Actors don't need to suffer for art | Stanley Kubrick vs David Lynch
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Join me, Maggie Mae Fish, as I list the top 100 coolest facts about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and also David Lynch and Lost Highway and a bunch of other movies please just enjoy this video and click like and subscribe and whatever other buttons happen to be on your screeeeeeeen!!!
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Broey Deschanel's video on Method Acting: • The Problem of Method ...
Lolita Podcast - on Stanley Kubrick's Lolita: www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-l...
"No Ghosts in the Shining" CZcams video: • The Shining - There ar...
"Analyzing Evil: Jack Torrance and The Overlook Hotel from The Shining" CZcams video: • Analyzing Evil: Jack T...
Crosshairs image creativecommons.org/licenses/... By Delapouite, Lorc and Sbed. - Krátké a kreslené filmy
Sir, this is a film set. Remember: don't sympathise with Kubrick, and save Martha.
Did Kubrick ask for sympathy? That's weird, why would he... That's weird. People who'd do that know they're doing something wrong.
Is this a reference to what ?
@@videodromeTVversion Lol.
Was is worth it ?
Yeah...
@@ouissam2502 Thank you, I'll be here all week- try the veal.
"Kubrick trusts Jack to play evil without being evil but he didn't trust Duvall to play terrified without being terrified." This is such a brilliant sentence and I salute you for it!
Exactly. I hate that he did all that. He seems like a monster to me. Makes me uncomfortable watching his movies now...
I keep hearing this, but I don't think I've ever seen a citation or evidence that getting a better performance was the reason he acted like a dick. Not that I know that there isn't evidence.
@@debrachambers1304 That's a TERRIFYING thought.
==Original comment deleted because if you don't watch the full video before commenting on it you might write a couple paragraphs about how you disagree with the point being made, only to watch the rest of the video and realize not only did you unnecessarily reiterate some shit Malcolm MacDowell is quoted saying in the video, but you've actually agreed with the point being made the entire time and your impatient ass just couldn't wait for them to get to that point, this message left in place of original comment as a reminder to others not to do what I just did==
Or play abused without being abused.
4:50
One of my favourite jokes regarding this ludicrous theory is "Kubrick DID fake the moon landing, but he was such a perfectionist that he insisted they film on the actual moon."
THIS
I saw that in Kyle Kallgren's video. I especially like the joke of "One step for (a) man" flub and that Kubrick would have scolded Armstrong and had him do it over.
he filmed a vietnam film just outside london
Corridor Crew actually made a video where they analysed the moon landing footage and concluded that it would have required more effort to fake that footage than to actually fly to the moon.
That's funny.
I think it was more powerful for Wendy to leave her abusive husband to die alone, angry and confused in the cold than to "beat" him in the traditional way. Beating him was never the answer, leaving him always was. At least that is my read of the ending.
I agree. In the book Jack locks himself in the faulty boiler room so he can stop the hotel from controlling him and save his family. In the movie Jack just freezes to death, alone.
King's book is warmer in tone since its based on his addiction to drinking, while Kubrick's is more distant and detached especially in regards to Jack. In the book Jack means well but the hotel controls him, whereas in the movie Jack was an abuser even before the hotel.
I like that 👍
That’s how I saw it too.
@@drinfernodds I like to think the whole movie is a diss to King, Kubrick obliterated his character
Trump 2024
I'm baffled by how anyone can think that the family was 'idyllic' before they lived at the hotel. Like, the beginning of the movie makes explicit that Jack was always abusive??
They're talking about the book. The movie was very different from the book. In the book it's clear that Jack is being possessed by the ghosts of the hotel, who are exploiting his alcoholism to get to him. In the movie, Jack seems twisted from the beginning.
@@44excalibur Eh. Somewhat. But in the book, Jack was also abusive towards Danny. Because he also dislocated his shoulder when Danny messed up his typed play manuscript. It was also made explicit how Jack's childhood influenced his treatment towards Wendy and Danny. I agree that the book was very different from the movie, but mostly it was because King saw a lot of himself and his own parental anxieties in Jack Torrence (and therefore wrote a more favorable account of Jack's descent into madness), while Kubrick shone Jack's character in bas-relief. I think that's also why King hated the film; he said that Kubrick only made a movie to "hurt people," I think what he really meant was "Kubrick made a film to hurt me."
Edit: also this is not to say I think Kubrick was an angelic genius and had no faults, I just think he created a better story (thematically) with King's original material.
yeah, in the movie jack dislocated danny’s arm before they ever got to the hotel.
@@ripwednesdayadamsthat also happened in the book
Idyllic ment very different thing in 1979, that it means today.
People tough that even abusive alcoholic can chance, if they can drop the drink....
It's really crazy if you think about how much our society and mindset has changed.
Also 80 seem much closer than fifties seemed in eighties. the liberation of individual, and society's perspective for difference was much more radical change than change from 80 to 2020 imo.
One of my favorite stories of David Lynch being collaborative with his actors is how Nadine was supposed to be a smaller character in Twin Peaks, but in her first scene with the curtains Wendy Robie made Lynch laugh so hard he saw more potential in her. A few years ago in a interview she talked about how he makes his actors feel free to go as far as they want because he would ground them if needed.
Or how about the creation of BOB, due to one of the set guy's reflection showing up accidentally in a shot. Another director might have scrapped the take. Lynch made a whole new villain.
@@SirThinks2Much who was TERRIFYING
@@moxxibekk I KNOW RIGHT
And Wendy Robie is so goddamn funny, dude. Y’ever seen The People Under the Stairs? That’s a movie that also stars Robie and Everett McGill as the villains, and they’re incredible in it.
Hell, everybody is. That movie might just be incredible.
Grounding them is a bit bit too far, imo. Lunch detention would be enough for most actors that get out of hand. They're very social creatures, after all... you don't want to break their spirits.
Lynch had a formative experience as a young boy. He was walking with his friends, just a sunny midwestern day, and he saw a badly bruised, naked woman walking down the same street. He said he was too young to understand what *might* be going on, but that he *knew* something was very, very wrong. And he began to cry.
He is also suprisingly open about dealing with anger issues during the 70s, when he was making Eraserhead.
He strikes me as an honest guy. I mean that as it is, as it sounds...
I live in Australia. It's not *that* great.
That's really interesting, but I'm not sure I understand the last line's meaning?
@@ZedAmadeus she said something about Australia being great
@@mattgilbert7347 Oh, must've missed that haha
@@ZedAmadeus Tbh I can't recall exactly, it's been a while since I watched this, but I vaguely recall some remark (probably semi-ironic, knowing MMF) about Australia being a paradise utopia where leftists go after they die...
She's close...that would be New Zealand in the late 60s.
@@mattgilbert7347 Modern Australia has rather notorious corruption problems, but they weren't as well known when she made the video.
It's bizarre to me that people miss the very obvious interpretation of the Shining being about abuse. I lived with an alcoholic for several years and Jack is... he's a very good actor.
Well, he DID work with Roman Polanski. I suppose he had some first-hand experience.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick Wasn't it his house where Polanski violated a 13-year-old girl?
There can't be objective interpretations of films. Its an art form, not a commodity. Art is always subjective.
It's always weird to me that people never consider the original author admits to having dealt with substance abuse and working it into his works. Our own personal interpretations can be broad but we shouldn't ignore the authors intentions (especially when they've talked about it so often) that they deliberately put there. The Shining is complicated due to the directorand author clash but the base is still there.
@@ketamineanonymous8396 Oh really? Schindler's List is only subjectivity about the Holocaust then?
I had a dance teacher who was very tyrannical and yet he was lauded for his results, but I felt like hell every day and ultimately gave up on my career due to PTSD. You can get great results from people through encouragement too, not just through aggression, and this video really speaks to that principle.
Sounds like the same kind of instructor as the band director in "WHIPLASH."
There's a survivor bias here too, as the "great results" achieved by awful teachers who brutalize their students ignores the many students who dropped out. Considering this, in the end a good teacher will have much better results.
Sounds exactly like my sister's dance teacher. She was a real piece of work.
@@kandimba Indeed. Kinda like how Bob Knight always bragged about how his players didn't leave early for the NBA, but from Larry Bird on, there was a huge list of players who left.
Every time I learn more about how Hollywood treated Shelley Duvall, I just feel incredibly sad. I just want to hug her 😞
Heather Graham needs to be on this list of Hollywood women who need a hug as well!!
And proper pay. The women in hollywood deserve pay equity
Hollywood is shit
@@wweltz And Heather Graham was also in the last few episodes of Twin Peaks. I wonder how Lynch treater her.
My exact reaction. While watching this I just started feeling the urge to give her a cup of tea and a soft blanket and tell her it's gonna be okay. I'm feeling levels of sadness, empathy and pity I didn't know I even had like what the fuck.
