I Think Its Time That We Revisit "The Shining" (1980) as well as Shelley Duvalls wonderful performance

For me, in the top three favorite movies of all time. I love it so much.

[quote]doesnt rely on jump scares

Well, it did have a jump scare or two.

Shelleys performance made the film for me. You can literally see and feel her fear, devastation and exhaustion. Poor thing, and that wasnt even much acting. Kubrick was literally driving her insane on set, poor thing was losing it because of him. He made her do that bat scene 127 times, so much so that she cried so much that she had no tears left to cry and became dehydrated.

It’s my favorite movie. I love watching it a few times in the winter during a snow storm.

Kubrick treated Duvall like shit throughout a lot of the filming, I'm assuming to get a certain level of performance out of her. I've obsessed about this film for a long time, and have read and seen just about everything on it. Conspiracy theorists say Kubrick embedded subliminal messages about the US moon landing throughout the movie, and it sounds far-fetched, but there are lots of coincidences.

[quote]Conspiracy theorists say Kubrick embedded subliminal messages about the US moon landing throughout the movie, and it sounds far-fetched, but there are lots of coincidences.

Lots of coincidences? Meaning?

R5 yes, he treated her like shit and picked on her a lot to beat her down so much that the devastation, fear and exhaustion we see is genuine. He would make her work crazy hours over and over, and the tears during many scenes were real tears from her.

She has said she was dealing with personal issues in her life at the time of filming this so the way he treated her hit her even harder.

Was this released to theaters just for tonight? Caught my local cinema's 7pm showing and it was the only one listed.

Had never seen it on the big screen before...I was 3 or so when it originally came out.

It was like watching it new all over again.

It's a truly spellbinding movie.

The Shining is one of my favourites. The way the tension builds is fantastic and Jack Nicholson’s never been better. I never miss it if it’s on. I thought the book was shite though. x

r8 omg I just went to see it at 7pm in Brooklyn tonight. My local Regal was showing it so I went to see it and it was amazing. I was not even born yet when this movie came out (born years later), and watching it on the big screen felt so different. It was so much more intense and creepy.

Has anyone ever seen the mini-series from the 90s? I remember not liking it. The kid was awful in the mini-series.

Why Stephen King hates Stanley Kubricks "The Shining"

Between this and 3 Women I consider Shelley Duvall to be one of the best and most interesting actresses of her generation.

Film critic Nick Davis actually named Shelley Duvall’s performance in The Shining as the best by a leading actress that year. No way did she deserve the Razzie.

They missed something. When, whoever it was, looked closely at the photos on the wall from decades past, Jack should have been in all the photos. Such as the photos from the 1930s and 1940s, or whatever.

Kubrick was a sadist, don't get the adoration.

Universal Studio's Hollywood Horror Nights did The Shining attraction two years ago. It was pretty good.

Kubricks vs Kings

It wasn't a performance. She was basically tortured by being forced to do take after take after take until Kubrick finally broke her.

Shameful.

"I know that Stephen King hated this movie because it strayed so far from the book. I liked the changes. "

I understand that in the book Wendy is pretty and tough, quite able to look after the kid, and hat the father wasn't that bad, that the chief threat comes from the supernatural elements rather than from within the child's own family.

Well Kubrick was right and King was wrong, threats from within your own family are FAR scarier than any ghost or monster! Few are genuinely afraid of ghosts, but everyone who has ever lived still has an inner child that is deeply frightened of their father's rage and mother's helplessness, and who experiences gut-deep terror when they see parents turning on or abandoning a child. The fear is there in all our minds, and Kubrick accessed it.

"The Shining" just gets weirder and scarier: repeat. If this ilk of shimmering and scarier than fuck fuckery is one of your ideas of healthy entertainment, you might want to read "The Girl On the Landing" by Paul Torday. I'll refrain from any comment about the book because I've read it more than a few times and I always remark about the similar ways these two stories start off being normal for 90 seconds and then proceed to delicately unwind reality and values as we know it. The book is available on abebooks for cheap.

From the opening scene/music to the ending scene/music:

I don't pay much attention to King's opinion on the film. Book and film are two completely different mediums.

My only complaint about the film is that Jack goes crazy too soon. It should have been drawn out a bit more.

It's a great film and it's being released on Blu-Ray in UHD.

What Kubrick did to Duvall was shameful. Kubrick was a great director but he would never get away with that shit today.

My favorite performance in the movie is Danny Llloyd's: it's a big, and difficult, role, and he is totally authentic and unnerving. He must have felt in tune with Duvall, Nicholson, and Kubrick to work with them all so brilliantly.

[quote]Has anyone ever seen the mini-series from the 90s? I remember not liking it. The kid was awful in the mini-series.

I had to cleanse my soul by watching the film just to get that shit out of my head. Their first mistake was hiring the guy from "Wings" - there was no way he'd be taken seriously in that role when he had just finished a long run on a sitcom

This is Alex Essoe, the actress who will be playing Wendy Torrance in the recreated flashback scenes in Doctor Sleep.

A bit of a resemblance to a younger Shelley Duvall.

In an interview in the very early 1980s Sissy Spacek said she could never work with a director like Stanley Kubrick doing take after take. I take it that Shelley relayed her experiences to Sissy.

R27, she looks like Sophia Coppola in that picture

The whole cast is brilliant, especially Duvall.

I've known women like her Wendy who are so desperate to keep a man, any man, that their children's safety is secondary.

The best reaction is the doctor just sitting there stone faced as Wendy recounts Danny's dislocated shoulder and how happy she is that it resulted in Jack being 5 months sober.

R30 I thought the Dr was horrified by Wendy's recounting of Jack's abuse while Wendy states, more than once 'it was purely an accident', the Dr knew better. The Shining is a work of art . Why was it necessary to torture Duvall to get a performance ? It's called acting for a reason! You can be sure Jack didn't have to endure that fuckery.

The DVD included a short made by Vivian Kubrick, basically documenting the way Kubrick and Nicholson terrorized Duvall during production. It was almost more frightening then The Shinning.

Does Kubrick really confess in this movie that he did the 'moon landing' hoax?

We would think that he would have to be rather careful about that, assuming he wanted to continue breathing.

R33 No. its just one of many conspiracy theories.

There are many conspiracy theories about Eyes Wide Shut also

It's a shame Duvall stepped back from acting.

The documentary Room 237 covers some of the fan theories. It's fairly interesting and gave me a new appreciation for the film's design.

A film that could never be allowed to be made today.

I saw it when it first came out. The book was such a hit and Kubrick was such an icon with 2001. Unfortunately, the crowd I saw it with was disappointed. When the lights came up, people just quietly left the theatre as it deviated so much from the book. Where were the lawn creatures? Jack NIcholson was all over the place. People now hated Wendy and you hoped the husband would kill her. That said, I still think the film is a classic. Just needed that initial excitement to wear off to truly appreciate it.

The topiary creatures would have looked ridiculous on film.

Go to Hell, R 39.

Probably Kubrick's most brilliant curation of classical pieces ever for the "score." Aided and abetted by the Wendy Carlos compositions, which were so chilling. I love this one - it plays while they are driving up to the hotel in the beginning and talking about the Donner party. ("you mean they ate each other up?")

Gooseflesh city.

Love every frame of this movie, and can’t understand why people hated Duvall. She was awkward, weak and depressed as Wendy and it was appropriate for the character. The miniseries was much more straightforward but the movie really explores cabin fever and how people can spiral into madness through loneliness/addiction.

There’s a great doc called “Film Worker” about Kubrick’s long time assistant who found Danny and coached the performance out of him. I’m a big Kubrick fan but the doc makes you realize that he’s a maniac.

It is perfection. Duvall is perfection, too. Actually, everyone gave excellent performances. Too bad Kubrick had to be such a sadist in directing Duvall.

Love that long, burning cigarette Duvall is holding in the Ann Jackson scene.

Count me in on one of those who found the casting and the movie itself pretty much perfect.

R20, my children LOVE this movie. I’m probably a bad parent for letting them watch it, but I think a 10-year old can handle it, and we have discussed why it’s a classic film. Interestingly, they also love “The Babadook”, which has similar themes of a child’s helplessness and a parent’s descent into madness.

We try to introduce them to classic/iconic films, and it’s interesting to see what takes. I’m still trying to fine “2001: A Space Odyssey”, since one of them expressed an interest. And I’d like to see it again.

R38 I remember people laughibg when I went to see it. Duvall got nominated for a Razzie(which she deserved) and Nicholson should have been nomilinated for one as well. There is a camp factor to it that is undeniable. Kubrick was great at dumbshows and noise but not with the heart and soul of acting.

Laughing and nominated

Duvall was perfect casting for the family that Kubrick wanted to put on film, which was of course totally different than the family in the book.

Look at them in the early scenes, there's this confident, moderately handsome, and intelligent man who has pretensions as a writer but who is mysteriously underemployed, there's this plain stay-at-home mom who has a husband out of her league and yeah she's making excuses for his bad behavior the minute we see her, and there's this withdrawn child who's getting visits from a psychiatrist before he's old enough to be in school. Bingo! Before we ever see the Overlook Hotel, we know damn well that this is a dysfunctional family and the parents have an abuser/enabler relationship, and that these are the last people on Earth who should isolate themselves for months.

It's brilliantly set up, and wouldn't have worked nearly as well with an actress who was beautiful or glamorous.

No one ever talks about Scatman Crothers. Is it because he was heavily into scat?

Scatman C. Sings

The Crothers character was kind of irrelevant to the main narrative, which was about the collapse of a family. He's just there to fail to rescue Danny and to be the first murder victim.

The kid's "Shining" psychic ability is also pretty irrelevant to the story in the film, in fact, it could have been completely cut and nothing major about the movie's plot would change. But Kubrick had paid good money for the title of a best-selling book, he couldn't actually leave it out of the film.

This film is one of my all-time favorites. I don't think of it in relation to the book at all (I also really like the book). Someone upthread said it's a great movie to watch during a snowstorm, and I agree. I remember watching it for the umpteenth time during the 1991 Halloween snowstorm in Minnesota. I was in college then, living in an old stone dorm building and watched the film with my friends.

Whenever I'm in Oregon, which isn't enough lately, I try to go to the Timberline Lodge at the top of Mt Hood. The exterior of the hotel stood in for the Overlook Hotel in Kubrick's film. I've also been to the Stanley in Estes Park, CO which was King's inspiration and the Banff Springs Hotel where supposedly King wrote the book. All three hotels are different, but are all mountain hotels and all distinctive in their own way. I feel like a geek feeling like I've stamped my loyalty card by staying at all 3 of them (solely because they are related to the book/movie).

The Stanley, in Estes Park

Banff Springs Hotel

Sorry, actually Banff Springs Hotel in Canada was supposedly the inspiration for the Shining, not where he wrote it.

The shot of Jack in the snow is the only part that I don't think works. It looks over the top and very comedy like.

I don't think the child actor ever worked as an actor again. Do I have that right?

Also, the scenes with Danny's shine add very much to the creep factor. REDRUM!

[quote]Too bad Kubrick had to be such a sadist in directing Duvall.

Shelley Duvall is an actress. She knew the risks.

Brilliant directors expect a lot of their stars. Same scenario with Tippi Hedren and Hitchcock in The Birds.

These films made them legendary and they need to stop whining about how difficult it was.

R59 you try filming that long ass bat scene from start to finish 127 times in a row with no breaks. I’m sure you would crack also.

[quote] The topiary creatures would have looked ridiculous on film.

They used cheap CGI for the moving topiary creatures for the TV mini-series, and it looked absolutely awful.

