How Shelley Duvall really felt about shooting endless takes for 1980’s ‘The Shining’: “That makes it good”
First and foremost, The Shining is renowned for Jack Nicholson’s off-the-cuff delivery of “Here’s Johnny!” as he violently attempts to enter the bathroom where his wife Wendy, played by Shelley Duvall, is hiding.
The second thing that pops into the head of the collective consciousness with regards to The Shining is the gruelling, gruesome demands that Stanley Kubrick put on his cast to tease out an air of real lunacy, fear and madness, perfect for the slow-build horror. Yes, I’m talking about the horrific number of takes Duvall had to endure each time her character shrieked, wailed, and searched fruitlessly for an exit.
Famously, the demanding working conditions were no worse than the staircase scene, in which Duvall’s character backed away from her husband with a baseball bat, swinging at him and crying all the while, as she witnessed her life partner devolve into an eerie, wild madness.
Many film buffs have it on good authority that Duvall had to repeat the scene some 127 times, requiring her to whimper, cry, and retain an air of complete panic for 12 hours a day, over many months. Kubrick’s insistence on perfection was made all the worse after his previous film, Barry Lyndon, somewhat flopped at the box office, meaning the pressure was on to show the world what he was capable of.
A few years before her death, Duvall opened up about her miserable treatment on set: “You just think about something very sad in your life or how much you miss your family or friends,” she told Hollywood Reporter, “But after a while, your body rebels. It says, ‘Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day’. And sometimes just that thought alone would make me cry.”
However, around a similar time, she also discussed the movie with Double Talk and had a slightly different perspective. When the interviewer rolled their eyes at Kubrick’s obsession with endless takes, Duvall rushed to his defence. “But that makes it good,” she insisted, before adding, “It gives you good practice. You really want to please the director”.
Perhaps distance from the initial shock helped the beloved actor separate herself from the desperate sobs of her character, but the scene is a hard watch without the extra trivia surrounding it. As Wendy, she begs for him to stop, delivering pleas like, “I just want to go back to my room”, and “I’m very confused, and I just need a chance to think things through”.
Despite Kubrick’s evident mean streak, there are plenty of reports of his kindness on set, too. As per reports from behind the scenes, he would put the actors to work and afterwards reward them with sweets and ice cream, praising them for their commitment to their craft. Though a scoop of strawberry ice cream doesn’t quite make up for 127 takes of lunacy in my eyes.
Duvall, at least, managed to keep her cool despite the gruesome schedule. It’s a happier story than for other artists who were put through the wringer; take Isabelle Adjani of the 1981 horror movie Possession, who suffered severe psychological distress and even a suicide attempt after the filming for the intense, violent role had been completed.