@@jasonblalock4429 Lynch is known for treating his actors very well
Stanislavsky had the courage to remind actors that it's their job to **pretend**
When Dustin Hoffman did "Marathon Man", he went days without sleep because his character did. Co-star Olivier asked him why he didn't just try _acting_ .
@@johnpjones182 Laurence Olivier's acting advice is "Learn your lines and don't bump into the furniture"
@@PatrickBoyda I like that Olivier, who worked alongside Gielgud and Richardson, thought the best actor he ever saw was Spencer Tracy. High praise!
I personally don't like describing acting as "pretending." It sort of devalues the work and makes it seem childish in a way. It's a lot more than playing a game of make believe. Actors aren't pretending to be another person per se, but rather they are telling a story through the lens of the character they play. It's actually not the easiest thing to describe, but there is so much more specificity and intention behind each choice an actor makes that "pretend" fails to really capture. It's far too narrow of a description in my opinion. That being said, for the purpose of talking about more intense method acting and the problems associated with that, it is a good reminder that you are indeed not required to experience the events and characteristics of your role in order to have an effective performance.
@@BigDaddyWes Sure, I'm being a little broad to make a point, but there's SOOOO much toxic overthinking and pretension that surrounds acting as an art form that nullifies an actor's sense of play -- acting on stage is CALLED acting in a "play" after all. Also a lot of self-serious acting "methods" very actively impede and undermine their ability to effectively interact with their scene partner, which to me is usually their most important job
I only recently got into David Lynch and around halfway through this video thought “uh oh, all this bad stuff about Kubrick and she hasn’t even gotten to Lynch yet” then I was pleasantly relieved to learn how accommodating and helpful Lynch is as a director. Great video
me too, i just finished twin peaks weeks ago (cant stop thinking bout it) and i was hoping lynch was gonna be to contrast, im glad i was rigth jaja , but i wanna know her criticism on him
Look at interviews between Lynch and his actors. They literally fawn over him. Laura Dern and Naomi Watts seem to genuinely love the man. Lovely person who is fantastic at exploring the most fucked up parts of the human psyche.
Rossellini liked him soo much.. she dated him!
I've heard a few actors instruct agents that the answer is 'yes' to any role in Lynch project.
@@voodoochild1975az This would make sense considering he somehow got every fucking actor in the world to have a bit part in Twin Peaks The Return. And all of them looked like they were having so much goddamned fun.
Shows how much of a good man he is
Turns out the secret sauce to making films with good acting is to actually just let the actors whose sole job is to act try doing acting. If you don't trust an actor to act, why did you even cast them? Feeling the need to traumatise a reaction out of someone because you don't trust the person you chose to do the job to do it should not be lionised, it should be seen - accurately - as incompetent casting.
I remember watching The Shining with a friend who said after "It was good, very good, but not exactly scary" I said, "try growing up with an abusive father and watching it late at night". Your points have completely validated the sheer terror I feel when I watch it. Excellent essay as always Maggie!
Hi...I agree. I am sorry you had go through that.
My father wasn't physically / sexually abusive but he had mental health issues that were untreated (in retrospect I believe he had undiagnosed bipolar) which meant things could get erratic and potentially unsafe. There was one particularly bad breakdown just before he passed away. It probably did not help that he looked a lot like Nicholson but I see a lot of my childhood in the scenes with Jack and Danny.
Watching the movie in later life actually helped me process things from a distance. Take care of yourself.
Yep. Dr. Sleep is even harder for me for similar reasons. "The drinking, the temper, the anger... those things in me were his; and all I could know of him."
I fall apart seeing everything that happens to Danny.
And I don't fu**en know why.
some guesses. no proof.
@@cmmosher8035 I'm sorry you had to experience that with your father.
@@hamsters7760 I felt that bit hard myself.
I know this is a weirdly specific comment, but I'm just here to say that the Stanley Kubrick polygons vs the David Lynch zigzags on Maggie's thumbnail is a kickass visual
I was thinking the same thing
i was struggling the other day with explaining to my mother what gaslighting is, *mantaining a psychological advantage* sounds like a good place to restart that conversation
Speaking of "Twin Peaks", what Sheryl Lee has to perform in "Fire Walk With Me" is really emotionally brutal. But she's always talked about how supportive David Lynch was as a director, along with fellow actors like Ray Wise and Frank Silva. She felt safe enough to access the vulnerability and emotions necessary to portray Laura Palmer. And the film gives Laura back her voice and agency in her own story, when the character just started out as a McGuffin for the show. And that was sparked by Lynch recognizing what an amazing actress Sherly Lee is, just from making the home movie of Laura and Donna's picnic.
Oh that movie and her performance just breaks my heart every time.
Laurence Olivier to Dustin Hoffman after the latter stayed up three days to portray a sleepless man, "Dear boy, why not try acting?"
Dunno if that actually happened (I guess I could google it) but I like it regardless.
@@stealintomorrow John Schlesinger talks to Charlie Rose about it here starting about 2:11 in, czcams.com/video/itz5kArG538/video.html
The only film I give a pass to in this regard is “Come and See” - because that’s kinda the whole mission statement. The actors and crew (and one cow) in that film were put through the ringer but it wasn’t just in service of making the directors vision or a piece of art or a product - the film has a thesis statement, it’s the title.
Let Dustin Hoffman act the way he wants to and let Laurence Olivier act the way he wants to
Hoffman already squelched this. 👍
I have no doubt that Maggie's already aware of this fun fact about The Shining, but there's a point early in the film when Jack is reading the January 1978 issue of Playgirl Magazine, an issue whose cover advertised the article "INCEST: Why parents sleep with their children". Between that and the symbolism Maggie noted in the man in the bear costume at 7:36, there seems to be an intentional implication that Jack's abuse of Danny was sexual in nature.
czcams.com/video/dW2GrG7Zk0U/video.html good explanation of Danny's abuse in this video
the way jack was holding him was enough for me
@@akshaydalvi1534 Yup Rob Ager's explored this theory exhaustively. Compelling evidence I must say.
Good insight!!
@@akshaydalvi1534 and @MetroidxMe Honestly, I'm scared to watch this video. Would it be too much to ask for a breakdown?
One interesting "method acting" story I've heard: On the set of Man on the Moon, in an effort to psyche himself into Andy Kaufman's wrestling persona, Jim Carrey would repeatedly mistreat and harass Jerry Lawler. If you know anything about Lawler's actual relationship with Kaufman, this is kind of messed up; although they were enemies on stage, the two were actually close friends in real life. So Carrey was basically harassing this dude while imitating his dead buddy.
Lawler was apparently so pissed off by this that he paid Carrey back during the David Letterman scene by hitting him with a real punch. In his own words, he hit Carrey harder than he ever hit Kaufman.
Love this, as Jim Carrey has the most punchable face.
The line, "You've always been the caretaker." could be interpreted as, "You've always been abusive." Jack (the character) has always been abusive. The Overlook Hotel was just the place where Jack could finally "correct" Wendy and Danny like all the other abusers did at the hotel before him.
My Native friends and I use "ancient Indian burial ground" as a joke whenever we feel a little scared to lighten the mood. The joke being, the whole hecking continent is just that. That trope is just... so silly and ridiculous, linguistically and culturally.
Nah. You and your friends are delusional.
@@YourWifesBoyfriend About what? The whole North American continent being an 'ancient Indian burial ground'? It absolutely is, though. The continent has been inhabited by indigenous people for thousands of years, so of course there are native burials all over the place, even without considering the Native American genocide perpetrated by European continents.
@@gibbcharron3469 I assume they’re a very obvious troll trying to get a reaction.
@@gibbcharron3469 Nah. You're exaggerating. Grow up and be realistic.
@@elif6908 How many Indian bodies have you found?
When I was in film school, I told my prof. that I didn't like Kubrick for the exact reason of the treated Devall, and his honest response was "That's stupid. She just an actress." It's been six years and I still get angry at that.
I’m not sure what you mean though… you don’t like Kubrick as a filmmaker or as a person? Because being an asshole has nothing to do with all the other aspects of his filmmaking, such as shot composition, sound design, symbolism, etc. You are only looking at a single side of him which is probably the least integral to the finished piece of art: his personality, which most people will never be aware of, unless they watch a lot of film analysis videos on the internet or something. I’d be willing to bet a lot of famous artists over the years have been intolerable assholes to the people around them.
@@essaywhu Knowing that someone was abused to make a work of art can put people off of the artwork itself. The same way learning about the realities of the meat industry can make people feel sick looking at a burger. Just because it wasn't on the screen doesn't mean that it plays no part in how people view the art.
Marilyn Manson is a good example. I loved their music when it was all theatre. When I found out he was also just the worst it took the shine off his work and I can't even enjoy Mechanical Animal anymore despite it being an incredible album.
@@NinasNon-Sense ok, fair enough, but what of his other films, where people were not known to be abused?
And also, I’d argue that sexual abuse as well as threatening to kill women is much worse than anything Kubrick did.
