INTP QUOTES (SOCIONICS)
SOROS
Type:
Businessman Quotes
Category:
Hungarian Businessman Quotes
Date of Birth:
August 12, 1930
Nationality:
Hungarian
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George Soros
Related Authors:
John Moody
Peter Camejo
Paul Getty
Walter Annenberg
Bo Bennett
Jim Cramer
David Ogilvy
Scott Cook
I'm not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I'm doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.
George Soros
Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is make by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.
George Soros
Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on.
George Soros
My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them.
George Soros
Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
George Soros
Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.
George Soros
The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios... The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.
George Soros
The worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside.
George Soros
Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.
George Soros
“The absurdity of its illegality has been clear to me for some time. I learned about pot from my kids and realized it was a lot better than Scotch, and I loved the Scotch. Then I went to my doctor, and he said, 'I'm thrilled. You're drinking too much. You're much better off doing pot than drinking.'”
George Soros quote
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“The markets are always on the side of exuberance or fear. It's fear and greed. Right now greed has the better of it, which is rather nice (for investors) as long as it doesn't get out of hand,”
George Soros quote
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“This asymmetry in the treatment of lenders and borrowers is a major source of instability in the global capitalist system and it needs to be corrected,”
George Soros quote
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“Up to those amounts the countries concerned would be able to access international capital markets at prime rates. Beyond these, the creditors would have to beware.”
This segment has considerable momentum and people are not ready to jump ship as long as prices are rising,”
George Soros quote
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“I hardly knew the man's name, ... He really invented me. He needed me for his political purposes, so I'm a figment of his imagination.”
George Soros quote
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“My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them.”
George Soros quote
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“balanced multi-manager hedge fund.”
George Soros quote
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“The objective is to provide the best possible management for the assets of my family and foundations that may also be attractive to other investors with similar objectives, and to put into place a structure that will last beyond my lifetime,”
George Soros quote
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“We have come to realize that a large hedge fund like Quantum Fund is no longer the best way to manage money, ... Markets have become extremely unstable and historical measures of value at risk no longer apply.”
George Soros quote
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“The market today is dominated by much younger people who have not experienced a bear market.”
George Soros quote
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“This is unrelated to last week's events,”
George Soros quote
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“This reorganization took place in the full glare of publicity and involved the departure of a large number of employees. Inevitably this gave rise to rumors ... but in fact everything went according to plan,”
George Soros quote
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“In my old age I have become somewhat conservative, ... But we will probably have a more mediocre performance because of the multi-manager structure, because to some extent managers can cancel each other out.”
George Soros quote
“I think I lost my touch some time ago. I'm like an aging boxer that should not go into the ring,”
George Soros quote
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“President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values.”
George Soros quote
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“Most of the capital (in Indonesia) is in the hands of limited business groups, which don't feel so secure here. Any slightest risk will cause them take their money to Singapore.”
George Soros quote
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“Over half of all AIDS cases involving children are directly related to unclean syringes,”
George Soros quote
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“You have the potential of a breakdown of the entire system if you have a slowdown of economic activity in the center even as inflationary pressures mount, ... We're on the edge of it, yes.”
George Soros quote
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“There's (a) problem that I think is brewing, and that is the end of the housing boom in the United States and the ability of households to spend more than they earn because the value of their house is rising.”
George Soros quote
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“The conference is remarkable for its complacency -- it's a bit like dancing on the Titanic. They're having a very good time and there's a very cheerful atmosphere.”
George Soros quote
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“It's a very, very troubling and troublesome development.”
George Soros quote
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“I'm very worried about the supply-demand balance, which is very tight.”
George Soros quote
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“I expect by '07 there will be a significant decline in U.S. consumer spending, and I don't see what will take its place, because it's so important as the motor of the world economy.”
George Soros quote
As the housing boom cools off, there will be a shortfall in demand (which will) affect the global economy.”
George Soros quote
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“If you have the rule of law, then you're going to get investment in factories. You have to assure or give a sense of assurance to investors in direct investments that they will be fairly treated and that their property rights are respected.”
George Soros quote
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“I think that it will lead to reforms and I am sure that the region will recover because it has tremendous energy,”
George Soros quote
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“challenge the very concept of the 'war on terror.'”
George Soros quote
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“We must not forget; but we must forgive. Suffering often such compassion from the Jewish community. It was Jewish groups in the US who were in the forefront in opposing the ethnic cleansing of Muslim in Bosnia.”
George Soros quote
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“International capital flows must have been at the root of the problem,”
George Soros quote
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“because the international banking system must also be at fault.”
George Soros quote
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“but recently we have seen financial markets sometimes move more like a wrecking ball, knocking over one economy after another.”
George Soros quote
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“I think they got the facts wrong. There was no case of insider trading.”
George Soros quote
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“No, because I've got the same courts that found me guilty in the first place.”
George Soros quote
It is a bizarre thing because I was the only one who was found guilty when the whole of the French establishment was involved,”
George Soros quote
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“So I think what needs to happen is he needs to be removed from power,”
George Soros quote
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“Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on.”
George Soros quote
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“He is actually doing the right thing for himself because he is preserving himself in power, and he puts himself in a position where he can bail out his cronies who are in financial difficulties, including his son and so on,”
George Soros quote
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“I really want to help people who are hurt. And if I do that, I feel that my money is well-spent,”
George Soros quote
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“It sounds like a careful step, not a huge expansion”
George Soros quote
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“Clinton has a concrete goal of getting China into the WTO, his near-term agenda is to get China in.”
George Soros quote
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“I think the whole idea of eradicating the drug problem is a false idea, ... You can discourage the use of drugs, you can forbid the use of drugs, you can treat people who are addicted to drugs, but you cannot eradicate drugs. Once you accept this point, you may be able to develop a more rational approach to the problem.”
George Soros quote
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“I'm not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I'm doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.”
George Soros quote
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“This would enable the authority to set a ceiling on the amounts it is willing to insure,”
George Soros quote
Something really is broken in the international financial architecture, ... We're now in the 20th month of financial crisis. Yet this crisis was brewing, it was the most anticipated crisis in recent history.”
George Soros quote
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“I think the (Brazilian) government has done most of the things it promised to do on the fiscal front, ... However, it has mismanaged the process so badly that the currency overshot.”
George Soros quote
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“It will require, I think, the release of funds and perhaps even an increased package to bring stability, ... Everything that could have been done wrong has been done wrong.”
George Soros quote
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“I don't think you will see the Fed jumping to interest rates,”
George Soros quote
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A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
Franz Kafka
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Franz Kafka
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Franz Kafka
A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
Franz Kafka
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
Franz Kafka
Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.
Franz Kafka
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Franz Kafka
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
Franz Kafka
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
Franz Kafka
Evil is whatever distracts.
Franz Kafka
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
Franz Kafka
I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.
Franz Kafka
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
Franz Kafka
In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.
Franz Kafka
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
Franz Kafka
In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.
Franz Kafka
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
Franz Kafka
It is your people who make the ultimate difference. You put the investment into training the people and then, when you get invited to the party with the big boys, that is a unique selling point.
Franz Kafka
May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
Franz Kafka
My "fear" is my substance, and probably the best part of me.
Franz Kafka
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
Franz Kafka
My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.
Franz Kafka
No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth.
Franz Kafka
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
Franz Kafka
The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.
Franz Kafka
We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the tree of knowledge, but also because we have not eaten of the tree of life.
Franz Kafka
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
Franz Kafka
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka
Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Franz Kafka
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
William Faulkner
Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.
William Faulkner
Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.
William Faulkner
I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
William Faulkner
I decline to accept the end of man.
William Faulkner
I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.
William Faulkner
I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.
William Faulkner
I'm inclined to think that a military background wouldn't hurt anyone.
William Faulkner
If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: The "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies.
William Faulkner
It wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand $30,000.
William Faulkner
It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.
William Faulkner
Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.
William Faulkner
Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.
William Faulkner
Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly is having to accept it.
William Faulkner
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.
William Faulkner
Others have done it before me. I can, too.
William Faulkner
Our tragedy is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it... the basest of all things is to be afraid.
William Faulkner
Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.
William Faulkner
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.
William Faulkner
The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
William Faulkner
The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.
William Faulkner
The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
William Faulkner
The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past.
William Faulkner
There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it's the risk, the gamble. In any event it's a thing I need.
William Faulkner
This is a free country. Folks have a right to send me letters, and I have a right not to read them.
William Faulkner
To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.
William Faulkner
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ABOUT Federer:
"I think it's in his mind. It's a little difficult to play Nadal because he's a leftie, he's younger, he has less pressure than Roger. By the way he's playing, I think he should beat him. I think it's more mental than any other problem...He has no reason to get really down, he won seven Grand Slams. So, he has nothing to be pissed off about."
-- Marat Safin on Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal.
"Grand Slams are funny things. You have to try to find a way to get through the first week and put yourself in a position in the second week. A lot of strange things happen."
-- Lleyton Hewitt putting the hex on Roger Federer, addressing the Swiss winning another Wimbledon title in 2006.
I don't see anyone with a big enough weapon to hurt him. They're just staying back and Roger is able to dictate well enough. You just have to serve well and attack him.
Pete Sampras, winner of 14 Grand Slams. (Source)
I really consider myself top 5 player in the world, but it doesn't mean that I am nearing Roger.
Ivan Ljubicic, at Indian Wells 2006. (Source)
Oh, I would be honoured to even be compared to Roger. He is such an unbelievable talent, and is capable of anything. Roger could be the greatest tennis player of all time.
Rod Laver, winner of 11 Grand Slams, considered by some the greatest player to ever play the game of tennis. (Source)
He's the best I've ever played against. There's nowhere to go. There's nothing to do except hit fairways, hit greens and make putts. Every shot has that sort of urgency on it. I've played a lot of them (other players), so many years, there's a safety zone, there's a place to get to, there's something to focus on, there's a way. Anything you try to do, he potentially has an answer for and it's just a function of when he starts pulling the triggers necessary to get you to change to that decision.
Andre Agassi, at US Open 2005. (Source)
He's a real person. He's not an enigma. Off the court he's not trying to be somebody. If you met him at McDonald's and you didn't know who he was, you would have no idea that he's one of the best athletes in the world.
Andy Roddick, at Cincinnati 2005. (Source)
He hasn't changed a bit. He hasn't been arrogant in the locker room. He never is. That's great to see someone that does it with class. He doesn't intentionally get in anyone's face. He doesn't put people down.
James Blake, at Cincinnati 2005. (Source)
He put tennis, the bar very high - very high. It's incredible what kind of game he can play.
Marat Safin, at Australian Open 2005. (Source)
He's the most gifted player that I've ever seen in my life. I've seen a lot of people play. I've seen the (Rod) Lavers, I played against some of the great players - the Samprases, Beckers, Connors', Borgs, you name it. This guy could be the greatest of all time. That, to me, says it all.
John McEnroe, winner of 7 Grand Slams. (Source)
We have a guy from Switzerland who is just playing the game a way I haven't seen anyone - and I mean anyone - play before. How fortunate we are to be able to see that. If he stays healthy and motivated - and the wonderful feel he has stays with him - he is the kind of guy who can overtake the greatest.
Boris Becker, winner of 6 Grand Slams.
There's probably not a department in his game that couldn't be considered the best in that department. You watch him play Hewitt and everybody marvels at Hewitt's speed, as well as myself. And you start to realize, `Is it possible Federer even moves better?' Then you watch him play Andy [Roddick], and you go, `Andy has a big forehand. Is it possible Federer's forehand is the best in the game?' You watch him at the net, you watch him serve-volley somebody that doesn't return so well and you put him up there with the best in every department. You see him play from the ground against those that play from the ground for a living, and argue he does it better than anybody.
Andre Agassi, winner of 8 Grand Slams. (Source)
If you want to be a tennis player, then mould yourself on Roger Federer. I won three Wimbledon titles and I wish I could play like him.
John McEnroe
I'd like to be in his shoes for one day to know what it feels like to play that way.
Mats Wilander, winner of 7 Grand Slams. (Source)
Roger Federer is the most talented tennis player I have ever seen. He has the capacity to become the greatest in history.
Nick Bollettieri (Source)
Roger Federer is the only guy I watch for his strokes. He is just beautiful. He can hit every single shot you could ever think of. John [McEnroe] and Ilie [Nastase] were very talented but you always knew there were some shots they couldn't hit. Not with Federer. I would go and watch him practice, he's so good.
Ivan Lendl, winner of 8 Grand Slams.
Roger is a complete player. What he has, and it's not luck, is the ability to change his game slightly as to what his opponent's doing to him.
Jack Kramer, an all-time great of the game. (Source)
I've never enjoyed watching someone playing tennis as much as Federer. I'm just in awe. Pete Sampras was wonderful but he relied so much on his serve, whereas Roger has it all, he's just so graceful, elegant and fluid - a symphony in tennis whites. Roger can produce tennis shots that should be declared illegal.
Tracy Austin
He's probably the most talented person to ever carry a racquet around - the shots that he can come up with, the way he's kind of become a totally complete player. But I think off the court, it's huge. There have been a lot of good champions, but he's just classy. He is never high and mighty in the locker room or anything like that.
Andy Roddick
Yes, I really hit with him when he was 15, during a tournament in Basel, and I knew then he would be good, but not this good. If he stays healthy, it will actually be a miracle if he doesn't win more Grand Slams than Pete [Sampras]. The way he picks his shots is unbelievable. He is fast, he has a great volley, a great serve, great backhand, great everything. If I was his coach, what can I tell him? He is a magician with a racket. Even when he is playing badly, which is rarely, he can still do things with his racket nobody else can do.
Goran Ivanisevic on the question if Federer is destined to become the greatest player of all time. (Source)
He's the best player I've ever played against, full stop... and he was just too good today.
Tim Henman, after losing in the 2nd round of Wimbledon 2006 6-4,6-0,6-2
"Even Roger Federer never won Davis Cup, so it's really something special, something that gives you confidence when you go out there and you look at the other opponent and you feel like you have something more than the other guys do."
-- Ivan Ljubicic on winning the Davis Cup.
"He's up there. But (Marat) Safin, on his game, is as hard to beat. And Andy Roddick has that huge serve. A lot of guys can beat you if you're slightly off your game."
-- Lleyton Hewitt, refusing to acknowledge Roger Federer as the best in the game.
"Federer's winning so much that he likes the situation the way it is."
-- Brad Gilbert speaking with Fox Sports on Roger Federer being against the video replay system.
"Many say that (Pete) Sampras is the greatest player. But I say with all due respect to the rest, that he (Roger Federer) is the most complete player in the world so far."
-- Marat Safin on world No. 1 Roger Federer.
"I think we're both starting to hit our stride a little bit -- him more so. He's obviously won his first Slam. But he's gone 'win, win, final' and now he's in the semis again and I've gone 'win, semi, win,' and I'm in the semis again. I think over the past couple of months we're a couple of the top players."
-- Andy Roddick trying to do the math in his budding rivalry with Roger Federer, with the players winning a combined five titles in the last three months.
"I never expected this, it's amazing! If you don't lose a set it's a pretty good tournament...I won three titles this year already and it's only half way of the season. I'm very happy with this season this far." -- The amazing Roger Federer after winning in Munich.
"My goal for the end of the season was to be in the Top 10 and make the Masters (Cup)." -- Roger Federer. If you want to make the Masters Cup, I guess your goal is to be in the Top 8, dumb ass.
"I don't play doubles often, but when I do, I tend to win a lot." -- The humble Roger Federer in Rotterdam, where he reached his third consecutive Rotterdam doubles final.
"One or two years ago, I didn't know who I was on court and I used to swear a lot. But now I've learned how to cope and can therefore win 10 matches in a row. I want to be remembered as a good player rather than an idiot on court." -- Roger Federer in Rotterdam after beating homecountry favorite Sjeng Schalken.
"My aim over the next few months is that I have a lot of points to defend in Miami and Hamburg, after that I can set my sights on No. 1." -- Roger Federer talking tough in Rotterdam.
"Winning Wimbledon, winning the Masters and the way he plays reminds me of some of the players from our time, like myself, like Pete (Sampras), like Stefan (Edberg), and Boris (Becker). He plays with a lot of variety and he plays shots you don't expect him to play. When you sit in the stands you think 'Wow, that's not possible, but he did it.' The other players are good but they play to a certain routine. Federer is a guy who brings a lot, and can do great things for the game if he keeps his current level going."
-- Michael Stich on Roger Federer.
"I can definitely beat him, yeah. But it's not going to be easy and I think I know as well as anyone he's definitely the man to beat at the moment."
-- Lleyton Hewitt on Roger Federer, who he has lost his last six matches against, including five bagel sets. Yeah, maybe he'll twist an ankle.
"That was...that was choking. You're right. But of course when you play against (Roger) Federer, he's No. 1 in the world, he won three grand slams last year, and he's just full of confidence. It's difficult to do anything regular to beat him. You have to do something extra to be able to have the chance to beat him. Set points, I had six of them and I couldn't take one. But I was close."
-- Marat Safin interviewed by Jim Courier on losing a 20-18 tiebreak to Roger Federer at the 2004 Masters Cup.
"Earlier in his career it wasn't like that. He would sort of start out like he was doing a warm-up lap..."
-- Fabrice Santoro on the oppressive early-match play of Roger Federer.
"No! I don't have a chance. For me he's unbelievable. I will continue with my comeback and I am just happy with that."
-- Rafael Nadal on if he could surpass Roger Federer for the No. 1 ranking.
"He moves great, does everything very well. He's gotten to a point that when he's not at his best, he's finding ways to win, and that separates him from the rest," Sampras said, a moment before making sure to bolster his own credentials a tad. "There are less great players today than there was when I was playing."
-- Pete Sampras in USA Today on Roger Federer.
"The thing that really impresses me is that like the (Rod) Lavers and (Ken) Rosewalls, he really cares about this game. Being No 1, he feels he has a duty to do as much for the game as possible, and, to me, that is very important."
-- Tony Roche on protege Roger Federer.
"With all the injury problems we have in men's tennis at the moment, I'm happy to still be standing."
-- Roger Federer entering the Australian Open.
---
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Federer Quotes by himself:
"It could get into my mind. I could start thinking, 'I can't play against this guy, his game doesn't suit me'. I could start accepting the fact that I have been losing against him, but that would be a bad thing for me to do."
-- Roger Federer on Rafael Nadal"I'm at the top of my game so, when I win or lose, I don't freak out...I don't think we can call it a rivalry yet. There's just to many great players around."
-- Roger Federer putting the spin on his 1-3 record against Rafael Nadal.
But so far I have the feeling that the chances are there to repeat last year's season.
Roger Federer
Early in my career, I struggled with consistency, but I couldn't get more consistent than this year.
Roger Federer
I can't stay No. 1 for fifty years, you know. We'll see what happens.
Roger Federer
I have learnt to be even more patient.
Roger Federer
I think people are looking at this as too dramatic. It's not a disaster, because I knew how tough the claycourt season is for me.
Roger Federer
I've really proved that on all surfaces, everywhere in the world, I can win the title. It's been incredible for me from beginning to end.
