I was going to start a thread about A CLOCKWORK ORANGE but wanted to see if there was an old one I could bump first. Couldn’t find an existing thread (the fuck?), but in the process of searching for one I came across a bunch of ancient Kubrick-related CHUD threads I’ve collated below as a public service since I already went to the trouble of clicking through all of them. Times like these are why I will forever be grateful to Nick for making the effort to preserve the content of the old forums.
Something that has long interested me is where Kubrick is perceived to sit on the spectrum from auteur to commercial film maker. I know a lot of people will say “auteur” without hesitation, but there’s plenty of evidence that Kubrick was very concerned about box office, profit and reaching the largest possible audience. He may have been uncompromising in his art, but he was also a calculating business man, and it’s not a side of him that gets explored a lot despite the fact that a number of his friends have portrayed it quite candidly.
One of his collaborators and friends Michael Herr thought of Kubrick’s movies as “art films with blockbuster pretensions.” He painted Kubrick as someone obsessed with grosses, who became almost jealously interested in any movie that crossed the $100 million mark (back when that was an impressive feat that implied cultural impact), who complained for years that Jack Nicholson made more money than he did on THE SHINING.
Kubrick somewhat ruthlessly sabotaged the release of FAIL SAFE so that it wouldn’t be a box office competitor to DR. STRANGELOVE. He cast a tabloid couple for (what was at least marketed as) a steamy, erotic thriller. He was notoriously cheap with his talent, which probably helped keep his extremely long shoots cost-effective. And most of Kubrick’s films were in fact commercial successes, albeit modest ones. It’s been put forth that Kubrick made a horror movie - based on a best-selling book, no less - after BARRY LYNDON because he wanted to make a movie with wider commercial appeal after a box office disappointment. When THE SHINING debuted soft and Warner Bros. told the director the film was too long, he shrugged and cut out twenty-five minutes for the international release, just like that.
These things don’t exactly square with the common depiction of Kubrick as a walled-off artiste who was precious about every frame, who never let his material be influenced by outside forces, least of all audience expectations. Neither does this quote from Kubrick:
Kubrick was pretty dismissive of most Hollywood films precisely because their expense meant that they had to compromise in order to get their money back, yet he wasn’t much kinder to the underground movement, stating “I haven’t really seen any good underground movies.” In the same interview, he lauds the independent film GIRLFRIENDS, but is quick to stress that he distinguishes Claudia Weill’s work as “a low-budget professional film” rather than an “underground film.” It isn’t clear what the difference is.
At the end of the day, Kubrick was of course incapable of making anything other than a Kubrick movie, which meant that he was never going to get a STAR WARS type hit. But you get the sense that he kind of wanted to. I’m not going to go as far as to say that Stanley Kubrick was a frustrated populist film maker, but I think he was somewhat jealous or fascinated by film makers who succeeded greatly in the mainstream, just as I’m sure many mainstream directors were jealous of the nonpareil independence he enjoyed despite also spending from a major studio’s billfold.
Piggybacking off Fatherdude, I’m genuinely curious to know what he thought about STAR WARS and other blockbusters. I know he worked with Spielberg, but I’m curious to know what he thought about Spielberg’s films.
I know that Kubrick apparently liked 1941 but thought it should have not been marketed as a comedy. There’s also this:
People have taken that quote (if we assume it to be true - which isn’t always easy when it comes to Raphael on Kubrick) to mean Kubrick was trashing the movie, but I don’t think he disliked SCHINDLER’S LIST. I think he was just saying the focus of the film was necessarily much narrower than the Holocaust in all its scope and horror. Kubrick had a attempted to make a Holocaust movie for years but finally abandoned it after considering it an unfilmable subject, at least within the confines of a 2-3 hour feature. Much like the Napoleon movie, I suppose. I bet Kubrick would have excited about the comeback of the mini-series format.
I know that Spielberg and Kubrick first met on the set of THE SHINING, because Spielberg was waiting for Kubrick to move off the stages so that RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK could move in. THE SHINING originally booked Elstree Studios for something like six months and it turned into something like thirteen months (partly due to a fire). They were friends thereafter.