Yet again, Dataloungers show they have no sense of history.

Shelley Duvall was legendary BEFORE she did "The Shining" for her performances in "Thieves Like Us," "Nashville," "Three Women," and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller."

Kubrick didn’t use the creatures intentionally because he said they would look awful and ruin the entire look and vibe of the movie.

He knew in 20 years people would look at it and say this looks awful.

R52, such a terrible opinion. The moment he gets killed and you see the psychic connection between the two, was very powerful. That terrifying scream from Danny knowing the only person who could ever understand him, had just been murdered by his father, was an incredible scene. To go from their simple and sweet first connection "How would you like some ice cream, doc?" to him being slaughtered by his father and seeing/feeling that in his mind, is just incredible.

I felt terrible for the old man. He was a good, kind older gentleman. I hated the scene when the ghost that convinces Jack to kill his family calls him a nigger. Always annoyed me. He may be black, but he was no N word.

When I was a kid, I loved the Stanley Kubrick version of The Shining. Then 10 years later, when I read the book, it completely turned me against the Stanley Kubrick version.

Then a few years later, when I heard about the miniseries, being written by Stephen King, I thought that the miniseries would be perfect. There was plenty of things wrong with the miniseries, but my main complaint was that damn kid, Courtland Mead, who played Danny.

Every time that little twerp spoke, he sounded like he had tons of snot up his nose. I'm rather surprised that he turned out to be a good looking man.

R66 that’s debatable. I don’t think he’s handsome. He couldn’t act.

[quote]I don't think the child actor ever worked as an actor again. Do I have that right?

According to IMDB, Danny Lloyd has just one other acting credit: he played the young G. Gordon Liddy in a 1982 TV movie, "Will: The Autobiography G. Gordon Liddy" (a different kind of horror story).

[quote]Every time that little twerp spoke, he sounded like he had tons of snot up his nose

LOL!

That miniseries would've been way more convincing if Rebecca De Mornay played "Jack" since she pretty much did in "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle."

I absolutely hated this film from the first time I saw it (I watched it many years later to see if I was wrong...I was not.) Like many Kubrick films, the main culprit is the pacing. It is just so fucking SLOW. I thought this film would never end.There are a few great scenes in it, but not enough to slog through this interminable mess.

Many critics at the time hated DeMornay being cast as Wendy for the simple fact that she’s a blonde, prett, very attractive woman that also came off secure, aka the opposite of Duvall. In other words, her Wendy would never have put up with Jacks bullshit and would have left the minute he broke their sons arm.

You believed Duvall would stay with Jack and be his apologist, not DeMornay.

I don’t find this film slow, and find it visually appealing to look at on top of fantastic writing, directing and acting.

It was bad casting all-around for that miniseries. That little kid mouth-breather and Steven Weber??? I mean did EVERY OTHER ACTOR turn it down?

How could you not root for the ghost to strangle the one on the right? Look at that little shit.

I know Duvall’s performance was overall hated when this film came out but many young critics and viewers praise her now. I’ve seen many young people online refer to her portrayal of Wendy as someone you have empathy for and care for and want to see become the hero.

Yeah, I distinctly remember Shelley's performance being roundly hated. I think it was more for her appearance than the actual performance, though. There were countless jokes about how ugly she was in the movie.

The fact that she’s not pretty made the character more real to me.

I thought Shelley Duvall was Way more hotter than Rebecca De Mornay.

Kubrick treated different Shelley much better:

Another star of Lolita, Shelley Winters, had this to say about Mr. Kubrick: "He respects and likes actors, and explains the totality of what he's after and picks your brains about how you would fulfill it. Then, by a process of elimination and discovery, he arrives at what he wants. But it's not a performance superimposed on you. It's something of your own that he's managed to bring forth."

Maybe I'm insane, but I've never considered Shelley Duvall "ugly." She was absolutely odd-looking, but more often that not, I found her rather adorable. She had a childlike quality about her that was both innocent and eccentric.

R79 I actually thought she looked very pretty in the scene when they’re driving to the Hotel for the first time. She had a glow in that scene with her hair done nicely.

She could be pretty when she didn’t open her mouth.

Duvall was a model. People don’t seem to know she was a model in magazines like Vogue in the late 60s and early 70s.

This is her in Vogue, 1971.

Agreed R80. She did look nice in that scene. I think her toothy grin puts people off, but I've always thought she had weirdly charming looks. She was definitely not the kind of Hollywood beauty that your typical hetero guy would go after—her looks were more offbeat—but I find her weirdly pretty.

R81 she certainly had the right body for modeling—tall, and thin as a rail. Paired with her near-cartoonish facial features, should could have possibly been a runway model had she been born several decades later.

[quote]not the kind of Hollywood beauty that your typical hetero guy would go after

Untrue. I know of two, hunky, muscled guys who went crazy for her:

Should they ever do a biopic, Mia Goth would make a perfect Shelley—same childlike energy, too.

This was the best scene in the film.😄

R87 I found that very creepy, scary and disturbing when I was younger lol. I can only imagine that moment was shocking in 1980.

This is VERY INTERESTING to watch. A side by side view of many scenes from Kubricks The Shining and Kings The Shining

R88 I did too because it’s so random! Lol.

A bear giving a BJ to an old, WASPy queen. I bet there's a whole youporn section.

R91 it’s the way the scene is shot, and then the bear looking right at her and the Wasp coming up and looking right at her. The thought of me being there would terrify me when I was younger. The only thing that would make it scarier is if they stood up to walk toward her.

Every shot in this film could be converted into a painting. It’s gorgeous and ART.

The 1997 version is trash.

This is the perfect example of why it’s ok to not stick with the source material at times.

I remember watching The Shining on TNT with my dad when I was maybe 10 years old. It absolutely horrified me, but I was precocious and loved scary things and talked him into letting me watch it. I grew up near Timberline Lodge, where they filmed the exteriors, and was greatly disappointed when I first went inside the hotel to find it looked nothing like the Overlook in the movie.

I still think Shelley Duvall's performance is fantastic in it. The staircase/baseball bat scene is so well-played by her, probably because, as others have pointed out, she had done the scene 100+ times and was on the verge of madness—but still, a great scene is a great scene, and it's mainly great because of her. It's one of the few moments in the film that I will rewind and watch again.

R93 I agree—Stephen King's books often don't translate well to film, at least the supernatural ones. When literal adaptations have been done, they are always awful (i.e. the 1997 Shining miniseries). First of all, his books tend to be long and proliferated with intricate details, so they are hard to pare down into a 2-hour movie; and second, there is imagery in many of them that just looks goofy onscreen (i.e. the moving plant sculptures in the book). In literary form, his books are successful at really getting inside your head, but a lot of the details just don't pan out onscreen. The "It" films made in the last couple years suffer from this too—there are moments that are just too fucking goofy to translate well onscreen. The only Stephen King film adaptation I've seen that was truly great was "Dolores Claiborne", but that was because it had great actors and a straightforward crime story/family drama.

Kubrick was right in pruning King's novel and making the alterations he did for the film; he extracted kernels from the book and presented many of them without context, which made it absolutely terrifying onscreen. In the novel, there are backstories relayed about the "ghosts" we see in Kubrick's film—the lady in the bathtub, the guy in the suit getting a blowjob from the guy in a bear costume, etc. I'd argue that the fact that we don't get those backstories in the film makes their appearances so much more jarring.

I thought De Palma's "Carrie" handled the supernatural elements brilliantly: truly frightening and intense.

The Shining made $44 million in 1980, which would be $147 million in 2019.

It did R96, but it also eliminated a lot of things. For example, the rocks raining through the house at the end: In the book, this is explained in much more detail, and the first scene in the novel has it initially happening when Carrie is a child. Like with the 1997 "Shining" adaptation, the 2002 "Carrie" remake they did for television included this, but it didn't really work. I feel that, in order to adapt King's books for the screen, there is often [italic]a lot[/italic] that has to go; more than is the case with many books adapted into films.

We still talk about the film versions of Carrie and The Shining to this day. Obviously De Palma and Kubrick did something right.

The 2013 remake to Carrie was absolute shit. Judy Greer was the only good thing in that.

Stephen King was an idiot to say he didn’t like Kubrick’s movie, yet thought the 1997 version was good when it was a piece of shit.

R101 he wrote the 1997 version himself.

He still hates the 1980 version to this day.

King despised the IT miniseries also.

I thought the IT miniseries was okay, all things considered. The show had some decent cast members.

Looking at R81 ‘s post. Can you imagine paying $150 for a dress in 1971? I wonder how much that would be 2019 dollars.

The old woman in the bathtub was a rich widow who came to The Overlook with a much younger man. He took off with her money and she committed suicide in the tub.

There is an entire video where a man breaks down that Bear blow job scene and how it connects to Danny

R104 $950 in 2019

R78 Of course Shelley Winters didn't know or didn't what to mention that Kubrick wanted to fire her because she was such a pain in the ass and the only reason that he didn't is that they had already filmed most of her scenes and it would have been very costly to recast and reshoot. His experience with Shelley Winters for not a good one for him. In the case of Shelley Duvall not a good one for her (sometimes) though Duvall never spoke publicly that I am aware of of having a terrible time with Kubrick.

I cant watch this movie late at night, especially if I am alone. I have nightmares. There are too many images that just stick in your mind after seeing them, the bear and man staring at Wendy being one of them.

Fun fact... this poster to The Shining used to give me nightmares when I was a kid

R108 Thanks. I didn't know that about Winters and Kubrick, but I'm glad her role wasn't recast.

for years, I never noticed the man in the bear costume was baring his ass in the beginning of that scene.

The video in r106 shows the symbolism Kubrick used to show that Jack was sexually molesting Danny, and the Bear and Waspy Man represent that.

In the book it was a guy in a dog costume and he offered to blow Danny.

I'd like to see the original ending.

I couldnt imagine filming a movie like this. I would have nightmares for months, like Skaarsgard did after filming both ITs or Neve Campbell did after filming the Scream movies.

In the beginning when Jack is in lobby waiting to be interviewed, he is reading a Playgirl magazine with an incest article on cover ,

[quote]Of course Shelley Winters didn't know or didn't what to mention that Kubrick wanted to fire her because she was such a pain in the ass and the only reason that he didn't is that they had already filmed most of her scenes and it would have been very costly to recast and reshoot.

What version of “The Shining” did you watch? Because the one I watched did not have Shelley Winters in it...

Shelley W. played the bare-assed bear.

R118 The post was in relation to Shelley Winter's in Kubrick's Lolita, which is referred further up.

Didn't Nicholson say that of all the actresses he has ever worked with, that Shelley was the best and most talented? Or something to that effect?

No, Nicholson couldn't stand Duvall and vice-versa.

Maybe it was Louise Fletcher then.

I have a question about the ending and the old photo on the wall showing Nicholson's character. Was he supposed to be a reincarnation of a previous guest/caretaker who was somehow drawn back to the Overlook?

R115 is why I love DL. I never knew there was that deleted scene.

This is creepy to me: [quote]The scene ends with Stuart throwing a yellow tennis ball to Danny, alluding to an earlier scene in the film. This scene was meant to show Wendy and Danny survived the ordeal, but also adds mystery to the manager and his motives.

Almost like telling us Stuart "feeds" the ghosts with these families who come to watch the place during the off-season.

The photo at the end shows that Jack is now part of the hotel.

Fun Fact - Kubrick didn’t even read the Screenplay that Stephen King wrote.

