20 facts you might not know about 'The Shining'

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.

How did Kubrick end up making “The Shining?” It all started with “Barry Lyndon.” “Barry Lyndon” was Kubrick’s film that came out in 1975, and it had been a commercial flop. At this point, Kubrick decided he wanted to make a movie that could be a success at the box office but still be fulfilling from a creative perspective.

Kubrick figured he should find a book he could adapt to create his hopefully successful film. King said that Kubrick was given a bunch of books to read to try and find one he wanted to tackle. The story goes that Kubrick’s secretary got used to hearing the thud of a book being thrown after Kubrick tired of it. Eventually, she noticed there wasn’t a thud and went to find the director engrossed in “The Shining.”

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. However, none of those actors got a sign-off from King.

King wrote the book that became “The Shining,” obviously. On top of that, Kubrick was a writer on the screenplay. However, Kubrick isn’t the only writer credited with the screenplay for the film. Diane Johnson also worked on the script. While she did not do much in the world of film, she was an accomplished novelist, and her book “Le Divorce” was adapted into a movie in 1997.

One of the indelible, creepy images of “The Shining” is the Grady twins, the two ghost girls that young Danny Torrance runs into in the halls of the Overlook Hotel. In the book, though, they aren’t twins. They are referred to as sisters and are mentioned as being around eight and 10. Then, Kubrick cast identical twins for the role and that changed everything.

They didn’t hire a known child actor to play Danny Torrance. Instead, Kubrick sent casting agents to Cincinnati, Chicago, and Denver to audition over 5,000 kids to try and find Danny. Why those cities? Because Kubrick wanted to find a kid whose accent would fall somewhere between Nicholson and Shelley Duvall.

When they say that New York City is a character in a movie you might roll your eyes, but it is probably fair to say the Overlook Hotel is not unlike a character in “The Shining.” They didn’t film at a real hotel, though. The establishing shots of the Overlook are actually the Timberline Hotel near Mount Hood in Oregon. Meanwhile, the interiors – which shot on a set – were inspired by the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park.

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. We also hope that Danny Lloyd, who played Danny Torrance, was not part of that screening.

Kubrick was known for his meticulousness as a director and for being demanding of his cast and crew. As such, he was not afraid to tinker with the movie as it went along. Kubrick was changing his shooting script all the time, sometimes multiple times a day. In fact, Nicholson got so frustrated he began tossing script changes away, knowing they would inevitably be changed again. He ended up learning his lines right before saying them.

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.

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.

Had they tried to make “The Shining,” a few years sooner, it might have looked different. That’s because the movie makes use of the Steadicam, something that film viewers are now used to. Back then, though, it had been used a half dozen times or more at most. “The Shining” was one of the very first films to ever use the Steadicam.

Was “The Shining” a blockbuster? No, but it was enough of a success to be a hit. Kubrick made the film for $19 million, and its worldwide box office was $47 million. Sure, it didn’t do as well as another 1980 film by the name of “Empire Strikes Back,” but it was able to turn a profit.

Kubrick didn’t exactly make crowd-pleasers a lot of the time, even when trying to make a commercial film. At first, the critical reviews were mixed on “The Shining.” Now, though, the movie is considered an all-time classic. AFI ranked it 29th on their “100 Years…100 Thrills” list, and it appeared on a couple more of those lists as well. Roger Ebert, who didn’t love it when he reviewed it when it came out, put it into his “The Great Movies” series eventually as well.

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 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.

“The Shining” is one of the most-parodied movies ever made. You can catch references to the Grady twins or “Heeeere’s Johnny!” all over the place. That being said, if we are talking parodies of the movie, we want to focus on “The Simpsons.” In one of their “Treehouse of Horror” episodes, they do a story called “The Shinning” that is a straight-up parody of “The Shining.” It inspired its own iconic moment when Homer “goes crazy.”

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.