Sunday, April 23, 2017
(GEN) Enigmatic Kubrick Faces Exposure | 02/17/1999 | Toronot Star
please excuse spelling errors, this was converted from a pdf
Enigmatic Kubrick faces exposure
Director's image contradictory as next movie title, Eyes
Wide Shut
LONDON (Special) - He is a legendary recluse who has not given an interview than
25 years.
The wall of secrecy around his film sets is cemented by
contracts binding emplo his law of silence. His physical appearance is as much a
mystery as his character be cold, warm, abrasive and indulgent by turns.
But now, Stanley Kubrick is about to splinter through the
doors of his ivory to bare his very soul. And not via a discreet interview with
a selected journalist or interrogation by a studio
audience.
The acclaimed American
director of 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork has opted for nothing less than the High Court, under the
pitiless gaze of the wo media.
Kubrick, 70, is bringing a libel action
against Punch magazine, claiming that a about him last August
was "grossly defamatory" as it questioned his sanity.
Although, technically,
he is not obliged to appear before a jury if a
preliminary next month upholds his complaint,
legal sources believe he would impair his ch he stayed away.
It is curious timing. Kubrick's reported
eccentricities have been the staple of go columns and features during much of his seclusion in Britain since
1961. He ha stoically endured
the sort of coverage accorded
to other recluses
such as J. D. S Thomas Pynchon and Howard Hughes without
a peep of protest. It was almost
wished his total indifference to public
notice to be universally recognized.
So why
react now, especially as the case may overshadow the release of his Ion film
Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman? It will be his fir since
Full Metal Jacket 12 years ago.
If a full hearing
of the case is granted,
it may take place in the autumn. The film for release in August, but it has already been more than two
years in the making few
months' slippage cannot be ruled out.
From the outset, Kubrick has
struggled to exercise the utmost control over
his supervising every aspect from casting
and shooting, to editing and even occasio operating the camera.
When 2001 was screened for the New York critics, he wa projection booth.
But he may discover that the law is an even more unruly beast; many solicitors clients
that most libel cases end in tears for the winner as well as the loser.
On past form, he will
be unhappy about delegating authority to lawyers. "I'm d in delegating authority, and my distrust is usually well founded,"
he observed o
''I especially
don't trust people who don't write things down. With those who do very interested in what they write
things in. Ifit's one of those chic little Fifth A notebooks
with those expensive gold pencils, I'm more suspicious than ever."
'Actors are drawn
to him because of his skills and mystique, but they only work once'
Kirk Douglas, who
persuaded Kubrick
to direct Spartacus, called him a "cold Malcolm McDowell, the star of A Clockwork Orange, claimed he was traumatic years after working with Kubrick. In a 1996 TV
documentary, Kubrick was se shouting and swearing at Shelley Duvall while shooting The Shining.
''Actors are
drawn to him because of his undoubted skills and mystique, but the work for him
once," said John Baxter, his biographer.
Whatever Cruise and Kidman
experienced during their 18-month commitment t Kubrick's latest film, they are keeping their mouths tightly shut. Both had to su his predilection for shooting up to 100 takes of a
scene. Based on Arthur Schnit 1926 novella
Traumnovelle (Dream Novel),
which explores the sexual ambival happy marriage, the intensely
erotic film involves orgy scenes, at which Cruise insiders
to have experienced unease.
Harvey
Keitel left the film citing
"artistic differences," and Jennifer Jason Leig replaced
by the Swedish actress Marie Richardson.
Kubrick
provokes as much affection as anger. Clint Eastwood is one of his mo fans, communicating from a safe distance by fax. Frederick Raphael, who scrip Wide Shut, has described him as a great man possessed of modesty and a gener to praise others'
work.
Even his long-standing producer
Ken Adam, who had a nervous breakdown hal through the shooting of Barry Lyndon, said: ''I loved the man, but I had to cut t umbilical cord."
Nor is he insensitive to public criticism
. He refused to allow
A Clockwork Oran shown in Britain after copycat attacks said to have been inspired by the
film's v In a 1993
trial, a cinema manager claimed he employed spies to check whether were complying with his wishes .
Stories of his foibles
are legion. To guard against
his travel phobia,
most of Eye Shut was filmed at Pinewood Studios,
a short drive from his manor house
in St. Hertfordshire.
But
even this journey
may have proved irksome. Kubrick , a
qualified pilot who travelling by air, instructed his driver not to exceed
50 kilometres per hour. Urg by a friend to visit Rome, he
is said to have replied : ''I
don't have to
go. I just s great documentary on it."
The same
reasoning prompted him to recreate Vietnam at an old east London ga for Full Metal Jacket.
For his 1962 movie Lolita, set in middle America, he cho
Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire.
Every one of his laborious films has left indelible images
- the lollipop- sucking Lyon in Lolita, the kaleidoscopic warp speeds of 2001, a
boy riding his tricycle hotel corridors in The Shining and Slim Pickens riding an
H-bomb to suicidal g Dr. Strangelove.
Yet, even his admirers have admitted that they find his films curiously
empty. C mystified that no apparent theme links his work.
The charge that Kubrick is withholding something to
enhance his mystique is f Until 1972, he explained himself as eloquently as he
could, and then decided he want to
repeat himself. The key seems to be his desire to create the perfect film genre
he chooses.
He was born in New York and raised in the Bronx. His father, a doctor, encoura interest
in photography by giving him a Graflex camera at 13. A year later, he r cheque from Look magazine for the first
of several assignments that led to him hired as an apprentice at 17. "I
loved cameras," he
said. "There is a tactile, alm sensuous pleasure
in a beautiful piece of equipment."
He had been a poor high school
student, to the extent his teachers sent him to be at Columbia University. They found he
was so far ahead of his class intellectua work bored him.
He established himself as America's most promising director in 1957 with Path Glory,
a story of military injustice and class hatred in the French army during W I,
starring Kirk Douglas. Since then, his films have won eight Oscars and 14 nominations,
although none for best director.
Kubrick is
unapologetic to reproaches that he has no unifying doctrine. ''Each face the terrifying prospect
of being met with total
indifference when it is finish said.
He does not see the need
to intellectualize his rationale for making films. ''Wha should I be doing?
The fact that I may be able to do them better than other peop me an added pleasure.
I think Orson Welles' remark summed it up : 'A
movie st the best toy a boy ever had.' "
He believes it is a director's right
to have sole authority over a film: "One
man novel. One man writes
a symphony. It is essential for one man to make a film. A Napoleon said, 'Better
one bad general than two good ones.' "
Kubrick's dream of making a film about Napoleon has so far eluded him, as ha (artificial intelligence), a love affair between computers,
rumoured to be his nex
Given his pace of filming,
these may never be realized.
It has been said that he films
that last an age and take ages to make.
Ifhe appears in court, we can be sure it will be a memorable performance . THE SUNDAY TIMES LONDON
CAPTIONS:
RECLUSIVE DIRECTOR :
Stanley Kubrick (directing
The Shining in 1980) may have to appear in public when his
libel suit against Punch magazine goes to trial.
