Steven Spielberg Didn't Like A Stephen King Adaptation That's Now One Of His Favorites

Steven Spielberg became a legendary director in part by reminding everybody that it's okay to get lost in child-like wonder even after you're supposed to have grown up. As such, it's not surprising the man wasn't a fan of "The Shining" — a movie in which a small child endures untold traumas in a haunted hotel — when he first saw it. What is slightly surprising, however, is that the "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" director eventually came around to Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece and even claimed to have seen it 25 times.

Stephen King originally envisioned a totally different vibe for the film adaptation of his 1977 novel "The Shining." Had Spielberg been in charge, it seems he too would have gone in a different direction. In many ways, "The Shining" is an anti-Spielberg film. Instead of following a child who encounters some otherworldly entity which brings out his inner compassion, Kubrick's film features a child who encounters an otherworldly entity and endures a nightmarish sequence of events before narrowly escaping a painful death at the hands of his father. So, you can imagine Spielberg settling in for a viewing of the 1980 Stephen King adaptation and almost immediately asking to phone home.

In a 1999 interview, via Cinema Art, the director recalled how when he first watched the film, he was unimpressed, particularly with Jack Nicholson's performance as Jack Torrance. Evidently the director felt Nicholson was too over the top, which is true, but that was surely the point. The legendary star was delightfully unhinged as the mad writer possessed by the spirit of the Overlook, and his deranged performance was a representation of how deeply the character's mind had been corrupted. For Spielberg, however, it was all a bit much. Kubrick, on the other hand, was having none of that criticism.

In 1980, Steven Spielberg was preparing to shoot "Raiders of the Lost Ark" at Elstree Studios in England, the same studio where the "Shining" had just filmed. Already, then, Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick were forever linked, but they'd soon meet again. Kubrick was forced to leave America to find funding for 1962's "Lolita" and famously never returned, establishing his home at Childwickbury in Hertfordshire, where he invited Spielberg for dinner after "Raiders" had wrapped. 

In the aforementioned interview, the "Jaws" director recalled attending the dinner and being asked by his host whether he liked "The Shining." "I'd only seen it once, and I didn't love 'The Shining' the first time I saw it," Spielberg recalled, "[...] I was telling him all the things I liked about it and he saw right through me. He said, 'Well, Steven, obviously you didn't like my picture very much.'"

Kubrick pressed Spielberg on what he disliked, with the latter conceding that he thought Jack Nicholson had delivered a "great kabuki performance." Kabuki theater is known for containing exaggerated dramatic performances, and once again, Kubrick pressed his guest. "He said, 'You mean, you think Jack went over the top,'" Spielberg continued, "And I said, 'Yeah, I kind of did.'" 

Kubrick then asked Spielberg to list his favorite actors, which evidently included Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and Clark Gable. "Okay, where was James Cagney on this list?" asked Kubrick. Spielberg continued: "I thought, 'He's up there, high.' He said, 'Ah, but he's not in the top five. You don't consider James Cagney one of the five best actors around? You see, I do. This is why Jack Nicholson's performance is a great one.'"

At some point Steven Spielberg came to his senses and, as he revealed in the interview, embraced "The Shining" following his initial distaste for the film. "I have since seen it 25 times, it's one of my favorite pictures," he said, before going on to praise Stanley Kubrick for his work in general:

"Kubrick films tend to grow on you. You have to see them more than once. But the wild thing is, I defy you to name me one Kubrick film that you can turn off once you start it. It's impossible. He's got this fail-safe button or something. It's impossible to turn off a Kubrick film."

Since that 1980 dinner at Childwickbury, Spielberg has gone on to pay homage to the man who became somewhat of a role model for him. Aside from the fact the director's 2018 sci-fi actioner "Ready Player One" recreated a classic Kubrick moment from "The Shining," Spielberg also took on the director's never-filmed "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" adaptation to create 2001's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" following Kubrick's death. Clearly, then, Spielberg's initial dislike of "The Shining" was just a blip in his relationship with its director.

Of course, Spielberg wasn't the only one who was put off by the 1980 horror movie. Stephen King himself famously hated Kubrick's adaptation of "The Shining," and even shared Spielberg's distaste for Nicholson's overt craziness.