‘Are you OK? Is it too scary? We can leave if you need to …” It was May 1980. I was nearly 13 years old, sitting in an Ohio movie theatre with my mother watching Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. She was right to be concerned; exactly two years earlier she had taken me to see Larry Cohen’s horror film It Lives Again – his sequel to It’s Alive – and the experience had caused more than a year of traumatic, recurring nightmares. As a result, I had since avoided any scary movies (or even their trailers). So it was risky for her to take me to see another horror film that early summer evening.
Little did she know that she was changing the course of my life. The Shining penetrated my psyche in a way I had never experienced, and it was intoxicating. Like Danny Torrance, I was an only child whose parents were entangled in a dysfunctional marriage. I also spent many hours home alone, my house filled with rich fodder for my imagination: a shadowy crawlspace, a statue of a little girl that I was certain was alive, and the insecurity and numb terror that comes from watching your parents’ marriage unravel.
Several days later I was being driven to Indiana for a month away at summer camp. We stopped for gas at a service station, and I went inside to buy a snack. On a rotating rack of paperbacks, a bright yellow cover caught my eye: it was the movie tie-in edition of King’s novel. I bought it and spent the rest of the summer reading and rereading it voraciously. It transported me back to the labyrinthian hallways of the Overlook Hotel, the winter wind howling outside. But there were new scenes, new moments, new details – the novel expanded the world beyond the movie. I discovered that there were enormous differences between the two versions, but I loved them equally.
In the centre of my well-worn paperback was a collection of black-and-white stills from the film. I pored over them again and again, and it eventually occurred to me that one of the stills was not from a scene I remembered: it was a shot of Wendy preparing breakfast in the Overlook’s kitchen. My thoughts raced; if there was a scene in the film that was shot – but not used – could there be others? I visited my local library in search of information about the making of the film but found next to nothing. The only thing I eventually got my hands on was the film’s screenplay, which I ordered from a Hollywood script company. My heart thudded when the envelope arrived in our mailbox: at last I was going to get a glimpse of scenes that had been written and shot but not used in the finished film.
To my dismay, the screenplay proved to be what is called a “continuity script” –merely a transcription of the finished version – and revealed no secrets. As time passed, I became more and more obsessed with The Shining. The more I rewatched my Betamax videocassette, the more I grew to appreciate the artist behind the film. Who was this Stanley Kubrick? Had he directed other movies? At the dawn of the video age, I watched A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the rest of Kubrick’s films with abandon.
Then something strange happened: I felt I was experiencing reverse echoes of The Shining in Kubrick’s earlier films – little details, such as his compositional framing, his use of music, the mannered performances, and the slow, deliberate pace of his editing. I realised that a director could have a particular style, and that that style could permeate all of their films. It was The Shining and Kubrick’s entire oeuvre that led me to one conclusion: I needed to direct movies.
Fast forward many, many years, and I was lucky to find myself directing feature films at Pixar Animation Studios. Around the time I was making Toy Story 2 I started a website devoted to The Shining. It was while directing Toy Story 3 that I learned that Kubrick’s family had donated a trove of materials to the London College of Communication, establishing the Stanley Kubrick Archive. Later, while in London to promote the release of Toy Story 3, I got the chance to walk through the frosted glass door of the archive and spent days combing through its extensive holdings. I was finally able to read the many drafts of Kubrick and Diane Johnson’s script, as well as sift through continuity photographs from scenes that had been deleted from the film.
I had spent 30 years dreaming of a moment like this.
I then had an epiphany: while many books had been published that analysed The Shining and its potential meanings, little to nothing had been written about the making of the film. Perhaps I could bring that book into the world. I treasure the many memories I have of creating it with my fellow author Jonathan Rinzler (who sadly died of pancreatic cancer mere months before its completion). Spending a day reminiscing with Shelley Duvall at a Red Lobster restaurant in Texas, getting a bit drunk with the twins Lisa and Louise Burns at a pub in London, and sharing a meal with Christiane Kubrick in Childwickbury’s kitchen while sitting at the same table at which Jack sat and typed in The Shining.
It’s the book I long wished had been in the world, and now it is.
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