Yahoo Autos ‘The Shining’ Book Sets Record Straight on Kubrick’s Multiple Takes, Shelley Duvall, and Cheese Sandwiches
“The Shining” has obsessed Oscar-winning Pixar director Lee Unkrich since he saw it in theaters at the age of 12. After years of “The Shining” Easter eggs popping up in Pixar films, Unkrich’s fascination with Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror cult classic culminates in his monumental making-of book: “Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining” (Taschen), currently available in a Collector’s Edition of 1,000 copies ($1,500). (A smaller standard edition has not yet been announced.) The three-volume collection includes hundreds of never-before-seen production photographs from the Stanley Kubrick Archive in London, interviews with cast and crew, and a deluxe set of facsimile reproductions of ephemera from “the masterpiece of modern horror.”
The Kubrick film’s sense of the uncanny and bravura filmmaking (including the innovative use of Garrett Brown’s Steadicam) possessed Unkrich from his first viewing at an Ohio movie theater and ultimately led to decades of rewatching the story of the Torrance family trapped at the haunted Overlook Hotel. Not surprisingly, “The Shining” shaped his career when he joined Pixar as an editor on “Toy Story,” flourishing for 25 years as co-director (“Monsters, Inc.” and “Finding Nemo”) and director (the Oscar-winning “Toy Story 3” and “Coco”). But over the years, Unkrich became frustrated at the lack of information — and the surfeit of misinformation — about the making of the film. Then he visited the Kubrick Archive during the London press tour for “Toy Story 3.”
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Unkrich was like a kid in Kubrick’s candy store, and the seeds were planted for this definitive book. He pitched his proposal to the Kubrick estate but learned that he had a rival in the late J.W. Rinzler (“The Making of Star Wars” and “The Complete Making of Indiana Jones”), so they joined forces. Unkrich conducted most of the interviews (including Shelley Duvall and child actor Danny Lloyd) and paid Rinzler out of pocket to write the book. It took 12 years to complete, but the result is an invaluable resource that brings us closer to understanding Kubrick’s meticulous and idiosyncratic methodology — and debunks some entrenched myths about the set.
However, Unkrich’s search for the Holy Grail — the deleted hospital epilogue where hotel manager Ullman (Barry Nelson) visits Wendy and Danny and tells them that nothing out of the ordinary occurred at The Overlook — was unsuccessful, save for some rare color frames that have been restored and reproduced in the book. Kubrick ordered the scene cut by editors in L.A. and New York after the opening weekend and before wider release. It is speculated that audiences found it too confusing. All excised scenes were returned directly to Kubrick and were subsequently destroyed. In any event, Unkrich can now put his obsession with “The Shining” to rest. He spoke to IndieWire about the outsized influence the film has had on his life and career — and why the Guinness Book of World Records is wrong about “The Shining.”
Read More: 23.7 Facts About Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’
Courtesy of Taschen
On his decades-long obsession with “The Shining.”
“I think it really came down to two things. One, which is a more surface thing: It really was the film that inspired me to make movies. That was a pivot point for me. Prior to ‘The Shining,’ I think I just saw movies as entertainment and nothing more. And it was ‘The Shining,’ and what [it] subsequently led to in terms of seeing other Kubrick films and expanding my palette of cinema that made me see film as art and directors as artists. And I’d never thought of it that way before. So I think that’s part of why it was important to me. But in terms of why I really got obsessed, it got me wanting to understand how movies were made, and ‘The Shining’ was a good thing for me to think about.
“But on a deeper psychological level, I was an only child, and my parents’ marriage was pretty dysfunctional, and I remember being scared a lot when I was a kid. Whether it was scared of just emotional stuff going on in my house or just the fact that I had a really vivid imagination and I was, I was a latchkey kid, so I was home alone a lot, and a lot of things in my house scared me. And so when I saw ‘The Shining,’ even though I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, I was really relating to it on a deep, subconscious level, the whole situation.”
Courtesy of the Stanley Kubrick Archive
On which Pixar Easter eggs were his — and which were not.
“On the surface level, the Easter eggs that I would put in the films having to do with ‘The Shining’ was just me having fun. There’s a bunch of stuff in ‘Toy Story 3’: There’s a Room 237 license plate on the back of the garbage truck. We have a tissue box with the carpet pattern on it by the monitors where the security monkey sits. We also made a reproduction of the radio sitting on that desk too. There’s a security camera in the classroom that has a badge on the side that says the Overlook 2000 or something. In ‘Coco,’ there’s a skull version of the twins in Frida Kahlo’s studio. And we put the ax from ‘The Shining’ in Miguel’s courtyard.
“Now, there are two things that people think I put in that I didn’t. One is the carpeting in Sid’s hallway in ‘Toy Story,’ and that was actually Ralph Eggleston [the late production designer]. That decision had been made before I was even on the movie. And then on ‘Finding Nemo,’ having Bruce [the shark] kind of bang his face through the door and say, ‘Here’s Brucey.’ That was [director] Andrew [Stanton]. I think he knew it would amuse me.”
