146 min/1980
A man, his son and wife become the winter caretakers of an isolated hotel where Danny, the son, sees disturbing visions of the hotel's past using a telepathic gift known as "The Shining". The father, Jack Torrance, is underway in a writing project when he slowly slips into insanity as a result of cabin fever and former guests of the hotels ghost's. After being convinced by a waiter's ghost to "correct" the family, Jack goes completely insane. The only thing that can save Danny and his mother is "The Shining".
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During the making of the movie, Stanley Kubrick would call Stephen King at 3:00 a.m. and ask him questions like "Do you believe in God?"
The Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood in Oregon was used for the front exterior, but all the interiors as well as the back of the hotel were specially built at Elstree Studios in London, England. The management of the Timberline requested that Stanley Kubrick not use 217 for a room number (as specified in the book), fearing that nobody would want to stay in that room ever again. Kubrick changed the script to use the nonexistent room number 237.
The book that Jack was writing contained the one sentence ("All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy") repeated over and over. Stanley Kubrick had each page individually typed. For the Italian version of the film, Kubrick used the phrase "Il mattino ha l' oro in bocca" ("He who wakes up early meets a golden day"). For the German version, it was "Was Du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf Morgen" ("Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today"). For the Spanish version, it was "No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano" ("Although one will rise early, it won't dawn sooner."). For the French version, it was "Un 'Tiens' vaut mieux que deux 'Tu l'auras'" ("A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush").
Stanley Kubrick decided that having the hedge animals come alive was unworkable, so he opted for a hedge maze instead.
Stanley Kubrick demanded 127 takes from Shelley Duvall in one scene.
Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [Bathroom] Jack speaks to the ghost of Delbert Grady in the men's room.
When first released, the film had an alternate ending: the party photos shot (now the last shot in the film) dissolves to a scene in a hospital, where Wendy is resting in a bed and Danny is playing in a waiting room. Ullman tells her that they have been unable to locate her husband's body anywhere on the property. On his way out, Ullman gives Danny a ball -- the same one that mysteriously rolled into a hallway earlier in the film, before Danny was attacked in room 237. Ullman laughs and walks away while Danny "shines" the Overlook Hotel. Stanley Kubrick had the scene removed a week after the film was released.
Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [three-way] Danny vs. the Overlook vs. Jack
In the scene where Danny Lloyd rides his bike through the hall and encounters the Grady daughters, he never actually sees them. The scene was accomplished by Stanley Kubrick directing Lloyd to turn the corner into an empty hall. Kubrick then directed Danny to stop, look scared, cover his eyes, and so on. At a different time Kubrick filmed the girls by themselves in the hall standing together. In post-production, he took the film from the two scenes and spliced them together to make it look like it was all happening at the same time - hence giving the illusion that Lloyd (who didn't realize until years later that he was in a horror movie) was actually seeing the two girls.
Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [faces] Jack, as he chases his son through the maze.
Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [faces] Danny, when he sees the twins in the hallway.
Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [zoom] when Halloran is on his bed watching TV.
Jack Nicholson ad-libbed the line "Here's Johnny!" in imitation of announcer Ed McMahon's famous introduction of Johnny Carson on U.S. network NBC-TV's long-running late night television program "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962). Carson once used the clip of Nicholson as the introduction to one of his annual anniversary specials.
During the scene where Wendy brings Jack breakfast in bed, it can be seen in the reflection of the mirror that Jack's T-shirt says "Stovington" on it. While not mentioned in the film, this is the name of the school that Jack used to teach at in the Stephen King novel.
Stanley Kubrick, known for his compulsiveness and numerous retakes, got the difficult shot of blood pouring from the elevators in only three takes. This would be remarkable if it weren't for the fact that the shot took nine days to set up; every time the doors opened and the blood poured out, Kubrick would say, "It doesn't look like blood." They had tried shooting that scene for an entire year.
Stanley Kubrick made the cast watch Eraserhead (1977) to put them in the mood he wanted from them.
All of the interior rooms of The Overlook Hotel were filmed at Elstree Studios in England, including The Colorado Lounge, where Jack does his typing. Because of the intense heat generated from the lighting used to recreate window sunlight, the lounge set caught fire. Fortunately all of the scenes had been completed there, so the set was rebuilt with a higher ceiling, and the same area was eventually used by Steven Spielberg as the snake-filled Well of the Souls tomb in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Jack (as played by Jack Nicholson) references Salem, Oregon, the location of his previous film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which also starred Scatman Crothers.
