The Reader Travels

There’s this spooky ghost hotel resort called the Overlook, high in the Rocky Mountains near Estes Park, Colorado. So maybe it doesn’t physically exist, but it does exist in the minds of many. Like unicorns and Santa Claus and the boogey man, the Overlook Hotel is eternal.

There are two versions of the hotel. One has this incredible hedge labyrinth, a psychological horror of confusion and captivation. The other has a topiary instead, a bunch of big scary hedge animals that will f* you up if you don’t watch out. Boo!

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining was oh-so loosely based on Stephen King’s novel. I’m sure Mr. King was much more comfortable with the TV mini-series version done nearly 20 years later. Like the characters in the book, the mini-series actors were pretty and blond. But Kubrick didn’t go for pretty and blond. He picked Shelley Duvall instead. And of course, Jack Nicholson. How brilliant was that?

It’s not that I hated the book. I just loved the movie. And without the book there would have been no movie. Stanley Kubrick just made a good thing a whole lot better. Great art doesn’t happen in a vaccuum, but it does happen in Colorado.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 4th, 2006 at 12:51 pm and is filed under US and Canada, fantasticalities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.