Roger Federer
Popularity:
“I like to play against guys who have beaten me, especially early in the career, try to get them back, ... He was a tough opponent for me for a long, long time.”
Roger Federer quote
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“Early in my career, I struggled with consistency, but I couldn't get more consistent than this year.”
Roger Federer quote
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“I have learnt to be even more patient.”
Roger Federer quote
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“I wasn't feeling so good like the last few times but maybe that's got something to do with him because he really came in a lot and never gave me the rhythm.”
Roger Federer quote
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“So far in this tournament, I haven't lost set before, ... When it happens, you're not ready for it.”
Roger Federer quote
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“I have played Novak many times and he's always dangerous so this is a good win.”
Roger Federer quote
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“He's improved a lot in the last few months and I expect it to be a tough match,”
Roger Federer quote
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“I'm not surprised he's in the final as he's a good grass court player,”
Roger Federer quote
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“I definitely need to use my chances when they come because definitely there won't be many.”
Roger Federer quote
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“It's always a strange feeling when that happens. Four sets says it all. It was difficult.”
Roger Federer quote
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“It was difficult, four sets says it all,”
Roger Federer quote
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“But my reaction was good and I feel very good right now because it was a tough match.”
Roger Federer quote
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“That game was huge, absolutely, ... I was not so happy the way I was playing, especially in the second set. Third was getting better, especially after that pass. I really felt that shift in momentum. I took advantage of that. In the fourth set, I started to feel like I'm really in control again where I didn't feel that way at all before. I had the feeling actually momentum was all on his side.”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“It was a tough match,”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“That game was huge, absolutely,”
Roger Federer quote
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“At the beginning of the year, people were shocked when I lost a set,”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“In the fourth set, I felt I was in control again. I didn't feel like that early. Momentum was all on his side.”
Roger Federer quote
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“I had been feeling all the momentum was on his side,”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“I was not so happy the way I was playing. That game was huge and I started to feel like I'm really in control again.”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“I like playing guys who have beaten me early in my career, [to] try to get back at them. I think it will be interesting to see how both of us have improved.”
Roger Federer quote
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“it's been not bad, but it's definitely not been fantastic, either.”
Roger Federer quote
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“Maybe we had enough men's tennis over the last few days.”
Roger Federer quote
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“I played great last year and it's just looking great again, ... It's exactly the way I should be playing at this stage of tournament because the opponents are only getting tougher. The result really shows it. I've been struggling a little bit over the last few days, but this is a great rhythm I got against David. I'm surprised it went so quick.”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“I came back from dinner and I thought, 'It's looking good for James,' and suddenly it turned around, ... What a thriller. I was up until 1:30 myself. Maybe it wasn't the best preparation, but I enjoyed it.”
Roger Federer quote
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“I had been struggling a little over the past few days but this was great,”
Roger Federer quote
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“Today it was a great rhythm I found against David, and I'm surprised it was so quick because I didn't expect this. I always expect the worst.”
Roger Federer quote
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“This doesn't happen every day so you better enjoy this moment, ”
Roger Federer quote
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“I was just particularly happy that I really played well,”
Roger Federer quote
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“He knows he's not far away,”
Roger Federer quote
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“It doesn't get any easier. You go out and try to hang in and put as much pressure on him as possible.”
Roger Federer quote
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“I played great last year, and it's just looking great again, ... It's exactly the way I should be playing at this stage of the tournament. This is a great rhythm I got against David. I'm surprised it went so quick.”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“Once you've lived through all of that, you're a changed player,”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“It was more of giving him a taste of what he had given me.”
Roger Federer quote
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“In my eyes, James gave it away. For the first time, he was in this position (playing in a featured night match at the Open), but I think James had him and let it go.”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“Not much. The one time I called him, I asked him if he saw the match. He said he didn't see the match, so ...”
Roger Federer quote
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“I think he's definitely put himself into positions all the time. If he beats me, right away he's in contention for No.1 in the world or he can win a big tournament again. I've been standing in his way and I think he knows that.”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“He could, you know. But then again, he could even run into the knife more brutally,”
Roger Federer quote
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“I don't think we can afford to change our games just because of a particular opponent you play,”
Roger Federer quote
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“Maybe now that he's a married man and getting a baby, maybe that's going to help him to be a little bit more relaxed and maybe it's not everything just to beat me. He's definitely put himself into positions all the time. If he beats me, right away he's in contention for No. 1 in the world or he can win a big tournament again.”
Roger Federer quote
Add to Chapter...
“I expect a tough match.”
Roger Federer quote
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"Watching a movie a couple of weeks ago. An American movie. I can't remember the name, but it wasn't even a sad movie. It caught me off guard. I was on an airplane."
-- Roger Federer speaking with the Miami Herald at the NASDAQ-100 Open on the last time he cried. Was it "The Pink Panther," because it was so bad and there was nowhere to go?
"I was very happy when I heard she was coming back. I was hoping that one day she would take the courage to do it, and she did it, and she even won her first match which was fantastic. I think it's great for the sport and think it will do her well too, to come back and see how good she can be again because she's a great competitor and she broke all the records. I think she could do something great again."
-- Roger Federer on Swiss compatriot Martina Hingis.
"It is about choosing where you play carefully. We are lucky to have so many tournaments."
-- Roger Federer on the answer to fewer injuries -- not scaling down the tournament calendar, but getting players to play fewer small tournaments and exhibitions.
"I have a very strong opinion. I'm absolutely against it. I'm against the challenge system. I'm for the way it is right now. Don't change that."
-- Roger Federer on allowing players to challenge calls using a video replay system.
"I let the evening unfold. I'm the sort of guy who likes to sit in the chair and look at the wine glass."
-- Roger Federer on partying hardy the night after winning the 2005 US Open. Roger, take that lampshade off your head, you nut!
"I had a nice dinner. I let the evening unfold, flow. I like to sit in a chair with a wine glass. When I woke up, I thought, 'Why didn't I go to bed at 11?' I came back at 3 and went to bed at 5."
-- Roger Federer on celebrating with approximately 10 friends the night after winning the US Open.
"Like Ahh-nold? (Schwarzenegger) I don't think so. I'm more into, in general, helping people. Like Muhammad Ali does for the world. Think about the world not only like 'God Bless America' sort of thing but God bless the world, because we're all together. We're living on the same world, you know? And not alone. Sometimes people forget. This is why we have fights all over the world. Of course you can't stop them, but still pick an issue, maybe in the future. Of course it goes into politics a little bit. Maybe. Who knows what I'll do? But I don't really see this sort of role. I'd like to be more of an ambassador."
-- Swiss Roger Federer on whether he would ever go into politics.
"Appropriate ban. No more I could say. It's a pity people have to do this."
-- Roger Federer on Guillermo Canas' two-year ban due to doping.
"I was curious to see how people will see me this year because I haven't really been back in New York since obviously the US Open. I feel there is a buzz."
-- Roger Federer at the US Open.
"I have a great record against anybody right now, so it doesn't really matter who I play in the final. I'll be in there as the big favorite. But I play my best in the finals, in the important matches. That's why I'm number one. There's no secret...I'm not overconfident, but very confident."
-- Roger Federer after winning the first semifinal in Cincinnati.
"I know I can beat him on any surface."
-- Roger Federer, eating some of his ego after losing to Rafael Nadal in the French Open semifinals.
"Simple version for me is, umm, started bad and finished bad basically..."
-- Roger Federer summarizing his Roland Garros semifinal loss to Rafael Nadal.
"Well, you gotta find his backhand, huh?"
-- Roger Federer on the key to beating Fernando "Gonzo" Gonzalez.
"I wanted to get a rematch from the Olympics. That always plays a role in such matches. You don't just forget what happened in the previous matches against any player. And with him I have kind of a tough past -- he ruined my Olympic dreams in Athens (laughing), so it's nice."
-- Roger Federer after dropping only three games in Hamburg against Tomas Berdych, who he lost to in last year's Athens Olympics.
"The French hasn't worked out for me the last couple of years and I'll make sure that doesn't happen again."
-- Roger Federer laying down a warning regarding the upcoming French Open for 2005.
"I think the experts and me and Tony (Roche), we all know it's not his mistake if my ranking drops. Eventually it will drop. I can't stay No. 1 for 50 years, you know. We'll see what happens. But I'm not worried that he will be blamed. I'm not thinking this way."
-- Roger Federer.
"The week before the (US Open) I gave a few interviews for CNN, USA Network, New York Times, USA Today and Sports Illustrated which had been arranged beforehand. The reason for giving these interviews is not only because working with the media is just part of the job, it is much more my desire to contribute to the promotion of tennis in the U.S."
-- Roger Federer writing in his on-line diary. Which he lets us read. Thanks Roger.
"The nicer the point, the more -- the better I feel, the more excited I get. But I never play that my opponent looks stupid. I think that is wrong. I have too much respect for every opponent I play."
-- Roger Federer on his shot selection.
"For me, I'm in the driver's seat; I'm No. 1 in the world. I've won the last couple of meetings, and I've won the big tournaments lately. Whoever comes, I'll try to beat him. But it's almost up to me to decide who's my rival, isn't it?"
-- Roger Federer, who says he'll decide whether Andy Roddick is his rival or not, thank you very much.
"The problem is not the claycourt. The problem is, you know, rather something to do with the conditions on center court. Because I've played well on Suzanne Lenglen, on the other courts. But the Chatrier court is really, really big, and I just haven't had enough play on it. Maybe I come here next year and play a week on this court, if I can, if the French Federation lets me. We'll see. I've been playing well in other tournaments, in Davis Cup on clay. So for me it's not the surface, it's rather maybe the court."
-- Roger Federer on his problems at the French Open.
"I think people are looking at this as too dramatic. It's not a disaster, because I knew how tough the claycourt season is for me."
-- World No. 1 Roger Federer after his early exit at the MS-Rome. Damn people, the man lost to a former Roland Garros winner, chill out.
"I've been thinking about it some time."
-- Roger Federer on why he canned coach Peter Lundgren.
"He's got a big game, definitely. He's got a very big serve. He can still improve his consistency on the serve, because I think he could have a great serve. He returns well. He has his weaknesses, but there's not a weakness that stands out, especially on the grass."
-- Roger Federer, kind of praising Mardy Fish.
"When I was 12 years old, I was just horrible. My parents were ashamed to watch my matches. I would play on a court at the local club and they would watch from the balcony. They would scream, 'Be quiet' to me and I would scream back, 'Go and have a drink. Leave me alone.' Then we would drive home in a very quiet car. No one speaking to each other."
-- Roger Federer on his Johnny Mac-like junior days in tennis.
"After the Wimbledon victory and a well-played Montreal tournament, I am extremely motivated. I got to New York early, just like in Wimbledon, and I will do everything to be optimally prepared. My main goal is to play well at the US Open, and if the No. 1 comes with the result, great."
-- Roger Federer on his US Open prep.
"I'm definitely more mature. I explained this to a few people already that I feel much better out on the court now. I feel like I found myself, my inner self, really." -- The inner game of Roger Federer.
"I think mentally and physically, I can change a match now. Before, it was more just because maybe little lucky, you know. But now I feel like I can really do it and turn around matches by hanging in there. This is also why I turned around this match today and I turned around the finals last week, you know, two days ago, three days ago." -- The increasingly-confident Roger Federer after his opening round win in Rome, reflecting on his Munich title last week.
-Article on Federer at BBC:
Roger Federer admitted he was relieved to have finally won a Grand Slam title after clinching the Wimbledon trophy with a straight sets triumph over Mark Philippoussis.
The new champion had long been tipped as a winner of major titles, but until this year's Championships had never got past the quarter-finals in any Grand Slam.
"I proved it to everybody and it was a big relief because there was pressure from all sides, especially from myself, to do better in Slams," he said.
"There is no guarantee of anything, but I knew I had the game and I have always believed in myself.
"I kept my level up here in the semi-finals and the final and to lift the trophy is an absolute dream."
Men's final highlights
The 21-year-old added that the back injury he sustained in the fourth round against Feliciano Lopez had left him doubtful that he would make it through the tournament.
"You need a little luck like I had with my back when I struggled through that match," he said.
"I was in big pain - I was struggling to serve, to return, even to sit down. I called the trainer and he gave me some painkillers but I thought if this continues, it's not worth playing.
"Somehow I stayed in but at that point I didn't think I would ever hold the trophy."
Feature:
Federer finally fulfils promise
Federer dedicated his win to his circle of friends and family, including former coach Peter Carter, who was killed in a car accident last year.
"Peter was one of the most important people in my career," he said. "I guess we would have had a big party if he had been here. I hope he saw it from somewhere."
Federer added that he was looking forward to going to Wimbledon's official dinner, after missing out in 1998 when he won the junior title.
"I had my first wild card in an ATP tournament in Gstaad," he explained. "So Peter (Carter) and I decided that I had to return to Switzerland to prepare well. So I'm excited about going this year."
I'm definitely going to hold that trophy up before I retire
Mark Philippoussis
Philippoussis, who has now lost in two Grand Slam finals after his defeat to fellow Australian Pat Rafter at the 1998 US Open, conceded that Federer had outplayed him in a surprisingly one-sided final.
"He definitely played better than me on the day," he said.
"The first tiebreak was huge to get the momentum going. At 4-3, I missed a forehand and double-faulted and that cost me.
"Whoever won that first set was going to go on a roll and that's what happened."
But the 26-year-old denied that he had allowed the tiebreak to play on his mind.
"I can't really say that I did much wrong - he came up with some great passing shots, running forehand, backhand returns. What can you do?" he said.
Philippoussis, who has spent long periods out of the game with a serious knee injury, insisted he would be back to win the title.
"The final will definitely help me in the future. Goran (Ivanisevic) was in the final three times before he won it so I am never going to give up," he said.
"There's a lot of positive things to take away and I'm definitely going to hold that trophy up before I retire. That's for sure."
----
KUBRICK
Type:
Director Quotes
Category:
American Director Quotes
Date of Birth:
July 26, 1928
Date of Death:
March 7, 1999
A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
Stanley Kubrick
A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.
Stanley Kubrick
How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.' This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001.
Stanley Kubrick
I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.
Stanley Kubrick
I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.
Stanley Kubrick
I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists-neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are.
Stanley Kubrick
I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business.
Stanley Kubrick
If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.
Stanley Kubrick
If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.
Stanley Kubrick
Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.
Stanley Kubrick
The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
Stanley Kubrick
The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.
Stanley Kubrick
The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.
Stanley Kubrick
You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.
Stanley Kubrick
“If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes. About: Movies quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes. About: Movies quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes.
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“The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes. About: World quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists-neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes. About: Tragedy quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes. About: Television quotes, Magic quotes, Emotion quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes. About: Nations quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Similar Quotes.
Add to Chapter...
“The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Add to Chapter...
“I don't actually know Tom that well.”
Stanley Kubrick quote
Add to Chapter...
Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 - March 7, 1999) was an American film director born in The Bronx, New York City who lived most of his life in England.
Directed Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss, The Killing, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange (film), Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut, almost all considered classics.
[edit]
Sourced
You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it’s really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.
Newsweek 26 May 1980
...There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.
from Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze by Thomas Allen Nelson, p.10
I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner. I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized "realistic" story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its "realist" style.
from Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze by Thomas Allen Nelson, p.14
If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space?
from Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze by Thomas Allen Nelson, p.17
[edit]
Attributed
"If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject you can create the consoling illusion it has been mastered."
"I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old."
"A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later."
"I would not think of quarreling with your interpretation nor offering any other, as I have found it always the best policy to allow the film to speak for itself."
"Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling."
"Art consists of reshaping life but it does not create life, nor cause life."
"I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker."
"The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes."
"If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed."
"How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.' This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001."
"The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle."
"I ought not to be regarded as a once happy man who has been bitten in the jugular and compelled to assume the misanthropy of a vampire." - on the complaint that his films were emotionally cold.
"Call it enlightened cowardice, if you like. Actually, over the years I discovered that I just didn't enjoy flying, and I became aware of compromised safety margins in commercial aviation that are never mentioned in airline advertising. So I decided I'd rather travel by sea, and take my chances with the icebergs [...] I am afraid of aeroplanes. I've been able to avoid flying for some time but, I suppose, if I had to I would. Perhaps it's a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. At one time, I had a pilot's licence and 160 hours of solo time on single-engine light aircraft. Unfortunately, all that seemed to do was make me mistrust large aeroplanes."
"I believe Bergman, De Sica, and Fellini are the only three filmmakers in the world who are not just artistic opportunists. By this I mean they don't just sit and wait for a good story to come along and then make it. They have a point of view which is expressed over and over and over again in their films, and they themselves write or have original material written for them."
"Part of my problem is that I cannot dispel the myths that have somehow accumulated over the years. Somebody writes something, it's completely off the wall, but it gets filed and repeated until everyone believes it. For instance, I've read that I wear a football helmet in the car."
"Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all."
"The danger connected with any multi-faceted problem is that you might pay too much attention to some of the problems to the detriment of others, but I am very conscious of this and I make sure I don't do that."
"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."
"One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film"
Article ABOUT KUBRICK:
YOUNG MAN WITH IDEAS AND A CAMERA
Thomas M. Pryor
The New York Times
January 14, 1951
Stanley Kubrick is a young man from the Bronx with a passionate interest in photography and a determination to make a name for himself in the movie world. Those are not entirely unique attributes or ambitions, but Stanley Kubrick is no ordinary tyro. At the age of 22 he can look back on four and a half years as a top-flight magazine still photographer and, since last spring, he has directed, photographed and produced two one-reel films which R.K.O. Pathe News will distribute. Now he is aiming at making a feature-length picture, which he has budgeted at the astonishingly low cost of $50,000.
One of the youngest staff photographers on Look Magazine, Stanley broke into the flashbulb profession by selling three picture stories to the magazine, and decided to quit school while in his freshman year at City College. The measure of his ability as a photographer can be judged on the basis of his assignments by Look, which ranged from taking pictures of theatrical and political celebrities, to a tour of Portugal, to illustrate a travel story. The magazine also gave him such other choice assignments as covering the circus at its winter headquarters in Sarasota, Fla., and Senator Taft's pre-election barnstorming in Ohio.
Writers who have worked with Stanley remember him warmly as "a funny kid and a wonderful photographer". Stanley Kubrick can say with all honesty that he made a career out of his father's hobby. He was 15 and a student at Taft High School in the Bronx when he started "fooling around" with his father's Graflex camera. One day he took the camera to school and made some pictures of an English teacher, a rara avis, "who read Hamlet and acted out the play for the class." Look bought and published Stanley's pictures.
One of his best-remembered camera stories for Look was "The Day of the Fight", a study of a prizefighter in the last hours before entering the ring. The idea struck him as just fine for a movie and, with the financial and artistic help of friends, Stanley quit his job and made a one-reel actuality move called The Day of the Fight which R.K.O. bought for considerably more than the $5,000 the project cost. The company then gave him an assignment last summer to make a one-reel documentary about the flying priest of the southwest, the Rev. Fred Stadtmueller, who uses a Piper Cub plane to minister spiritually to a flock spread out over vast distances in New Mexico from his parish in the town of Mosquero.
