Sunday, September 5, 2010

A15

It’s not a Ball! The women are all dressed wrong. Mr. Ullman says these people are, “all the best people” and there’s not one woman in a formal ball gown. It’s not a July 4th Ball and these are not rich people!

They’re not standing in a Ball Room in the photo either, they’re standing in a foyer. There are no tables, no chairs and no bandstand like The Overlook’s Gold Room, which is a ball room with a foyer. They’re standing in the foyer of an old theater (a large, vast room in a theater, opera, concert hall, showroom, cinema, etc. adjacent to the auditorium.), and a foyer is also described as a lobby. It’s similar to Radio City’s Entrance Hall. The photo is taken in a lobby and we’ve seen The Overlook’s lobby and foyer and the July 4th photo is obviously not The Overlook’s lobby as it can not be found anywhere in Stanley Kubrick’s Elstree Studio’s set. It’s only The Overlook in the minds of those who wish to not believe their own eyes, and you can’t use it as proof that Jack was there in a previous life.

Stanley Kubrick does say the photo “suggests reincarnation” in his interview with Michel Ciment. but he cleverly doesn’t say where. The photo is obviously not The Overlook.

A14

One of the last things we hear Jack utter at the end of the film is so important. Stanley Kubrick has him singing "California, Here I Come" at the very end of the film (2:18:09) for a reason. It’s a song he knew was written for a “1921” Broadway musical. It’s the correct song for the correct year (July 4th, 1921) just to drive home his point. The photo does not depict any hotel found in Oregon, as a huge California palm tree is dead center in the photo of the lobby Stanley Kubrick chose to show us right after we hear Jack sing that song. The photo and the song go hand in hand. It's California, not Colorado, and that's where Jack Torrance as well as Jack Nicholson are both headed - literally and figuratively.