In The Shining film, we have none of this discussed, although the scrapbook is seen open beside Jack several times while he’s writing. We have so much of the backstory explained in this deleted scene. And it’s probably for that very reason Kubrick decided to leave it out of the movie, to blur fact and fiction further and to heighten the mystery and intrigue. Jack the story writer and Jack the character in the story (and Jack the actor!) all get mashed together into a composite figure. And the only thing this composite character in the movie writes is that one sentence again and again. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Is Kubrick, for instance, saying that Jack’s story will turn out to be as worthless as this insane drivel? I believe we have to think about Stephen King’s source novel for the movie as well. Several researchers have laid out convincing arguments that Kubrick reversed much of King’s plot, or turned it on its head (much to the chagrin of King, they add). Let’s return to the horse’s mouth and see what Kubrick has to say about the source novel:
With “The Shining,” the problem was to extract the essential plot and to re-invent the sections of the story that were weak. The characters needed to be developed a bit differently than they were in the novel. It is in the pruning down phase that the undoing of great novels usually occurs because so much of what is good about them has to do with the fineness of the writing, the insight of the author and often the density of the story. But The Shining was a different matter. Its virtues lay almost entirely in the plot, and it didn’t prove to be very much of a problem to adapt it into the screenplay form.
So Kubrick’s opinion of the source novel is that it contains a solid plot but is not great fiction per se. And this plot provided the basis for the director’s re-invention, turning its weaknesses into strengths within the movie. Or that was the idea. So colors were re-invented and inverted, for example. In the movie we have Jack driving a yellow Volkswagen Beetle and playing with a yellow ball in the Colorado Lounge while attempting to think of ideas for his story. In King’s novel, both of these were red. Inversely, the novel’s yellow snowmobile (or sno-cat) becomes red in the film. As Danny and Wendy arrive at the Overlook in the yellow VW near the film’s beginning, they drive away from it at the end in this red snowmobile. Red and yellow have switched places as Alpha and Omega.
And what of the crushed *red* Volkswagen in the film, seen by Halloran as he returns to the snow bound Overlook Hotel from hot, sunny Florida? Here’s what blogger Jonny53 has to say:
http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2008/06/crushed-red-vw.html
Turned on its head indeed!
Sunklands 