Copyright (c)
1999 Toronto Star, All Rights Reserved.
Enigmatic Kubrick faces exposure., The Toronto Star, 02-17-1999.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
(ASO) 2001: Offbeat Director in Outer Space | NY Times | 1/16/66 | H. Alpert
January 16, 1966
2001': Offbeat Director In Outer Space
By HOLLIS ALPERT
Having annihilated mankind two years ago in "Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," Stanley Kubrick, who was voted the best director of 1964 by the New York Film Critics, and who, at 37, has been called a slightly aging Wunderkind, is now, with somewhat more optimism, heading for outer space with a forthcoming film to be called "2001: A Space Odyssey." The title alone might lead one to expect another bug-eyed-monster movie, but Kubrick, whose films have included such offbeat pictures as "Paths of Glory" and "Lolita," does not deal in the expected. "One thing is certain," says Robert H. O'Brien, president of MGM, the corporation which is backing "2001," "it won't be a Buck Rogers kind of space epic."
O'Brien is a man who chooses his words with care--and Kubrick is a man in a position to choose his company presidents with equal care. He is, as they say, wanted. Stanley Kauffmann, while still reviewing films for The New Republic, called "Dr. Strangelove" "the best American picture that I can remember since Chaplin's 'Monsieur Verdoux' and Huston's 'The Treasure of the Sierre Madre.'" But Kubrick is led by what intrigues and fascinates him most, and right now he is intrigued and fascinated by projections of scientific knowledge and discovery into the foreseeable future.
"Somewhere along my wandering reading," Kubrick said is his office at Elstree, MGM's English studio, where he is shooting "2001," I came across some Rand Corporation statistics on the probability of life in outer space. The ABC's of these statistics are that our galaxy is made up of about a hundred billion stars, that each of these stars is made of the same chemical stuff as our own sun, and that planetary systems thus number in the billions, too. The latest thought on the probability of life in the universe has it that, given a stable planet somewhere between fire and ice--planets like Jupiter are too cold and those like Mercury are too hot--the likelihood would be that life would arise spontaneously."
Obviously, then, Kubrick's new film is going to embody the idea of contact with outer- space life, although he is chary about revealing too many details of his story. He prefers to talk in terms of the background material that led him to his space odyssey. "The Rand Corporation," he said, "estimated 640,000 earth-type planets in our own galaxy--planets so much like ours that you could step out of a space vehicle, take a deep breath of oxygenated air and look up at a blue sky. Most astronomers and other scientists interested in the whole question are strongly convinced that the universe is crawling with life; much of it, since the numbers are so staggering, equal to us in intelligence, or superior, simply because human intelligence has existed for so relatively short a period."
It has become typical of Kubrick to make his entree into a film subject through reading. The Rand Corporation statistics led him farther afield to such speculative areas as prospects for biological immortality, and the possibility of exceeding the speed-of-light barrier postulated by Einstein's theory of relativity. He then did a quick catch-up on reading in the science-fiction field, and liked the writing of Arthur C. Clarke best, because he felt Clarke was the most scientifically grounded. Clarke did not know it, but he had been selected as Kubrick's collaborator.
"Someone I knew also knew Clarke," Kubrick said, vaguely, "and it so happened he was coming to New York." The two met, they talked, they became enthused, they decided to do a story together about a space venture at some point in the future, and finally fixed on 2001 as the year. "We didn't want to get too far out into space," Kubrick explained, "because the thing that seemed most interesting was man's first awareness of extraterrestrial life and the first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. Beyond that stage the mind tends to boggle."
They also decided to do the story in novel form first, using as a starting point a short story of Clarke's called "The Sentinel." "We spent the better part of a year on the novel," Kubrick said. "We'd each do chapters and kick them back and forth. It seemed to me a better kind of attack. If you do a screenplay from an original story idea you tend to leave out those ideas you can't find a ready way of dramatizing. But by doing it as a novel first you have a chance to really think everything out, after which you can figure out ways of dramatizing what you now know are valuable points of the story."
After finishing the first draft of the novel with Clarke, Kubrick had his lawyer and agent, Louis Blau, call O'Brien, who took the manuscript to read, as well as a meticulously detailed budget breakdown showing what the project would entail. O'Brien gave quick approval to the production. "There was agreement all along the line," he said. "Stanley had everything worked out, and the budget was remarkably accurate."
Yet it wasn't so long ago that Hollywood--or rather the complex of studio heads and the hierarchy of producers, stars, and wheeling and dealing big-time agents the term encompasses--regarded Kubrick with extreme suspicion, if not total disdain. "Who is Kubrick?" one agent asked curiously, when Harris inquired about the possibility of obtaining a star client for Kubrick to direct in "Paths of Glory," made in 1957. Kubrick was then a stringy, shaggy-haired Greenwich Villager, not long out of the Bronx, where he was born on July 26, 1928.
His father, a doctor and camera hobbyist, let him fool around with a Graflex when he was 13 and Stanley went on to become his class photographer at Taft High School. He was a nondescript student otherwise, and often missed classes because he was prowling around the city taking pictures. One of them, taken in April, 1945, showed the sad face of a newsstand dealer wreathed by papers with headlines announcing the death of President Roosevelt. Stanley sold the picture to Look, after first checking to see if The Daily News would pay more. He continued to sell picture stories to Look, and became a staff photographer at the magazine after his graduation from high school. Because he did not want to look like a tourist, he carried his camera equipment in a paper shopping bag.
Kubrick's interest in motion pictures was fired by a chum at Taft High School, Alex Singer, who has since become a director himself. Singer had a grandiose plan for turning the Iliad into a movie, and had made sketches for practically every shot of the epic. He spouted the film theories of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, and lured Kubrick into reading their works.
In 1950, when he was 21, Kubrick made his first essay into film-making. He took his carefully husbanded savings from his Look salary and put them into a short about a boxer, called "Day of the Fight." RKO thought it good enough to put it into distribution, and when Kubrick sat in New York's cavernous Paramount Theater and watched his handiwork he was so stirred that he at once handed in his resignation at Look and resolved thenceforth to do nothing but make movies. RKO gave him an advance to make another short, called "Flying Padre." It dealt with a Western priest who visited his parishioners in a Piper Cub. Kubrick, not a whit more solvent, came to the conclusion that shorts, no matter how good, were not the path to successful film-making. He had to make a feature.
Thereupon, he prevailed upon a Greenwich Village friend and poet, Howard Sackler, to compose the script for a moody mélange of violence, sex and symbolism called "Fear and Desire." When this failed to dent the box office, Kubrick took a job as second unit director on the "Omnibus" television series, but only until he had corralled sufficient funds (about $50,000) to try another feature, "Killer's Kiss." For this, he outlined several action scenes, including a murder, a near rape, a chase across New York rooftops, a boxing match and a fight to the death in a mannequin factory. He then connected the scenes with what passed for a screenplay. A lot of the production cost went to pay for wrecking a factory full of mannequins.
United Artists took the picture for distribution, but no profit accrued to Kubrick. Since his two features had been made with his savings, his father's savings, a druggist uncle's savings and deferred payments, Kubrick was monumentally in debt. At this point, in 1955, he met James B. Harris, a millionaire's son who was thinking of becoming a producer. It was Singer who brought the two together. He had met Harris in a Signal Corps film unit during the Korean War, and told him about Kubrick's low-budget efforts.
"You need a property," Harris sagely suggested after sitting through "Fear and Desire" and "Killer's Kiss." "What I can do for you," said Harris, whose money came from his interest in his father's TV film distribution company, Flamingo Films, "is buy you a property and hire some actors for you." Kubrick agreed. The new partners were both 26.