Angel Bait
The Day of the Fight not only impressed the people at R.K.O. Pathe, but it also encouraged Martin Perveler, a Los Angeles druggist and a family friend of the Kubricks [Perveler was, in reality, Stanley Kubrick's maternal uncle, note of the webmaster], to organize a syndicate to finance Stanley in his first feature-film attempt. Mr. Perveler himself put up most of the $50,000, Stanley says. If you think Stanley is nervous about the prospect of starting filming on his picture, as yet untitled in March, then you are sadly mistaken. With the collaboration of a friend, a 21-year-old poet name Howard Sackler, Stanley has developed a story about four soldiers in a battle who are trapped behind enemy lines. He describes his drama as a "study of four men and their search for the meaning of life and the individual's responsibility to the group".
Stanley says he has figured out every camera angle and that after he finds the proper location "in some wooded area of southern California" shooting should run smoothly and be concluded in fifteen to twenty-one days. He will bring four professional "but not known name actors" out to the coast from Broadway, and, because Stanley himself is not yet a member of the movie camera men's union, he will engage a professional cinematographer. The one requirement is that the cameraman must agree in advance to follow the blueprint laid out by Stanley, who will direct and produce the film. An adventuresome young man? Yes. But one who apparently knows his way around.
----
ANOTHER ARTICLE
KUBRICK ANOTHER BOY FILM PRODUCER
Irene Thirer
New York Post
March 27, 1953
Stanley Kubrick who, at 24, is the producer-photographer-director-editor of three commercially sold films, does not see his pictures through 3-D glasses, nor has he, as yet, shot in color. Up to the present he has worked in the stark realism and within the budget of black, white and shadows.
"I have never seen any 3-D except Bwana Devil," he admitted, "and I applauded the newsreel which followed. But, as far as third-dimension technique is concerned, I understand it, though I've never worked in it nor seen the results of Cinema-Scope and other mediums. I hope very much to make a color film, and no doubt, I will."
Kubrick's picture now under discussion is Fear and Desire, which Joe Burstyn is sponsoring at a Guild Theater premier Tuesday and in all probability will sell to a circuit after its initial run.
"It was filmed," the unconventionally garbed, sensitive, brown-eyed youth with a mop of unkempt dark hair, informed us at a 75 West St. confab, "on the outskirts of Los Angeles in Azuza, a good-looking forest." (We ventured that it was more difficult, likely, to find a good-looking forest than a good-looking girl on the fringe of L.A. He agreed.)
The picture concerns the exploits of an imaginary army and has a fairy tale quality. There is love interest, too. No "names" in the cast with the exception of Frank Silvera, who is currently on stage at the National in Tennessee Williams' Camino Real.
How did this career happen, and when?
"I've been a photography bug since childhood," Star said. "When I was at Taft H. S. in the Bronx I sold five picture stories to Look. I went to City College for a year, continuing as a Look free-lance photographer. Then I quit school and asked for a full time job, which I got." He also acquired a wife named Toba, who is his script girl and dialogue director. They have diggings in Greenwich Village, where they live when they are not off somewhere on location. His hobbies: chess and baseball, and he likes to the way his sister, Adelphi student, plays guitar and sings folk ballads.
He left the magazine three years ago to attempt movies, "with my good friend Dick de Rochemont putting up some of the money to back my first short subject, The Day of the Fight, which RKO released.
"On that deal I made exactly $50. But RKO accepted my second subject, Sky Pilot, about a priest who flew over New Mexico. It netted me $1,500 and satisfaction, since eight co-investors came to my aid for my first feature which cost $100,000.
"The script is written by Howard O. Sackler, poet laureate of my high school, and the musical score is by Gerald Fried, with whom I used to play basketball and baseball in the Bronx. We have ambitious future plans, in a small way. We will make a Love Story of New York, shooting all around the town."
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SULTRY NEW SIREN AND NEW ALL-AROUND MOVIE WIZARD SPARK FEAR AND DESIRE
People Today
April 8, 1953
A brilliant 24-year-old writer-producer-director-cameraman named Stanley Kubrik and a sensuous Hollywood unknown (opp. page) have distilled crucial elements of war and passion into a film of extraordinary emotional impact. Released this week, Kubrik's Fear and Desire centers on four soldiers, of unidentified nationality, lost behind enemy lines in an unidentified war. Their nerve-bruising misadventures point up the personality of each: the jittery recruit; the smooth-talking, philosophically inclined lieutenant; the tough sergeant; and a placid average type. Only two survive.
Kubrik was a successful magazine photographer at 17, set out to work on the film in '50 with $20,000 from friends and relatives. Shooting, mostly in California's San Gabriel Mountains, took a month. The rest of the time went for editing and drumming up another $80,000. Kubrik gives full credit to associates, says "Ten thousand things connected with film making are harassing, but it was all worth the trouble."
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THE HOLLYWOOD WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Colin Young
Film Quarterly
Vol.12 n.3, Spring 1959
In the United States a studio must hope to recover most or all of its costs within the domestic market. This represents the least specialized audience in the world (as we all know there is nothing special about being an American) and there is a constant temptation, almost always succumbed to, to level everything down to the lowest common denominator. In such conditions there is little chance that an individual filmmaker will produce a personal work. Almost always an American film is edited, not by the director, but by the studio - often in committee. It is not difficult to understand why. When several million dollars are at stake a responsible business will rarely rely on the opinion of one man. Other opinions, often outside opinions, will be sought. And each time such an opinion is applied to a film, it becomes to that extent less and less the director's personal statement. The Screen Directors' Guild in Hollywood in recent years has added a clause to its standard contract requiring a producer to grant the director right of first cut. But this is often no more than a formality. (There was a recent case in which the director's version of a film was seen only by him and his editor before it was taken apart again to be run, uncut, for the producers.) And with the current trend to larger budgets, based on the hypothesis that a larger investment is less risky than a smaller one, it is likely that less and less control will be left in the hands of a director, unless he is by age or experience or perhaps by financial participation powerful enough to have a controlling interest.
This is all very discouraging for the young filmmaker trying to bore his way into films through the porthole eye of television, or to make the long hard jump from shorts or the repertory theater into features. And for many European directors this is reason enough for not working in Hollywood. Their financing problems are usually solved film by film, whenever they persuade a backer to support their latest speculation - frequently for a budget which would have been consumed by one elephant charge in a film by the late Cecil B. De Mille...
The freedom to make the films of their own choosing, in their own way, is not even the goal of most Hollywood directors, who seem quite content to be parts of a large organic whole. It is only a small hard-core minority which chases these freedoms, each in his own way, perhaps known to each other, but not united by anything more than interest. Some of them play poker together but they solve their problems in different ways, some choosing to remain independent of a major studio entirely (like Stanley Kubrick), others already in possession of a more or less safe Hollywood studio contract but waiting for their chance to be free of studio control. Others again, not yet so far advanced, are serving a hopeful, waiting apprenticeship in the theater or in live television, or have started by making some shorts - usually documentary, but occasionally dramatic. In each case the mechanical problems are different - there is no single happy road to independence. But in each case the goal is the same - freedom to make a personal film, as free as possible from compromise. The fear that they will fail is a real one, and is responsible yearly for no one knows how many defections. And the thought that when they earn their freedom they will have lost the will to use it is a constant threat...
Stanley Kubrick is perhaps the most widely discussed of the postwar Hollywood newcomers, with four independent features behind him - Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss, The Killing, and Paths of Glory. He recently withdrew from the unit about to start shooting One-Eyed Jacks, Marlon Brando's independent production, ostensibly to begin work on Lolita, with his producer (since The Killing) James Harris. They bought the film rights about a month after the novel appeared and since then have had several bids from other producers - the highest for $650,000. This offer, like the others, was refused.
All this gives an impression of typically inflated Hollywood economics. But it is curiously untypical of the manner in which Kubrick and Harris work. Paths of Glory was made for $900,000 - $350,000 of which went to Kirk Douglas, its star. Thus, apart from Douglas's slice, the film was comparatively inexpensive-certainly a bargain for its distributors, United Artists. (It has to date grossed two and a half million dollars, worldwide.)
Kubrick is certain that genuine independence is possible only if the director stays clear of the major studios as long as possible. By this he means that a director should have a completed script, and if possible have a cast selected and signed, before going to a major studio for money. Anything less is inviting interference and a loss of control. It must include at least one "name" star, and the list of possibles is quite small - Kubrick mentioned about fifteen men and only seven women. "What this implies," he summarized, "is that you require the means to remain independent until the script is finished, until you have a star, and until the deal is set up properly." (By "properly" he means that the director's control will not prove to be illusory.)
A system so inexorably tied to a box-office list of actors and actresses obviously imposes severe limitations on a director's freedom of choice with material. But this does not distress Kubrick. "There is still a large enough number of good properties to permit you to do what you want - and remain independent."
The only time he has ever worked with a major studio was after Paths of Glory, when, with a forty-week contract from Dore Schary, he was let loose in the MGM library of story properties. It took him a long time to find anything to interest him, but before he left (in the wake of Schary's fall from grace) he had turned Stefan Zweig's touching short story The Burning Secret into a screenplay.
Employed by Look as a still photographer, he turned to film, making two shorts for RKO before stepping up to features with two hurly-burly films which he would rather not talk about now - Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss. But when they came out film critics did talk about them and saw the kind of promise which, it is generally agreed, Kubrick honored in his next two films. The money for his first two came from family and friends. Without this support, which must at times have seemed like blind devotion, he might never have reached his present position; it would be hard to estimate the number of aspirants who have never solved the problem of how to raise that first $50,000.
When he came to make Paths of Glory United Artists was the only financing organization in Hollywood which would touch it, and then only after Kirk Douglas agreed to play in it. The majors might have balked, Kubrick thinks, at the thought of offending their interests in France (through theater holdings, etc.). But United Artists is not committed in this way and, Kubrick added, perhaps has a more realistic view of the contemporary world market. In his experience they have been very good with scripts about which there is general apathy or, as in this case, antagonism.
Kubrick's two later films have received widespread critical attention - almost all of it favorable. The Killing is thoroughly manufactured, but the script goes out of its way to give motivation to all of the central characters and this alone would distinguish it from run-of-the-mill gunslingers if it did not anyway have considerable style and impact; it holds up well when reseen today. Paths of Glory is in almost every way a more important work - not only because it was almost three times as expensive. It is obviously about something - when we remember that this dramatization of an incident of military deceit in the French Army of World War I has still to be shown publicly in France.
What will probably be Kubrick's next film is also a war story. Presently titled The German Lieutenant, it is by a new writer, Richard Adams, formerly a paratrooper in Korea and more recently a Fulbright scholar to Europe, where he studied with Carl Dreyer. The story is based partially on his experiences, but has been switched to Germany in World War II.
I asked Kubrick at this point in our conversation why he wanted to make another war film - was there nothing about the contemporary scene which interested him? His reply is crucial and must be given in full.
"To begin with," he said, "one of the attractions of a war or crime story is that it provides an almost unique opportunity to contrast an individual of our contemporary society with a solid framework of accepted value, which the audience becomes fully aware of, and which can be used as a counterpoint to a human, individual, emotional situation. Further, war acts as a kind of hothouse for forced, quick breeding of attitudes and feelings. Attitudes crystallize and come out into the open. Conflict is natural, when it would in a less critical situation have to be introduced almost as a contrivance, and would thus appear forced, or - even worse - false. Eisenstein, in his theoretical writings about dramatic structure, was often guilty of oversimplification. The black and white contrasts of Alexander Nevsky do not fit all drama. But war does permit this basic kind of contrast - and spectacle. And within these contrasts you can begin to apply some of the possibilities of film - of the sort explored by Eisenstein."
He said somewhat wistfully, however, that he hoped to be able to deal some day with a more straightforward contemporary scene. To some extent he might do so of course with Lolita, but here his primary interest is to explore the development of Humbert's character, and the varieties of his love for his moppet-ending, ironically enough, with what Kubrick takes to be an almost selfless love for Lolita when, now seventeen, she is stuck with a humdrum pregnancy, and husband, and life. He does not plan to change the ages of the principals, nor the nature of their relationship, but he says they have a way of handling the subject which allows them to consider making the film at all.
Kubrick stands much closer to his material than almost any other director currently working in Hollywood. In each of his films to date he has been the principal or sole author of the screenplay (he did the original draft of Paths of Glory and Calder Willingham came in for the second), and he is at least the supervising if not the actual editor of his filmed material. On Killer's Kiss he carried credit for photography as well as direction, and he operated one of the cameras during the attack sequence in Paths of Glory (one fitted with a Zoomar lens). Thus it is not surprising that there should be a strong feeling of unity and single-mindedness in his films. Such a result is not guaranteed by one man's control of the material - he could be undecided about it. But it is rarely achieved in committee films. "A camel," as the recent proverb has it, "is a mule made by a committee."
There is an unconventionally intellectual air about Kubrick's films, but this may be more a by-product of style than an intentional ingredient. Certainly he does not mean his films to be intellectual in the sense of making a clear-cut statement about something. "I cannot give a precise verbal summary of the philosophical meaning of, for example, Paths of Glory. It is intended to involve the audience in an experience. Films deal with the emotions and reflect the fragmentation of experience. It is thus misleading to try to sum up the meaning of a film verbally." However, it is precisely his very evident style, praised by an eagerly perceptive band of professional film critics, which for some commentators (although not myself) prevents their involvement in Kubrick's characters and situations.
Kubrick has already given ample evidence of his strong grasp of mise en scène and the extension of character which an actor can be encouraged to bring to the pauses between lines of dialogue. On a second viewing of Paths of Glory, Douglas causes some uneasiness, but the film is otherwise beautifully performed, staged, photographed, cut, and scored - using, for example, a rasping, alarming staccato of drums during the battle scenes. It is a disappointment that Kubrick was not able to continue with Brando. Their relationship could not have been an easy one, but the result could have been fascinating...
This, then, is the "growing edge" of Hollywood. It is a different story than the one which might be told of Bergman, Ray, or Bresson, and it is perhaps not as heartening. But Kubrick is American, trying to work in or through Hollywood. If there is to be any "native" cinema in this country at all, it is as well that Kubrick and other gentlemen who pursue artistic freedom are there, making the attempt.
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THE ODYSSEY BEGINS (KUBRICK UNCOVERED)
Robert Emmett Ginna
Unpublished (Entertainment Weekly - The Guardian)
1960 (April 9, 1999 - July 16, 1999)
The Odyssey Begins
Nearly 40 years before his death and Eyes Wide Shut, director Stanley Kubrick spoke about his life and work. An exclusive interview by Robert Emmett Ginna.
by Robert Emmett Ginna
Before his unexpected death last month at 70, director Stanley Kubrick - always an elusive figure - had become the subject of intense speculation and mythologizing. With a minimal crew and a surplus of perfectionism, he had shot Eyes Wide Shut in London with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. The director of 13 features, including 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, had come out of seclusion to make his first film in 12 years, and had kept the stars occupied with multiple takes and reshoots for an astounding 19 months.
Hearing of his death, I burrowed into my files stored in an old New Hampshire barn and extracted the transcript of an interview I'd done with Kubrick in 1960 for Horizon magazine. Kubrick, who was 31 at the time, had just finished postproduction on Spartacus and was preparing Lolita. He agreed to be interviewed for Horizon's series "The Artist Speaks for Himself" and invited me to his modest, Spanish-style home in the unfashionable flats of Beverly Hills.
Chain-smoking but relaxed, wearing a gray blazer and corduroys, Kubrick spoke for hours about filmmaking, his life thus far, as well as his affinity for the Austrian dramatist and novelist Arthur Schnitzler (1862- 1931), whose novella Traumnovelle (or Dream Story) would become the basis for Eyes Wide Shut.
While Horizon interviews averaged 4,000 to 5,000 words, the Kubrick transcript ran to 26,000 words. I made several attempts to hew it down to publishable length with the help of the director, but Kubrick became absorbed in his filmmaking. I went off to make films too, and Horizon ultimately folded. The interview was never published.
Some years later, I was a producer working at the MGM British studios where Kubrick was immersed in making 2001. One morning I arrived at my production office to find that Stanley had begun to wall off his area of the studio. The symbolism was fitting. He'd become increasingly reclusive by then, and in later life he seldom spoke to the press, preferring to let his films speak for themselves.
What follows are excerpts from what he called "our heroic conversation."
Before your last picture, Spartacus, you'd begun work on One-Eyed Jacks, with Marlon Brando, which he ultimately directed himself. Why did you withdraw from that project?
When I left Brando's picture, it still didn't have a finished script. It had just become obvious to me that Brando wanted to direct the movie. I was just sort of playing wingman for Brando, to see that nobody shot him down.
Prior to Spartacus, your movies were modest in scale. Are you joining the "big picture" trend in Hollywood?
I think Spartacus is probably part of the trend of trying to combat television by giving the public something they can't see on television - namely, a multitude of big stars and spectacle. But what may be a trend in Hollywood isn't a trend for me, because I've always approached every picture I've done just from the standpoint of telling a story. And if it happens that the story takes three and a half hours to tell, and you need Roman costumes instead of modern clothes, and if some scenes are supposed to represent the Roman legion and need 5,000 people, I think that is all part of making films.
What attracted you to Lolita as a movie?
I was instantly attracted to the book because of the sense of life that it conveyed, the truthfulness of it, and the inherent drama of the situation seemed completely winning. I've always been amused at the cries of pornography on the part of various film columnists and people of that ilk, because, to me, Lolita seemed a very sad and tender love story. I believe that Lionel Trilling, in an article he wrote about the book, said that it was the first great [contemporary] love story. He remarked that in great love stories of the past, the lovers - by their love and through their love - totally estranged themselves from society and created a sense of shock in the people around them. And because of the slackening moral and spiritual values in the 20th century, in no love story until Lolita has that occurred.
You've said you're very fond of the work of Arthur Schnitzler. What draws you to him?
His plays are, to me, masterpieces of dramatic writing. It's difficult to find any writer who understood the human soul more truly and who had a more profound insight into the way people think, act, and really are, and who also had a somewhat all-seeing point of view - sympathetic if somewhat cynical.
Schnitzler employed indirection - a roundabout way of getting to the point.
I think all great dramatists have achieved their ends in very much the same way. The most potent way to move an audience is to reach their feelings and not their brains. Of course, it's a much more dangerous way to write, because if the audience fails to discover what you mean, they're left quite disturbed.
Do you find yourself drawn to works that are marked by ambiguity?
Well, that's an interesting point. It has always seemed to me that really artistic, truthful ambiguity - if we can use such a paradoxical phrase--is the most perfect form of expression. Nobody likes to be told anything. Take Dostoyevsky. It's awfully difficult to say what he felt about any of his characters. I would say ambiguity is the end product of avoiding superficial, pat truths.
But don't you feel that films with too much ambiguity will lose a mass audience?