“According to one of Kubrick’s biographers, David Hughes, King wrote an entire draft of a screenplay for The Shining. Kubrick didn’t even deem it worth a glance, which makes sense as he once called King’s writing “weak.” Instead, Kubrick worked with Diane Johnson on the screenplay because he was a fan of her book, The Shadow Knows. The two ended up spending eleven weeks working on the script.”

In 1983, King told Playboy, “I’d admired Kubrick for a long time and had great expectations for the project, but I was deeply disappointed in the end result. Parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentlessly claustrophobic terror, but others fell flat.”

He didn’t like the casting of Jack Nicholson either, claiming, “Jack Nicholson, though a fine actor, was all wrong for the part. His last big role had been in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and between that and the manic grin, the audience automatically identified him as a loony from the first scene. But the book is about Jack Torrance’s gradual descent into madness through the malign influence of the Overlook—if the guy is nuts to begin with, then the entire tragedy of his downfall is wasted.”

SLIM PICKENS WAS OFFERED THE ROLE OF DICK HALLORANN.

Slim Pickens had already worked with Kubrick before. He played Major T. J. King Kong in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Regardless, he was a particularly strange pick for the role of Dick Hallorann because the character is black in the book. Pickens chose to not work with Kubrick again, as he did not like the strenuous Dr. Strangelove shoots. The role then went to Scatman Crothers.

R20- interesting point about the supernatural element not being nearly as frightening as the human element. I avoided King’s book “It” and the ‘80s film made from it for DECADES because I’d heard so much about how scary it was/the clown stuff, etc. I reluctantly watched the remake and was VERY disappointed that the clown was just a supernatural alien or whatever. To me, that made everything too easy to explain and took all the “creepy and spooky” out of it.

"But the book is about Jack Torrance’s gradual descent into madness through the malign influence of the Overlook—if the guy is nuts to begin with, then the entire tragedy of his downfall is wasted."

Jack wasn't nuts to begin with. He had his troubles, like most people, but was trying hard to get his life together and be a decent person and good father.

He wasn't crazy from the get-go, but he was vulnerable, and quite frankly I think the story is better if he starts to crack up sooner at the Overlook, rather than later. If he takes a long time to start cracking up, then really, nothing important happens between the time they arrive at the Overlook, and the time he starts to start giving at the seams.

R129 I can’t picture Slim playing that role, so I’m glad it went to Scatman.

I am glad that Scatman got the role.

It’s not uncommon for a film’s ending to change in post-production, but Kubrick changed the ending of the film after it had been playing in theaters for a weekend. The film version is lost, but pages from the screenplay do exist. The scene takes place after Jack dies in the snow. Ullman visits Wendy in the hospital. He tells her, “About the things you saw at the hotel. [A lieutenant] told me they’ve really gone over the place with a fine tooth comb and they didn’t find the slightest evidence of anything at all out of the ordinary.” He also encourages Wendy and Danny to stay with him for a while. The film ends with text over black, “The Overlook Hotel would survive this tragedy, as it had so many others. It is still open each year from May 20th to September 20th. It is closed for the winter.”

Roger Ebert deemed the cut a good decision. According to him, “Kubrick was wise to remove that epilogue ... it pulled one rug too many out from under the story.”

Doctor Sleep looks like it is going to be awful.

[quote]He didn’t like the casting of Jack Nicholson either, claiming, “Jack Nicholson, though a fine actor, was all wrong for the part. His last big role had been in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and between that and the manic grin, the audience automatically identified him as a loony from the first scene.

That's a legitimate criticism. Nicholson was creepy from the first scene.

Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, DeNiro, Warren Beatty would have been interesting alternatives to Nicholson. The would have been less creepy from the beginning, which would have made the character's descent into madness more chilling.

R57 In Kubrick's original cut after Jack frozen in the snow featured the most comical scene of all. Barry Nelson visited the hospital that Duvall was in. The way he threatened her seemed to be too funny and too campy. Kubrick removed the scene as it was still playing in the theaters.

R136 Jack was miscast, He seemed bugfuck crazy from the very start. Unlike the book there is very little sense of love or affection in the film version from his character.

Now I feel like watching this film again!

I disagree with the comments above, I think Nicholson was well cast, and that the film is better for Jack feeling creepy from the beginning.

When Creepy Jack and his enabler wife head off to spend months in isolation, the suspense starts early in the film, and the fearful stage is already set as the family arrives at the Overlook. If Sane Jack headed off into isolation with his perky wife, there would be no feeling of worry, and the suspense would have to start building much later and for other reasons. By then, the audience would be bored.

This is what people mean when they say that changes have to be made, when adapting a book to the screen. Kubrick was a master filmmaker and knew damn well that he had to start the audience worrying about the characters right from the get-go for the film to work, so he cast Nicholson, who is someone nobody in their right mind would want to be snowbound with.

R139, I disagree. The thought of Redford or Beatty beginning the movie in their usual likable, charismatic way and then slowly descending into murderous monsters is chilling. It gives me goosebumps just to think about it.

Nicholson was great, but he was just playing Nicholson. There was no arc to his storyline. He was already creepy during the opening credits.

I feel the good guy going mad is a lame trope. I like the idea that the mad man going full on mad is more realistic.

Nicholson worked also because they lay out that he was abusing the kid (and Wendy) from the beginning, so it isn't as if there was ever a period in the story where he's really supposed to be 'nice'. The family relationship is completely damaged from the get-go, that's just how the narrative is laid out and it has nothing to do with Nicholson.

The issue with Nicholson is that he's up for killing his family from the very first shot. You wonder why it takes him so long to try. He doesn't need any convincing, which makes the supernatural element of the story irrelevant. Duvall's performance ultimately works because it's a shock when she finally fights back. I've always loved the moment when Grady admits that he's underestimated her.

Okay, R140, say that Beatty or Redford or some nice-guy actor played Jack Torrance, and everything seems great as the little family heads off to spend six months snowbound together.

If that's the movie, tell me what keeps the audience interested for the first hour. Or half hour. Why aren't they bored by this happy family in this big empty hotel.

Because if Jack isn't a worrisome character, if there aren't visible fault lines in the family, why are we paying any attention to them? Because like I said, with the characters of Creepy Jack and Enabler Wendy set in place during the opening scene, the suspense starts building as soon as we find out that they're ill-advisedly going to be isolated for months.

I'm sorry to say this, but If either Beatty or Redford were cast, being in a hotel with ghosts is more believeable than either of them being married to Duvall.

I don't think Beatty or Redford were capable of the necessary creepiness, whenever it would be called for in the movie.

The opening music is enough for me to think Kubrick wanted us to know there was trouble from the get-go.

I've dreamed of taking that car ride at the beginning with that music playing.

King suggested Harrison Ford, Jon Voight, Chris Reeve and Michael Moriarty. Newman was too old for the character, and would have been completely miscast. Redford looked a little younger, but would have looked equally ridiculous running around unhinged.

Reeve and Ford would have been very interesting considering they were coming off huge family friendly hits at the time.

Neither Ford nor Reeve are good enough actors to carry off crazy, and again, if you have a nice dad that everyone likes then the first act is fucking dull.

I suppose they could play up the supernatural elements and bring in the otherworldly menaces earlier, but even then... Having the dad slowly corrupted by evil influences slowly isn't nearly as scary as having the dad corrupted by evil influences quickly and easily. Because the absolute heart of the suspense in "The Shining" is fear of the parent turning against the child. That's what gives the film universal appeal.

Kubrick was a big fan of building atmospheres. The entire movie has a creepy atmosphere. That atmosphere would not exist with those other actors, especially Redford.

[quote]I'm sorry to say this, but If either Beatty or Redford were cast, being in a hotel with ghosts is more believeable than either of them being married to Duvall.

Well, Diane Keaton would have been cast as Wendy instead of Duvall, which is what should have happened in the first place. But you aren't ready for that conversation.

I read somewhere that the interior scenes of the Overlook were actually a large sound stage created in London - one of the largest at the time. To create the effect of natural light through the windows, they had to use intense lighting, making the set incredibly hot.

The whole thing sounds miserable & I agree Jack seems crazy from the get-go, but Nicholson was a big star in his day & for someone like him to star in a horror movie really elevated it to another level. There's a "behind the scenes" segment to the DVD when the Exorcist was re-released a couple of years ago and William Friedken tortured the hell out of them too - going as far as to slap the priest (a real priest, at the time!) who finds Damien at the bottom the steps at the end of the movie.

The fact that we're still talking about it today day solidifies that it's genuinely a classic. I personally love the carpet in The Overlook - ah, the 70s!

The fact you can tell Jack is unhinged from the get go is what makes it so much more disturbing.

You all crying about this should watch the 1997 version. That one is more your speed.

There were a lot of rumors floating around that Kubrick actually had shot the topiary animals and cut them from the film.

There used to be a movie theater in NYC in the 80s called the Thalia Soho. I moved to NYC in late 87 and a couple months after, the theater showed The Shining and advertised it as a cut with the topiary animals. It drew an enormous crowd, huge line waiting for the box office to open (no pre-sales back then), and I wasn't sure if we'd get in, and then the manager put up a sign that the print, in fact, did NOT contain any extra footage. Mass exodus. We stayed because we were already there and the show still sold out. For years after I was convinced this footage existed.

R154 Kubrick himself said he never shot them because he knew they would not look good. He was a visionary ahead of his time that used practical effects. That would require computers and he did not want that to cheapen his film.

Jack Torrance was never a happy husband and father. He was a failed writer haunted by an abusive childhood. A drunk who broke his son's arm and got fired from his teaching job for beating up a student. From the beginning Jack thinks he would be better off without a family. That's what made him so susceptible to The Overlook's influence.

Oh brother, we're back to "The Great Genius" who made this slow, shitty, misconceived movie.

I can't bear to think about his treatment of Shelley Duvall. He cruelly miscast her and then tortured her daily for six months. Ah, L'Artiste.

The Stephen King-based film I would love someone like Guillermo del Toro to do is "Storm of the Century." That's another one that was shitty on TV. And again, they went to the "Wings" well for that one by casting Tim Daly. Horrible adaptation

Where did they film the topiary maze scene? Don't tell me that was an elaborate sound stage.

Maze was constructed on a set in England.

I can’t believe that a special edition DVD/Blu-ray hasn’t been released yet with the alternate ending included as a bonus scene.

As stated already, the alternate ending has been lost.

The alternate ending no longer exists.

I've said this before and I'll say it again but I absolutely LOVE the movie-themed threads on DL. They remind me of the best IMDB movie threads. Like this thread or the great thread on Chinatown from a few months ago.

This thread inspired me to revisit the movie. After watching the sexual abuse video, I saw the movie in an entirely new light. Viewed through that lens it was even more terrifying and highly disturbing. I don't think any of the ghosts were real-just all symbols of how they were dealing with what Jack was doing to Danny. Utterly chilling.

R145 You are correct. Its worth noting that Kubrick cast Shelley Duvall first (based a lot on her performance in 3 Women) and then Nicholson.

Kubrick actually said something along the lines that the only type of guy Duvall could get was like Jack Nicholson - that was the best her character could do was how he put it. Still is rather insulting to both Duvall & Nicholson is you ask me.

Anyway Shelley Duvall gave one of the very best performances of 1980 in The Shining, up there with Sissy Spacek (Coal Miner's Daughter, Theresa Russell (Bad Timing - ironically written for Spacek) & Ellen Burstyn (Resurrection). She did not deserve a fucking Razzie nomination in the slightest (ditto anyone involved in Dressed to Kill which picked up nominations it did not deserve).

Kubrick’s Overlook seemed so disinterested in the folly of humans, which is what frightened me about the place - that any good times when inhabited were completely projected upon the place by the guests throughout time.

The TV Overlook was shot with angles that made the place seem inviting or at least safe when empty.

