The sitcom star of Wings played against type in The Shining and his research with the author of the source material didn’t always amount to much.
Stephen King’s opinion on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is well-known lore and a big driving force behind a second take at adapting his popular horror novel more faithfully with the TV movie mini-series The Shining. One of King’s gripes with Kubrick’s iconic film is the casting of Jack Nicholson, since Nicholson already sported an intensity about him prior to The Overlook, and King insists that the scariest notion of Jack Torrance is that he was a normal, unassuming dad who is driven to be a monster. Enter Steven Weber, who is known for his long-standing role as Brian Hackett in the sitcom Wings. Weber was primarily seen as a comedic actor, which made his casting as Jack more what King had envisioned.
Weber would share a little anecdote about working with King when he appeared on the Inside of You podcast. During the production of the mini-series, Weber read the novel as part of his process and wanted to take full advantage of having the author present since King was very involved during filming. Weber explained, “He’s on a different planet. He’s on Planet King. He was around a lot during filming of The Shining, and I was able to ask him questions cause I was reading the book while doing it. I remember there was a portion of the book I couldn’t understand. And I asked him what it meant. I thought, ‘Great. I’ve got a living author downstairs. What does this mean Steve?’ And basically, he was like, ‘Yeah, this line is about a bottle of wine…this is cause I was standing over a carpet and it had a color that intrigued me…and this, I was drunk.’” He humorously concluded, “And I was like ‘Oh…thanks Steve. I thought the point was going to be something really deep.’” He laughed it off by capping the anecdote with, “He was a great guy. He was fantastic.”
Earlier this year, Scream Factory would release The Shining mini-series in a new Blu-ray release.
Here are the specs for Scream Factory’s The Shining Blu-ray release:
NEW 2K RESTORATION FROM AN INTERPOSITIVE
Audio Commentary by Author Stephen King, Director Mick Garris, Cast Members Steven Weber and Cynthia Garris, and Select Crew
11 Additional Scenes
1080p High Definition (1.33:1)
DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo
English SDH Subtitles
The mini-series version of The Shining has the following synopsis: Jack Torrance and his family move into the sprawling, vacant Overlook Hotel to get away from it all. Away from the alcoholism that derails Jack’s writing career. Away from the violent outbursts that mar Jack’s past. But Jack’s young son Danny knows better. He possesses a psychic gift called the shining — a gift the hotel’s vile spirits desperately want. In the hands of Stephen King, the “dead” Overlook comes horrifyingly alive. Phantoms lurk, the message “redrum” appears with scary frequency, and even garden topiary lurches into macabre existence in this atmospheric shocker.