The intellectual is capable of understanding what is intended and gets a certain amount of pleasure from that, whereas the mass audience may not. But I think that the enemy of the filmmaker is not the intellectual or the member of the mass public, but the kind of middlebrow who has neither the intellectual apparatus to analyze and clearly define what is meant, nor the honest emotional reaction of the mass film audience member. And unfortunately, I think that a great many of these people in the middle are occupied in writing about films. I think that it is a monumental presumption on the part of film reviewers to summarize in one terse, witty, clever, TIME magazine-style paragraph what the intention of the film is. That kind of review is usually very superficial, unless it is a truly bad film, and extremely unfair.
What led you into filmmaking?
I was born in New York City, where my father was a doctor. My parents wanted me to become a doctor, and I was supposed to go to medical school, but I was such a misfit in high school that when I graduated I didn't have the marks to get into college. But like almost everything else good that's ever happened to me, by the sheerest stroke of luck, I had a very good friend at Look [magazine], which gave me a job as a still photographer. After about six months, I was made a full-fledged staff photographer. My highest salary was $105 a week, but I did travel around the country, and I went to Europe and it was a great thing. I learned a lot about people and things. And then I made a documentary film - the first one I made - called Day of the Fight [1951]. It was about a boxer called Walter Cartier and everything that happened on the day of a fight. I thought there was a great future in making documentaries, but I didn't make any money on any of the documentaries I made. Then I made a feature, Fear and Desire [1953], and then Killer's Kiss [1955]. That led to The Killing [1956] and my association with [producer] Jim Harris. We did Paths of Glory and Lolita together.
What's the best preparation for being a film director?
Seeing movies. One of the things that gave me the most confidence in trying to make a film was seeing all the lousy films that I saw. Because I sat there and thought, Well, I don't know a goddamn thing about movies, but I know I can make a film better than that.
Were your earliest films received well by critics?
Not really. Fear and Desire was a lousy feature, very self-conscious, easily discernible as an intellectual effort, but very roughly, and poorly, and ineffectively made. Killer's Kiss had some exciting action sequences in it, but the story was written in a week in order to take advantage of a possibility of getting some money.
What are the elements of a film you feel a director must control?
He must control everything. I think you have to view the entire problem of putting the story you want to tell up there on that light square. It begins in the selection of the property; it continues through the creation of the right kind of financial and legal and contractual circumstances under which you make the film. It continues through the casting, the creation of the story, the sets, the costumes, the photography, and the acting. And when the picture is shot, it's only partially finished. I think the cutting is just a continuation of directing a movie. I think the use of music effects, opticals, and finally main titles are all part of telling the story. And I think the fragmentation of these jobs, by different people, is a very bad thing.
Since you were a photographer before you were a filmmaker, does cinematography hold particular interest for you?
Well, no, I confess that story and acting interest me much more. Because of my background in photography, I have been able to quickly figure out the best visual way to photograph or represent a scene on the screen. But I never start thinking in terms of shots. I first begin thinking of the main intent of the film. After the actors rehearse the scene and achieve a level of reality and excitement, only then do I really look through the viewfinder and try to figure out the best way to put this on the screen. Generally speaking, you can make almost any action or situation into an interesting shot, if it's composed well and lit well. I've seen many films in which interesting camera angles and lighting effects are totally incongruous to the purpose of the scene. When the whole thing is over, you've seen a rather interestingly photographed movie that has no effect at all.
How do you feel about using movie stars in your films? Do you prefer accomplished unknowns?
No. I like stars if they're good actors. I suppose there are situations in which the awareness of the star's personality is too strong for the audience to overcome, and the star might destroy the character he's playing, even though he's good. But I think those instances are rare. I would say that 95 percent of the pictures released were made because a star was willing to do them. The movie business has become so difficult, audiences have become so indifferent to films, that the only assurance a distributor or financier may have of getting his money back is by using a star in the part. If the stars are right, they make life easier for you.
Is music highly important to your films?
I think music is one of the most effective ways of preparing an audience and reinforcing points that you wish to impose on it. The correct use of music, and this includes the non-use of music, is one of the great weapons that the filmmaker has at his disposal.
Have the works of certain directors, or pictures, been milestones for you?
I believe [Ingmar] Bergman, [Vittorio] De Sica, and [Federico] Fellini are the only three filmmakers in the world who are not just artistic opportunists. By this I mean they don't just sit and wait for a good story to come along and then make it. They have a point of view which is expressed over and over and over again in their films, and they themselves write or have original material written for them.
Is your view of the world, of life, optimistic or pessimistic?
I wouldn't care to try to convey what it is. It is unfair enough to try to convey somebody else's. I wouldn't be that unfair to myself. One of the things that I always find extremely difficult, when a picture's finished, is when a writer or a film reviewer asks, "Now, what is it that you were trying to say in that picture?" And without being thought too presumptuous for using this analogy, I like to remember what T.S. Eliot said to someone who had asked him - I believe it was about The Waste Land - what he meant by the poem. He replied, "I meant what it said." If I could have said it any differently, I would have.
Entertainment Weekly, April 9, 1999
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Ginna's manuscript was used for an article in UK neewspaper The Guardian too. The editor of this article chose different bits than the ones published in the Entertainment Weekly magazine, so we can read some more words by Kubrick out of those 26,000. It should be noted that in the printed Friday Review supplement, this article had the title A Film Odyssey.
Kubrick Uncovered
For 39 years a unique and candid interview with the notoriously reticent Stanley Kubrick languished, unpublished, in Robert Emmett Ginna's barn. As the late director's final film opens in the US, Film Unlimited reveals the hidden manuscript.
Robert Emmett Ginna, a young editor for the American magazine Horizon, interviewed the 33-year-old Stanley Kubrick in 1961. The director had just finished working on Spartacus and was preparing to film Lolita. Ginna met Kubrick in his modest, Spanish-style home in Beverly Hills. Chain-smoking but relaxed, and wearing a grey blazer and corduroys, Kubrick spoke for hours about film-making and his life thus far, as well as his affinity with the Austrian dramatist and novelist Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931), whose novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story) would become the basis for Eyes Wide Shut.
The transcript of Ginna's interview with Kubrick ran to 26,000 words. "I made several attempts to hew it down to publishable length with the help of the director," wrote Ginna, "but Kubrick became absorbed in his film-making. I went off to make films too, and Horizon ultimately folded. The interview was never published."
For nearly four decades, the transcript sat mouldering in Ginna's barn in New Hampshire. Until, that is, he posted a carbon copy to the Guardian. It wasn't just the rusty paper clips, the yellowing, flimsy paper, or the musty odour which testified to the authenticity of the interview, but the whole tenor of the questions and answers.
These are excerpts from what Kubrick told Ginna was "our heroic conversation".
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What led you into film-making?
I was born in New York. My father was a doctor. My parents had wanted me to be a doctor but I was such a misfit in high school that when I graduated I didn't have the marks to get into college. So, like almost everything else good that's ever happened to me, by the sheerest stroke of good luck, I had a very good friend on Look magazine, a woman named Helen O'Brien, who was the picture editor. I knew her through selling two picture stories to Look that I had shot when I was still in high school. She asked me if I would like a job - you know, a junior photographer or something. They gave me a job, for $50 a week, as a still photographer. After about six months I was finally made a staff photographer. My highest salary was $105 a week. But I travelled around the country and I went to Europe. I learned a lot about people and things. And then, I made a documentary film called Day of the Fight about a boxer called Walter Cartier. It cost me around $3,900 and I sold it to RKO for $4,000. So I thought there was a great future in making documentaries, but I didn't make any money on any of the films I made. Then I made a feature Fear and Desire (1953) and then Killer's Kiss (1955). That led to The Killing (1956), and my association with [producer] Jim Harris. We did Paths of Glory and Lolita together.
What's the best preparation for being a film director?
Seeing movies. It's true of any art form. The greatest preparation for a painter is to look at paintings. I mean, even seeing the current movies, you learn something. I know that one of the things that gave me the most confidence in trying to make a film was all the lousy films that I saw. Because I sat there and I thought, well, I don't know a goddamn thing about movies, but I know I can make a film better than that. And I think that's probably what started people like Truffaut.
Do you think that a movie of Lolita would have been possible for an American film-maker 10 years ago?
Well, a lot of people think it isn't possible now.
Would the audience have been prepared for it 10 years ago? And would a producer have made it?
Ten years ago there weren't many opportunities for financing a film outside of the major studios. Today there's almost an infinite number of possibilities for film financing, which allows almost complete control to the film-maker, and this includes getting financing from foreign countries. It also includes almost every major studio now, which makes deals of the same kind as United Artists has for years. They simply put up the money and distribute the film and allow you to make it by yourself, off the lot and without any interference or supervision.
Do you think communities might censor Lolita or ban it out of fear that a film from so controversial a book would provoke a large section of the public?
I think the sale of the novel has indicated that a much larger audience than just the hardbook readers have found interest in the story and have accepted it. It's already sold more than 3m paperbacks. I think all these cries of pornography and obscenity about any project are quite silly if the picture is playing. Because the police wouldn't let it play if it was truly obscene or pornographic, although that would be up to the courts to decide finally - whether it was or not.
What were the chief attractions for you in Lolita as a film subject?
I think the book is a rare and unique masterpiece; that is to say that it is a rare masterpiece of understanding of characters and situation, and of life itself. To me, Lolita seemed a very sad and tender love story. I believe that Lionel Trilling, in an article he wrote about the book, said that it was the first great love story of the 20th century. He remarked that in all the great love stories of the past, take what you like - Anna Karenina, The Red and the Black, Romeo and Juliet - the lovers, by their love and through their love, totally estranged themselves from society. It seems to me one of the wonderful things about Lolita is that it shocks, because of the relationship. You are prevented from making a premature and overly sympathetic judgment of Humbert's position by the shock that's created in your mind. And, finally, when you read your way through the book and get to the last scene - the confrontation between Humbert and Lolita when she's 16, pregnant and unattractive, by his own description, and certainly no longer an infant - you realise, without any doubt, and with a completely sweeping emotional effect that he selflessly and truly loves the girl and that he is broken-hearted.
May we surmise that the average film audience will find the relationship of a 39-year-old man and a child shocking, without the few startling erotic scenes in the book?
One of the wonderful things about the way the book is written - and the way we intend to tell the story - is that it has a surface of comedy, humour and vitality: only gradually, as the story progresses, do you penetrate beneath this surface and begin to see the true nature of each character and what the story is turning out to be. In this respect, by the way, I think it is very much related to many things by Arthur Schnitzler - this surface of gaiety and vitality, superficiality and gloss, through which you penetrate for yourself to start getting your bearings as to the true nature of people and situations.
You purchased the screen rights so early that I think we can exonerate you from purely box-office motives.
We bought it when it had not yet appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. We never dreamed of the popularity that the book would achieve. We thought it would be popular, but how could one guess that it would become the number one bestseller in the world? I think that Lolita is probably the greatest box-office attraction in the history of movies.
Prior to Spartacus, the pictures which you had made were rather modest in scale. When you undertook Spartacus I wondered if you were subscribing to a trend in Hollywood - The Big Picture.
I think Spartacus is probably part of the trend of trying to combat television by giving the public something they can't see on television - namely, a multitude of big stars and spectacle. But what may be a trend for Hollywood isn't a trend for me, because I think that, from my own point of view, I've always approached every picture I've done just from the standpoint of telling a story.
You have said that you're very fond of the work of Arthur Schnitzler and that he is a writer who has engaged your attention.
His plays are, to me, masterpieces of dramatic writing. I think he's one of the most underrated writers of the 20th century; probably because he didn't deal with things that are obviously full of social significance, he has been ignored. I know that, for my part, it's difficult to find any writer who understood the human soul more truthfully, and who had a more profound insight into the way people think, act, and really are, and who also had a somewhat all-seeing point of view - sympathetic, if somewhat cynical.
Schnitzler employed indirection, a roundabout way of getting at the point.
I think all great dramatists have achieved their ends in very much the same way. The most potent way to move an audience to your point of view is to reach their feelings, and not their brains. If you can emotionally make a point that may, in your own mind, be quite clear and philosophical, you will sway people, at least for the duration of your play or movie. And one of the most effective ways to move people is to allow them to discover what you mean for themselves. It seems to me that works in which the meaning is all too clear are never as powerful and as evocative as works in which the meaning becomes clear and where you enjoy a thrill of discovery. Of course, it's a more dangerous way to write because if the audience fails to discover what you mean, they're left quite disturbed. It's always safer to spell it out, in the last scene, and tell them exactly what you were after - which all too many people seem to do.
Do you find yourself drawn to works that are marked by a certain amount of ambiguity?
Well, that's an interesting point. It has always seemed to me that really artistic, truthful ambiguity - if we can use such a paradoxical phrase - is the most perfect form of expression, for a number of reasons. One: nobody likes to be told anything; nobody likes to be told the truth of what's happening. And, perhaps even more important than that, nobody knows what is true or what is happening. I think that a really perfect ambiguity is something which means several things, all of which might be true, and which, at the same time, move the audience, emotionally, in the general direction you want them to be moving. So, I think that, conversely, the literal, plain, clear statement is, in its own way, a false statement and never has the power that a perfect ambiguity might.
Do you have any familiar ways of working with the camera - that is, in terms of the number of camera set-ups you take to achieve a given scene?
Sometimes it's one shot. I have a scene in Spartacus where Laurence Olivier, who plays Crassus, a Roman general, tries to seduce Tony Curtis, who is a slave, and it's a very bleak kind of a dialogue scene. The whole thing is shot in a long shot through a kind of filmy curtain which covers his bathtub, and the figures are only about half the height of the screen. And, by doing this, I think we achieve the effect of somebody eavesdropping from the next room. The scene lasts two or three minutes and, normally, you'd cover it from a lot of angles, but when I shot it, I just shot this one angle.
I read a very interesting review of Mary McCarthy's collected criticisms, published recently in England, and, in the course of it, Angus Wilson, the reviewer, remarked that for her - and certainly for him - the cinema is the medium for the intellectual today, not the theatre. I wonder if you think it's true?
I do. I'd like to talk about that. There's something I recall reading in one of Stanislavsky's books. He made the point that, in addition to a performance being truthful and accurate and believable, that it also had to be interesting. There were many possibilities, in some scenes, of adjustment and ways to play it, but, finally, one had to choose the one that was the most interesting because the audience will not respond with a full emotional response if they're sitting there bored and restless. And there's always this fine line between over-stimulating an audience and keeping them artificially excited and losing them. And I think this is why great films and great theatre are so rare. Because, in addition to everything else the author has to accomplish, you're always treading that very narrow path of not artificially and falsely stimulating your audience, and, on the other hand, not losing them through boredom or indifference. I can tell you why I am disappointed in the theatre. I think realistic theatre is a bore. I think that to spend two and a half hours in the theatre, where the method of communication with the audience is through realism and through presenting words and deeds in a completely realistic way is somewhat tiresome. Movies can create realism and cover so much more ground in so much less time.
Is your view of the world, of life, optimistic?
I wouldn't care to try to convey what it is. It is unfair enough to try to convey somebody else's. I wouldn't be that unfair to myself. I think that I'll just let it go at that.
Will your pictures speak for you?
I think they should. One of the things that I always find extremely difficult, when a picture's finished, is when a writer or a film viewer asks: "Now, what is it that you were trying to say in that picture?" And without being thought too presumptuous, for using this analogy, I like to remember what TS Eliot said to someone who had asked him - I believe it was about The Wasteland - what he meant by the poem. He said: "I meant what it said." If I could have said it any differently, I would have.
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DIRECTOR'S NOTES: STANLEY KUBRICK MOVIE-MAKER
Stanley Kubrick
The Observer Weekend Review
Sunday December 4, 1960, pag. 21
With his anti-militarist Paths of Glory, Stanley Kubrick established himself as one of the most alert and trenchant young directors in Hollywood. Since then he has made Spartacus, the star-filled epic which opens in London this week, and he is now in England to direct the film version of Lolita.
Still only thirty-two, Kubrick is one of the great white hopes of the commercial film industry as well as of cineastes. Box-office and the star-system are conditions that Kubrick feels a good director should be able to dominate: for him the fact that the cinema is an industry is part of its essence as an art. His previous films were Fear and Desire, a dark, moody study of four soldiers trapped behind enemy lines, Killers Kiss, and The Killing, a microscopic record of a gang-robbery that had the intensity of Rififi and a style that moved critics to speak of Welles and Max Ophuls. In 1957 Paths of Glory made Kubricks name.
These thoughts, jotted down for The Observer in odd moments, are a Directors Notes on his Trade.
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I don't think that writers or painters or film makers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form: they like words, or the smell of paint, or celluloid and photographic images and working with actors. I dont think that any genuine artist has ever been orientated by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was.
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The making of any film, whatever the historical setting or the size of the sets, has to be approached in much the same way. You have to figure out what is going on in each scene and whats the most interesting way to play it. With Spartacus, whether a scene had hundreds of people in the background or whether it was against a wall, I thought of everything first as if there was nothing back there. Once it was rehearsed, we worked out the background.
I must confess that I never thought very much about the proportions of the wide screen after the first day or two. I think that much too much emphasis is put on it. It is really just another shape to compose to: for some scenes it's a better shape than others; for some scenes it just doesn't make too much difference. Instead of having the people stand two feet apart, sometimes you have them standing four feet apart; or you throw up a prop in the corner or something. As to the big screen, a big screen is a small screen from the back of the house and a normal screen is a big screen from the front rows.
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I haven't come across any recent new ideas in films that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less a fruitless thing. A truly original person with a truly original mind will not be able to function in the old form and will simply do something different. Others had much better think of the form as being some sort of classical tradition and try to work within it.
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I think that the best plot is no apparent plot. I like a slow start, the start that gets under the audiences skin and involves them so that they can appreciate grace notes and soft tones and don't have to be pounded over the head with plot points and suspense hooks.
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When you make a movie, it takes a few days just to get used to the crew, because it is like getting undressed in front of fifty people. Once you're accustomed to them, the presence of even one other person on the set is discordant and tends to produce self-consciousness in the actors, and certainly in myself.
You feel you should run up to the person who is watching and say: Now look - this scene comes in here after this scene and we have just this other take: the reason she is yelling so much is because... and so on.
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Maybe the reason why people seem to find it harder to take unhappy endings in movies than in plays or novels is that a good movie engages you so heavily that you find an unhappy ending almost unbearable. But it depends on the story, because there are ways for the director to trick the audience into expecting a happy ending and there are ways of very subtly letting the audience be aware of the fact that the character is hopelessly doomed and there is not going to be a happy ending.
In a criminal film, it is almost like a bullfight: it has a ritual and a pattern which lays down that the criminal is not going to make it, so that while you can suspend your knowledge of this for a while, sitting way back of your mind this little awareness knows and prepares you for the fact that he is not going to succeed. That type of ending is easier to accept.
One thing that has always disturbed me a little is that the ending often introduces a false note. This applies particularly if it is a story that doesn't pound away on a single point, such as whether the time-bomb will explode in the suitcase. When you deal with characters and a sense of life, most endings that appear to be endings are false, and possibly that is what disturbs the audience: they may sense the gratuitousness of the unhappy ending.