The Louisville Slugger baseball bat with which Wendy Torrance bludgeons Jack is signed by Carl Yastrzemski, Hall of Fame Red Sox player. Author Stephen King is a huge Red Sox fan.
Every time Jack talks to a "ghost", there's a mirror in the scene, except in the food locker scene. This is because in the food locker scene he only talks to Grady through the door. We never see Grady like we do in the other "ghost" scenes.
According to Stephen King, the title is inspired by the refrain in the Plastic Ono Band's song, "Instant Karma" (by John Lennon), which features the chorus: "We all shine on."
The movie Wendy and Danny are watching on the opening of Monday is Summer of '42 (1971).
At the time of release, it was the policy of the MPAA to not allow the portrayal of blood in trailers that would be approved for all audiences. In order to overcome this, Stanley Kubrick convinced the board that was approving the trailer that the blood flooding out of the elevator was actually rusty water.
Because Danny Lloyd was so young and since it was his first acting job, Stanley Kubrick was highly protective of the child. Through clever and creative directing, Danny didn't know he was working on a horror movie until after it was released.
The former caretaker of the Overlook Hotel has two different names (Charles Grady and Delbert Grady) because he's supposed to be two different people. Charles is the caretaker who murdered his wife and daughters in the winter of 1970, and Delbert is the butler of the Overlook Hotel at the 4th of July party in 1921(which Jack was also at). This is a reference to the original book (the former caretaker's name didn't change like it did in the movie, but he was at the hotel in two different time periods- once at a masquerade ball in 1945 and again as the caretaker in 1970.). The use of two different names in the movie is simply to show that Grady has been at the Overlook Hotel twice, just like Jack.
The throwing around of the tennis ball inside the overlook hotel was Jack Nicholson's idea. The script originally only specified that, "Jack is not working".
Outtakes of the shots of the Volkswagen traveling towards the Overlook at the start of the film were plundered by Ridley Scott (with Stanley Kubrick's permission) for the 'happy ending' in the original release of Blade Runner (1982).
The "snowy" maze near the conclusion of the movie consisted of salt and crushed Styrofoam.
Stanley Kubrick's first choice to play Danny Torrence was Cary Guffey, the young boy from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Guffey's parents apparently turned down the offer due to the film's subject matter.
Billie Gibson, the old woman in the tub, has been falsely rumored to be Ann Gibson, Mel Gibson's late mother.
Neither Lia Beldam (young woman in bath) nor Billie Gibson (old woman in bath) appeared in another movie before or after this one.
Cameo: [Norman Gay] The injured guest who frightens Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) by saying "Great party, isn't it?" was played by film editor Norman Gay.
There were so many changes to the script during shooting that Jack Nicholson claimed that he stopped reading it. He would read only the new pages that were given to him each day.
Stanley Kubrick composed and shot this film in the negative ratio (1.37:1) format so that in TV we see it in 1.33:1, but in the cinemas wee see it in 1.85:1 (aspect ratio). When a film is shot in 1.37:1, the top and the bottom of the frame are intended to be masked off in the cinemas to create a widescreen version, but are not masked off in the TV - VHS - DVD version.
Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind wrote and performed a full electronic score for the film, but Stanley Kubrick discarded most of it and used a soundtrack of mostly classical music. Only the adaptation of Hector Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique" during the opening credits, the music during the family's drive to the hotel, and a few other brief moments (such as Halloran's plane trip) survive in the final version. Wendy Carlos once noted that she'd like to see the original score released on CD, but there were too many legal snags at the time. As of 2005, Carlos' score for the film has been remastered, and is a part of "Rediscovering Lost Scores Volumes 1 and 2".
For the scene in which Jack breaks down the bathroom door, the props department built a door that could be easily broken. However, Jack Nicholson worked as a volunteer fire marshal and tore it apart easily. The props department were then forced to build a stronger door.
Anjelica Huston lived with Jack Nicholson during the time of the shooting. She recalled that, due to the long hours on the set and Stanley Kubrick's trademark style of repetitive takes, Nicholson would often return from a day's shooting, walk straight to the bed, collapse onto it and would immediately fall asleep.
