Stephen King disliked the movie. Shelley Duvall is traumatized by it. The studio went up in
flames. There’s more stoking the fire behind the many untold truths of The Shining masterpiece.
Curious about what’s happening behind the Overlook Hotel doors?
After watching Stanley Kubrick's creepy adaptation of "The Shining," it's probably
hard for most to imagine anyone other than Jack Nicholson in the role of Jack Torrance.
However, the legendary actor was far from the only choice for the role.
In his book, "Fright Favorites," David J. Skal says that Stephen King rejected
several options that Kubrick proposed for the lead.
King was more of a fan of having someone like Jon Voight or Michael Moriarty play the role instead.
King eventually accepted Nicholson as Jack Torrance, although he wound up regretting
that decision later. Why you may ask? It’s primarily because he criticized how
Kubrick wanted the character portrayed. In an interview with Deadline, King explains:
"The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie.
Absolutely no arc at all. […] All he does is get crazier. In the book,
he's a guy who's struggling with his sanity and finally loses it. To me, that's a tragedy."
Stephen King not only disliked how Jack Torrance was portrayed in the
film but was actually even more upset with Wendy Torrance in the adaptation.
In an interview with the BBC, he claimed that the portrayal was misogynistic, adding:
"She's basically just there to scream and be stupid,
and that's not the woman that I wrote about."
According to The Mirror, the author wanted the character to be shown as the strong woman
that he initially wrote. He even envisioned Jessica Lange as someone who could do so.
In the end, Kubrick went in a completely different direction and dramatically changed the character.
He decided to go with representing someone more anxious and fragile
and felt that Shelley Duvall was a better fit for the part.
Kubrick's vision of Wendy Torrance illustrates a woman who is in such an abusive relationship
that she's too frightened to leave, which is unfortunately a difficult reality that
many people face. The lengths that Kubrick was willing to go to get his desired performance
out of Shelley Duvall was also disturbing. It ultimately made filming quite a harrowing
experience for the 28-year-old actress that would have significant long-term effects on her.
"All right, don't sympathize with Shelley."
"It doesn't help you." "Yes it does."
In an interview with Dr. Phil many years later,
it’s visible that Duvall is still traumatized by the year she spent on set.
She talked about the difficulty she went through with filming before, sadly confessing:
"If he hadn't directed the way he did, if he hadn't done everything with force and cruelty,
then I guess it wouldn't have turned out to be as it was.”
Not only was the cast and crew ordered to ignore and isolate Duvall, but Kubrick also
punished her as much as possible. One of the worst examples of this is when she was forced to do 127
takes of the scene where she holds the baseball bat, as Jack Nicholson slowly stalks towards her.
Hours of crying on camera left her dehydrated and hoarse, and her hands even bled from holding the
bat so tightly and for long. Kubrick's daughter, Vivian, shot behind-the-scenes footage for
"Making the Shining," which features various moments of tension between Duvall and Kubrick.
It even showed Duvall's hair falling out due to the unbearable stress of filming.
One of the key features shared by both the novel and the film
is the eerie atmosphere of the Overlook Hotel. But
do you know what inspired it? It’s actually based upon the Stanley Hotel in Estes, Colorado.
In late September 1974, Stephen King and his wife spent time at
the Stanley Hotel when it was nearly empty,
as the resort was about to close for winter. The silent halls and spooky ambience creeped
the author out so much that it led to a nightmare that would become the origin for "The Shining."
The hotel has a long history of being haunted. In fact, according to the New York Times,
the owners and staff have leaned into the spooky image of the Stanley and used it as a marketing
strategy. They’ve even gone as far as adding the hedge maze Kubrick created for his film in 2015.
Filming "The Shining" may not have been as hard for the rest of the cast and crew
as it was for Duvall, but it was still extremely difficult. The number of takes
Kubrick wanted to shoot for every scene and the numerous changes to the script
increased the shooting schedule from six months to over a year.
As seen in the behind-the-scenes documentary, Jack Nicholson reportedly gave up memorizing the script
due to the daily rewrites. Instead, he’d just just do a quick study of the scene prior to filming.
"When everybody's got their script out you can look right over and know if they've got
the latest version but of course - you never have the latest version."
70-year-old Scatman Crothers also suffered due to Kubrick's perfectionism.
According to The Guardian, Kubrick demanded 60 retakes for one scene,
which made Crothers cry in exasperation. Yet none of these were as high as the "shine" scene, whose
148 retakes earned it the Guinness World Record for most retakes for one scene with dialogue.
However, there were some in the crew who didn't mind all of the retakes.
In an interview with The Independent, steadicam operator Garrett Brown said:
"I realized on day one it was a priceless opportunity for me to perfect what I was doing,
really to learn the physical act of doing it. I
could have literally done 100 takes or 1,000 takes."
Since its release, King has expressed criticisms of the film that boil down
to his frustration over the various changes from his original version.
After praising the look of the film in an interview with Deadline, King admitted:
"When it opened, a lot of the reviews weren't very favorable,
and I was one of those reviewers. I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn't care for it much."