A lot of it had to do with a pace that was meant to move the story along. Cutting to the action robbed the viewer of being constantly reminded that you’re alone and no one gives a shit what happens to you.

I had worked in a hotel off-season and it’s scary at night and, at best, depressing as hell during the day.

Kubrick got it right.

Kubrick nailed the Hotel. I’ve always found Hotels creepy, especially at night.

Watched it just now for the first time ever (the new remastered edition). It's okay, I guess. The kid's facial expressions and the music scared me the most, but the hotel was lit way too much / amateurishly to be scary. It was less violent than I assumed - he never once actually laid her hands on her, I think. I hated the transitions at the very start with the scenes fading into each other before the last person even finished their sentence, but I guess that's the way it was done back in the day.

However, I can't get past the premise of deserting an enormous hotel for extended periods of time. Is that something that is/was done in the US? How did the audience and the reviewers take this conceit at the time? To say nothing of the fact that there'd never be this huge mansion built in the middle of nowhere in the first place, anyway.

The acting was fine. I doubt we'd see such a meek female character in today's movies. It's just not a good look anymore.

Amazing film. Haters are gonna hate.

It’s one of the most discussed films ever.

[quote]However, I can't get past the premise of deserting an enormous hotel for extended periods of time. Is that something that is/was done in the US? How did the audience and the reviewers take this conceit at the time? To say nothing of the fact that there'd never be this huge mansion built in the middle of nowhere in the first place, anyway.

Rewatch the film when they first arrive.

It is explained that the hotel cannot operate during the winter months because it would cost too much to keep the roads plowed and open due to the heavy and voluminous snowstorms.

It's secluded location was a plus because when originally built it entertained the fabulously wealthy, film stars, 4 past presidents and even royalty.

The idea of a remote hotel being shut down for a whole winter is scary. I mean, what happens to the hotel during that time, and to the people who look after it?

The book has the space and freedom to peel back the weaknesses in Jack Torrance's character and how the Overlook slowly, deliberately, inexorably works upon him. I agree it would be harder to do that in movie format. Not impossible, but that's not the story Kubrick chose to tell and that's fine. Nicholson was great in the film and it's not like he's barking mad from jump. Kubrick used Nicholson's unsettling quality as a form of shorthand, imho.

Which isn't to say that Voight, Moriarty or even Reeve would have been terrible.

[quote]Well, Diane Keaton would have been cast as Wendy instead of Duvall, which is what should have happened in the first place. But you aren't ready for that conversation.

Is anyone ready for that conversation? Keaton would have been all wrong. Let's throw in Richard Dreyfuss hamming it up as Jack.

Damn I really want to rewatch now.

[quote]However, I can't get past the premise of deserting an enormous hotel for extended periods of time. Is that something that is/was done in the US?

The Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton Lakes National Park (Canada) is a big hotel in the Rockies that is closed over the winter. It's a couple hours south of the Banff Spring Hotel (which is open year-round), mentioned above.

It’s cheaper to close the Hotel than keep the roads clear etc.

I love this movie so much. Diane Keaton would have been all wrong though.

Great thread! I learned things I didn't know about this movie and its production. And I see both sides in the debate over Nicholson's performance but ultimately fall on the side that it works. Kubrick took something and made it his own which is what artists do. I'm generally fond of Stephen King but were he just a little brighter, he'd have had the sense to be flattered from the get-go. He's good with creepy stories but the man's never been an intellectual.

It is fun to think about alternate castings though. How about Richard Donner's The Shining with Harrison Ford as Jack, Sissy Spacek as Wendy and Justin Henry as Danny. With special appearance by Sidney Poitier as Dick Halloran!

"Kubrick actually said something along the lines that the only type of guy Duvall could get was like Jack Nicholson - that was the best her character could do was how he put it. Still is rather insulting to both Duvall & Nicholson is you ask me. "

I actually commented on that above. The film brilliantly sets up the little family's dysfunction in the opening scenes, with this arrogant guy who abuses kids and who thinks that he can fix it all by this stupid plan to isolate himself and write, his plain wife who clearly thinks that the only way to keep a man who she thinks is out of her league is to put up with everything. And the kid who's already troubled enough to get home visits from a child psychologist.

That's how the movie starts to build suspense, it shows you this dysfunctional family heading into forced isolation right off the bat, and the audience goes "Oh, no no no no NO NO NO!".

"However, I can't get past the premise of deserting an enormous hotel for extended periods of time. Is that something that is/was done in the US?"

Honey, entire industries shut down when the snow covers certain parts of the US, not just hotels!

Yes, some hotels in snowy regions stay open during the winter, chiefly those that are associated with skiing. But others close down, But I was in Maine last year during October, and all the stores, restaurants, and hotels that catered to tourists were shut down or putting up signs saying "We Close On XX/XX/XXXX". I've seen the same in Colorado and California, in mountainous regions where the hotels cater to summer hikers rather than skiers, and I understand it's the same on a lot of the islands off of New England, where "summer" is considered to be a verb. Or any locale where there's a limited tourist season.

R65, for me the n word was effectively used to describe how toxic and corrupt that spirit is.

The use of the n-word had a purpose. It was used to show two things, firstly that the spirits were a personification of the hatred and animalistic cruelty towards others that hides within the human psyche. They represent a total lack of empathy. Secondly, it was to add to the sense of time distortion. The use of a slur like that presented to casually was juxtaposed with the 1920’s atmosphere, to try to make the audience feel like something isn’t quite right. Like you’re in the wrong era, stuck in a more archaic year full of violence and unexplainable hatred. It had a point.

R180 When Grady says 'you've always been the caretaker here, I should know, I've always been here" to Jack, I get chills. Genuinely creeps me out. That is the scene the spirits take complete control to get Jack to do their bidding.

R181 In my opinion, the bathroom sequence is the best scene in the entire film.

Y'all will laugh, but Burt Reynolds could have been terrific as Jack.

So did Grady’s spirit enter Jack’s body as soon as Grady died 10 years before, or as soon as Jack agreed to take the job of taking care of the Overlook? I know Jack wasn’t Grady reincarnated because I remember during Jacks interview Mr. Ullman said that “the tragedy” happened in 1970, which was only 10 years before so obviously Jack was already born.

R184 I don’t buy into the reincarnation theory. I think “you’ve always been the caretaker” refers to Jack always having had the potential for violent insanity inside him, just as Grady likely did. The “caretaker” is a man with a subdued rage inside of him, an anger that he bottles up, usually one felt towards the caretaker’s family. It doesn’t matter who it is because in the end every “caretaker” is one in the same: a man who harbors a bottled up resentment of his own family, that given the proper push by the hotel can be harnessed into turning the man into a violent, insane, murderous psychopath.

[quote]Y'all will laugh, but Burt Reynolds could have been terrific as Jack.

I wouldn't laugh. For a while, I think he could've been considered a good/serious actor. But again, no one's buying him with Duvall. People still can't believe he dated Sally Field.

I think it’s funny Jack was supposed to be the caretaker, yet it was Wendy doing all the work (checking the boiler room, contacting the sheriff’s office to ask about the phone lines, etc). Not once does Jack do any work for the hotel.

Well, after all, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

"Y'all will laugh, but Burt Reynolds could have been terrific as Jack."

Actually, there's a small chance that Reynolds could have been great in the role! Because he made his name playing charming and sexy characters in the movies, but apparently in real life he's an angry, self-pitying, blame-throwing, punchy asshole. If he could have played the role by starting out with his usual charm and letting his inner asshole emerge, audiences would have been stunned.

But I still think that Nicholson was the right choice, he can ramp up the weirdness so high it's almost camp, but not quite. It's just as intense as an actor can be without being ridiculous.

I know most people say the guy in the bear costume or the old lady is the scariest moment in the film, but to me it was when Jack was just staring out that window with that bright light reflected on him while watching Wendy and Danny.

I honestly think Jack Nicholson is the only actor who could have made this role work. The fact that he seems so off from the get-go is what keeps his later rabid dog-style insanity so terrifying. The scene with the bat and the “here’s johnny” scene would have been laughable with an actor like Eastwood or Reynolds, but because it was Nicholson it worked.

De Niro or Pacino or Robert Duvall could have done it at the time, but I thought Nicholson was very good.

If they did another remake I think Iwan Rheon would be good.

Yikes! He even has the creepy gaze, R193.

R193 I adored him in GOT, but I don’t think he’d work as Jack. He’s incredibly talented, but he looks like a model. One of the facets of the original film that helped it do so well was the casting. Nicholson and Duvall looked like normal people. Seeing Iwan busting down a door with an ax would be more hot than horrifying.

Normal looking people like Duvall and Nicholson don't become stars anymore.

R196 Which is exactly why this movie should NEVER be remade, same thing goes for most Kubrick movies. They’re relics of a time when films had actual artistry put behind them and weren’t just created to sell toys. They are immortalized as perfection and they should stay that way, untarnished cinematic beauties of a bygone era.

[quote]The scene with the bat and the “here’s johnny” scene would have been laughable with an actor like Eastwood

Eastwood can’t even act. All he EVER does is scowl and mutter every once in awhile in his films.

But Clint sang his heart out and enunciated clearly in "Paint Your Wagon".

Kubrick wanted Lucy for the role of Wendy, but as you all know, I told her to turn it down.

I just recently noticed something upon rewatching. A lady with what looks like a bloody handprint on her ass causes the drinks the waiter is carrying to spill on to Jack, which leads him to go to the restroom where he meets Grady and is inspired to murder his family. Later, just after Grady says “you’ve always been the caretaker”, that same lady walks into the restroom. Anybody got any theories on the significance of her?

Sorry, forgot to link a picture.

[quote]But Clint sang his heart out and enunciated clearly in "Paint Your Wagon".

And even then he just scowled.

Wow, never noticed hand print lady.

R201 I’m not joking when I say I’ve watched this movie at least 50 times (because it’s been my favorite since I was a kid), and I NEVER noticed that before. Good catch!

She walks into the men's room?

R206 Exactly. Weird.

Never noticed bloody handprint woman, don't know why ! It is obvious now that she is there specifically to set the wheels in motion.

The “Here’s Johnny” scene wouldn’t have happened with another actor because Nicholson improvised that scene.

R201 R207 I don't think that's a bloody handprint. I think it's just an adornment on the back of the dress. It shimmers as she walks and appears to be part of the fabric design.

R201, R207 and R210-that definitely looks like a bloody hand print to me and not a shimmer. That's what's so amazing about this film. You can go batty just debating a dress. If all the people in the ballroom are ghosts, then does that imply that they died at the hotel? Was there some mass carnage that created so many spirits? Or does the hotel create the delusion? Or are they real at all? Perhaps every ghost isn't real at all and just delusions created by cab-fevered brains or brains that can't handle the abuse that's taking place.

The YouTuber at R106 has got a bunch of interesting looking film essays, including a debunking of the connection between The Shining and the moon landing conspiracy theories. And an homage to Star Trek:The Motion Picture, of all things.

[quote]How about Richard Donner's The Shining

Ha! Are you ready for Roger Corman's THE SHINING starring David Carradine, Sybil Danning, Jason Hervey and Fred Williamson?

Quentin Tarantino’s The Shining

R183, I think that Burt would've worked but only if Dom Deluise played Ullman. The blooper reel during the closing credits would have been hilarious!

A nice interview with Danny Lloyd, who plays Danny. He is now a biology professor in Kentucky and has stayed in touch with Duvall. He said he thinks she has good days and bad days.

Poor Duvall. I loved her.

R216 I agree. I wonder if any of her former co-stars have tried to help her, even financially. If they have they probably have done so privately.

