The Shining (1980)

[jackinbox]

Originally Posted by thatguamguy

Are we meant to infer that Kubrick knew he was dying, or just that the timing was a remarkable coincidence? I had always thought his death took everybody by surprise.

There's no doubt that his death took everyone by surprise. The timing of the alleged burning does seem odd, but if you think about it, it sort of makes sense. I'm sure Kubrick was well aware that deleted scenes had started to pop up like crazy on DVDs right around the same time that shooting had wrapped on EWS in June of 1998. That could have been the catalyst that put the thought in his head that maybe those trims would get released publicly someday after he passed. He obviously knew that they would never be allowed to see the light of day while he was alive.

It also seems hard to believe to me that a director who is famous for tinkering with movies up until the release date, and in at least one if not two cases *past* the release date, would order all of the footage from "Eyes Wide Shut" destroyed while he was still alive and the film hadn't been released yet, especially since he supposedly anticipated a fight with the MPAA.

I've never heard about any trims from EWS being burned. Unless I missed a quote somewhere, I thought it was only the films mentioned by Vitali in that quote. I agree that there's no way he would have destroyed anything until he had received an R-Rating from the MPAA.

I can still believe that Vitali will one day be saying something like, "Oh, sure, we destroyed all the footage that was stored in the *garage*, but ..."

I could totally hear him saying that as well.

[bo130]

Originally Posted by jackinbox

There's no doubt that his death took everyone by surprise.

I think it took fans and those who didn't know him by surprise. Those who knew him knew he was not doing well by that point. Emilio D'Alessandro noted in his book that Kubrick was using oxygen tanks by the end of the work on EWS. He was struggling, and I am sure his family and those around him knew that he was not doing well.

[bo130]

Originally Posted by crazybeats

I don't know how much of that I truly believe. What really baffles me and if it happened today I wouldn't understand it either. How can a film company pay someone millions of dollars to make a movie and that person hires all the staff, films the movie and then KEEPS the movie for themselves, which is what people are saying. Stanley had miles upon miles of negatives and prints and what he gave them back which is supposedly the final copy of the movie....that's what they get for their money. He even decided on the limited number of promo photos to be used. Do you think if that happened to me it would be the same? Do you think if I or anyone else got paid to make a movie the company would honestly say, all those photos you just keep them and send us the ones you want us to use and all that extra footage you shot and all those takes, just keep them yourself, just give us a 90 minute film at the end of it. No chance but this is the aura of Stanley Kubrick so the rules go out the window.

There is an easy explanation for all of this: Kubrick, through his contract with Warner Brothers, had absolute final cut of his movies, no matter what WB had to say about it. He also gained ownership of his movies after a certain period of time (forget what the number is). I don't know what kind of deal he had with MGM with 2001, but I would not put it beyond the realm of possibility that it was similar to his deal with WB.

Ownership I would imagine also includes owning the physical negatives of the movies. Even if it didn't, it certainly would include vetoing any potential "extended cuts", or other material that he (now his estate) did not want on any home video release or screening. If this is implied in Kubrick's will, or in some other legal form, no one is ever going to see deleted scenes. Besides, I read that any additional footage that Kubrick had was destroyed.

Is this unusual and unique - hell yes. But it's also the truth. Warner Brothers didn't care about what they would potentially lose. They just wanted to have a master filmmaker on their roster. They were willing to defer all kinds of power and control to Stanley to have him making movies for them exclusively.

[jackinbox]

Originally Posted by crazybeats

No doubt about it. I'm sure they were responsible for getting the prints made, would they have made all those prints and not kept one for themselves? And what are the prints made of? Don't they have to have the master copy in order for the 35mm prints to be made? There must be a lot of steps in that food chain before those prints were screened and I know about the stories of them cutting the ending, I think I read one story about people on bicycles transporting the prints back and forwards and travelling right away to make sure this ending was removed and it had to be at a precise point and then they went back on their bicycles with these trims and there was one story were the trims were sent straight back to Stanley Kubrick himself, Warner Bros didn't matter, it had to go straight to the man himself.....

