The Shining with Wine – A Night at the Overlook Hotel (Mockingbird)
Thank you to everyone who joined us at The Mockingbird Cinema for our Halloween screening of The Shining with Wine, or The Wine-ing, as we like to call it.
We hope you enjoyed your stay at the Overlook Hotel, the five wines specially selected from its private cellars, and the hospitality of our resident bartender Lloyd. We also hope you made it home safely. Our winter caretaker, Jack Torrance, was behaving rather strangely towards the end of the evening!
As promised, read on for details of our five wines, our gallery from the evening and plenty of fascinating behind-the-scenes trivia about the making of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror masterpiece.
The Overlook Hotel – Our Five Wines
Here's what we were drinking from the Overlook Cellars.
We welcomed our guests to the Overlook Hotel with a French sparkling wine from Burgundy, one of the world's most prestigious wine-producing regions.
Crémant de Bourgogne is produced using the same traditional method employed in Champagne, with the second fermentation taking place inside the bottle to create those lovely fine bubbles.
Our example from Moillard was made from Chardonnay, a grape that thrives in Burgundy and is also one of the principal varieties used in Champagne itself.
Expect fresh apple and citrus flavours, lively acidity and a delicate biscuity character on the finish.
An elegant French sparkling wine, made using the Champagne method, but without the Champagne price tag. Lloyd certainly knows how to welcome his guests.
Our second wine came from Bordeaux, a region known throughout the world for its magnificent red wines, but one that also produces some excellent whites.
White Bordeaux is traditionally made using Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon, sometimes with the addition of Muscadelle.
Sauvignon Blanc brings freshness, citrus flavours and a distinctive herbal character, while Sémillon can contribute body, texture and softer fruit flavours.
Our Calvet Bordeaux Blanc was a refreshing, dry white wine with crisp citrus, green apple and gentle herbal notes.
For our third wine, Lloyd returned to introduce something a little different from the Loire Valley.
Vouvray is one of France's most celebrated white wine appellations and is made exclusively from Chenin Blanc, a wonderfully versatile grape capable of producing everything from bone-dry whites to rich dessert wines and sparkling wines.
Our example was a Demi-Sec, meaning it had a touch of residual sweetness. The grapes grow in vineyards featuring the region's famous tuffeau limestone, a soft, chalky rock which also provided the building material for many of the Loire Valley's magnificent châteaux.
Les Coteaux Tufiers offered flavours of honeyed cooked apple, ripe melon and a little walnut, balanced by the refreshing acidity of lime.
That acidity is what makes Chenin Blanc such a fascinating grape. Even when the wines have some sweetness, they can remain wonderfully fresh and balanced. A very different style from our first two wines, but a delicious example of what the Loire Valley does so well.
Our fourth wine took us back to France for one of the world's most celebrated red wine grapes, Pinot Noir.
Pinot Noir is famously associated with Burgundy, where some of the world's most expensive and sought-after red wines are produced. It's also notoriously difficult to grow. The grape has thin skins, is susceptible to disease and requires careful handling in the vineyard and winery.
However, when conditions are right, Pinot Noir produces beautifully elegant red wines, often with much lighter colour and softer tannins than varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon.
Our Olivier Dubois Cuvée Prestige delivered juicy cherry and redcurrant flavours, with a gentle touch of sweet spice and soft tannins. Pinot Noir might look relatively delicate in the glass, but there's often considerably more going on beneath the surface. A little like the Overlook Hotel itself.
We finished the evening with our biggest and boldest wine, a Californian Cabernet Sauvignon with a name that seemed particularly appropriate for the occasion.
Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the world's most widely planted red wine grapes, originally from Bordeaux, but now grown successfully in wine regions across the globe. California has become particularly famous for producing rich, ripe examples, thanks to its generous sunshine and favourable growing conditions.
Our Showdown 'Man with an Axe' Cabernet Sauvignon delivered blackcurrant, black cherry and ripe wild berry flavours, together with sweet vanilla notes from oak ageing.
A full-flavoured red wine with soft tannins and plenty of character. And what a name!
The Shining with Wine Gallery – Here's Johnny!
The Shining – Behind the Scenes Trivia
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made, but its extraordinary production history is almost as fascinating as the film itself.
As promised, here are some of the stories we shared during our screening, together with a few additional nuggets we didn't have time to squeeze into the evening.
Where is the real Overlook Hotel?
The Overlook Hotel might be one of the most recognisable locations in horror cinema, but the building you see on screen is actually a combination of several different places.
The exterior belongs to Timberline Lodge, a real hotel on Mount Hood in Oregon, which is still operating today.
