330. Kings of King: Doctor Sleep
Added 2020-10-27 13:00:07 +0000 UTC
The Shining tale continues with writer/director/editor Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep. We didn’t know all along it’s Stephen King’s X-Men! Seriously, Danny and Abra running around solving ghost crimes and killing psychic vampires would be amazing. Michael and Abe breathe deep of the delicious movie steam and discuss what makes this film a success, how it differs from Kubrick’s The Shining, and the lore behind the saga.
Features:
Michael Swaim: https://twitter.com/SWAIM_CORP
Abe Epperson: https://twitter.com/AbeTheMighty
Comments
Stephen King addressed the “psychically lead you to a dead body/assume you are the killer” concept in his recent short story collection You Like It Darker with “Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream”. It goes about as well as you would expect. Does it go one step too far by making the detective a looney? Mayyybee. Either way, clearly Stephen heard your podcast and wrote a story about it. Expect your royalty checks in the mail soon. Or never. Who can say?
Scriptmonkeys
2024-08-04 13:39:50 +0000 UTCYour professor was guilty of hypercorrection (or being ignorant of German).
Scriptmonkeys
2024-08-04 13:30:27 +0000 UTCThe Shining is a steam or a Mist?
drunkencoyote
2023-10-25 19:12:06 +0000 UTCI interpreted it the same way. That’s why Overlook Dan runs to the boiler room when Abra mentions it. If Dan’s body gets blown up, The Overlook won’t have a vulnerable, weakened host who Shines to possess. It couldn’t even totally control Dan when he was at death’s door, and Abra’s Shine was streets ahead of his.
Burrito
2023-02-08 18:13:59 +0000 UTCOoo nice.
Small Beans
2020-11-20 14:51:44 +0000 UTCBonus points; what is a Knot if not a collection of strands? Like the center of a web~
Mat Brady
2020-11-20 10:17:36 +0000 UTCI like this image a lot. It's basically how they set up the Knot. There are satellites (like Rose) and there are hunters (like Crow). Several people play a crucial role in accumulating more kids. It makes sense that she's the general of the group and therefore cuts steam from the top, though in the film, she only does so when the group has been killed and she's alone. There's something great about her desperation in opening the cans.
Small Beans
2020-11-19 19:36:06 +0000 UTCIt's true, it's painful and there's loss in the story, but it does seem that the villains are outmatched. The fact that Rose et al are so well accostomed to murder that there is enough of a threat, but I do like it when sometimes characters like Abra can just destroy the competition. Like Dark Phoenix. If there were a sequel, it'd almost be too easy.
Small Beans
2020-11-19 19:33:26 +0000 UTCI didnt read the books but rose the hat struck me as being a psychic spider, casting a web while shes on the roof to see what flies into it. I also assumed she was the only one who could save the steam for later since shes the only one taking it in or out of the jars, able to save a catch for later the way a spider does. And of course king has a thing for spider villains
bob the bob
2020-11-16 06:30:11 +0000 UTCAbe agrees!
Small Beans
2020-11-13 10:02:54 +0000 UTCDidn't know that about Dick and Pennywise. That's rad!
Small Beans
2020-11-13 10:02:06 +0000 UTCActually super clear when Dan dies. He died when his dad died in the book, and it's why King gave his blessing here. When the boilers blow
Harry Moore
2020-11-13 06:11:27 +0000 UTCI think King is more nihilistic than you guys think. The good guys win, always, but it's always clear that everything we do is only a stalling game, that they'll be back, and eventually they'll win.
Harry Moore
2020-11-13 05:50:49 +0000 UTCI think this is a horror movie for the bad guys in many ways. These people are what make them afraid.
Harry Moore
2020-11-13 05:48:03 +0000 UTCShining is essentially life force, everyone has a lil... many have a lot. The diminishment of Shining is meant to express the loss of vitality. The Loser's Club had the Shining and that's how they were able to beat Pennywise... also fun fact... Halloran is a Pennywise survivor. He is the survivor of the black spot club that burned down via Pennywise in IT.
Harry Moore
2020-11-13 05:38:29 +0000 UTCIf you haven’t checked out the director’s cut, you should give it a look. It has some nice touches and is available on HBOmax
John Saunders
2020-11-07 20:01:23 +0000 UTCOh, shit! I just realized Snakebite Andi is a “pusher” which is what Andrew McGee is in Firestarter! He’s a psychic who can make people do things by “pushing” them!
Drew Mancini
2020-11-02 04:03:57 +0000 UTCI noticed that this podcast was posted, so I watched the movie and then listened. I thought I'd hear you guys draw more Star Wars parallels, honestly. Star Wars wasn't even on my mind going into it, but that's all I kept getting. the shining/steam = the force. Hallorann's shining ghost visits Danny/Dan just like force ghosts do to Luke. Dan is just Luke and Abra is Rey. There are good and bad shining users like light side and dark side, and they can remote astral project. There's even a part where Rose refers to RAW POWER, which is literally a thing Snoke says in The Force Awakens. I don't know where I'm going with this, really. Just some parallels to waste your time. I loved the mirroring in this. Ullman's office, Abe pointed that out. Also, the way rose is slowly stalking Dan up the stairs as he backward walks up them, exactly the way Jack stalked Wendy. The True Knot gave me super cool vibes of the (forgive me,) gypsies in the movie Thinner, which I'd forgotten about until I watched this. Alright, stay safe everyone at Small Beans and everywhere else.
