are slowly swooshing through the heads and bodies of our two heroes. Check how the natural and electric lights at Stapleton even seem to make light arrows in both their heads.
- The other cool thing is: right when Dick says “eye scream”, the shot cuts from Jack typing to 3rd lesson Danny triking backwards to room 237. Cuz Jack don’t get no friggin’ eye scream. Actually, airport Dick’s dialogue at this point is about how there’s a very serious problem with the people who are taking care of the place, and that they turned out to be completely unreliable assholes. He then says that Ullman phoned him, and told him to go see if they needed to be replaced. This is 13 seconds from the scene moving back outside the pantry to where Ullman will stroll up for his last scene in the movie.
- There’s a shift to a more sombre, chilled out tone in the moment that trapped Jack reappears, which happens in perfect tandem with Danny getting his final (in the Twice-Fold) flash of the Grady twins from touching room 237, and Hallorann leading the gang out into the hall, and rescue Hallorann’s headlights appearing on the snowy road. So there’s two “no shall not pass” images combining with two “but Hallorann can pass” images.
- The whole time Hallorann’s talking about ice cream with the Torrances, his Dad half is hearing a radio broadcast from Hal and Charlie. These were real broadcasters, but I like how Hal echoes the great screaming eye of HAL 9000, and Charlie echoes Charles Grady, who had his own Herculean eye scream.
- When Dick privately asks Danny what kind of ice cream he likes and Danny says chocolate, Dead Dick is driving past the smashed red Beetle. Meanwhile, backward Dead Jack is gloating about how Wendy’s not going anywhere, and Wendy’s two vehicles are a red snowcat and a yellow Beetle, and here’s a smashed red Beetle. Also, remembering the Abbey Road Tour, which is just about to end for good, that’s another kind of Beatle the movie’s about to smash. …cuz you gotta smash the Beatles!
- Q Danny and Dead Tony are giving two very hard stonewalls in tandem here, and both have a chocolate substance that the one has polished off while the other has only drunk half by the look of it. Also, Q Danny has that Tony the tiger in his head. On a similar note, Dead Jack is crying out not to be left in the pantry in mock sorrow, while triking Danny is going to notice room 237 in a second, which will seem to call out to him, so there’s a whole lot of mental games of suppression and extraction going on here, which is cool.
- Also I guess I should give a shout out to Danny triking on his tricycle during Loxycycle. The rev up that happens in the music happens on the exact moment that the triking scene switches to Wendy in the kitchen hearing about the missing Aspen woman. And she’s hearing it on a TV that is the exact same TV that faded away in Durkin’s garage when this mellower phase of Loxycycle began. That’s another Sewing Cards moment, that is.
- And fun fact, the newscaster here was one of the first black newscasters in American herstory, Bertha Lynn, who happens to be the only person who appeared in both the film and TV versions.
- Also, this is the moment Hallorann first says “shining” so this daisy chain of tiny TVs and eye screams is being connected to shining itself. Not that I haven’t written about this several times already, but I think Kubrick sees screen media as a uniquely sophisticated form of shining. In the sense that creative arts are uniquely about shining. For the way they put images in your head that weren’t there before, and for the way they travel across time and space to send messages.
- Also, fruit salad Wendy is overlaying with the baseball bat that Roadrunner Wendy is about to pick up, which happens to be next to a Winnie-the-Pooh doll and the fire engine, with its connection to Emergency! Point being: whole lot of screen media references flying around during this shining talk.
- As Danny reacts to Dick’s story about how he and his grandma were able to have entire shine conversations and how he used to think it was “just the two of” them who could do it, Dead Tony is saying his last line of dialogue to Wendy, seemingly frustrated at their inability to hold such impressive conversations. Pantry room Jack is becoming equally frustrated with his inability to trick Wendy into letting him out. The handle of the door ends up looking like some kind of inoperable stick shift against this revving up music.
- Wendy is also grabbing the knife that will slash Jack at the same moment as the other Wendy is going for the bat that will club Jack.
