10 Directors Who Were PISSED OFF At Film Premieres

8. Stanley Kubrick Was Upset By The Original Ending - The Shining

Reservoir Dogs Quentin Tarantino
Warner Bros.

Stanley Kubrick is perhaps cinema's most infamous perfectionist filmmaker, an artist of extreme deliberation who not only asked his actors to perform scenes 100+ times, but even occasionally continued editing his films after they'd received their official premieres.

Case in point, the version of The Shining screened at its premiere and for a week of previews in New York and Los Angeles featured an additional epilogue scene set at a hospital, in which it's revealed that Jack's (Jack Nicholson) body was never found and young Danny (Danny Lloyd) is given the tennis ball that belonged to his father.

After critics and audiences alike expressed confusion at the ending following the film's premiere, Warner Bros. immediately asked Kubrick to cut the scene, which he mournfully complied with, even asking projectionists to literally splice the scene out of existing prints themselves.

According to executive producer Jan Harlan, Kubrick was "actually very sad that he misread the audience," and consequently had the negatives of the hospital scene burned so that they couldn't ever be reconstituted into the film.

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.