Formal Sweatpants comic inspired by The Shining.
Continuity Polaroid of Danny’s “REDRUM” writing in lipstick on the bathroom door from The Shining.
Actor Jack Nicholson and Director Stanley Kubrick review material on a video monitor on the Lobby set of The Shining. Actor Scatman Crothers (or his stand-in) stands in the background.
The helicopter and camera rig used to film The Shining’s title sequence, in which we follow Jack Torrance’s yellow Volkswagen on its way to the Overlook Hotel.
Inside the helicopter sit Camera Operator Jeff Blyth and pilot Duane Williams.
The 2nd Unit crew had permission to film in Montana’s Glacier National Park, but they were not allowed to land in the park except in an emergency. As such, they would often have to hover just a foot or two off the ground so that 2nd Unit Director Greg MacGillivray (who was also driving the Volkswagen) could check the cameras and clean the lenses, which would become encrusted with squashed bugs.
In addition to the two 35mm Arriflex film cameras, there was also a video camera mounted on the rig which fed a small black-and-white monitor inside the cabin. Blyth used this monitor to guide the pilot, and get an approximate sense of what the film cameras were capturing. He was also able to make small adjustments to the camera rig via remote control.
The 2nd Unit crew spent nearly a month in the park filming the title sequence, as well as many other 2nd Unit shots that ended up not being used in the finished film.
(photos courtesy Jeff Blyth)
The Shining’s iconic title sequence was photographed in Montana’s Glacier National Park by Jeff Blyth and Greg MacGillivray of MacGillivray Freeman Films.
Blyth recalls the month he and his partners spent shooting the footage in this interview and this article.
‘There’s a man lives in London town,
Makes movies, he’s world-renowned.
Yes, he’s really got the fame,
Stanley Kubrick is his name.
He does it all, he does it all,
Stanley does it all…
He’s a man who looks ahead
To make you think he’s raised the dead
And he cuts all his flicks,
He’s a genius with his tricks,
He does it all, he does it all.
I’m tellin’ y’all, Stanley does it all.’
Lyrics to a song written by actor Scatman Crothers during the filming of The Shining.
Poster created for a screening of The Shining at the Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds, UK.
Artist: Abbas Mushtaq
Production still from The Shining. One of several production stills printed in the center of the movie tie-in paperback edition of Stephen King’s novel.
This image is notable in that the shot does not appear in the finished film. Wendy is presumably preparing Jack’s breakfast while she watches Wheel of Fortune on the small television. It is likely that this scene preceded the shot of Wendy rolling the room service cart through the hallway on her way to delivering Jack’s breakfast. She wears the same robe in this image as in that subsequent scene.
Production stills are often selected and distributed before films achieve final cut, which likely explains why this still was disseminated despite the scene having been cut from the finished film.
Stanley Kubrick at work on the set of The Shining. Clips taken from Vivian Kubrick’s documentary on the making of The Shining, as well as Jan Harlan’s film, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.
(gif assembly courtesy pickledelephant.tumblr.com)
‘I deleted a brief epilogue scene between Shelley Duvall and Barry Nelson which took place in a hospital after the main action of the film had been concluded. After several screenings in London the day before the film opened in New York and Los Angeles, when I was able to see for the first time the fantastic pitch of excitement which the audience reached during the climax of the film, I decided the scene was unnecessary. It had not been possible to change all of the New York and Los Angeles prints before opening.’
In a telephone call press statement from June of 1980, Stanley Kubrick discusses his reasoning behind removing the hospital epilogue from The Shining only days after its limited U.S. release.
Warner Brothers publicity still slide from The Shining.
Only a handful of still frames were released to help promote the film, and all of those stills were personally approved by Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick used the still selection project as an opportunity to mentor a nineteen-year-old aspiring photographer named Murray Close, who was a schoolmate of Kubrick’s daughter, Vivian. Close went on to be the only Kubrick-sanctioned photographer on the set of The Shining, and subsequently established himself as a well-respected production photographer.
This particular still is notable in that it is not a frame seen in the finished film; it’s presumably a frame from an alternate take of the same shot. It has also been color-timed to a much cooler hue than the shot that appears in the finished film.
(image courtesy Marc Finkel)
Teen fashion writer Tavi Gevinson, wearing an Apollo 11 sweater from The Shining during her appearance on The Colbert Report.
The Shining bento box.
Artist: Sonoma Bento
Screenplay for the deleted original ending of The Shining. When the film was first released, a hospital epilogue was located between the shot of Jack frozen in the snow and the long dolly shot through the lobby that ends on the July 4, 1921 framed photo.
Kubrick decided to remove the scene very shortly after the U.S. opening, dispatching assistants to excise the scene from the dozens of prints showing in Los Angeles and New York City. All known copies of the scene were reportedly destroyed, although it is rumored that one surviving copy may exist.
Very little remains of the hospital epilogue beyond some continuity polaroids, costumes, and 35mm film trims housed in the Stanley Kubrick Archive. Evidence of just how late in the process the scene was removed lives on in the form of two actors listed in the end credits, despite the fact that they don’t appear in the finished film: Burnell Tucker in the role of “Policeman” and Robin Pappas in the role of “Nurse”.
It’s also important to note that this was likely not the exact scene that Kubrick shot; since the scene no longer exists, it’s impossible to know how exactly it played. Even the many people who saw the epilogue when The Shining was first released have varying recollections of the exact details. Clearly, the final text about the Overlook’s history was an idea omitted during the writing process.
Kubrick’s co-screenwriter on The Shining, Diane Johnson, had this to say about the deleted epilogue:
Kubrick had filmed a final scene that was cut, where Wendy and Danny are recovering from the shock in a hospital and where Ullman visits them.
Kubrick felt that we should see them in the hospital so we would know that they were all right. He had a soft spot for Wendy and Danny and thought that, at the end of a horror film, the audience should be reassured that everything was back to normal.
The Shining reference on the television show, The Simpsons.
