Stanley Kubrick “systematically destroyed” and deleted one ‘The Shining’ scene from history
Stanley Kubrick was always a his way or the highway type of guy.
He showed that in every little detail, from his writing process, like when he had Arthur C Clarke hauled up to the Chelsea Hotel, routinely going in to check that 2001: A Space Odyssey was in fact being written and written right, to his on-set behaviour where his cast were forced to do retake after retake.
It’s a fact that his unique style of working made people absolutely despise him. There isn’t a single Kubrick film where at least one actor didn’t leave the project distressed or furious. After the making of The Shining, especially, Shelley Duvall felt genuinely traumatised by Kubrick pushing her and pushing her in the role of Wendy Torrance. Meanwhile, he basically tortured Scatman Crothers on that same set as they hold the world record for the most takes done of a single piece of dialogue, with the actor being forced to repeat it 146 times, and that’s not even the worst of it.
On the set of Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick got the movie he wanted by tearing Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise’s marriage apart. Realising exactly how he could get this film, about the twisted collapse of love, to work, he basically set about gathering gossip and gripes, and funnelling it back towards the other, making them live out the plot.
But while it’s true that it made Kubrick a divisive figure, it’s also true that it led to him making masterpieces, as his singular vision was truly a great one. His dedication to it was both the issue and the magic. It was the thing that led to those on-set bust-ups, with Robert Duvall calling the director “an actor’s enemy”. However, it wasn’t just the performers getting the brunt of his perfectionism, but the off-camera crew were too, and the editing room.
Especially in the case of The Shining, where his obsession with getting things right seemed to take its firmest grip, Kubrick sent clear instructions to the editing team once he’d decided on the ending, and decided a scene he filmed must never be seen.
“Stanley wanted to make sure that nobody would ever reassemble his edit in any other way,” producer Jan Harlan recalled. The director wanted to be certain that none of his off-cuts and scraps could ever lead to his perfected project being messed with, so the instructions were clear: “All outtakes and unused scenes were systematically destroyed—including negatives and rushes”.
In particular, this included an alternative ending that was filmed. In that scene, Wendy is in the hospital, and her husband’s body is explicitly stated to never be found. It makes the ghost story element of the film clearer, but also somehow seems to take away some of the mystery. Last minute, Kubrick seemed to realise that and cut it after the premiere, with Warner Brothers sending a note to projectionists, demanding they cut it and making sure they sent it back to the studio.
When those scraps returned, Kubrick killed them all, meaning that nothing at all survives of that scene beyond four still photos, taken by his daughter on set.
