PACIFIC NORTHWEST #2: A Trip to The Overlook Hotel

The second stop on our Pacific Northwest trip was The Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel THE SHINING.  Sort of. 

Kubrick used the historic Timberline Lodge, built in the 1930s as a WPA project, as his inspiration—but did not do any filming at the lodge itself (aside from the aerials seen at the beginning of the movie).  Instead, he ordered the construction of a replica façade at a studio in England.  The interiors were shot on a sound stage, the better to facilitate Kubrick’s famously elaborate Steadicam shots. 

The main inspiration for Kubrick’s interior sets was the Ahwahnee Hotel in California’s Yosemite National Park, but (to my eyes, at least) there are some similarities between the Ahwahnee and the Timberline—most notably, Native American designs incorporated into the art and architecture of both hotels.  According to co-screenwriter Diane Johnson, Kubrick was intrigued by the notion that the Overlook Hotel was built on an Indian burial ground.  In her 2014 memoir Flyover Lives, she noted that “the idea of tainted ground and Indian ghosts malevolently hovering over the hotel does not really achieve visual or other expression, or only subliminally—one critic points out the Calumet baking powder tin in Wendy’s kitchen—but it served to generate some of the creativity of the filmmaker, and some of the décor.”  

Sidenote: King's inspiration for THE SHINING novel was actually The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.  (And this is where THE SHINING TV miniseries directed by Mick Garris was shot.)  I haven't been there yet, so don't ask me about that one.

To account for snowdrifts, the architects of the Timberline built two main entrance

The lower entrance was once accessible only by passing through an ice cave

This ominous-looking fellow still greets everyone who passes through the lower entrance.

The lower lobby

One of the original guest rooms

The interior of the Timberline doesn’t have much in common with Kubrick’s sets.  But a Stephen King nut like me can always find something…

One of the main design motifs in the hotel is an incorporation of wild animals into the art and architecture.  Naturally, this made me think of Stephen King’s hedge animals—featured prominently in THE SHINING miniseries directed by Mick Garris, but not in Kubrick’s film. 

And get this: According to a pamphlet produced by the Friends of the Timberline, the official mascot of the Timberline Lodge is… a Saint Bernard.  Coincidence?  Not on my blog.

Next stop: The Goon Docks