@@essaywhu It was an example, not a 1 to 1 comparison. Personally, I enjoy the Shining and Clockwork Orange, but then death of the author is a lot easier when the author is actually dead. But I can see people not wanting anything to do with any of his work after finding that out.
@@NinasNon-Sense I might agree but after finding out personal details about most of the great filmmakers over the years, I can’t see how anyone is innocent. Everyone has personality defects and mistreats someone at some point in their lives and power and celebrity just amplifies it.
I would like to say that I would never watch a film that had anything to do with a piece of garbage like Weinstein, but there were just too many good films that he was involved in, and too many other talented people that were involved as well, and they wouldn’t deserve to be punished for his crimes.
I like how Roger Ebert's central complaint was about how it made him feel.
really reminds me (small spoiler ahead) ironically of another "blue" movie, *Perfect Blue*
the main character is always objectified, and although she finds a sense of artistic freedom finally in a dramatic rape scene (she's an actress, it's not a "dramatic rape scene where she finds artistic freedom" with her as the literal victim at least in this sense!) this is the breaking point for her stalker, whose rage comes from her breaking away from what her audience wants her to be/embody as a "pure" and virginal performer, not a dramatic actor.
Satoshi Kon is always where my mind goes haha
@@k.morningstar7983 Satoshi Kon is SO good. He passed way too soon.
Also, fans' relationship with idols in Japan is kinda gross and parasocial, and that's a big element of Perfect Blue's plot.
it's called empathy lmao people are delusional
Film maker here. The way Kubrick treated Duvall was cruel and unnecessary. There’s this attitude that still persists that directors can and should mess with the actors’ heads to get a particular performance. While this method can yield results, there are much better ways to get great performances. You know what else gets results? Not being a jerk and just letting your actors ACT! Acting is their job. They don’t have to be put through real trauma to perform trauma.
is this role call? should all the shitty wannabe directors raise our hand and think our opinion means more than anyone elses?
@@trepp8210 Yes, you spotted that someone called themselves a director. What an insightful and devastating response to the substance of complaint. Please collect your Smart Brain award at the door.
The difference is he’s Stanley Kubrick a legendary filmmaker one of the best ever if not the best , who you be again ?
@@robertthomsonwatson2542 He's actually Stanley Kubrick 2, the objectively-better director who runs cameras 25% faster for 10% less fuel, and is grateful for your extremely insightful and non-stupid comment that forwarded the conversation.
@@UnreasonableOpinions still don't know who he is .
My thing about the whole "there are no ghosts in the shining" bit is that, with stories you don't have to choose. Things can be in the movie that are supposed to be taken as what they are and also as symbols. Just because the ghosts represent abuse or society and so on doesn't mean they aren't also ghosts. Maybe it seems like a small point but I feel like its one of those ways that people try to "solve" a movie.
Also David Lynch has a sister named Martha. Do with that information as you will.
My problem with no ghosts theory is that the things any of the three of them see and experience are consistent with what the other two see and experience. If Jack is only talking to himself why do Wendy and Danny experience things that fit with that? Wendy tells Jack there is a woman in that room and he imagines not a woman in the room but specifically a younger woman in the tub who becomes an older woman when he kisses her, and he imagines she laughs as he runs away. All that from there's a woman who tried to strangle Danny? Doesn't it make more sense to just say the hotel is haunted and Jack encountered the same haunting that Danny did? Consider too that that room incident also is consistent with what Hallorann told Danny about traces being left behind in the hotel. That's not a conversation Jack heard yet it sure looks like he encountered one of those traces.
@@DemonicBoobs I'm not sure I understand. They see and speak to Hallorann in front of many people. Isn't that 'real'? If those people were real, then Hallorann is real. This means what he says to Danny is a real conversation they had. That means the shining power is real. You see how things start to tip the scales towards the hotel being haunted?
I'm 100% with you. We don't need to "explain" the ghosts. Narratives that are completely explicable and "sensible" are often pretty dull - more along the lines of technical manuals than stories. They can be fun as puzzle boxes, but they fade with time. I suspect many of Christopher Nolan's films are destined for this fate - once you figure them out, they're not nearly so special as they initially seemed. The Shining and Lost Highway have simple surface narratives that are easy to follow ("simple" does not mean "explicable"; you can follow what happens easily, even if it violates reality as we understand it), but are also full of inexplicable, enigmatic allusions to larger ideas. To me, they don't require interpretation. You just need to let them speak their strange language to your inner self, who understands them better than you think.
It doesn't matter
True. The fact that metatextually, the ghosts are a device to represent and reveal the preexisting dark side of the characters/humanity doesn't mean that textually they aren't still ... ghosts haunting the hotel. but the essence of old school fantastical fiction (edgar Allan Poe and such) is that the supernatural is ambiguous, and I think the Shinning, at least the movie, exists in that tradition.
When I was in a very abusive relationship, my partner at the time watched the The Shining for the first time and joked that it was "us", and that I was Wendy and he was Jack. And I have a lot of baggage associated with The Shining, especially when I learnt of the abuse of Shelly Duval behind the scenes. I really appreciate this video and how it touches on the bullshit that abuse is okay as long as you made great art out of it. Anyways, amazing video Maggie!
My psychotic and abusive ex’s favorite movie was The Shining, and she also gave me tons of baggage for that movie. I’m so sorry you went through that.
I know it’s overdone to talk about Twin Peaks in relation to David Lynch but it really is a series that centers empathy. Empathy for Laura Palmer is the central pillar, you simply can’t understand it if you can’t empathize with her, and its final season being violent and grim and dark beyond the original seemed like Lynch’s condemnation - saying here, this is what you clamored for when you told me to wrap up Laura’s murder and continue the series.
Is interesting that Lynch is very well known for making a safe work enviroment with all his actors and actress and being one of the most beloved persons to work with in the industry, as the same time he's the most anti-hollywood mainstream directors.
I love watching Naomi Watts talking about Lynch, the amount of respect and love she has to him is inspiring, also she does a great and really funny impression of him.
Knowing Maggie, I tought she was going to do the "100 things" bit all the way
Actually, I would argue that shows you don’t really know Maggie. First of all, she doesn’t really have regular gags. Secondly, while she has occasionally had gags that re-emerge throughout a video, it’s always used in a way that makes sense, which it wouldn’t in this case, as she’s addressing TWO movies. That’s the crux of Maggie’s gags… they always make sense.
@John Verne Except for that they start with “Knowing Maggie,” which implies pretty heavily that this is based on previous essays.
@@jakethet3206 dude it's a bit you don't need to be this pedantic about something just say "ok" theres no need to play the grand inquisitor
@@SgtKaneGunlock I WOULD thank you for your input, but I don’t let others tell me what to do. You’ve shared your opinion. This is the part where other’s would say something rude to you. Bye now!
@@jakethet3206 lol look at this dude getting sweaty in a CZcams comment section
Mcdowell and Kubrick got along really well during the filming of clockwork, then after the release Kubrick completely shunned him after that. It's like if you are a behind the scenes person at a theater, running lights or a stagehand for example, Some directors and even actors are your best friend during the run then after it ends they behave as though you never met. The TLDR is this, some people are kind to you when they need you but when they don't you no longer exist to them. Kubrick was that guy. I love how Mcdowell basically said "yes he was brilliant but at the end of the day he was an asshole".
Except he wasn't, Matthew Modine kept in touch with him after FMJ, as did others IIRC, and he called him once in a while to catch up and chat with him. The thing is that Kubrick was always working and wanted to deliver and justify the trust put in him by those who financed his films, so he made sure everything was as good as it can be. All these narratives surrounding Kubrick and the whole image of him being some sort of tyranical robot are just pathetic and rarely worth taking into consideration. His family also stated as much.
He didn’t basically actually say that. This is another one of those things people skew. Malcolm himself explained it pretty logically. It’s a job. The nature of the job and the relationship between an actor and a director means you are going to be working VERY closely for a longish amount of time, and then you may never see each other again, or not for a long time. What you’re describing, It’s like holding a grudge against your first boss for not keeping in touch like, lol, maybe you can be friends with your boss, but just because you and your boss were friendly when you worked together, does not obligate your boss to be your friend. It might sound mean but it’s not
Why should he have to keep contact with him? The bond between an actor and a director is a working relationship, not a friendship.
@@avidfather1864its also just not true, Joe Turkel remained lifelong friends with Kubrick from his NYC days.. he worked with Patrick Magee and Philip Stone repeatedly.
This video just exemplifies why I love David Lynch so much, he truly is an underappreciated genius. I have never heard an actor have a bad experience with him, and he repeatedly makes incredible unique works of art. Even though he is well known for a lot of things and people recognize him as a good director I still think that he is underrated because he is legitimately one of the greats. I hope with time people realize what an incredible artist and person he is
Underappreciated? By whom? Dude is regarded as a genius, which he is.
