All professors have a pet peeve that can produce stern warning or even requests to leave a classroom. However, Professor Danny Lloyd may have the most unique. In his anatomy and physiology class at a community college, he will flunk anyone who asks about Stanley Kubricks “The Shining.” It turns out that Lloyd played the creepy kid, Danny Torrence, in the movie.
I just ran across this story. I suppose it does get old to be asked over and over again. However, he was a great little actor in the cult classic.
Lloyd taught in Elizabethtown, Kentucky and is now teaching in Missouri at Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley.
I am delighted that Lloyd has pursued a science teaching career. He obviously has brains to match his talents.
It also appears that he has become a bit more expansive in his speech since his troubled youth . . .
Source: Page2
Penn Valley CC is in KC. It’s really just a high school w/ ashtrays.
ap,
If it was the same for you as it was for me then one has to feel a bit of sympathy for our partners. 😉
lol, blouise. an excellent insight.
With regard to “The Shining”, the book had a greater impact on me than the movie, which I found amusing rather than frightening. The casting, in general, was wrong, IMO, with the exception of “Lloyd” perhaps.
(Blouise, “The Shinning”? Am I missing something or was that a typo? 😉 )
ap,
If it was the same for you as it was for me then one has to feel a bit of sympathy for our partners. 😉
I’m not trying to OT the thread … just trying to illustrate why the prof has my support. Our motivation is certainly different but the end result is the same … don’t mention “The Shinning”.
From the Page 2 article:
Also rumour has it that at the beginning of each semester, Danny tells his students ‘anyone asking about The Shining, fails the class’
http://frompage2screen.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/what-happened-to-the-kid-from-the-shining/
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I think that comment about failing the class should not be taken literally. Methinks the professor was being hyperbolic.
I started to watch the video but didn’t last a minute. I watched all the Hitchcock movies but would get nightmares unless I stayed to the end.
Lots of questions about how the comment came about. Intro on first day? Attempt to end distractions after several comments? Serious or facetious? Maybe he just prefers to talk about body parts.
“Play Misty for Me” … such a pretty title. It took me about 10 years to recover from that one” -Blouise
I’m with you, Blouise… Its effects lingered, to be sure.
I am not a scary movie fan and do my best to avoid them but sometimes the titles sucker me in
“The Shinning” scared the living daylights out of me and turned me off of King forever. I know, I know but come on … I saw it at a drive-in, a place of creepy shadows and plaintive train whistles (a train track ran along side of the outdoor theater). If Lloyd gets sued by one of his students, he wants me on his jury.
A close second to The Shinning is Clint Eastwood’s first foray into full length movie direction, “Play Misty for Me” … such a pretty title. It took me about 10 years to recover from that one before I was suckered by the title, “The Shinning”.
Then there was that T.V. movie, “Duel”, starring good ol’ lovable Chester from Gunsmoke, Dennis Weaver, and directed by a very young Steven Spielberg … suckered again.
Okay, nightmares tonight.
What Gene said.
Maybe just wait until it actually came out then have the innoculation, maybe after a few years fewer and fewer people will remember.
Curse of the child actors I guess. I can understand how it might be irritating to this professor though.
A former colleague of yours at Tulane was rumored to have gone to high school with Elvis. In his common law property class, we maneuvered “Black Acre” into being “Graceland” in every hypothetical until one day the professor admitted he had indeed gone to high school with the rock and roller. In his wonderful Mississippi lilt he added, “And he was the biggest damned fool I ever met in my life.” Graceland changed its name back to Black Acre that day.
I watched the video before I clicked on your post. My thought was that just hearing red rum in that annoying voice for a minute was enough to drive someone else to murder. Dr. Lloyd is probably being facetious. He teaches in a college in my town. I might have to drop by and find out.
Last summer, I visited The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, the history of which inspired “The Shining.” The hotel makes a big deal about ghosts and being haunted, but the most frightening things about the place were the prices or rooms and meals in the restaurant. It is a lovely place, though.
That kid has some tough lines to remember???
It matters crucially whether Lloyd humorlessly articulated the policy in all seriousness, or whether he was exaggerating in order to make a serious point.
So, if he tossed me from his class could I get back in his good graces by showing up every day in a sheet as if I were a ghost, or is that too obscure outside of legal movies?
raff/mespo,
I think the question is actual action versus threat of action. Students can be very obnoxious with such a factoid at their disposal and generally disruptive of class, but I dare them to try to say “medulla oblongata” backwards and expect a good grade. Still, in a teaching environment, some sense of order must be maintained. That being said, inoculation seems like a better strategy: discuss “The Shining” on the first day of class, indulge all the questions he’s doubtlessly heard thousands of times before, and at the close of that class announce that there will be no more questions about it or – he won’t flunk them – but he will dock a letter grade for distracting the class with it from that day forward.
Just a suggestion.
Anything you say Lloyd, anything you say.
So professor…. Tell me about how you rally felt about the shining….
If Mr/Dr Lloyd fails a student for just mentioning “The Shining”, I’m pretty sure that student will have a good basis for a grievance or a lawsuit. The pettiness of some people in the teaching business has always annoyed me.
“All professors have a pet peeve that can produce stern warning or even requests to leave a classroom. … In his anatomy and physiology class at a community college, he will flunk anyone who asks about Stanley Kubricks ‘The Shining.'”
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Seems the very definition of “arbitrary and capricious.”
Get over it Prof. Lloyd.