When Jack Nicholson was approached by director Stanley
Kubrick for The Shining, the actor had just completed shooting the comedy
western Goin' South, which he both directed and starred in. Filmed in 1977 and
released the following year, it was, to use that old phrase, a ‘troubled
production’ which received a critical mauling. A New York Times reporter, who
made an on set visit, found Nicholson in a morose and misanthropic mood: possibly,
one person suggested, the now 40 year old actor was finding it hard to balance his on set duties by day and his night time partying antics. Pauline Kael subsequently referred
to Nicholson’s performance in the film as a ‘leering leprechaun’ who ‘talks as if he needed
to blow his nose.” To what could she have been referring?
In Jack’s private life the production of Goin' South coincided with the truth about his parentage being made public – that June
Nicholson, who he had always believed was his sister, was actually his mother. So in many ways it wasn’t a great time for him.
Kubrick had known Nicholson for many years and they had
talked about working together since Jack’s Easy Rider days – in fact, a
potential historical epic had been talked about, with Jack playing the part of
Napoleon - this came to nothing, however.
Although Nicholson was Kubrick’s first choice for The Shining’s lead role of the caretaker, Jack Torrance, other actors were also
tested, including Robert de Niro, Harrison Ford and Robin Williams.
Kubrick needed to make a movie with decent box office returns after the
dismal failure of his previous film Barry Lyndon in 1975. Kubrick probably
thought that a horror film would guarantee him a hit. According to one source he
amassed a load of books in that genre, which he then shut himself away to read.
He could be heard noisily discarding all of the books after a few pages, throwing them against a wall, before things quietened down after he picked up Stephen King’s ‘The Shining’ which had been published in 1977. Of course
Kubrick wasn’t interested in making a horror film per se – he’d already been
offered and rejected director duties on The Exorcist and The Exorcist II - The Heretic – but the
plot of the novel, about a writer with creative block who takes on the job of
caretaker in a closed for the season – and haunted - mountain hotel, and the
strange psychic power of his son Danny, afforded him lots of opportunities to
make a horror movie with a difference. It also appealed to his interests in ESP
and the paranormal.
The Shining went into production in the winter of 1978, at
the same time that Goin' South was tanking at movie theatres. The long shot exteriors
of the Overlook Hotel, where the action takes place, were filmed at an actual
hotel in Oregon, but the close up exteriors and all the interiors were shot on
meticulously designed and constructed sets at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood,
Hertfordshire. The vast spaces of the hotel are navigated in breathtaking style
by Garrett Brown’s revolutionary Steadicam set up.
Even people with only a slight knowledge of Stanley Kubrick
will know of his legendary habit of multiple shot takes. The Shining was no exception. One scene, between Scatman Crothers playing
Hallorann, and Danny Lloyd as Torrance’s son Danny, went to 148 takes and was only
stopped when Crothers broke down and Nicholson intervened.
As a result of this, the shooting timetable went way over schedule,
turning from a 17 week shoot into a 46 week one. Two major films scheduled to start
at Elstree, Warren Beatty’s Reds and Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, were
cued up but massively delayed. Matters became more complicated when most
of the The Shining’s sets were destroyed in a studio fire in February 1979,
before filming had completed. The final scenes were finished as in an adjacent
studio The Empire Strikes Back was going into production.
Because of the extended shooting schedule – the length of which caused Nicholson to comment at
one point that both he and Shelley Duvall, who plays Jack’s wife Wendy, wore the
same costumes every day for a year – Jack ended up taking a rental house in
Chelsea. Nicholson made himself pretty comfortable and by all accounts the
house became party central. Jack was filming during the day, partying at
night and fitting sleep in during the the car rides ferrying him from London to Elstree.
Interestingly much of the film was shot in order – unusual in film making – and
towards the end it was commented that Nicholson needed less and less makeup to
turn him into the possessed, manic Jack Torrance.
The Shining met with a lot of critical hostility when it
opened during the summer of 1980. It was also seen as too long - the original
film ran to 144 minutes, but Kubrick reduced this to 118 for audiences outside
the US – it’s this print that you’ll see this afternoon.
I saw it when it first came out and like a lot of people was
impressed with the look of the film, but couldn’t get past Jack’s performance
and also the fact that Kubrick had used King’s book - which was a favourite of mine - as a jumping off point to
make his own rather idiosyncratic version of the story. But like most of Kubrick’s films, it took a
few re viewings of the film for its genius to sink in.
James Joyce once commented of his famous novel ‘Ulysses’
that there were enough traps and tricks in that book to keep critics guessing
for years. And the same can be said for The Shining. Doing some research for
this introduction I was amazed at the sheer volume of analysis – a lot of it
quite bonkers – produced in reaction to the movie. Some of these theories were
collected together in Rodney Ascher’s 2012 film Room 237, a conspiracy theory
style documentary almost as extraordinary as the film that inspired it. And yet there are so many inconsistencies in the film, which add credence to some of these theories, and which surely could not have happened by accident with a director as scrupulous as Kubrick.
So whether it’s your first time or your twentieth viewing of
the film, you’ll still find a lot to interest you. You may even have your own
theories about what happens in the film, but I’d think carefully before
committing them to the internet.
Enjoy the film.
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