The story about Kubrick sending people out to edit the 12 prints of The Shining that had opened in New York and Los Angeles is pretty well documented. Having read several books on Kubrick, I'd be fairly certain that Kubrick had the ending excised from Warner's IP that they used to make prints in addition to the original camera negative. He would have likely insisted that that footage be returned to him via an air courier. I'll bet the footage from Warner was sitting back in his office in London less than a week after the NYC/LA opening.

I don't know how much of that I truly believe. What really baffles me and if it happened today I wouldn't understand it either. How can a film company pay someone millions of dollars to make a movie and that person hires all the staff, films the movie and then KEEPS the movie for themselves, which is what people are saying. Stanley had miles upon miles of negatives and prints and what he gave them back which is supposedly the final copy of the movie....that's what they get for their money. He even decided on the limited number of promo photos to be used. Do you think if that happened to me it would be the same? Do you think if I or anyone else got paid to make a movie the company would honestly say, all those photos you just keep them and send us the ones you want us to use and all that extra footage you shot and all those takes, just keep them yourself, just give us a 90 minute film at the end of it. No chance but this is the aura of Stanley Kubrick so the rules go out the window.

Correct. The relationship between Kubrick and Terry Semel at Warner Brothers didn't operate under the normal rules. Semel. According to Semel, because the budgets on Kubrick's films were very inexpensive, he pretty much had carte blanche to control everything. When the script for EWS was finished, Semel had to fly to London and read the script over there. He wasn't even allowed to take a copy with him back to Burbank. He also had to fly to London (along with Cruise and Kidman) to see his finished edit of the film. I know it sounds strange, but that's the nature of the freedom he was given by Semel and Warner Brothers.

I find it hard to believe Warner Bros don't have anything. They had all that 2001 footage locked away in their vaults for all those years and it was said to be in pristine condition. At the very least, if all that stuff is true they should have the original version of the movie with the original ending in tact.

Since 2001 was made for MGM, I would assume it was just something that Warner got when they acquired the pre-1986 MGM library in the 90s from the merger with Turner. Kubrick's relationship with MGM wasn't on the same level as he would later have with Warner, MGM probably insisted on keeping that footage.

[jackinbox]

Originally Posted by bobbyh64

That’s pretty ridiculous that he defended the 1.78 ratio. I’m pretry sure no film was ever intended to be 1.78 before the creation of widescreen TVs. The only reason there are some movies released as 1.78 (I don’t know how many are released this way in theaters but it has to be a pretty low number) is because they’re just cropping it to make it fit 16:9 TVs.

I agree with you. Here are Vitali's exact words regarding the aspect ratio of Barry Lyndon. It's pretty good comedy.


Glenn Kenny: "Well, there’s already controversy brewing because the Barry Lyndon Blu-ray is 1.78 and there’s some feeling that it should have been 1.66..."

Leon Vitali: "Well I can tell you what now, okay; never was it ever 1.66, it wasn’t shot in 1.66, we never released it in 1.66 in any format whether it’s film or television or DVD. It was 1.77. It was shot it…I mean , the difference between 1.77 and 1.78 is miniscule, you couldn’t see it with a magnifying glass. And anyone who thought it was meant to be in 1.66 is sadly delusioned. Seeing as I was there, at every stage of it; shooting and everything, I should know. I should know."

Glenn Kenny: "Well, that’s about as definitive an answer as we’re likely to get; so where does it come from, then? Where’s the 1.66 idea come from…?"

Leon Vitali: "It comes from people who think they know and weren’t there and have something to say about Stanley all the time.

I have both of the Kubrick DVD box sets. I remember some of the movies in the first box set were 1.33 and it said that was Kubrick’s intention and I thought that was odd. Then I read somewhere he only wanted them that way because he’d rather have his films opened up instead of cropped to fit 4:3 TVs. Are there even any 1.85 movies that were cropped to fit 4:3 TVs? I thought all 1.85 movies were just opened up.

