The Influence of Stanley Kubrick and THE SHINING on DARK OF WINTER

I can remember the first time that I tried to watch The Shining.

But first, a little history: I never liked horror films.  They just weren’t my thing.  There were (and are) exceptions to that rule, as always, and I can appreciate them for what they are.  But they’re just not my preferred genre of cinema.

The work of Stanley Kubrick had a profound and important impact on me.  His films were the first that, for whatever reason, made me really understand what a director did.  I can only presume it is Kubrick’s bold style and artistry that provides a through line of sorts, connecting one movie to the next, that gave me an insight into what a filmmaker could and should do.  Not all filmmakers work like this, but Stanley Kubrick did, and once I realized that simple fact, I knew that I wanted to work that way, too.

So, after discovering, in sheer jaw-dropping amazement to a 15 year old budding cinephile, A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, Dr. Strangelove…, and re-discovering 2001: A Space Odyssey, I immediately made it my mission to find every film in the Kubrick oeuvre.  This, of course, was long before the ease and immediacy of the internet, so I had to find film books and encyclopedias in order to get the information I so desperately needed.

I was really quite surprised when I discovered that Kubrick had directed an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining.  It seemed out of character for him.  Surely the genius behind Paths of Glory and A Clockwork Orange wouldn’t stoop to making a slasher film?  There had to be more to it.  Plus, it starred Jack Nicholson, so it couldn’t be all bad, right?

A trip to the video store yielded Strangelove (again) and The Shining.  I watched Strangelove first because I was eager to see if there were any crucial details I had missed the first time around.  Plus, it was an easy hour and a half that would get me ready for the film I had yet to see, The Shining.

Around 9 in the evening, I started the movie.

Incredible opening shot.  Creepy-ass music.  Credits rolling backwards.  A STANLEY KUBRICK FILM.

Wow…okay…here we go.

I got as far as Danny’s first vision, the blood pouring through the elevator doors, not even a half hour into the movie, and I turned it off.  And I stared at the blank television screen, scared to death.  The movie had shaken me to my core, in just that little bit, and I couldn’t watch anymore of it.

But, the next day, in the interest of cinema, and trying to man up (or some teenage, macho shit), I started to film over and forced myself to watch it all the way through.

And I hated it.  Because it scared the shit out of me.

No other film had ever done that to me.  No other movie had gotten under my skin so deeply that I was afraid and disturbed.  And this was from watching it on 14″ television!  I couldn’t believe it.  Every other film I had seen by this director I had loved without question, some more than others.  But this!  This film!  Why, Stanley?  Why did you have to put me through this?!

It would be a long while until I would attempt to revisit the picture again.  And I’m not even sure why I did.  Perhaps something in that film stuck with me, something beyond the obvious tension and horror, and I had to see it again to figure it out.  By the time I had gotten back to it, I had discovered Barry Lyndon, Lolita, and The Killing.  So maybe it was me just trying to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.

So I watched The Shining again.  And I enjoyed it.  It still wasn’t my favorite film in his canon (and still isn’t; that would probably be Clockwork or Strangelove) but it was gaining traction.  And then, later still, I saw it again, and I enjoyed it even more.

After a couple of years, it had made its way into my list of films I would re-watch on a fairly regular basis.  I would recommend it to people.  Visually, it’s one of Kubrick’s most stunning films.  Thematically, I can’t even grasp all the things that he was getting at.  The more that you delve intoThe Shining, the more perplexing it can become.

Now, what does all this mean in the context of my film Dark of Winter?

The obvious connection is that Dark of Winter is, on the surface, a psychological horror thriller.  If you decide to immerse yourself further into the picture, you find a lot of things open to interpretation, including the possibility of supernatural forces at work.

I had already acknowledged the important influence of David Lynch’s dreamlike cinema, specifically Lost Highway, on the writing of our film, but as we got into production, I found myself thinking more and more about The Shining.  Kubrick’s style, camera placement and movement, and approach to the medium are always rattling around in my head when I shoot, but this time it was more specific.  It wasn’t as if I was trying to ape his film or borrow from it, consciously anyway.  But there were little things that felt like impressions of The Shining: the blood (obviously), the mystery and the unexplainable, even something about the architecture in the bathroom of my apartment that we were shooting in.  No matter where Dark of Winter was headed, The Shining was always there.

I can’t directly compare the two films, nor should anyone, but it was important for me to share where the inspiration came from.  Even though cinema is the most recent of the fine arts in terms of history, we are still drawing upon 100+ years of filmmaking that has established a standard and grammar that is inescapable for narrative film.  So the influence of other pictures is a given; sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not.

