Strange Facts About Kubrick films

1. The Shining (1980):

·         The infamous 'Heere's Johnny!' scene took 3 days to film and the use of 60 doors.

·         Because of the intense heat generated from the lighting used to recreate window sunlight (the room took 700,000 watts of light per window to make it look like a snowy day outside), the lounge set caught fire.

·         Shelley Duvall suffered from nervous exhaustion throughout filming, including physical illness and hair loss. She was brutally tortured and made to feel worthless which later was told to be the plan to get her frustrated and low.

·         The scene where Jack is chasing Danny through the maze took over a month to shoot. During the shoot, crew-members often found themselves lost and had to walkie-talkie for assistance.

·         The scene towards the end of the film, where Wendy is running up the stairway carrying a knife, was shot 35 times; the equivalent of running up the Empire State Building.

·         According to the Guinness Book of Records, the scene where Wendy is backing up the stairs swinging the baseball bat was shot 127 times, which is a record for the most takes of a single scene.

·         The film took over 5 years to complete.

2. A Clockwork Orange (1971):

·         Malcolm McDowell's eyes were anesthetized for the torture scenes so that he would film for periods of time without too much discomfort. Nevertheless his corneas got repeatedly scratched by the metal lid locks.

·         The doctor standing over Alex as he is being forced to watch violent films was areal doctor, ensuring that Malcolm McDowell's eyes didn't dry up.

·         During the filming of the Ludovico scene, star Malcolm McDowell scratched one of his corneas and was temporarily blinded. He sufferedcracked ribs during filming of the humiliation stage show.

·         The language spoken by Alex and his droogs is author Anthony Burgess's invention, "Nadsat": a mix of English, Russian and slang.

·         Filming the rape scene was so difficult for the actress originally cast in the role. She quit and the part was recast to Adrienne Corri, who was said to have been furious with Stanley Kubrick for the scores of takes he required for this infamous scene.

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968):

·         In the premier screening of the film, 241 people walked out of the theater, including Rock Hudson who said "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?"

·         Stanley Kubrick wanted to get an insurance policy from Lloyd's of London to protect himself against losses in the event that extraterrestrial intelligence were discovered before the movie was released.

·         At the beginning, the prehistorical African landscapes are just photographs, not actual clips.

·         Conspiracy theorists claim that all footage of Armstrong's voyage was a hoax film directed by Stanley Kubrick using leftover scenes and props from this movie.

4. Full Metal Jacket (1987):

·         One scene cut from the movie showed a group of Marines playing soccer. The scene was cut because a shot revealed they were kicking a human head, not a soccer ball.

·         During filming, a family of rabbits were accidentally killed. Stanley Kubrick, an animal lover, was so upset that he canceled the rest of the day's work.

·         Vincent D'Onofrio gained 70 pounds for his role as Pvt. Pyle, breaking Robert De Niro's movie weight-gain record (60 pounds) for Raging Bull (1980). During the course he tore ligaments in his knee on the obstacle route, due to the extra weight he put on.

·         The inscription "I Am Become Death" is written on Animal Mother's helmet. This is a quotation from the Bhagavad-Gita, spoken by J. Robert Oppenheimer after the explosion of the first atomic bomb at Alamogordo.

·         In his memoir, Matthew Modine claims that Stanley Kubrick didn't want him to leave the set to be present at his wife's delivery, and he threatened to injure himself in order to get to the hospital before Kubrick relented and allowed him to leave.

·         For the final battle of Hue, 200 pine trees were imported from Spain and a few thousand tropical plastic plants were imported from Hong Kong.

5. Eyes Wide Shut (1999):

·         The Guinness World Records recognized Eyes Wide Shut as the longest continual film shoot — over 15 months.

·         Kidman participated in a shoot without Cruise, which captured sex scenes (50 different positions) with a male model (used in the naval officer dream sequences). To add to Cruise’s anxiety, Kubrick forbade Kidman to discuss the shoot.

·         Stanley Kubrick died just four days after presenting Warner Bros. with what was reported to be a final cut of the film, after a legendarily long shoot. His friends and family, as well as the cast and crew of the film, all claimed that Kubrick's death was completely unexpected and that he never seemed in poor health while making the film.

6. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964):

·         Kubrick demanded that when the crew made the table located in the center of the room, which itself was part of a massive 130 foot wide set, that they covered it in the exact same kind of material found on a poker table.

·         It wasn't Kubrick's idea but Columbia Pictures that Peter Sellers, with whom Kubrick had worked on Lolita and who the director had planned to cast again, play multiple roles in the new movie.

·         Kubrick coaxed Scott to deliver broad, animated performances as Buck, promising him that they were merely an exercise and would not be used in the final cut. Of course, the takes that went to print were among the actor’s wackiest. Scott felt terribly betrayed, and vowed never to work with Kubrick again.

·         The film led to actual changes in policy to ensure that the events depicted could never really occur in real life.

·         The scene where Gen. Turgidson trips and falls in the War Room, and then gets back up and resumes talking as if nothing happened, really was an accident. Stanley Kubrick mistakenly thought that it was George C. Scott really in character, so he left it in the film.

7. Lolita (1962):

·         Sue Lyon was chosen for the title role partly due to the size of her breasts. Stanley Kubrick had been warned that the censors felt strongly about the use of a less developed actress to portray the sexually active 14-year-old.

(Sources: Task & Purpose, Interesting Facts from the Fact Fiend, Random, Interesting, Amazing Facts - Fun Quizzes and Trivia | Mental Floss, Flavorwirem,  )