For TV and home video purposes, Stanley insisted on the entire image area being exposed. In some cases it was 1.33, in others it was slightly different. This all got started around 1988 or 1989 when Warner wanted to release 1.85 laserdisc versions of the The Shining and A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick insisted that they be opened up so that the full frame was shown. In the case of The Shining it was 1.33 and I can't remember what Clockwork Orange was, but I think it was hard-matted to something like 1.55. Criterion ran into the same thing when they released Dr. Strangelove on laserdisc in 1992. What we don't know (and never will) is whether or not he would have changed his mind about this when 16:9 displays became the norm.

[bobbyh64]

Originally Posted by jackinbox

For TV and home video purposes, Stanley insisted on the entire image area being exposed. In some cases it was 1.33, in others it was slightly different. This all got started around 1988 or 1989 when Warner wanted to release 1.85 laserdisc versions of the The Shining and A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick insisted that they be opened up so that the full frame was shown. In the case of The Shining it was 1.33 and I can't remember what Clockwork Orange was, but I think it was hard-matted to something like 1.55. Criterion ran into the same thing when they released Dr. Strangelove on laserdisc in 1992. What we don't know (and never will) is whether or not he would have changed his mind about this when 16:9 displays became the norm.

Maybe Kubrick just wanted the entire frame of the TV to be filled. In the late 80s when LaserDiscs were being released was it common to present them in their original aspect ratio?

Kubrick probably would’ve been fine with his 1.85 movies being released in that ratio had he known about 16:9 TVs. Unless for some reason he preferred 1.33 and wished his films were released that way in theaters.

[Cremildo]

I've always read that Kubrick insisted on opened-up 1.33:1 VHS versions because that would fill the CRT TV screen. Needless to say, back then 16x9 TVs weren't the norm. It makes no sense to watch those films in 1.33 nowadays, unless you still own a CRT TV. I always put Tumblr pages that only post screencaps of his films in 1.33 on ignore. His last three films were intended for widescreen viewing in wide screens.

I'm sure this image has been posted many times before.

[drush9999]

I'm just happy enough to have most of Kubrick's movies in close to OAR, especially since the Criterion release of Barry Lyndon. The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut are opened up a tad, and that doesn't bother me really. At least we're not stuck with 4:3 versions of most of his movies like the early days of DVD.

[crazybeats]

Obviously when films are being restored they restore the entire frame. If you have an entire frame and you are framing for different ratios, how do you know you've got the right parts of the frame? Is it just a standard thing where you have the full frame and then the borders are placed on top, the areas not needed are permanently blacked out? Would studios never release the entire frame and let us see the films? I know things can sometimes be shown such as overhead mics and cables and things we are not meant to see but when I seen the restoration of Dawn of The Dead and they showed the entire frame on the negative, it was interesting to see how what we seen was this small part in the middle and there was so much height all around what we normally see.I'd love to see Kubrick's films like that and see just how much width there really is to each frame and obviously with height too,there might be much more than what we seen on those 1:33 versions.

[jackinbox]

Originally Posted by bobbyh64

Maybe Kubrick just wanted the entire frame of the TV to be filled. In the late 80s when LaserDiscs were being released was it common to present them in their original aspect ratio?

It was more common for films shot either with anamorphic lenses or 70mm to be "letterboxed" on LD than it was for flat 1.85 films back then. Kubrick had already worked with Criterion (in 1988) on their 2001 laserdisc which was presented in its OAR. He signed off on that about a year prior to his insistence that The Shining and Clockwork Orange be released full-frame. On the back cover of the Criterion release of 2001 it reads: "An exclusive film-to-tape transfer made under the supervision of Stanley Kubrick".

[reason108]

So, i’m Sitting here in pizza restaurant, watching The Shining on a Samsung television on the Viceland channel. The movie looks like it was shot on video. I don’t know if it’s the television, the transfer or the Viceland presentation. I’ve yet to get this on blu-ray so I am asking if this is how the blu-ray transfer looks. I know it would be hard to say without seeing it for yourselves. But, hopefully you know what I mean by a transfer that looks like it was shot on video. It really reminds me of how A Clockwork Orange looked when it showed in theaters on DCP screens. My blu-ray looked better. I someday hope to get all of Kubrick’s films on blu-ray but can wait if some better masters will be coming down the road.

