strap on your snow shoes and take a walk with us through the uncanny valley. This week on Kingme, 110 empty hotel rooms filled with horror. We're talking the shining? Kingme!
Kingme! Kingme! Kingme! Kingme!
Welcome to Kingme, the unofficial Stephen King movie podcast, the official podcast of Kingme. I feel like we should do a reset for a new year, right? No, yeah. It's the official podcast of Kingme, it's the official podcast of Plosive Peas.
And it's the official podcast of, I almost said of remakes, but we already established that it's on a Facebook page. It's official in that respect. Right. So, it's the official podcast of cutting your losses.
Welcome to Kingme, I'm Dangg, I already. I'm Robby Vaughn. Back for another week. Yeah.
And it's a weird week. It's a weird one. Not like for, we're recording this in advance, so it could be like nationally a weird week, so I don't want to accidentally like a major tragedy happens and I'm like, that's weird, right? So, it's a weird week on the show.
Yeah. Because we are, this episode is going to be about the shining. Not that one. Not that one.
1997's the shining, the TV mini series. Right. None of the familiar faces. It's so bizarre.
Yeah. Starring Rebecca DeMornay. Starring Steven Weber. Starring Courtland Reed.
Whose IMDB picture is like two years after this movie was made and it's very funny. He's wearing like little Morpheus sunglasses. He's got like the front of his hair spiked up like you did back then. And he sucks.
He's just, he's a real drag. So we'll get into all that. Yeah. Directed by.
Oh man. Mick Yaris. Hello Mick. Back at it.
Hello Mick. How have you been? He did the last week. Yeah he did.
The one with the hands. I will say this is better than that was. Yeah. If you're wondering if anything could be worse than Quicksilver highway.
So far no. Yeah. So far no. I'm just kidding.
That wasn't the worst. The worst was definitely sometimes they come back again. I think that was the worst movie we watched. It's so hard to tell the lines blur.
Um, player lines. King Troops. King. King.
Welcome to King me. Oh wait guys we have a new, um, a new reveal. Oh right. I want to rate and review the show.
We encourage you to do that because it helps people find the show without, you know, trying that hard. If you want to read it. Yeah. This one is from VP Baker and it's titled It is Just Fine.
And the body of it says I don't mind it. Not bad. Five star. Not bad.
Okay. Hey you can't ask for much more than that. I have to assume that it's written by Stephen King. The actual, the man.
Yeah. Well VP Baker I think it's pretty, it's an anagram of Stephen King. Right. Yeah.
He shuffled his letters around. Right. You can probably squeak out of Stephen King. Yeah.
So thanks for that VP Baker. And if you would like us to read your review of the show, leave it. Yeah. And then we will five star review.
We'll fucking read it. Yeah man. If you leave it as Stephen King, then it tricks people into thinking that Stephen King is a huge fan of the show. Yeah.
Which as far as I know he's not yet. Not yet. Stephen. Steve.
Can I call you Steve? No. Come on. That's why Mr.
King. Yeah. Um, guys leave a review five stars and we'll read on the podcast. Um, donate to our Patreon.
And we'll give you a shout out and before we say five or more, yeah, five or more. You get bonus content bonus. Hey now, bonus. Hey now, you're an all star.
That's right. Well, I came here. I had a pasta dinner before I came here. Oh, that makes it sound like it was a fundraiser.
We're at a night's of Columbus Hall. I had a spaghetti dinner. Yeah. For spaghetti.
It was the mothers against drunk driving annual spaghetti dinner to raise money for the PTA. What? Yeah. Yeah.
It's like this laundering operation. Actually gets funneled back to conversion therapy. Okay. Yeah.
So maybe don't ever donate money to anyone. I don't mean that. Also, if you donate money to Planned Parenthood, let us know and we'll report you to the mind, believe to the mind. That's a thought crime and we will report you.
Yeah. So we're talking, we're talking about the shining from 1997 directed by Mick Harris. Okay. So if you, um, if you, if you, if you would like to call me, baby, just go ahead now.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did. We did.
A couple of Porky Pigs in here. Uh oh. Early, very early on in the shows, history, our show that we watched the shining, Stanley Kubrick's 1980 shining. Was it a 1980 shining?
