Interesting new information about Stanley Kubrick and Shelley Duvall’s relationship during the filming of The SHINING

Avid fans of The brilliant you know that director Stanley Kubrick AND Shelley Duval he had a pretty intense working relationship. Most of the information we need to get from that comes from Vivian KubrickThe documentary on the making of the film, which features footage of Kubrick always making the actress and Duvall react emotionally and frantically.

There’s been a lot of discussions over the years about this with people explaining that the reason he was so hard on her was to get that amazing performance out of her. Pixar director Lee Unkrich has spent the last 12 years working on a book called The Shining by Stanely Kubrickwhich is a detailed 2,200-page account of the creation of the classic horror film.

During a recent interview with Variety, Unkrich shared some information he came across, and one thing he shared was some fascinating additional insight into Kubrick and Duvall’s relationship. Diane Johnson, Kubrick’s co-writer, revealed that the friction led Kubrick to focus more on Jack Nicholson’s character Jack and curtail development of Wendy by Duvall. She said:

“The reason why [Wendy’s] no more developed in the script in the end it was because he didn’t get along with Shelley Duvall. They just collided. And so he removed a lot of her scenes. The dialogue I wrote for Wendy was more or less [taken from] Stephen King, where he talks like a normal person and has interesting perceptions and so on. And the reason she looks so hysterical has to do with Kubrick and Duvall.

Kubrick’s portrayal of Wendy is something that The brilliant author Stephen King also hated for the movie. He has previously spoken of Wendy’s portrayal, saying:

“Shelley Duvall as Wendy is truly one of the most misogynistic characters ever put in a movie. She’s basically just there to scream and be stupid and she’s not the woman I wrote about.”

Unkrich actually spoke with Duvall about what it was like for her to work with Kubrick, and she explained, “Ultimately, the most important person to hear from was Shelley herself,” she says. “And Shelley loves Stanley.” She added:

“I think of it as that story of all the blind men touching an elephant, and each one has only a part, and they describe what they think they are touching and none of them are right, because they are not seeing the whole, and I think that is what it is what happened with that movie, honestly, is people assume this whole thing must have been so heartbreaking for her.

He went on to explain what Shelley told him, saying:

“Shelley will tell you it was a very difficult shot. And she will also say that at times she didn’t necessarily agree with Stanley’s tactics to get a performance out of her. But she admits that she got an amazing performance out of her.

That performance is incredible, but it’s also absolutely exhausting to watch. Seriously, every time I watch this movie I get anxious! It’s so interesting to learn new things about this film, and it’s nice to know that Duvall has no hard feelings against Kubrick for the way he treated her.

You can see some behind-the-scenes footage of Kubrick interacting with Duvall below.