Next month, art book publisher Taschen will release Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, a massive limited-edition tome about the monumental 1980 masterpiece of horror cinema. Within the pages are fascinating stories from behind-the-scenes that shed new light on the film's creation. Here are two of the tales as shared by i-D magazine:
Kubrick's secretary spent months typing "all work and no play makes Jack dull boy"
Imagine typing out the line, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", over and over again. What would that do to your mindset? The best person to answer the question would be Kubrick's secretary, who spent months doing exactly that. In the film's commentary, Kubrick's biographer says the director decided there needed to be a real manuscript typed up of 500 or so pages "so it would be absolutely authentic", with each page formatted differently. Her name was Margaret Adams. Take a bow.
Kubrick had to change the original room number to Room 237 for a good reason
Fans of Stephen King's book had already made pilgrimages to The Stanley Hotel, where the book is set, even before the film was made. The general manager of the Timberline Lodge, whose exteriors are seen in some establishing shots in Kubrick's movie, was expecting fans to book rooms after the film's release. According to Lee's book, the manager was concerned that guests wouldn't stay in Room 217 after seeing the film and that they might be "afraid of being chased by the bloated body of the bathtub lady." For that reason, the manager asked if Kubrick could change the room number to 237, 247, or 257, none of which existed at the Timberline Lodge. Kubrick chose the number 237: the code number that has to be punched into the B52 computer in Dr Strangelove in order to trigger the nuclear holocaust.