Harris came across a paperback thriller by Lionel White called "Clean Break," about a race-track robbery. He purchased the screen rights, and he and Kubrick went to United Artists, which offered to back the picture for $200,000 if they could get a star for it. The star they found, Sterling Hayden, was not then of the highest magnitude, but Harris insisted he was perfect for the part. (He was, and later he repaid the Harris-Kubrick faith in him by corrosively portraying the psychotic Air Force general in "Dr. Strangelove.") Harris added $120,000 of his own funds to the budget for "The Killing" (the film title for "Clean Break"), in order to give Kubrick more shooting time.
"The Killing" failed at the box office, but was good enough to land on the ten-best lists of Time and The Saturday Review, and to catch the eye of Dore Schary, who was then head of production at MGM. He hired Kubrick and Harris to develop film stories from the MGM files of scripts and purchased novels, but they found nothing they liked.
Kubrick meanwhile found, on his own, a novel he did like, written in 1935 by Humphrey Cobb. It was called "Paths of Glory," and was a harshly antiwar story about an incident in the French Army during World War I: Three soldiers, picked at random, are court- martialed for "mutiny" because of a division's failure to take an impossible objective. Neither Schary nor anyone else at MGM could see any possibilities for commercial success in the story, which had already been turned down by every other major studio.
When Schary was swept out of MGM in a major shake-up, Kubrick and Harris left, too. They managed to interest Kirk Douglas in a script version of "Paths of Glory" that Kubrick had done with Calder Willingham, and United Artists agreed to back it with Douglas as the star. The film was made in Germany at a cost of slightly less than $1- million, just about broke even, was banned in France, but won reviews in which the term "masterpiece" was used--not lightly. It contained some of the most bitterly realistic war scenes ever put on film.
For one thing, the script approved by United Artists had the three protagonists saved at the last moment, contrary to the ending of the book. But in preparing the script for shooting, Kubrick felt uneasy about the ending. It involved a compromise, he said.
"What do we do about an ending, then?" Douglas asked.
"Hell," Kubrick said, "why don't we shoot them?"
"Sure," Douglas said.
When United Artists' executives saw the finished print, they didn't say a word about the changed ending; they were too impressed by the picture. (Kubrick's ability to show the nature of war on the screen has amazed many military men, especially since he has had no military service himself. "He was turned down for the Army on some oddball thing," says Singer.)
In spite of the acclaim he received for "Paths of Glory," Kubrick, who had temporarily settled in Hollywood, did not immediately find more work. One fear-inspiring studio executive looked at the movie and deemed it "the lousiest picture ever made." Reactions of this kind hardly bothered Kubrick who, although he does not believe in biting any hand that might strangle him--as Lyn Tornabene, a writer-friend of his, puts it--is somewhat inclined toward a resentment of all authority. (Singer says this is because he had a natural gift for drawing the worst teachers at Taft.) Kubrick and Harris continued to look for their own properties to develop, and became enthusiastic about the possibilities for a movie based on Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Lolita." In spite of warnings about the censorship difficulties they would encounter, they purchased the screen rights for $150,000, and hired Nabokov to do a screenplay.
Meanwhile, Kubrick's directorial flair had caught the eye of Marlon Brando, and he was hired to direct Brando's pet project, "One-Eyed Jacks," for a reported fee of $100,000. When Kubrick took a look at the script he knew at once that it "needed work," and pitched in to solve its inherent problems. Five months later, after a series of conferences with Brando and associates--which inevitably degenerated into poker games--his contractual time was up, and he left.
Kirk Douglas, as it happened, had just begun filming "Spartacus," his large-scale production, and had run into differences with his director, Anthony Mann. After a week of shooting, Mann left, and Kubrick came in, his fee by now having gone up to $150,000. He made out of "Spartacus" a better-than-average spectacle, but says about it now that the experience was valuable only because it gave him the opportunity to shoot more film: "Every time you do something, you learn something."
The Kubrick-Harris partnership dissolved after "Lolita." There were no real differences of opinion between them. Although Kubrick felt there was a tinge of compromise in choosing Sue Lyon, a 15-year-old at the time, for the key role, instead of a younger nymphet, the picture had been made well and, released by MGM, was highly profitable. Harris went off on his own because he wanted to direct ("The Bedford Incident") as well as produce, and Kubrick because he wanted to produce as well as direct.
For "Dr. Strangelove," Kubrick hired Peter George, author of "Red Alert," the novel on which the film was based, to work on the screenplay with him. But, whereas "Red Alert" was a straight suspense yarn on the fail-safe theme, it was Kubrick's notion to turn it into a nightmarish comedy.
The screenplay was completed, and Kubrick was about ready to put it into production at Shepperton Studios near London, when he decided a brush-up of it might be helpful. The novelist Terry Southern had been assigned by Esquire to do an article on the filming of the picture; Kubrick knew that Southern was a talented writer and decided to employ him on the script "to see if some more decoration might be added to the icing on the cake."
That brief collaboration on an already completed script led to complications which have bewildered and, to a degree, saddened Kubrick, although he prefers not to speak of the subject any longer. When the film appeared, several critics decided its brilliance was due to Southern's contribution; since then, Southern has been referred to time and again as the coauthor of "Dr. Strangelove"; he has been employed frequently on Hollywood movies, and his fee (he received a mere $2,000 for his contributions to "Dr. Strangelove") has risen into the screenwriter's stratosphere.
Although Kubrick does not in the least begrudge Southern's new affluence, he is bothered by the implied slight to his own and Peter George's screen-writing talents. When Martin Ransohoff took a full-page ad in The New York Times to proclaim that "the writer of 'Dr. Strangelove'" was going to meet with the director of "Tom Jones" on "The Loved One," Kubrick threatened legal action. He fired off a telegram to Ransohoff and released a statement to the press, though with little effect.
Part of the statement read: "Mr. Southern was employed from the period of November 16 to December 28, 1962, during which time I wrote in close collaboration with him. During shooting, which began on January 28, 1963, many substantial changes were made in the script by myself and/or Peter George, and sometimes together with the cast during improvisations. Some of the best dialogue was created by Mr. Sellers himself. Mr. Southern took no part in these activities, nor did he receive any further employment, nor did he serve in any consulting role."
"I guess I was being generous when I gave him the third writer's credit on the picture," Kubrick said recently about Southern, "but I thought it might help him get more work, if he wanted it."
Southern says blandly: "Stan may be long on 'generosity' (ha-ha) but I'm afraid he's a bit short on humor (not to mention memory). And what he neglected to say about his 'completed script' is quite simple: It wasn't funny."
Kubrick's approach to directing is based on self-confidence. "There are very few directors," he said recently, "about whom you'd say you automatically have to see everything they do. I'd put Fellini, Bergman and David Lean at the head of my first list, and Truffaut at the head of the next level."
He thinks it is possible to learn more from film that "deals with other things, like documentaries, a few moments in crazy avant-garde movies, and TV commercials, even if they're things that only happen to work for five seconds. Actually, I think some of the most imaginative film-making, stylistically, is to be found in TV commercials. Because they have to have compression, dramatize and make their point in about 30 seconds, some are made with unusual precision. A feature film made with the same kind of care would have to cost about $50-million."
