The Shining [1980] (1 disc)

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• Stephen King tried to talk Stanley Kubrick out of casting Jack Nicholson in the lead suggesting, instead, either ^[?] Michael Moriarty or Jon Voight. King had felt that watching either of these normal-looking men gradually descend into madness, would have immensely improved the dramatic thrust of the storyline.
• Stanley Kubrick decided that having the hedge animals come alive (as they do in the book) was unworkable due to restrictions in special effects, so he opted for a hedge maze instead.
• Jack Nicholson ad-libbed the line "Here's Johnny!" in imitation of announcer ^[?] Ed McMahon's famous introduction of ^[?] Johnny Carson on U.S. network NBC-TV's long-running late night television program [The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson]. Stanley Kubrick, who had been living in England since before Carson took over [The Tonight Show], had no clue what "Here's Johnny!" meant. Carson once used the clip of Nicholson as the introduction to one of his annual anniversary specials.
• Every time Jack talks to a "ghost", there's a mirror in the scene, except in the food locker scene. This is because in the food locker scene he only talks to Grady through the door. We never see Grady in this scene.
• Stanley Kubrick, known for his compulsiveness and numerous retakes, got the difficult shot of blood pouring from the elevators in only three takes. This would be remarkable if it weren't for the fact that the shot took nine days to set up; every time the doors opened and the blood poured out, Kubrick would say, "It doesn't look like blood." In the end, the shot took approximately a year to get right.
• During filming, Stanley Kubrick made the cast watch Eraserhead, Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist to put them in the right frame of mind.
• Billie Gibson, the old woman in the tub, has been falsely rumored to be ^[?] Ann Gibson, Mel Gibson's late mother. And neither she nor Lia Beldam (the young version of that same woman) appeared in another movie before or after this one.
• Stanley Kubrick's first choice to play Danny Torrance was Cary Guffey, the young boy from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Guffey's parents apparently turned down the offer due to the film's subject matter.
• The throwing around of the tennis ball inside the overlook hotel was Jack Nicholson's idea. The script originally only specified that, "Jack is not working".
• Outtakes of the shots of the Volkswagen traveling towards the Overlook at the start of the film were plundered by Ridley Scott (with Stanley Kubrick's permission) when he was forced to add the 'happy ending' to the original release of Blade Runner.