And even though I have accepted The Shining as one of Stanley Kubrick’s most important films, it still creeps me out a little…

ICON 31 AND SHOWING DARK OF WINTER TO AN ACTUAL AUDIENCE

Matt Porter, Kyle Jason, and David C. Snyder outside of the screening room at the end of Icon 31

This past weekend, actors Kyle Jason and Matt Porter, Executive Producer Kim Garnett, and I took Dark of Winter to ICON 31, a science fiction convention held at Stony Brook University in New York.  We were the last minute addition (many thanks to Ken Deep!) to their screening schedule and it was exciting to get to show the film to an audience that really had no idea as to what to expect.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that we were the last minute addition, the film wasn’t as prominently featured in the press materials as some of the other events.  However, a little leg work and some informative promotional materials got us a few extra viewers added to those people who had already tracked us down on the schedule and wanted to check out our very particular psychological horror film.

Saturday night’s premiere had anywhere from 20-30 people show up.  We screened the film from a DVD I had prepared for the event and, due to the set up, it looked like garbage.  I told the audience during the Q&A afterwards that the film did indeed look better than what they saw and they completely understood.

Some people walked out, which was to be expected, and I had hoped more people would’ve stayed for the Q&A.  But the people that did stay gave us great feedback, asked questions, and really seemed receptive to the film.  There was even a Michael Bay joke for good measure.  This reaffirmed to me that we do indeed have an audience for the film, which is an issue that crosses every filmmaker’s mind at one point or another during the making of a picture.

On Sunday we screened the film from a hi-def file on my laptop and, although a little bit dark, it was a much more accurate presentation.  The down side was that we only had a couple of people come through for the screening (including one guy from the night before!) and Q&A.  I’m not really broken up about it, though, because it was the last day of the Con and people were just trying to get in as much as they could as everything shut down and thinned out.  The upside was that one of the audience members said that the film had shades of Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly’s celebrated cult film from 2001, a reference that I hadn’t thought of before.  I love Donnie Darko, so I’ll take that any day.

Was it a success?  Was it worth it?  Hell yes.  As nerve wracking as it is to screen your film for an audience, that’s the whole point, and it gives you pointers and feedback as to what works and what doesn’t.  It’s a valuable part of the editing process as long as you use it for what it’s worth.  I know that a lot of directors loathe the test screening process because of the way the studios handle it.  But if you screen your film for your intended audience, then it can be an extremely useful tool.

But it is still nerve wracking…

DARK OF WINTER and the Influence of David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY

The gestation period of Dark of Winter was a short one.  The film came about very quickly once I was able to nail down which direction we were headed in.  It actually started out as something altogether different, but I was having some problems figuring out the details of the narrative for my original idea, and so I decided to concentrate on one storyline instead of the three that I was trying to write.  That’s right around the time that it started to become the psychological horror film that it is today.

When I decided to go in the new direction, I found that my influences changed as well.  I started to think about the work of David Lynch, specifically his 1997 film Lost Highway.  A “neo-noir”, as it has been called, Lost Highway is typical Lynch and one of my favorite films in his oeuvre.  Filled with unsolvable mysteries, riddles, and striking imagery, Lost Highway can get under your skin if you let it.  But what has always fascinated me most about the film is its very unique structure.

The film circles back upon itself, a kind of cinematic moebius strip.  As frustrating as an idea it is, displacing time in the narrative, it always struck me as something incredible and it turned out to be one of my favorite things about the picture.  As I began to write Dark of Winter I realized that I wanted to attempt my own take at this structure and see where the story could go within those confines.

I also did some research to see if there were any other films that were designed the same way and I fortuitously discovered Milcho Manchevski’s 1994 film Before the Rain.  I had heard about the movie as it had been released on DVD by The Criterion Collection (a bit of an obsession of mine) but I had never seen it.  So I dropped it in my Netflix queue and it arrived the day before we began principle photography.

Before the Rain was a revelation for me.  The cinematography is gorgeous (Criterion should seriously upgrade it to Blu Ray) and the performances are fantastic (I actually did a shot in Dark of Winter as an homage to Before the Rain, but I’ll leave you in the audience to figure out which one it is!).  And just as I suspected, the film circles back upon itself, similar to Lost Highway, but not nearly as bizarre.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not big on horror films.  They also know that I am big on circumventing classic cinematic tropes and forms by putting my own take on them.  Dark of Winter began as a dramatic character piece that eventually morphed into a psychological horror movie.  I didn’t set out to do that; it just happened.  I’m not even sure exactly how it happened, but as it took on its own life (as films often do) it just headed in that direction.  And as we started shooting, another film lodged itself in the back of my mind.

But I’ll save that one for another day…