Movies - TV
The Shining's Hedge Maze Sets Were Just As Disorienting Behind The Scenes
By ANYA STANLEY
One of the most intimidating places on the grounds of the Overlook Hotel in “The Shining” is the towering labyrinthian hedge maze. John Baxter's biography of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick contains a treasure trove of insights on the film, including a breakdown of the mazes onscreen and how bewildering the hedge set was for its camera operators.
Baxter wrote that the crew got “easily lost” within the ever-changing layout and the oily haze created by fog machines. He quoted the film’s Steadicam creator and operator Garrett Brown, who recalled Kubrick’s reaction to the disoriented crew: “It wasn't much use to call out, 'Stanley!' as his laughter seemed to come from everywhere.”
Under salt and crushed Styrofoam snow, the hedge network's sprawling walls were a series of movable “pine boughs stapled to plywood sheets” (per Baxter) through which the crew should have been able to navigate with ease. However, even crew members with a map attached to their call sheets couldn't maneuver the Overlook maze set without getting lost.