I think so. That was a good year for shining, in my opinion, as far as I'm concerned. The best one arguably, as we now know. Yes.
And if you've heard that episode, you've heard us discuss how Stephen King did not like that movie. Right. He thought it was a failure as an adaptation to the novel. He thought it was so unfaithful that it was like not even, not even funny, bro.
He hated it so much. He hated it so much. And, uh, you know, we've disputed the grounds on which he hates it. And I think like, and so he, he waited like 20 years.
Yeah. And then was like, all right, everyone forgot about Stanley Kubrick's shining. My time has come. Do you think that he was, he, he was waiting for people to forget about it?
Like, I mean, he couldn't do it like five years later. Well, right. That would have seemed incredibly petty. Sure.
But do you think like, so it comes out of 1980, everybody loves it. And it just like, it kind of continues to grow, like the popularity of it. And like, where you don't? Irish?
The popularity of popularity. Oh, the popularity of it. It ends up on like, you know, Turner Classic movies and top 100. Like it's on every top 100.
Good movies, horror movies, whatever, just everything. It's always on. Meanwhile, Stephen King is like, just self-destructing in Maine, quite caught in Calumet, whatever he can. Right.
You know, do you think he was just like, I'll wait for this to go away. And then 15 years later, he's like, this thing is not going away. I'm taking the bull by the horns. I'm doing it myself.
Taking the hedge bull by the horns. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't know.
I can wait probably 15 years before I can get away with this. And I don't think it was a matter. He also had the juice to do it in 97. Like, he had enough, I guess.
Right. Like, I mean, and Shawy Demps should come out not too long before that. And the reason I mentioned is because Frank Derabant is an extra. Yeah.
And he was on set to tell Stephen King that he would direct the Green Mile. Oh. That's why he was there. And he was coerced into being an extra.
That's awesome. Yeah. So just to give you a sense of where Stephen King is in his career, he's right between the Shaw Shank redemption and the Green Mile. Yeah.
The stand had come out in 94 also, a very popular mini series. So it's sort. I guess it made sense to people to do this. Give it another one's over.
And honestly, it's pretty different. Yeah, it is different enough where this is not. I think it justifies its own existence. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know. I think it does. I think just barely.
But I think it does. It eeks it out. Yeah, sure. Because like, OK, so I accidentally, the file is in three parts because it's a three part miniseries.
I accidentally queued up the third part first, which if you'll remember drops you into Danny about to be attacked by the hedge monsters. And Wendy going, Danny! And then he goes, hi mom! And that was so jarring.
Like, blonde bombshell Wendy fucking Rebecca de Morne Wendy. Yeah. And then like this chubby cheek butt tooth loudmouth kid. Hi mom, this snow's real good for packing right now, man.
Oh boy. And then Stephen Weber also runs out. And he's just like, he's been like a smiley half charming, half crazy. Yeah.
Whereas like Jack Nicholson is just like, you wouldn't not, I would not let him look over my hotel. He's a lunatic. Like on a good day, Jack Nicholson looks like the devil. Yes.
Like on his best day. Yeah. He looks like the devil. Even where's like sunglasses in inappropriate times?
Like I imagine the devil does. Because he's so cool. I saw like, there was just, he, I probably said it on this show, but though it was at a red carpet event and people were taking pictures of him and he didn't want it. So he told the photographer if he didn't stop, he was going to push his face through the back of his skull.
If you don't stop taking those pictures. I'm going to put him face through the back of your skull. I think we have talked about that because we were discussing how it's not punch. It's a slow contagious pressure.
Yeah, that's right. Like a hydraulic press. Just slowly mushing your face backwards. That was probably a year ago that we talked about.
Oh, what a year. Here we are. Nothing is fucking waiting for Gidome. Same stupid story.
Welcome to waiting for Gidome. Okay. We record this in a room that's completely empty except for one tree. One baron tree.
So that is not where the movie starts. The movie starts in the boiler room with with John Jack Torrance and fucking our first King alum Pat Hingle, that old Hingle McKringleman. That old man who's showing him with the boiler and telling him he's got a very, very important. He tells Jack Torrance, you got to release the pressure on this boiler every night.
If you don't, you're going to blow the whole hotel sky high. And then they look and he says sky high and then they look into the camera and they both say sky high. Yeah. So check offs boiler.