On the other hand, if you end a story with somebody achieving his aim it always seems to me to have a kind of incompleteness about it, because that almost seems to be the beginning of another story. One of the things I like most about John Ford is the anticlimax endings - anticlimax upon anticlimax and you just get a feeling that you are seeing life and you accept the thing.
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It is sometimes supposed that the way to make pictures entirely as one wants to, without having to think about the box-office, is to dispense with stars in order to make them on a low budget. In fact, the cost of a picture usually has little to do with how much the actors get paid. It has to do with the number of days you take to shoot it, and you cant make a film as well as it can be made without having a sufficient length of time to make it.
There are certain stories in which you can somehow hit everything on the nose quickly and get the film shot in three weeks. But it is not the way to approach something of which you want to realise the full potential. So there often is nothing gained by doing without stars and aiming the film at the art houses. Only by using stars and getting the film on the circuits can you buy the time needed to do it justice.
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I've often heard it asked whether it doesn't affect the reality and the artistic quality of a picture not to make it in actual locations. Personally I have found that working out of doors or working in real locations is a very distracting experience and doesn't have the almost classical simplicity of a film studio where everything is inky darkness and the lights are coming from an expected place and it is quiet and you can achieve concentration without worrying that there are 500 people standing behind a police line halfway down the block, or about a million other distractions.
I think that much too much has been made of making films on location. It does help when the atmosphere circumstances and locale are the chief thing supposed to come across in a scene. For a psychological story, where the characters and their inner emotions and feelings are the key thing, I think that a studio is the best place. Working on a set provides the actor with much better concentration and ability to use his full resources.
When Spartacus was being made, I discussed this point with Olivier and Ustinov and they both said that they felt that their powers were just drifting off into space when they were working out of doors. Their minds weren't sharp and their concentration seemed to evaporate. They preferred that kind of focusing-in that happens in a studio with the lights pointing at them and the sets around them. Whereas outside everything fades away, inside there is a kind of inner focusing of physical energy.
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The important thing in films is not so much to make successes as not to make failures, because each failure limits your future opportunities to make the films you want to make.
People nowadays seem to have a great deal of difficulty deciding whether a character in a film is good or bad - especially the people who are making the film. It seems as if first they deal out twenty-five cents worth of good and then twenty-five cents worth of bad and at the very end of the story you have a perfect balance.
I think it essential if a man is good to know where he is bad and to show it, or if he is strong, to decide what the moments are in the story where he is weak and to show it. And I think that you must never try to explain how he got the way he is or why he did what he did.
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I have no fixed ideas about wanting to make films in particular categories - Westerns, war films and so on. I know I would like to make a film that gave a feeling of the times - a contemporary story that finally gave a feeling of the times, psychologically, sexually, politically, personally. I would like to make that more than anything else. And it's probably going to be the hardest film to make.
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DAVID WARK GRIFFITH AND HIS WINGS OF FORTUNE
Stanley Kubrick
DGA Magazine XXII #2
May-June 1997
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3,2 MB avi
Good evening. I'm sorry not to be able to be with you tonight, to receive this great honor of the D.W. Griffith Award, but I'm in London making Eyes Wide Shut with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. At just about this time I'm probably in the car on the way to the studio, which, as it happens, reminds me of a conversation I had with Steven Spielberg, about what was the most difficult and challenging thing about directing a film. And I believe Steven summed it up about as profoundly as you can. He thought the most difficult and challenging thing about directing a film was getting out of the car. I'm sure you all know the feeling.
But at the same time, anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.
A picture of the award achieved by Steven Spielberg the year after Kubrick.
I think there is an intriguing irony in naming the lifetime achievement award after D.W. Griffith, because his career was both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. His best films will always rank among the most important films ever made, and some of them made him a great deal of money. He was instrumental in transforming movies from a nickelodeon novelty to an art form, and he originated and formalized much of the syntax of moviemaking now taken for granted. He became an international celebrity, and his patronage included many of the world's leading artists and statesmen of the time.
But Griffith was always ready to take tremendous risks in his films and in his business affairs. He was always ready to fly too high. And in the end, the wings of fortune proved, for him, like those of Icarus, to be made of nothing more substantial than wax and feathers. And like Icarus, when he flew too close to the sun, they melted, and the man whose fame exceeded the most illustrious filmmakers of today, spent the last 17 years of his life shunned by the film industry he had created.
I've compared Griffith's career to the Icarus myth, but at the same time I have never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, "don't try to fly too high", or whether it might also be thought of as "forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings".
One thing, however, is certain: D.W. Griffith left us with an inspiring and intriguing legacy, and the award in his name is one of the greatest honors a film director can receive. Something for which I humbly thank all of you very much.
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Durante la serata, è stato mostrato un montaggio commemorativo dei film di Kubrick: 1,16 MB Real
Jack Nicholson accepted the award on behalf of Kubrick.
Incidentally, Stanley's money's on better wings.
My first impulse was to quote Bum Phillips when he said of Earl Campbell the running back that he was in a class all of his own, and if he wasn't, it don't take long to call the roll.
Leon Vitali, attore in Barry Lyndon e poi assistente di Kubrick, ha raccontato i retroscena del videomessaggio di ringraziamento in un episodio dello Stanley & Us Project.
The D.W. Griffith Award was something very special for Stanley because it was awarded him from his collagues. Even if he didn't expected it I know he was very happy about it... it was very important to him.
It was the only time I actually ever saw him in front of a camera. An amateur camera... and I was shooting him doing this acceptance speech. It was just us two in the room. It was sweet, it was wonderful to see him doing this because you would have never thought he would have done it, but he did. It was really something very special for him... he never allowed to be shot. And he never recordered any other acceptance speech for any other award.
It was quite funny, because he didn't know his lines! We laughed about that and I said: "Now you know how it feels!" It took a lot of takes to get it right. He was so sweet because he was not able to do it right and he was in pain about it. Another side of Stanley you have not seen before. Quite wonderful and touching. Actually the one thing he didn't give up was the right to say "Cut". If he saw he wasn't doing it right he said "cut" himself. And if he went terribly wrong he just switched off the camera.
Stanley & Us Project
nche Christiane Kubrick, la terza moglie del regista, racconta la realizzazione del videodiscorso.
Stanley era un attore terribile. Era bravissimo ad osservare le piu' sottili sfumature negli attori, ma nelle occasioni ufficiali, esattamente come me ora su questa sedia, andava nel pallone. Completamente.
In occasione del discorso di accettazione del Premio Griffith scrisse un bellissimo testo, ma - come se avesse ingoiato un bastone - era rigidissimo... poi ho visto il risultato ed era orribile! Ho riso da matti. Io e Leon l’abbiamo preso in giro. L'ha dovuto rifare decine di volte, e alla fine ha detto: "Devo decidermi a spedirlo, altrimenti non lo finiro' mai".
Poi l’ha rivisto in televisione... pensavo stesse per soffocare... era terrorizzato dal modo in cui era venuto. Ecco perche' non dava interviste. Diceva: "Perché dovrei apparire come un'idiota?"
Quando era molto giovane fu invitato in un programma radiofonico - avra' avuto 20 anni - e il tipo della radio gli mise il microfono in bocca e gli disse senza cortesia: "Parla!" Ma lui non ci riusciva. Cosi' il tipo lo sgrido': "Credevo che avresti parlato del tuo film!". Ebbe una sorta di paura da palcoscenico e non riusci' a dire nulla. Molte persone non riescono a parlare in pubblico. Non riesci mai a dire quello che veramente vorresti dire. Non ti vengono in mente i nomi, le date, quando sei sotto i riflettori...
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THE ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW: STANLEY KUBRICK
Tim Cahill
Rolling Stone
August 27, 1987
He didn't bustle into the room and he didn't wander in. Truth, as he would reiterate several times, is multifaceted, and it would be fair to say that Stanley Kubrick entered the executive suite at Pinewood Studios, outside London, in a multifaceted manner. He was at once happy to have found the place after a twenty-minute search, apologetic about being late and apprehensive about the torture he might be about to endure. Stanley Kubrick, I had been told, hates interviews.
It's hard to know what to expect of the man if you've only seen his films. One senses in those films painstaking craftsmanship, a furious intellect at work, a single-minded devotion. His movies don't lend themselves to easy analysis; this may account for the turgid nature of some of the books that have been written about his art. Take this example: "And while Kubrick feels strongly that the visual powers of film make ambiguity an inevitability as well as a virtue, he would not share Bazin's mystical belief that the better film makers are those who sacrifice their personal perspectives to a "fleeting crystallization" of a reality [of] whose environing presence one is ceaselessly aware."
One feels that an interview conducted on this level would be pretentious bullshit. Kubrick, however, seemed entirely unpretentious. He was wearing running shoes and an old corduroy jacket. There was an ink stain just below the pocket where some ball point pen had bled to death "What is this place?" Kubrick asked. "It's called the executive suite", I said. "I think they put big shots up here."
Kubrick looked around at the dark wood-paneled walls, the chandeliers, the leather couches and chairs. "Is there a bathroom?" he asked, with some urgency. "Across the hall", I said.
The director excused himself and went looking for the facility. I reviewed my notes. Kubrick was born in the Bronx in 1928. He was an undistinguished student whose passions were tournament-level chess and photography. After graduation from Taft High School at the age of seventeen, he landed a prestigious job as a photographer for Look magazine, which he quit after four years in order to make his first film. Day of the Fight (1950) was a documentary about the middleweight boxer Walter Cartier. After a second documentary, The Flying Padre (1951), Kubrick borrowed $10,000 from relatives to make Fear and Desire (1953), his first feature, an arty film that he now finds "embarrassing". Kubrick, his first wife and two friends were the entire crew for the film. By necessity, Kubrick was director, cameraman, lighting engineer, makeup man, administrator, prop man and unit chauffeur. Later in his career, he would take on some of these duties again, for reasons other than necessity.
Kubrick's breakthrough film was Paths of Glory (1957). During the filming, he met an actress, Christiane Harlan, whom he eventually married. Christiane sings a song at the end of the film in a scene that, on four separate viewings, has brought tears to my eyes.
Kubrick's next film was Spartacus (1960), a work he finds disappointing. He was brought in to direct after the star, Kirk Douglas, had a falling-out with the original director, Anthony Mann. Kubrick was not given control of the script, which he felt was full of easy moralizing. He was used to making his own films his own way, and the experience chafed. He has never again relinquished control over any aspect of his films.
And he has taken some extraordinary and audacious chances with those works. The mere decision to film Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1961) was enough to send some censorious sorts into a spittle-spewing rage. Dr. Strangelove (1963), based on the novel Red Alert, was conceived as a tense thriller about the possibility of accidental nuclear war. As Kubrick worked on the script, however, he kept bumping up against the realization that the scenes he was writing were funny in the darkest possible way. It was a matter of slipping on a banana peel and annihilating the human race. Stanley Kubrick went with his gut feeling: he directed Dr. Strangelove as a black comedy. The film is routinely described as a masterpiece.
Most critics also use that word to describe the two features that followed, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971). Some reviewers see a subtle falling off of quality in his Barry Lyndon (1975) and The Shining (1980), though there is a critical reevaluation of the two films in process. This seems to be typical of his critical reception.
Kubrick moved to England in 1968. He lives outside of London with Christiane (now a successful painter) three golden retrievers and a mutt he found wandering forlornly along the road. He has three grown daughters. Some who know him say he can be "difficult" and "exacting".
He had agreed to meet and talk about his latest movie, Full Metal Jacket, a film about the Vietnam War that he produced and directed. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Herr, the author of Dispatches, and Gustav Hasford, who wrote The Short-Timers, the novel on which the film is based. Full Metal Jacket is Kubrick's first feature in seven years.
The difficult and exacting director returned from the bathroom looking a little perplexed.
"I think you're right", he said. "I think this is a place where people stay. I looked around a little, opened a door, and there was this guy sitting on the edge of a bed."
"Who was he?" I asked.
"I don't know", he replied.
"What did he say?"
"Nothing. He just looked at me, and I left."
There was a long silence while we pondered the inevitable ambiguity of reality, specifically in relation to some guy sitting on a bed across the hall. Then Stanley Kubrick began the interview.
"I'm not going to be asked any conceptualizing questions, right?"
All the books, most of the articles I read about you - it's all conceptualizing.
Yeah, but not by me.
I thought I had to ask those kinds of questions.
No. Hell, no. That's my... [He shudders] It's the thing I hate the worst.
Really? I've got all these questions written down in a form I thought you might require. They all sound like essay questions for the finals in a graduate philosophy seminar.
The truth is that I've always felt trapped and pinned down and harried by those questions.
Questions like [reading from notes] "Your first feature, Fear and Desire, in 1953, concerned a group of soldiers lost behind enemy lines in an unnamed war; Spartacus contained some battle scenes; Paths of Glory was an indictment of war and, more specifically, of the generals who wage it; and Dr. Strangelove was the blackest of comedies about accidental nuclear war. How does Full Metal Jacket complete your examination of the subject of war? Or does it?"
Those kinds of questions.
You feel the real question lurking behind all the verbiage is "What does this new movie mean?"
Exactly. And that's almost impossible to answer, especially when you've been so deeply inside the film for so long. Some people demand a five-line capsule summary. Something you'd read in a magazine. They want you to say, "This is the story of the duality of man and the duplicity of governments." [A pretty good description of the subtext that informs Full Metal Jacket, actually.] I hear people try to do it - give the five-line summary - but if a film has any substance or subtlety, whatever you say is never complete, it's usually wrong, and it's necessarily simplistic: truth is too multifaceted to be contained in a five-line summary. If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant. I don't know. Perhaps it's vanity, this idea that the work is bigger than one's capacity to describe it. Some people can do interviews. They're very slick, and they neatly evade this hateful conceptual- izing. Fellini is good; his interviews are very amusing. He just makes jokes and says preposterous things that you know he can't possibly mean. I mean, I'm doing interviews to help the film, and I think they do help the film, so I can't complain. But it isn't... it's... it's difficult.
So let's talk about the music in Full Metal Jacket. I was surprised by some of the choices, stuff like These Boots Are Made for Walkin', by Nancy Sinatra. What does that song mean?
It was the music of the period. The Tet offensive was in '68. Unless we were careless, none of the music is post-'68.
I'm not saying it's anachronistic. It's just that the music that occurs to me in that context is more, oh, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison.
The music really depended on the scene. We checked through Billboard's list of Top 100 hits for each year from 1962 to 1968. We Were looking for interesting material that played well with a scene. We tried a lot of songs. Sometimes the dynamic range of the music was too great, and we couldn't work in dialogue. The music has to come up under speech at some point, and if all you hear is the bass, it's not going to work in the context of the movie. Why? Don't you like These Boots Are Made for Walkin?
Of the music in the film, I'd have to say I'm more partial to Sam the Sham's Wooly Bully, which is one of the great party records of all time. And Surfin Bird.
An amazing piece, isn't it?
Surfin Bird comes in during the aftermath of a battle, as the marines are passing a medevac helicopter. The scene reminded me of Dr. Strangelove, where the plane is being refueled in midair with that long, suggestive tube, and the music in the background is Try a Little Tenderness. Or the cosmic waltz in 2001, where the spacecraft is slowly cartwheeling through space in time to The Blue Danube. And now you have the chopper and the Bird.
What I love about the music in that scene is that it suggests post combat euphoria - which you see in the marine's face when he fires at the men running out of the building: he misses the first four, waits a beat, then hits the next two. And that great look on his face, that look of euphoric pleasure, the pleasure one has read described in so many accounts of combat. So he's got this look on his face, and suddenly the music starts and the tanks are rolling and the marines are mopping up. The choices weren't arbitrary.
You seem to have skirted the issue of drugs in Full Metal Jacket.
It didn't seem relevant. Undoubtedly, Marines took drugs in Vietnam. But this drug thing, it seems to suggest that all marines were out of control, when in fact they weren't. It's a little thing, but check out the pictures taken during the battle of Hue: you see marines in fully fastened flak jackets. Well, people hated wearing them. They were heavy and hot, and sometimes people wore them but didn't fasten them. Disciplined troops wore them, and they wore them fastened.
People always look at directors, and you in particular, in the context of a body of work. I couldn't help but notice some resonance with Paths of Glory at the end of Full Metal Jacket: a woman surrounded by enemy soldiers, the odd, ambiguous gesture that ties these people together...
That resonance is an accident. The scene comes straight out of Gustav Hasford's book.
So your purpose wasn't to poke the viewer in the ribs, point out certain similarities...
Oh, God, no. I'm trying to be true to the material. You know, there's another extraordinary accident. Cowboy is dying, and in the background there's something that looks very much like the monolith in 2001. And it just happened to be there. The whole area of combat was one complete area - it actually exists. One of the things I tried to do was give you a sense of where you were, where everything else was. Which, in war movies, is something you frequently don't get. The terrain of small-unit action is really the story of the action. And this is something we tried to make beautifully clear: there's a low wall, there's the building space. And once you get in there, everything is exactly where it actually was. No cutting away, no cheating. So it came down to where the sniper would be and where the marines were. When Cowboy is shot, they carry him around the corner - to the very most logical shelter. And there, in the background, was this thing, this monolith. I'm sure some people will think that there was some calculated reference to 2001, but honestly, it was just there.
You don't think you're going to get away with that, do you?
[Laughs] I know it's an amazing coincidence.
Where were those scenes filmed?
We worked from still photographs of Hue in 1968. And we found an area that had the same 1930's functionalist architecture. Now, not every bit of it was right, but some of the buildings were absolute carbon copies of the outer industrial areas of Hue.
Where was it?
Here. Near London. It had been owned by British Gas, and it was scheduled to be demolished. So they allowed us to blow up the buildings. We had demolition guys in there for a week, laying charges. One Sunday, all the executives from British Gas brought their families down to watch us blow the place up. It was spectacular. Then we had a wrecking ball there for two months, with the art director telling the operator which hole to knock in which building.
Art direction with a wrecking ball.
I don't think anybody's ever had a set like that. It's beyond any kind of economic possibility. To make that kind of three-dimensional rubble, you'd have to have everything done by plasterers, modeled, and you couldn't build that if you spent $80 million and had five years to do it. You couldn't duplicate, oh, all those twisted bits of reinforcement. And to make rubble, you'd have to go find some real rubble and copy it. It's the only way. If you're going to make a tree, for instance, you have to copy a real tree. No one can "make up" a tree because every tree has an inherent logic in the way it branches. And I've discovered that no one can make up a rock. I found that out in Paths of Glory. We had to copy rocks, but every rock also has an inherent logic you're not aware of until you see a fake rock. Every detail looks right, but something's wrong. So we had real rubble. We brought in palm trees from Spain and a hundred thousand plastic tropical plants from Hong Kong. We did little things, details people don't notice right away, that add to the illusion. All in all, a tremendous set dressing and rubble job.
How do you choose your material?
I read. I order books from the States. I literally go into bookstores, close my eyes and take things off the shelf. If I don't like the book after a bit, I don't finish it. But I like to be surprised.
Full Metal Jacket is based on Gustav Hasford's book The Short-Timers.
