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Cast | Articles | Deleted Scene | Filming Locations | Media Mentions | Notes | Soundtrack
Making the Shining

Cast

Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Novel written by Stephen King
Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Diane Johnson

Articles

Time Magazine 10/1/06
Time: Are there any of your own movies you have come back to?

Martin Scorsese: Kubrick is really the killer. The other night, there it is again - The Shining. What could I do? I had to watch the whole goddamn thing.

Leonardo Dicaprio: [To Nicholson] I wish you would've worked with Kubrick again.

Jack Nicholson: Me too. I'm ashamed to admit it, but the first thought through my mind when I heard that he died was not, 'Oooh, Stanley, my dear friend.' It was, F___. Not going to get to do another movie with him. I wouldn't have suspected that would have been my reaction, but it's true.

The Shining is the perfect scary film, the formula found
8/5/04 BBC

    Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson, has been named the perfect scary film, according to a new mathematical formula.     The secret of making a scary movie has been calculated by university experts. Scientists have worked out an equation to prove why thrillers like Psycho and the Blair Witch Project are so successful at terrifying audiences.
    The formula combines elements of suspense, realism and gore, plus shock value, to measure how scary a film is. Researchers spent two weeks watching horror films like The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs in pursuit of the formula. The model focuses on three major areas: suspense, realism and gore.
    Factors considered include the use of escalating music, the balance between true life and fantasy, and how much blood and guts are involved. As suspense plays such a pivotal role in the success of a scary film, its elements - escalating music, the unknown, chase scenes and a sense of being trapped - are brought together and then squared. Shock value is then added.
    SCARY MOVIE FORMULA (es+u+cs+t) squared +s+ (tl+f)/2 + (a+dr+fs)/n + sin x - 1. Where: es = escalating music u = the unknown cs = chase scenes t = sense of being trapped s = shock tl = true life f = fantasy a = character is alone dr = in the dark fs = film setting n = number of people sin = blood and guts 1 = stereotypes.
    In addition, the experts say a film needs to be realistic to be truly frightening. Accordingly, they tried to balance out the parts which made a film either too unrealistic or too close to life. They then looked at how many characters were in the movie, assuming audiences empathize with a smaller number of people.
    The team at King's College, London also took into account the darkness of the film's setting. The Shining's isolated setting, with the family living in a huge hotel closed down for the winter, and the shower scene in Psycho, were perfect examples of the winning formula, experts said. The formula also looks at the levels of gore and offset this against the number of stereotypes present in the film.
    Jaws was the perfect example of appropriate levels of gore in a film, researchers found. "Steven Spielberg reached the optimum level perfectly allowing the viewer to see just enough blood to be scared of the Great White Shark, but not so much that it repulsed us," experts agreed. The research was commissioned by Sky Movies, to launch a season of scary films.

Deleted Scene

The last shot in the film of the photo of Jack dissolved to a hospital room 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. Kubrick released the film with this scene and then had it removed a week after the film was released.

Filming Locations

Unlike A Clockwork Orange which was 95% location shooting, The Shining is the opposite, almost all done on sets.

• The opening flyover sequence was done over Glacier National Park in Montana.

• Saint Mary Lake is the body of water they fly over low.

• The highway the car is on is the Going to the Sun Road.

• The Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood in Oregon was used for the exteriors, but all the interiors were specially built on a soundstage in Elstree Studios, London, England. Some of them burned down in a fire and had to be rebuilt.

• Hotel Lobby was The Awhanee Hotel, The Colorado Lounge in Yosemite National Park, California.

• The only real location featuring an actor was Hallorann on the phone at Stansted Airport.

• Stage sets - Jack's Boulder apartment, Hallorran's Florida condo, room 237, Durkin's garage, winter interior maze.

• West Wing sets - Caretaker's apartment, tall staircase, and a maze of hallways.

• The boiler room was in a warehouse at the back of the Studios

• Backlot - the car and snowcat interiors, maze exterior.

• The Gold Room Ballroom was built in a big storage shed.

• Summer interior maze was real hedges Radlett Aerodrome. (same as Handley Page hangers the ending fantasy scene in ACO)

• On the Aerodrome’s runway is where the tanker overturns onto a VW Beatle as Hallorann drives past.

Media Mentions

48 references

Notes

• The owner of the Timberline Lodge requested that Kubrick not use room 217 (the room with the woman in the Stephen King novel), fearing that nobody would want to stay in that room ever again, so he changed the room to 237 since they didn't have a room with that number.

Soundtrack

1. Main Title - Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind
2. Rocky Mountains - Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind
3. Lontano - Gyorgy Ligeti
4. Music For Strings, Percussion and Celesta (Movement III) - Bela Bartok
5. The Awakening of Jacob - Krzysztof Penderecki
6. Utrenja - Ewangelia - Krzysztof Penderecki
7. Utrenja - Kanon Paschy - Krzysztof Penderecki
8. De Natura Sonoris No.1 - Krzysztof Penderecki
9. De Natura Sonoris No.2 - Krzysztof Penderecki
10. Polymorphia - Krzysztof Penderecki
11. Masquerade - Jack Hilton and his Orchestra
12. Midnight, the Stars and You - Ray Noble Orchestra with Al Bowlly
13. It's All Forgotten Now - Ray Noble Orchestra with Al Bowlly
14. Home - Henry Hall & the Gleneagles Hotel Band

Making the Shining

When Kubrick rehearses the ballroom dance scene he pulls out and a record:

If I Had You Now
Whispering Jack Smith
World Records Retrospect Series LP 78rpm HMV No.B2925
Words & Music by Ted Shapiro, Jimmy Campbell & Reginald Connelly

I could show the world how to smile,
I could be glad all of the while,
I could change the gray skies to blue if I had you.
I could leave the old days behind
Leave all my pals, I'd never mind;
I could start my life a - new if I had you.
Bridge:
I could climb a snow-capped mountain,
Sail the mighty o-cean wide;
I could cross the burning desert
If I had you by my side.
I could be a king, dear, uncrowned,
Humble or poor, rich or renowned
There is nothing I couldn't do if I had you.

Alternate lyrics
I dreamed all my dreams, schemed all my schemes.

© 2004-09 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net