on her boss and found Kubrick deeply engrossed in reading The Shining." Speaking about the theme of the film, Kubrick stated that "there's something inherently wrong with the human personality. There's an evil side to it. One of the things that horror stories can do is to show us the archetypes of the unconscious; we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly". Casting Nicholson was Kubrick's first choice for the role of Jack Torrance; other actors considered included Robert De Niro (who said the film gave him nightmares for a month), Robin Williams, and Harrison Ford, all of whom met with Stephen King's disapproval. Stephen King, for his part, disavowed Nicholson because he thought that, since he had shot One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the viewer would tend to consider him an unstable individual from the beginning. For this reason, King preferred Jon Voight, Michael Moriarty, or Martin Sheen for the role, who would more faithfully represent the profile of the ordinary individual who is gradually driven to madness. In any case, from the beginning the writer was told that the actor for the lead role "was not negotiable." Although Jack Nicholson initially suggested that Jessica Lange would be a better fit for Stephen King's Wendy, Shelley Duvall knew early that she was the one cast for the role (Nicholson would work with Lange on his next movie, The Postman Always Rings Twice). Wendy's character in the film differs notably from the novel, where she appears more capable and less vulnerable. Throughout the filming Kubrick pushed Duvall hard. It is said that the scene in which, armed with the baseball bat, she walks backwards up the stairs before the attack of her husband (one of the most reshot scenes in all of cinema), she was not representing a terrified woman; Shelley was literally "terrified." According to the "Guinness Book of Records", Kubrick demanded the shot be repeated 127 times. The director's initial candidate to play the Torrances' son was Cary Guffey (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), but the young actor's parents prevented him, claiming that the film was too gruesome for a child. In his search to find the right actor to play Danny, Kubrick sent a husband-and-wife team, Leon (who portrayed Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon) and Kersti Vitali, to Chicago, Denver, and Cincinnati to create an interview pool of 5,000 boys over