Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Department of "Why didn't I think of this?"

Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in terrifying form in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, is a frustrated writer who goes with his wife and son to spend the winter in the isolated Overlook Hotel in an attempt to get the novel he has always wanted to write started. But the hotel's grisly past and unquiet ghosts have their way with him, and his wife Wendy eventually finds that the manuscript he has been working on actually only contains the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", typed over and over again.

Now New York artist Phil Buehler, who describes himself as "a big fan of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King", has self-published a book credited to Torrance, repeating the phrase throughout but formatting each page differently, using the words to create different shapes from zigzags to spirals.

"The idea has probably been marinating for years, because I loved the movie and the Stephen King book," said Buehler. "I'd just finished my own obsessive art project [and] it was an idea I had over the Christmas holidays."

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