10 Movies That Went Into Totally Unnecessary Detail
6. Different Typewriter Pages Were Shot For Different Countries - The Shining
There's not really much point trying to reason with the pathological perfectionism of Stanley Kubrick, a filmmaker who reportedly insisted upon 127 takes for The Shining's staircase confrontation between Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) and his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall).
But perhaps Kubrick's most over-the-top and unnecessary artistic choice? Having different typewriter pages written for the international releases of that movie.
For the memorable scene where Wendy examines Jack's typewriter and finds that he's typed "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" hundreds of times, Kubrick had alternate POV shots of the paper filmed with typing in Italian, German, French, and Spanish.
And because Jack's original English phrase doesn't really translate well, Kubrick even had new phrases cooked up, with the Italians getting the especially eerie, "The morning has gold in its mouth."
That's an impressive and frankly unnecessary amount of detail when the vast majority of filmmakers would've likely simply had the typing captioned for international releases.
Oh, and Kubrick even had his secretary, Margaret Worthington, type hundreds of pages in each language by hand, rather than simply making copies of a few pages and calling it a day. Wild.