But Pat Hingle, King alum, he was in maximum overdrive. Who was he in maximum overdrive? He was the bad boss that was like, he wouldn't pay. I thought the bad boss was a truck.
He wouldn't pay Amelia. He was the guy who had a full military arsenal. He whips out a bazooka out of nowhere. He's the guy who willy-nilly through a corpse in his basement.
Yeah. And he was fucking that wife. Or wife, waitress fucking that wife. She was married.
I don't know. Probably. Very normative of you. Okay.
All right. So we opened with some boiler talk. But that's the scene like, instead of Jack Nicholson being going on a tour of this hotel. It's so weird because there's a specific moment where they diverge from the movie in that way.
Like they articulate it. Like Pat Hingle is like, aren't you two Melvin Van Peebles? Aren't you going to show them the kitchen? That's your territory.
He goes, no, you do it. I'm going outside. Which is like weird. It seems spiteful to me to just skip that part.
Yeah. This movie also has Melvin Van Peebles as Richard Hollerin. Dick Hollerin, yeah. You might remember Melvin Van Peebles as Sweetback from his movie, Sweet Sweet Badass.
What's happening? What's this? Hold on. Sweet Badass.
Sweet Badass song. Sorry. Sweet, Sweetback's Badass song. You must have had more spaghetti dinner than I did.
It's a black exploitation film from 1971 that he wrote, directed, and starred in. He has sex with a woman on screen in that movie. Real sex, unsimulated. Like penetrative.
Yeah. Like the old in out and out. That's right. Wow.
That's pretty cool. P right in the L. Maybe. Maybe A.
Is that the plural? Maybe I. So he's in this. Yeah.
Yeah. So there we have also. First scene in Boileroom. Elliot Gould.
Oh, right. Elliot Gould. Who, he was a bit stiff in this, I must say. Yeah.
That was like his character. But also it seems like they are feeding him his lines. Yeah, it's weird. Elliot Gould was part of that whole fucking like 60s, late 60s, 70s.
The odd turn. Yeah. He was in MASH and where he's the hard-boiled detective. What the fuck is that?
The long goodbye. Oh. Like I thought he was considered a cool guy. Cool guy.
Elliot Gould. And I don't know what happened, but he's just like, he's sort of just a dork. A pain in the ass. Yeah.
Yeah. Like he's got like a Ghostbusters EPA vibe. Yeah. Like he's that kind of just like a rump about everything.
Which I kind of appreciated because like no one should trust Jack Torrance. Right. He's right to be very, very skeptical of him. Although like I guess the point in the shining is like yeah this whole fucking building is evil.
So of course we're just gonna welcome you in. But they have a conversation outside the hotel where Elliot Gould is like I don't like you. I don't think you're gonna do a good job here. You got fired from teaching because you hit a kid which they flash back to this- Oh my gosh.
This guy. Oh my gosh. And he pins him to the ground and like knees on his shoulders. It's like, oh God.
Yeah. Yeah. And so Elliot Gould's like I don't think you're gonna do a good job. I forget exactly how we got the job.
I think it was like a recommendation for me. Yeah. It's something. Yeah it's Wendy says who it is.
But he's like I'm only doing this guy. He's a favorite to this other guy. And if you fuck this up then you're gonna be out on your ass. I don't even know what buddy.
But also like he's got I don't know. This is the hotel where last year a guy murdered his family already. This already happened. So to be like we have certain expectations here.
We hold a standard to our in-keeper. I could have just none of you to be alive. Do whatever you gotta do to make that happen. What do you think about oh this is also where they take the time to explain in some detail the rules of Denver croquet and the machinations of it.
All you need to do is be like yes bigger croquet. That's it. They talk about the history of it and how it's played and how it's harder because the balls are bigger. It's deceptively challenging I believe he says.
All they need to do is be like it's big or it could have been regular croquet. They could have been like oh we love croquet here. Well you do some damage with a regular croquet mallet. Yeah they could have but I don't know.
But instead it had to be a cartoon hammer. Yeah it just sort of like washed over me. I was just like I know that in the book we won't talk about. No we're never gonna talk about it.
It's a croquet mallet not an axe. Yes. Which is less threatening to me I feel like. Yes and I feel like that's why Stephen King would like it more.
