Making The Shining was hell: How tormented stars, Kubricks temper and box-office disaster led to an immortal horror – The Independent

Jack Nicholson must have needed a lot of toothpaste. When he was starring in Stanley Kubricks horror movie The Shining (1980), he felt it a matter of common courtesy to brush his teeth before any new scene. Working on a Kubrick film was, he thought, gruelling enough anyway for the crew and his fellow actors without having him breathe over them through a face full of lamb cutlets. In her BBC documentary Making the Shining, Vivian Kubrick, the directors daughter, shows Nicholson bent over the basin, rinsing his mouth. The moment the ritual was complete, he very politely walked back on set, picked up his axe and started trying to hack his co-star Shelley Duvall into pieces all over again with that demented grin on his face. There was take after take after take and his breath was as fresh at the end of the day at the beginning.

Nicholson was playing Jack Torrance, a troubled writer and recovering alcoholic who takes his wife Wendy (Duvall) and young son Danny (Danny Lloyd) to the Overlook Hotel in the Rockies. Jack is planning to spend the winter as caretaker, working on a book, but hes an angry, combustible figure anyway and the solitude brings out the devil in him. Little Danny has psychic powers. Through the shining, he can sense the evil and violence lurking within the hotel and inside his own dad, too.

This Shining, which turns 40 tomorrow, is one of Kubricks greatest films. This was a director who never took shortcuts and who approached every film he made with a manic zeal to match that of Jack Torrance with his axe. Radiating a slow-burning fury, the movie turns up the intensity from frame to frame, with Nicholsons performance increasingly deranged. The fast-moving camera work, strident music and intricate but absurdist plotting induce a sense of mounting hysteria in audiences whove regularly voted this the scariest movie ever made.

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But not everybody likes The Shining. Not only was it overlooked by the Golden Globes and the Oscars, but Kubrick found himself nominated for a Razzie for Worst Director. Stephen King, on whose novel it is based, was dismayed by Kubricks icy, detached approach. Its a great big, beautiful Cadillac with no motor inside. You can sit in it and you can enjoy the smell of the leather upholstery the only thing you cant do is drive it anywhere, King said in an interview with American Film. He suggested Kubrick was trying to make a horror film with no apparent understanding of the genre.

Like all Kubrick movies, The Shining had a long and complicated gestation. It was supposed to take six months to shoot. It took a year. Towards the end of production, the sets at Elstree burnt down. Even then, there was a sweet aroma in the air. Bottles of co-star Scatman Crothers Brut aftershave added fuel to the fire. Thankfully, the polystyrene snow had been moved to the backlot. If that had gone up, the inhabitants of Borehamwood and beyond might have been at risk of severe poisoning. Kubrick took the mini-disaster in his stride.

Shelley Duvalls Wendy Torrance struggles to keep a lid on her husbands swelling mania (Warner Bros)

The snow was used for the chase through the maze that marks the climax of the film. Kubrick had built a real-life maze and it was a common occurrence for cast and crew to get hopelessly lost inside it as the director roared with laughter at their plight.

The directors fastidious approach has given fuel to all those conspiracy theorists whove been poring over every frame of the film ever since it was released. The production design and use of props are so detailed that fans have read secret messages in everything from the tinned food in the Overlooks larders to the pictures on the walls. If the colour of Jacks typewriter changes in the course of the movie, these fans wont accept it could be a simple continuity error. Theyre sure Kubrick is telling them something.

Rodney Aschers entertaining 2012 feature documentary Room 237 gathers together some of the more outlandish theories. The Shining is seen by his interviewees as an allegory about the genocide of the American Indians or as having a deeply laid subtext that takes on the Holocaust. They puzzle over the strange architecture of the hotel, concluding that Kubrick has put the windows in all the wrong places on purpose.

When it comes to The Shining, just about any theory sticks. You could probably even make the argument that Jack Torrance is intended by Kubrick as a darker version of Mr Banks in Mary Poppins an absurd idea but no more absurd than most of the others.

In his cutting remark about the Cadillac, King implied that there is an emptiness at the core of the movie. Maybe thats why it so enraptures fans and inspires such wild interpretations. Its a blank canvas on which they can impose their own thoughts and fantasies. The director didnt give many interviews. He didnt tell audiences what his films were about. Instead, he allowed the work to speak for itself.

Most of Kubricks collaborators dont hold much truck with the weird and incredibly irrelevant readings of The Shining aired in Room 237. However, they testify to his mind-bending perfectionism. The director would test the lighting endlessly. He would spend an eternity on every aspect of the production.

