“Heeere’s Johnny!” Surprising Facts You May Not Have Known About The Shining

Stanley Kubrick is considered one of the masters of his craft in the filmmaking world. If it’s a Kubrick film, you know you’re in for a delightful treat. The movie you’re all here for, The Shining, is undoubtedly one of Kubrick’s most beloved films by fans. Horror is often a genre that is full of cheap thrills and cliches, but Kubrick brings a unique flair to his work, especially in terms of cinematography and memorable characters. 

While most people associate The Shining with Kubrick, there’s actually another big name involved. That name is the bestselling book giant Stephen King, who wrote the book in 1977. Since the movie came out in 1980, the transition from page to screen happened extremely fast. 

The road to making The Shining all started with Kubrick’s drama period piece Barry Lyndon. Kubrick’s film, based on a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, came out in 1975. Sadly, it was a commercial flop, making $20.2 million domestically. 

With his new standard in mind, Kubrick thought that he should find a book that he can successfully adapt to fit his vision on screen. Stephen King said that Kubrick was given a lot of books to read in order to hopefully find the right one he would adapt. 

It can’t even be imagined that the role of Jack Torrance would have belonged to anybody else besides Jack Nicholson. Jack Torrance plays the patriarch of the Torrance family and he was Kubrick’s first choice casting-wise for the role. Jack Torrance is the main catalyst for all of the horror in the film. 

Even though King wrote the novel The Shining and Kubrick adapted the screenplay, another name was involved in the process. Kubrick isn’t the sole adapter credited with writing the screenplay. Diane Johnson was the other name attached to the script adaptation. 

One of the most unsettling and creepy images from the film is the famous scene with the Grady twins in the Overlook Hotel hallway staring at Danny Torrance, Jack’s son. However, they aren’t twins in King’s book. 

Kubrick didn’t want to hire a known actor for the role of Danny Torrance. So, Kubrick sent casting agents all over Chicago, Denver, and Cincinnati, and auditioned over 5,000 young kids. Hopefully, they would find the right one to play Danny.

It’s completely accurate to say the Overlook Hotel is a character itself in The Shining. They didn’t film at a real hotel, however. The establishing shots of the hotel are actually the Timberline Hotel close to Mount Hood in Oregon. 

Kubrick had a very specific vision for the movie he wanted to make. He attempted to give the cast and crew an idea of the vibe by screening David Lynch’s cult classic Eraserhead. It’s a little ironic that Kubrick showed that movie as the precedent for commercial success because it was far from that. 

Kubrick was known as a strict, meticulous director and often went to extreme lengths in order to get performances out of his actors. He also wasn’t afraid to switch things up at a moment’s notice, meaning he would change the shooting script more than once, and even multiple times in a day. 

Much like Kubrick, Duvall was particularly meticulous about her craft. Ultimately, this pairing was disastrous from the start in terms of working together. With Kubrick as the director, he didn’t shy away from making his way the right one. Clearly, he had the upper hand in the dynamic. 

When people think of The Shining, they most likely think of Jack Torrance’s iconic line “Heeere’s Johnny!” Nicholson says it so maniacally and creepily that people can’t help but remember its indelible effect on them.

In the movie industry, it’s common for international versions of a movie to include small tweaks in language and culture. The idiom “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” doesn’t necessarily translate effectively in other languages and parts of the world, as it does in America.  

If they had attempted to make The Shining a few years prior, it probably would have looked a bit different. They used a Steadicam (a camera stabilizer that mechanically isolates the operator’s movement) in the movie which some film viewers aren’t used to seeing today. In those days, the Steadicam was extremely popular. 

The Shining was not a blockbuster, in fact, it wasn’t even a big enough success to be considered a box office hit. For $19 million, Kubrick made the film and it grossed $47 million worldwide. It clearly didn’t do nearly as well as the 1980 sci-fi space opera movie Stars Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. 

Making crowd-pleasing films wasn’t really Kubrick’s thing, even when it came to commercially relevant ones. The Shining initially received mixed reviews, although it’s now considered to be a widely beloved classic in cinema history.

In particular, there is one person who hasn’t been quiet about voicing his dislike for Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining. That person is Stephen King, who openly despises the movie. King doesn’t like how Jack or Wendy were portrayed, and it’s a story that hit close to home for him personally. 

A documentary titled Room 237 delves into all the theories surrounding the various meanings and interpretations of The Shining. Naturally, many people have their own theories as to what the movie’s real meaning is, but that can only be explained and deduced by Kubrick himself (who isn’t around anymore to reveal them). But, it’s not like he would, anyways!

It’s a well-known fact that The Shining is one of those movies that has been parodied countless times in pop culture. References about the Grady Twins and “Heeere’s Johnny!” are everywhere. One TV show, in particular, is the most successful in its iconic parodies of the movie. 

Years after penning The Shining, King decided to write a sequel that came out in 2013. The sequel was called Doctor Sleep and it centers on Danny Torrance all grown up. The book was adapted into a movie which was directed by contemporary horror master Mike Flanagan. 

Kubrick’s brother-in-law, Jan Harlan, was the executive producer of The Shining. Also, Kubrick’s wife and daughter, Christiane and Vivian, assisted with the production design and the music. Vivian, however, is more famously linked to the documentary she made on set called The Making Of ‘The Shining.’ 

There are many prominent elements of the Overlook Hotel that don’t make logical sense from a spatial perspective. One of them is that Stuart Ullman’s office (the general manager of the hotel), has a window looking outside, but there are surrounding rooms around the office which doesn’t make it possible for there to be a window there. 

A fire broke out towards the end of shooting the movie, destroying multiple sets. The one massive fire at night burned down two sound stages and would have almost ruined a third at Elstree Studios. Eleven fire alarms were going off. 

Notoriously, Kubrick was known for the lengthy amount of time he took on his film productions. It’s not entirely clear how long the shooting itself went on for, but it likely lasted for almost one year. Kubrick also shot most of the film in chronological order, which rarely happens in the industry. 

Only a sweet six-year-old boy at the time of filming, Lloyd had no clue he was in a horror movie. According to Kubrick, everything Lloyd was a part of filming was integral to the family drama in a hotel. 

One of the most iconic and memorable scenes in The Shining was when a massive wave of blood gushed out of the elevator’s doors, completely covering the hallway. The shot was filmed in three takes, but took about a year to complete due to the thought process behind it. A noted perfectionist, Kubricks spent nearly an entire year thinking about that one scene. 

Nicholson is one of the finest actors of his generation and, without a doubt, stepping into the warped mindset of Jack Torrance reinvigorated the audience’s faith in his immense talent. Kubrick also had faith in him. In order to accurately portray Jack’s descent into madness, Kubrick used a certain something to escalate Nicholson’s anger and add a realistic touch to his character. 

Kubrick was a brilliant filmmaker with a gifted creative sensibility and an innate eye for details. To further terrify the audience, Kubrick incorporated a maze of labyrinthian proportions, which reflected the complexities and intricacies that existed within his own mind. He feared that the production team would solve the maze too easily, which it was. So, they challenged Kubrick one Saturday morning to solve it and he gave up very quickly. 

When a film’s ending changes in post-production, it’s not an uncommon thing. In fact, it’s extremely common in the film industry. Kubrick – the wild card that he is – changed its ending after it had premiered in theaters during a weekend. Even though the film version has not been recovered, the pages from the screenplay exist.