Early 1976 with Barry Lyndon released into cinemas and chugging along at the box office but with the critical reception and Warner Brothers complaining about US box office ringing in his ears I imagine Stanley wanted a project that was both commercially viable and also artistically fulfilling for the master of cinema.
In 1973 William Friedkin’s movie “The Exorcist” based on the horror novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty took $233M at the box office against a production budget of $12M and became a pop culture phenomena then in 1975 the summer before Barry Lyndon was released Stephen Spielberg directed an adaptation of Peter Benchley novel “Jaws” which not only took $260.8m at the box office against a production budget of $7m it has gone down in history as the first “Summer Blockbuster” due to it coming out in the summer and the public queuing around the block to see it.
So it should come as no surprise that while looking for his next project Kubrick would explore Horror novels that were still to be adapted for the screen.
The story goes that in 1977 Stanley asked some of his research assistants to gather heaps of horror novels and stack them in his office.
Kubrick secluded himself in his office and started reading, periodically his secretary would hear each novel hit his office wall as he flung it across the room in frustration after just reading the first few pages and not being inspired. Then one day the secretary became aware she hadn't heard a thud of another authors work being rejected.
She walked in to check on her boss and found Mr Kubrick totally engrossed reading a manuscript copy of Stephen King’s “The Shining”.
“The Shining” (1980)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick, Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Diane Johnson, Based on the novel The Shining by Stephen King, Produced by Stanley Kubrick, Music by Wendy Carlos &
Rachel Elkind, Cinematography by John Alcott and Edited by Ray Lovejoy, Starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Danny Lloyd. (Run Time 144m)
Jack Torrance takes the job as winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, hoping to cure his writer's block. He settles in along with his wife, Wendy and his son, Danny. Little Danny Torrance is plagued by psychic premonitions. As Jack's writing goes nowhere and Danny's visions become more disturbing, Jack discovers the hotel's dark secrets and begins to unravel into a homicidal maniac hell-bent on terrorising his family.
The script was written by Kubrick in collaboration with novelist Diane Johnson.
Kubrick had rejected the initial screenplay written by King himself stating it was
“too literal an adaptation of the novel”.
Kubrick felt he need to tread lightly in the horror genre because the filmmaker did not believe in ghosts and he didn’t want to make a film that "would imply the possibility that there was something after death".
Kubrick instead chose to work on the script with Diane Johnson who was teaching a Gothic novel seminar at the University of California at Berkeley at the time, he felt she would be better fit for the project. This was the beginning of the pseudo feud between King and Kubrick due to King being rejected and not respecting the adaptation Kubrick crafted from his book.
With Kubrick's extensive and detailed pre-production taking around 12 months they began principle photography in May 1978 and the shoot went on for 13 months. Kubrick did let the actors stray from the script letting them occasionally improvise on set for example the iconic line
'Here's Johnny!' was performed spontaneously on set by Jack Nicholson.
Due to Kubrick’s eye for detail he would often demand 70 to well over 100 takes from his actors striving for perfection. In retrospect Stanley is criticised for the approach he took to extracting the desired performance from Shelley Duvall, he intentionally isolated and argued with her to make her feel that she couldn't do anything right and forced her to perform the exhausting baseball bat scene 127 times. (If you think about it yes it was a bit cruel but it is one hell of a scene!)
There is literally hundreds of anecdotes about the production of The Shining.
On its release in 1980 the film received mixed reviews.
Looking through some of the reviews from the time it’s obvious people didn’t “Get It” complaining about pacing, being confused by the imagery and seemed to not appreciate all the performances in the film.
Some critics jumped on the bandwagon of the whole “Stephen King doesn't approve” thing echoing his complaints.
As I always say “a movie existing does not delete the book it was based on! So get over it!”
I get the feeling King still got paid and enjoyed the cash.
The film went on to take $47.3M at the box office against a production budget of $19M.
Its box office did suffer due to so many critics not being able to comprehend what they were seeing and Stephen King being sour it also came out the same weekend as a little movie “The Empire Strikes Back”
which did suck a lot of the oxygen out of the movie media sphere at the time.
But as with all great cinema it gets rediscovered and reappraised by a more sophisticated and discerning audience. It is now respected and hailed as the masterpiece it is.
Roger Ebert, a critic who was origonally very negative about the film on its release in 1980, inducted the film into his Great Movies series in 2006, saying,
"Stanley Kubrick's cold and frightening The Shining challenges us to decide: Who is the reliable observer? Whose idea of events can we trust? ... It is this elusive open-endedness that makes Kubrick's film so strangely disturbing."
In 2010, The Guardian newspaper ranked it as the 5th "best horror film of all time".
In 2012, Sight & Sound directors' poll ranked it the 75th greatest film of all time.
The Shining was voted the 62nd greatest American film ever made in a 2015 poll conducted by BBC.