It's a very short, very beautifully and economically written book, which, like the film, leaves out all the mandatory scenes of character development: the scene where the guy talks about his father, who's an alcoholic, his girlfriend - all that stuff that bogs down and seems so arbitrarily inserted into every war story. What I like about not writing original material - which I'm not even certain I could do - is that you have this tremendous advantage of reading something for the first time. You never have this experience again with the story. You have a reaction to it: it's a kind of falling-in-love reaction. That's the first thing. Then it becomes almost a matter of code breaking, of breaking the work down into a structure that is truthful, that doesn't lose the ideas or the content or the feeling of the book. And fitting it all into the much more limited time frame of a movie. As long as you possibly can, you retain your emotional attitude, whatever it was that made you fall in love in the first place. You judge a scene by asking yourself, "Am I still responding to what's there?" The process is both analytical and emotional. You're trying to balance calculating analysis against feeling. And it's almost never a question of, "What does this scene mean?" It's, "Is this truthful, or does something about it feel false?" It's "Is this scene interesting? Will it make me feel the way I felt when I first fell in love with the material?" It's an intuitive process, the way I imagine writing music is intuitive. It's not a matter of structuring an argument.
You said something almost exactly the opposite once.
Did I?
Someone had asked you if there was any analogy between chess and filmmaking. You sald that the process of making decisions was very analytical in both cases. You said that depending on intuition was a losing proposition.
I suspect I might have said that in another context. The part of the film that involves telling the story works pretty much the way I said. In the actual making of the movie, the chess analogy becomes more valid. It has to do with tournament chess, where you have a clock and you have to make a certain number of moves in a certain time. If you don't, you forfeit, even if you're a queen ahead. You'll see a grand master, the guy has three minutes on the clock and ten moves left. And he'll spend two minutes on one move, because he knows that if he doesn't get that one right, the game will be lost. And then he makes the last nine moves in a minute. And he may have done the right thing. Well, in filmmaking, you always have decisions like that. You are always pitting time and resources against quality and ideas.
You have a reputation for having your finger on every aspect of each film you make, from inception right on down to the premiere and beyond. How is it that you're allowed such an extraordinary amount of control over your films?
I'd like to think it's because my films have a quality that holds up on second, third and fourth viewing. Realistically, it's because my budgets are within reasonable limits and the films do well. The only one that did poorly from the studio's point of view was Barry Lyndon. So, since my films don't cost that much, I find a way to spend a little extra time in order to get the quality on the screen.
Full Metal Jacket seemed a long time in the making.
Well, we had a couple of severe accidents. The guy who plays the drill instructor, Lee Ermey, had an auto accident in the middle of shooting. It was about 1:00 in the morning, and his car skidded off the road. He broke all his ribs on one side, just tremendous injuries, and he probably would have died, except he was conscious and kept flashing his lights. A motorist stopped. It was in a place called Epping Forest, where the police are always finding bodies. Not the sort of place you get out of your car at 1:30 in the morning and go see why someone's flashing their lights. Anyway, Lee was out for four and a half months.
He had actually been a marine drill instructor?
Parris Island.
How much of his part comes out of that experience?
I'd say fifty percent of Lee's dialogue, specifically the insult stuff, came from Lee. You see, in the course of hiring the marine recruits, we interviewed hundreds of guys. We lined them all up and did an improvisation of the first meeting with the drill instructor. They didn't know what he was going to say, and we could see how they reacted. Lee came up with, I don't know, 150 pages of insults. Off the wall stuff: "I don't like the name Lawrence. Lawrence is for faggots and sailors." Aside from the insults, though, virtually every serious thing he says is basically true. When he says, "A rifle is only a tool, it's a hard heart that kills", you know it's true. Unless you're living in a world that doesn't need fighting men, you can't fault him. Except maybe for a certain lack of subtlety in his behavior. And I don't think the United States Marine Corps is in the market for subtle drill instructors.
This is a different drill instructor than the one Lou Gosset played in An Officer and a Gentleman.
I think Lou Gosset's performance was wonderful, but he had to do what he was given in the story. The film clearly wants to ingratiate itself with the audience. So many films do that. You show the drill instructor really has a heart of gold - the mandatory scene where he sits in his office, eyes swimming with pride about the boys and so forth. I suppose he actually is proud, but there's a danger of falling into what amounts to so much sentimental bullshit.
So you distrust sentimentality.
I don't mistrust sentiment and emotion, no. The question becomes, are you giving them something to make them a little happier, or are you putting in something that is inherently true to the material? Are people behaving the way we all really behave, or are they behaving the way we would like them to behave? I mean, the world is not as it's presented in Frank Capra films. People love those films - which are beautifully made - but I wouldn't describe them as a true picture of life. The questions are always, is it true? Is it interesting? To worry about those mandatory scenes that some people think make a picture is often just pandering to some conception of an audience. Some films try to outguess an audience. They try to ingratiate themselves, and it's not something you really have to do. Certainly audiences have flocked to see films that are not essentially true, but I don't think this prevents them from responding to the truth.
Books I've read on you seem to suggest that you consider editing the most important aspect of the filmmaker's art.
There are three equal things: the writing, slogging through the actual shooting and the editing.
You've quoted Pudovkin to the effect that editing is the only original and unique art form in film.
I think so. Everything else comes from something else. Writing, of course, is writing, acting comes from the theater, and cinematography comes from photography. Editing is unique to film. You can see something from different points of view almost simuluneously, and it creates a new experience. Pudovkin gives an example: You see a guy hanging a picture on the wall. Suddenly you see his feet slip; you see the chair move; you see his hand go down and the picture fall off the wall. In that split second, a guy falls off a chair, and you see it in a way that you could not see it any other way except through editing. TV commercials have figured that out. Leave content out of it, and some of the most spectacular examples of film art are in the best TV commercials.
Give me an example.
The Michelob commercials. I'm a pro football fan, and I have videotapes of the games sent over to me, commercials and all. Last year Michelob did a series, just impressions of people having a good time...
The big city at night
And the editing, the photography, was some of the most brilliant work I've ever seen. Forget what they're doing - selling beer - and it's visual poetry. Incredible eight-frame cuts. And you realize that in thirty seconds they've created an impression of something rather complex. If you could ever tell a story, something with some content, using that kind of visual poetry, you could handle vastly more complex and subtle material.
People spend millions of dollars and months' worth of work on those thirty seconds.
So it's a bit impractical. And I suppose there's really nothing that would substitute for the great dramatic moment, fully played out. Still, the stories we do on film are basically rooted in the theater. Even Woody Allen's movies, which are wonderful, are very traditional in their structure. Did I get the year right on those Michelob ads?
I think so.
Because occasionally I'll find myself watching a game from 1984.
It amazes me that you're a pro football fan.
Why?
It doesn't fit my image of you.
Which is...
Stanley Kubrick is a monk, a man who lives for his work and virtually nothing else, certainly not pro football. And then there are those rumors...
I know what's coming.
You want both barrels?
Fire.
Stanley Kubrick is a perfectionist. He is consumed by mindless anxiety over every aspect of every film he makes. Kubrick is a hermit, an expatriate, a neurotic who is terrified of automobiles and who won't let his chauffeur drive more than thirty miles an hour.
Part of my problem is that I cannot dispel the myths that have somehow accumulated over the years. Somebody writes something, it's completely off the wall, but it gets filed and repeated until everyone believes it. For instance, I've read that I wear a football helmet in the car.
You won't let your driver go more than thirty miles an hour, and you wear a football helmet, just in case.
In fact, I don't have a chauffeur. I drive a Porsche 928S, and I sometimes drive it at eighty or ninety miles an hour on the motorway.
Your film editor says you still work on your old films. Isn't that neurotic perfectionism?
I'll tell you what he means. We discovered that the studio had lost the picture negative of Dr. Strangelove. And they also lost the magnetic master soundtrack. All the printing negatives were badly ripped dupes. The search went on for a year and a half. Finally, I had to try to reconstruct the picture from two not-too-good fine-grain positives, both of which were damaged already. If those fine-grains were ever torn, you could never make any more negatives.
Do you consider yourself an expatriate?
Because I direct films, I have to live in a major English-speaking production center. That narrows it down to three places: Los Angeles, New York and London. I like New York, but it's inferior to London as a production center. Hollywood is best, but I don't like living there. You read books or see films that depict people being corrupted by Hollywood, but it isn't that. It's this tremendous sense of insecurity. A lot of destructive competitiveness. In comparison, England seems very remote. I try to keep up, read the trade papers, but it's good to get it on paper and not have to hear it every place you go. I think it's good to just do the work and insulate yourself from that undercurrent of low-level malevolence.
I've heard rumors that you'll do a hundred takes for one scene.
It happens when actors are unprepared. You cannot act without knowing dialogue. If actors have to think about the words, they can't work on the emotion. So you end up doing thirty takes of something. And still you can see the concentration in their eyes; they don't know their lines. So you just shoot it and shoot it and hope you can get something out of it in pieces. Now, if the actor is a nice guy, he goes home, he says, "Stanley's such a perfectionist, he does a hundred takes an every scene." So my thirty takes become a hundred. And I get this reputation. If I did a hundred takes on every scene, I'd never finish a film. Lee Ermey, for instance, would spend every spare second with the dialogue coach, and he always knew his lines. I suppose Lee averaged eight or nine takes. He sometimes did it in three. Because he was prepared.
There's a rumor that you actually wanted to approve the theaters that show Full Metal Jacket. Isn't that an example of mindless anxiety?
Some people are amazed that I worry about the theaters where the picture is being shown. They think that's some form of demented anxiety. But Lucasfilms has a Theater Alignment Program. They went around and checked a lot of theaters and published the results in a [1985] report that virtually confirms all your worst suspicions. For instance, within one day, fifty percent of the prints are scratched. Something is usually broken. The amplifiers are no good, and the sound is bad. The lights are uneven...
Is that why so many films I've seen lately seem too dark? Why you don't really see people in the shadows when clearly the director wants you to see them?
Well, theaters try to put in a screen that's larger than the light source they paid for. If you buy a 2000-watt projector, it may give you a decent picture twenty feet wide. And let's say that theater makes the picture forty feet wide by putting it in a wider-angle projector. In fact, then you're getting 200 percent less light. It's an inverse law of squares. But they want a bigger picture, so it's dark. Many exhibitors are terribly guilty of ignoring minimum standards of picture quality. For instance, you now have theaters where all the reels are run in one continuous string. And they never clean the aperture gate. You get one little piece of gritty dust in there, and every time the film runs, it gets bigger. After a couple of days, it starts to put a scratch on the film. The scratch goes from one end of the film to the other. You've seen it, I'm sure.
That thing you see, it looks like a hair dangling down from the top of the frame, sort of wiggling there through the whole film?
That's one manifestation, yeah. The Lucas report found that after fifteen days, most films should be junked. [The report says that after seventeen days, most films are damaged.] Now, is it an unreal concern if I want to make sure that on the press shows or on key city openings, everything in the theater is going to run smoothly? You just send someone to check the place out three or four days ahead of time. Make sure nothing's broken. It's really only a phone call or two, pressuring some people to fix things. I mean, is this a legitimate concern, or is this mindless anxiety?
Initial reviews of most of your films are sometimes inexplicably hostile. Then there's a reevaluation. Critics seem to like you better in retrospect.
That's true. The first reviews of 2001 were insulting, let alone bad. An important Los Angeles critic faulted Paths of Glory because the actors didn't speak with French accents. When Dr. Strangelove came out, a New York paper ran a review under the head MOSCOW COULD NOT BUY MORE HARM TO AMERICA. Something like that. But critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion. Which is why I think audiences are more reliable than critics, at least initially. Audiences tend not to bring all that critical baggage with them to each film. And I really think that a few critics come to my films expecting to see the last film. They're waiting to see something that never happens. I imagine it must be something like standing in the batter's box waiting for a fast ball, and the pitcher throws a change-up. The batter swings and misses. He thinks "Shit, he threw me the wrong pitch." I think this accounts for some of the initial hostility.
Well, you don't make it easy on viewers or critics. You've said you want an audience to react emotionally. You create strong feelings, but you won't give us any easy answers.
That's because I don't have any easy answers.
----
STANLEY KUBRICK: AT A DISTANCE
The Director Does Vietnam His Way - In London
Lloyd Grove
Washington Post
Sunday, June 28, 1987
PINEWOOD GREEN, England
The board room at Pinewood Studios is disturbingly baroque. The ceiling sags with chandeliers. Gilt-edged paneling dresses every inch of wall. At one end a cold-eyed movie mogul, the late J. Arthur Rank, grins from his painted portrait. It hangs above a sideboard bearing an electric burner. "IMPORTANT! COFFEE MUST NOT BOIL" reads a label on the machine, atop of which two pots contain smoking black sludge. At the other end of the room, far, far away, a filigreed mirror. The chasm between is filled by a table and 20 padded chairs. In front of each, a sea-green blotter. Natural light, diffused through curtains, washes in from a bank of windows.
Time passes slowly here, if at all. Portentous pops from the burner occasionally break the silence. Thus brewing anarchy threatens stolid formalism. It could be a scene out of a Stanley Kubrick film.
At length the director of Full Metal Jacket, an elegant vision of chaos during the Vietnam war, shambles in through a set of double doors, which spring back and forth on their hinges until they reach a point of equilibrium. He plops a satchel on the table and takes the chairman's seat. He wears an ocher corduroy jacket - unabashedly shabby, with a dark blue stain at the chest - khakis that ride toward his calves, and jogging shoes worn to a fare-thee-well (though not, it would seem, by jogging). Black hair sprouts from a balding head. The grayish beard is like jungle growth. The eyes, gazing through wire rims, look slightly surprised.
"Has it been seven years?" he asks with the hint of a smile. His last movie, The Shining, came out in 1980. "I never remember the years... I don't remember dates. I usually have trouble remembering how old my children are. I know that one's about 28. But I'm not sure. Is she 28? 27?"
For Kubrick, who will turn 59 next month, time is infinitely malleable, though he periodically consults a digital watch. One of his avowed artistic goals is to explode the narrative structure of movies. He has also managed to explode the narrative structure of life. At one point in a five-hour conversation, he seems to remember that World War II ended 20 years ago. At another point he mistakenly refers to Richard Nixon as president during the Tet offensive in the early months of 1968, the setting of his new film.
"Was it Johnson?" he asks ingenuously.
The release of a Stanley Kubrick movie is always an event. In his long absences and astonishing reappearances - he has made 12 movies since 1953 - he evokes the dark monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, his classic about the ascent of man from apehood to the cosmos. It's "as if Stanley K. were the black slab itself", critic David Denby wrote in the current Premiere magazine, "a force of supernatural intelligence, appearing at great intervals amid high-pitched shrieks, who gives the world a violent kick up the next rung of the evolutionary ladder."
Full Metal Jacket - based on former Marine combat correspondent Gustav Hasford's 1979 novel The Short-Timers and filmed, audaciously, entirely in England - will probably provoke its share of shrieks.
"I know there's going to be a lot of outraged and offended responses to this movie", says Michael Herr, author of the acclaimed Vietnam memoir Dispatches, who spent a year working with Kubrick on the screenplay. "The political left will call him a fascist, and the right - well, who knows? I can't imagine what women are going to think of this film."
Kubrick, as ever, is reluctant to shed light on his $17 million creation, the first of a three-picture deal with Warner Bros. The film, at once visceral and cerebral, seems to crystallize his concerns about the destruction of human personality (as in A Clockwork Orange, 1971), the machinery of mass delusion (Dr. Strangelove, 1964), and the undivine comedy of war (Paths of Glory, 1957).
"We were just going for the way it is", he says, unable to resist a chuckle, perhaps thinking about all the film buffs who will be chewing on it for years.
"I certainly don't think the film is anti-American", he expands. "I think it tries to give a sense of the war and the people, and how it affected them. I think with any work of art, if I can call it that, that stays around the truth and is effective, it's very hard to write a nice capsule explanation of what it's about."
He mentions last year's Vietnam blockbuster, with which Full Metal Jacket has inevitably been compared. "I liked Platoon", he says. "It's very different. I think Platoon tries to ingratiate itself a little more with the audience. But then, I have enough faith in enough of the audience to think that they are able to appreciate something which doesn't do that. At least you're not bored. I don't know if you go to the movies a lot, but that's one of the biggest problems."
Kubrick submits to interviews so seldom, and then usually under the most calibrated of conditions, that he has become the J.D. Salinger of movie mythology. "Or worse", he laments, "Howard Hughes."
"I don't know what you've read about Stanley", says Matthew Modine, who plays the new film's central character, a cynical Marine combat correspondent nicknamed Private Joker, "but the impression I got was that he was this crazy lunatic who was afraid of germs and flies. It's just not true."
"He's not a recluse", says Herr. "He doesn't go to parties but he sees a lot of people. He's a very sane guy."
"He may think," says Hasford, who also worked on the screenplay, "that the public enjoys thinking of him as a mad scientist."
In case one hasn't heard the bizarre stories, Kubrick is happy to repeat them, albeit with a few strategic shrugs.
"I mean," he says, "I'm supposed to wear a football helmet and have a chauffeur who's told not to drive more than 30 miles an hour. In fact, I have a Porsche 928S, which I drive myself, like anybody else on the motorway, at 70 or 80 miles an hour... I've read I have a huge fence around where I live. In fact, I have a car gate which is about that high to keep the dogs from running out on the road, where you press a button and the gate opens. That's described as 'an electronically operated security gate.' I did an interview with a guy once, and he wrote that I hire a helicopter to spray my garden because I don't like mosquitoes. Well, I mean, there are very few mosquitoes in England."
And if he indulges a fear of flying, "there are about 50 million other people who don't like to fly. But with me, it tends to be attributed to some kind of singularly neurotic and generally incomprehensible weakness. In fact, I had a pilot's license. I used to fly single-engine aircraft out of Teterboro Airport in New Jersey." For a moment he reflects. "I don't know why people don't do it. Certain things get to your imagination and boom!" He smacks the table. "Who can define where phobias come from?"
Born in the Bronx, a fact still evident in his speech, at once hard edged and homey, he has lived half his life in England, these days on a country estate outside London. He hasn't been back to his native land since 1968. He keeps up by reading newspapers and watching videotapes (often of old football games, his passion along with chess), screening movies in his projection room, talking on the phone and sending messages by modem and fax. "Stanley", says Herr, "is a great tool-using animal."
Kubrick's rambling house and converted stables - which he shares with his third wife Christiane, pets both canine and feline, and a rotating retinue of assistants - are stacked with papers, books and film cans. Kubrick himself cuts every foot of his films - he spent 10 months on Full Metal Jacket - and half a dozen rooms are devoted to high-tech editing gear, run by a computer that is never turned off.
"They say it likes to be on, it likes to be hot", he explains. "So it's been on since we started editing, and it's still on. It's a bit like HAL", he adds, referring to the computer that turned homicidal when threatened with disconnection in 2001.
