Hasitha Fernando on the story behind The Shining as it turns 45…
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had a divisive reception from film critics at the time of its release. However, decades later the effort has been appreciated and hailed as one of the greatest horror flicks of all time. As the masterpiece celebrates its 45th anniversary we take a look at what went on behind-the-scenes during the making of the iconic film…
The Shining was Stanley Kubrick’s first effort in the horror genre
After crafting the visually stunning Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick wondered what he’d do next to whet his artistic appetite. Although the lavish historical received high-praise for its technical achievements it was sadly a box-office disappointment, so Kubrick wanted to do something that would not only fulfil him artistically but also had commercial viability as his next venture. The enigmatic auteur then decided that his next effort would involve a genre he’d never tackled before – horror. Kubrick had his staff bring piles of horror books to his office to decide on which source material to adapt but over days and weeks he was dissatisfied with what he read and his secretary could hear him throwing rejected books at the wall in sheer frustration. Then, one day the ruckus stopped and when his secretary checked on him she saw Kubrick curled up on his chair reading Stephen King’s The Shining. Kubrick wanted the horror author to take a stab at the screenplay but what he submitted didn’t appeal to the filmmaker, so novelist Diane Johnson was chosen for the daunting task based on the strength of her psychological horror novel The Shadow Knows.
Stephen King never bought Jack Nicholson in the lead role
From the get-go Jack Nicholson was Kubrick’s top pick for the lead role. Although Robert De Niro and Robin Williams were considered at the outset, Kubrick thought De Niro was not psychotic enough based on his performance in Taxi Driver and that Williams was too psychotic for the role, based on his performance on Mork & Mindy. Kris Kristofferson was Kubrick’s backup choice in case Nicholson didn’t come on board. Writer Stephen King, however, completely disagreed with the filmmaker’s choices regarding Jack Nicholson, believing audiences would likely view the actor as an unhinged individual from the very beginning since his Academy Award winning work on the critically acclaimed psychological drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The writer’s preferences for the lead role were Jon Voight, Martin Sheen or Michael Moriarty, who would have portrayed an individual’s gradual descent in to madness more accurately. But a clause in King’s contract forbade him from having a say in the casting process and as a result Nicholson got the part.
Shelley Duvall suffered nervous exhaustion during the shoot
To say Shelley Duvall had a tough time during the production of The Shining would be a proverbial understatement. The book version of Wendy Torrance was a more independent and less timid character than her movie counterpart. However, Stanley Kubrick envisioned Wendy Torrance as an emotionally fragile person and cast Shelley Duvall in the role. Even co-star Jack Nicholson was confused with Kubrick’s casting choice, even going to the extent of recommending Jessica Lange for the role but once the filmmaker explained the changes he’d made Nicholson accepted that Duvall was the right actress for the gig. In comparison, Nicholson and the other cast members had it easy during the shoot, but Duvall was certainly pushed beyond her limit which resulted her in suffering from perpetual state of nervous exhaustion throughout. Although Duvall reflected that Kubrick’s extreme behavior towards her was to coax the best performance out of her, the actress admitted that it wasn’t an experience that she ever wished to repeat in her career.
The iconic bathroom scene took three whole days to film
Since its release over four decades prior the bathroom door scene in The Shining has gone on to become one of the most iconic moments in cinematic history and cementing its place firmly in modern day pop-culture. During filming the props department built a door that could be broken down with ease, however, they didn’t take in to account that Jack Nicholson had worked in the capacity of a volunteer fire marshal some time back and was thus able to tear down the prop door with little effort. This compelled the props department to build a stronger door but in the end, due to Kubrick’s fastidious nature the shooting of that sequence took three days using up sixty doors. The “Heeeeeere’s Johnny” line which was improvised by Nicholson was nearly edited out of the final movie because Kubrick hailed from England and was unfamiliar with The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.
Stanley Kubrick was super protective of actor Danny Lloyd
When Danny Lloyd landed the gig as little Danny Torrance, the actor was a mere child and the performance was his first acting job. During the shoot Lloyd was also under the impression that he was filming a drama and not a horror movie and it was much later, eleven years after the film’s release, that the actor saw an uncut version of the movie he contributed to. Although director Stanley Kubrick was hard on the most of the adult cast members, like Shelley Duvall and Scatman Crothers, he was genuinely protective of the child actor and maintained a good work relationship with Lloyd. In later interviews Lloyd even mentioned that Kubrick even used to play ball with him in between takes and even called to congratulate him during his high-school graduation. The scene where Wendy Torrance carries Danny away while shouting at Jack in the lounge was a life-sized dummy that is carried away by Shelley Duvall.