However, those extraordinary opening helicopter shots, following Jack's yellow Volkswagen Beetle along a winding mountain road, were filmed hundreds of miles away in Glacier National Park, Montana.
Meanwhile, the magnificent interiors, including the Gold Room, Colorado Lounge and those seemingly endless corridors, were constructed at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England.
Production designer Roy Walker drew inspiration from several American hotels, particularly the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park.
So, the Overlook is really a combination of Oregon, Montana, California and a large helping of Borehamwood. Hollywood magic!
The hotel that inspired Stephen King
Although Timberline Lodge provided the exterior for Kubrick's film, it wasn't the hotel that inspired Stephen King's original novel.
That honour belongs to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.
In 1974, King and his wife Tabitha visited the hotel towards the end of its operating season. The building was almost entirely deserted, leaving the couple wandering through its vast empty corridors.
King began imagining what might happen if a troubled family found themselves isolated in such a place throughout the winter. The experience helped inspire his novel The Shining, published in 1977. The Stanley Hotel has since embraced its association with the book and become something of a pilgrimage destination for horror fans.
Stephen King wasn't particularly impressed
Despite the enormous success and enduring reputation of Kubrick's film, Stephen King famously disliked the adaptation of his novel.
King felt that Kubrick had changed some of the most important elements of the story, particularly the character of Jack Torrance.
In the book, Jack is a deeply flawed man struggling with alcoholism and anger, but someone who initially wants to do the right thing for his family. King believed that Jack Nicholson appeared unstable almost from the beginning, reducing the impact of his eventual descent into madness.
Kubrick, meanwhile, was more interested in ambiguity, atmosphere and psychological horror.
The two men had very different interpretations of the same story.
King eventually developed a television adaptation in 1997 that followed his novel much more closely. Nevertheless, Kubrick's version has gone on to become one of the most influential horror films in cinema history.
James Bond was running the Overlook Hotel
Stuart Ullman, the friendly hotel manager who interviews Jack Torrance and explains the history of the Overlook, is played by Barry Nelson.
Interestingly, Nelson had previously played James Bond! Long before Sean Connery made 007 a household name, Nelson portrayed the character in a 1954 American television adaptation of Casino Royale.
It was the first screen appearance of Ian Fleming's famous secret agent.
From James Bond to managing one of cinema's most sinister hotels. Quite a career change!
Danny Lloyd didn't know he was making a horror film
Danny Torrance was played by Danny Lloyd, who had never acted professionally before being selected for the role.
Kubrick's casting team considered thousands of children before choosing the young actor, who was just five years old when filming began.
Because of his age, Kubrick took considerable care to shield him from the film's more disturbing scenes. Danny was led to believe he was appearing in a drama about a family living in a hotel rather than one of the most terrifying horror movies ever made.
He was kept away from many of the frightening sequences, with a dummy sometimes used in scenes involving danger.
Years later, Lloyd recalled his time on set very fondly, describing Kubrick as kind and playful.
He subsequently left acting and became a biology teacher.
Not quite the Hollywood career that might have been expected, but probably considerably less traumatic than spending another winter at the Overlook.
Whatever happened to Danny's tricycle?
One of Danny Lloyd's favourite memories of filming was being allowed to ride his little plastic tricycle around the enormous hotel sets.
And who wouldn't enjoy cycling through a luxury hotel without being told off?
A member of the production team apparently promised that he could keep the tricycle once filming had finished.
Unfortunately, it never arrived. Lloyd recalled waiting patiently for it to be delivered, but the promised gift never materialised.
The sound of Danny's tricycle
Those scenes of Danny cycling through the hotel's corridors are among the most unsettling in the entire film.
Part of their effectiveness comes from something remarkably simple: the sound.
As Danny pedals over the hard flooring, the plastic wheels produce a loud, rattling noise.
Then he reaches a section of carpet and the sound almost completely disappears.
A few seconds later, he's back on the hard floor and the racket resumes.
Kubrick uses this constantly changing soundtrack to build tension, even when absolutely nothing frightening is happening on screen. A brilliant example of making an ordinary sound deeply disturbing.
The camera technology that changed filmmaking
The remarkable tracking shots following Danny through the hotel's corridors were made possible by a relatively new invention called the Steadicam.
Developed by Garrett Brown, who also operated it on The Shining, the Steadicam allowed a camera operator to move freely while keeping the image remarkably smooth.
For the low-level shots following Danny, Brown adapted the system to achieve the appropriate camera height, including working with a wheelchair-mounted arrangement.