Because his whole thing is like you know taking the everyday and making it. It's with the sea. Everyday croquet. Everyday croquet.
Everyday big old croquet. Guys welcome to everyday croquet. Yes this is why Stephen King and Dr. Sleep the sequel to this.
The murder weapon is always a shuttle cock. Just likes taking backyard games. Making them murder. So we're introduced to their croquet.
We also get introduced to Wendy and Danny. They're back home while Jack is on his little meeting there. I hated that whole thing. So she's painting a bowl of fruit.
Which is funny because at the end of the movie just to jump ahead. Like in the film Wendy and Danny live. And because they established at the beginning that she's painting a bowl of fruit. At the end of the movie she owns an art gallery.
Oh really? Yeah I did not do that. No that's what her and Dick. He like it's some like off-handed thing where she's like yeah and I opened an art gallery.
I did love painting bowls of fruit so I thought why not open an art gallery. It's a whole gallery with just that one painting. So she's doing that and Danny comes in and he's like what you doing? What you painting?
Yeah. Now this kid is so annoying. He's so disgusting. He has a kid.
I hate a kid. He's ten years old at this point in his life. He's got a mouth that won't shut. His natural resting mouth is almost wide open.
He's got those big old front teeth. Yeah they're keeping his upper lip. The bottom lip is straight across and the upper lip is like an upside down U. It's not quite a cleft palate.
But it hooks up. For sure. Being hooked on that. The curtain is drawn.
So he always sounds like he just drank the biggest glass of milk. Oh. It's just so flummy. He just wrote.
I just imagine it just going in his mouth and then he just washes right out because he can't close his mouth. He keeps also vacillating back and forth between being a dumb little kid who doesn't understand anything. But then she takes him to the doctor and he's like, oh my god this is the smartest boy. He's supposed to be very sensitive and intuitive.
Then in certain moments the hedge monsters are sneaking up on him and he has no idea. He has the shining. And he wasn't sensing those hedge monsters. No no he was not shining the hedge.
Well I'm not shining the hedge. He is our horticulture podcast. There's weird bits in here. He does go to the doctor.
And the doctor is like, he's fine. He's very smart. That's probably why he wants to learn how to read. And he said that line.
I was like, kids like 10. He wants to read because everybody else can read. Why haven't they taught him this? He can't read.
He can't be a teacher and a writer. He can't read to the point where Tony who, holy shit. There's a lot going on. I don't want to spend too much time going through the plot points of the shining because you don't know them go back and listen to the other episode because we do go through it.
So Tony in the original though, he's portrayed as Danny like bending his index finger and doing that weird voice. Right. The red round voice. In this one, he's like a Dawson's Creek looking motherfucker.
He's wearing one of those oversized button down t-shirts that's open. Yeah. Not t-shirts. And he's got those very round glasses on.
Like the John Lennon. Yeah. And he's got that middle parted blonde overgrown sort of like book. Oh yeah, but it's not so it's like pushback.
Yeah. It's weird. I think Stephen Webber actually has the same haircut. But he's a, his character is played by, what's the kid's name?
Will Horneth from The Sandlot among other things, which also starred Patrick Renah, who was Ham, who was also in sometimes they come back again. He was the one who, oh no, wait, no, the other kid wanted to fuck his sister. He was the one who was like, you ever, you like your sister's canoobies? Yeah.
That's right. Yeah. He's also in, um, son in law, starring, holy sure. Hey buddy.
That's in that movie. He just started, he drops his older sister off at college and just starts going through her roommates underwear. Yeah. Well, she's out of the room.
Let's go. Yeah. What a guy. Hey buddy.
Buddy. Buddy. Just creeping through these patties, buddy. Oh, this is, this is all gonna be a short thing.
I'm gonna say the longshoreman. That is good. I like yours more. What are we doing?
No, what are we doing? So, so, okay, right. So Tony is portrayed by this, um, like teenage. Yes.
So, um, I think the way I came up was that Danny is so illiterate that at one point, Tony has to change like a pedestrian crossing sign to just be a skull and crossbones. So that Danny understands what's going on. Yeah. Like, do you see?
Do you see? Yeah. Yeah. They're on their way, um, to the hotel, the whole family.
