Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel, The Shining, departs from the book in numerous ways. The film's ending, for example, is vastly different from that of the novel, as is its representation of the Overlook Hotel's hedge maze, which in King's book is able to move and rearrange itself. King, who had already written a script that adapted The Shining for the screen before Kubrick expressed interest in the material, was consulted very little in the making of Kubrick's film, and in fact Kubrick never read King's version of the script. Ultimately, King was only granted a one-day visit to Kubrick's set (Lobrutto 414-415).
Nevertheless, King was flattered when Kubrick called him one morning at 7:30 AM to discuss adapting the book to the screen. Once King's wife had recovered from being starstruck and handed the phone to her husband, Kubrick began rambling to King that he believed ghost stories to be ultimately optimistic, as they presume that the afterlife exists. King, who remembers being hungover that morning, almost agreed with Kubrick before asking him, "'But what about hell?'" Kubrick replied simply that he didn't believe in hell. Later, King would trace Kubrick's differing spin on the plot of the novel to this interpretation, wherein Jack Torrance ultimately enjoys a happy ending as the perennial caretaker of the hotel (Lobrutto 414).
Film critics today will point to Kubrick's elaborate production design on the film as the most memorable element of his direction. Although King's novel already contained images like the hotel's hedge maze, Kubrick's version of the Overlook Hotel was grounded in geometry, patterns, and symmetry so as to leave a lasting impression in the mind of the viewer. Many of the film's most famous shots have gained their fame precisely due to this obsession with symmetry and geometry, such as Danny's forays through the hotel's carpeted halls and the hotel's scale model of the exterior hedge maze.
These elements were conscious choices on the part of Kubrick and his design team, with roots in the years Kubrick spent as a still photographer. Kubrick first approached designing the hotel's aesthetic by sending Roy Walker, the film's art designer, to scout hotels in the United States for ideas about how to design the Overlook Hotel. The red bathroom in which Delbert Grady talks to Jack, for example, was based on an Arizona hotel's bathroom that was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright (Lobrutto 417).
Kubrick's ability to center the actual shots of the film, however, were largely due to the revolutionary Steadicam, invented by Garrett Brown. Whereas cameras had historically relied on tripods and/or dollies (platforms that glide smoothly across space using tracks) for stabilization, Brown's new technology made use of a counterweight system that enabled a camera operator to move the camera in a less restricted manner without recording a shaky, unintelligible image. After watching a promotion reel for the new technology while shooting Barry Lyndon (1975), Kubrick hired Brown as his camera operator for The Shining, making the movie one of the earliest showcases of the Steadicam, now standard in Hollywood (Lobrutto 422).