Note just a fine horror film, but one of the GOAT cinematic art works. Was that glorious time when a talented director could seamlessly create a true work of art that also appeals to a wider audience. Was part of the culture then, not so much today.

The 4k blu-ray is coming out tomorrow! Just bought a copy.

[quote]I'm generally fond of Stephen King but were he just a little brighter, he'd have had the sense to be flattered from the get-go

Considering it was his story in the first place, he has the right to feel however he feels towards an adaptation of it.

Plus, The Shining was a very personal piece of work for him. He went through his own issues with drugs and alcoholism that almost tore his family apart. A lot of that went into the pages of that book. It's understandable as to why he was so protective of how it was projected on film.

His version doesn’t work on film. Anyone that has seen the 1997 movie knows it did not work.

" He went through his own issues with drugs and alcoholism that almost tore his family apart. A lot of that went into the pages of that book. It's understandable as to why he was so protective of how it was projected on film. "

Yeah, it's understandable that he defends the idea of Decent Jack, for personal reasons, but the fact is that the film is much better with a Creepy Jack who resents his family and succumbs to evil in fluences without a struggle. That's everyone's worst nightmare, having a parent decide they're done with this family shit.

r219 Christ, the thought of seeing those teeth in 4k... 😬

The problem with King’s interpretation of Jack is that he becomes just another self-insert character. Everything that makes Jack an interesting, human, and even sympathetic character is stripped away in the book/miniseries because Jack is a caricature.

🔨 [italic] RedRum !

RedRum !

R223, I'll be getting it tomorrow (day of release). I cannot wait. I think this is Kubrick's second movie in 4k, the other being 2001. I have 2001 and it is mind blowing in 4k. I hope all of Kubrick's stuff at least gets GOOD releases on blu-ray eventually. Eyes Wide Shut, to pick just one movie, had a lackluster blu-ray release.

r226 How does the makeup in 2001 look in 4k? Is it all sorts of awful?

Kubricks best movie starred me, sweethearts! Know this!

King hates Kubrick’s film because he saw himself in Jack, whereas Jack in Kubrick’s film was the personification of familial abuse. Jack in the book being the alcoholic with a heart of gold makes the character feel disingenuous and cliché, while Jack in the film is better developed because instead of representing a person (king himself) he represents a concept (familial abuse).

👍👍 👍👍👍 LOVED IT !

R227, it occasionally sticks out but I think the movie looks incredible. Kubrick's classic movies have aged well on all levels, in my opinion. Not many directors can say that about their works.

Everyone talks about the twins and the decaying lady, but to me Dick’s murder is the scariest scene in the film. It’s impossible to explain, but from start to finish it develops a sense of anticipated brutality that is unique to this one scene. The best way to describe it is that it gives you the feeling of walking into a lion’s den, knowing you’re going to die and that there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

The very definition of the word “beastly”.

That was one thing about Kubrick's film (which I love) that disappointed me: Dick's murder. I preferred to have him live, as in the book. To have him make all the effort to get to the hotel only to be murdered immediately was sad.

R234 I think that was the point, though. The book was an outright supernatural horror, but the movie dealt with more tragic themes and realistic horrors with tragic elements (the native american genocide, for instance).

I'm sure Kubrick would get a kick out of the fact that we're still discovering little details after all the years and viewings.

Yes, R236, and we're not talking about the book the same way!

"Everyone talks about the twins and the decaying lady, but to me Dick’s murder is the scariest scene in the film."

That is the moment when the madness leaves the spiritual real and Jack's head, and enters real life.

Although IMHO the scariest moment is when Wendy tries to defend herself against her husband. Because we KNOW she literally couldn't stand up to him to save her life, and that's where Kubrick's setup of the asshole/enabler relationship in the first scenes becomes part of the horror.

I'm with those who think the movie is great, but can completely understand why some don't care for it. I think that only adds to the mystique of the movie and why people are still so interested in it decades later. Shit, the criticisms only make you want to go and watch it.

That's what great works of art are supposed to do, inspire such rich debates. And Kubrick's movies were great for that at one time.

I hope the 4K keeps the 4:3 ratio aspect that it was filmed in.

I was creeped out by the scene in the topiary maze in the middle of the storm.

I was creeped out by the scene in the topiary maze in the middle of the storm.

I feel like DL Stockholm is setting in because as much as I loved Nicholson in this a nagging is tugging at me that Ryan O'Neal should have been cast as Jack. He would have fit the bill in terms of 'good-guy-gone-crazy'.

We ALL know what he's capable of now, right?

Cant image Slim Pickens in this as Haloran, loved him in Dr. Strangelove but I don't think he'd have had the groovy wall 'art'.

[quote] I hope the 4K keeps the 4:3 ratio aspect that it was filmed in.

It doesn't; it's framed for 1.85, but the review I read said that the loss is minimal and not really noticeable.

R243-yeah, we all know what he's capable of now, but at the time we didn't, so seeing a beloved golden boy just coming off Love Story going slowly mad wouldn't have had the resonance of a barely-holding-it together batshit crazy guy going off into the mountains with his family. The audience knew Jack was a violent creep from the beginning, so we're pretty terrified from the beginning.

What's the lost alternate ending?

R245 Was a (bad) joke. Just felt timely, but honestly, I couldn't stand the 97 mini-book because the man wasn't menacing in the least (among many other missteps). Nicholson made that movie for me, and the stair scene, always thought he stole it from Shelly with his lines and depraved delivery. Wasn't until years later until I'd seen the documentary on the making of this and Duvalls nervous breakdown.

It's a masterpiece.

R246, the lengthy, obsessive Wikipedia article about the movie explains that when the film was first released it had a short epilogue with Danny and Wendy in a hospital. This was cut out of all the prints of the film. Warner Brothers, presumably, has this and hours of footage that Kubrick shot (and edited) that never made it into the final version of the film.

King apparently wanted Jon Voight to play Jack.

Voight is another good choice, but Nicholson worked out fine. O'Neal would have been terrible; his talent was for light comedy.

Stephen King is a moron who knows nothing about cinema. The trailer for Doctor Sleep looks terrible and his grubby, fat fingerprints are all over it.

Sorry, R247! That sailed over my admittedly slow head today. The staircase scene was harrowing. Duvall was losing it in real time, and I always had the sense that the audience was seeing Nicholson's real personality peaking through. Didn't he beat up a prostitutions to the point of causing brain damage?

Many hotels in Alaska close for several months out of the year, so seasonal closure is not uncommon in extreme climates.

I'm biased because I discovered the film before the novel, but I always felt the film worked better. The book was great, but some parts of it seemed unfilmable, especially at that time.

Duvall went for broke and played full tilt mental breakdown kind of fear. Everyone likes to think they'd be calmer in that situation, but the truth is that most of us would be behaving exactly as she did. I thought she was wonderful. The backlash against her performance reminds me of the backlash of the young actor in Hereditary a year or two ago. I thought he turned in an excellent performance and showed excellent fear (a skill many male actors don't have or don't want to show) and his performance was called laughable by a lot of people I know.

Wasn't there talk of the alternate ending being on this new 4k release?

I hope not, R255. The film is a triumph as is. But it is something I would love to see as a deleted scene.

R184

The hotel guests, the bartender, and Grady are demonic forces who use that (beautiful! stunning!) hotel as a portal to possess more victims. They want blood. They want the killing to continue, they want the pain and torment to continue. Jack is also one of their victims just as Grady was.Grady tells Jack one of his daughters tried to burn the hotel down. Reading between the lines, the daughters like Danny and Dick Hallorann knew that hotel was possessed with demonic forces trying to kill them.Bloody handprint woman is there to guide Jack directly to Grady to receive instruction.I've rewatched that scene after r201 mentioned it and I was amazed I never even noted her presence. The scene I rewatched last nite didn't include her in the men's room but you can't miss her purposely stride through Grady as if he isn't there to provoke that interaction.

That is definitely a bloody handprint on her rear and not a pattern on her dress. women do not wear patterns in that color on that part of their body.

There are alternate credits. When ABC showed it there were blue credits.

This Tv spot features alternate takes of scenes.

R254 I found everything about Hereditary to be on a so-bad-it’s-good level with the exception of the teen kid’s performance. He was the only actor in the cast (aside from the father) who was believable in an unhammy way.

I've heard people claim that Nicholson was miscast but I couldn't disagree more. The fact that Jack is so visibly off to begin with made it more chilling because it's more realistic. The "honorable good man goes bad " trope is rarely found in real life. Often,those who succumb to the so called dark side are people struggling with deep shit internally who one day just go completely over the edge. But only after being exposed to "just the right set of circumstances ", to paraphrase another dark classic. Redford seemed to have too gentle a presence to be vulnerable to the sinister influence of the hotel.

Duvall was perfect as well. Now they would have to portray her as a tough as nails type who never lost her cool but her portrayal was so much more true to life. I'm curious about just what happened to Duvall psychiatrically. My understanding is that major schizophrenic type breakdowns happen primarily during the 20s and rarely any later. Maybe it was drug induced. I don't recall hearing anything about her behaving strangely when she was younger.

Sorry, but the son in Hereditary was bad in some scenes. I liked him overall but there were some scenes he was BAD.

Also, his appearance took me out of the film. Two WASPs would not produce a child that looks like him. I remember a few movie boards had threads about how he was miscast based on appearance. He looks middle eastern.

Come now, let’s not let that overrated piece of shit Hereditary infect a thread about the best horror movie ever made. That’s like serving a Michelin star meal and having kraft mac and cheese as a side.

R252 I've read some AMAZINGLY awful things about Nicholson in his off-set life, mostly here, or links within threads. I never read about a prostitute with induced brain damage, but I'd imagine that the staircase Jack was what Anjelica had to contend with on a bad night. Lara Flynn Boyle didn't fare as well despite his having aged, but I think that was more substance plus the sadism.

R265, Nicholson was sued by a prostitute for assault; he settled that claim. There are terrible rumors about what he did to Lara Flynn Boyle and how she’s barely functional now.

i'm surprised he's escaped #metoo with all of the stories about him

Nicholson is in poor health.

I went to The Shining 4k screening in Century City which was basically marketing for Doctor Sleep.

They promised an extended sneak peek following The Shining, but everyone left. That picture is totally going to bomb. Ewan teaming up with a precocious youngster just seems so lame.

Does the 4K reveal if it's really a bloody handprint on her dress?

R266-What are the rumors? I head he cheated on her with a ballet dancer, but that's it.

R252: I read a balls-out paragraph in Rolling Stone back in the seventies about Nicholson and Steve Stills tripping on mescaline and crawling into some restaurant in Hollywood on their hands and knees. At the time I believe they were seen as similar mad men.

Been staying quiet reading through this whole wonderful thread. I own an itunes version ( w/ blue titles and credits btw) and this is simply one of the best. But man are there some ignorant sons of bitches that love to sling the shit.

When does the woman with the red handprint appear?

R273-right before Jack's conversation in the bathroom.

My head canon has always been that Wendy was a drunken one night stand who got pregnant. Jack had to marry her because that's what you did in those days.

My head canon is similar, R275. She was the dowdy librarian at the private school where Jack taught, so he really had no choice. He clearly loathed her.

I understand those views, R275, R276, and Jack probably told himself stories like that. In reality, he was destined to be with her or someone just like her, because she was a victim. He needed someone to abuse. A beautiful woman, a stronger woman, would have instantly realized he was bad news.

I read somewhere that King wanted Jessica Lange to play Wendy. Lange would have eaten Jack up and shit him out.

