The Shining Poster Here’s Johnny Jack Nicholson Stanley Kubrick Stephen King

Description

The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the Stephen King novel The Shining.

A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an off-season caretaker at an isolated hotel. His young son possesses psychic abilities and is able to see things from the past and future, such as the ghosts who inhabit the hotel. Soon after settling in, the family is trapped in the hotel by a snowstorm, and Jack gradually becomes influenced by a supernatural presence; he descends into madness and attempts to murder his wife and son. Although initial response to the film was mixed, later critical assessment was more favorable and it is now viewed as a classic of the horror genre. Film director Martin Scorsese, writing in The Daily Beast, ranked it as one of the 11 scariest horror movies of all time.

Nicholson was Kubrick’s first choice for the role of Jack Torrance; other actors considered included Robert De Niro (who said the film gave him nightmares for a month), Robin Williams, and Harrison Ford, all of whom met with Stephen King’s disapproval. Stephen King, for his part, disavowed Nicholson because he thought that, since he had shot One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the viewer would tend to consider him an unstable individual from the beginning. For this reason, King preferred Jon Voight, Michael Moriarty, or Martin Sheen for the role, who would more faithfully represent the profile of the ordinary individual who is gradually driven to madness. In any case, from the beginning the writer was told that the actor for the lead role “was not negotiable.”

Although Jack Nicholson initially suggested that Jessica Lange would be a better fit for Stephen King’s Wendy, Shelley Duvall knew early that she was the one cast for the role (Nicholson would work with Lange on his next movie, The Postman Always Rings Twice). Unlike the character in the novel, the Wendy in the film would have a vulnerable personality, weak of character and submissive towards her husband. In this way, and according to the sociological interpretation of the film, Kubrick wanted to highlight machismo more starkly as one of the manifestations of master-servant power relations. To carve out that character of her and give her more credibility, throughout the filming the director pushed her to her limit, even going so far as to humiliate her in front of her colleagues. It is said that the scene in which, armed with the baseball bat, she walks backwards up the stairs before the attack of her husband (one of the most reshot scenes in all of cinema), she was not representing a terrified woman; Shelley was literally “terrified.” According to the “Guinness Book of Records”, Kubrick demanded the shot be repeated 127 times.

Room 237 is a 2012 American documentary film directed by Rodney Ascher about interpretations of Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining (1980) which was adapted from the 1977 novel of the same name by Stephen King. The documentary includes footage from The Shining and other Kubrick films, along with discussions by Kubrick enthusiasts. Room 237 has nine segments, each focusing on a different element within The Shining which “may reveal hidden clues and hint at a bigger thematic oeuvre.” Produced by Tim Kirk, the documentary’s title refers to a room in the haunted Overlook Hotel featured in The Shining.

Thirty-nine years after the original film, a sequel, Doctor Sleep, was released on November 8, 2019.

In April 2020, a spin-off titled Overlook entered development for HBO Max. In August 2021, HBO Max opted not to proceed with the project.

Like new, no pinholes.