Hair of the Dog that Lit You

LAST EXIT TO NOWHERE (LETN) has a wide variety of merchandise, so when we set out to make our trilogy of spots for them we wanted to feature items besides their apparel catalog. That included a coaster for the Overlook Hotel from THE SHINING. But how do we recreate the luxurious Gold Room on a limited budget? What if we could meet the viewer halfway?

Our concept was another mini-sequel like we had done for THE THING. What if Jack had thawed, and came back into the hotel after hunting Danny with the ax? We needed Jack’s hands, an ax, and Lloyd the bartender to pour him a drink. When Jack lifts his drink, we reveal the LETN coaster. So, how would Kubrick shoot this?

Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance seated at the bar in THE SHINING’s Gold Room.

The infamous director was notorious for his zooms and symmetrical framing. Well, there it was… a Bird’s Eye View of the bar, with a slow zoom in on the coaster after it’s revealed. Now all we needed was a bartop… one with a glowing top. Perfect, because those are everywhere, right?

Normally, Danny Cork is the more savvy member of our team when it comes to the art department, but since I live closer to the Home Depot, I set out to make us a bartop. Nothing like fluorescent lighting and the beeping sound of heavy machinery driving in reverse to inspire creativity. I found a piece of nice outdoor siding with a tongue and groove for the wood portion of the bar. I cut the piece in half, then sanded it down, and gave it a few coats of stain until we had a nice glassy surface. When everything was dry, I mounted the two pieces parallel together about a foot apart with the grooves facing inwards. Now where to get a luminescent surface?

In the past I’d picked up some acrylic sheets from Tap Plastics for some trophies that we’d created back when we were handing out the 20/20 Awards (Oscars with two decades of hindsight). I found a piece white acrylic at a ¼” depth and Tap cut the piece to size. I brought it home, slid it into the groove, and our bar top was ready to go. It was time to find our local Jack Torrance and Lloyd the barber… or at least their hands.

Just like Las Vegas, our bar top doesn’t look as sexy in broad daylight.

Danny had good hands to play Jack, so that part was cast. We also had a burgundy jacket and an ax for Jack, because… I was going to be Jack Torrance for Halloween one year. The plan was to wander the local business district going from bar to bar, and drag my leg behind me while wielding an ax and screaming out for my missing son, “DANNY!!” Except there’d been a rash of trigger happy police, so weighing my odds I decided to sit that one out. However, I’d already bought the perfect jacket on EBay, and I wasn’t about to let it go to waste. Unfortunately, I’d never had any Halloween ideas based on Lloyd the bartender, so I didn’t have a red tuxedo. Fortunately our friend Fred who lived close by had a red tuxedo, and he was game to come over and pour out a few drinks for Jack.

Nicholson in his burgundy coat.

Joe Turkel as Lloyd the Bartender is his red tuxedo coat.

Filming was going to be a very simple set up, but nothing’s ever as simple as you think. We pulled out a pair of sawhorses, and rested a home made tube light between them, pointed at the ceiling. We placed the bartop atop the saw horses, and voila. Our bar was lit from below. It looked fantastic, the glow was soft, and softly wrapped around the edges of the bar. I was kind of stunned at how elegant it looked, and how closely it resembled the original film.

Danny (on the left) steadies the camera rig, as I set the focal length.

For our shot we had to mount the camera looking straight down atop the bar. Always a cool idea for a shot, never an easy task to achieve unless you have specific gear. We attached the tripod head to a horizontal C-Stand arm, and then braced that arm with another arm forming a triangle. The shot was coming together, and through the lens, without the awareness of the sawhorses, it was looking more and more like a bar. We just had to be careful, because the floor of my dining room is very springy, and the camera being jerry rigged in the air like that, the slightest movement jiggled the shot like a windy day atop the Space Needle.

One last detail, now that we were looking through the lens, the top of the bar and the hands of our cast was just a little too dark, so we put a bounce card over the top camera, which gave just enough kick to light our talent nicely.

We ran the scene a few times. Danny playing Jack set the ax down atop the bar, and Fred poured him a drink. Our talent went through the lines of dialog even though we knew we’d be replacing all of it later in post production. We used actual whisky, and after each take, the glass was emptied into a bowl. At the end of the night after we wrapped we celebrated by emptying the bowl of booze into our bellies.

There was no editing to do in post, except pick an opening frame, and a closing frame. The zoom was done digitally in post. We shot in 4k, and finished in 1080, so we were able to blow up the image without losing any quality. One issue we were having was that the glow from the bar top was so overbearing that it was bleeding onto the product, so we handed a graphic of the coaster to Rich Phelps over at Rumbl Media who was doing our finishing in post, and he worked his magic by placing the graphic over the existing coaster, then added a little bit of glow, and it looks perfect.

Once again, Meredith Wylegala did a fantastic job on sound design, and our composer Jessica Aceti was able to recreate a piece of music reminiscent of THE SHINING that’s close enough to keep us out of legal trouble. For the voices of Jack and Lloyd, Danny and I put our questionable impersonation skills to the test. Since we couldn’t decide who was less good, we put it up to a vote between our friends. We hope they made the right decision. 

In the end, we had a big idea and a small budget, but knew we could rely on the viewer’s imagination to fill in the blanks. The bar in THE SHINING is so iconic, that all we had to do was imply that we were in the Gold Room, and the viewer’s mind would do the rest. 

We’ll drink to that.