Yes, R277-but he would have viewed an unplanned pregnancy as a betrayal and a snare to trap him. There's no way a strong woman would have tolerated his abuse.

R249 Kubrick cut that scene out because the reaction was laughter not horror! The scene was supposed to let us know that the hotel manager knew about the ghosts and evil n the hotel. It came across as silly and camp. In addition,Kubrick supposedly had all of those scene prints all destroyed.

I'm glad Jon Voight never got the part. It's pretty much my favorite movie since I was old enough to watch it in the 90s and with him being such a right-wing pos, he would've surely ruined it for me.

R280 I don’t know, the idea that Ullman was aware the whole time and sort of feeds the hotel is both creepy and makes a lot more sense in terms of logic. How else can he explain the fact that guests and caretakers drop like flies when they’re left alone in The Overlook?

Okay, Danny would have been concieved in the mid-seventies, when men who considered themselves cool definitely didn't feel obligated to marry girls they got pregnant. It was after the sexual revolution and feminism was at its popular peak, having children out of wedlock was considered downright fashionable in some quarters. Now if they both taught at a private school there may have been some pressure put on him to marry her, but that's not the primary reason he married her.

I presume that a one-nigh stand turned into a casual no-strings relationship and then a shotgun marriage, because Wendy was enough of a doormat to forgive him everything, flatter him at any opportunity, never complained when he paid attention to other women, didn't try to sober him up or otherwise change his ways, etc. He both wanted to be with her, because he did more for him than any woman who had her shit together would, and held her in contempt. And yes, that's how most asshole/doormat relationships work, an awful mixture of need and contempt.

[quote]Lange would have eaten Jack up and shit him out.

Yes, she was more than his match in "The Postman Always Rings Twice".

Ullman knowingly feeding the hotel the caretakers every year reminds me of that movie Burnt Offerings where Eileen Heckart and Burgess Meredith do the same thing. Fuck, that movie was creepy.

Ok, ULLMAN IS NOT FEEDING ANYTHING, atleast not knowingly. The Grady massacre was 10 years before Jack, brought up the golden goose. The hotel wanted Danny. While Kubricks movie tells several stories at the same time, Ullman is the Face, he's not the summer caretaker who has an interesting but understated part, it's like with Casino, Green was the square front guy while Ace ran things.

That scene would've implied that he was doing damage control, and that's too obvious for Kubrick. Surprised he shot it to begin with.

Having Ullman appear at the end, apparently to indicate that The Overlook was still interested in Danny, undermines a classic rule of haunted house/cursed ground stories: you are safe if you finally escape the premises. It's one too many twists. The ending as it is now is perfect.

R286 In the book it wanted Danny. In the movie it doesn’t have a clear objective, the sole purpose of The Overlook is to drive people to death. The shining is inconsequential, it’s more about abusing the residents with themselves, like driving Jack to insanity. In the book The Overlook is like a person, but in the film The Overlook is more like an animal. The book version of The Overlook has different goals and strategies, but the film version has only one goal: to devour and consume.

I think the Ullman ending would have been perfect for two reasons.

One, there’s a tragic horror to it. It’s the realization that yes, there is something supernatural occurring at the hotel, but there’s nothing that can be done to stop it from driving people towards violent deaths for generations to come. The implication is frightening.

Also, it would have been great in terms of pacing. It would have gone between the shot of Jack’s frozen corpse and the slow zoom into Jack in the photo. Not only would they fit together really well with the movie’s theme about the tragedy of unstoppable violence, but it would have been much smoother and more terrifying pacing for the ending.

Duvall claimed that the yellow ball in that scene was tied into the tennis ball that lured Danny into the haunted room. In addition that the hotel manager was in on the plot.

I'd still love to see the cut footage because I love this film so much and it's fascinating to see unseen footage especially for a movie that is almost 40 years old.

I think the movie ending is effective since it ends at the hotel. It still retains the feeling of claustrophobia of the entire film.

R290 The ball that rolls to Danny is pink, the yellow tennis ball is what Jack's impaling the walls with.

[R288] I know, am familiar with the book as I'd read it a few times when I was younger. But the films Hotel still covets Danny, or his 'power' (Dick being the only one directly murdered plays into that with him also being psychic.) Grady also makes it clear that Danny is the attractive one to them because he's gifted (and abused). I think that the Hotel 'curates' who it keeps and Danny was a desired acquisition. Of course he's the lynchpin in keeping everything going, including his mother alive/sane as well as his father by proxy. JMO, If the Hotel wanted to break Wendy, it would've.

Stupid question but Wendy sees the blood coming through the elevator door near the end. Did she have "the shining" too or was it because things had just gone batshit crazy by then?

R293 I think it was because shit had hit the fan and that allowed her to clearly see what was going on in the hotel, but I like to think that both Jack and Wendy have a sort of repressed ability to shine themselves.

R293, I think it's clear from Jack's experiences (and, by implication, the experiences of the caretaker who killed his family) that the hotel can make visions materialize for anyone when it wants to.

R293 When Jack embraces the young turned old woman the hotel had awoken, he was a tangible link to life. Previously Grady wasnt physically able to move real things, like the dry pantry door. By that point the Hotel was 'alive'. It had an agenda and was using Jack who it successfully seduced by that point.

Thanks r294, r295, and r296.

I just rewatched yesterday, big mistake. I’m jumping at everything and I have the song from the end stuck in my head.

I hadn't realized until I read this thread how strongly the Shining (the book) must have been influenced by The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. It's very obvious now. Hill House seems awakened by the presence of Eleanor Vance, who has psychic powers, and, depending on how one interprets things, covets her for that reason. Jackson's book is more ambiguous and has a stronger sexual subtext. The house seems to prefer to merge with or acquire women.

R299 I’ve never read The Haunting Of Hill House, but with the subtext in mind I’m incredibly interested. The sexual abuse subtext in both The Shining’s book and movie adaptation is the scariest thing about it to me.

The Shining was shot in 78 or 79? Duvall was a famous actress with an agent and money. I get that performers have to withstand tyrannical visionary directors, but if Kubrick's demands reached the level of torturous abuse, could Duvall not call up her agent and/or simply walk uff the set? I think actors will allow a fair amount of difficulty in their shoots and directions if they think it's creating a terrific performance and good film.

R301 I think it was shot sometime between 1975 and 1980, since it took about five-ish years to make and a little over a year just to shoot.

R301 I think it was shot sometime between 1975 and 1980, since it took about five-ish years to make and a little over a year just to shoot.

R299 The Haunting of Hill House was a profoundly sophisticated book for its time. I'm a fan of both King and Jackson and I agree that there do appear to be many similarities to The Shining. The biggest are that the main characters Eleanor and Jack both succumb to the house because they are already psychically vulnerable. There's a pre existing darkness there that isn't present in the other characters. I was initially intrigued by the announcement of the Netflix Hill House miniseries only to realize that the director had decided to use the name of the characters but not incorporate almost ANY key aspects of the actual plot. Why he chose to do that was beyond me. Someone unfamiliar with Shirley Jackson's work would think Hill House was some sort of family melodrama . What a disappointing bore. Blech.

R300, King has written at length about The Haunting of Hill House in his nonfiction book about horror, Danse Macabre (highly recommended, by the way). His analysis of it may illuminate his some of his thinking about The Shining.

Couldn't have been filmed around 75, the actor who played Danny was born in Oct '72. I doubt they started filming when he was 2-3 yr old.

Correction: Couldn't have STARTED filming around 75

A masterpiece of film making but its disturbing to think Duvall's mental health problems could have been triggered during the creation of this film.

Filming began in May/78.

R30& Could have? They definitely were. Watching this movie fucks with your head enough, imagine having to act it out with you as Wendy hundreds upon hundreds of times. I don’t think it was the number of takes that fucked her up, I think it was doing scenes where she’s being chased around by a rabid Jack Nicholson screaming murderous things at her hundreds of times that fucked her up.

To go back to OP's specific topic: Kubrick spends an extended time showing us what's "really" going on in the hotel: we see Jack being wined and dined, we know what he is going to do, we see Danny interacting with ghosts. Wendy doesn't doesn't know any of this. There's a lot she's in denial about, but there's a lot she simply has not seen. It's easy for the audience to laugh and feel superior to her when the scales finally fall from her eyes. We've gotten used to the visions and whatnot. But when the hotel makes its true nature known to her, it's an absolutely cold reveal. Of course she's hysterical; it's amazing that she's able to get it together and fight back.

I love Kubrick but I can only imagine if he were alive today and interviewed, he would be skewered for how he filmed his movies, and in particular, how he treated Duvall. Especially in light of #metoo, sometimes I wonder if Kubrick's work might be "reassessed".

Kubrick's shoots were LONG. I remember Jennifer Jason Leigh gave an interview with either Movieline or Premiere (I can't remember which magazine) but she said that she actually worked on Eyes Wide Shut but the shoot was so long that she had to leave the production and was replaced. However, from her own account, she seemed to have fond memories of working with Kubrick and was proud of the fact that she actually got to work with him although she was not in the final product.

This thread is making me appreciate this film even more.

" JMO, If the Hotel wanted to break Wendy, it would've. "

I disagree, I think the dark spirits that haunt the hotel were as shocked as the audience, when Wendy actually fought back against her husband for the first time in her life.

Kubrick knew what he was doing, when he changed the Jack and Wendy from the characters in the book. In the movie version, there's so much suspense built into their personalities and their relationship, that can't have been there in the book.

R313 IMHO The fact that King made Jack and Wendy with the vision of them being him and his wife kind of ruins it. He made Jack loving from the get-go, the kind of person who would never willingly hurt his family. He also made Wendy an intelligent, no-nonsense mother who wasn’t pushed around by him in the slightest, so when he broke down she didn’t cower, she got her shit together and tried to escape with Danny. I’m sure that if King hadn’t written Jack and Wendy with himself and his wife in mind they would have been a bit more damaged and real.

Just received the 4k blu ray yesterday and it was amazing to watch. Yes, the bathtub scene with the old lady looks dumb now (the makeup) but everything else holds up). Does anyone think Jack was unfaithful to Wendy at some point which is why he saw the naked woman in the tub?

I've read all kinds of theories about the woman in the tub. She's the hotel made flesh; she's actually a projection of Jack as molester, etc. etc. Any favorite interpretations? And what does it say about movie audiences that one of the scariest parts of the film is an elderly naked lady? That people were so freaked out about that says volumes.

R316 I think it’s two things, Jack coming to terms with the fact that he sexually abuses his son and Jack coming to terms with the fact that he cheated on Wendy some time ago.

And people find it scary because she’s decaying, not because she’s old. It’s not about her being elderly, it’s about her being a walking corpse.

Apparently the woman in the tub is named Miss Massey. She preyed on young men (bellhops mostly) whenever she stayed in hotels. She apparently checked into the Overlook when she was alive and slit her wrists in the bathtub out of guilt over her actions.

R318 That backstory basically proves she’s meant to represent Jack coming to terms with the fact that he sexually abuses his son. I mean, come on.

Mrs. Massey wasn't a sexual predator. She was a lonely widow who got robbed by gigilo.

"The Shining" is one of the King books where I always wondered what happened to the characters after. Say what you will about the BOOK of "Doctor Sleep" but the first third of it showing Danny's decline through his life is realistic and well done. I knew he wouldn't have a perfect happy life after what he endured.

There seems to be a trend of using naked people as instruments of fear. I've seen it recently in Midsommar, Hereditary, Suspiria, It Follows, etc. I think it says a lot about Americans that we're making movies where the scares are coming from just seeing the human body. It does seem to be a very American fear. We're so fucking prudish.