Kubrick's confidence in himself is of the kind that inspires confidence in his co-workers. According to Kirk Douglas, this confidence and his coolness under stress were there from the beginning. "Somehow," said Douglas, after having given one of his finest performances in "Paths of Glory," "Stanley always knew he was good." Part of Kubrick's assurance comes from his intimate understanding of the nature of the complicated equipment he uses. This began with still photography and his knowledge of the intricacies of lighting. By the time he worked with his first Hollywood crew on "The Killing" he knew enough about cinema photography to instruct studio veterans on the lighting setups he wanted. One awed electrician said: "I've been in this business 30 years, and I'm learning stuff from this kid." Very few film directors have this kind of grasp of the technical end of their craft. And Kubrick is equally at home in the cutting room. "Everything you do can be ruined," he once said, "if you don't stand by and see it's cut the way you want it."
He realized early, too, that the success of a picture depends a great deal on the quality of the acting performances a director can obtain. After "Killer's Kiss," which suffered from spotty performances, he spent a great deal of time running old films and analyzing those effects that came from a director's manipulation of his actors. He also boned up on acting theory. During his brief tenure at MGM, after being put on salary by Dore Schary, he went through the studio's film vaults and made such heavy use of the executive screening room--watching star performances of the past--that he was subjected to an executive reprimand. He also learned how to cope with the actor's ego, and part of his technique is to mask his own.
At the same time, his air of knowledge can, according to Kirk Douglas, infuriate an actor at first. "Then," Douglas adds, "you settle down and admire him."
One critical test of Kubrick's control came during the making of "Paths of Glory." He made the veteran actor Adolphe Menjou do the same scene 17 times. "That was my best reading." Menjou announced. "I think we can break for lunch now." It was well past the usual lunch time but Kubrick said he wanted another take.
Menjou went into an absolute fury. In front of Douglas and the entire crew he blasted off on what he claimed was Kubrick's dubious parentage, and made several other unprintable references to Kubrick's relative greenness in the art of directing actors.
Kubrick merely listened calmly, and, after Menjou had spluttered to an uncomplimentary conclusion, said quietly: "All right, let's try the scene once more." With utter docility, Menjou went back to work. "Stanley instinctively knew what to do," Douglas says.
On the other hand, when Kubrick senses that an actor can add creatively to the picture, he is inclined to give him his head. He allowed Peter Sellers in "Dr. Strangelove" to improvise whole scenes. Neither Laurence Olivier nor Peter Ustinov was wholly satisfied with his lines--provided by Dalton Trumbo--in "Spartacus," and they spent several weekends contriving new ones. Kubrick, aware that some were good and some were not, let them do scenes their way, but always made sure to get the takes he wanted, addition. In the cutting room, he put together a Ustinov performance that won an Academy Award.
"He is most certainly in command," George C. Scott, who worked for Kubrick in "Dr. Strangelove," says, "and he's so self-effacing and apologetic it's impossible to be offended by him."
Crew members have reported that the temperamental Mr. Scott was himself drawn out to give one of his best performances without the least awareness of what was happening. Kubrick had an ace in the hole. He is a whiz at chess, having whiled away many hours at the game at the tables in Washington Square Park. "Stanley," Miss Tornabene said, "simply beat Scott at chess and showed him who was boss.
Kubrick's attention to detail is overwhelming. While filming "Dr. Strangelove," he was at the studios at 7 every morning, and seemed to be doing everything except painting the mock H-bombs suspended from scaffolding. He had never seen the interior of a Strategic Air Command bomber but he supervised a design that was chilling in its seeming authenticity. He seemed to be everywhere at once, and Miss Tornabene, who was on the set for a time, reported that "the overwhelming omnipresence of the director had a strange effect on the crew. Awestruck and respectful, they appeared to feel there was no need for their own perfection; the director had more than enough for everyone. They would frequently stand off and watch him rechecking details of their work not with hostility, but with incredulity."
The same sort of awestruck respect of his coworkers was already apparent at Elstree before the actual start of filming on "2001: A Space Odyssey." Tony Masters, an English art director hand-picked by Kubrick, headed a staff of 30 artists slaving over designs for space ships, space stations, hibernaculums for those who would be in suspended animation during periods of a space voyage, and a strange crater on the moon in the middle of which is an odd sort of extraterrestrial artifact. (It would seem to be an alarm that would alert extraterrestrial beings to the fact that human intelligence has evolved to a certain critical point.) As each design was born and drawn it would be brought to Kubrick for approval. If the boss did not like the design, back it went to the drawing board. There was never the slightest objection on the part of anyone to a Kubrick objection: If the boss said it wasn't right, it wasn't. Three special-effects teams slaved to work out the trick effects demanded by Kubrick. These were handpicked men too. So were the two rocket experts, once colleagues of Wernher von Braun whom Kubrick kept around for full-time consultation.
To top off his attention to detail (or chutzpah if you prefer) Kubrick has enlisted the aid (for free) of some of the world's largest corporations on "2001". Firms such as IBM, du Pont, Bausch & Lomb, Eastman Kodak; Minneapolis-Honeywell and General Mills were asked to help him guess what various items would look like 35 years from now. Their research scientists bent to his will and helped him design everything from future computers to what a chair, an item of clothing, or the lounge of a space station would be like in "2001". NASA contributed rocket-ship designs and the like. Vickers- Armstrong of Britain helped him build a huge centrifuge to create artificial gravity on a space station.
"What I'm after," Kubrick says, "is a majestic visual experience," and, in the hope of achieving this, he is filming for the Cinerama screen. "Besides," he says, "Cinerama has the best projection system and the nicest theaters."
If his past history is any guide, Kubrick's trip through space will have its nightmarish elements, too. His imagination has always had a mordant quality, and his style of direction often mingles stark realism with wild touches of fantasy. As early as "Killer's Kiss," he filmed a scene in which a prize fighter wearing boxing gloves and a green dressing gown crossed Fifth Avenue at 42d Street at a sunny, crowded noon hour. In "Dr. Strangelove," American soldiers fought a grimly realistic battle with other American soldiers defending an air-base closed off by an insane general. No doubt what attracted him most to "Lolita" was the nightmare quality of a love affair between a mature man and an immature girl.
His humor, when it asserts itself, tends toward the black and the grisly, and his satire can be savage, as when the Texan pilot of the SAC bomber in "Dr. Strangelove" rides his own hydrogen bomb, waving his hat in patriotic joy at the success of what he thinks is his mission. A scene he shot for the same film involved a pie-throwing battle between Russian and American officials in the War Room, as the moment of doom approached, but Kubrick decided it was too far out, and cut it from the final print.
He toyed for a while with a notion for a film to be called "Blue Movie." This was to be a story about a film director who becomes so great and famous that he gets the financing to make the ultimate pornographic film starring two well-known screen lovers. It is doubtful that Kubrick ever seriously considered making such a movie but Terry Southern liked the notion so much that he got Kubrick's permission to write the story as a novel. Kubrick also confessed to a friend once that he would like to make the world's scariest movie, involving a series of episodes that would play upon the nightmare fears of the audience.
"I sometimes get the feeling," one of his friends said, "that Stanley has never quite grown up--that he has remained an immensely gifted child, needing and demanding attention, but suspicious of those who pay it to him."
Private Life
Along with his early professional vicissitudes, Stanley Kubrick, the director, has run into some marital ones. At 19, already glamorous because of his job as a Look photographer, he married Toba Metz, the prettiest girl in his class at Taft High School. The marriage lasted five years. Soon after, he married Ruth Sobotka, a ballet dancer with George Balanchine's City Center group; that union lasted long enough for her to appear briefly in a ballet sequence in "Killer's Kiss." His third marriage was to Suzanne Christiane Harlan, a German actress who appeared (under the name of Suzanne Christian) in an affecting final scene in "Paths of Glory." That marriage has endured, and the Kubricks have three children from it.--H.A.