Torrance chats with Lloyd, the devilish bartender, amid a party of ghosts (Warner Bros)

Young British actor Leon Vitali had given a brilliant performance as the priggish, highly strung Lord Bullingdon in Kubricks previous feature, the period drama Barry Lyndon (1975). Kubrick had noticed the way that Vitali had calmed down a little boy appearing in the ballroom scene who had become upset and lost his focus.

Stanley being Stanley, he doesnt forget things like that. When it came to The Shining, he just sent me the book. I read it overnight, Vitali tells The Independent. The next day, Kubrick called him and said, how would you like to go to the States and find a boy to play Danny?

The actor, later to become Kubricks dogged and dedicated personal assistant, took the job. It entailed an epic journey around Illinois, Colorado and Missouri, holding audition after audition. It was amazing, he says. Before I went, there were four and a half thousand names with appointment times already. You can add another 500 to that once I got over there.

Vitali interviewed all these kids (who ranged in ages from four to nine), videotaped them and then sent tapes of the most promising ones back to Kubrick in England. Eventually, he discovered the four-year-old Danny Lloyd, who said to him, Gee, Leon, I like your suit, and proved to be a screen natural.

The process of casting this one role had taken six months. Vitali then looked after Lloyd on set. His parents were fantastic, he says. They got it. They trusted us and we got to be very good friends actually.

The other actors on The Shining faced a trial of endurance. They werent always sure what their director was after. Kubrick wasnt interested in conventional psychological realism. You come up against somebody like Stanley who says, yes, its real but its not interesting, Jack Nicholson says in Vivian Kubricks documentary, summing up the challenge of working with such an unpredictable director.

Documentary footage shows Jack Nicholson preparing to film the axe scene

He [Kubrick] pushed me and it hurt, Shelley Duvall said to Vivian Kubrick. In the documentary, there is an uncomfortable and revealing scene in which Kubrick loses his temper with her. He tells her in full view of the crew that she needs to look more desperate as Jack comes after her with the axe and warns her youre wasting everybodys time. Depending on your point of view, he is either bullying her or using sly, intimidatory tactics to goad the performance he wants out of her.

I was really in and out of ill health because the stress of the role was so great and the stress of being away from home just uprooted and moved somewhere else and I had just gotten out of a relationship, and so for me it was just tumultuous, Duvall told Vivian Kubrick. At the time, she felt the stress was worth it. Without the director playing on her nerves, she would not have been able to reach the pitch of intensity she achieved. Four decades on, though, some speculate that The Shining took an immense toll on her. The film was hell to be part of, the star, who has had mental health problems in recent times, later acknowledged.

Duvalls is a thankless role. She is the foil to Nicholsons mad man. He chases. She runs. She personified the horror we are supposed to feel, Vitali says. To do that, she had to get up to a really high pitch of emotional tightrope walking. Once she had done that, she couldnt go back. We were weeks and weeks and months and months from the end of the shoot. Nicholson took the plaudits for his feral turn as Jack, while she has remained underappreciated. Yet her febrile, hyper-sensitive performance was just as important to the overall success of the film.

Vitali remembers that Kubrick had wanted to make a serious horror movie in the psychological sense rather than a vicious, horrible, blood-filled [one]. Not that this stopped him from including the famous scenes of blood cascading from the lifts down the corridors of the Overlook.

Grin and bear it: Nicholson on set with the unpredictable Kubrick (Getty)

At lunch time, the cast and crew would all watch rushes. Kubrick liked his actors to surprise him. He would shoot take after take after take. Stanleys gauge was that when youve finally got an actor to go too far, youve probably got it, Vitali remembers the way he kept on pushing the actors until boredom and exasperation gave way and they came up with something unexpected and original.

Nicholson realised that Kubricks ideas about the story and the characters were continually changing. I quit using my script. I just take the ones they type off each day, he told Vivian Kubrick.

Her father looked to his screenwriters to provide the foundations on which he would build his movies. Once these were in place, he wanted to be unfettered and free to explore. The writers would often be offended when he told them, Thank you, tell Warners what they owe you and then dismissed him from his orbit . For him, the screenplay was just the starting point. Inevitably, that meant his relationship with writers was strained. He kept them all at arms length. Even a figure as revered in horror fiction as Stephen King was left on the outside. When Stanley said, Right I am going to do The Shining, I think Stephen thought he may be there, called upon to write the script or called upon to be a consultant in some way, invited down to the set. But Stanley never worked that way, Vitali says.

King did eventually turn up at Elstree towards the end of shooting. Vitali showed him around at a time when the crew were shooting inserts of the typewriter. I know he felt very angry and probably reasonably insulted. What King couldnt have known was the importance the typewriter holds in the movie. In one of The Shinings most disorienting scenes, Duvall looks at the manuscript Jack has been working on. Instead of writing the next great American novel, her husband, she discovers, has simply been typing the same words, All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, again and again and again, on sheet after sheet of paper.

