How'd You Like Some Ice-cream, Doc?
“ The Poster that came out
in Europe, at least in
England, I believe,
before The Movie was released in Europe said,
"The Wave of Terror
that swept across America."
And Kubrick controlled
The Posters very carefully.
Now, it made you do a double take.
I remember seeing it in Europe.
I was the Rome Bureau Chief at the time for ABC News.
And I remember looking at it.
It said,
"The Wave of Terror that
swept across America."
What's he talking about?
And you'd sort of think that
he was talking about
the impact of The Book,
The Shining. Maybe.
The impact of The Movie
that had just opened
over there? Maybe.
It didn't quite fit.
The Wave of Terror
that swept across America
from Portland, Maine,
to Portland, Oregon,
was the genocidal armies and
The White Men with Their Axe
clearing it all and bringing in extractive industries,
among many other
good things as well.
But that was The Wave of Terror that swept across America,
terrifying, of course,
The American Indians.
I went in to see this movie in Leicester Square Movie Theatre, right near Leicester Square
in London.
And I remember it
quite clearly from...
I can even remember
the seats we were sitting in.
If I went back to that theater,
I could point them to you, sort of near the back and over to the left.
From the moment of
the opening astonishing
helicopter shot,
I was terrified.
I had no idea what
was coming.
I remember sort of sitting
on the front edge of my theater seat there
to keep from falling off.
And I remember gripping my belt buckle with my left hand, I think it was...
yes, my left hand, sort of to keep from falling off the edge of the seat
and to try to Control My Terror
as I watched this movie.
I had no idea
what was coming.
I hadn't read The Book.
I had barely seen any of the posters.
And I remember that I was stunned when the movie was over.
We left the theater, went in...
down into our underground car park
to get into the car to leave.
And as we were driving up
out of the car park,
I was sitting in the back left seat.
I was thinking,
“What was that?”
“What was that?”
“What was it?”
“What was it?”
“What was it?”
And I think
my visual imagination looked at that
Calumet baking powder can,
the one right behind Hallorann's head
when he was talking to Danny.
I knew what "calumet" meant.
It meant "peace pipe."
And I thought to myself,
“Peace pipe, Indians —
Oh, my goodness,
they're all over the place
in that movie.”
‘The Loser has to
keep America clean.’
And I suddenly said to my friends,
"That movie was about the genocide
of the American Indians."
And they said,
"What are you talking about?"
And I started explaining it, because I'd noticed the Calumet baking soda can.
In the first... the first time
we seen one, it's
a single baking powder can
straight on.
And you can see the whole word, "Calumet," so there's no duplicity, like the little girls represent later.
This is an honest truth, an honest peace pipe between them.
The other time we see the Calumet baking powder cans is when they're very carefully placed behind Jack Nicholson's head when he's talking to Grady.
‘No need to rub it in, Mr. Grady.
I'll deal with that situation as soon as I get out of here.’
There's about six or seven of them stacked up, and they're all turned different ways,
and you can't read any one
of them completely.
It's... I've always
interpreted those
as being broken, dishonest
peace pipe treaties.
They're not...
These Two Guys,
Grady and Jack,
are not being honest
with each other.
Grady is trying to get Jack
to go Kill His Family
and commit Genocide,
in the larger sense of the movie.
You know, I mean,
Kubrick often,
in many of his movies,
he will end them with a puzzle so that he forces you to go out of the theater saying,
"What was that about?"
And he would put things in the scenes that he knows will be,
among other things, like confirmers when people start to try to figure out what the movie is about.
And we know he took
this kind of care.
There's a photograph in one of the books that actually shows
Kubrick carefully arranging objects on the shelves
in that dry goods room.
I thought afterwards,
"How come I saw this
and a lot of other people didn't?"
And I've thought about it.
It's a combination of factors.
First, I grew up in Chicago
and, therefore,
just north of
The Calumet Harbor
and spent summers up
in the sand dunes of Michigan,
around on the other side
of Lake Michigan.
My Father took me and my sister out to collect little bits of Indian pottery.
I'd already... I'd already covered, at that point in 1980, five years of the Lebanese civil war.
I was, at that point,
covering John Paul II.
I was the Rome Bureau Chief.
And listening to what
he was saying about...
Because he had experienced
The Holocaust at its epicenter
and also other horrors.
And so all of those factors were very much alive in my mind
when we went to see The Shining,
which I just thought was going to be
some kind of horror movie
by this great moviemaker.
And all of those coming together along with the little key,
the Calumet baking soda can,
is why I just happened to tune to it as we were driving up out of that underground parking garage just off Leicester Square.”
“I first saw the movie in 1980
when it first came out and saw it probably two times.
I can say that I remembered
the skier poster.
That is one thing that really stuck with me.
And The Window.
The Window in The Office,
that's another thing
that really stuck with me.
I remember, you know, in the newspapers afterwards,
people being disappointed.
And I remember people that I knew,
yes, in dialogue afterwards,
being disappointed that
it was not more
a horror film.
Well, no Kubrick film's really
just a regular movie.
I understood that from, well, when I was 10 years old and I first saw 2001. I walked away. I thought, "This is a film that's supposed to make me think."
I had my first
religious experience
seeing the film
2001: A Space Odyssey
in 1968.