Hollis Alpert writes regularly on movies for The Saturday Review. He is the author of a book of essays about films, "The Dreams and the Dreamers," and of "The Barrymores."
(GEN) Stanley Kubrick’s Legacy | 7/6/99 | MovieMaker Magazine | V. LoBrutto
Stanley Kubrick’s Legacy / The Legacy of Stanley Kubrick | MovieMaker Magazine
Stanley Kubrick’s Legacy
The Legacy of Stanley Kubrick
by Vincent LoBrutto | Published July 6, 1999
Stanley Kubrick was a living legend. He was a film director who invented
himself. Positioned between the directors of the Hollywood studio system and the
generation trained in university film schools, Stanley Kubrick was an autodidact
and a twentieth century filmmaking pioneer. He completed only 13 features in a
half-century, but his larger-than-life status was achieved by his consistency of
vision, fierce dedication to total control, and mastery of the cinematic medium.
Citing his unique contribution to the most popular art form of the 20th century,
Steven Spielberg called Kubrick the grand master of filmmaking and observed that
"He created more than just movies. He gave us complete environmental experiences
that got more, not less, intense the more you watched his pictures. He copied no
one, while all of us were scrambling to imitate him."
Kubrick was a poor student with low grades when he became captivated by still
photography as a teenage boy in the Bronx. His obsession with the photographed
image led to filmmaking. Kubrick was a wunderkind staff photographer for Look
magazine when he decided he was going to make a film short. The film Day of the
Fight, based on a Look photostory, was 22-year-old Kubrick's first venture into
the medium. Working with his documentary subject, middleweight boxer Walter
Cartier, Kubrick created the screenplay and learned how to operate a movie
camera by countertop instruction from a rental house salesman. Later, to edit
the film, he taught himself how to operate a Moviola and then constructed the
soundtrack frame by frame during the sound editing process. The project led to
Kubrick's second short subject, Flying Padre, and an industrial commission, The
Seafarers.
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Kubrick made the leap to independent feature filmmaking by convincing his uncle
Martin Perveler to finance a low-budget film. Kubrick co-wrote the existentially
drenched script with Howard O. Sackler, who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for
The Great White Hope. Kubrick photographed the film himself in black and white
without studio assistance or Hollywood professionals. Although the film is
crude, it reveals the raw beginnings of his dynamic sense of cinematic
composition and introduces themes he tackled throughout his career-the futility
of war and the cruel nature of man.
Kubrick's second feature film, Killer's Kiss, was also a totally independent
venture. The film was shot on location in New York City with Kubrick behind the
camera. A testament to guerrilla filmmaking, it is a noir portrait of a
down-and-out boxer photographed in bleak black and white. Though Kubrick later
referred to the film as the equivalent of a student undertaking, Killer's Kiss
achieves a documentary environment with haunting, surreal overtones.
After two features Kubrick moved beyond his self-proclaimed amateur status and
formed Harris-Kubrick Pictures with producer James B. Harris. Their first
collaboration was The Killing, an adaptation of the novel Clean Break, the story
of a racetrack robbery which was structured in a time-shuttling narrative
presenting multiple points of view by moving back and forth in the timeline. The
film starred Sterling Hayden and featured a cast of veteran crime film actors.
Kubrick again wanted to photograph the film, which was being produced in
Hollywood, but the cameraman's union wouldn't allow it. Instead, Kubrick hired
master director of photography Lucien## Ballard and stood up to the venerable
cameraman for every shot of his dynamic uncompromising vision. The Killing is
the first mature Stanley Kubrick film. The hopelessness of crime is portrayed by
the noir narrative and the existential style. The characters are entrapped by
the use of space and camera movement. The Kubrick aesthetic of meticulously
symmetrical compositions gives The Killing an austere visual style.
The second Harris-Kubrick production was Paths of Glory, an adaptation of the
Humphrey Cobb World War I novel. The two filmmakers managed to entice Kirk
Douglas to star in the film and to produce the project under the aegis of his
Bryna Productions. Universally acclaimed as one of the great anti-war films,
Paths of Glory reveals the ugly politics of war as three innocent French
soldiers are sacrificed for the explosive egos of their superiors. Kubrick
continued to evolve his decisive visual style. Shots were centered and carefully
counterbalanced. Kubrick had long admired the fluid camera movement of Max
Ophuls and the gruesome trench scenes which open the film and fuel the narrative
are shot with a relentless tracking camera. Kubrick's powerful use of the dolly
shot leapt into cinematic parlance as a "Kubrick dolly shot" defining the
technique of moving the camera either forward or back while shooting straight on
to maintain a pristinely center-framed composition.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
In 1960 Kubrick directed Spartacus when star Kirk Douglas asked him to take over
for Anthony Mann who wasremoved from the production. Although Spartacus ranks
amongst the best of the "epic" genre, Kubrick's lack of artistic control
convinced him to turn away from Hollywood, a decision that lasted the full
extent of his career. Kubrick's displeasure with his limited authority caused
friction with Douglas on the Spartacus set. "He'll be a fine director someday,
if he falls flat on his face just once. It might teach him how to compromise."
Next, Harris-Kubrick took on the scandalous literary masterwork Lolita. Kubrick
mounted the production in England, far from Hollywood, for several logical
reasons. The studios were well-equipped, the technicians well-trained, the
budget costs restrained and he could exercise total control over the film.
Lolita was a handsome production in black-and-white. Kubrick's challenge was to
maneuver Nabokov's erotic and verboten sexual matter past the Code Seal censors
and the all-mighty and omniscient Catholic church. Kubrick and Harris acted on
high levels of diplomacy to pull off the feat while imbuing their Lolita with
rich black humor and layers of double entendres.
Lolita ended the 10-year Harris-Kubrick relationship and began Kubrick's
residency as an American film director who worked exclusively in the UK. Kubrick
next chose to tackle the subject of nuclear annihilation. He began by
researching the science and philosophy of nuclear war and optioning Red Alert, a
serious dramatic novel by Peter George. Although Kubrick had long been
personally terrified by the potential of an all-out nuclear war, he eventually
turned his devilish sense of black humor on the project. Novelist Terry Southern
turned the original story on its head and the film was renamed Dr. Strangelove
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Shooting in black and
white on a soundstage in England, Kubrick was in supreme command of the content
and the visual style of the film. Production designer Ken Adam who had created
the look for the James Bond film series, invented the circular-structured War
Room and recreated the interior of the U.S. bomber cockpits without receiving
official permission to examine the real thing. Based on intensive research in
military magazines Adam brought realism to the outrageous comedy and imagination
to the notion of a War Room used to plan global conflicts. Adam and Kubrick were
so successful they even fooled President Ronald Reagan, who at the dawn of his
first term, anxiously asked to tour the White House War Room which only existed
in movieland.