However, this allegorical anti-war movie following four soldiers caught behind enemy lines has more going for it than its reputation would suggest.

Rex Features

New Yorker Kubrick made good use of authentic, shadow-filled Manhattan locations for his first outing in dark city which has many classic noir tropes the film is told in flashback by a world weary narrator, theres love, deception, murder and revenge, and a striking denouement as hero and villain battle it out in a warehouse filled with mannequins.

Rex Features

Starring then husband and wife Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Eyes Wide Shut was impossibly hyped as art house porn featuring Hollywoods golden couple and as the masters final masterpiece.

Its neither of course, merely a fairly interesting erotic drama that crawls at a snails pace at times, even by Kubricks standards.

Rex Features

Kubrick later claimed if he had known beforehand how severe the censorship restrictions would be, he wouldnt have made Lolita, but Nabokov revealed that Kubrick had incorporated several things into the film that he wished he had thought of for the novel.

Rex Features

Star and director didnt always see eye to eye either. Douglas, exasperated by Kubricks meticulous attention to detail, reckoned that he spent longer making Spartacus than the slaves rebellion lasted.

Spartacus remains a great spectacle however, if a bit wordy, and won four Oscars, none of them for Kubrick.

Rex Features

Kubrick explores the dehumanising effect that not just combat but the brutal training regime under a profane, bullying instructor has on the recruits.

Coming after a succession of highly regarded Vietnam movies, The Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Platoon (1987), Full Metal Jacket perhaps suffered by comparison.

Rex Features

Disturbed by reports that the stylised violence in the film had provoked copycat crimes, Kubrick withdrew the film in Britain in 1973 and it wasnt made available again until 2000, a year after Kubricks death.

Rex Features

Kubrick shot all but a few scenes by natural light and candlelight, investing the film with the authentic look of the period and evoking the works of Hogarth and Gainsborough exactly the look that Kubrick desired

Rex Features

The caper goes to plan perfectly but the aftermath gradually and inexorably unravels in spectacular and bloody fashion.

Dont let the clichd Dragnet-style narration or the B movie status put you off this is top notch film noir with a lean, mean approach that proved hugely influential in the years to come, serving as the blueprint for Reservoir Dogs (1992).

Rex Features

However, The Shining still works as a chilling horror movie with Kubrick putting his own indelible stamp on proceedings the jaw-dropping tracking shot of the child on his tricycle, the shocking image of torrents of blood flowing from an elevator.

Kubrick was also happy to give his actors full latitude to improvise and Jack Nicholson is in full scenery chewing mode, his descent into madness making for mesmerising viewing.

Rex Features

It is certainly his first masterpiece and may well be the greatest anti-war film ever made, with its shattering portrayal of the slaughter in the trenches of the First World War and the jockeying for promotions of the self-serving army generals who view the men on the frontline as mere cannon fodder in their own quest for advancement.

Winston Churchill considered Paths of Glory to have been the most realistic depiction of trench warfare, but the films themes could have been set to any war and told from the perspective of any nation.

Rex Features

Perhaps only Kubrick would dare make a film about nuclear Armageddon as the Cold War was intensifying and so soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis, as he speculates on the consequences of the wrong person with their finger on the trigger.

With fantastic sets courtesy of Ken Adams, outstanding black and white cinematography, a devastating script with lines quoted ad infinitum, (Gentlemen, you cant fight in here! This is the War Room!) and a uniformly brilliant cast, allied to Kubricks fearless approach throughout, climaxing in the montage of mushroom clouds to the strains of Well Meet Again, Dr Strangelove is peak Kubrick, finding humour in the most chilling of subject matters.

Rex Features

What, for example, is the head-scratching ending all about, and what is the true purpose of the mysterious black monolith that pops up on Earth, then the Moon and finally in outer space as the spaceship heads for Jupiter?

These conundrums all add to the mystery and aura of a film in which Kubricks legendary attention to detail with regards to the sets stretched to importing just the right type of sand and washing and painting it to accurately portray the moons surface.

Rex Features

However, this allegorical anti-war movie following four soldiers caught behind enemy lines has more going for it than its reputation would suggest.

Rex Features

New Yorker Kubrick made good use of authentic, shadow-filled Manhattan locations for his first outing in dark city which has many classic noir tropes the film is told in flashback by a world weary narrator, theres love, deception, murder and revenge, and a striking denouement as hero and villain battle it out in a warehouse filled with mannequins.