@@ulfingvar1 The average film goer? You know like 95% of people that watch movies don't know who he is right? Yes within film circles he is very highly regarded. But even though he has made multiple mainstream successes, most people still do not know him, and just see him as like a weirdo if they do.
When Jack says "I saw your picture in the newspapers," he's referring to the research he's done on the hotel as part of his "writing project." You can see the hotel's scrapbook of clippings on his writing desk in an earlier scene.
Either way, he sought the place out and was engaged with the place in large part because of some sort of…fascination he had with the idea of a man murdering his family in the Overlook Hotel when they were snowed in.
I did a lot of drama classes as a kid. An actor friend who went onto psychology recently said that Method Acting training can be indistinguishable from grooming. Something I've been thinking about a lot. Actors - especially child actors - really should have a union rep on set to look out for them.
did she explain at all why? that seems like a very concise statement for something that varies so greatly and the definition of grooming. Even intention changes a lot of things when it comes to what is actually considered grooming in psychology.
OH JESUS, four years of intensely abusive theatre school and at least a year of watching directors abuse actresses for no good reason and Maggie is giving me some logic and history for it.
This is the second time I’ve come here for pop culture analysis and Maggie has actually put something awful from my past into stark relief in a way that would take aT LEAST a year of therapy to uncover.
People born after 1980s started to expect the world to be nice, to see even expressing the human emotion of anger as abuse. Everything is abuse, now. Is it any wonder that we have nothing but fantasy movies and tame formula anymore? Hold out your hands. Imagine your right hand is security and your left hand is agency. Both greatness and suffering come from maximum agency. Only bland mediocrity comes from maximum security. You can pick somewhere in the middle but you can't have both.
This
Thank you for putting this sentiment into words. I was in an acting class where our professor would try to intentionally trigger us and also pit us against one another, which led to at least one student having a panic attack or mental breakdown every class period. I myself had three lmfao. so fucked.
@@thepagecollective 'EVERYTHING IS ABUSE NOW' is a very stupid defense to actual, documented abuse. Anyone who can't trust actors whose sole task is to act to act successfully without traumatising them is outing themselves as a shit director or teacher.
@@UnreasonableOpinions When everything is abuse, nothing is abuse. Actors are some of the dumbest, most shallow, most entitled hacks in the world. Ever notice how there is nothing but shit movies lately? Oh, but lots of sensitivity to actors.
Love using David Lynch as a bridge to help misogynists understand why upholding Auteur theory in these instances is so bad. Because lets face it, we need a revered man to set a good example, lest the misogynists get disinterested.
A+ use of Lynch.
Consider it inoculation.
Of course he was tough on male actors too. The film community is rife with dudes who jump to defend Kubricks behavior though. That's the misogyny, always only identifying with & jumping to defend the man. I have literally never heard of a woman defending this behavior.
@@hotturkin I completely agree.
Although I find it kinda sad how people always bring up how poorly he treat Shelley duvall and don't bring up how fucking horridly he treat Malcolm McDowell in the same breath.
Also, from first hand experience, the film industry is ripe with homophobia and ableism as well.
ALso, yeah, David lynch was a ten out of ten.
@Leandro Aude Being critical is part of the film observation process, especially in regards to someone as profound as Kubrick. "Calling out" as a behavior without a concept of the expected "follow up action" isn't whining either. You need the follow up action or understanding of the intention to classify the act as whining. It is very hard to come to an accurate conclusion of what "whining" is unless that action or intent is put into regard.
HOWEVER, yes, calling out without the intention of doing something about it is whining. With that thought in mind, I personally feel your opinion comes from a very valid place, but saying "women" as the general monolith are claiming victimhood for being critical is just as unproductive as those who you say "whine." To put it more neutrally, Kubrick was abusive to his actors and had borderline sociopathic tendancies when it came to his prioritization around the "work" over the conditions he created. To say he's just a misogynist, while potentially a contributing factor, tells a very incomplete story and doesn't build towards proactive "working condition" solutions in film.
Its sorta like "stating a problem" and ending the conversation there, as this video essay put it. I say it goes both ways. The people who claim misogyny and damn the art for the sake of principle (which I don't agree with personally)... as well as those who devalue valid criticisms/critique on the individual level and claim its some socio/political agenda, so it must not be valid or an actual self established opinion.
Anyway sorry for the run on musings. Thought it would help since I can see where you are coming from I think.
28:25 - Shelley Duvall's speech here about how Stanley Kubrick's treatment of her was actually fine because it made the film better somehow - her word choices, her cadence, her facial expressions, her eye movements, everything about it - is eerily like Wendy's talk with the pediatrician about how Jack dislocating their son's arm was an accident, just "one of those things". The only thing missing was a cigarette to fidget with.
I had the same interpretation 😔 I can see in retrospect how Kubrick was able to create such a poignant film about the cycle of abuse...because in a lot of ways he was a perpetrator himself.
Yes ! That makes so much sense and is so sad.
no its not like that at all, she is much more relaxed in the interview, and seems a bit... irritated like she is currently being told "told you do" - so not like the "well this stuff just happens of course" in the movie.
The first two times I watched The Shining, I was scared but I was fine afterwards. The third time I watched it, I was inconsolably terrified. Like, I made one of my friends return the video to Blockbuster rather than leave it with me, and I went over to another friend's house so I wouldn't have to sleep alone. It's like a metaphor for me coming to terms with the violent reality of my childhood...
That kind of happened to me. It was the second time, and it was because I was reading or finished reading the book. Among other issues, I didn't have that Treehouse of Horror segment to compare it to anymore
Watching "Fire Walk With Me" was hard for childhood reasons. But it was cathartic!
i found that ebert clip super strange. he almost frames himself as the victim rather than advocate for isabella rossellini which he seems to think hes doing.
As a man who has come a long way, (and hopefully can come a long way more) in terms of overcoming many of his more fragile masculine impulses, this is a thing that can happen.
Sometimes it’s really easy to dress up concern for your own masculine security as concern for a woman’s autonomy. So easy you might not even realize that’s what you’re doing, at least not consciously.
What Malcolm McDowell said about Kubrick reminds me of what I’ve said about bosses I’ve worked for who considered themselves great or were considered great because they could run tight ships of beastly stores, but terrorized their employees. You’re not a great boss if you can’t manage people. I’ve worked for people who were great at running businesses and also kind and caring and decent people. THOSE are the greats!
“The freezer door is the only thing in The Shining not explained by madness.”
-Adam Savage
I completely agree
It's not a freezer it's a pantry
@@MR._3 Refrigerated, though?
It does hinge on one assumption though... That she locked it in the first place.
He's groggy from the headwound. She's terrified and is only thinking of escaping. Maybe she only imagined locking the door?
@@jmalmsten That's an intriguing idea... 🤔
Idk. But we never actually see Jack open the door. Suppose he actually found something in the pantry to beat it open? You are making me think!
Your Honor, my client wasn't abusing their wife, they were merely maintaining a *phycological advantage*.
Sounds like something Dennis Reynolds would say.
Your honor it was the hotel
Watching this really makes me wanna go through Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me again. The dinner scene in that one jumped right to mind when you talked about how Jack and Danny's scenes get more horrifying every time you watch The Shining. I have my problems with Fire Walk With Me and think it's not Lynch's most polished film, but Fire Walk With Me is just so emotionally raw and uncompromising and Sheryl Lee is just sells every moment of pain and nihilism and anger and even catharsis that it might be my favorite Lynch film.
Like you said, it's a film that addresses abuse and domestic violence and is brutal and harrowing in how it depicts them, but it has this thread of hope running through it. I just love that film so much and I am so glad that Lynch has such a consistent history of creating his art ethically and collaboratively. Every time you see the actors he's worked with talk about him, they only have good things to say. Definitely not what you'd expect from someone whose work is that dark, twisted and violent. Seems like the only way to see his bad side is to watch one of his movies on an iPhone.
You'll also see Lynch's bad side if you tell him a scene's too long lol
I fucking love that movie
A consistent part of Sheryl Lee's life since "Fire Walk With Me" has been women telling her how much Laura Palmer has helped them with their own trauma. There's actually a really good book of essays about the resonance of the characters called "Laura's Ghost: Women Speak About Twin Peaks".
The Shining might've been about a lot of things, but it was also definitely, literally, explicitly about alcoholism.
An alcoholic author? In a Stephen King book!? Madness!
reading the book did give me a different feeling. i would say that to me the book and the movie are pretty equally good with quite different takes of very similar themes and a generally same plotline. it feels like there's a real attempt to portray a tragedy with Jack's failure to fight off the ghosts of his alcoholism as well as an inability to control his rage, and i think the movie missed out on the hornet's nest mini side plot.
@@lengarion I love that about Stephen King. All the malevolent spirits and monsters and supernatural events and the real horror is still human dysfunction ripped straight from reality.
@@mariaquiet6211
It's quite a shame that a better writer couldn't have had King's ideas.