Kubrick’s MO was to call a director after he’d seen a movie he liked and drill them with questions. I know he did this to George Sluizer after seeing THE VANISHING, to Albert Brooks after seeing MODERN ROMANCE, and to Robert Zemeckis after seeing WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. When JURASSIC PARK came out, he melted Spielberg’s phone asking about effects, because until that movie Kubrick didn’t think technology was at a point where his A.I. project would be monetarily feasible.
Kubrick obviously had a lot of respect for Spielberg, but I can’t find any first-hand opinions about specific Spielberg films. Of course, that probably has more to do with how few interviews Kubrick granted than anything else.
Speaking of Kubrick interviews, if this is going to be the Kubrick catch-all thread it might be valuable in the long-term to collect them all here. This site seems to have lassoed most of them. (A highlight is Kubrick’s tiff with The New York Times when A CLOCKWORK ORANGE came out.) There are also interviews that Kubrick gave to French critic Michel Ciment that appear in Ciment’s 1981 book. They can be found here:
Then there are the super rare audio interviews. The first is with Jeremy Bernstein, who interviewed Kubrick as a basis for this New Yorker piece. It is believed that this recording is really two different sit-downs - one in late 1965 and one in early 1966 - while 2001 was being filmed.
Then there are three stitched-together interviews he gave Michel Ciment upon the release of BARRY LYNDON, THE SHINING, and FULL METAL JACKET respectively. I believe these were the basis for some of the text interviews in the Ciment book - apparently Kubrick asked to revise his answers after the fact, which is why this sounds almost like a first draft of those interviews. The annoying edits you will hear have to do with the fact that this originated from a French radio program, and all of the questions and answers were repeated in French by an interpreter. The person who made this video removed the French translations, but because the translator often talked over the original English, the result is a bit jarring.
Anyone have a chance to see FILMWORKER, about Leon Vitali? I’m curious about it. Especially since the guy who made it is making the upcoming EYES WIDE SHUT documentary.
I did watch S IS FOR STANLEY (on Netflix) which is about another one of Kubrick’s assistants and confidants, his driver Emilio D’Alessandro. Emilio shows up as a side character in many accounts about Kubrick. In the doc he comes off as an incredibly humble person who found himself happily devoting his life to, essentially, running Stanley Kubrick’s errands. He didn’t particularly care about movies, and despite that (or perhaps because of it) was one of the people who knew Kubrick most intimately. There’s a funny anecdote toward the end where he talks about how finally watched Kubrick’s films very late in life (like maybe the 90s). He declared that his favorite was SPARTACUS, much to Kubrick’s chagrin.
Happy Birthday Stanley! He would have been 90 today. How should we celebrate? I think tonight calls for a viewing of THE KILLING, his most underrated movie.
I re-watched THE KILLING just the other week! And didn’t even bump the thread about it, which must be some sort of record.
THE KILLING is so good. It’s the RESERVOIR DOGS of the 50s, complete with the nonlinear storytelling and homoerotic subtext. Elisha Cook Jr. is the film noir sap.
That Kubrick would have been 90 today reinforces how young he was when we lost him. In the doc, Emilio basically makes it sound like he worked himself to death, pulling all-nighters in the editing room and looking alarmingly underslept. I guess when you pull that stuff in your 20s/30s you feel lousy, and when you pull it at age 70 your heart gives out.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that was a Kubrick tribute on Nolan’s part.
And let’s not forget Timothy Carey, who was apparently just as scary in real life as he looked on screen and was so disruptive on PATHS OF GLORY that Kubrick fired him and used a double for the character’s remaining shots. Tarantino apparently considered him for the Lawrence “I Wasn’t Asked Back On Seinfeld Because I Frightened People” Tierney role in RESERVOIR DOGS.
The moment where he calls the parking lot attendant the N-word in THE KILLING is genuinely shocking. Have you all watched “The World’s Greatest Sinner”? It’s bonkers.