25 Things You Might Not Know About The Shining

You may have seen The Shining many times since it came out in 1980, but you still get a chill down your spine when you see it again. The Stanley Kubrick version of the Stephen King novel is a classic. However, there are many behind-the-scenes tidbits that are still surfacing about the production. For example:

5. Jack Nicholson wrote a scene.

In addition to improvising one of the most famous lines of the film, Nicholson actually wrote an entire scene. He felt a particularly deep understanding of Jack Torrance's berating of his wife while he’s trying to write.

In an interview with the New York Times, Nicholson explained, “That’s what I was like when I got my divorce. I was under the pressure of being a family man with a daughter and one day I accepted a job to act in a movie in the daytime and I was writing a movie at night and I’m back in my little corner and my beloved wife Sandra, walked in on what was unbeknownst to her, this maniac—and I told Stanley about it and we wrote it into the scene.”

16. Shelley Duvall and Stanley Kubrick did not get along.

Though he had a good relationship with Nicholson, Kubrick was notoriously brutal on Shelley Duvall during filming. In her words, “From May until October I was really in and out of ill health because the stress of the role was so great. Stanley pushed me and prodded me further than I’ve ever been pushed before. It’s the most difficult role I’ve ever had to play.” The scene in which Wendy is swinging a bat at Jack is an example of this pushing. The scene actually made it into The Guinness Book of Records because it took 127 takes, the most for a scene with spoken dialogue.

You’ll find plenty of other information that may give you a better understanding of the total weirdness of The Shining in a list at mental_floss.


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Back in the mid 80's I rented and lived in a house in Pekin, Illinois that was owned by the parents of Dan Lloyd, who played the boy Danny Torrence in the film. His mom loved telling my wife and I that her son had starred in the movie.
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