@@God-mb8wi ideas are cheap. execution, tenacity, and continued creativity to make a finished product are true skills for a storyteller, which King has.
i would not say King is my favorite writer, but i do tend to find that people who consistently denigrate not anything specific about him (fair points: kids in weird sexual situations? did *The Shining* truly NEED a sequel?) but him as a "bad writer" tend to have a bad case of sour grapes. hell, i know a bitter writer who swears Tabitha is the real writer and he takes all her work.
I love how when he says not to sympathize with Shelly, he's turning away from a mirror. Like he can't even look at himself, AS he is talking to himself. He lived out film symbolism all the time and didn't even seem to notice. Like, full on doing a thing in real life that would be purely symbolic in his movies.
Yeah that was insanely ironic
This isnt a counterpoint but just another thought - was he saying that because he knew he was on camera and performing for his daughter, who was directing the documentary? Was he playing up the part of an ogre? Or did he say worse off camera?
There are a ton of indications that the documentary was scripted. Collative Learning's channel has some pretty convincing discussion about it.
@@whiplashfilms ... That makes a lot of sense. It would be pretty strange if he acted the same on and off camera. Hard to believe even.
Kubrick was obviously joking. Gimmee a break.
11:30 I must correct you on this one: Jack is referring to old newspaper clippings. In a scene that was written but never filmed, Jack finds a huge book with newspaper clippings about the history of the Overlook hotel - that include Delbert Grady's crime. It's implied that he starts studying the hotel history as an inspiration for his novel, but obviously it goes nowhere. You can still see the open book next to Jack in some scenes, like when he's having a nightmare - and by the way, it makes Jack's nightmare about murdering his family quite natural and believable (he just read about Delbert Grady doing the same thing).
I disagree. Jack knew about the Grady murders from the get-go, back when it happened and was first reported on. In the novel, that Scrapbook you're referring to does NOT include anything about the Grady murder/suicide: it's all a history of the hotel vis-à-vis its change of ownership, especially when Horace Derwent (a Howard Hughes-type millionaire) owned it. If Kubrick had wanted the audience to know or believe that Jack saw Grady's picture in a newspaper clipping from that Scrapbook, then he would have provided a shot of Jack looking down at such a clipping, like the shot of Jack looking down at the Hedge-Maze miniature. Rob Ager, who has seen that Scrapbook prop at a Kubrick retrospective museum display, has described what was in it, and nowhere does he state that a newspaper clipping of the Grady murder story was ever a part of it.
Once we realize that Jack knew about the Hotel and about that horrific murder/suicide in 1970/1971, years before Danny was even conceived -- and most probably before he married Wendy -- and that Jack is the reincarnation of a "Mr. Torrance" who had been a part of the hotel's history as a playground for the Elite class, then we can get a fuller sense of what Jack's motivation had been all along. Every moment he spent typing that same sentence over and over and over again, through page-after-page, EVER SINCE THE DAY THEY WERE FIRST ALONE IN THE HOTEL, was in furtherance to his long-term plan to wait it out until they were snowbound there, when Wendy and Danny would be totally at his mercy, and then to terrorize them to the point where their souls -- 'seasoned' with fear -- would be deemed 'tasty' enough for the evil in the hotel to feast upon.
And I mean that quite literally. The famous Blood-Elevator image has elements of anthropomorphism, where the dials above the twin elevators look like 'eyes' -- similar to the eyes on the Bear-Pillow in Danny's bedroom in Boulder -- and the blood gushing out from the elevator represents the blood consumed by the victims of the 'Ruling Class' that built the hotel (on the desecrated graves of the Native genocide victims). Speaking of the 'Ruling Class', there's a film from earlier in the '70s titled "THE RULING CLASS" -- starring Peter O'Toole -- in which a man named Jack ends up murdering his own wife immediately following a scene at the House of Lords, depicted as a darkened, cobwebbed chamber full of skeletons. Kubrick 'borrowed' that imagery in the scene where Wendy sees the Lobby of the Overlook as a darkened, cobwebbed chamber full of skeletons. By 'echoing' that shot, Kubrick was blatantly stating that his film had everything to do with the corruption of the Ruling Class. Jack Torrance willingly does the bidding of the Powers-That-Be in the expectation that he will achieve advancement to their ranks -- to the position he once gloried in, in his former incarnation when he had been front-and-center at the July 4, 1921 Ball in the Gold Room at the Overlook Hotel -- that photo we see at the end, which itself is in the exact center of all those photographs on display.
Murdering his own family 'earned' Grady a position at the Hotel, free thenceforward from the drudgery of being reincarnated yet again, and able to enjoy a kind of hellish 'nirvana' among the "best people" . . . so why shouldn't a similar attempt at feeding the Beast garner Jack Torrance a permanent place there?
My favorite story of pointing out the problems with Method Acting came from Bruce Campbell's memoir, _If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-List Actor._ He talks about working with John Mahoney in a movie, and how a Method actor gave crap to Mahoney the whole time because they were antagonists in the movie. The other actor says that it was a pleasure to work with Mahoney, who says, "I wish I could say the same thing about you." When the director says Cut, you have to know when to turn it off.
“how these men ruin their lives and the lives of women around them” is also an appropriate way to describe Alfred Hitchcock.
Not his films, just him as a person
What was with the peepholes?
And Fritz Lang, and Charlie Chaplin, and...
"The trouble today is that we don't torture women enough" - Hitchcock
The Shining documentary that Kubrick’s daughter made was unsettling for me. Shelley Duvall seemed so tortured and the segment with Crothers crying was shocking. After getting my hands on a VHS bootleg of it as a kid thinking it would be cool I ended up feeling a sense of dread that I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see. That said, I totally want to see the rest of the footage that was shot that wasn’t allowed to be released.
As someone who hasn't watched it, why did Scatman Crothers cry?? Slash, what was so shocking about it?
I'm very curious now
@@asspills he also went through Kubrick’s “direction” and he’s OLD so it clearly took a toll on him and it was clearly traumatic enough for him to recall all his conflicting emotions. It’s always shocking seeing someone cry like that
@GuamoKun You said it - "...it was clearly traumatic enough for him to recall all his conflicting emotions." @asspills It was shocking because his response completely stripped away the distance of The Shining being "just a movie." I felt guilty for liking the movie so much after that. This latest Maggie Mae Fish piece helped me understand why.
That reminds me of the blooper reel of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen's "Passport to Paris," which played during credits. The girls were beating themselves up over missed lines, and in general seemed very stressed and unhappy- and I felt sick having seen a movie (at least I didn't enjoy it--the movie was awful of course) that subjected these children to such anxiety.
@@msmazahs I keep wondering if any level of our enjoyment is excusable once we are aware of abuses during production.
I'm a clinical social worker with a background in relationship counseling and domestic violence services (have worked with survivors and batterers alike). People who are abusive to their spouse and/or child typically won't be abusive to other people in their lives. That's why a lot of other people they know will be like "he seemed like such a great guy, I never would have known" etc. Abusers typically know who they have dominance over and who they CAN get away with abusing. Like, they certainly won't be abusive toward their boss, for example. Abusers will often use excuses like past trauma or mental illness to explain their abusive behavior toward spouses or children. Problem is, it can't be explained by mental illness or trauma unless they are abusive to everyone around them. So in Jack's case, it's a choice to be abusive (he's not abusive toward Mr. Ullman, for example). In Lost Highway though, if the guy is abusive to everyone around him, we could make a case for it being a result of a personality disorder (mental illness). Doesn't make it okay of course. Still needs to be worked on and corrected. But we could say that it's a little more complicated than a simple decision to be a bully.
I always loved this essay and agree with every word.
Only... Today I discovered Kubrick's Lolita is David Lynch's favourite movie and it fucked with my mind.
"Description is not analysis" is a solid line. A lot of movies (even ones I like) tend to fall into that trap of showing you the cruel depths of humanity and then being like, "yep, hope you got something out of that." Ignoring the obvious example of the guy living in a society, there were a whole glut of films after Wolf of Wall Street came out that were basically just contextless violence, abuse and financial crimes. Which were sometimes fun, but more often I wondered why I wasn't just watching the news if the only message was "this exists. Crazy right?"
I'm beginning to suspect that the motivation behind a lot of these is, "Guess we can't do anything about this! Guess we're off the hook then for doing anything about this or contributing to it!"
I disagree with that line. I agree that descriptive analysis is weaker than if there were a value or prescriptive component, but I’m pretty sure analysis doesn’t require those things to be called analysis.
@@uselesscamel5360 I agree, and I think the text of The Shinning specifically includes analysis; knowledge of history saves Danny & Wendy from evil, it's a strong theme. It doesn't gleefully revel in violence for no reason, it astutely criticizes it, IMO.
I can see how emotions can run high, especially for those who've suffered abuse like Wendy/Shelly and Danny, when watching the film, and I wonder if some of those feelings became part of this review.
