Stanley Kubrick Didn't Get The Shining's "Here's Johnny" Line (& 2023 Audiences Don't Either)

Publish date: 2023-12-28

The Shining has several of the horror genre’s most iconic moments, but the Stanley Kubrick movie almost came out missing its most famous line.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining has several iconic moments, but the horror movie’s most famous line almost ended up on the cutting room floor. An adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Shining, Kubrick’s The Shining shows Jack Torrance’s descent into madness during his and his family’s time taking care of the Overlook Hotel during the off-season. The movie culminates in Jack’s full psychotic breakdown, which nearly leads to him killing his wife Wendy and son Danny prior to their escape. While Stephen King famously hates the Kubrick adaptation, The Shining has gone on to become a horror classic.

The Shining is full of iconic imagery and lines, particularly in The Shining’s ending. One of the movie’s most famous scenes involves Jack attempting to break down a bathroom door to get to Wendy, who is hiding inside. The actors' improvisation in the scene spawned The Shining’s most famous and oft-quoted line, but shockingly, there was a strong possibility that it didn't make it into the horror movie’s final cut. Thankfully, Stanley Kubrick kept The Shining’s best quote, undoubtedly helping the movie become the horror touchstone it is considered today, but things could have been very different.

Stanley Kubrick Almost Cut 'Here's Johnny!' From The Shining

Although the “Here’s Johnny!” scene has gone on to become one of The Shining’s most iconic moments, it almost didn’t make it into the Stephen King movie adaptation at all. The line isn’t from either Kubrick’s script or King’s original source material, but an ad-lib that Jack Nicholson came up with on the spot. However, thanks to a combination of Kubrick's notoriously meticulous direction and the origin story behind the quote, it's a small miracle that it remained in the movie.

While there's no record of Kubrick actively wishing to ax the line, the director's commitment to dozens of takes meant that he had multiple options for any particular scene. Given that Nicholson's ad-lib was an off-the-cuff tribute to the original Tonight Show host Johnny Carson, it's pure coincidence that this is the take Kubrick settled upon. In fact, according to some sources (via Slash Film), the only reason Kubrick kept the line at all was because he had been living in England, and therefore missed the Johnny Carson reference altogether (just as many modern viewers likely would too, given the now-dated reference). Had he realized Nicholson's inspiration, he may well have felt differently about the take.

How Jack Nicholson Improvised The Shining's 'Here's Johnny' Line

Jack Nicholson was behind some of The Shining’s most iconic moments, so it’s not surprising he improvised the movie’s most well-known line. Stanley Kubrick was known to be a devoted perfectionist when it came to his movies, which is particularly true of The Shining’s production. This led to both countless rewrites of the script and take after take of scenes, sometimes into triple digits. Eventually tiring of the endless changes to the script, Nicholson claimed to have stopped reading the new scenes, knowing that another change was inevitable. However, because of the numerous takes and rewrites, it allowed the opportunity to try scenes in different ways.

Jack breaking through the bathroom door with an ax to get to Wendy was one such scene that required numerous takes, taking three days to get right. Because of this, Nicholson occasionally varied his approach to the scene, resulting in the improvisation of the “Here’s Johnny!” line, which is a reference to how Johnny Carson was introduced on The Tonight Show. Though Nicholson’s Johnny Carson ad-lib could have been, Kubrick luckily decided to use the take with the “Here’s Johnny!” line for The Shining, creating one of the horror genre’s most iconic scenes in the process.

Sources: Slash Film, IMDb