Diane Johnson

And he was also famous for adaptations.

You know, Diane Johnson, who co-wrote the screenplay for The Shining with him, notes that Kubrick always said it was better to adapt a book rather than write an original screenplay and that you should choose a work that isn't a masterpiece so you can improve it.

Which I knew you would find very interesting.

Girl.

Fucking hell.

This is deep.

So Kubrick worked with Diane Johnson.

She herself was a novelist and he really admired her books.

I'm going to get another novelist to write the screenplay.

And he got this woman called Diane Johnson.

And Diane Johnson was both a published novelist and she taught Gothic literature at Berkeley.

This is an incredible fact.

So this is why we've gone on this little tangent.

Diane Johnson if people listen to our previous podcast about the bell jar they will know that Sylvia Plath won this competition to go with 20 young women to work on Mademoiselle magazine in New York City in 1953 and that's the first that's the first section of the bell jar Diane Johnson was one of these women

There you go.

One of the women whose Sylvia Plath, you know, whose life Sylvia Plath destroyed.

It is based on the book of the same name by Stephen King, a fairly well-known author.

The screenplay is by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson, and it is directed by Stanley Kubrick.

The movie stars Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance, Danny Lloyd as Danny Doc Torrance, and Scatman Crothers as Dick Halloran.

I don't know why they just didn't name Shelley Shelley.

theories were laughably overcomplicated.

Really? A story about a writer going nuts trying to kill his family is actually about the genocide of American Indians? Can I have whatever you were smoking when you watched The End of 2001 the 80th time? However, when I found out writer Diane Johnson purposefully made the burial site the hotel was on top of an Indian one, and the design of the hotel is very much inspired by Native American art, I did find myself going, Now, do I believe all the theories connected to this movie? Not really.

Some are about Kubrick faking the moon landing or commenting on World War II.

Most of them, I think, read too much into the material as, if even half of them were true, to what purpose would it serve in the context of the movie or getting you more invested? A close friend and assistant to Kubrick, Leon Vitale, even said he found a lot of the documentary pretty laughable.

Half Price Horror is a spoiler-heavy podcast that takes a deep dive into scary movies curated by the selection at the local Half Price bookstore.

I'm your host, John, and today we'll be taking a look at The Shining from 1980, adapted by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson from the novel by Stephen King and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

And Kubrick is one of those names that comes up a lot on this podcast, mainly because he invented the aesthetic of the modern genre movie with 1968's 2001 A Space Odyssey, and it's very difficult to discuss any film made after that point without at least tangentially touching on him every once in a while.

but he didn't actually do a lot of horror, so this is the first time I've been in a position to cover him directly.

[laughs]

This is based on the 1977 Stephen King novel of the same name, directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson.

This is The Shining.

We're- we're do- we're doing it.

Yeah.

For this one, you know, obviously directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Kubrick and Diane Johnson.

This is fascinating.

So everyone knows, you know, it's Jack Nicholson there as Jack Torrance.