By all accounts, Stanly was an asshole, but I don't think that necessarily makes the films he made worse. Part of why I think Kubrick has such a cult following is because his movies are compelling, and when folks learn abt who he was, it makes them curious about how anyone could have made films like that. Lynch, conversely, seems much more "normal" when interviewed. You can dive deep into a Lynch film too, but they tend not to have the same impact for many as Stanly's, not quite the same level of detail or creepy precision. I think about Eraserhead and how the horror is this raw, dream-like exposure to then alien, combined with gross effects and paternity anxiety. It's relatable, but only in a cock-eyed way. The horror from the Shinning IMO comes from familiarity, it reminds the audience how close we can be to violence, to horror.
Obviously it's not fair to compare any director's early work to The Shinning, but I feel these themes are shared across both director's body of work; Lynch gets uncomfortably weird and Kubrick gets uncomfortably close to home.
@@DarthCool99 fun fact, apparently Kubrick said that Eraserhead was his favorite movie.
Also, when films spend too long 'observing' or frankly delighting in acts of cruelty or violence, the camera is focused on the act itself, usually the least interesting part about it. Dozens of films heavily feature the ritual suicide of Seppuku by showing the details, the props, the blood, because the fascination is in this particular elaborate form, when the best films to feature it focus on the actor because the most compelling part is the human choice to carry it out and the moments before they do. 1962's Harakiri features a particularly horrific example of the act, and not only is it a vastly stronger film for making the character's face the only feature of the scene, but also despite showing very little blood and no gore managed to be more shocking, confronting and cruel than any other example in the eighty years that followed. It also actually serves the film and the audience since it shows that this person who has been three times mocked for failing the social code, even when trapped into the worst imaginable situation commits absolutely to upholding it, when those who have mocked him are later shown to all completely and utterly fail to uphold those precepts themselves.
The more films I watch and the older I get, the more I want violence and cruelty in a film to serve a purpose. It's so very tedious when you see a scene of abrupt cruelty and you can visualise the director when asked why smugly explaining it's to shock you. It doesn't shock me, it bores me, because when those scenes fail to shock there's nothing left.
"In 1980, you couldn't Google headlines." That is a true statement. I was there.
Shelley being emotionally consumed by her fear is something that kinda happens in abusive relationships. It's draining; in the depths of it, it's so strangely two dimensional. Priorities of surviving the moment sucks out curiosity, creativity, just everything that isn't survival and maintenance. There may be a bit around the edges or in the okay times, but when you're in the vortex it's so exactly like Shelly.
The Virgin Shining compared to the Chad Lost Highway.
😂 bruh you clearly a simp with this clown of comment
@@joed7185 you aren’t using that word properly.
@@joed7185 I'd simp for David Lynch any day.
@@joed7185 You're called Joe D, don't tell someone else they're a clown with that handle..-
@@rangda_prime The guy's a goofball, but I can't for the life of me figure out why you went after him for having a mundane YT handle. "How dare you the temerity and lack of self-awareness to use a common first name and a last initial!"
I am surprised you did not mention the fact that Lynch has gone on record to say Lost Highway is inspired by the OJ Simpson trial.
i love when Lynch talks like a William Burroughs beat poem.
"creating to destroy the universe...... destroying to create the universe"
Those rugs really tie the two together, do they not.
Do they knot?
@@joefather6084 what a rugged sense of humour
Duval and Kubrick abusing her on set reminds me of Lars von Trier and how he terrorized and sexually harassed Björk on the set of Dancer in the Dark, along with a lot of other male auteurs and their actresses. It’s beyond gross, just as you described.
yep... and now james franco seems to be the newest addition to this long shameful line of assholes...
excellent point
the director of blue is the warmest colour too
I hate this gender generalisation, I've heard various cases of leading women in Hollywood being pieces of shit as well, but you don't see any of them mentioned, do you.
@@icravedeath.1200 Actually men have talked about it, and in a lot of cases like with Brendan Fraser they get blacklisted from movies. And maybe you should look into something like Last Tango in Paris where an actress was not told about a rape scene and had it done to her so it would look “more real” before spouting this shit.
It’s so weird for that one critic reviewing _The Shining_ to see the Torrance family at the beginning of the film as being “the stereotypically happy American family,” when we clearly see Wendy take Danny to the doctor-before they ever set out to the hotel-and we clearly hear Wendy tell that doctor that Jack once dislocated Danny’s shoulder in a drunken fit of rage… which is also when we first get to see Wendy rationalizing Jack’s alcoholic violence away as if it’s normal or just a series of misunderstandings. No wonder their kid talks to himself… who else would listen?
It never occurred to me anyone would watch the film from a perspective other than Danny’s. To some extent, owing perhaps to personal limitations related to my upbringing, it’s impossible for me NOT to watch _The Shining_ not only as Danny, but almost as if Kubrick has snuck a camera into my childhood and recorded the first decade of it. I promise you, Jack’s bursts of rage _feel_ like a home movie! And it’s not a difficult watch, surprisingly; watching _Sesame Street_ is hard, happy kids and helpful adults, I’ll sob every few minutes; _The Shining_ is quite an easy, almost nervously gleeful watch: “Ha ha, for once the kid up there is NOT me!” (I know, that contradicts what I wrote first, about watching it as Danny… but both perspectives are there: the terror of feeling immersed in that situation, but also the exhausted, uncritical relief of knowing for once it’s someone else’s turn.)
I now see your point, though, about how the camerawork does invite us to adopt Jack’s perspective, and even to relish in it. I guess all I would hope is that a viewer, so engaged in celebrating Jack’s predations, might feel a twinge of remorse? It’d be silly for me to imagine that was Kubrick’s project, I think the ‘60s and ‘70s vanguard of cinema was to be distant and uncritical as a director, to force the audience to themselves make and thus internalize judgments. So it’d be a stretch to say Kubrick intended for his Jack-eyed audience to feel remorse, or horror at their own capacity to identify with the monstrous. But perhaps the possibility is there.
You offer that Kubrick presents no solutions to the dilemmas he recreates. I do see your point. I don’t know if you’ll find this interesting, but lately I’ve thought the ending to _The Shining_ bears some resemblance to the end of _Barry Lyndon._ If I recall correctly, before the closing shot of frozen Jack, we see Wendy and Danny having escaped the hotel, and there’s a long, silent calm, with a closeup of Danny’s face. Similarly, at the end of Barry Lyndon we see the son and child having liberated themselves from the dad, and there’s a long silent calm, and a closeup of the son’s face. To me both these scenes feel like waking from a nightmare you hadn’t fully realized you were having. Kubrick takes his time, beginning from not only calm but from utterly mundane scenes, of job interviews, or of highly ritualized dialogue during a courtship… all structured and predictable things. Then each film gradually builds to a fever-pitch of insanity. When Kubrick yanks that insanity away again, perhaps the feeling we’re meant to experience along with the characters onscreen is “Wow… how DID things get to that point? Was that even real!??”
From personal experience, I know that feeling of finally getting away from something not only bad, but so bad it defies description, so bad you realize you couldn’t recount it to anyone and have them believe you. My feeling, on the plane ride away from something like that, wasn’t so much relief, as it was a growing stunned disbelief: wtf, how did it come to this, how are things so calm right now, what the hell is it we’re even flying away from… was that real, is this real? There was relief, even joy on the boarding ramp… but on the actual plane ride, that happiness was unexpectedly replaced by a stunned “What the fuck…?”
So perhaps Kubrick isn’t offering a solution to the enabling of a Jack Torrance, or a solution to how society not only enables, but practically forces the creation of, and then elevates, a bounder like Lyndon… other than perhaps perpetual hypervigilance? The message I could read into _The Shining_ and _Barry Lyndon_ is something like “Keep your eyes open, if things seem calm, it’s because it’s all a lie, and everything!s going to suck so bad for you soon, but it’ll only escalate bit by bit, so always keep your guard up and nip everything in the bud.”
Or maybe Kubrick again is distant, and simply captured accurately that feeling after trauma: no ability to process what just happened, a kind of disbelieving silence, and an inclination towards perpetual hyper-vigilance.
I dunno, lol. Regardless, I really appreciated your video essay, especially regarding the different on-set environments. Subbed immediately, thanks for the upload!
This video is great but why is your voice so velvety smooth ????
Ammmmmmmmannnnnnnnnnndaaaaaaaaaaaaa ❤🧡💛
Smooth like Blue Velvet
I've left effectively the same comment before but when I saw this thumbnail I SHRIEKED
It's ironic that "Lolita" is one of David Lynch's favourite movies.
Oh my, imagine a fight between Stanley Kubrick and Klaus Kinski. A director who demands compliance, an actor who doesn't believe a director should tell actors what to do... An unstoppable force versus and unmoving object.
As a 'survivor' of a violent, abusive alcoholic father, the film is disturbingly accurate in it's portrayal of the family dynamics. The father who seems charming and respectable to the outside world, but at home arrogant and dangerous even sober, the weaselly, passive, excuse-making mother, and the weird, inward-looking kid. Yea, I'm the weird, inward-looking kid.