Before the project came to fruition, Stanley Kubrick was deciding on whether to adapt the novel or Diane Johnson's other novel "The Shadow Knows". Ultimately he decided on the former, for Johnson's novel had problems in its first-person narrative. Still impressed with her works, he brought her in to work on the adaptation for three months after rejecting Stephen King's draft of the screenplay.
The making-of documentary shot by Vivian Kubrick shows that the hedge maze set, while nowhere near as large as the maze in the film (which was mostly a matte painting), was still large and complex enough to require a detailed map. In the commentary for her documentary, she notes that many crew members really got lost in the maze, dryly noting that it now reminds her of the lost-backstage scene in This Is Spinal Tap (1984).
There was no air conditioning on the sets, meaning it would often become very hot. The hedge maze set was stifling; actors and crew would often strip off as much of the heavy clothing they were wearing as quickly as they could once a shot was finished.
Tony Burton, who had a brief role as Larry Durkin the garage owner, arrived on set one day carrying a chess set in hopes of getting in a game with someone during a break from filming. Stanley Kubrick, an avid chess player who had in his youth played for money, noticed the chess set. Despite production being behind schedule, Kubrick proceeded to call off filming for the day and engage in a set of games with Burton. Even though Kubrick won each game, Burton said the director thanked him since it had been some time that he'd played against a challenging opponent.
Stanley Kubrick wanted to shoot the film in script order. This meant having all the relevant sets standing by at all times. In order to achieve this, every soundstage at Elstree was used, with all the sets built, pre-lit and ready to go during the entire shoot at the studios.
The design of the Overlook's Colorado Lounge and Lobby are based very closely on the beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite national park. The chandeliers, windows and fireplace are nearly identical, so much so that people entering the Ahwahnee often ask if it's "the Shining hotel".
Steadicam operator Garrett Brown accomplished many of the ultra-low tracking corridor sequences from a wheelchair on which his invention was mounted. Grips would either pull backward or push forward the wheelchair, depending on the requirement of the shot
Stephen King tried to talk Stanley Kubrick out of casting Jack Nicholson in the lead suggesting, instead, either 'Michael Moriarty' or Jon Voight. King had felt that watching either of these normal-looking men gradually descend into madness, would have immensely improved the dramatic thrust of the storyline. Indeed, many fans of the book agreed with King, adding that Nicholson appeared fairly crazy from the very start, thus there was little or no surprise when Jack ultimately went totally overboard.
Vivian Kubrick makes a cameo in the party scene. She wears a black dress and sits on the right side of the sofa closest to the bar.
In the party scene, Stanley Kubrick told the extras to mouth their words and not to nod their heads.
One of the shots in the part where Jack is bouncing a ball against a wall took several days to film. This was because the shot entailed the ball bouncing from the wall onto the camera lens as it filmed. As Stanley Kubrick was so determined to get this precise shot, the camera kept rolling while the ball was continually hit against the wall in the hope of it bouncing back and hitting the lens. It took everyone on the entire unit having a go at it in between other shots before the shot was finally achieved after several days.
The Torrance's car is a Volkswagen Beetle.
The opening photo is looking west down Saint Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, on the Going-To-The-Sun road. There is an Ansel Adams photograph taken from exactly the same location.
The red bathroom, where Jack and Grady speak for the first time, was modeled after a bathroom in a hotel in Arizona, which was built by Frank Lloyd Wright.
This was voted the ninth scariest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Stephen King originally wanted Jack Palance to play the role of Jack Torrance.
The movie's line "Here's Johnny!" was voted as the #68 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).
The movie's line "Here's Johnny!" was voted as the #36 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
Much like the casting of the "Jack" character, Stephen King also disliked the casting of Shelley Duvall as "Wendy." King said that he envisioned Wendy as being a blond former cheerleader type who never had to deal with any true problems in her life making her experience in the Overlook all the more terrifying. He felt that Duvall was too emotionally vulnerable and appeared to have gone through a lot in her life, basically the exact opposite of how he pictured the character.
