Jack Torrance is hired to be the caretaker at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado during the winter. He hopes the peace and quiet will help him write something. He brings his wife, Wendy and son, Danny, along and they all settle in. Danny has a special power to see into the future and read and communicate other people’s minds. Danny sees spirits of people who have died in the hotel. The hotel is starting to get to Jack and causing him to go insane.
Blaine: Stanley Kubrick was one of the greatest film artists and filmmakers. Before Stanley became a filmmaker, his passion was photography. He had studied photography for years and had a very good eye. Stanley did the school paper during his years in high school. He would go around looking for pictures that would capture the imagination. When Franklin Roosevelt the 32nd President of the United States died there were a lot of sad faces. Stanley took a picture of someone working as a street vendor who was depressed over Roosevelt’s death. He had looked like the world had just ended. Stanley was only sixteen when he sold that picture to a magazine.
The magazine was called “Look” and after Stanley had graduated from high school he became a staff photographer for Look. He took thousands of pictures for them and many made it into the magazine. Stanley also had a passion for boxing which made him want to make a film about it. Being a first time director, Stanley Kubrick made his first film in 1950, “Day of the Fight”. After that Stanley went on to make many more pictures. A lot of the films Stanley made got mixed reactions. Stanley Kubrick made films like “Paths of Glory”, “Spartacus”, “Lolita”, “Dr. Strangelove”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “A Clockwork Orange” and “Barry Lyndon”. Stanley used his photography skills for all the shots in his movies.
Warner Bros. had bought the rights to “The Shining” novel and when they wanted to make it into a film they had Stanley Kubrick in mind. Stanley Kubrick had read a book called “The Blue Hotel” in his youth and he liked the idea of a person arriving at a place with a death wish so when he was offered to direct “The Shining” he thought as the perfect opportunity of directing his own haunted house movie. Stanley had read a novel called “The Shadow Knows” and he was curious to know where he could find the author, Diane Johnson, because he thought someone like her could adapt “The Shining” into a screenplay.
Stanley Kubrick wasn’t too big on having big Hollywood actors in his movies, but he had some in mind that he felt would be right to work with. Stanley was going to make a film about Napoleon Bonaparte with Jack Nicholson as the lead, but the project was terminated. Stanley thought that Jack was a great actor and had wanted to work with him, so he had him play Jack Torrance in “The Shining”. Jack Nicholson would go crazy after doing 27 takes of a scene when his character is supposed to be crazy. Stanley Kubrick liked to do so many takes of a scene (even after he knew he got good things) and he pushed the actors psychologically to get them to give really crazed performances. Stanley Kubrick would be hard on Shelley Duvall. He was pushing her to do her best at being terrified for a scene. They did get a long and Shelley respected Stanley for the work he had done on “The Shining”. Diane Johnson had written a bigger part for Shelley Duvall in the script with more to say. Stanley was interested in finding an actress who was more in love with her partner than he is with her.
Stanley had sent people out to take pictures of different hotel rooms that they could use for the film. The sets for the film were built at London’s Elstree Studios. There were hundreds and thousands of watts of light that were stationed outside the windows to illuminate the inside brightly and evenly in any direction and felt like it gave the appearance of a fog of some sort outside. The steady cam had just been invented by Garrett Blown and it was great for the shot where the kid is riding his big wheel tricycle around the hallways of the hotel. No one expected the sound that was made as the tricycle rode over the carpet (quietly) and then the hardwood (loudly) including Stanley. They all thought it was cool.
The shot of the twins appears to be an homage to the famous black and white photo of twins taking in the 1960s by Diane Arbus. Lisa and Louise Burns, the young ladies who played the twins, didn’t like wearing those blue dresses because they were itchy and they thought that they looked awful to wear. Stanley would hear the girls say their lines, “Come and play with us Danny" differently for every take they did of that scene.
At first after it came out there were comments that it wasn’t true to Stephen King’s novel. Even it’s author, Stephen King, didn’t like it and one reason was because he didn’t create the character Wendy Torrance to just scream a lot or be stupid when he wrote the novel. As time went on feelings about “The Shining” changed. It was one of those type of movies where you had to watch it more than once in order for it to grow on you. Today “The Shining” is thought to be a classic and one of the most terrifying films ever made.
My rating on “The Shining” is five out of five stars.
Parodies
The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror V
Plot: Mr. Burns has the Simpson family be the caretakers of his mansion. Mr. Burns has the cable to the television cut and takes away all the beer. Without TV and beer it causes Homer to go insane and want to kill his family.
South Park
Episode: A Nightmare on FaceTime
Plot: Randy Marsh buys a Blockbuster store for ten thousand dollars. Randy is excited about it, but the rest of the family feels that Blockbuster is old school now that people rent movies from RedBox or stream them online.