Among his problems with the film, King felt that in Kubrick's hands, the overall story is darker
and more heartless than what he envisioned. He summed it up as such to TCM, saying:
"I always thought that the real difference between my take on it and Stanley Kubrick's take on it
was this: In my novel, the hotel burns. In Kubrick's movie, the hotel freezes.
It's the difference between warmth and cold."
As grueling as it was, filming 'The Shining' apparently didn't impact the child actors as much
as the adults. In an interview with The Guardian, Danny Lloyd describes how Kubrick did what he
could to protect him from the scary aspects of "The Shining," so he wouldn't be scarred for life.
In fact, Kubrick was so successful that Lloyd didn't even know he was in a horror film
and not a drama until years later. But Danny unfortunately struggled to find success after
the film, and quit acting when he was 13 or 14. However, Lloyd wasn't the only child actor of "The
Shining" to make that decision. Lisa and Louise Burns played the creepy and iconic Grady twins.
"Come play with us Danny."
In spite of their success on screen, they decided to focus on academic pursuits rather than careers
in film. Years later, the pair appeared in an episode of VH1's "Where Are They Now,"
where they described their decidedly less creepy lives out of the spotlight.
20 years after the release of his novel, King got his chance to redeem his original
story and tell it the way he wanted to for television audiences. "The Shining" miniseries
was written and produced by the horror master. It later aired on ABC in three parts in 1997.
Featuring Steven Weber as Jack and Rebecca De Mornay as Wendy, the small screen adaptation
shows the characters in a way that is more true to how they are written in the novel.
Not only does De Mornay play a much stronger character,
but it’s also made clear that Weber's portrayal of Jack truly showcases the evil influence of
the undead. The Overlook Hotel is the main cause of his descent into madness.
The TV miniseries got a number of positive reviews by critics,
and it even won two Emmy awards for Makeup and Sound Editing.
One of the many hard-to-believe conspiracy theories about the film's secret messages is
also one of the darkest. The theory is put forward in a thorough analysis by film scholar Rob Ager in
his book, "Mazes, Mirrors, Deception and Denial" and focuses on the disturbing bear suit scene.
In the film, a man dressed in a bear costume performs a sexual act on another man.
Bears are a recurring motif in Kubrick's film and in fact,
their image is associated with Danny several times in the movie.
Ager notes that the use of this bear imagery connects Danny to the man in the bear costume.
This frighteningly speaks to a much darker and more sinister subtext:
Danny has been sexually abused by Jack.
Ager points to other evidence of this potential trauma. He points out the Playgirl issue that Jack
is reading, which features a story with the title "Incest: Why parents sleep with their children."
There's also the similar use of a mirror between Danny's dream sequence in room 237 where Jack
meets the rotting old woman and the disturbing scene where Jack comforts Danny. While Ager's
interpretation is his own, even the theory makes Jack even more of a monster than he already is.
Along with interpretations of the bear suit mystery, there are many other theories of
hidden meanings throughout the film. Kubrick was a well-known perfectionist,
so when even a minor detail is off, many are quick to find some logical reason for the discrepancy.
But producer Jan Harlan is very clear about his dismissal of the conspiracy theories
surrounding the film. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he says:
"The most insulting one is the idea that 'The Shining' is a film about the Holocaust.
That's outrageous. That's an insult to Kubrick [...] and also an insult
to victims of the Holocaust. The other ideas are much more harmless,
where continuity mistakes are attributed with deep meaning."
It's difficult to argue with Harlan on this, since according to The Independent,
Kubrick actually did want to make a film about the Holocaust, and spent
over 20 years developing a project called "The Aryan Papers," which never came to fruition.
One condition that Kubrick made Warner Bros. agree to was that all unused footage had to be
destroyed. As producer Jan Harlan shared with Entertainment Weekly:
"Stanley wanted to make sure that nobody would ever re-assemble his edit in any other way."
The first of the unused scenes shows Jack finding a scrapbook that illustrates the dark events of
the Overlook's past. Even though the scene did not make the final cut, the scrapbook can still
be seen on his desk for a moment later in the film because it was so important to the story.
As a result, the very end, which shows the photograph of Jack from 1921,
makes even less sense without that cut scene.
"It's good to see you." "It's good to be back Lloyd."
Kubrick also took out an alternate ending because Warner Bros. thought the movie was too long.
After Jack's famous demise in the cold, the scene shows Wendy and Danny safe in a hospital.
The alternate ending continues with the manager of the Overlook Hotel telling them
that an investigation was done and no evidence of paranormal activity has been found. However,
he follows that admittance by handing Danny the same tennis ball he found outside the haunted Room
237 – ultimately leaving the audience convinced of the supernatural events they just witnessed.
As if the filming of "The Shining" could not get any more chaotic, The Independent reported
that things took an even more intense turn when a fire broke out at Elstree Studios, where the
majority of the film was shot. Luckily, no one was harmed, but the flames caused all sorts of damage.
Kubrick not only seemed unfazed, but was even a bit happy about the disaster.
In an interview with BBC, his widow Christiane Kubrick says:
"It gave him a long delay, which for some reason he thought was
quite fun cause he could rethink certain things."
Ray Merrin, the sound editor, also comments on how the director only
seemed concerned with making sure his audio recordings were safe.
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