Jan Harlan

Brother-in-law of Stanley Kubrick.

[on The Shining (1980)] The only straight person is the mother. That's important: the mother is completely normal, fighting for her son - who's also a little bit funny. Stanley thought that was a real challenge. In a way it's a fairy tale, a gruesome fairy tale that - like all fairy tales that we tell to children - have an element of realism. As unrealistic as fairy tales always are, if there wasn't a reality that we could translate into our own fantasy, in our own life, it would be boring. The interest is only because of a potential reality.