book one redone - Coldbacon

Now Lane’s Jack Nicholson-versus-Steve McQueen comment is just not
true. “...but the sight of a weary, begrimed Steve McQueen emerging from
the tower is burned into my mind with a fierceness that Jack Nicholson,
with his nicked nostril, can never match.” He’s talking about Nicholson in
Chinatown, but I choose to read this as a direct attack on The Shining.
Jack Nicholson in The Shining is so riveting you could not possibly name
a more riveting performance. And neither can Anthony Lane. And he
knows it. I submit he is lying. For flow. Something which apparently gets
the blind eye over at The New Yorker.
Now I didn’t see The Shining as a 3T (teddy-toting toddler) thus
developing some sort of needful, regressive relationship with the film. I
first saw it at the non-tender age of (thinking/guessing/would I lie to you)
twenty-four. But over many viewings (I call them mini-screenings), I’ve
come to appreciate the Jack Nicholson moments in full. “Who is the
caretaker?” “Yes, and What is the gardener.” “Who?” “No, What.” “What
is the gardener?” “Precisely.” “Well then what about the ghost?” “I don’t
know.” “You don’t know?” “No, I don’t know.” “What?” “No, he’s the
gardener.” “Well who directed the film then?” “No, he’s the caretaker.”
“Ahh!” There is no film that I saw as a child which invokes more awe and
terror than The Shining. I have thought about this. I have run down a short
list of films that were a big deal way back when. Attack of the Killer
Tomatoes, Godzilla Versus Mothra, Godzilla Versus Fractalgodzilla. Sure
I have nostalgic feelings for them, but I now realize how silly those first
two were. My first girlfriend, however, was not silly. She was hot. I was a
fool. I was fourteen. Okay, I was fifteen. My second girlfriend was also
hot and probably still is even though someone just told me she’s pregnant
now (and married). I had stupidly traded her in for a life of crime. “Hello,
my name is Bacon. I am sixteen years old, and I’m a fool.”
You really should be able to develop new and powerful emotional
responses, while most of your childhood memories should fade further
and further away—not to be let go or forgotten—nothing and no one is to
be forgotten—but not at the cost of laying down new tracks. But Lane’s
psychological ex-lap-dressed-up-as-film-review goes on to explore the
notion of tastes changing over time.
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