Truly, I just think it's effective because there's something uncanny about it. We're not used to seeing naked people outside of us getting out of the shower or having sex with someone. Walking into the kitchen at night to get a glass of water and seeing a naked old woman standing in front of the fridge is unnerving.

R322, that reminds me of Arrested Development when Maby produces a movie using Lucille's recovery from plastic surgery as inspiration. Audiences were terrified at an old woman in bandages rasping, "I'm thirsty."

I think a big part of King's issue with Kubrick's film is that he cast Nicholson in part because he resembled King. Since it's clear that King based the characters on himself and his wife, the cinematic narrative of Jack and Wendy, along with King's not being able to distance himself from Kubrick's version since he intentionally cast an actor who resembled him probably didn't sit too well.

Of course Jack cheated on Wendy, its implied in the beginning when he checks out two chicas leaving the hotel.

Jack undoubtedly cheated on Wendy every chance he got.

Duvall and Nicholson were both excellent but I'm curious as to which modern actors DL think could pull their roles off. I can't think of a modern actor with Nicholson 's intensely dark energy or Duvalls barely restrained hysteria.

R326, if he had, though, the whole story would probably have not happened. His anger and frustration would have had an outlet. He would have gotten involved in other bad relationships and he would not have been willing to go off into nowheresville for a long period of time.

Jack is a drunk, he is abusive. His weaknesses made him a target for the demons who wanted more victims .

R327 Although he may be a bit too old for it, I could see Bryan Cranston pulling off the role of Jack amazingly. Duvall is a bit more complicated though, her performance was lightning in a bottle due to what Kubrick put her through.

Joaquin Phoenix and an uglified Emma Stone or Rooney Mara.

Jesus, Phoenix could actually pull it off. It's one of those movies, though, that shouldn't be remade - as evidenced by King's lackluster miniseries.

R327, I can't comprehend a world where THIS film could be successfully recast.

Kubricks works shouldn't be trifled with, just look at Lolita!

R333, I wouldn't mind Lolita being redone. Kubrick's version isn't that great. It's definitely one of his lesser films.

R344 It already has been done again with Jeremy Irons, and it was a mess!

Having watched OP's clip above after originally seeing it decades ago, I can now saw Jack's performance was anti-gay.

He is doing a Paul Lynde "Uncle Arthur" impersonation. Once more the gay guy is the villain of a picture

Ho Hum.

Jim Carrey as Jack Torrance

Kubrick uses bathrooms in his films a lot. I am interested to know what this means.

Susan Harris' The Shining

Bea Arthur as Jack

Betty White as Wendy

Introducing Jenny Lewis as Danielle ("Dani")

*Zoom in on bear giving BJ*

Wendy (in trembling voice) - "That's not Fernando..."

Don't forget Estelle Getty as Halloran.

And Marg-YOUR-eet as Grady!

R338-I wonder if because at the time, they still weren't used all that much and using them was kind of edgy. Hitchcock's Psycho was the first time movie audiences saw a toilet and it caused quite a stir (followed, of course, by the stabbing in the shower that we never actually saw happen).

i watched the first part of the miniseries last night and yikes. It is really not good. Not sure I'm going to finish it.

But I'll be rewatching the Kubrick film this weekend. Jealous, spectral bitches?

Was this on the Blu-ray?

R344, HAHAHAHAHAHA.

I love the recut

R339, and playing the woman in the shower:

Except for "Dr. Strangelove" and one or two others, I do not know what people see in Stanley Kubrick's cold, overbearing films. All of them are far too long and ugly-spirited, and I have no use for them.

I'm curious: is there an army of female admirers of Stanley Kubrick? Maybe so....to me--as a gay man--he is repellently male in the worst sense, and he seems to appeal to something ugly in many men--chortling over violence, exulting in his vicious control games....Ugly.

R348, I love that Kubrick does not have the need to spoon feed his audience. You really have to understand the technique and read the images to understand what he's trying to convey and I like that.

R348 It sounds like Kubrick might not be your speed.

Might I suggest Stuart Little?

R348, King has taken a lot of heat over the decades for criticizing Kubrick. Some have said, for example, that he didn't like the way Kubrick portrayed Jack as an irredeemable psychopath when in the book he did in fact redeem himself to save Danny. Jack was a homolog for King, so, say the critics, it rankled King. But what I always found striking was that King said he felt Kubrick wanted to create a film that would hurt people. I think that's not only a fair assessment, but accurate.

I didn't realize that Shelly Duvall dated Paul Simon. He really had a thing for mentally fragile women.

One of the best movies I have ever seen.

It's been 40 years (gasp) since I've read the book, but the ending has the hotel destroyed and Hallorann saved. Anyone feel free to correct me, but it seems Hallorann is now working at some summer resort and Wendy and Danny come to stay. In a conversation, Wendy tells Hallorann her new job is going well and Danny is in some kind of therapy but coping. Does this sound right? In the book Wendy does come across (King's vision) as a more confident, slightly more Waspy and educated woman than Duvall. But Duvall's performance was just what this movie needed.

And novelist/essayist Diane Johnson wrote the screenplay. Her only one. In interviews she praises Kubrick for his exacting, perfectionist ways and has great respect for him - at least publicly.

When I was younger I wanted to be a filmmaker. I was obsessed with film. And as a teen I was obsessed with Scorsese. I still like and admire many of his films but, for me, as an adult in my 40s, Kubrick and De Palma have become my favourite directors. Their films have so much repeat viewing value.

There's such a... boldness to their films. Dark but funny, visually opulent (love those long takes and Steadicam shots in both of their films), I love going back to their films because they are so rich. They may not always work but when they do, they're exciting to watch.

5/ Who was Kubrick's co-writer?

After rejecting King's own efforts at turning his novel into a screenplay Kubrick turned to Diane Johnson, an American novelist and critic who published a number of novels which Kubrick admired, including "The Shadow Knows" which he considered making into a film. As Johnson tells it:

Kubrick was thinking of making either the Stephen King or my novel, "The Shadow Knows." And, you know, he ultimately decided on the King. "The Shadow Knows" had some problems like being a first person narrative, the only other one that I've done actually . . . well, almost . . . and, but anyway, he and I, in talking about it got along better than he and Stephen King, I guess. (Laughs). So, he just . . . he would call me up for about a week or two. It's very much a story that other of his writers tell. You know, you get these calls from Kubrick and then he proposes a meeting, and then he proposes you come in and write a script. And, so I did. And I spent, oh, I don't know, a couple of months . . . I guess eleven weeks all together, so almost three months in London, working everyday with him.

Kubrick was also interested in Johnson because he learnt that she was giving a course at the University of California at Berkeley on the Gothic novel and could bring a scholarly knowledge of literary horror to the script. He called her the ideal collaborator for "The Shining" .

The fact that King had such a problem with Kubrick’s film comes off as childish in some aspects and disturbing in others. I think that the fact that he calls Kubrick’s translation of Wendy “sexist” is ludicrously immature and makes him seem like a fucking idiot in terms of understand visual narrative (since she was clearly changed the way she was to more reflect that she was a victim of abuse and an enabler herself of the abuse on Danny). But his issues with Jack disturb me, especially the weird need he has to project himself on to the character. The fact that he associates himself with a man who in both versions is a violent drunk (even though in the book he’s got a “heart of gold” or whatever) is unnerving, and it makes me really worried that he beat the shit out of his son and wife back in his drug/alcohol days. Identifying with Jack is like identifying with the grandmother in Flowers In The Attic. If you do, there’s something wrong with you.

Abusive fathers are a Stephen King trope. His own father abandoned him when Stephen was two.

R358 This is different. King never said he empathized with Bev’s dad in IT, or Annie’s parents in Misery. He’s explicitly stated that he sees himself in Jack. That’s disturbing, and also a very big red flag.

I’m not sure that attacking King serves any purpose. Authors usually hate losing creative control over their work. It’s understandable—it’s their creation. He and Kubrick have very different sensibilities. He was probably destined to dislike the film. And horror writers famously are tormented souls who deal with their problems by writing about them.

Indeed, R360. I take King's points but still see Kubrick's movie as a masterpiece. For me Kubrick used King's story as a jumping off place, so you really can't compare the two beyond the very basic bare bones.

Agree with R360.

Incidentally I wouldn't go so far to say it's "ludicrous" to find sexism in the way the more well-rounded Wendy of the book was simplified for the film. I'm not sure I *agree* with that interpretation but there is an argument to be made. Reasonable people can disagree.

R362 I can see how Wendy’s characterization in the film could be seen as sexist from King’s eyes, exactly for the reason you said, because she’s different in the book. The problem is, in the film she is the way she is because Jack is overtly an abuser and it’s highly implied that he beats her. I don’t think that Wendy’s characterization is sexist, I think she was changed to more accurately fit the Jack of the film. The Wendy of the novel never would have put up with Jack’s shit the way the film’s Wendy did, and if she knew he was sexually abusing Danny she would have ran away with him and never looked back. I think that King’s problems with the characterization of Wendy tie back to his resentment of King for altering the story so much and making the character that he identified with overtly a POS, they aren’t objective, although I don’t expect them to be considering it’s hard to objectively view an adaptation of your own work.

R362 I can see how Wendy’s characterization in the film could be seen as sexist from King’s eyes, exactly for the reason you said, because she’s different in the book. The problem is, in the film she is the way she is because Jack is overtly an abuser and it’s highly implied that he beats her. I don’t think that Wendy’s characterization is sexist, I think she was changed to more accurately fit the Jack of the film. The Wendy of the novel never would have put up with Jack’s shit the way the film’s Wendy did, and if she knew he was sexually abusing Danny she would have ran away with him and never looked back. I think that King’s problems with the characterization of Wendy tie back to his resentment of King for altering the story so much and making the character that he identified with overtly a POS, they aren’t objective, although I don’t expect them to be considering it’s hard to objectively view an adaptation of your own work.

R362 I can see how Wendy’s characterization in the film could be seen as sexist from King’s eyes, exactly for the reason you said, because she’s different in the book. The problem is, in the film she is the way she is because Jack is overtly an abuser and it’s highly implied that he beats her. I don’t think that Wendy’s characterization is sexist, I think she was changed to more accurately fit the Jack of the film. The Wendy of the novel never would have put up with Jack’s shit the way the film’s Wendy did, and if she knew he was sexually abusing Danny she would have ran away with him and never looked back. I think that King’s problems with the characterization of Wendy tie back to his resentment of King for altering the story so much and making the character that he identified with overtly a POS, they aren’t objective, although I don’t expect them to be considering it’s hard to objectively view an adaptation of your own work.

R362 I can see how Wendy’s characterization in the film could be seen as sexist from King’s eyes, exactly for the reason you said, because she’s different in the book. The problem is, in the film she is the way she is because Jack is overtly an abuser and it’s highly implied that he beats her. I don’t think that Wendy’s characterization is sexist, I think she was changed to more accurately fit the Jack of the film. The Wendy of the novel never would have put up with Jack’s shit the way the film’s Wendy did, and if she knew he was sexually abusing Danny she would have ran away with him and never looked back. I think that King’s problems with the characterization of Wendy tie back to his resentment of King for altering the story so much and making the character that he identified with overtly a POS, they aren’t objective, although I don’t expect them to be considering it’s hard to objectively view an adaptation of your own work.

Shit, sorry, the site glitched out on me as I hit post.

What are the clues that Danny was sexually abused in the film? I always thought he was abused--this is made explicit in the film--but I never thought of sexual abuse?

