“The Shining” is considered one of the best horror films ever by many movie fans, but it’s also just straight-up considered a great movie by many irrespective of the genre. Combine an iconic, taxing director, one of the most successful writers ever, and the biggest movie star of his generation, and you get “The Shining.”
There are a lot of interpretations about what movie “really means." There is a documentary called “Room 237” that is dedicated to chronicling some of the theories that abound about “The Shining.” A lot of people have a lot of ideas about what the movie is “actually” about. Perhaps the most famous of those is the theory that “The Shining” is Kubrick’s way of admitting he staged the 1969 Moon landing.
Kubrick was not the only big name associated with “The Shining.” The movie is based on a book by none other than Stephen King. King’s book came out in 1977, and the film came out in 1980, which means it was a pretty swift timeline for the adaptation.
It’s hard to imagine anybody but Jack Nicholson playing Jack Torrance, the patriarch of the Torrance family who drives the horror of the film. Kubrick felt the same way apparently, as Nicholson was his first choice for the role. That being said, other actors were considered just to be safe, included Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, and Robin Williams.
In order to try and give his cast and crew an idea of what kind of vibe he wanted for “The Shining,” Kubrick decided to screen David Lynch’s cult classic “Eraserhead” for them. Given that Kubrick went into the project saying that he wanted “The Shining” to be a commercial success that seems like a rare choice.
Duvall had it even worse than Nicholson. Duvall, like Kubrick, was particular about her craft. This did not lead to a great working relationship. As the director, and a man who was not afraid to throw his weight around, Kubrick had the upper hand in their battle. Duvall found the experience so stressful that she got sick while shooting, and her hair even began to fall out.
An iconic line was improvised. If one line stands out in “The Shining,” it’s probably Jack’s intense, maniacal “Heeeere’s Johnny.” That line was actually improvised by Nicholson. It also almost didn’t make the cut, as the British Kubrick didn’t understand the reference. Oh, and that was a real door that Nicholson chopped through, by the way. He had been a firefighter in his youth and knew his way around an ax.
It’s not uncommon for international versions of a movie to have little tweaks in terms of language and culture. For example, the idiom “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” does not necessarily resonate in other languages and parts of the world. As such, international versions got different lines there. In Germany it’s “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” in Spanish it’s “No matter how early you get up, you can’t make the sun rise any sooner,” and so on.
You know who has never been shy about voicing their dislike for “The Shining?” That would be none other than King. The author despises Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel. He doesn’t like how Kubrick portrayed Jack or Wendy, and also to be fair the novel was personal to King. It was in many ways him working through the demons of his alcoholism, so seeing the novel turned into a movie he didn’t like was probably frustrating. Interestingly, he was a fan of the TV miniseries of “The Shining.”
There’s a sequel to the movie
Many years after writing “The Shining,” King decided to write a sequel. In 2013 he released “Doctor Sleep,” which focuses on a grown-up Danny Torrance. That book was then adapted into a movie as well. Now, given the fact Kubrick is no longer alive, and also given how King feels about the movie version of “The Shining,” it remained to be seen if “Doctor Sleep” would have anything to do with its cinematic predecessor. However, director Mike Flanagan explicitly said he was making a sequel to “The Shining” film, and that movie came out in October 2019.
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