Paths of Glory (1957)
In 1964 Stanley Kubrick embarked on a four year odyssey to make a new kind of
science fiction film. He collaborated with Arthur C. Clarke on a novel to be
adapted into a screenplay. Kubrick was not happy with any of the special effect
technology available so he set out with a team of four effects innovators and
invented the technology to bring his vision to the screen. The result, 2001: A
Space Odyssey, is a landmark film on many fronts. The non-narrative structure
which relies on issues/34/images and sound to communicate had a substantial
impact on commercial filmmaking. The look of the film inspired countless films
of the genre-notably the Star Wars series and Blade Runner. With 2001 Kubrick
established a new working method. He began taking more time between projects. He
would decide on a topic or genre and research the field totally. Now living
permanently outside of London, he would develop the visuals down to the most
minute detail. Exercising total and complete authority over all the crafts
involved in his movies, Kubrick was now operating on his own terms. His take
ratio began to climb. Soon his only contact with Hollywood was in connection
with the distribution of his work. After 2001, Kubrick made a deal with Warner
Bros. which would last for the rest of his career and life. Warner's would
distribute his films with no questions asked. Kubrick had final say over
subject, content, cast, crew and, of course, the director's beloved final cut.
Kubrick's "no compromise" reputation was burgeoning at the same time as
mythology was developing around his personality traits and work methods. Keir
Dullea, who starred in 2001, tried to set the record straight. "H's a very quiet
man and your dealings with him were intimate in that sense. Good directors are
wonderful con men. The best directors all have that facility. He had a quiet
power. He was such a stickler for detail, but there was nothing tyrannical about
him. Stanley was a true Renaissance man. He knew about so many things having
nothing to do with filmmaking."
Often Kubrick used the adaptation process to completely revise the narrative of
a novel to tell his own story, but his adaptation of Anthony Burgess's A
Clockwork Orange was absolutely faithful to the author in story and
visualization. Kubrick was attracted to the idea that a person's nature and will
could be altered by applied science. The violence and language are presented in
over-the-top comic book fashion, creating a disturbing impact on the audience.
The point of the film is to support free will wherever it surfaces, including in
violent and sexual impulses. A Clockwork Orange is structured in three sections
and is rendered in precise and vivid pictorial detail. The film was originally
rated 'X' in the U.S. and Kubrick himself banned the film in the UK when copycat
crimes began to surface. The film continues to speak directly to young audiences
even after over 25 years in release.
Next Kubrick chose to make the ultimate period film, selecting Barry Lyndon,
considered a minor Thackeray novel by scholars. Barry is a common thief and a
rogue who marries for wealth and power. Kubrick tells his story with dark humor
in the style of an English novel. A proper English-accented narrator and title
cards give the film a literary illusion. The visuals are highly pictorial,
perfectly centered and adorned with lavish details gathered from the exacting
study of paintings from the period. Barry Lyndon is the first film to shoot
scenes exclusively lit by candlelight. Kubrick had a still photography lens
mounted to his Panavision movie camera. The result is not only realistic, but
transports the viewer back in time as it illuminates the patina of the period
environment. The constant narration, repetitive classical music score and lack
of action and dramaturgy played poorly in the United States, but the film was
well-received throughout Europe. Eventually Barry Lyndon began to be recognized
and appreciated by critics and re-evaluation has placed it on international best
films lists.
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Kubrick's next project began as a quest to make the most terrifying horror film
ever made. Kubrick read through the classic and contemporary canon of horror
fiction and selected Stephen King's The Shining. The novel was very loosely
adapted into a film that explored the horror of family violence and the ghosts
of a haunted hotel. Kubrick's work always combines a dark narrative of ideas
with technical virtuosity that brings the vision to life. King's Overlook Hotel
was actually built to full scale on a soundstage in London. Kubrick had learned
of the Steadicam, a new deviceinvented by Garrett Brown, which allowed free and
smooth movement of the camera. The massive and realistically detailed set was
built with the Steadicam in mind even though Kubrick had not yet seen the
prototype. Brown's work on the film following Danny Torrance around on his Big
Wheel trike helped expand the grammar of the moving camera. The Shining is an
unconventional horror film which provokes the audience with its creepy sound
design and well-positioned title cards as well as traditional effects like
ghosts and gore. The Shining has enduring popularity; the Jack Nicholson's
perennial star power memorialized Jack Torrance's "Here's Johnny" in modern film
vernacular. Nicholson praised Kubrick's perfectionism. "Stanley's demanding.
He'll do a scene 50 times and you have to be good to do that. There are so many
ways to walk into a room, order breakfast, or be frightened to death in a
closet. Stanley's approach is, 'How can we do it better than it's ever been done
before?' It's a big challenge. A lot of actors give him what he wants. If you
don't, he'll beat it out of you. With a velvet glove, of course."
Kubrick's obsession with war led him to take on the Vietnam conflict even though
major filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Cimino and Oliver Stone had
explored the subject from emotional, psychological and realistic vantages.
Kubrick used Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers as an armature for Full
Metal Jacket. Never one for realism at the expense of what he found truly
interesting, Kubrick took the film's language and violence to a heightened
actuality. Kubrick and his production designer, Anton Furst, built the Marine
training camp on a soundstage and backlot. The barracks were created down to the
last meticulous detail, but Kubrick's center-perfect compositions and the fluid
forward and back dead-on positioned dolly shots gave the environment a surreal
quality as real-life drill Sergeant Lee Ermey articulated his training lingo at
absurdist levels. Other filmmakers took on the jungles of Vietnam, Kubrick went
into the heart of the city, mobilizing his camera and the Steadicam through the
rock and rubble he created.
Spartacus (1960)
Full Metal Jacket was released in 1987 and was a modest success. To the public,
Stanley Kubrick went into a long silence, but the secretive and reclusive
filmmaker continued to work every day on numerous projects. In 1993 Kubrick was
ready to put Aryan Papers into production in Europe. The film, an adaptation of
Louis Begley's Holocaust novel Wartime Lies, was canceled, many speculate
because of Steven Spielberg's award-winning production of Schindler's List.
Kubrick also was in pre-production on A.I. (artificial intelligence), based on a
short story by science fiction master Brian Aldiss. Kubrick felt the special
effect technology was not advanced enough for the film and put it on the back
burner.
Next up was Kubrick's longtime fascination with Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Novel,
a film he'd been developing since the early '70s. Kubrick sent a fax to Tom
Cruise and Nicole Kidman and immediately got the power couple on board as his
stars. Even in the "communications" age, Stanley Kubrick had the capacity to
keep Eyes Wide Shut shrouded in secrecy. Prior to its July 16, 1999 release only
select factoids were confirmed. The adaptation brings Schnitzler's story into
contemporary times and transplants the European locale to New York (built on a
London soundstage and backlot). The scenario is an erotic thriller and
tantalizing trailers show an unadorned Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in
compromising positions.
The Shining (1980)
Shortly after the completion of Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick died suddenly in
the early morning of March 7, 1999. For his fans worldwide, the unthinkable had
happened. Although Kubrick rarely gave interviews, almost never left his
residence in England and was absent to a hungry multimedia, his presence was
always felt. Stanley Kubrick was always out there makingmovies, a one-of-a-kind
filmmaker, the definition of a legend. He leaves Eyes Wide Shut as his last
major work. We will never see Aryan Papers or A.I. or his production of
Napoleon, one of the cinema's great unmade potential masterworks. After his
death a tearful Steven Spielberg announced he had been working with Kubrick for
three years on a project he would direct to be produced by Stanley Kubrick. Out
of respect for the master, Spielberg wouldn't elaborate on the project or even
reveal the subject matter.