- As Dick finally gets Danny to open up, there’s this box from a Portland, Oregon popcorn supply company called Poppers, which was totally obscured behind Danny when Dick was asking him if he’s like ice cream. Here, it’s right above Danny’s ice cream bowl while Jack stumbles into the Kellogg’s Rice Krispies.
- Also, Danny opening up to Dick happens in time with the first shot of Wendy showing Danny the maze, which creates this effect of both his head and Hallorann’s head looking much more open thanks to the sky overlay.
- The rapid, exciting music carries on beautifully all the way through the aerial lift off created by the backwards action here, drawing to a close as sane tennis ball Jack finishes his stroll away from the model labyrinth. But what I love about this image is how it suggests the reality of what Jack’s thinking here. She just clubbed him atop a staircase that happens to perfectly resemble the labyrinth from above (see below). We don’t know exactly where Jack sat down and died, but it’s in one of these corridors, so he might be overlaying with the actual location of his death. So, pantry Jack might be thinking, “Wait, if you lock me away…I’ll die!” Ironic, since she’s actually cutting herself off from the majority of the sustenance. Meanwhile, forward Dead Wendy is entering the lounge to do the clubbing, and is right here looking up at the spot where she’ll do the clubbing, as she walks backwards for a few seconds. Danny will walk backwards to trap Jack in the maze heart. And in the ice cream world, Danny is confirming to Hallorann that Tony is the one who “tells him” things. And possibly the most important thing he tells Danny is REDRUM, a mirror phrase, to help Danny think in terms of backwards and forwards. A phrase he’ll be seeing for the last time in just a few minutes.
- At the top of our lift-off Danny’s saying how it’s like Tony shows him things, but when he wakes up, he can’t remember everything. Pantry Jack is experiencing a similar moment of waking and not grasping the significance of the way he’s being dragged, or why he’s being dragged. Also, Wendy’s showing him the labyrinth, and he will remember these lessons.
- As Dick asks if Danny’s mom and dad know about Tony, Danny confirms, while sane Jack seems to be studying the maze. But when he asks if they know that Tony tells him things, Danny says, “No, Tony told me never to tell them.” Which pairs with Jack walking away from the labyrinth. So I’ve long since imagined that Kubrick sees the labyrinth as being an apt metaphor for the natural sciences, for its connection to Danny’s lessons and escapes, but it’s interesting to think of the labyrinth as being an abstraction of Tony’s future-sight, which, again, is something Jack can’t do. The model he’s studying doesn’t have the same design as the real labyrinth. So, while Wendy shows Danny the labyrinth, Jack is being shown a false labyrinth by the hotel. The hotel is a sorry excuse for a Tony. But maybe too, Tony doesn’t want to do anything that’ll screw up Danny’s chances for survival, and that means keeping his innermost feelings and thoughts safe and secure, even from those who would purport to love him the most. Danny got an early lesson in how untrue that can be. His first lesson. But when Danny’s saying, “Tony told me never to tell them”, this leads to backward Dead Jack strolling past the baseball bat in the lobby that the Wendy opposite him is going to crack him with, so if Tony had told Danny to give up his every insight, maybe things don’t go just as they should in order for everything to work out OK.
- Also doesn’t Wendy wrenching at the pantry door handle (left image) look like she’s singing the bat on Jack?
- And since Loxycycle probably starts with Hallorann asking if Danny wants some “eye scream”, it’s neat that it ends with him saying, “Now think real hard, Doc. Think!”
Click here to continue on to Round 2: Track Six: Nürburgring
MAIN PAGE ⎔ SECTION PAGE ⎔ SITE MAP ⎔ GLOSSARY
OTHER MAIN PAGES FOR SHINING ANALYSIS
THE MIRRORFORM ⎔ THE BEATLES ⎔ THE RUM AND THE RED
BACKGROUND ART ⎔ OVERLOOK PHOTOGRAPHS ⎔ GOLDEN SPIRALS
PHI GRIDS ⎔ PATTERNS ⎔ VIOLENCE AND INDIGENA ⎔ ABSURDITIES
THE STORY ROOM ⎔ ANIMAL SYMBOLS ⎔ THE ANNOTATED SHINING
EYE SCREAM 