Danny double

I was having a beer with an Aussie at a dinner party recently. He grew up minutes away from the photo on the album cover of Born Sandy Devotional by The Triffids, which is Mandurah, Western Australia. Interestingly, the song Born Sandy Devotional didn’t make it onto the album* (it would later appear on In the Pines).

Anyway, we were actually talking about Hal Hartley – apparently his films were popular in Australia at the time (the 1990s). Here in the UK, I would say they only had cult appeal.

Then we were talking about Christopher Nolan and Stanley Kubrick. As far back as 2010 The Guardian was calling Nolan Kubrick’s natural heir. I couldn’t care less as, for me, their main similarity is making boring films. Dr Strangelove was funny, he had decent mise en scène but Kubrick’s cold style does nothing for me. Likewise, I remember liking Momento when it came out (2000) but Batman films? What am I, 12? Interstellar and Dunkirk, dull as ditchwater. Inception hurt my eyes.

Anyway, what I’m actually getting to is the Aussie’s partner’s sister went to school with the body double of Danny from The Shining (I know, it’s tenuous). Apparently because of English union rules at the time, Danny, played by American actor Danny LLoyd, had to have an English body double. All the back shots of Danny cycling along the corridors of the hotel are actually his Brit body double.

In a film apparently all about doubles, I thought this interesting, and perhaps not widely known. Room 237 (the scary room in The Shining) is the title of a documentary exploring various obsessive fan’s pretty far-fetched theories in The Shining. They range from the film being about the cultural assimilation of Native Americans to an attempt by Kubrick to covertly show he directed the Apollo Moon landing footage.

For me, it’s a slow-paced horror film, nowhere near as scary as, say, what John Carpenter was making around the same time (who used the then-new Steadicam to better effect). One of the things they say about Kubrick is he worked and excelled in all genres. Okay, but he lacks the humanity and narrative skills of, say, Howard Hawks or Robert Altman, who both also worked across genres, and reinvented them along the way. Kubrick is style over substance, which is unfortunately why he’s so lionised nowadays. If Nolan wants the mantle, he can have it.

*In this it is not unique: The Doors’ Waiting for the Sun, Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, Gomez’ Bring It On and Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack are just a few other examples where the title of the album doesn’t contain the song of the same name. It will often appear on a band’s subsequent album.