The result was a camera that seemed to glide effortlessly through the hotel, almost as though we were another unseen presence following Danny.
The Shining became one of the early films to demonstrate the extraordinary creative possibilities of this technology. Today, stabilised camera movement is commonplace in cinema and television, but in 1980 it was genuinely revolutionary.
Those terrifying twins
The two little girls who repeatedly appear to Danny in the Overlook's corridors are among the most recognisable images in horror cinema.
They were played by real-life twin sisters Lisa and Louise Burns. Their matching blue dresses, identical hairstyles and perfectly synchronised movements created an unforgettable sense of unease.
The girls have become such iconic horror characters that they remain a popular inspiration for Halloween costumes more than four decades later.
Room 237 – a hotel room that doesn't exist
One of the most sinister locations in the film is Room 237.
However, in Stephen King's original novel, the mysterious room is numbered 217.
Why the change?
The management of Timberline Lodge, whose exterior was used for the Overlook, was apparently concerned that guests might refuse to stay in its real Room 217 after seeing what happened in the story.
Kubrick therefore changed the number to 237, a room that didn't exist at the hotel.
Rather wonderfully, the plan had quite the opposite effect.
According to Timberline Lodge, Room 217 has become its most frequently requested room.
Horror fans are a strange bunch!
Lloyd – the world's most accommodating bartender
The mysterious bartender Lloyd is played by Joe Turkel, an actor who already had a long association with Stanley Kubrick.
Turkel previously appeared in Kubrick's The Killing in 1956 and Paths of Glory in 1957, making The Shining their third film together.
Lloyd is one of the most fascinating characters in the movie. He never seems surprised to see Jack, appears to know exactly what he wants and remains unfailingly polite, regardless of how disturbing their conversation becomes.
But there's something rather odd about the whole arrangement.
Earlier in the film, hotel manager Stuart Ullman tells Jack that all the alcohol is removed from the hotel when it closes for winter, largely for insurance purposes.
Yet when Jack enters the Gold Room, there's Lloyd standing behind a fully stocked bar, ready to serve him. Exceptional service, an extraordinary inventory error or something altogether more sinister?
Hair of the dog that bit me
When Jack returns to the Gold Room, he orders a drink using the familiar expression 'hair of the dog that bit me'.
This old saying refers to drinking more alcohol to relieve the symptoms of a hangover.
Its origins lie in an ancient folk belief that a hair taken from a dog responsible for biting someone could somehow help treat the wound.
But there's a much darker significance to Jack's order.
Earlier in the film, Wendy explains that Jack stopped drinking after an incident in which he injured Danny. Jack has apparently been sober for around five months when he first encounters Lloyd.
The return of alcohol represents another important stage in his psychological deterioration, although whether Lloyd and his drinks are entirely real is another question altogether.
The curious case of Mr Grady
The deeply unsettling Delbert Grady is played by English actor Philip Stone, another performer who had worked with Kubrick before.
Stone previously appeared in A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon. Grady is fascinating because his extraordinary politeness is completely at odds with the horrifying things he says.
He addresses Jack with impeccable courtesy while discussing increasingly disturbing matters.
It's the sort of customer service that the Overlook seems to specialise in.
But here's an intriguing detail.
At the beginning of the movie, Ullman explains that a previous caretaker named Charles Grady murdered his family before killing himself. Later, Jack meets a man who introduces himself as Delbert Grady. Charles or Delbert?
The film never offers a clear explanation for the discrepancy.
A deliberate mystery, a hint that identities are being confused or simply a continuity error?
Kubrick certainly leaves us with plenty to think about.
The Overlook was an enormous undertaking
Kubrick wanted the hotel interiors to feel like a real, interconnected building rather than a collection of separate film sets. His production team consequently constructed enormous, highly detailed interiors at Elstree Studios.
The Colorado Lounge, Gold Room, corridors, bedrooms and other locations occupied vast areas of studio space.
Kubrick also wanted many sets to remain standing simultaneously so that he could revisit locations and film scenes in something approaching story order.
The scale of the operation was extraordinary, and the production ran considerably beyond its original schedule.
A real fire at the Overlook Hotel
During production, a serious fire damaged the enormous Colorado Lounge set at Elstree Studios. The blaze caused extensive damage to the soundstage, requiring substantial rebuilding work.
Fortunately, the film was able to continue.
The studio space was subsequently used for other productions, including Raiders of the Lost Ark. So, in a rather wonderful piece of movie history, two of cinema's most famous films have a direct connection through the same British studios.