R368 There’s multiple videos and essays online that present all the clues, but the biggest one is bears. Kubrick routinely uses bears in his films to represent the sexual abuse of children (Lolita, Eyes Wide Shut, etc). Remember the scene of the bear blowing the ghost guy? Go rewatch that scene, but this time with the idea in your head that this is really the hotel forcing Wendy to come to terms with the fact that her husband has been sexually abusing their son. The bear is Danny, the man is Jack.

R368-it's all laid out in Rob Ager's video. It's almost 20 minutes long but worth the view. He lays out some compelling arguments.

R369, now when I watch that scene, I see it as Wendy stumbling upon Jack and Danny. She isn't seeing ghosts at all. Her brain can't process the horror of it, though, so she sees the bear and man instead. It's completely changed that scene for me.

The notion that King hated the movie is funny on a number of levels. I can see why he thought the malevolent forces of nature were evil (whereas Kubrick saw evil manifest in a crazed father). King lives in Maine, for christ's sake, so he has a point. I used to hate Duvall's performance, but now I get how it is integral to the mise-en-scène of horror. I think the idea that the ballroom scenes that depict long-dead people being in hell itself is close enough to being brilliant.

Redrum!

Never understood when authors complained about how their works are adapted for film. If you sell the rights, get script approval in the contract, or shut up.

R373 King is a narcissist, of course he threw a tantrum.

"Authors usually hate losing creative control over their work."

Yeah, then don't sell the film rights, or do what J.K. Rowling did, and refuse to sell unless you get script approval!

But really, it's just as well that King didn't. Very few of his works translate well to the screen, and IMHO the fact that he doesn't like the changes that made "The Shining" into a terrific movie show that he doesn't have a good grasp of what works in the medium of film.

R368 Aside from the bear bottomed blowjob bear and politician, the films beginning has a nearly naked Danny lying on a giant teddy bear face, it's a bizarre but intentional shot. Once you start looking for these things you'll pick up on more and more.

King really liked the changes De Palma made for Carrie and he's praised the new IT movies and the new Pet Semetary which both stray in many ways from his original books, so I don't think he's being a dick. I think The Shining was a more personal book for him and he and his family are probably a bit of the inspiration for the characters in the story. That might be why he takes it so personally. In his defense, it does change the story a hell of a lot, too, but I think it worked for the film.

I think Carrie and The Shining are the two best film adaptations of King's works and as I said previously, they're both two of my favourite directors.

Really LOVING this thread. I never made the connection between the bears and Jack possibly sexually abusing Danny. Indeed, that is true horror. Learning a lot.

A few years ago, the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto had an exhibit of Kubrick's films. It was absolutely brilliant. At the front of the Lightbox, two girls dressed as the twins from The Shining greeted (or terrified) customers as they entered the building. Genius.

I rewatched "Rosemary's Baby" (1968) and it just reinforced why "The Shining" (1980) is an artistic masterpiece.

Polanski does not do art. He does a literal interp.

Kubrick is the King of reinterpretation and re-envisioning.

really? her performance was reviled at the time as shoddy....weak and contrived.

E79, I love both. Rosemary's Baby reminds me (not that I need to be reminded) why I am pro-choice. The thought of other people controlling a woman's body is terrifying.

[quote]E79

BINGO!

[quote]I think Carrie and The Shining are the two best film adaptations of King's works and as I said previously, they're both two of my favourite directors.

Salem's Lot is the most underrated adaption of King's work. It doesn't get the respect it deserves because it was a TV miniseries. I find it the scariest of all the King adaptions, except for maybe Carrie. I still can't believe that something so genuinely scary was made for TV in 1979. Tobe Hooper did an incredible job.

R383 I agree. Salem's Lot is my favorite Stephen King novel, bar none. It is a brilliant, haunting book, and the miniseries from the '70s was very well-handled. Tobe Hooper had a bizarre and rather inconsistent filmography overall when you compare his later stuff to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (which I regard as the best horror film to come out of the U.S. to date), but he had some hits, and Salem's Lot was one of them.

I liked "Rose Red" with Nancy Travis

The most fascinating detail I learned from that bear video was how the eyes of Danny's teddy bear are similar in shape to the carpet pattern in room 237 and the floor indicators of the bloody elevator.

I also never noticed the subtle reversal in the sequence of the girls rolling the ball to Danny. I feel like many rewatches are in my future.

I'm shocked the film received no Oscar nominations, including technical ones. The cinematography, editing and sound were top-notch. I I

Oops, posted too soon r387.

I think Duvall and Scatman Crothers deserved nominations.

[quote]Never understood when authors complained about how their works are adapted for film.

You've never understood regret? Well aren't you lucky!

R389-I think what the poster was trying to say is that King sold the adaptation rights and, one would presume, profited handsomely. He also didn't contractually mandate script and casting approval. When that happens, subsequent criticism can be head scratching. But aren't you lucky to be so superior?

King has the right to be territorial about his work but Books aren't movies,this film is a masterpiece .

[quote]But aren't you lucky to be so superior?

Yes. Thank you for noticing.

[quote]The kid's "Shining" psychic ability is also pretty irrelevant to the story in the film, in fact, it could have been completely cut and nothing major about the movie's plot would change.

Not really. The "house" is using Jack to kill Danny because it wants the power of his "shining" if I remember correctly. In the book the Dick Halloran character rescues Wendy and Danny and they go live with him in Florida.

[quote] if I remember correctly. In the book the Dick Halloran character rescues Wendy and Danny and they go live with him in Florida.

Don't be ridiculous. Dick would never take down his black velvet paintings of the nudie negro women.

I think Rosemary's Baby is a masterpiece and one of the most faithful novel to film adaptations of all time. I don't think it's a bad thing to have a film that's faithful to the original source. It can be done, but the source material was already more film-friendly than The Shining was. Rosemary's Baby was a novel that almost read like a film. I also think Polanski cast and shot the film perfectly. I can't imagine anyone but Mia in that role.

In that The Shining behind the scenes documentary someone posted above, Shelley actually looked quite pretty in all the shots. It was very strange how attractive she looked on that videotape, no less.

The Exorcist book was almost word for word, scene by scene, identical to the film.

I think only the subplot about Chris MacNeil's German butler was different..

R397, no I don't think so. That entire beginning part in Iraq was not featured in the book.

Yes, it was, R398

Could someone explain the exchange between Jack and Lloyd at the bar when Lloyd tells him it's not of his concern right now?

Was this direct from the book?

Duvall was a muse of Robert Altman, an equally accomplished director. I don't understand why is was needed to push her over the edge for this performance . Her mental health problems tarnish this great work.

Duvall current mental health problems tarnish this great work's legacy, imo

But can her mental health problems be traced back to The Shining?

I think this is probably one of the coolest Shining spoofs on YouTube.

[quote] Duvall current mental health problems tarnish this great work's legacy, imo

That's a ridiculous claim. Duvall went on to have another 20 years in the business after The Shining wrapped, including being the creator and executive producer of a series for Showtime, Fairy Tale Theatre, that ran for several seasons. Whatever issues she had later in life were not brought on by the way Stanley Kubrick treated her and were likely physiological issues that finally manifested themselves in a way that she wasn't able to get a handle on.

Hitchcock was mean to Tippi Hedren, too, but those movies made her a star. Actors should be grateful to get a part in an iconic movie and stop whining about it. It's not like either one of them was ever relevant again.

R406 let me guess, and you think actors shouldn't complain about the casting couch either, because after all it made them stars?

Duvall was a seasoned and experienced actress when she worked with Kubrick. I admire Kubrick's work but he could be an asshole. And he was an asshole to Duvall.

There's no way Kubrick's style of filmmaking would exist today in the world of social media.

For Eyes Wide Shut, remember that scenario Nicole Kidman describes to Tom Cruise with the Military Captain and how she imagined having sex with him? In the scenes where Cruise imagines this happening, Kubrick had the actor actually fuck Kidman as a way of torturing Cruise. He really loved to fuck with his actors. But at least he didn't describe actors as being cattle like Hitchcock, I guess.

Source, R409?

I'll always love Shelley for Faerie Tale Theatre. That was a big show in my household growing up. I'm glad she at least held on for a few more years to create that show.

This may have already been posted but I thought it was a good insight into the tough treatment Duvall endured during filming.

R409 is full of shit. Directors can't make two actors fuck for real.

We are speculating Duvall's mental health problems were triggered during the filming of The Shining, I am inclined to believe it though I am a rabid Kubrick fan!

I agree r409 is fake as fuck but damn, if I was Nicole, I would have fucked him. That actor was hot.

Duvall had mental issues long before she worked with Kubrick. She was unbalanced, just like Karen Black. Kubrick didn't make her crazy.

Come to think of it, Karen Black would have been amazing in The Shining. Probably even better than Shelley. What a missed opportunity.

These sculptures are a little disturbing. I wouldn't mind to own them.

That's dead on for Duvall, but if I didn't see the other two with her, I wouldn't be able to tell you for sure why they were supposed to be. You'd think the Jack Nicholson would be more accurate.

I love it still.

I love it still.

I can't see Karen Black as Wendy. As Jack, yes, but not Wendy. Karen always looked like she wasn't just on the end of a mental breakdown, but about to start a series of spree killings. She was scary.

She, in essence, did play Jack in Burnt Offerings a few years before where she was pretty much possessed by a house while she was the caretaker there.

I'm not so sure you can make actors fuck on screen for real, but there have definitely been rumors of actors who were down for it. They said it about Donal Sutherland and Julie Christie in Don't Look Now for years, but I think they both denied it.

I was watching Basic Instinct last year and, when Michael Douglas goes down on Sharon Stone, you can actually see her pussy lips attached to his face. That didn't look like they were faking anything right there. Even if there's some sort of cloth or dental dam on the vagina itself, it doesn't change the fact that she was riding his face the entire time.

R422 Well Sharon Stone's pussy lips are like the suction cups on octopus and squid tentacles.

I watched this last night and found the analysis to be dull and underserves such a great work.The older commentator offered the best insights, the younger guy and the woman who participated were unbearably dull.

I watched this agaiin today. Brilliant

Did they really build that big maze in front of the hotel for the movie? That must have cost a fortune.

The maze wasn't the only thing built. Some of the exterior shots of the hotel we're also built.

*were ^

God- damn voice-to-text!

I just saw the 4k rerelease here in Australia and I found it infinitely more frightening now as an elder-Millennial pushing 40 than I did 20 years ago. Nothing is more scary for a child than not trusting your parents and that is writ large with Jack Nicholson's brilliant performance. I appreciate him as an actor so much more now than in my childhood when I took his presence for granted.

Danny's "shining" is almost beyond the point. It's all about him living in this space with his abusive father. It seems almost obvious now, as discussed above, that Danny has been molested by Jack. Case in point is Tony. Danny behaved much, much more like a kid who had experienced sexual abuse than one who's habitually drunk dad injured him.

It made being trapped with Jack being sent mad by the hotel all the more terrifying.

The fact that Tony lives in his mouth and then goes into his stomach says it all...

His father was forcing fellatio on his son.

I stayed at the Balsams once, in Dixville Notch, New Hampster, with my tall, dark, and handsome French Canadian-American boyfriend. It reminded me of the Overlook. I’m amazed that it is still open, while the resorts in the Catskills have closed.

Gorgeous building, r431.

Was Danny's molestation in the book?

Great movie but Jesus Christ does Jack Nicholson chew the scenery.

No r432

The maze was constructed in front of the hotel exterior set. I grew up about 30 minutes from Timberline Lodge, which is the stand-in for the Overlook in the faraway exterior shots. None of the closeups (i.e. Wendy and Danny outside the hotel, the maze) were actually filmed there—only the aerial shots or the ones taken from a distance.

I loved the carpet.