It looks like Jack Torrance has found a good job. He tries to take care of the isolated Overlook Hotel, near Denver, Colorado, during the winter season. The establishment closes between November and May and Jack will live there with his wife, Wendy, and his son, Danny, taking care of the maintenance and dedicating whatever free time he has left to writing a novel.
Although things look good, there are some drawbacks. It turns out that a couple of years ago another man was in charge of the winter care of the Overlook and went so crazy that he killed his wife and his twin daughters with an axe. But Torrance does not give importance to that sinister and already past episode.
And then there's the matter of little Danny. The child sees things, his mind anticipates the future, he has telematic capacity and hides a powerful inner voice. It is what those who know about the matter usually call “the glow.”
And the person who knows the most about the matter today is Lee Unkrich, editor, producer, one of the big names at Pixar and director of films like Toy Story 3 (2010) or Coco (2017). When he was 12 years old, in 1980, Unkrich went to the cinema to see The Shining, the recently released Stanley Kubrick film based on a horror novel by Stephen King (although he was unhappy with the changes introduced in the film) and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall and the child Danny Lloyd.
Unkrich's mother couldn't help but worry; perhaps she had taken her son to see a film not suitable for minors. But none of that, the boy loved The Shining. And even more: “I became obsessed with the film and I have maintained that obsession throughout my life,” he explained yesterday while passing through the Sitges Festival, which paid tribute to Kubrick with the screening of the extended version of The Shining (in A shorter version was released in Europe), which 43 years after its release is still scary. And a lot.
In addition, Sitges presented an award to the film's producer and Kubrick's brother-in-law, Jan Harlan. The event finished off the tribute with a conference by Unkrich, who during these years has not limited himself to being obsessed and has been collecting all the existing material on the film to include it in a book, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (Taschen), which is a delicatessen: it consists of two volumes, plus facsimiles and illustration booklets, all packaged in a luxury box; Only a thousand copies have been published and it goes on sale for the not modest price of 1,500 euros.
If you have the money (and if Nicholson doesn't buy most of this limited edition), it is worth getting the book, because behind its pages hides a lot of hard work that Unkrich has developed over decades like a little ant.
“I saw the movie countless times, I bought King's novel and reread it over and over again, then the film came out on video and I rented it over and over again. When a book about the film was published, I bought it and I was very surprised because it contained a photo of Wendy in the kitchen, which was not in the final cut of The Shining, that obsessed me even more,” the filmmaker explained yesterday.
It was that photo that led him to a wild search for all the unpublished material from the film: “I got the script, I acquired more books and I envied their content. When Kubrick died in 1999, I was devastated that there would be no more of his films, but suddenly, I managed to access his personal archive.” That file was a mine. It contained "photos, the original script with corrections, the King novel that Kubrick had worked on, newspaper clippings with real crimes that inspired him, negatives, polaroids of the filming..."
Unkrich spent three days in the archive, but his happiness was not complete: “I had found many answers, but from that material new mysteries emerged.” So he continued investigating until 13 years later he found photos of a sequence filmed in the hospital that was also not included in the final footage: “It's not that I had discovered the secret of eternal life, but for me it was a magical moment,” he related.
He still had research to do. He needed to talk to the team members. Some had died, but the actors were still alive. He started with Nicholson, who was reluctant at first, but then “gave me a great interview.” “Shelley Duvall had returned to Texas and was suffering from mental illness, but in 2018 she allowed me to come visit her. I had a great day with her and she showed me a video of her and some photos I had never seen before.”
Danny Lloyd only made one TV movie after The Shining, “I found him in Kentucky, I wanted to keep his privacy, but in the end I can go see him on his farm and he was very kind.” The twins, Louise and Lisa, didn't cause any problems. They are far from the cinema, one is a microbiologist and the other a lawyer, but they do not hide their pride in having participated in the film (a video greeting from the two ladies was projected, humming what they say in the film: “Come play with us !”) and contributed to enhancing Unkrich's book, his great life project.