Stanley Kubrick has now taken his place in the international pantheon of
celebrated 20th century film directors. His legacy is 13 feature films and some
of the greatest moments in all of world cinema. Though he left moviegoers with
so many unforgettable issues/34/images (the Star Child in 2001, the trenches of
doom in Paths of Glory, the mesmerizing maze of The Shining and a hundred
others) most of all he has left us with the confirmation that film is not only
an art form, but perhaps the greatest of art forms. MM
Stanley Kubrick’s Legacy
The Legacy of Stanley Kubrick
by Vincent LoBrutto | Published July 6, 1999
Stanley Kubrick was a living legend. He was a film director who invented
himself. Positioned between the directors of the Hollywood studio system and the
generation trained in university film schools, Stanley Kubrick was an autodidact
and a twentieth century filmmaking pioneer. He completed only 13 features in a
half-century, but his larger-than-life status was achieved by his consistency of
vision, fierce dedication to total control, and mastery of the cinematic medium.
Citing his unique contribution to the most popular art form of the 20th century,
Steven Spielberg called Kubrick the grand master of filmmaking and observed that
"He created more than just movies. He gave us complete environmental experiences
that got more, not less, intense the more you watched his pictures. He copied no
one, while all of us were scrambling to imitate him."
Kubrick was a poor student with low grades when he became captivated by still
photography as a teenage boy in the Bronx. His obsession with the photographed
image led to filmmaking. Kubrick was a wunderkind staff photographer for Look
magazine when he decided he was going to make a film short. The film Day of the
Fight, based on a Look photostory, was 22-year-old Kubrick's first venture into
the medium. Working with his documentary subject, middleweight boxer Walter
Cartier, Kubrick created the screenplay and learned how to operate a movie
camera by countertop instruction from a rental house salesman. Later, to edit
the film, he taught himself how to operate a Moviola and then constructed the
soundtrack frame by frame during the sound editing process. The project led to
Kubrick's second short subject, Flying Padre, and an industrial commission, The
Seafarers.
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Kubrick made the leap to independent feature filmmaking by convincing his uncle
Martin Perveler to finance a low-budget film. Kubrick co-wrote the existentially
drenched script with Howard O. Sackler, who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for
The Great White Hope. Kubrick photographed the film himself in black and white
without studio assistance or Hollywood professionals. Although the film is
crude, it reveals the raw beginnings of his dynamic sense of cinematic
composition and introduces themes he tackled throughout his career-the futility
of war and the cruel nature of man.
Kubrick's second feature film, Killer's Kiss, was also a totally independent
venture. The film was shot on location in New York City with Kubrick behind the
camera. A testament to guerrilla filmmaking, it is a noir portrait of a
down-and-out boxer photographed in bleak black and white. Though Kubrick later
referred to the film as the equivalent of a student undertaking, Killer's Kiss
achieves a documentary environment with haunting, surreal overtones.
After two features Kubrick moved beyond his self-proclaimed amateur status and
formed Harris-Kubrick Pictures with producer James B. Harris. Their first
collaboration was The Killing, an adaptation of the novel Clean Break, the story
of a racetrack robbery which was structured in a time-shuttling narrative
presenting multiple points of view by moving back and forth in the timeline. The
film starred Sterling Hayden and featured a cast of veteran crime film actors.
Kubrick again wanted to photograph the film, which was being produced in
Hollywood, but the cameraman's union wouldn't allow it. Instead, Kubrick hired
master director of photography Lucien## Ballard and stood up to the venerable
cameraman for every shot of his dynamic uncompromising vision. The Killing is
the first mature Stanley Kubrick film. The hopelessness of crime is portrayed by
the noir narrative and the existential style. The characters are entrapped by
the use of space and camera movement. The Kubrick aesthetic of meticulously
symmetrical compositions gives The Killing an austere visual style.
The second Harris-Kubrick production was Paths of Glory, an adaptation of the
Humphrey Cobb World War I novel. The two filmmakers managed to entice Kirk
Douglas to star in the film and to produce the project under the aegis of his
Bryna Productions. Universally acclaimed as one of the great anti-war films,
Paths of Glory reveals the ugly politics of war as three innocent French
soldiers are sacrificed for the explosive egos of their superiors. Kubrick
continued to evolve his decisive visual style. Shots were centered and carefully
counterbalanced. Kubrick had long admired the fluid camera movement of Max
Ophuls and the gruesome trench scenes which open the film and fuel the narrative
are shot with a relentless tracking camera. Kubrick's powerful use of the dolly
shot leapt into cinematic parlance as a "Kubrick dolly shot" defining the
technique of moving the camera either forward or back while shooting straight on
to maintain a pristinely center-framed composition.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
In 1960 Kubrick directed Spartacus when star Kirk Douglas asked him to take over
for Anthony Mann who wasremoved from the production. Although Spartacus ranks
amongst the best of the "epic" genre, Kubrick's lack of artistic control
convinced him to turn away from Hollywood, a decision that lasted the full
extent of his career. Kubrick's displeasure with his limited authority caused
friction with Douglas on the Spartacus set. "He'll be a fine director someday,
if he falls flat on his face just once. It might teach him how to compromise."
Next, Harris-Kubrick took on the scandalous literary masterwork Lolita. Kubrick
mounted the production in England, far from Hollywood, for several logical
reasons. The studios were well-equipped, the technicians well-trained, the
budget costs restrained and he could exercise total control over the film.
Lolita was a handsome production in black-and-white. Kubrick's challenge was to
maneuver Nabokov's erotic and verboten sexual matter past the Code Seal censors
and the all-mighty and omniscient Catholic church. Kubrick and Harris acted on
high levels of diplomacy to pull off the feat while imbuing their Lolita with
rich black humor and layers of double entendres.
Lolita ended the 10-year Harris-Kubrick relationship and began Kubrick's
residency as an American film director who worked exclusively in the UK. Kubrick
next chose to tackle the subject of nuclear annihilation. He began by
researching the science and philosophy of nuclear war and optioning Red Alert, a
serious dramatic novel by Peter George. Although Kubrick had long been
personally terrified by the potential of an all-out nuclear war, he eventually
turned his devilish sense of black humor on the project. Novelist Terry Southern
turned the original story on its head and the film was renamed Dr. Strangelove
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Shooting in black and
white on a soundstage in England, Kubrick was in supreme command of the content
and the visual style of the film. Production designer Ken Adam who had created
the look for the James Bond film series, invented the circular-structured War
Room and recreated the interior of the U.S. bomber cockpits without receiving
official permission to examine the real thing. Based on intensive research in
military magazines Adam brought realism to the outrageous comedy and imagination
to the notion of a War Room used to plan global conflicts. Adam and Kubrick were
so successful they even fooled President Ronald Reagan, who at the dawn of his
first term, anxiously asked to tour the White House War Room which only existed
in movieland.
Paths of Glory (1957)
In 1964 Stanley Kubrick embarked on a four year odyssey to make a new kind of
science fiction film. He collaborated with Arthur C. Clarke on a novel to be
adapted into a screenplay. Kubrick was not happy with any of the special effect
technology available so he set out with a team of four effects innovators and
invented the technology to bring his vision to the screen. The result, 2001: A
Space Odyssey, is a landmark film on many fronts. The non-narrative structure
which relies on issues/34/images and sound to communicate had a substantial
impact on commercial filmmaking. The look of the film inspired countless films
of the genre-notably the Star Wars series and Blade Runner. With 2001 Kubrick
established a new working method. He began taking more time between projects. He
would decide on a topic or genre and research the field totally. Now living
permanently outside of London, he would develop the visuals down to the most
minute detail. Exercising total and complete authority over all the crafts
involved in his movies, Kubrick was now operating on his own terms. His take
ratio began to climb. Soon his only contact with Hollywood was in connection
with the distribution of his work. After 2001, Kubrick made a deal with Warner
Bros. which would last for the rest of his career and life. Warner's would
distribute his films with no questions asked. Kubrick had final say over
subject, content, cast, crew and, of course, the director's beloved final cut.