And, right, he does that thing. And he's like, you gotta stay away from the hotel, Doc. And the kids like, I can't do it. I can't do anything.
I'm only 10. I'm just a little boy. Yeah. So little.
So, um, they get to the hotel. And they, this movie, this is the mini series. It's four and a half hours long. It takes at least an hour for an hour and a half before they get to the hotel.
Mm hmm. And that was tough for me. Yeah. I don't, yeah.
Bare minimum exposition is clearly, we learn that's all you need. Right. Is, uh, she was a boy. She was a girl.
Yeah. You don't need to make it anywhere obvious. Mm hmm. But they do get to the hotel after having an oddly familiar conversation about the Donner Party on it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was all like, it's weird the things that make it make it make it make it.
And it, I think, um, I think Steven Weber does a fine job in this. He's trying, there are moments where I'm like, he is just trying not to do Jack Nicholson. Like in his head, it's like this like ridiculous task ahead of him. I'm like, I'm playing this iconic character.
I did appreciate that when he breaks down the door. But he did not say, he did not say here's Johnny. And I did like that. He just went, boom.
Yeah. That was good. That was very good. Um, Rebecca DeMornay, um, I think she gets better as the movie goes on.
I think by the end of it, I liked it. Yeah. Um, really on though, it's a different character. It's like a very different character.
She has, she has needs. She has needs. Oh, she has womanly needs. Yeah.
And, but also like she has expectations for how she should be treated. Yeah. Which is like, you start to understand where's like, why Steven King felt like Stanley Kubrick did not honor the characters. Right.
Cause she's pretty much rewritten. Yes. From how he intended it. And he wrote the scripts for these.
Remembering. He did. Yes. This is very much what he wanted to see.
So they, uh, I wonder if Danny is just the worst. Yeah, he sucks. He sucks. So Beth.
So, uh, yeah, they're Portland. Portland need, um, they get to the hotel. And, uh, what happens? Who cares?
They get to the hotel and, um, everyone's having a lot of fun. Yeah. We're really, really. And people so much fun.
I think van people says something like, oh, he's dressed like, uh, like, he's dressed for Havana all the time. Yeah. He's, I haven't my notes here. Van Peebles is a sexual time, Ramisource.
And I think that's pretty accurate. Yes. Yeah. Although we don't, we don't see his apartment, but you have to imagine like, in my mind, it's so much worse than Scott Man's apartment.
Like, that's why they couldn't show it. Mm-hm. Where's that guy named Scott Man? Yeah.
Like, he's got, he's got women like chained up willingly in his apartment. Yeah. Yeah. He's got like a whole, like, like, dondreper with Linda Cartellini.
Yeah. He's going to leave for a couple of days. I'm staying here. If you need anything, don't call for room service.
Yeah. Um, oh, and I'm already like, skipping to the second part. That's fine. That's fine.
It does matter. They have, um, there's a meeting. They're having an alcoholics, an honest meeting. And Mick Garris, he's an alcoholic with fondest for work, right?
That's what he says. I bet he improv that. Yeah. For sure.
He's like, I'm the director of this movie. Yeah. I can do whatever I want. So in the, but not to get too far out of the chronology of things.
I'm trying to think of like things that happen in this, that don't happen in the movie because I feel like that's the conversation we should be having. But like, yeah, no, I'm trying to think if in the first part, what was the case? What's the case? What's the case?
It's supposed to be different. Danny and Doc, or not Danny and Dick have more of a conversation about shining and what shining is. Yeah. It's like, there are words in the film, but this is like a long-ass conversation where Dick gets into like his whole family history and it basically takes Kubrick's movie and expands it out into four and a half hours of exposition.
Yeah. That's like, I don't know. That's the weird thing to me in general about Stephen King is like a horror guy is that he's a world builder and like the challenge of like making horror effective in a world other than the real world. You know what I mean?
Yeah. It's, that's why it hits or it hits really hard or it misses really hard, I think. So like this is, this is somewhere in between. Yeah.
I don't know. Yeah. I think that conversation that Danny is having with Dick, he does try, he does tell Danny to like, give me all you got. Yeah.
And then in his mind, he just sort of like shouts, oh, he dick and cracks his tail light. And also like sends him like stumbling back and I think he gives me nose. Yeah. Yeah.
