Stanley Kubrick’s Assistant Says ‘Room 237’ Is ‘Gibberish’
Stanley Kubrick’s assistant on The Shining recently described Room 237 as “pure gibberish.”
The documentary by filmmaker Rodney Ascher takes a look at the numerous theories that have surrounded Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel. Although many people have subscribed to these ideas over the years, Stanley’s assistant on the horror flick thinks the documentary is “gibberish.”
“I was falling about laughing most of the time,” Leon Vitali said during a recent interview with The New York Times. “He didn’t tell an audience what to think or how to think, and if everyone came out thinking something differently that was fine with him.”
Vitali added that Stanley Kubrick wouldn’t have listened to the majority of Room 237 since most of the theories are “pure gibberish.”
One theory championed by Professor Geoffrey Cocks at Albion College in Michigan says Kubrick was interested in linking the horror in The Shining with the Holocaust. The director’s assistant said people probably shouldn’t read that much into Kubrick’s film.
Vitali took issue with theories surrounding the German typewriter used in the movie. In this particular case, the typewriter might be just that: a typewriter.
“A lot of decisions made on the set were about pragmatism: ‘This looks good. It sits on the oak table pretty perfectly.’ Not to mention, it’s a great typewriter. I used that typewriter for 10 years, actually,” the assistant explained.
Despite the Leon Vitali’s insistence that Stanley Kubrick would not have been happy with The
Shining documentary, Room 237 director Rodney Ascher thinks the filmmaker would have been pleased with the effort.
“It’s presumptuous for me to try to crawl too far into his head, although I’d like to think he’d be happy that his movie is still talked about and engaged with and debated 30 some years on. It seems like he had a pretty good sense of humor, so I like to think he would have taken it pretty well,” Ascher told Moviefone.
Are you a fan of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining? Do you subscribe to some of the theories discussed in the documentary Room 237?
