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.
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