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The Frotcast comes a day early this week! This week, we all (ALL of us, can you believe it?) saw Room 237, the documentary on peoples’ insane theories about The Shining. We’re all a bit baffled by its 92% RT rating, as for most of us, it was a powerful, powerful nap aid. If you don’t mind paying $7 for a really restful nap, Room 237 is your movie. At one point, a guy was literally talking about how he saw Stanley Kubrick’s face in a cloud. I’m with Armond on this one. The world is already lousy with asinine opinions, thanks. We also discuss Tyler Perry’s awesome newsletters where he compares your life troubles to turbulence on his private jet, and Laremy shows up to read us some lists. Take your pants down, it’s time to grind boners, Frotcast for life.
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I can’t believe all the glowing reviews for this movie. For me, part of the beauty of movies and stories about filmmaking is the way film can immortalize moments that are created by strange, unique combinations of planning, improvisation, collaboration, and the conditions under which a scene just so happened to be filmed. There’s the part you can control and the part you can’t, and where they meet is what you end up with. The story behind Hank Azaria’s reaction shot in Heat is a perfect example of why I write about and continue to be interested in films. That it captured this one spontaneous moment in time that no one could predict and only could’ve happened that one way is the magic of it for me. Conversely, when you get a bunch of harebrained dickheads in a room like Room 237, talking about how the shape created by Jack Nicholson’s hair and the leaves in the background is an exact silhouette of a messerschmitt fighter plane which is evidence that Stanley Kubrick meant The Shining as a parable for the Third Reich all along, and he was able to plan it all down to the shapes of the clouds in the background because he has a 200 IQ, it absolutely sucks all the magic and fun out of film and the filmmaking process. If you want to watch it to laugh at these weirdos and their elaborate fantasies, fine (it was still too dull for me, but at least then I’d understand), but if this is “a new way to watch and experience movies” like Klosterman says, I’m going to go play in traffic because f*ck all that.