I share a very intimate creative relationship with Jack Torrance’s manuscript, which had nothing but 18 pages of “All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy” —just a single sentence, written over and over again. It was in my early days of filmmaking (sometime in 2018), and I was penning a psychological thriller centering on a pair of twin sisters. I kid you not, the opening to my screenplay about the twins had the exact same scene (not the same quote, though) as in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. In my scene, one of the twins is sitting in a dark room, scribbling intensely on her notebook. As we finally see the pages of the notebook, we see it’s the same sentence, written over and over again, across pages. That being said, this was way before I ever watched Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. So you can imagine my feelings when I watched the film (I’m still smiling cheek to cheek as I write this). Naturally, writing this article, decoding the typewriter scene is a literal honor for me. So let’s dive right in (because clearly I’m the best person for this one).The Story Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), an adaptation of one of the most celebrated Stephen King novels by the same name, follows Jack Torrance (Nicholas Cage), a former writer and recovering alcoholic, and his family as they head to an isolated hotel for the winter after Jack is offered a job as a caretaker. Ignoring literal warnings about...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Thursday, 2 October