The story is right where you are.

[Katie-Ellen]

Stephen King stayed here in 1974, and this hotel apparently inspired The Shining.
217 Stanley Hotel, Colorado

It's the concept of the corridor, do you think? And then the blind corner. Your retreat is also blind. The shut doors are blind.

That's it. Not going now

(I was just about to, you understand)

 

[Eva Ulian]

Yes, I can well believe, if you are disposed, a place, a person, or an incident can inspire a writer enough to write a whole novel about it. I wonder if it has happened to anyone here.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I wouldn't be surprised

 

[Robert M Derry]

The Shining's is a fantastic book. I can't imagine that the corridor inspired the whole novel, but I can see how it might have been the final jigsaw piece. Just looking into that corridor gives the sense of the walls closing in around you as they were in Jack's unraveling mind.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

"In late September of 1974, Tabby and I spent a night at a grand old hotel in Estes Park, the Stanley. We were the only guests as it turned out; the following day they were going to close the place down for the winter. Wandering through its corridors, I thought that it seemed the perfect—maybe the archetypical—setting for a ghost story. That night I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire-hose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in the chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind. " - Stephen King

 

[Barbara]

I'm currently reading The Shining for the first time ever, but only after this happened:

Friend: 'You should read The Shining, Barbara. It might help you with your protagonist. It's really a good book.'

Me: 'It's a book?? I thought it was just a film.'

It was like discovering Santa isn't real (just to tie in this thread with the one in Caf L about raising no elfs).

In all fairyness, I'm foreign and newish to literature in English. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it.

 

[yanapuma]

My favourite Steven King novel ... utterly haunting ... I won't say anymore ... King hated Kubrick's adaptation of it ... and it is very different

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I saw a different version on the box. I rather preferred it in some ways.

The father was properly tragic not just scary-manic in the tv version

 

[yanapuma]

You've got to see it on the big screen to really get that 'Overlook' feel ... I love both of them, the novel and the film, but for different reasons ... the novel is all about Jack the film is all about the hotel

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Me too. They're different beasts.

 

[yanapuma]

Me too. They're different beasts.

I didn't know they'd made a tv re-make .... what a terrible idea ... from what I can see it looks absolutely terrible ... I mean what is the point in trying to re-make what is obviously a masterpiece of horror cinema??? I know they re-made Suspiria which I saw the other night and I loved the re-make but it was a very different film from the original ... the original is obviously still the superior but ...

 

[Carol Rose]

That was the first Stephen King book I ever read, and I was hooked.

 

[Robert M Derry]

The Shining is a good example of how films and books are fundamentally different and must be approached differently. The film has a completely different approach to the concept than the book does and they both work very well within their own mediums.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I didn't know they'd made a tv re-make .... what a terrible idea ... from what I can see it looks absolutely terrible ... I mean what is the point in trying to re-make what is obviously a masterpiece of horror cinema??? I know they re-made Suspiria which I saw the other night and I loved the re-make but it was a very different film from the original ... the original is obviously still the superior but ...

It was King's own film project and it was largely slated. I turned it on one night, and it was towards the end. It had its merits, the key one for me being the father was tragic. He came to his senses just before the end, and it was him again, just before he died, blowing up the hotel. But as for a stunning piece of cinema....no competition.