[Michael24]

It sounds like the restaurant's television might have a certain setting turned on. I've seen it called "Motion Flow" on TVs. I think it's supposed to reduce motion blur but it gives things a sort of "soap opera effect" that does indeed make them look like something shot on video. When we've bought a new TV, it's been on by default and we have to turn it off.

[Gacivory]

Originally Posted by reason108

So, i’m Sitting here in pizza restaurant, watching The Shining on a Samsung television on the Viceland channel. The movie looks like it was shot on video. I don’t know if it’s the television, the transfer or the Viceland presentation. I’ve yet to get this on blu-ray so I am asking if this is how the blu-ray transfer looks. I know it would be hard to say without seeing it for yourselves. But, hopefully you know what I mean by a transfer that looks like it was shot on video. It really reminds me of how A Clockwork Orange looked when it showed in theaters on DCP screens. My blu-ray looked better. I someday hope to get all of Kubrick’s films on blu-ray but can wait if some better masters will be coming down the road.

https://www.avclub.com/what-is-motio...ite-1821823296

It’s used for sports, I think it makes the sports look better.

[Arch Stanton]

Originally Posted by reason108

So, i’m Sitting here in pizza restaurant, watching The Shining on a Samsung television on the Viceland channel. The movie looks like it was shot on video. I don’t know if it’s the television, the transfer or the Viceland presentation. I’ve yet to get this on blu-ray so I am asking if this is how the blu-ray transfer looks. I know it would be hard to say without seeing it for yourselves. But, hopefully you know what I mean by a transfer that looks like it was shot on video. It really reminds me of how A Clockwork Orange looked when it showed in theaters on DCP screens. My blu-ray looked better. I someday hope to get all of Kubrick’s films on blu-ray but can wait if some better masters will be coming down the road.

Motion interpolation + dynamic mode probably.

[reason108]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I will have to pick this up on blu-ray then at some point soon.

[Eye Candy]

Welcome to the Overlook Hotel - YouTube

[crazybeats]

Looks like the original ending may infact exist or this could be something entirely different. A never before seen cut of The Shining will be going up for auction.



https://news.avclub.com/a-supposedly...ocialMarketing

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by crazybeats

Looks like the original ending may infact exist or this could be something entirely different. A never before seen cut of The Shining will be going up for auction.



https://news.avclub.com/a-supposedly...ocialMarketing

The additional scene contained in the footage being auctioned is "a scene where Wendy, played by Shelley Alexis Duvall, carries Danny, played by little Danny Lloyd.” It isn't the famous lost ending. The auction description is vague about whether the footage is just this deleted scene, or if it's a print of the entire film, containing this deleted scene.

[Bates_Motel]

Originally Posted by bobbyh64

That’s pretty ridiculous that he defended the 1.78 ratio. I’m pretry sure no film was ever intended to be 1.78 before the creation of widescreen TVs. The only reason there are some movies released as 1.78 (I don’t know how many are released this way in theaters but it has to be a pretty low number) is because they’re just cropping it to make it fit 16:9 TVs.

I have both of the Kubrick DVD box sets. I remember some of the movies in the first box set were 1.33 and it said that was Kubrick’s intention and I thought that was odd. Then I read somewhere he only wanted them that way because he’d rather have his films opened up instead of cropped to fit 4:3 TVs. Are there even any 1.85 movies that were cropped to fit 4:3 TVs? I thought all 1.85 movies were just opened up.

I believe all the 1.85 movies in both box sets were opened up to 1.78 too. That kind of annoys me because even though there’s barely a difference between 1.85 and 1.78 I like watching movies in their original aspect ratio and I just don’t see the point in opening 1.85 to 1.78.

Actually, 1.75 WAS a valid ratio, used MGM and Warner Bros. between 1953 and 1955 at the beginning of the move to widescreen.

[crazybeats]

I hope we get to see it whatever it is or how long it is.