The Shining has so many memorable and dramatic monologues. There are probably more than a few frustrated writers that could relate to Jack Torrance played by the intense Jack Nicholson as he delivered a foul-mouthed, annoyed reaction to wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) when he shouted, “You’re Distracting Me.”

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. Understand? I’m gonna make a new rule.

Whenever I’m in here, and you hear me typing, whether you don’t hear me typing, whatever the f*** you hear me doing in here, when I’m in here, that means that I am working. That means don’t come in. Now do you think you can handle that? Why don’t you start right now and get the f*** out of here?

I recently stayed in room 217 of the Stanley Hotel. This is the room that Stephen King spent a night back in the 70s in but the entire hotel was empty. After a few nightmares and seeing a few spooky things, it inspired him to write The Shining. A few years later Jim Carrey filmed the Dumb and Dumber movie here and also decided to spend a night in room 2017. But he only lasted half a night and to this day refuses to talk about precisely what happened in this very room.

The Shining used to be continuously streaming on channel 42, but because of copyright issues, it has since been removed. So I took a walk down to Estes Park to pick up a copy of the DVD. So to set the scene, we’re staying in 217, we have a copy of the Shining on DVD, and a glass of bourbon on the rocks just like Jack Nicholson did in the movie. About an hour into the film at the moment where things start to go a little bit dark where Jack Nicholson starts talking to a ghostly barman, the DVD player powered off.

This was more than a little spooky because we were watching the movie in the dark. But, hey I’m a tech guy, so I tried to troubleshoot the problem. I traced the power of the DVD player to the back of the big bulky unit which was very difficult to move. I completely removed the power, and after around three attempts I managed to get it working again and sat back in bed to enjoy the movie. 20 minutes later, things started to go a little dark again, and the power went one more time. But this time it was not coming back.

I couldn’t even remove the disc and concluded that either the DVD player is faulty of there’s something in this room telling us it didn’t want this to watch it, I don’t know which it was so I gave up. In the morning when I was preparing to check out the DVD player was working absolutely fine and removed my disc without any issues.

If you have stayed in room 217 or thinking about spending the night, please contact me and share your experiences, after all, All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.