Apparently, Stephen King was nursing a pretty bad hangover when Stanley Kubrick first called to ask him about making a movie for The Shining. King thought the whole thing was a joke until he actually heard Kubrick's voice.
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According to some folks who worked on the set of The Shining, Kubrick actually forced the actors to do some of the takes more than 100 times. The Guinness Book of World Records has even said that the staircase scene took more than 120 takes to get right.
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So how's this for an insult? Stephen King had actually written a screenplay of The Shining before Kubrick started working on the film version. But Kubrick didn't even bother reading it because he considered King to be a "weak" writer. But it makes you wonder why he loved King's story so much to begin with.
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