So that is like, I love that trope of telekinesis and like telepathy. Yeah. It's like nose bleeds if you do it too hard. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It sucks. Don't watch it.
Yeah. It fucking blows. I don't care. Go ahead.
It's just like it's the story. I know absolutely nothing about it. It's a shitty story told very well. Okay.
If that makes sense. There's like, isn't there something to be said for that then? Yes. Okay.
I don't think it's worth your time. Okay. There's like angels are real and they call them angels. Okay.
In the outfield. No, no, no. They're in the basement. Okay.
She gets kidnapped and what does OA stand for? I don't know if they say, okay, it's like, I know the O, I think the O stands for original. She might be the original angel. She might be the first.
Hey buddy. Hey buddy. It's a show. It's stupid and they're like, it's like this whole thing.
They stop at school shooting through the power of dance. That's a spoiler. I should have said spoiler alert. But through the power of dance.
The climax of the season is Phyllis from the office and four kids, four teenagers doing a dance to confuse a school shooter. Is this a comedy? No. No, it's not.
And like the dance is like it's very sort of modern interpretive and this doesn't sound. They're called, they're called movements and the movements have powers and one of which is they bring someone back from the dead. I'm spoiling this whole thing because it's stupid and it doesn't matter. I like, you're telling me this right now and I kind of want to cancel this show.
Because that sounds bad. Yeah. So they're doing the movements. And like each, each movement is like, I don't know.
So the whole thing is like the main characters all have had near-death experiences. And so doing, they've like met their guardian angels and one like each of them are given like a different animal that represents a knowledge. A spirit animal? To eat.
They eat the animals. I know. So each of the movements like reflects that moment from their near-death experience. At one point they all hiss, they go, it's so embarrassing.
Like I've never gotten like, I wish. I wish. No, I like that. He's just a cheek pincher.
This is, this fucking is just douche chills. How many episodes are there? 8. Oh, 8.
I can't, I don't know. Watch it. Watch it. Watch it.
To mawk it. I'd say. I think it deserves. No, that's not fair.
People are allowed to like what they like. People are allowed to like what they like. People are allowed to like what they like. I have to remind myself of this.
But it sucks. And I'm working, I don't know. It's, people are trying to make a thing out of it. Like a stranger things where they're like, it's so good.
Like, and they're wrong. And I need everyone to know. I need to nip this in the butt. Cultural warrior dang.
I'm a baby. So welcome to King. Welcome to King, the official podcast of the OA. What happens next, Dan?
I forget. So there's, yeah. Well, Dick kind of gives Danny his sort of heads up. He's like weird shit happens in the hotel.
It's not real. It's like if you close your eyes and count to 10, it'll go away. It fucks with you. He said it's like pictures in a book.
They can't hurt you. And he's wrong. And Danny's like, oh, like in that book, my dad read me where a guy cuts a woman's head off. Do you remember that?
He's like, it was like Bluebeard the pirate. And he was like, yeah, there was a picture of a man holding a woman's severed head. Is it like that? And Dick's like, oh, yeah.
I'm going to talk to your dad. So yeah, he's like, but if you need anything, just give me a brain hauler and I will come running. So everyone, he leaves. The other guy leaves.
And they make a lot of jokes about one of them dying. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I wonder if you'll be here next winter or come spring or whatever.
Yeah. And Dick is just like, yeah, probably. And he's like, don't die this winter. He's like, OK, I will fucking won't leave me alone.
Yeah. Do you know something I don't? I've hit a bunch of croquet mail. It's throughout this building.
So the family settles in and Jack is going to work on writing his play. This time it's a play. This time it's a play. I'm trying to, I don't know, like what happens in that second part?
Like Jack, we see that hedge animals in Topiary. These hedge animals come to life. Yes. There is no hedge maze in this.
No, no, no, no. So apparently, according to the IMDB trivia, Stanley Kubrick didn't include the hedge animals because he didn't feel like the special effects were good enough at the time. And also, it's dumb. Is that what you're going to say?
It is dumb. It's goofy. I shouldn't say it's dumb. But you know what?
I did like the, because for the most part, like at a certain point, they become CGI and it loses me. But when Jack is like being pursued by them, it's the kind of thing where they only move if you're not looking at them, which I like. I like that. That's a doctor.