Other Titles • The Shining • Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' (1980) • Shining (1980)
Trivia from The Shining (1980)
1
Shelley Duvall described her time making the picture as "tumultuous"; she was in and out of ill health, partially because of the stress of the role and being away from home for so long. Despite several flare-ups with Kubrick, she was wholly satisfied with the final film, and she said she learned more from Kubrick during this shoot than she learned in all her other films.
(48 votes)
2
Theatrical release: May 23, 1980.
(31 votes)
3
Of horror films, Kubrick said, "I think the unconscious appeal of a ghost story, for instance, lies in its promise of immortality. If you can be frightened by a ghost story, then you must accept the probability that supernatural beings exist. If they do, then there is more than just oblivion waiting beyond the grave."
(28 votes)
4
Kubrick was able to film all of Danny's parts without "Danny" realizing he was in a horror movie.
(26 votes)
5
Filmed at EMI Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, England, and at the Timberline Lodge in Mount Hood, Oregon.
(25 votes)
6
The shoot lasted from May 1978 through April 1979.
7
Estimated budget: $10-15 million.
8
Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick clashed over the production of THE SHINING. One surreal anecdote records a telephone call from Kubrick to King in the wee hours of the morning in which the director asked the author, "Do you believe in God?" Upon answering yes, Kubrick responded, "I thought so," and hung up. For years King railed against the film but said he came to appreciate the psychological style of horror that Kubrick was mining. A television miniseries based on the novel follows the original story much more faithfully--the screenplay for the miniseries was written by King himself.
9
The topiary from the book was too difficult to reproduce, so the hedge maze was created in its place.
10
The ominous snow was actually a mixture of Styrofoam and salt.
11
The use of the Steadicam, invented by camera operator Garrett Brown, was revolutionary in its ability to get moving shots never before possible.
12
Cowriters Kubrick and Diane Johnson read works by Sigmund Freud and Bruno Bettelheim to prepare for the psychological nature of THE SHINING.
13
The interior of the Overlook Hotel was actually a huge set built in a British studio.
14
Philip Stone also appeared in Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE; Joe Turkel also appeared in Kubrick's THE KILLING and PATHS OF GLORY.
15
The film was originally shown with a final hospital scene, but Kubrick quickly edited it out five days after the release, sending editors on bicycles to the theaters to cut the scene.
16
The Timberline Lodge in Mount Hood, Oregon, served as the Overlook in exterior shots.
17
In the book, room 217 holds some evil secrets; the room number was changed to 237 for the movie because there is no room 237 at the Timberline Lodge--and the owners felt that no one again would have ever stayed in room 217 after they'd seen the movie.
18
The book that Wendy Torrance is reading in the beginning of the film is J.D. Salinger's THE CATCHER IN THE RYE--which deals with mental instability and the urge to save a child.
19
The documentary MAKING "THE SHINING" was directed by Vivian Kubrick--Stanley Kubrick's daughter--who, among other things, followed around Jack Nicholson as he prepared for the "Here's Johnny!" scene and interviewed the actors.
20
In the film Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers) describes the shining as the special ability to see the past and the future.
21
About his detail and technical proficiency Kubrick has said, "Eisenstein does it with cuts. Max Ophuls does it with fluid movements. Chaplin is all content and little form. Nobody could have shot a film in a more pedestrian way than Chaplin. Nobody could have paid less attention to story than Eisenstein. ALEXANDER NEVSKY is, after all, a pretty dopey story. POTEMKIN is built around a heavy propaganda story. But both are great filmmakers."
22
Vivian Kubrick, daughter of Stanley Kubrick, had a uncredited guest role as a smoking guest on a ballroom couch.
23
The opening panorama shots and all scenes of the Volkswagen Beetle on the road to the hotel were filmed in Glacier National Park in Montana.
24
The set for the Overlook Hotel was then the largest ever built, and by viewers popularly and easily mistaken for a real location. It included a full recreation of the exterior of the hotel, as well as all of the interiors. A few exterior shots were done at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon. They are easy to notice because the hedge maze is missing. The Timberline Lodge requested Kubrick change the sinister Room 217 of King's novel to 237, so customers would stay in their own room 217 fearlessly. The interiors are based on those of the Ahwahnee hotel in Yosemite National Park. The massive set would be the site of Kubrick's first use of the Steadicam.
25
The movie that Danny and Wendy watch on television at the beginning of the "Monday" segment is Summer of '42, reportedly one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite movies, and a rare insurgence of modern pop culture in one of his films.
26
Although the story is set in Colorado the only scenes filmed there are an exterior of the Flatirons above Boulder, and an interior at the now defunct Stapleton International Airport, where Hallorann is calling to make arrangements to get a vehicle to get him to the hotel. Scenes of the Torrance family watching the news on television included several actual Denver newscasters and weathermen of the time. Negotiations with the Stanley Hotel (the main inspiration for King's book) in Estes Park, Colorado, broke down over Kubrick's proposed uses of the facility. It would be used for the filming of the 1997 miniseries.
27
The Grady twins' footage is unmistakably reminiscent of a photo by Diane Arbus, and much of the abstracted horror appears influenced by Arbus's strange photos of masked revellers and desexualized nudes.
28
After Jack admonishes Wendy for interrupting him, if one listens to the typewriter carefully, one can deduce that Jack is in fact typing the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
29
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, The Shining holds the record for the film with most retakes of a single scene (with spoken dialogue) at 127 takes.
30
Stephen King notoriously disliked Kubrick's vision. He thought that the novel's important themes, such as the disintegration of the family, were ignored. He also felt that Kubrick viewed the source material as below him, and that the film was Kubrick's way of elevating the material to his level. King also viewed the casting of Nicholson as a mistake and a tip-off to the audience that the character Jack would go mad.
31
An edit of footage by Robert Ryang, in which The Shining was marketed as a family based character film, swiftly became a much downloaded internet favourite on its wide distribution in October 2005. (Source: New York Times)
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