Kubrick's "no compromise" reputation was burgeoning at the same time as
mythology was developing around his personality traits and work methods. Keir
Dullea, who starred in 2001, tried to set the record straight. "H's a very quiet
man and your dealings with him were intimate in that sense. Good directors are
wonderful con men. The best directors all have that facility. He had a quiet
power. He was such a stickler for detail, but there was nothing tyrannical about
him. Stanley was a true Renaissance man. He knew about so many things having
nothing to do with filmmaking."
Often Kubrick used the adaptation process to completely revise the narrative of
a novel to tell his own story, but his adaptation of Anthony Burgess's A
Clockwork Orange was absolutely faithful to the author in story and
visualization. Kubrick was attracted to the idea that a person's nature and will
could be altered by applied science. The violence and language are presented in
over-the-top comic book fashion, creating a disturbing impact on the audience.
The point of the film is to support free will wherever it surfaces, including in
violent and sexual impulses. A Clockwork Orange is structured in three sections
and is rendered in precise and vivid pictorial detail. The film was originally
rated 'X' in the U.S. and Kubrick himself banned the film in the UK when copycat
crimes began to surface. The film continues to speak directly to young audiences
even after over 25 years in release.
Next Kubrick chose to make the ultimate period film, selecting Barry Lyndon,
considered a minor Thackeray novel by scholars. Barry is a common thief and a
rogue who marries for wealth and power. Kubrick tells his story with dark humor
in the style of an English novel. A proper English-accented narrator and title
cards give the film a literary illusion. The visuals are highly pictorial,
perfectly centered and adorned with lavish details gathered from the exacting
study of paintings from the period. Barry Lyndon is the first film to shoot
scenes exclusively lit by candlelight. Kubrick had a still photography lens
mounted to his Panavision movie camera. The result is not only realistic, but
transports the viewer back in time as it illuminates the patina of the period
environment. The constant narration, repetitive classical music score and lack
of action and dramaturgy played poorly in the United States, but the film was
well-received throughout Europe. Eventually Barry Lyndon began to be recognized
and appreciated by critics and re-evaluation has placed it on international best
films lists.
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Kubrick's next project began as a quest to make the most terrifying horror film
ever made. Kubrick read through the classic and contemporary canon of horror
fiction and selected Stephen King's The Shining. The novel was very loosely
adapted into a film that explored the horror of family violence and the ghosts
of a haunted hotel. Kubrick's work always combines a dark narrative of ideas
with technical virtuosity that brings the vision to life. King's Overlook Hotel
was actually built to full scale on a soundstage in London. Kubrick had learned
of the Steadicam, a new deviceinvented by Garrett Brown, which allowed free and
smooth movement of the camera. The massive and realistically detailed set was
built with the Steadicam in mind even though Kubrick had not yet seen the
prototype. Brown's work on the film following Danny Torrance around on his Big
Wheel trike helped expand the grammar of the moving camera. The Shining is an
unconventional horror film which provokes the audience with its creepy sound
design and well-positioned title cards as well as traditional effects like
ghosts and gore. The Shining has enduring popularity; the Jack Nicholson's
perennial star power memorialized Jack Torrance's "Here's Johnny" in modern film
vernacular. Nicholson praised Kubrick's perfectionism. "Stanley's demanding.
He'll do a scene 50 times and you have to be good to do that. There are so many
ways to walk into a room, order breakfast, or be frightened to death in a
closet. Stanley's approach is, 'How can we do it better than it's ever been done
before?' It's a big challenge. A lot of actors give him what he wants. If you
don't, he'll beat it out of you. With a velvet glove, of course."
Kubrick's obsession with war led him to take on the Vietnam conflict even though
major filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Cimino and Oliver Stone had
explored the subject from emotional, psychological and realistic vantages.
Kubrick used Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers as an armature for Full
Metal Jacket. Never one for realism at the expense of what he found truly
interesting, Kubrick took the film's language and violence to a heightened
actuality. Kubrick and his production designer, Anton Furst, built the Marine
training camp on a soundstage and backlot. The barracks were created down to the
last meticulous detail, but Kubrick's center-perfect compositions and the fluid
forward and back dead-on positioned dolly shots gave the environment a surreal
quality as real-life drill Sergeant Lee Ermey articulated his training lingo at
absurdist levels. Other filmmakers took on the jungles of Vietnam, Kubrick went
into the heart of the city, mobilizing his camera and the Steadicam through the
rock and rubble he created.
Spartacus (1960)
Full Metal Jacket was released in 1987 and was a modest success. To the public,
Stanley Kubrick went into a long silence, but the secretive and reclusive
filmmaker continued to work every day on numerous projects. In 1993 Kubrick was
ready to put Aryan Papers into production in Europe. The film, an adaptation of
Louis Begley's Holocaust novel Wartime Lies, was canceled, many speculate
because of Steven Spielberg's award-winning production of Schindler's List.
Kubrick also was in pre-production on A.I. (artificial intelligence), based on a
short story by science fiction master Brian Aldiss. Kubrick felt the special
effect technology was not advanced enough for the film and put it on the back
burner.
Next up was Kubrick's longtime fascination with Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Novel,
a film he'd been developing since the early '70s. Kubrick sent a fax to Tom
Cruise and Nicole Kidman and immediately got the power couple on board as his
stars. Even in the "communications" age, Stanley Kubrick had the capacity to
keep Eyes Wide Shut shrouded in secrecy. Prior to its July 16, 1999 release only
select factoids were confirmed. The adaptation brings Schnitzler's story into
contemporary times and transplants the European locale to New York (built on a
London soundstage and backlot). The scenario is an erotic thriller and
tantalizing trailers show an unadorned Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in
compromising positions.
The Shining (1980)
Shortly after the completion of Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick died suddenly in
the early morning of March 7, 1999. For his fans worldwide, the unthinkable had
happened. Although Kubrick rarely gave interviews, almost never left his
residence in England and was absent to a hungry multimedia, his presence was
always felt. Stanley Kubrick was always out there makingmovies, a one-of-a-kind
filmmaker, the definition of a legend. He leaves Eyes Wide Shut as his last
major work. We will never see Aryan Papers or A.I. or his production of
Napoleon, one of the cinema's great unmade potential masterworks. After his
death a tearful Steven Spielberg announced he had been working with Kubrick for
three years on a project he would direct to be produced by Stanley Kubrick. Out
of respect for the master, Spielberg wouldn't elaborate on the project or even
reveal the subject matter.
Stanley Kubrick has now taken his place in the international pantheon of
celebrated 20th century film directors. His legacy is 13 feature films and some
of the greatest moments in all of world cinema. Though he left moviegoers with
so many unforgettable issues/34/images (the Star Child in 2001, the trenches of
doom in Paths of Glory, the mesmerizing maze of The Shining and a hundred
others) most of all he has left us with the confirmation that film is not only
an art form, but perhaps the greatest of art forms. MM
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