You have no idea how much I love Lynch’s daily weather reports. They are legit the best part of my day lol
I'm losing my mind at how apt the geometric backgrounds are for each director
Fun fact: Kubrick was *_heavily_* involved in the dubbing and subbing of his films despite (AFAWK) being a monolingual. Dude had his films translated into different languages and then back-translated to make sure they got it right.
I spent much of last year writing an 18,000-wd dissertation on the translation of _A Clockwork Orange_ into Italian. That shit fucking _sticks_ .
My wonderful partner alerted me to this video and I got war flashbacks in the process of watching. Good vid, though, I genuinely enjoyed it.
Lynch has commented many times that Lolita was one of his top 3 all time films
And?
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormickThe video above seem to suggest that Kubrick somehow endorsed the behaviour of the James Mason character, which is plain bullshit! If it had, I doubt Lynch, or anyone, would have liked it. And it would've been a very different film.
Jack recognizing Grady is possibly explained in deleted scenes where Jack finds a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about the hotel's history. You can actually see the scrapbook sitting on a table in several shots, but it's never addressed upon in the final film.
I do like the intereptation that he was lying about not knowing about the murders though.
"One does not have to have been Martha to understand the need to save Martha." - The Saving Martha Method
Loved this video. I will say that with all the (absolutely right) shots taken at Kubrick’s Lolita, it’s funny then that Lynch’s favourite Kubrick film is Lolita.
Considering how much of Lynch’s body of work is dedicated to stylized dissections of patriarchal violence, I’d say that perhaps his enjoyment of the film might not be an uncritical one.
Well, at least most men in Lolita are scummy dirtbags and groomers... My personal impression of the film was that Lolita was exploited from a young age by those men, indirectly at first (like she was mad about Quilty, a sick fuck, before he started to groom her).
And the only kind, naive and sincere person is Lolita's mom.
I don't know shit about the production of the movie, and the choice to portray Lolita as a perverted, manipulative psychopath raises some questions about the dynamics of grooming in real life and is kinda victim-blamey.
But that was in the source material from the start, it's in the Nabokov writing.
I've read Lolita 3 times in different periods of my life, and it's still hard for me to say what Nabokov actually meant. The whole narrative is the Humbert Humbert's point of view, so we cannot really say if this portrayal of Lolita is accurate or just the rationalizations his mind makes to excuse his grooming.
What's interesting, Lolita's mom was portrayed by him as this disgusting, hysterical, noisy and clingy old hag, and in the film she's... Kinda nice?..
I guess I just want to say that Lolita's not that simple. Although I'd be happy to learn more and change my view. I personally enjoyed the movie and the book, they are quite complex
Anyone who has ever seen Shelley Duvall in the Twilight Zone episode "Saucer Of Loneliness" knows what a great actress she is. As much as I like Kubrick's films, I think his treatment of Shelley was inexcusable. She brings a certain unique and quirky energy, and if that's not what Kubrick wanted for the character of Wendy, he should have simply replaced Shelley with another actress, and spared her all the trauma. If she wasn't right for the part, why did Kubrick cast her in the first place?
I read somewhere that the studio (WB) insisted on casting Shelley Duvall, and Kubrick had no choice. But that doesn't sound like Kubrick, meekly going along with whatever the studio demands. I've also heard plenty of stories about Kubrick telling the studio what to do and insisting they meet HIS demands. It seems to me that if Kubrick told WB "she's not right for the part and I won't work with her," they would have let Stanley choose a different actress. My 2 cents.
Everything I hear someone saying "admiting it is the first step"
I would always say, "what use is a first step if you have no interest in taking the 2nd step?"
Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me deals with similar topics, and is by far one of the most uncomfortably brutal films I've seen, despite containing no shortage of Lynch's typical wackadoo dream-logic directorial decisions. If you ever follow this up for whatever reason, I'd love to hear your take on that. Great job!
I totally agree!
I will forever be soooo angry at all the people who told me Fire Walk With Me was bad because it meant I didn't end up seeing it until a few years ago and it is hands down my favorite Lynch movie and I wasted so many years without it lol. Absolutely insane that he got literally booed out of Cannes for that movie.
The Fire Walk With Me backlash is so fascinating because Twin Peaks fans complained it was too dark and not funny/quirky enough like the show was.Well no shit it wasn't funny! It's about a teenaged girl being raped and murdered by her own father!
@@wweltz That reaction is somewhat understandable given Lynch's penchant for subverting expectations to the nth degree; especially when there is a large public following that isn't used to being challenged on that level. Personally I love this about Lynch; his refusal to be predictable and willingness to experiment with high-concept ideas is a joy to me. And yes Fire Walk With Me is unforgettable.
Watching Wendy try and explain away Jack's abuse of Danny... _chilling_
Considering these are 2 of the greatest feature film directors in living memory, and probably of all time, I would say the work speaks for itself, and those performances, however elicited speaks for themselves. As far Kubrick, the man was a perfectionist who would do a huge amount of takes to make sure everything was right...and there is a lot going on in a shot besides acting. I could see how somebody like Duvall, who had preexisting psychological issues and was in such an intense role in such an intense film would have large difficulties performing shot after shot after shot. If he had lived to see Duval's decline and current state I wouldn't be surprised if Kubrick would regret both her casting and treatment on set. As far as Lynch, the man is so experimental and guided in the moment that it is almost like working on the edge of a knife or a swaying tightrope...and that type of avant-garde work, while ideally sought after by many many actors, is not for every actor. To be as vulnerable as good acting requires, especially when scenes requiring sexual tones are involved is hard...but when the structure is so loose I could see why some actresses may not feel as supported as they usually would. But again, most actors and actresses would probably give almost anything to be involved in actual ART as opposed to movie-making...but its not for everyone, no matter how much they may think the want it. This isn't "Showgirls" after all...
I was very fortunate to meet Patricia Arquette and ask her about how she mentally prepared for Lost Highway and how she approached the characters as an actress. The lady told me a lot of intresting things. She's an awesome actress.
This was excellent-- absolutely excellent. I have a love-hate relationship with Kubrick and Lynch's films. The Shining is one of my favorite horror films but I detest Duvall's treatment. I'm definitely going to re-watch this.
"The lady told me a lot of intresting things" Can you pass sme of them on?
Dorian, here's what she said:
"So they were definitely interesting roles and the thing about René is that she's afraid of her husband. She's trying to divorce him but gently. She's like, 'Okay I want to leave you. But I don't want to hurt you. That's not what I want; I just don't feel safe with you anymore.' And one thing that definitely influenced David was the OJ trial going on at the time. Then it dawned on me-- because the whole story is from her husband's point of view, the way both women are depicted is filtered through a misogynist's mind. So I had to ask myself, 'How would a misogynist interpret these women's actions?' I decided to play them like classic bad women. I asked myself, 'Who are the oldest bad women?' and I chose Salome and Delilah." My father asked her which was which. She no longer remembers. I tried to figure it out myself but it could go either way.
@@justwaiting5744 thank you so much, i was expecting something a little more brief, but you took the time to give a comprehensive answer.
@@dorianleakey Hahahaha I thought the same thing when she answered me.
@@justwaiting5744 Yes, the movie is from the perspective of the husband going through a fugue state; he cannot reconcile the fact he murdered his wife, so he 'becomes' different man, literally. Buy his fantasy soon deteriorates.... It's actually a brilliant film.
First time I saw the Shining, I didn't know anything about the interpretations of the film. I just saw it as, the hotel is just an outlet for your own madness. That and the acting before they get to the hotel. I don't know how Shelley Duvall managed it (probably abuse from Kubrick) but her expression immediately told me he husband was abusive. I didn't understand much else of the film's imagery but one fact was always clear : Jack Torrance was always an abusive husband and father. The hotel just stripped away the act. Whether it was loneliness or an evil force, I don't know.
Thank you! You are fast becoming one of my favorite producers of film analysis and I get so excited when a new video is released.
Really great video and a super compelling take on the artist, their art, and their humanity. I remember reading an article that made a similar comparison between John Lennon's Beatles song, "All You Need is Love", and Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails song "Love is Not Enough." One was written with an idealistic view of the world with the belief that love will solve all of humanities woes, while the other implies that relying on such idealism is to ignore just how complex we are as people, and that it could only result in more suffering. Of the two songwriters, it's the man who beat both his wives, essentially abandoned one of his children, and seems to be well documented as generally angry and abusive person who also happened to be the idealist who could sing to the world that "all you need is love." Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails on the other hand is known for being far from positive and uplifting music, often dark, cynical, depressing and at times downright nihilistic, and he had a troubled start to his career with drug abuse and self-destructive behaviours that lead him to the brink of suicide. But he grew up, got sober, found someone he loves and started a family with them, and though he's still doing his art, he's stepped back from the wild rock n roll life, and has spoken openly about his wanting to be a supportive and present father and husband.
