20 Things You Didn't Know About The Shining

UPDATE: Following the release of Lee Unkrich's book, "The Shining", it has been revealed that the number of takes Kubrick had Shelly Duvall perform for the Stairway sequence was not 127, but instead 17. The number of takes was an exaggerated rumor that went unchallenged for decades. This author apologizes for reinforcing this misinformation.

Original entry follows:

I can hear you typing in the comments from here, cinephiles, and frankly, I don't care. Let's call Kubrick's behavior towards Shelly Duvall what it was: abusive.

I've been calling Kubrick various humorous synonyms for crazy this entire list because of how he tended to act while shooting just this one movie. One of the examples of his craziness was forcing Duvall to redo the scene where Jack first tries to murder Wendy 127 times in a row. This, as you can imagine, pushed poor Ms. Duvall to the emotional and mental breaking point.

This was all, I imagine, to give the scene that much more visceral edge by making Duvall's panic all the more real. Of course, the constant breaking in her voice, her being close to sobbing, and her face resembling more a ghoul than a living woman, comes from her having to do that scene 127 times and dreading Kubrick yelling cut and making it 128.

A classic example of an auteur filmmaker abusing his cast and crew in order to get his art on the screen.