The snow wasn't real either
Although the fictional Overlook Hotel was situated high in the Colorado Rockies, much of the snow-covered landscape was recreated at Elstree Studios.
The production team constructed an enormous exterior set and used artificial snow to create the impression of a remote mountain hotel in the depths of winter.
Even the terrifying hedge maze sequences were filmed using elaborate sets rather than a genuine snow-covered maze in Colorado.
The next time you watch Jack struggling through the blizzard, remember that much of the action was filmed in Borehamwood!
Here's Johnny!
One of the most famous lines in horror cinema wasn't originally in the script.
When Jack Nicholson smashes through the bathroom door and pushes his face through the opening, he delivers the immortal greeting: 'Here's Johnny!'
Nicholson improvised the line during filming.
It was of course a reference to the introduction used for Johnny Carson, the enormously popular American television talk-show host.
American audiences immediately recognised the reference, making the combination of familiar television catchphrase and terrifying axe-wielding maniac particularly effective.
Kubrick liked Nicholson's improvisation and kept it in the film. The line has since become one of the most recognisable moments in cinema history.
A particularly demanding film to make
Stanley Kubrick was famous for his perfectionism, and The Shining was no exception.
The production involved lengthy shooting days, constantly revised scripts and numerous takes as Kubrick pursued precisely the performances and images he wanted.
Shelley Duvall, who played Wendy, had an especially demanding experience. Her performance required extraordinary levels of fear, panic and emotional exhaustion, and filming some of the more intense scenes proved extremely stressful.
Her portrayal of Wendy has subsequently received considerable recognition for its emotional intensity.
Watching her desperately attempt to protect Danny from Jack, it's difficult to imagine the film working anywhere near as effectively without her performance.
A documentary made by Kubrick's daughter
One of the best ways to appreciate the extraordinary production of The Shining is to watch the behind-the-scenes documentary Making The Shining.
Remarkably, it was filmed by Kubrick's daughter Vivian, who was just 17 years old during production.
Armed with her camera, she captured footage of the director, actors and crew at work.
Considering Kubrick's famously private nature and his reluctance to allow outsiders onto his film sets, the documentary provides an exceptionally rare insight into his working methods.
It also reveals just how much effort went into creating the illusion of a haunted mountain hotel.
Scatman Crothers and Jack Nicholson were reunited
Scatman Crothers, who plays the kindly hotel chef Dick Hallorann, had previously appeared alongside Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975.
That film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Nicholson.
Five years later, the two actors found themselves reunited in a rather different kind of institution.
John Lennon helped inspire the title
Here's an interesting musical connection.
Stephen King has explained that the title of The Shining was partly inspired by John Lennon's 1970 song Instant Karma!, which contains the refrain 'We all shine on'.
King's novel was originally titled The Shine before becoming The Shining.
It's a surprising connection between one of the most influential horror stories of the twentieth century and one of popular music's most celebrated songwriters.
The terrifying music of The Shining
Music plays an enormous role in creating the film's unsettling atmosphere.
The ominous theme accompanying those magnificent opening helicopter shots was created by electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind.
It was based on the Dies Irae, a medieval melody associated with death and the Day of Judgement, particularly through its use in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.
Kubrick also made extensive use of compositions by Béla Bartók, György Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki.
Much of the music is deliberately dissonant and uncomfortable, creating tension long before anything frightening actually appears on screen.
Try watching some of the hotel's apparently ordinary scenes with the sound turned off.
They're considerably less terrifying!
And what about that final photograph?
The Shining concludes with one of the most mysterious images in cinema history.
A photograph hanging on the wall of the Overlook Hotel shows Jack Torrance attending a Fourth of July Ball in 1921, decades before the events of the film.
How can Jack appear in a photograph from so long ago?
Has the hotel somehow absorbed him into its history? Has he always belonged there? Or is there something even stranger happening?
Kubrick famously preferred to leave much of the film open to interpretation, and the final image has encouraged endless debate among fans.
Like so many things about the Overlook Hotel, perhaps it's better not to know.
Thank You Once Again!
Thank you to everyone who checked into the Overlook Hotel for The Shining with Wine. We hope you enjoyed the wines, the movie and our rather unusual hotel staff.
We'd also like to thank The Mockingbird Cinema for allowing us to transform the venue into our very own Overlook Hotel for the evening.
We look forward to welcoming you to another Movies with Wine event very soon.
Keep an eye on our website for upcoming screenings and sign up to our monthly mailing list for news of future events.
Tony, Lloyd, Jack, Wendy and The Wine Events Crew
And remember, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy! So, check out your next Movie with Wine experience below ..
Comments