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There Was Nothing Scary About Making The Shining
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Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is one of the most terrifyingly realistic portrayals of madness ever filmed. It sparked a thousand talking finger jokes, a billion "Here's Johnny" impersonations, and at least one ax safety lesson. It was a masterpiece of horror, and also, it seems, totally hokey behind the scenes. Which makes sense, as the kid who played Danny assumed for years that he was merely making a movie about a hotel.
For example. This is the loving Torrance family, as portrayed by their very, very long-distance stand-ins, hamming it up on their long drive up the mountain:
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Two people raising a grown-ass woman as their son might have made this a scarier movie, actually.
And here's Jack Nicholson, apparently strolling around the set with several important bits flapping around in the breeze.
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All shirt and no pants make Jack a dull boy.
Presumably later, after Jack got himself decent, he grabs his ax and takes a few wild practice swings. A process which the crew has obviously learned to work around:
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"Aw, no, come on. That bed is a rental."
And that iconic blood-filled elevator? The one from your nightmares? Well it looks a lot less terrifying and a lot more tedious when you see the poor crew who had to mop it up afterwards:
Warner Bros
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