SPOILER: Stanley Kubrick ordered more than 120 takes in the scene where the camera simply slowly zooms in on Scatman Crothers as he "shines" in his bedroom. Kubrick originally wanted approximately 70 takes of the scene where Halloran gets killed by Jack Torrance, but Jack Nicholson talked Kubrick into going easy on the 70-year-old Crothers and stopping after 40. At one point during the filming, Crothers became so exasperated with Kubrick's notorious, compulsive style of excessive retakes that he broke down and cried, asking "What do you want, Mr. Kubrick?"
SPOILER: DIRTRADE(Stanley Kubrick):[Bathroom] Wendy hides from Jack in a bathroom during Jack's ax attack.
SPOILER: Danny croaks "Redrum" 43 times before his mother wakes up and Jack starts to break into the apartment.
SPOILER: There is only one on-screen murder in the film.
GOOFS
Continuity: Mrs. Torrance's cigarette ash when she discusses Danny with the doctor.
Continuity: The amount of sandwich eaten by Danny at the beginning of the film.
Continuity: When Jack and Danny are sitting on the bed talking, Jack's left hand alternates between being down at his side or around Danny's shoulders between shots.
Continuity: The positioning of Danny's hands and the ice cream bowl when he and Hallorann are talking about Shining.
Miscellaneous: A bug can be discerned crawling down the camera lens when Wendy is talking to Danny in his bed.
Continuity: Wendy's hand when Jack is talking about his nightmare.
Continuity: The position of Danny's toy cars on the circled carpet in the hallway when the ball rolls toward him.
Continuity: Damage to the bathroom door.
Continuity: As Wendy enters the bathroom to escape from Jack, the lampshade beside the bed is crooked. When Jack enters the apartment to break down the door with the axe, the lampshade is straight.
Continuity: While Wendy and Danny are in the bathroom hiding from Jack, the interior shots show snow accumulated in the corner of the window pane. There is no snow on the exterior shots of the window as Danny escapes. This keeps alternating between snow and no snow as the scene alternates from interior to exterior shots of the window.
Continuity: During the long shot of the Overlook in the beginning (right before The Interview title card), the maze cannot be seen, though throughout the rest of the movie it is rather close to the hotel.
Factual errors: There is no way that the huge pile of the Torrance's luggage (as seen when they first arrive at the Overlook) would fit in a VW Bug.
Continuity: During Hallorann's phone conversation with Larry, his scarf changes positions from being inside his coat to outside, and then back inside.
Continuity: During Hallorann's phone conversation with Larry, the box on Larry's table changes angles between shots (red-blue turns into red-only).
Crew or equipment visible: The shadow from the camera is visible on Wendy and Jack when they enter the apartment for the first time during the tour near the beginning of the film.
Continuity: Dick Hallorann opens the freezer door with his left hand and the door's handle is on the right. When the scene switches to inside the freezer, he is opening the door with his right hand and the door handle switches to the left. When they walk out of the freezer, they walk out of a different door (they first go into a freezer that is next to the chef's office, when they exit, they come out a door which is across from the office).
Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Wendy brings Jack breakfast in bed, they appear to change sides, but in fact, the first shot is in a mirror.
Continuity: When Jack is using the ax to break through the door he only breaks through one of the the recessed panels and says, "Here's Johnny". But when he hears the snowmobile and turns and the shot changes, two of the panels are gone without him using the ax on them.
Continuity: The position of the knife when Wendy locks herself in the bathroom.
Continuity: The first time we see Jack's typewriter at the Overlook Hotel, it is a small white typewriter. Later, when he is actually typing, it is a larger, blue typewriter.
Crew or equipment visible: Shadows from camera equipment are occasionally visible on Danny's back when he is riding through the hotel corridors on his tricycle.
Continuity: The amount of bourbon in Jack's glass rises and falls during the his second conversation with Lloyd the bartender.
Revealing mistakes: When Jack orders a Bourbon from the bartender in the hotel, the amount of Bourbon in the glass changes between shots from 3 quarters full to 1 quarter full.
Crew or equipment visible: When Halloran is speaking to Danny after Wendy and Jack have returned from their tour, their tape marks are visible on the floor.
Continuity: There are several large windows along a wall in the master bedroom of the caretaker's quarters. However, these windows cannot exist based on the architecture of the Overlook as seen from the external shot when Wendy pushes Danny out the bathroom window and down the snow drift.
