Trivia for
The Shining (1980)

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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?"
  
  
• Stephen King was first approached by Stanley Kubrick about making a film version of 'The Shining' via an early morning phone call (England is five hours ahead of Maine in time zones). King, having a hangover, shaving and at first thinking one of his kids was injured, was shocked when his wife told him Kubrick was on the phone. King recalled that the first thing Kubrick did was to immediately start talking about optimistic ghost stories are, because they suggest that humans survive death. "What about hell?" King asked. Kubrick paused for several moments before finally replying, "I don't believe in hell."
  
  
• 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
  
  
• Stanley Kubrick considered both Robert De Niro and Robin Williams for the role of Jack Torrance but turned the idea down. Kubrick didn't think De Niro would suit the part after watching his performance in Taxi Driver (1976), because Kubrick deemed him not psychotic enough for the role. Kubrick didn't think Williams would suit the part after watching his performance in "Mork & Mindy" (1978), because Kubrick deemed him too psychotic for the role.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• The scrapbook that Jack finds in the novel makes a brief appearance next to his typewriter in the scene when Jack tells Wendy never to bother him while he's working.
  
  
• 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 Torrance 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
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• The film was released in the United States on star Scatman Crothers' 70th birthday.
  
  
• King had the first rights to write the movie's screenplay, but after talking to several people who'd worked with Kubrick previously and hearing their horror stories regarding working with the director, he declined.
  
  
• The role of Lloyd the Bartender was originally to have been played by Harry Dean Stanton, who was unable to take the part due to his commitment to Alien (1979).
  
  
• Scatman Crothers was a friend of Jack Nicholson's, and when he heard about the Halloran role, he asked Nicholson to talk to Kubrick about casting him.
  
  
• The two tracked vehicles in the movie are the Activ Fischer VW Powered 4 Speed Snow-Trak (referred to and labeled on the vehicle as a "SnowCat") and a Thiokol Imp Snow-Cat (this is the vehicle Wendy and Danny escape in).
  
  

• 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: Director Trademark: (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.
  
  

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