The Climactic Maze Scene in Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING Was Terrifying to Shoot Because of Fire

One of the things that make Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining so great and haunting was the amazing camera work. The way the camera just fluidly flowed through that giant hotel was incredible. That was all thanks to Garrett Brown, the inventor of the Steadicam, who was hired by Kubrick to shoot the movie.

Pixar director Lee Unkrich has spent the last 12 years putting together a 2,200-page book titled Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which will offer the most detailed account ever of the making of Kubrick’s film. Unkrich has been obsessed with the film since he was 12 years old and while promoting the book, he shared a few interesting details and stories and one comes from Brown.

Brown had previously worked with Sylvester Stallone on Rocky, particularly the iconic scene of Rocky running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. That was just the beginning of the Steadicam, but it’s Kubrick’s The Shining that allowed him to show off its full potential as it awesomely captured the corridors of the Overlook Hotel with liquid smoothness.

Brown explained what Kubrick was trying to do before they utilized the Steadicam saying in an interview:

“Stanley had had a 2CV Citroën stripped down — took the engine and the body and everything off of it so all you had was a seat, a steering wheel, and a little platform in the back for the camera because the suspension is so amazingly sloppy, he was hoping that if you push it down the corridors, it would allow the camera, but the results from that were disastrous.”

One of the stories that were shared involved the shooting of the climactic maze scene at the end of the movie and how terrifying it was for Steadicam operator Garrett Brown to shoot because of all the fire hazards they were shooting around! The whole set could’ve easily gone up in flames! Brown went on to explain:

“There was really no choice but the Steadicam to navigate those huge spaces. [But] it got absurd at times in the maze. If a viewer knew what we were doing, they would be astounded. I was trudging through dairy salt eight inches deep with Styrofoam above thousand-watt lights on thoroughly dried-out pine needles. We were all terrified of fire the whole time, crunching along in my continually rotting boots because of the salt in a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And it was oil smoke, now illegal, but then, legal. And we breathed it for three months to make that mist. And then you look at the final shot, and gosh, it looks amazing.”

That all sounds like an absolutely bonkers experience! But, yeah, regardless of all of the crazy fire hazards, and under the threat of death, that scene did sure turn out incredible!

Source: Variety