His is an entirely self-contained world, from which he rarely ventures forth. Over the years he has marshaled a panoply of reasonable-sounding explanations. Traveling to no purpose is "boring", he says, the equivalent of "aimless wandering". Then there's the problem of pets. "It's one thing to leave your house", he says, "but then suddenly you've got to leave your dogs and cats, and there's really no one particularly to take care of them properly. So it starts to become inconvenient to leave the place. And I have no particular reason to."
London is also a good place to make movies, with production facilities superior to New York's and less expensive than Hollywood's. And, after all, it doesn't really matter these days where one hangs one's hat. "If you live, say, in New York, you get the images of your neighborhood and your friends, but essentially it's all the electronic village stuff and it isn't that different now living any place, with cities being decentralized and computer modems and TV."
He fails to cite the most persuasive argument - that this carefully composed environment is probably the only one in which his obsessive imagination could flourish. The image of Kubrick abroad evokes the hapless astronaut in 2001 struggling with a severed life-support system as he hurtles through the void.
The director who explored the horror genre in The Shining, knockabout satire in Dr. Strangelove, and costume drama in Barry Lyndon (1975), insists that he never set out to put his stamp on the Vietnam War Movie. As always, he says, he just wanted to tell a good story.
"There are certain things about a war story that lend itself to filming," he says, "but only if the story's good. There's something about every kind of story. There's something about a love story with Greta Garbo in it. Whether it's a war story, or a love story, or an animal story... I would say it's the story, not the subject."
On finishing The Shining, based on the novel by Stephen King, he launched a literary reconnaissance mission. "When I don't have a story" he says, "it's like saying a lion walking around in the veld isn't looking for a meal. I'm always looking." In 1982 he happened on The Short-Timers, in which young Marines are molded by boot camp and then twisted by war - and was immediately enthralled. It took him longer to decide that the novel was filmable. The term "full metal jacket", which appears nowhere in the book, describes the casing of a bullet.
"This book", Kubrick says, "was written in a very, very, almost poetically spare way. There was tremendous economy of statement, and Hasford left out all the 'mandatory' war scenes that are put in to make sure you understand the characters and make you wish he would get on with the story... I tried to retain this approach in the film. I think as a result, the film moves along at an alarming - hopefully an alarming - pace."
Beginning in 1983, he steeped himself in Vietnam - countless movies and documentaries, Vietnamese newspapers on microfilm from the Library of Congress and hundreds of photographs from the era - as he collaborated on the screenplay with Herr and Hasford and looked for locations in England. He found a British Territorial Army base to serve as the Marine boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., where the movie's searing opening sequences unfold. For Da Nang, Phu Bai and the Imperial City of Hue, which was devastated by the Tet fighting, he found an abandoned gas works on the Thames River at Beckton, already scheduled for demolition.
The architecture on the isolated site, about a mile square, closely resembled certain neighborhoods in Hue, circa 1968. It was "all in this industrial functionalism style of the 1930s, with the square modular concrete components and big square doors and square windows", Kubrick says. "And so we had a demolition team in there for a week blowing up buildings, and the art director spent about six weeks with a guy with a wrecking ball and chain, knocking holes in the corners of things and really getting interesting ruins - which no amount of money would have allowed you to build."
Kubrick's Hue was finished off with grillwork and other architectural accents, 200 palm trees imported from Spain and thousands of plastic plants shipped from Hong Kong. Weeds and tall yellow grass - "which look the same all over the world", he notes - were conveniently indigenous. Four M41 tanks arrived courtesy of a Belgian army colonel who is a Kubrick fan, and historically correct S55 helicopters were leased and painted Marine green. A selection of rifles, M79 grenade launchers and M60 machine guns were obtained through a licensed weapons dealer.
"It looks absolutely perfect, I think", the director says of his dusty rendering of Vietnam on the Thames. "There might be some other place in the world like it, but I'd hate to have to look for it. I think even if we had gone to Hue, we couldn't have created that look. I know we couldn't have."
Kubrick discarded documentary realism only once in the film - for the sake of facing rows of naked toilets in the boot camp barracks, built on an interior set in London. The actual Parris Island toilets didn't have that sinister configuration. "We did that as a kind of poetic license", he says. "It just seemed funny and grotesque."
He hired extras from the local Vietnamese community, and cast the principals largely from videotaped auditions. He received about 2,000 tapes, including one from a then-unknown named Vincent D'Onofrio, whose performance as Private Pyle, a weak-minded recruit who spiritually melds with his M14, is already being touted for an Oscar nomination. But perhaps his luckiest discovery was retired Marine gunnery sergeant Lee Ermey, a Vietnam veteran and former drill instructor who was already employed as Kubrick's technical adviser.
After videotaping Ermey insulting and intimidating prospective actor-recruits, an exercise designed to see who would react in interesting ways, Kubrick picked him to play the savagely efficient drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. The D.I.'s dialogue, much of it Ermey's invention, nearly all of it unprintable, forges new frontiers of ear-burning obscenity.
"It was quite clear that Lee was a genius for this part," Kubrick says of Ermey, who heretofore had performed only in small movie roles. "I've always found that some people can act and some can't, whether or not they've had training. And I suspect that being a drill instructor is, in a sense, being an actor. Because they're saying the same things every eight weeks, to new guys, like they're saying it for the first time - and that's acting."
Kubrick concedes that certain Marine Corps PR types might be less than thrilled with the depiction. "I just think the dialogue is so good it goes beyond the question of 'should he be saying this? Is it right or wrong?' The most important thing is that it's dramatically effective and interesting and it's true. It's both funny and frightening."
For music, Kubrick scoured Billboard Top 100 lists of the era - using, for instance, Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made for Walking for a shot of a hooker slinking through downtown Da Nang - and hired first-time film composer Abigail Mead to supply some deftly ominous ambiance.
Vietnam, Kubrick says, was "probably the only war that was run by hawk intellectuals who manipulated facts and fine-tuned reality, and deceived both themselves and the public." History records that the Tet Offensive was a military defeat for the North Vietnamese, but also a pivotal psychological victory. In this regard, the director quotes one of his favorite lines from the film, spoken by a Marine lieutenant as he briefs correspondents for Stars and Stripes: "The civilian press are about to wet their pants, and we've heard that even Cronkite is about to say the war is now unwinnable." "Probably the war was always unwinnable", Kubrick says. "I'm sure it was. The Tet Offensive wasn't really the most appropriate time to realize that. They could have realized it a lot earlier."
"Stanley is an extremely difficult and talented person", set designer Ken Adam once said of his stint on Dr. Strangelove. "We developed an extremely close relationship, and as a result I had to live almost completely on tranquilizers."
"He's a control freak", says Herr. "But he's philosophical about the things he can't control."
His compulsion for detail is famous. Once, during the opening week of A Clockwork Orange, he ordered a theater in New York repainted because he'd heard, from 3,000 miles away, that the walls were a bit too shiny. His sets are closed to everyone but cast and crew. He rarely shows his films to the studio executives until a few weeks before the release dates. He doesn't do audience test-screenings because they are, in his view, "irrelevant and potentially dangerous." It goes without saying that he has final cut.
"I may have poor insight about myself", Kubrick says when asked if he is indeed a control freak, "but I don't think so, no. Obviously, in the nature of making a film, you are trying to control a lot of people. Either you control them or they do what they want. I suppose somebody could agree that if you are able to do that, and are not made uncomfortable by it, it appeals to you. But that's certainly not why I've made movies."
If anything, says Jan Harlan, Kubrick's longtime executive producer, the director has grown "more thorough, more precise" over the years. "Stanley is a locomotive", Harlan adds. "He just pulls everybody along."
Midinterview, Kubrick requests to see a transcript of his quotes. He wants to make sure that he can recognize his voice. Some days later, after 18 pages of transcript are dispatched to London, he sends back 28 pages of corrections. He insists during a subsequent discussion that he has no interest in appearing spontaneous in an interview, that he sounds inarticulate to himself - that that's not the way he talks. (A few of his suggestions were incorporated into this piece.)
He is also sensitive to the suggestion that he films endless takes.
"I think this about takes", he says. "An actor has to know his lines before he can begin to act. You cannot think about your lines and act. Some actors - and those are usually the ones who go back to L.A. and do interviews about what a perfectionist I am and how they had to do a take 70 or 80 times - don't go home after shooting, study their lines and go to bed. They go out, stay out late, and come in the next morning unprepared..."
"So you can reason with them or explain how they're hurting themselves, or you can yell at them. Some of them respond, some don't, and there isn't an awful lot you can do about it except not work with them again."
"He's very kind, one of the kindest people I've ever known", says Ermey. "But he's in a position where he can't show that side of himself. You can't be Mr. Nice Guy and win awards."
"He's probably the most heartfelt person I ever met", says Modine. "It's hard for him, being from the Bronx, with that neighborhood mentality, and he tries to cover it up. Right underneath that veneer is a very loving, conscientious man, who doesn't like pain, who doesn't like to see human suffering or animals suffering. I was really surprised by the man."
In Full Metal Jacket Modine's Joker, sporting a peace sign on his fatigues and the words "Born to Kill" on his helmet, defines this condition as "the duality of man".
"The Jungian thing, sir!" he explains to an inquisitive officer.
In the striving, middle-class Bronx neighborhood where Kubrick grew up, the son of a doctor, he was considered slightly Bohemian - a polite, soft-spoken young man with a far-off look in his eye. "As if he were somewhere else", recalls one of his contemporaries from William Howard Taft High School, where Kubrick's grades were so poor he couldn't get into college. Instead, at age 17, he became a photographer for Look magazine. He left at 21 to make documentary short subjects.
The old neighborhood "isn't there any more", Kubrick says. "I guess the part I grew up in is still there, it's just different." How does he know? "Because people tell me. And I've seen documentaries." He describes one in which snipers take pot shots at firefighters.
"My sort of fantasy image of movies was created in the Museum of Modern Art, when I looked at Stroheim and D.W. Griffith and Eisenstein", he recalls. "I was star struck by these fantastic movies. I was never star struck in the sense of saying, 'Gee, I'm going to go to Hollywood and make $5,000 a week and live in a great place and have a sports car.' I really was in love with movies. I used to see everything at the RKO in Loew's circuit, but I remember thinking at the time that I didn't know anything about movies, but I'd seen so many movies that were bad, I thought, 'Even though I don't know anything, I can't believe I can't make a movie at least as good as this.' And that's why I started, why I tried."
He was 25 when he borrowed $9,000 from family and friends to make Fear and Desire, his first feature. He made his second, Killer's Kiss, two years later. "I was forced to do everything, literally everything," he says, "from photographing them, going and buying the film, keeping the accounts, editing them, laying in the footsteps, creating the sound effects, to going to the lab." He went from there to Hollywood, where he detected a "general sense of insecurity and slight malevolence... That immediate effect on you isn't particularly useful in trying to make films. It's very easy to be put off your balance."
He made Paths of Glory, Spartacus and Lolita in quick succession. He'd just as soon have Spartacus hacked from his oeuvre. "I don't know what to say to people who tell me, 'Boy I really loved Spartacus. Gee, I think that's my favorite film'", Kubrick says of the only movie on which he was just a hired hand.
Some critics since have noted a strange detachment in his films, an observation that leaves him baffled. "I don't even think that's a particularly valid comment", he says. "It's more in the department that those normal signals - ingratiating and reassuring signals that most films make sure they give, and which are usually false - are not in the films."
Kubrick, in any case, has little use for critics.
"I wouldn't like to have to write an appreciation of a movie that I liked, because I think it's so elusive, and the things that critics are forced to do – make connections and conceptualizations of it – seem at best minor, and at worst fairly irrelevant to what seems almost inexpressibly beautiful about the movie."
He can still be a fan. "Your expertise only clicks in when the thing isn't good", he says. "When a film really works, you're captured by it and you're just sitting there responding to it and enjoying it."
Occasionally, Kubrick will respond almost to point of tears. "Close to it, but don't ask me which ones. There aren't that many movies that try to bring you to tears that are that good."
For the next three months, he must maintain his composure. He will be supervising the dubbing and subtitling of Full Metal Jacket for international release. Then he will retreat from the limelight, no doubt to return once again.
"The structure of making films is nice and enjoyable, and I like to make films", he says. "But there are certain virtues and benefits to doing other things... like living."
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MYSTERY IS MORE POWERFUL IN ART THAN IN LIFE
Vincente Molina Foix
El Pais- Artes II, n.59
December 20, 1980
You are still considered an American director even though in fact you've been making your films and living in England for many years. Are the reasons for your settling in England entirely personal or do they also have to do with the fact that making films in Great Britain costs much less than it does in the United States?
If you want to make films in English there are three centers of production, Los Angeles, New York and London, and since shooting and editing a film takes me a long time I have no choice but to live in one of these three cities; otherwise I'd never be home, I'd be out all the time. New York is less equipped than London for filmmaking, Hollywood offers far greater technical possibilities but, since the choice is between Hollywood and London, I prefer London. The city itself is definitely more interesting and I like living there. I'd also like New York, but it's not a practical place for making movies, except for the shooting of exteriors: if you're making a studio film, like The Shining or 2001: A Space Odyssey, New York doesn't have much to offer in the way of large studios or the construction of sets. All things considered, England seems to me the most suitable place.
Do you think that the fact of living here, in contact with a reality and with a film production different from the one you come from, has influenced your work in any way?
I don't think so. Because even if you live in the United States... living in New York is completely different from living in Atlanta, or Dallas, or Minneapolis, or in the rest of the country. If you live in New York the most that can be said is that you have a New Yorker sense of life. Living in London I think I have conserved an American sense of life, the same sense I'd have if I were living in New York. Furthermore, there's no question that in London I have a closer contact with reality than I could ever have, say in Hollywood, which is the most unreal place in the world. Every day I read the New York Times and American magazines, I see American films: so I really don 't think that living here is all that different from living there. As a matter of fact, I don't have a feeling of not living in America. I don't feel segregated or cut-off culturally. I'm never aware of any cultural gap, as I would be if I lived, for example, in France or in some other country. I live in London as if I were in a neighborhood of New York.
A few days ago you were telling me how you've always loved going to the movies. Do you still go often?
I try to see all the films that come but. Now I have a projector at home and that makes it much easier. The films I manage to get a copy of I watch at home, and for the others, I go see them in the theaters. In any case I try to see everything.
I'd like to ask about your preferences. What films...?
I like the good ones [Iaughter].
Do you agree with the Europeans who, after having strenuously defended the Hollywood motion picture industry of the '50s and '60s, now maintain that it is dead?
Well, the truth of the matter is that a majority of the most entertaining and amusing films have been made in Hollywood; but if I had to make a list of the most important films in the history of cinema I'm not so sure they would be Hollywood films.
In the Hollywood production of today, are you interested in the new work being expressed by young directors such as Scorsese, Schrader, Coppola, Bogdanovich, De Palma?
I think that the most interesting Hollywood - or rather North American - film that I've seen in a long time is Girlfriends, by Claudia Weill. It seemed to me one of the very few American films that I can compare with the serious, intelligent and sensitive works (as regards both script and direction) of the best European directors. Unfortunately the film didn't do too well, it certainly deserved much much better; I think it is a marvelous film that made no concessions to the central truth of its story, of its theme. Really magnificent.
It would be safe to say, then, that your tastes don't exactly jive with the "Hollywoodesque" cinema, as I like to call it.
I think "Hollywoodesque" is a bit strong. But it's very hard to make a film that is spectacular and attracts the general public while expressing, at the same time, the truth and perception associated with great literature. In fact, I think this is pretty hard to do, even without attracting the public [great laughter]. What happens is that since films cost so much in the United States, people are obsessed with pleasing the mass public. I think it ought to be possible to make something spectacular but not, on that account, false: but it's not easy.
Can you think of any examples?
Not easily since if you make a list of the ten best films, they will never be the box office hits of all time. But it also depends on how much a film costs. The receipts are really important only in relation to the cost of the film. If making a film in Hollywood costs eight million dollars, plus a million for the copies and another million for advertising, and it takes in around fifteen million, you still lose. If someone makes a film in Europe for about a million dollars and takes in six million, he gets rich. The profit has to be calculated on the basis of the costs. This is the big problem today: the enormous costs of filmmaking. In America it has become practically impossible to make a good film (which always means sufficient time, a good crew and good actors) that is not fabulously expensive.
Have you ever been interested in so-called "underground" cinema, either on the political side (Kramer, De Antonio), or on the avant-garde and New York side (Warhol, Mekas, Anger...)?
Frankly I've never seen a good underground movie. One of the problems about filmmaking is that without a certain degree of technical ability the product can only be crude. And most of the underground films I've seen were very badly made. A few of these film buffs are of some interest; there are some people out there who do things that no one else would think of doing. But on the whole I don't find them stimulating or important for the creation of ideas that can be useful to others.
In the past few days we have often touched upon the theme of Spanish filmmaking and the limited repercussion it has had outside Spain - perhaps unjustiftably limited. Could you say something more about the few Spanish films you have seen, apart, obviously, from Bunuel.
I have to confess that my knowledge is quite insufficient. The only director I can really say anything about is Carlos Saura, and also, in virtue of his single, excellent film, Victor Erice. But then, you ought to mention in the interview that here in London, unfortunately there are not many opportunities of seeing Spanish films.
Yes, the fact is very well known in my country.
I first encountered Saura's work by chance and in a rather strange way one day I got home quite late and turned on the television; a film in Spanish with subtitles, that I knew absolutely nothing about and besides I'd missed the first half hour. It was hard for me to follow and understand but, at the same time, I was convinced it was the film of a great director. I watched the rest of the film glued to the TV set and when it was over I picked up a newspaper and saw that it was Peppermint Frappè by Carlos Saura. Later I found a copy of the film, which of course I watched from the beginning and with great enthusiasm, and since then all of Saura's films that I've seen have confirmed the really high quality of his work. He is an extremely brilliant director, and what strikes me in particular is the marvelous use he makes of his actors. I'd also like to mention the great impression the young girl Ana Torrent made on me in the two roles I saw her play: in Erice's film, El espiritu de la colmena, and in Saura's Cria cuervos. I dare say that in a few years she will be a woman of rare beauty - you can see it already - and a great actress. And besides these two directions I must of course mention Luis Bunel, whom I have profoundly admired for many many years.
But do you see anything in common between these three directors? I ask you this question, which may seem gratuitous, because when Cria cuervos was shown recently on the BBC, there were numerous references in the English press to the "Bunuelesque" quality of Saura's film, and the names of both directors were linked to Erice's.
All good films have something in common. Apart from that, divining kinships is critics' work, and more often than not they make them up. Sure, some hypotheses of the critics are more plausible than others... All great films are great because they have something unique about them and, for this reason, each one is incomparable. But, on the other hand, a good film normally has to be well written, well acted, well directed, and this may give the impression that good films do resemble one another. But the truth is that they are for the most part quite different, because each one is unique.
Nearly all your films are based on novels. Do you find it easier to work when you start out with literature?