Crew or equipment visible: The helicopter's blades/shadow in the opening shot are visible. Some claim this is deliberate and that it's Kubrick's way of "signing" his movie. Others claim that this is the stupidest explanation for a goof that they've ever heard. Another possibility is that this is only visible in the un-matted TV/video print (and thus isn't an error at all). The choice is yours.
Crew or equipment visible: The Steadicam's shadow is briefly visible during the final chase through the maze.
Continuity: When Jack enters the hotel manager's office to disable the radio, there is a light switch on the wall to the right of the door. Earlier, when Jack enters the office to meet with Mr. Ullman for "the interview," there is clearly no light switch on the same wall.
Continuity: When Wendy gets up to run into Danny's room when he's screaming "Redrum", she has a cigarette in her hand. Though, when she gets through the door and into Danny's room to grab him, the cigarette is gone, without enough time for her to discard it.
Revealing mistakes: When Wendy hits Jack over the head with the baseball bat on the staircase, the bat flexes, revealing it to be made of rubber.
Continuity: As jack is talking to Mr. Grady in the men's room, and Grady puts down the tray, it moves from between the 2nd and 3rd tap to between the 3rd and 4rth tap and back again several times during their conversation.
Continuity: The small painting above Jack's/Wendy's bed does not appear to be there as Jack is talking to Dan
Continuity: When Jack follows Grady into the bathroom to get cleaned off, he wipes some of the spilled Advocaat on Grady's jacket, the stains are visible. In the next shot, in the bathroom, the stains have gone.
Continuity: When Stuart Ullman is interviewing Jack, he has a name plate on his desk. When Wendy finds the switchboard is out and has to use the ham radio, the name plate is gone. When Jack goes back into that room to remove the tubes from the radio, the name plate is back in the center of the desk.
Anachronisms: The song played in the ballroom scenes is "Midnight, the Stars, and You," which wasn't recorded until 1932, 11 years after the scene takes place.
Revealing mistakes: There is no visible breath coming out of Jack or Danny's mouths when they are in the hedge maze, where it is supposedly freezing.
Continuity: When Danny has the tennis ball rolled to him in the Hotel, the carpet pattern on the floor changes between cuts.
Revealing mistakes: When Wendy is doing the dishes just before Jack calls to tell he got the job, the electricity socket near the sink is clearly a British three-pin socket.
Crew or equipment visible: In the opening scene the shadow of the helicopter doing the filming can be seen for an instant on the lower right corner.
Revealing mistakes: When Wendy and Danny are watching TV, there is no power or antenna/cable cords connected to the set.
Revealing mistakes: After Wendy has locked Jack in the pantry, we hear him slamming against the door repeatedly in an attempt to escape. The door doesn't move an inch, yet, in the interior shot, we see the door giving when he's saying "go check it out" and slamming his hands against it.
Continuity: After Wendy hits jack with the baseball bat, he can clearly be seen wearing white trainers, but when he's being dragged to the large lock up pantry, they've switched to sand colored hiking boots.
Continuity: When Wendy comes to see what Jack has written and he yells at her for distracting him he rips the paper from the typewriter. When she leaves, a fresh sheet is already loaded for him.
Revealing mistakes: When Jack is angry in the kitchen after his argument with Wendy, he knocks kitchen utensils off the worktops, a couple of steel tins hit and bounce back off the camera.
Continuity: When Jack stares at the model of the hedge maze and it cuts to an aerial view of Danny and Wendy in the maze, the model doesn't match the map of the maze that is posted on the reader board outside the maze (shown when Danny and Wendy enter it).
Revealing mistakes: Throughout the film, "The Gold Room" sign is located at the entrance of the Gold Ballroom. At the very end of the film, the sign is in the inside of the Ballroom as the camera exits while focusing on a picture of Jack. It doesn't make sense why the sign would be on the inside of the room if the sign is meant to be out in the hallway before you enter.
Continuity: Jack remarks to Lloyd that he has not had a drink for five months, but this is after they have been in the hotel for one month already. A month earlier his wife mentioned he had not had a drink since his episode with Danny, five months ago. Also, a only a few minutes later, Jack tell Lloyd that the incident was three years ago, which, considering the fact that his wife claims he hasn't had a drink since the incident, would imply that he hasn't had a drink for three years.
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