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The Movie Poster That Drove Stanley Kubrick Insane

Paper and Light

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To design the movie poster for his horror masterpiece The Shining, Stanley Kubrick hired famed graphic designer Saul Bass. Their collaboration was...successful?

#TheShining #StanleyKubrick #stephenking #videoessay #graphicdesign

Voice of Stanley Kubrick: Andreas Mannegren

Special thanks to the Vancouver Public Library, and Video Cat Vancouver.

Patreon:
Patreon: Paper_and_Light

Instagram:
Instagram: paper_and_light_posters

SOURCES:

Films directed by Stanley Kubrick:

The Shining
©1980 Warner Bros.

A Clockwork Orange
©1971 Warner Bros.

Full Metal Jacket
©1987 Warner Bros.

Barry Lyndon
©1975 Warner Bros.

2001: A Space Odyssey
©1968 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Eyes Wide Shut
©1999 Warner Bros.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
©1964 Columbia Pictures

Paths of Glory
©1957 United Artists

Spartacus
©1960 Universal International

Additional sources:

Making 'The Shining'
©1980 BBC, Vivian Kubrick

Bass on Titles
©1977 Pyramid Films

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes
©2008 Jon Ronson

The Royal Tenenbaums
©2001 Touchstone Pictures

Yojimbo
©1961 Toho

Se7en
©1995 Arnold Kopelson Productions

Psycho
©1960 Paramount Pictures

Ferris Bueller's Day Off
©1986 Paramount Pictures

Room 237
©2012 IFC Films

Maximum Overdrive
©1986 De Laurentiis Entertainment Group

Twister
©1996 Warner Bros.

Ready Player One
©2018 Warner Bros. Pictures

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Reddit: wtf_is_this_poster

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20 Comments

@Paper_and_Light Creator 1 month ago Pinned

*A few corrections:

- yes, I botched the pronunciation of 'Kubrick' with my Canadian accent.

- the technique that Bass used to create his initial 5 sketches is called 'stippling', not 'pointillism'. Stippling doesn't involve colour, as far as I understand, while pointillism does.

- it was Stanley Kubrick's 'biographer', not 'autobiographer'. Totally biffed that one.

@Adasha 11 months ago

The problem with the 'here's Johnny' poster is it's a complete spoiler.

@Danjoker. 11 months ago

To me the yellow poster matches the mood of the movie. It's simplistic, yet it holds an eerie vibe, but I can see why some people don't like it.

@jgonzo5523 11 months ago

I think what Kubrik and Bass knew is that Abstraction is more potent than Literalism as a marketing tool - I think people who enjoy the "Here's Johnny Poster" like it because they have seen the film. But, if you knew nothing about the movie, that poster undermines the slow build of Jack's murderous insanity - if you saw that poster, you would just be waiting for Jack to explode and the surprise would be ruined. It's great for the home video releases, but fails as a marketing tool.

@TuffKaya 11 months ago

4:12 If Saul knew about the maze it means that Kubrik did in fact shared some detaisl with him, because there is no maze in the book. It was a garden with animal-shaped hedges.

@riffraffrichard 10 months ago

Kubrick thought of the advertisement as an artwork in itself that would compliment the mood of the film rather than something that showed you what to expect.

@DanHarkless_Halloween_YTPs_etc 11 months ago

First I've heard the theory that it's the face of Tony. I really like that. The face looks too angry and old to be Danny, but it doesn't really feel like Jack's face either. Having it be the face of a nebulous and ambiguously threatening psychic entity just works.

@thejabbawookie1010 11 months ago

As a kid the yellow poster absolutely freaked me out! I love it… it’s the unknown of it all, that haunting, relentless face.. it symbolises the movie perfectly

@onemorechris 11 months ago

there’s something slightly reassuring that even Mr Bass himself got feedback from Kubrick himself that said ‘i love the designs, but;’

@BuddySweyzer 10 months ago

I've always thought the yellow poster looks like it's for a sci-fi movie about an alien

@strangebotwin- 10 months ago

“He later gave an interview to Kubrick’s autobiographer..”. So.. you mean Kubrick himself?

@imdoneplus 11 months ago

I love the poster because that isn’t “fear,” that face is “horror.” If you’ve ever truly faced horror, like a small child running out into traffic, or a loved one’s heart not beating, that’s the face that accompanies it. And when you see the face in the poster, you have to ask, “why?” That’s a great lure, which is what a poster should be in that era especially.

@davidfjelstad2495 11 months ago

Great video. But the drawing technique is called stippling, not pointilism. Pointilism is dots of colours put next to each other to create a "whole" image in a painting. Stippling is one coloured dots. Not a biggie but a difference.

@yellowjackboots2624 11 months ago

As a kid in the early 80s, that VHS cover really creeped me out. The cold, clinical frame, the face of the madman, the terrorised woman. My little-kid mind just invented horrors without actually seeing the movie

@kodyghost 10 months ago

as a content creator, I appreciate that you can talk about the history of something in a respectful way, but you can still say you don't like the poster

@SpellboundWolf 11 months ago

Because yellow is such a vibrant color, too much of it will stress out the brain. It's associated with fear and anxiety. The face being made of spots is really spooky too.
I have heard a fellow YouTubers talk about how they couldn't be in their coworker's office for longer than a few minutes because the yellow walls made him anxious.

@avinandanmondal4017 11 months ago

I love the yellow poster..it conveys the mystical nature of the movie in most simplest form

@batangbatugan 11 months ago

As an illustrator and comic book artist I can totally understand both sides: Kubrick is just like a client who has a very particular idea in their head who has to convey it in words and needs lots of visual input before he can get to narrow his idea down. Bass is kind of like me in that I make a couple of layouts/ studies/ sketches but puts an emphasis on a particular one that I like and will try to push to the client and hopes he'll accept it. Sometimes I get surprised that the client chooses the one I liked the least, or even chooses the rougher version more than the finalized one. Art really is subjective.