Damien Lupo
2020-11-01 06:53:47 +0000 UTCGood for abe! 😉
Kerri Lewis
2020-10-29 22:49:11 +0000 UTCAbe agrees!
Small Beans
2020-10-29 22:34:03 +0000 UTCI'm not sure I agree that it's "unclear" when Dan dies. To me it seems they set it up a couple of times during the movie. As Dr. Sleep-Dan helps his elderly "patients" experience lovely things from their past and "see" the people that are waiting for them, right when they are at the cusp of life and death: the taste of blueberries, the sound of the radio, that one guy says "i see my wife" and in the directors cut, Dan helps one guy see his twin sons. So the way I interpreted it-Dan is wounded, Rose gets "absorbed" by the hotel. The hotel gets all up in Dan, like they did his father, and send him running around trying to kill Abra. Yes he's wounded and is totally going to die soon-but the hotel is driving him around with an axe trying to get Abra while he is still alive-limping around mad just like his father did years before. At the very end-Dan gets down to the boiler room and Dan sees his Mom, and we look back to see young Dan. Dan himself gets to experience a nice moment with his Mom-not covered in the black flies that he says he saw around her before she died-but young again, healthy, and looking so proud of her son. To me that said he was at the end of his life and he himself got the Dr. Sleep treatment, easing him out of life without fear as the hotel burns. I could be wrong, but that's how it seemed to me.
Kerri Lewis
2020-10-29 16:59:51 +0000 UTCUm, ackshually, in my film studies courses I took as free electives, the professor pronounced it “leet-motiv.”
Drew Mancini
2020-10-29 01:35:48 +0000 UTCI did not know that! My bad! Thank you for pointing it out!
Small Beans
2020-10-28 23:17:40 +0000 UTCLove the pod but guys, please - this is bugging me! The "Leit" in the word Leitmotiv is pronounced the same as the word "light". Lightmotiv. Source: I'm german.
Poseylock Jimmismits
2020-10-28 23:00:21 +0000 UTCI liked the part when Rose the Hat enters the Overlook, sees the blood elevator, kinda smirks, and just keeps walking sort-of unaffected by it.
Drew Mancini
2020-10-28 20:13:39 +0000 UTCSounds like the movie made some beneficial tweaks to the story, I’ll have to check it out one of these days~ One of the things that bugged me about the book was that only one character on the good guys team died, and from old age no less. Don’t get me wrong, it’s refreshing to see horror protagonists use clever strategy and teamwork to come out ahead with flying colors, but without that element of sacrifice and danger, the victory feels too easy. Like beating the final boss with cheat codes enabled.
Mat Brady
2020-10-28 16:02:35 +0000 UTCFascinating, thanks for letting us know about the book! We really did like the choices in the movie. I'll get around to reading it eventually.
Small Beans
2020-10-28 04:23:07 +0000 UTCYeah, I was not surprised that they got rid of that element in the movie. I didn't really mind it in the book because I wanted Danny to have a happy life, but it didn't feel necessary. The only thing I really liked about it was the callback to Jack being kind of an asshole.
Jennifer B
2020-10-28 04:02:35 +0000 UTCI actually enjoyed the movie more than the book. The book is good, yes, but the movie makes better choices. One thing the movie leaves out... I mean, it’s there, it alludes to this topic, but it leaves out a lot of the themes about recovery. A lot of the book is dedicated to Dan pontificating about his father’s alcoholism. A lot of the book has sentences and paragraphs describing what it must have been like for Jack Torrence, and how Dan feels about it. The movie does a lot of cinematic equivalencies, and it does a great job at it, but the book really digs down into the recovery themes. Ultimately though, it only serves to enrich the movie. I loved that movie.
Drew Mancini
2020-10-28 03:14:35 +0000 UTCI was so bummed. I read the book after seeing the movie. It really closes the universe up when you find out Danny is actually Abra’s uncle. In that context it’s implying that the Torrence bloodline is full of shiners rather than “there are all kinds of people out there in the big big world.”
Drew Mancini
2020-10-28 03:08:56 +0000 UTCReally glad you guys did Doctor Sleep. In the book, Halloran is alive at the beginning of the story, but dies before Danny reaches adulthood and comes back to Danny as a ghost. Danny doesn't die in the book. Also, he and Abra are related.
Jennifer B
2020-10-27 19:00:57 +0000 UTCReally enjoyed the movie and was delighted at your xmen comparisons. Hadnt thought of it that way
red sands
2020-10-27 14:06:08 +0000 UTCCoincidentally, I’ve spent the last year watching/rewatching The Shining and Doctor Sleep, and reading/rereading the books, and then texting walls of texts to my friends (who actually have lives) the differences in the books vs. the movies. I was screaming to a silent house while wearing headphones the answers to Michael and Abe the entire episode. 😜
Drew Mancini
2020-10-27 13:38:57 +0000 UTC