All interior sets in the movie were built from scratch
Most of The Shining’s story occurs inside the Overlook Hotel, so Kubrick aimed to make the set unforgettable and immersive for viewers. Therefore, the filmmaker had production designer Roy Walker purposefully design the elaborate set based on an amalgamation of real-life hotels. For example, the Colorado Lounge was modelled after the Ahwahnee Hotel, in Yosemite Valley, California. The stunning red colored men’s bathroom was inspired by the men’s room of the Biltmore Hotel located in Arizona. This elaborate set was built from scratch at the Elstree Studios in England and since Kubrick wanted to shoot the movie in chronological order as written in the script, he had all relevant sets prepped and ready at all times, which meant every soundstage available at Elstree Studios were utilized and all sets were constructed, dressed, pre-lit and ready to go during the entirety of the shoot. Since the Overlook Hotel boasts massive floor-to-ceiling windows the daytime scenes were tricky to make as they required the generation of a large output of artificial light to recreate sunlight. Due to the intense heat generated by these light fixtures, in one instance the lounge set caught fire. Fortunately all relevant scenes had already been wrapped at the time.
The movie boasts world records for the most number of takes
Stanley Kubrick was infamous for being a perfectionist and because of this the director had a tendency to make a multiple number of retakes in order to get a scene right. This naturally led to his efforts going way over budget and prolonging shoots indefinitely. The Shining was initially supposed to conclude shooting within seventeen weeks but it ended up being extended to over 50 weeks. There’s some degree of contention regarding the number of retakes Kubrick did for certain scenes but according to the Guinness Book of Records, the scene where Shelly Duvall’s Wendy is backing up the stairs swinging the baseball bat at Jack Nicholson’s character was apparently shot a whopping 127 times. According to actress Anjelica Huston, who was dating Nicholson at the time, the actor would often return from a day’s worth of shooting, walk straight to bed, collapse and fall asleep since the process of making the movies was so exhausting.
The movie was one of the first films to employ Steadicam
Along with a half-a-dozen other movies released in 1976 like Marathon Man, Rocky and Bound for Glory, The Shining was one of the first films to utilize the newly developed Steadicam which employs a stabilizing mount for its motion picture camera. The Steadicam revolutionized filmmaking in that it allowed smooth tracking shots to be accomplished, even though its operator is treading through uneven ground. Garrett Brown, who invented Steadicam, was heavily involved with the production of The Shining offering his expertise on how to refine the shots needed for the film.
The composers were unsure if any of their music would even make it into the film
The opening aerial shot of The Shining, with Jack Torrance’s car snaking through a winding road that overlooks a pristine blue lake, accompanied by the foreboding music of Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind have now become the stuff of legend. But during the making of the film, neither Carlos nor Elkind were sure how much of the music they composed would be featured in the final cut as Kubrick was well known to arbitrarily replace the original music crafted by composers for his efforts with classical pieces available in the public domain. Such was the case for Kubrick’s magnum opus 2001: A Space Odyssey when the filmmaker rejected Alex North’s score for the classical pieces he’d initially used as his “temp track”. Even Wendy Carlos had had a bitter experience previously when she worked with Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange. But against her better judgement Carlos and Elkind decided to score the music for The Shining and surprisingly some of their compositions did end up making in to the final cut. Carlos’s music, in its entirety, was released much later in 2005 as part of the musicians’ Rediscovering Lost Scores compilation.
Box office success, mixed reviews, reappraisals and legacy
Made on a relatively modest production budget of $19 million, The Shining went on to make a fairly decent killing (pun intended) at the worldwide box-office by raking in a respectable $48 million. Despite opening on the same weekend as The Empire Strikes Back, and far fewer number of screens The Shining grossed $622,337 for the four-day weekend, the third-highest haul over an opening weekend from fewer than 50 screens of all time.
Like many cult classics that have later on gone on to be appreciated The Shining too had its detractors in the form of film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Siskel gave the effort two stars out of four labelling the film, “a crashing disappointment” while Ebert opined that it was hard to connect with any of the characters. The movie even went on to be nominated for two Razzie Awards, in the Worst Director and Worst Actress categories. Ouch.
In any case, with the passage of time The Shining went on to be reappraised and appreciated by both film critics and audiences, achieving the status of a modern horror masterpiece. Even Roger Ebert, who was at first critical of the effort, inducted the film into his Great Movies series in 2006, elaborating “Stanley Kubrick’s cold and frightening The Shining challenges us to decide: Who is the reliable observer? Whose idea of events can we trust? … It is this elusive open-endedness that makes Kubrick’s film so strangely disturbing”.
The movie has had a profound influence on pop culture, primarily through its iconic imagery (the creepy Grady Twins) and unforgettable quotes (the Heeeeeere’s Johnny” line), which have been aped and spoofed in numerous flicks later on. The movie has also been tremendously influential on the psychological horror genre, through its exploration of isolation and its ill effects on the human mind as well as its exploration of themes of mental instability.
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Hasitha Fernando is a part-time medical practitioner and full-time cinephile. Follow him on Twitter via @DoctorCinephile for regular updates on the world of entertainment.
