Fans of Shelley Duvall will be happy to know that her Golden Raspberry Award nomination for The Shining has officially been rescinded. While the classic horror film, directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the Stephen King story, is widely regarded as one of cinema's all-time greatest movies, it was not met with the warmest reception when it was first released. In fact, Kubrick was nominated for Worst Director at the Razzies with Duvall also nominated for Worst Actress. Those awards went to Robert Greenwald (Xanadu) and Brooke Shield (The Blue Lagoon) respectively, but the nominations have since garnered controversy
This week, the Razzies announced that a new award for the Worst Bruce Willis Performance of 2021 has been revoked in light of his aphasia diagnosis. In a statement published by IndieWire, co-founders John J. B. Wilson and Mo Murphy explained that it wasn't appropriate to analyze Willis' performances from last year in this way, given that his medical condition is a factor in his "decision making and/or performance." They also note that "extenuating circumstances" can apply to other nominations as well, even those from decades past. With this in mind, they've decided to also officially rescind Shelley Duvall's Worst Actress nomination for The Shining.
"As we recently mentioned in a Vulture interview, extenuating circumstances also apply to Shelley Duvall in The Shining," the statement reads. "We have since discovered that Duvall’s performance was impacted by Stanley Kubrick’s treatment of her throughout the production. We would like to take this opportunity to rescind that nomination as well."
The Razzies Stands By Stanley Kubrick's Nomination
In February, the Razzies co-founders spoke more about Shelley Duvall's nomination. Murphy said that Kubrick's reported mistreatment of Duvall on the set would warrant rescinding the nomination, though it hadn't yet officially happened at the time. Wilson also shed some light on why Duvall was nominated in the first place.
“The voting membership the very first year were largely people that Maureen and I worked with at a trailer company,” Wilson said. “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... 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 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.”
Perhaps they're standing by Kubrick's nomination, but technically, Duvall is no longer a Worst Actress nominee.