In 2017 Empire magazine's readers' poll ranked the film at No. 35 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Movies".
In 2021, The film was ranked at No. 2 by Time Out on their list of "The 100 best horror movies".
In 2023 Empire also ranked it No. 1 on its list of "The 50 Best Horror Movies".
Total Film magazine ranked The Shining as the 5th-greatest horror film of all time.
Do you get it? It’s good and critics in 1980 were dicks !!
In 1978, Kubrick moved into Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire, a mainly 18th-century stately home about 30 miles north of London and a 10-minute drive from his previous home at Abbotts Mead.
His new home became a new larger workplace for Kubrick, he converted the stables into extra production and workshop space in addition to the many rooms within the home that he used for office, archiving and editing.
In 1980 before The Shining was even released Kubrick contacted Michael Herr, author of the Vietnam War memoir “Dispatches” (1977) Kubrick told Michael Herr he wanted to make a war film but had yet to find right story to adapt but was keen to work with Herr due to his combat experience and writing style. Kubrick discovered the novel “The Short-Timers” (1979) written by Vietnam veteran Gustav Hasford's. Herr also read the book and thought it a masterpiece.
In 1982, Kubrick read the novel twice; he concluded it is "a unique, absolutely wonderful book" and decided to adapt it for his next film.
In 1983, Kubrick began research for the project; he watched archival footage and documentaries, read Vietnamese newspapers on microfilm from the Library of Congress, and studied hundreds of photographs from the era. Stanley then wrote a detailed treatment of the “The Short-Timers” novel, By passing the treatment between Michael Herr and the books author Gustav Hasford the three of them hammered out a script in 1985. Kubrick was worried that the audience (and dumb critics) may misunderstand the book's title as a reference to people who only work short days. So after discovering the phrase in a gun catalogue Kubrick changed the tile of the project to,
“Full Metal Jacket” (1987)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick, Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr & Gustav Hasford, Based on the novel “The Short-Timers” by Gustav Hasford, Produced by Stanley Kubrick, Music by Abigail Mead, Cinematography by Douglas Milsome, Edited by Martin Hunter, Starring Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Ermey, Dorian Harewood, Arliss Howard, Kevyn Major Howard and Ed O'Ross. (Run Time 116m)
Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam War opus follows smart-aleck Private Davis quickly christened
"Joker" by his foul-mouthed drill sergeant and pudgy Private Lawrence, nicknamed
"Gomer Pyle," as they endure the rigors of basic training. Though Pyle takes a frightening detour, Joker graduates to the Marine Corps and is sent to Vietnam as a journalist, covering and eventually participating in bloody carnage.
Principal photography began on August 27, 1985, and wrapped on August 8, 1986.
This film was shot in numerous locations across England Kubrick with his production designer Anton Furst worked from still photographs of Huế, Vietnam taken in 1968; Kubrick discovered a site that belonged to the Gas Board that was scheduled to be demolished to double as Huế, Vietnam. Kubrick had buildings blown up, and the film's art director used a wrecking ball to knock specific holes in some buildings over two months as the battle scenes were shot. Kubrick had plastic replica jungle flown in from California but once he saw it Stanley exclaimed "I don't like it. Get rid of it."
The open country scenes were filmed at marshland in Kent and along the River Thames. locations were supplemented with 200 imported Spanish palm trees and 100,000 plastic tropical plants from Hong Kong.
Considering the film was made in England in the 80’s Kubrick still managed to buy four M41 tanks, some Westland Wessex helicopters, a selection of rifles, M79 grenade launchers and a stack of M60 machine guns for the production.
In true Kubrick style while shooting the boot camp sequences, Modine and the other actors underwent actual Marine Corps training, during which Kubrick got actor Lee Ermey to yell and berate them for 10 hours a day.
Kubrick's daughter Vivian Kubrick using the alias "Abigail Mead", wrote the film's score. She wrote and performed the score with a Series III edition Fairlight CMI synthesizer and a Synclavier. For the period music, Kubrick went through Billboard's list of Top 100 Hits for each year from 1962 to 1968 and tried out tracks that would fit the scene and not drown out the dialogue.
Most reviews at the time focused on the two half structure of the film and criticised the second half for being disjointed and confused.
It is true that when I think about Full Metal Jacket it is the boot camp sequences that come to mind. Seeing how the military breaks down these young men and brain washes them into killers and cannon fodder does leave an indelible mark on the viewer.
In the second half we see Joker being a journalist break his programming as he is thrust into this brutal environment where he experiences first hand and attempts to gain an understand of the evil that humans are capable of.
Again critics never seem to get Kubrick first time round and the film has been vigorously reappraised and is now hailed as a masterpiece and it regularly appears on lists of best movies.
It had a rocky start at the box office but between its release in 1987 and its numerous runs and screenings in repertory cinemas by 1998 it has grossed $120m at the box office against a production budget of $30m.
End of part Four… almost there!!
