The Shining: Razzie Awards founder regrets Shelley Duvall’s nomination

Last Updated on February 25, 2022

The Razzie Awards, which seemed to be founded with some sort of sense of humor involved, have also been seen as attention-seeking and mean-spirited. Just look at the reaction to this year’s nominations which led to some social media backlash after they were announced. The ceremony “honors” the bad in the year of cinema and they were founded by Maureen Murphy and John J.B. Wilson back in 1981. Murphy was asked in a recent interview if she regretted any of their Razzie nominations over the years and she singled out Shelley Duvall’s performance in The Shining as one of their missteps.

During a chat with Vulture, Murphy expressed regrets about giving a worst actress nomination to Duvall for The Shining. Duvall played Jack Nicholson’s wife Wendy Torrance in the film and she becomes the center of his torment throughout the movie as it escalates. Director Stanley Kubrick reportedly put Duvall through a lot of emotional distress during the making of The Shining and Murphy says that knowing what she knew now about what Duvall went through on that project makes her regret giving her the nomination. Murphy said, “knowing the backstory and the way that Stanley Kubrick kind of pulverized her, I would take that back.”

Kubrick’s directing style, which has been said was VERY demanding, had negative effects on Duvall’s mental and physical health. The voting body for the Razzie Awards consists of 1,128 members from 49 states and over two dozen countries worldwide. The Shining was released in 1980 and the voting membership for The Razzies was in their first year. The Shining is Kubrick’s only movie to earn nominations from the Razzie Awards which also included a nomination for worst director for Kubrick. Wilson says he does not regret his nomination:

“The voting membership the very first year were largely people that Maureen and I worked with at a trailer company. A group of us who had read Stephen King’s novel went to see ‘The Shining’ the night it opened at the Chinese, and we didn’t care for what Kubrick had done with the novel. The novel was far more visually astounding, far more terrifying, far more compelling, and we couldn’t understand why you would buy a novel that had all of that visual opportunity in it and then not do the topiary thing, not do the snakes in the carpet, not do the kids’ visions.”

Kubrick’s The Shining is highly regarded by horror fans but it has also been criticized for not following Stephen King’s book as it should. This was even a bone of contention with King himself, who also wasn’t pleased with Kubrick’s interpretation. Because of this, Wilson went on to say, “If you’re going to say it’s ‘The Shining,’ you have to have certain key things in there that were not. And as I understand it, Kubrick was the one who decided what they cut out from the novel. So I don’t feel that badly about Stanley Kubrick.” Murphy then added, “Exactly. I think that guy’s overrated. He did one good movie, and that was about it. And we’re willing to say, ‘Yeah, maybe that shouldn’t have been nominated.’ Everybody makes mistakes. That’s being human.”

Do YOU agree with Shelley Duvall’s Razzie nomination for The Shining?