The Making of ‘The Shining’ a Lesson

in Creating as We Go

I love old making-of because they are so much less controlled than today’s. If you want to realize how media savvy you’ve become just by watching marketed content, watch The Shining‘s making-of. Filmed by Vivian Kubrick, the filmmaker’s daughter, the video captured pretty much all the moments that wouldn’t make the cut in a making-of in 2017: random people coming on set to visit because wealth, politics, power, all of the above?… Kubrick systematically talking shit to his lead actress, Shelley Duvall, Nicholson making fun of the constant change in scripts, so much so he’s just stopped learning his lines…

Cue marketing department having a hard-attack.

Even Brick’s making-of, which was made by a student for an unknown filmmaker’s first film is more formatted. (Actually, the only making-of that really feels uncensored and is one of my favorite bts of all times is Fucking Kassovitz. A must)

To illustrate, below is a conversation between Gert Kubrick, Stanley’s mother, Jack Nicholson and Kubrick about the constant changes in the screenplay:

GERT KUBRICK

Why is the script in multi-colored pages?

STANLEY KUBRICK

At first, you get very methodical, each time you make a new version you put in a different color.

After a while, you’re lucky if people get copies of the changes.

JACK NICHOLSON

You start with white then blue, then pink, green and yellow.

So that when everybody got their script out you can look right over and know if

they’ve got the latest version but of course, you’ve never got the latest version.

I quit using my script, I just take the ones they type up each day.

GERT KUBRICK

Aren’t you exaggerating a little bit?

JACK NICHOLSON & STANLEY KUBRICK

No.