Trivia: For the famous scene where Jack Nicholson breaks down the door with an axe, the crew made a fake door for him to break through, but had to replace it with a real door as the fake one broke too quickly due to Jack Nicholson's prior training as a fireman. This dates to his period of military service in the Air National Guard in 1957. After completing basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, Nicholson performed weekend drills and two-week annual training as a fire fighter assigned to the unit based at Van Nuys Airport. Some sources state they went through 60 doors during filming to get the footage Kubrick wanted.
Jennyred
19th Jan 2019
The Shining (1980)
9th Jan 2019
The Shining (1980)
Trivia: Kubrick tortured Shelly Duvall to get the performance he wanted out of her. He told the crew to have no sympathy for her, and pushed her to do many retakes until she would cry. The scene where she walked backwards on the stairs with the baseball bat was filmed up to 127 times by some counts. At the end of filming she presented Kubrick with clumps of her hair that had fallen out due to stress.
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Suggested correction: The number of "127 takes" is an urban legend created, according to Lee Unrich, by someone who worked on the movie, but who wasn't here during the shooting of the scene. Plus, according to Gordon Stainforth (the editor of the movie) on IMDb, the scene was "only" shot 35-45 times. I also want to say that the "fact" that Kubrick may have tortured Shelley Duvall is also a legend. Duvall herself said, in 2021, for the magazine "Hollywood Reporter", that Kubrick was also warm with her.
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