Rex Features

Starring then husband and wife Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Eyes Wide Shut was impossibly hyped as art house porn featuring Hollywoods golden couple and as the masters final masterpiece.

Its neither of course, merely a fairly interesting erotic drama that crawls at a snails pace at times, even by Kubricks standards.

Rex Features

Kubrick later claimed if he had known beforehand how severe the censorship restrictions would be, he wouldnt have made Lolita, but Nabokov revealed that Kubrick had incorporated several things into the film that he wished he had thought of for the novel.

Rex Features

Star and director didnt always see eye to eye either. Douglas, exasperated by Kubricks meticulous attention to detail, reckoned that he spent longer making Spartacus than the slaves rebellion lasted.

Spartacus remains a great spectacle however, if a bit wordy, and won four Oscars, none of them for Kubrick.

Rex Features

Kubrick explores the dehumanising effect that not just combat but the brutal training regime under a profane, bullying instructor has on the recruits.

Coming after a succession of highly regarded Vietnam movies, The Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Platoon (1987), Full Metal Jacket perhaps suffered by comparison.

Rex Features

Disturbed by reports that the stylised violence in the film had provoked copycat crimes, Kubrick withdrew the film in Britain in 1973 and it wasnt made available again until 2000, a year after Kubricks death.

Rex Features

Kubrick shot all but a few scenes by natural light and candlelight, investing the film with the authentic look of the period and evoking the works of Hogarth and Gainsborough exactly the look that Kubrick desired

Rex Features

The caper goes to plan perfectly but the aftermath gradually and inexorably unravels in spectacular and bloody fashion.

Dont let the clichd Dragnet-style narration or the B movie status put you off this is top notch film noir with a lean, mean approach that proved hugely influential in the years to come, serving as the blueprint for Reservoir Dogs (1992).

Rex Features

However, The Shining still works as a chilling horror movie with Kubrick putting his own indelible stamp on proceedings the jaw-dropping tracking shot of the child on his tricycle, the shocking image of torrents of blood flowing from an elevator.

Kubrick was also happy to give his actors full latitude to improvise and Jack Nicholson is in full scenery chewing mode, his descent into madness making for mesmerising viewing.

Rex Features

It is certainly his first masterpiece and may well be the greatest anti-war film ever made, with its shattering portrayal of the slaughter in the trenches of the First World War and the jockeying for promotions of the self-serving army generals who view the men on the frontline as mere cannon fodder in their own quest for advancement.

Winston Churchill considered Paths of Glory to have been the most realistic depiction of trench warfare, but the films themes could have been set to any war and told from the perspective of any nation.

Rex Features

Perhaps only Kubrick would dare make a film about nuclear Armageddon as the Cold War was intensifying and so soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis, as he speculates on the consequences of the wrong person with their finger on the trigger.

With fantastic sets courtesy of Ken Adams, outstanding black and white cinematography, a devastating script with lines quoted ad infinitum, (Gentlemen, you cant fight in here! This is the War Room!) and a uniformly brilliant cast, allied to Kubricks fearless approach throughout, climaxing in the montage of mushroom clouds to the strains of Well Meet Again, Dr Strangelove is peak Kubrick, finding humour in the most chilling of subject matters.

Rex Features

What, for example, is the head-scratching ending all about, and what is the true purpose of the mysterious black monolith that pops up on Earth, then the Moon and finally in outer space as the spaceship heads for Jupiter?

These conundrums all add to the mystery and aura of a film in which Kubricks legendary attention to detail with regards to the sets stretched to importing just the right type of sand and washing and painting it to accurately portray the moons surface.

Rex Features

The Shining was a huge endeavour. Assistant director Brian Cook told the BBC there were 300 construction people on the pay roll before the film had even started. Quite apart from its status as one of the great horror films of the past 50 years, The Shining marked a pivotal moment in the evolution of Steadicam shooting (thats to say, a stabilising system which allows handheld camerawork to avoid jerkiness). It begins with an astonishing helicopter shot. Then the Steadicam work begins in earnest. The camera is rarely still for an instant. The energy here comes not just from Nicholsons performance but from the astonishingly fluid shooting style.

Carrying the Steadicam was its inventor, Garrett Brown, a pioneering and near-legendary figure in cinematography who had filmed Sylvester Stallone running up the stairs in Rocky (1976) and has worked with directors from Spielberg to Scorsese. Speaking on the phone, he describes his work on the film as being like moving a piano and playing it. It involved both very heavy grunt work and extremely delicate artistry.

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Making The Shining was hell: How tormented stars, Kubricks temper and box-office disaster led to an immortal horror - The Independent

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero