Fire on set and other weird behind-the-scenes facts of 'The Shining'

In 1980, one of the most emblematic psychological horror films was released: 'The Shining'. Inspired by Stephen King's 1977 book of the same name, the film was produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and took place in a spooky hotel. Behind the scenes, there was a lot going on. Let's see if you know these factoids about 'The Shining'!

In order for the film to be perfect under Kubrick's eyes, some scenes were exhaustively reshot. Actress Shelley Duvall, for example, recorded the same scene 127 times and entered the Guinness Book of Records with this weird feat.

Another scene that was marked by the number of attempts to complete it, was the one in which Jack slams an axe into a door. Altogether, there were 3 days of recording and more than 60 doors destoyed.

In the scene where Jack breaks down the door, Nicholson improvised and shouted Ed McMahon's famous line from 'The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.' The scene took on a macabre feel and worked so well that it stayed in the movie.

In the final scene, Jack appears in a dark and macabre tunnel. To make this decor, the production spent more than 900 tons of salt and a huge amount of Styrofoam.

The film's script was so scary that the owner of the hotel where it was set asked to change the room number mentioned in the script. He feared that future guests would not want to book it anymore. So, what used to be 217 became 237, a non-existent room.

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While shooting the last scenes, there was a fire in the studio, causing a loss of US$2.5 million. Ironically, a fire was the end of the plot in Stephen King's book. In the photo, we see director Stanley Kubrick posing with a smile in front of the destroyed set.

The famous phrase: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" changes its meaning with foreign translations of the film. In fact, this was at Kubrick's request.

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In German, the statement was: "Don't leave for tomorrow what you can do today". The Spanish version says: "Even if you get up early, the day will not dawn earlier." In Italian, it goes: "Whoever wakes up early wins a golden day." Finally, in Portuguese, the statement was closer to the original. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

Speaking of that phrase: nobody is sure if it was really Kubrick who typed the 500 pages repeating it. But sources at the time claimed that the director did not take this task to the support department and used his own typewriter.

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As the machine was a device with internal memory, the pages could be typed without anyone revising them. However, in the film, some pages contain different layouts and errors. Kubrick said he never revealed who really was responsible for the work.

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Kubrick is known for his attention to detail. In the scene where Jack Torrance is seen with a P l a y g i r l magazine, there are some subliminal messages in the props. For starters, an article about i n c e s t can be seen, which reinforces the theory that Danny may have been abused.

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The main headline in the magazine is an interview with David Soul (from the TV series 'Starsky & Hutch' - photo). The ex-wife of the character Hutch appeared in the third season and was murdered in his apartment. Was this article a harbinger of things to come? (Not to mention that no hotel leaves a magazine with this type of content in its lobby.)

Aged 5, the little actor Danny Lloyd didn't know he was participating in a horror movie. In order to protect the boy, Kubrick said they filmed a drama. Only at the age of 16 did the actor watch the film.

At the end of the story, the protagonist appears in a photograph hanging on the wall of the hotel. It depicts a celebration dated on 1921. However, the plot takes place in the 1970s... Could Jack be the reincarnation of an ancestor and does his soul have a strong relationship with this place?

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One conspiracy theorist, Jay Weidner, said that the images of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon were a hoax and that they had been created by Stanley Kubrick, in collusion with the US government. Why would he think that? Well, Kubrick conducted research with a rocket specialist for the production of the film '2001 – A Space Odyssey', released in 1968. There, he created a special effect that simulated being in space.

For those who believe this theory, Kubrick allegedly made a reference to this theory in the scene of 'The Shining' where Danny plays alone on the hotel premises and wears a sweater with an Apollo 11 print on it.

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The Washington Post published an article revealing that the film is a metaphor for indigenous genocide in the early 20th century. The idea is supported by the elements used in the decoration of the hotel, with details such as the Calumet yeast tin that has a native person on it, for example.

Kubrick added a scene that doesn't exist in the book. In it, the Torrance family is informed that the hotel was built over an Indian burial ground. The classic bloodshed scene of the film would be a reference to the mass killing of native Americans.

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Stephen King didn't like Kubrick's adaptation of his work at all. In an interview with P l a y b o y magazine, he said: "I'd admired Kubrick for a long time and had great expectations for ['The Shining'], but I was deeply disappointed in the end result. Parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentlessly claustrophobic terror, but others fell flat."

Regarding the casting of Jack Nicholson for the role, King said that  despite being a good actor, Jack Nicholson was in the wrong role. His last big role, before 'The Shining' was that of 'One Flew over a Cuckoo's Nest', where Nicholson got stuck in an insane asylum. The previous film, along with his maniacal smile, led audiences to automatically identify him as a madman from the very first scene in 'The Shining.'

King added that the book is about Jack Torrance's gradual descent into madness, under the macabre influence of the Overlook hotel. If man is already considered mad from the beginning, then all the tragedy of his descent into madness is 'wasted.'

Another scene that really stirred the public's imagination is the one of the twins. The actresses did not pursue an artistic career and currently work as a lawyer and a scientist.

According to conspiracy theories, a possible inspiration for Kubrick's creation of these characters came from a photo taken by the North American Diane Arbus, entitled 'Identical Twins, Roselle,' from 1967.

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Lee Unkrich, the director of 'Toy Story,' is a fanatic of 'The Shining.' As a result, some references to Kubrick's work can be found in several Pixar films, including 'Toy Story 3,' where Sid's carpet is very similar to the carpet in the Overlook hotel.

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And there's more: Trixie chats online with a dinosaur toy on the street who happens to have the screen name 'Velocistar237.' And what number does that remind us of? Yes, the famous hotel room in 'The Shining'!

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