"All work and no play makes a Jack a dull boy." And, apparently, too much ending makes Stanley an unhappy auteur. While today there are endless warnings of an age where filmmakers will "revisit" their works endlessly by reediting and re-CGing them, it is important to remember that the practice of recutting a film (even after it has been released theatrically) is hardly a new one.

In 1980, Stanley Kubrick recut the ending of his spectral masterpiece The Shining a week after it had been released to theaters. Kubrick eliminated entirely a scene after the "hedge maze" climax, during which Wendy (Shelley Duvall) is recuperating at a hospital, and receives a visit from the Overlook Hotel's manager Stuart Ullman, played by Barry Nelson. Ullman informs Wendy that searchers were unable to locate the missing Jack Torrance's body. This eerie scene indicated that perhaps nutty old jack was still out there... somewhere... ?

Why cut the scene? Pacing, according to Kubrick. "I noticed that audiences felt it threw off the excitement reached during eh film's climax," Kubrick was quoted as saying at the time of the film's recutting, "and I decided the scene was unnecessary." The deleted scene has yet to ever be released on video, DVD or theatrically, and probably never will (if it even exists at all.) Another victim of the Overlook?