This video reminded me of that article to a degree.
Another thing for anyone who might like a similar kind of deep dive into a great and classic horror film from a terrible human being, there's an episode of April Wolfe's podcast "Switchblade Sisters" where her and writer Jessie Nickson-Lopez do a deep dive into "Rosemary's Baby". April Wolfe's research into the film's production and specifically how Roman Polanski was always a terrible person and how that's reflected in the film is really fascinating. His relationship on set with Mia Farrow is not too dissimilar to Kubrick's with Duvall - except that Polanski is just endlessly creepy, whereas Kubrick just seems to be that classic idea of a "true artist" (read: asshole)
David Lynch isn't just a genius director, he's also a genuinely good person.
The magical 80's when you can talk to your doctor while smoking a cigarette.
OMG SEMPIE NOTICED ME!
This makes me love David Lynch and all his weirdness even more.
Maggie, this video was incredible. You're killing it and I hope you never stop!
Thank you for going in to Kubrick's treatment of women, the discussion of his films is almost always cuts out how he treated his actors and how he violently abused his actresses. Shelly Duval should never have gone through what she did for his "vision." It's possible to make art without traumatizing others.
@Arthur Frayn a hahaha haha. Watch the video and find out. Because while the answet is partly everyone he came across he really had it in for women. Maggie covers it well. In this situation your attitude is the problem. You can admit a smart man is a monster. I get its hard. First cishet dude i had this journey with was my late dad. Smart cishet white dudes are often monsters as we live in a society tbat lets them get away with it. FUN SHINING FACT #87 JACK NICHOLSON OWNED THE SWIMMING POOL ROMAN PLANSKI RAPED A CHILD IN 💙 maybe just maybr hollywood is rampant in the abuse of women? Maybe just maybe your fav is a sack of shit. Kill your heroes. You'll be better off. Lol. Who. Thats rich.
"we live in a society"
@@MrWane1 societal forces shape people yeah. Im actualky miffed the surface snapping dude bros make removes thr fact that yes the responsibility for shit like this does also fall on the societies we build and maintain
@Arthur Frayn impressive typing for a sea lion
“Violently abused”? Tf? And you said actresses, who are you even talking about here?
The relief to know that Lynch isn’t a complete shitbag is overwhelming. I enjoy so much of his work. Although I’ll admit to finding Eraserhead difficult to watch. Like, the sound design made me so anxious that I turned it off twenty minutes in.
Eraserhead is one of the few movies I genuinely never want to watch again. One of those "a thousand showers won't make me feel clean" movies. At the same time, I find it kind of fascinating that Lynch can produce such utterly bleak and inhuman works, yet come off as a decent human being whenever he's being looked at directly.
@@jasonblalock4429 And Eraserhead was praised by Kubrick.
The ending is something else. Hard watch, but worth it
@@jasonblalock4429 Honestly, it feels like some people who produce dark/bleak/fucked up/inhuman work do it to purge those thoughts from their mind/thoughts so only the good is left in their daily life for the people around them. Seems like Lynch is one of those people, from everything I've heard about him.
What’s wrong with Eraserhead? I never watched it.
I am happy to be a patron. Maggie, once again, your quality is consistently great and you never disappoint. I have no doubt whatever videos you do next will be excellent.
Lost Highway is the best movie ever made about OJ Simpson.
Man. It's like that.
Man, Bill Pullman is WEIRD casting for Simpson! JK, I agree with you completely.
the main plot was literally based on that
I guess that would make Balthazar Getty Arron Hernandez then? Seriously though, that is an awesome take.
"Kubrick maintained a psychological advantage over Shelley Duvall by making her feel she wasn't giving him what he wanted."
This sounds like something out of a PUA manual
I agree with everything in the first 80% of the video (especially that Lynch's directing style is infinitely more preferable to Kubrick's) but I've never gotten the sense that you're supposed to sympathize with or take joy in what Jack is doing. The man is clearly insane, how anyone wouldn't be rooting for Wendy and Danny is beyond me. The movie trusts that the viewer will catch onto the that, regardless of how "charming" Jack can be.
This was a delight. These are two of my favorites and this was so insightful. Thank you!
Last time I heard, the actor who played Danny teaches at my local community college and gets upset when people bring up The Shining and tbh I get it.
Not because of trauma or any dumb shit like that
In this interview from 2019 he doesn't seem to have any negative memories about the film though.. czcams.com/video/oRCUDeJPzoo/video.html
Sorry Roger- or anyone who has not heard Lynch explain himself where he got the idea for the " he put his disease inside me" scene from blue velvet. When Lynch and his brother where quite young, 10-12yrs old, they were walking back home on a street where they lived, early evening but still daylight. They both witnessed a woman approaching them on the sidewalk, middle aged, who was completely nude, and who then proceeded to slowly walk right by them in a zombified kind of trance, ignoring them completely. And Lynch then said basically that ud think to young boys who would normally be totally keen on getting an eye full, of an attractive naked lady right? Yeah well he said no, there was none of that. He said he and his brother both without speaking a word between them burst into tears and ran straight home fast as they could to their mother. He said we just knew, without really understanding...we knew it was something very bad, something terrible. Unreal and genius and also suddenly very tender and sincere when u realize it was literally Lynch wanting to expose people to something he was actually exposed to himself as a child, the only thing I can say for Roger's reaction Is that was exactly what Lynch wanted u to feel...upset. no sane person would want to see a woman so brutally victimized for mere shock value. And just knowing that kind of thing can and does occur is hard enough to stomach. but that's why being forced to see it isn't an exploitation, it's a reminder that sometimes it walks right up in your face in broad daylight.
"Isn't is weird that the the society we built is like this for us?" (While patting on their backs for being so smart and sophisticated because they can appreciate a brilliant movie)
Replace the word brilliant with "meh" and you've got yourself a Todd Phillips's Joker right there
Damn, I first saw it this weekend. And 'Meh' is what I got out of it. 6/10 because I found is visually quite beautiful, and Joaquin Phoenix's physicality in his acting was pretty solid. But none of it connected with me emotionally.
I'll throw my hat in this ring: Joker was hollow. It was the "I'm 12 and this is deep" movie of its year.
Joker was as deep as what a comic book movie about the Joker can be.
@ I dunno, I think you can make a complex movie about the Joker. It definitely wouldn't be an "origin" story and you'd probably have to get David Lynch on board, but it's possible.
Sorry, but JOKER was far, far from meh
The party scene in Highway when a pale hairless guy comes up, telling Bill Pullman "I'm at your house right now, why don't you call me...?" is legit one of the scariest things I've seen in a movie, and perfectly captures the logic inside dreams. Just a masterpiece.
It's hard to imagine anyone watching The Shining and not seeing that Jack was always crazy.
Maybe viewers at the time of the original release were more familiar with the novel, and it rubbed off on their perception of the film? Jack's character is very different in it, at the beginning he's remorseful about his abusive and irresponsible behavior and has made genuine progress in improving. He's a fairly sympathetic everyman archetype, the description that the early reviewers gave of the Torrence family in the film is pretty close to how they're portrayed in the outset of the book. The horror comes from how the hotel chips away at Jack's sanity and urges him to give in to his worst impulses until he's backslid on all his progress, and the reader is left wondering if the Torrence family may have gone on to have a happy life together if they'd just been somewhere else that winter instead.
The film has a rather bizarre take on Jack's character, in that he appears quite insane and full of contempt for Wendy and Danny from the get-go, and he also comes off as much more intentionally malicious. Since the film has become so well-known and iconic, it's the first thing that people think of _now_ when they think of "The Shining" while the book has been overshadowed, but prior to the film's release, the book was a fairly popular breakout hit for Stephen King. I'm guessing that that's where some of the weirdness of the early audience reaction comes from.
Ofc the character of Fred is confused and angry once he achieves the goal of killing his wife. Patriarchy f*cks men up. I think that's the read there. None of this male violence (real or fictional) ever made any of the dudes who did it any happier, that's the kicker in all this. Which brings me to the question of 'what is Kubrick trying to say about the cyclical system of patriarchal violence', and so far as I have a coherent opinion its this: When the mania subsides and the reality of the situation hits home the violence these men do just leaves them even more cold, alone, isolated and impotent - as the ending of the shining demonstrates in a brutally physical way - and perhaps Kubrick left more of himself in that statement that he might care to admit.
Was happiness ever the goal?
You know what’s weird? Growing up I was told by multiple people that I should never see blue velvet for a myriad of reasons, but people always described the shining as “scary, but great”. My dad even said that Kubrick was a genius *specifically* for hiring for someone, who in his mind, could play such a “shrill” and “unlikable” woman as well as Shelley Duvall. (aka she was asking to be mistreated and ultimately unalived bc she looked and acted vaguely like my mom).
The thing about Jack having to know about the murders beforehand because he said he saw his picture in the paper blew my mind. I had never thought about that and what that implies