"Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me, you're breaking my concentration. You're distracting me. And it will then take me time to get back to where I was. You understand?"
The Shining is one of my favourite movies, and although Jack Nicolson gets all the good lines, it's Shelley Duvall who has the last laugh. Although she did apparently suffer at the hands of director Stanley Kubrick, who made the shoot as traumatic as possible for her; as viewer's we're left wondering how much of her performance is acting and how much is genuine anxiety and exhaustion.
Duvall also played Olive Oyl alongside Robin Williams's Popeye, a role that revealed her to be a pretty good singer too. Here's a lovely song from that soundtrack which was also featured in the movie Punch Drunk Love many years later. Written by the great Harry Nilsson...
How does Shelley do in the Celebrity Jukebox? Pretty well, actually... though not from any acts I've heard of before today.
Let's start with Greys, a self-described "loud rock band from Toronto", although to be fair, this one might be one of their quieter offerings...
No Win come from L.A. This is from their 2019 debut album "downey". As with the above track from Greys, I'm not quite sure how the lyrics relate to Ms. Duvall... but it's a cool tune anyway.
Max Diaz was born in 2004. Let's not hold that against him.
Sickly Sid can't decide whether he's a rapper or a punk rocker. More of the former on this track, which at least has a lyrical reference to tie into its title...
Made for each other, except we're kinda not
Similar view on the world, we wanna rot
But not many same interests, we both pessimistic
But shit, at least I'm not angry and fucking sadistic
Like Shelley Duvall when she escaped Jack Nicholson
Nothing left for me, but just upsetting, unrealistic
Liverpudlian Esa Shields recorded his 2014 album Ovum Caper in a haunted house. "Within its carmine red walls were broken clocks, which prevented time from passing normally for its inhabitants, who mostly lived at night." Nice.
Next, a short-but-sweet offering via a "folk punk lady-type trio from central Pennsylvania", lyrically addressed to Mrs. Torrance, the name of Shelley's character from The Shining...
And here's Geoffrey O'Connor, lead singer of Aussie indie band The Crayon Fields, with a song about a girl who looks just like Shelley...
Unicorns In The Snow are from Kansas. My hearing aids aren't powerful enough to decipher what they're singing about here, but Shelley's name does get mentioned repeatedly...
My favourite discovery today comes from Israeli singer songwriter O Mer, now based in Brooklyn. Shades of John Grant right here, I reckon...
Shelley is so paranoid you’d think she’s really Wendy from The Shining
Ding a fucking dong the witch is gone but I‘m still angry and depressed
Bigfoot isn’t real but Bigfoot porn is, coming up after the break
Close encounters of the furry kind are a true American dream
Jack says he must be losing his mind!
This is just about the best account of Duvall's experience making The Shining, in my view - straight from the horse's mouth. And it is a far, far better piece than the awful Dr Phil exposé. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/feature/searching-for-shelley-duvall-the-reclusive-icon-on-fleeing-hollywood-and-the-scars-of-making-the-shining-4130256/amp/
ReplyDeleteThat's a great article. I'd love to read that Taschen book. Not at £1500 a copy though.
DeleteGreat, isn't it? And yes, I too got very excited about the Taschen book, but they appear to have accidentally put the price for a secondhand car on it, so I'll have to do without. I do have the Taschen Stanley Kubrick Archives book though, and can confirm that it is both excellent and affordable.
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