It does provide a considerable advantage, since it gives you a chance to see the whole story at a single glance. I've never written an original script, so I'm just speculating on the effect it might produce. But I suppose that if someone has an idea that he, or she, really likes and decides to develop it, his first impression about whether the story is interesting or not will have disappeared by the time he finishes writing it. And so, to attempt at this point to convert the idea into a film, one has to trust in that initial and now distant interest or instinct. The advantage of a story already written that can be read in a book is that you can remember what you felt the first time you read it. And this is very useful for the decisions you have to make when you are directing the film. Even with a story written by someone else, a director becomes so familiar with it after a certain period of time that there is no way of saying just what impression it will make on someone else who is seeing it for the first time.
Nevertheless, the novels you have adapted (Nabokov's Lolita, Thackeray's Barry Lyndon, King's The Shining, and so forth) are always very different from one another. What is it about a novel that makes you decide to adapt it for the screen?
In the first place, a certain undefinable personal response to the story. This sounds a bit simplistic, but the point of it is that I simply have to like the story. Then comes the question: does the story maintain its power of fascination? If you think about it for two weeks, do you still find it fascinating? If it passes this test, then comes the question, "Can the novel be made into a film?" With the majority of novels, if they are good ones, it just isn't possible.
What especially attracted you about Stephen King's novel The Shining?
The novel was sent to me by an executive of Warner Bros, and it was the first time I ever read a novel that had already been chosen for a film adaptation. It made for absorbing reading, and I found the plot, ideas and structure far more imaginative than is usually the case in a terror story. I thought it could be made into a magnificent film.
Were you familiar with King's earlier novels?
No. I had seen Brian De Palma's film Carrie, based on King's novel of the same name. That was all. I'd say that King's special talent is for the construction of a plot. It doesn't seem to me that he cares very much about the form of the book: I had the impression that he writes the novel, rereads it, polishes it, and passes it on without further ado to his publisher. He appears to be much more interested in invention, and I have to say that he is inventive indeed.
But did you have any idea about making a horror film before they sent you King's book?
No. When I finish a film I never have any idea of what film I will do next, I don't know what it might be. The only thing I do know is that I would not like to make a new film that is similar to the last one I made.
Yes, but what about the attraction of certain types of story? On previous occasions you worked within the conventions of specific genres (science fiction, the war film, the colossal and so forth). Was it the "genre" once again that attracted you this time?
Well I believe that the only rule as far as "genres" are concerned is that one must not attempt to explain them, or to look for clear explanation for what is taking place, and that the fundamental aim is to produce a feeling of mystery in the viewer. The feeling of mystery is the only emotion that is experienced more powerfully in art than in life, and it opens up many interesting perspectives in the genre. I read an essay by that great master H. P Lovecraft in which he says that one should never explain what is taking place, as long as it fires people's imaginations, their sense of mystery, their sense of anxiefy and fear; and always, of course, while avoiding obvious internal contradictions. To put it differently, it's all a question of building something up in the imagination (ideas, surprises, and so forth) and of exploring this area of sensations. I also think that the ingeniousness of a story like The Shining is something that the spectators enjoy enormously. As the film goes on they keep asking themselves what is about to happen, and I think they take great pleasure, at the end of the film, in not having been able to anticipate the denouement, without, however feeling that someone has tricked them or been pulling their leg.
There are quite a few changes in the film with respect to the book. Many characters have been some what simplified, the supernatural side and the side that I would call "pseudopsychological" have been practically eliminated, and the terror component has been toned down. Does this mean you were trying to avoid the basic conventions of the genre, even though for a large slice of the public the film remains a pure exemplar of terror?
I don't agree with you when you say that I toned down the terror elements of the book. There are even some people who think that there is more terror in the film than in the novel. In the novel, for example, nobody dies...
But you eliminated the presence of the giant animal figures that take lives, and run, and jump, and threaten...
Yes; but that's all. In fact, in the novel the animal figures silhouetted in the hedges of the garden attempt to imprison the negro cook Halloran when he arrives at the hotel, but this is the only thing that disappeared from the book.
In the film you highlight the relations between the characters; the sense of isolation and alienation in the hotel, the writer's frustration as he struggles over his book... none of this is in the novel, and I think it contributes a great deal to the film.
Well, there's no question that King attempted to include in the novel too many of what I might call clues and pseudopsychological characters, but the essence of the characters in the book have been retained in the film. Jack, above all... Perhaps the only change is Wendy the wife, who is now more credible as mother and wife.
I would say, above all on the basis of the ending, and especially of the final sequence, that the flirtations with Poe give way in the film to a presence of the universe of Borges, with his fiftgrees on the constant of an imaginary time and his ability to make fiction out of reality.
There's no question that the ending of the film, the last thirty minutes, represent a radical change with respect to the book, in which the climax, if I remember correctly, is limited to the face-off between the child and his father where the boy says to him, "No ,you're not my father", and then the father goes into the boiler room and the hotel explodes, and that's that. In fact, the most important task that Diane Johnson and I set ourselves was to change the ending, modifying the dramatic emphasis along the lines I've just traced out. With regard to such things as Jack's father and the family situation on the whole, in the film we introduced a few clues. For example, when Wendy tells the doctor how Jack dislocated the child's shoulder, it's obvious that she's trying to play the matter down, but we realize that in fact something horrible has occurred. Or when the hotel manager asks Jack, at the end of the job interview, "Do you think your wife and son will like the hotel?" Jack gives him a look that apparently means "What an unnecessary question", then he smiles and says: "They'll be fascinated." I think there are a great many slight and subtle suggestions of this sort, which attempt to give the viewer, albeit unconsciously the same evidence that King attempts so laboriously to insinuate into his novel.
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Early life
Kubrick was born on July 26, 1928 in the Bronx, New York City, United States, the first child of Jacques Kubrick and his wife Gertrude (born as Perveler). His sister, Barbara, was born in 1934. Jacques, whose parents had been Jewish immigrants of Austro-Romanian and Polish origin, was a successful doctor. Kubrick was taught to play chess at the age of twelve by his father, and the game would remain a lifelong obsession.
At thirteen Jacques Kubrick bought his son a Graflex camera, triggering Kubrick's fascination with still photography. At this time, he also became interested in jazz, and attempted a brief career as a drummer.
Stanley Kubrick grew up in the Bronx, New York City as the first child of a well-to-do family.Kubrick attended William Howard Taft High School from 1941 to 1945. (Chanteuse Eydie Gorme was a schoolmate.) He was a poor student with a meager grade average of 67. When he graduated from high school in 1945, colleges were flooded with soldiers returning from service in the Second World War, and Kubrick's poor grades eliminated his hopes of getting into a post-secondary school. Later in life, Kubrick would speak of his education and of education in general with disdain, and maintained that nothing in school interested him.
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Still Photographer
While still in high school, Kubrick was chosen to be the official school photographer for a year, and eventually sought job opportunities on his own. By the time of his graduation Kubrick had already sold a series of pictures to New York's Look. To supplement his income, Kubrick began playing "chess for quarters" in Washington Square Park and various Manhattan chess clubs. Kubrick also registered for night courses at the City College, to improve his grade average. Kubrick worked as freelancer for Look and was hired as an apprentice photographer in 1946. He later became a full-time member of the staff.
During his years at Look Kubrick married Toba Metz and they moved to Greenwich Village. It was also during this time that Kubrick began frequenting film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art and at cinemas all over New York City. He was particularly inspired by the complex and fluid camera movements of Max Ophüls, whose films influenced Kubrick's later visual style.
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Motion Picture Film career and later life
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Early films
In 1951 Kubrick's friend Alex Singer persuaded him to start making short documentaries for the March of Time, a provider of cinema-distributed newsreels. Kubrick agreed and independently financed Day of the Fight in 1951. Although the distributor went out of business the same year, Kubrick was able to sell Day of the Fight to RKO Pictures for a profit of one hundred dollars. Kubrick quit his job at Look and began work on his second documentary short, Flying Padre (also from 1951), funded by RKO. A third film, The Seafarers (1953), Kubrick's first film in color, was a 30-minute promotion short for the Seafarers' International Union. These three films, in addition to several other short subjects which have not survived, constitute Kubrick's only work in the documentary genre. He also served as second unit director on an episode of the television show Omnibus about the life of Abraham Lincoln.
Beginning with Fear and Desire in 1953, Kubrick began to concentrate solely on feature-length narrative films. Fear and Desire concerns a team of soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in a fictional war. In the finale, the men realize the faces of their enemies are identical to their own (the characters are played by the same actors). Kubrick and wife Toba Metz were the only crew on the film, which was written by Kubrick's friend Howard Sackler, who would later become a successful playwright. Fear and Desire garnered respectable reviews, but was a commercial failure. In later life, Kubrick was deeply embarrassed by the film which he dismissed as an amateur effort. He refused to allow Fear and Desire to be shown in retrospectives and other public screenings after he had established himself as a major filmmaker. The film was later released on DVD unofficially, and student filmmakers who have seen it have confirmed that it is 'encouragingly bad'.
Kubrick's marriage to his high school sweetheart Toba came to an end during the making of Fear and Desire. He married his second wife, Austrian dancer Ruth Sobotka, in 1954. She would make a cameo appearance in Kubrick's next film, Killer's Kiss (1955). Like Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss is a short feature film with a running time of slightly over an hour. Also like its predecessor, it had only limited commercial and critical success. The film tells the story of a young welterweight boxer at the end of his career who gets himself mixed up with organized crime. Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss were both privately funded by loans from Kubrick's family.
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The Killing
Alex Singer introduced Kubrick to a young producer named James B. Harris, and the two became lifelong friends. Their business partnership, Harris-Kubrick Productions, would finance Kubrick's next three films. Harris and Kubrick purchased the rights to a Lionel White novel called Clean Break which Kubrick and co-screenwriter Jim Thompson turned into a screenplay about a race track heist that goes terribly wrong. Starring Sterling Hayden, The Killing was Kubrick's first film with a professional cast and crew. The film made impressive use of non-linear time, unusual for the 1950s, and although not a financial success, it was Kubrick's first critically acclaimed film. The widespread admiration for The Killing brought Harris-Kubrick Productions to the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio offered the pair its massive collection of copyrighted stories from which to choose their next project. They eventually chose The Burning Secret by German writer Stefan Zweig. Kubrick wrote a screenplay with Calder Willingham, but the deal with MGM fell through before the film got properly underway.
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Paths Of Glory
Left to right: Stanley Kubrick, James B. Harris, and Kirk Douglas on the set of Paths of Glory (1957).Kubrick suggested an adaptation of Humphrey Cobb's novel Paths of Glory. Set in World War I, the story involves three innocent French soldiers who are charged with cowardice by their superiors in order to set an example for the other men. Kirk Douglas was cast as Colonel Dax, a humanitarian officer who tries to prevent the men's execution. Douglas was a major star at the time, and his involvement in the project was essential. Harris and Kubrick were unable to create much interest in the project until a major star of Douglas' caliber was on board, at which point United Artists agreed to finance the film. Paths of Glory (1957) went on to become Kubrick's first significant commercial and critical success and established him as an up and coming talent. Critics praised the film's unvarnished combat scenes and Kubrick's manipulation of the camera. A scene in which Douglas marches through his soldiers' trench in a single, unbroken reverse tracking shot has since become classic and is often cited in film classes. Steven Spielberg later stated that Paths of Glory is his favorite of Kubrick's films.
Paths of Glory was shot in Munich, Bavaria. During production, Kubrick met and became romantically involved with a young German actress named Christiane Harlan (who was credited under the stage name of "Susanne Christian"), who played the only female speaking part in Paths of Glory. Christiane (born in 1932) was four years his junior and had been born in Germany into a theatrical family. She trained as a dancer and actress. The two would marry within a year. The marriage was Kubrick's third and last, ending only with his death in 1999. In addition to raising Christiane's young daughter Katharina (born 1953) from her previous marriage, the couple would have two daughters: Anya (b. 1958) and Vivian (b. 1960). Christiane's brother, Jan Harlan acted as Kubrick's Executive Producer from 1975 onwards.
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Spartacus
After returning to the United States, Kubrick worked for six months on the Marlon Brando vehicle One-Eyed Jacks (1961). Kubrick would later claim that he was forced off the film because Brando wanted to direct it himself, which he later did. Kubrick languished working on screenplays which never reached production until Kirk Douglas requested that he take over the director's chair on Spartacus (1960) from Anthony Mann. Based on the true story of a doomed uprising of Roman slaves, Spartacus would establish Kubrick once and for all as a major director. The production, however, was not a happy one for Kubrick. Creative differences arose between Kubrick and Douglas, who was both the star and producer of the film. Kubrick was frustrated by his lack of creative control, and later largely disowned the film. The battle for control between Douglas and Kubrick, who had developed a good relationship during Paths of Glory, would result in a falling-out between the two men. In later years Douglas would refer to Kubrick as "a talented shit." Spartacus proved a major commercial success and was well-received by critics, but the battles waged over the film convinced Kubrick that he would have to find ways to work with the financial resources of Hollywood while remaining independent of its production system. Kubrick would later refer to Hollywood filmmaking as "film by fiat, film by frenzy."
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Lolita
Kubrick relocated to England to make Lolita in 1962, and would reside there for the rest of his life. The film caused Kubrick's first major controversy. The book, which dealt with a love affair between a middle-aged man and a twelve year old girl, was already notorious when Kubrick embarked on the project, and the difficulty of the subject matter would eventually be mocked in the film's ad campaign, which consisted of the tag line: "How did they ever make a film of Lolita?" Vladimir Nabokov, the book's author, produced a three hundred page screenplay which Kubrick abandoned. The final screenplay was, reportedly, penned by Kubrick himself. Despite changing Lolita's age to a more acceptable sixteen (changing her from a pre-pubescent to a teenager), several scenes which made their way into the final film had to be re-edited in order for the film to be released. The result was a film that toned down the more perverse aspects of the novel, sometimes leaving much to the audience's imagination. The actress who played Lolita, Sue Lyon, was sixteen at the time of filming. Kubrick later commented that, had he realized how severe the censorship limitations were going to be, he probably never would have made the film. However, Kubrick always spoke highly of James Mason, who played the pedophile Humbert Humbert in the film, and would later mark him as one of the actors he most enjoyed working with. Lolita was also the first time Kubrick worked with British comic Peter Sellers, a collaboration which would prove one of the most successful of Kubrick's early career.
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Dr. Strangelove
Kubrick's next project was the cult classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Based on the novel Red Alert by ex-RAF flight lieutenant Peter George (writing as Peter Bryant), and co-written for the screen by Kubrick and George in collaboration with American satirist Terry Southern, Strangelove is considered a masterpiece of black humor. While Red Alert was a deadly-serious cautionary tale for the Cold War era, Strangelove would evolve, almost accidentally, into what Kubrick himself would call a "nightmare comedy".
Kubrick originally intended to make the film a straight-ahead thriller, but found that the actual conditions of nuclear war were so absurd that the screenplay soon became darkly funny rather than suspenseful. Kubrick proceeded to reconceive the film as a comedy and recruited Terry Southern to help provide the anarchistic irony the subject required.
Peter Sellers, who had played a memorable role in Lolita, was hired to play four roles simultaneously in Strangelove. Sellers eventually played three of those roles, partially due to a leg injury, and partially due to the difficulty of mastering bomber pilot Major "King" Kong's Texas accent. Kubrick would later say that Sellers was "amazing," but lamented that his energy level rarely went beyond two or three takes. In response, Kubrick set up two cameras to film Sellers and let the comedian improvise. Strangelove is often cited as one of Seller's best films and proof of his genius as a comic actor.
Kubrick's decision to film a Cold War thriller as a jet-black comedy was a daring risk, one that paid off for both himself and Columbia Pictures. The same studio coincidentally released the nuclear war thriller Fail-Safe, which bore major similarities to Strangelove, the same year. Kubrick considered legal action against the film, but eventually decided against it.
The film portrays an "accidental" nuclear war between Russia and the United States, which is set off by the paranoid actions of the mad General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden). The film cuts between Burpleson Air Force Base, where RAF Group Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers) tries to stop General Ripper, and the War Room, where the President (also Peter Sellers), General Turgidson (George C. Scott) and the mad German scientist Dr. Strangelove (also Peter Sellers) try to stop (or, in some cases, not stop) the B-52 bombers on their way to nuke Russia. Ken Adam designed the sets for the film, and the War Room set in particular is considered a classic of production design.
By belittling the sacrosanct norms of the political culture as the squabbling of intellectual children, Strangelove foreshadowed the cultural upheavals of the late 1960s and proved an enormous success with the nascent counterculture. Strangelove went on to earn four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and the New York Film Critics' Best Director award. Kubrick's success with Strangelove persuaded the studios that he was an auteur who could be trusted to deliver popular films despite his unusual ideas.
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2001: A Space Odyssey
Kubrick spent five years developing his next film, 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey (photographed in single-film MGM Camera 65/Super Panavision 70 Cinerama). Kubrick wrote the screenplay with science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, expanding on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel". The screenplay was written simultaneously with the novel which was released in tandem with the film, though the finished novel is credited only to Clarke and the film deviates substantially from its screenplay in several ways. Both Clarke and Kubrick later spoke very highly of one another.
The film's special effects, overseen by Kubrick and engineered by legendary effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull (Silent Running, Blade Runner), were groundbreaking for their time and inspired many of the special effects driven films which followed. 2001 is considered one of the few films of its era whose special effects remain believable to today's viewer. A host of manufacturing companies were consulted as to what the designs of both special and everyday objects would look like in the year 2001. At the time of the movie's release, speaking to journalists at a talk hosted by MGM, Clarke commented on the look of the film, predicting that a generation of engineers would design working spacecraft based on the fictional depictions in the movie, "even if it isn't the best way to do it." Despite numerous nominations in the categories of directing, writing, and producing, the only Academy Award Kubrick ever received was for his supervision on the special effects for 2001.
The film was also notable for its use of classical music such as Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra and Johann Strauss' The Blue Danube. Even more notable is Kubrick's use -- albeit unauthorized -- of music from the contemporary avant-garde Austro-Hungarian composer, György Ligeti. The director's use of Ligeti's music --inlcuding Atmospeheres, Lux Aeterna, and the Requiem -- marked the first major exposure of Ligeti's work, and helped to establish his public persona and identity as one of Europe's most important composers in the latter quarter of the 20th century. Kubrick's use of music in 2001 was unusual for its time, in that the music is an essential part of the film and not simply a commentary on or enhancement of the action.
2001: A Space Odyssey represented a radical departure from both Kubrick's previous films and mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. The film contains no dialogue for its first and last half-hour, and what dialogue there is is largely superfluous to the images and the music. The story is obscure for most of the film's running time and the ambiguous ending continues to perplex and fascinate audiences today. Kubrick would never again push the experimental envelope quite so hard. Despite its unorthodox nature, the film was an enormous box office success and a pop cultural phenomenon. This came after an initial period of public disinterest and inertia, followed by a counterculture word-of-mouth swell, which the film may not have had time to realize in theaters of the time, except for a six week contract in which the first two weeks' ticket sales were abysmal. The film had nearly been pulled, and Jack Nicholson later would quote Kubrick as having counted two hundred and seventeen walkouts during the premiere (including the studio head). Paradoxically, Kubrick would win total creative control from Hollywood by succeeding with one of the most "difficult" films ever to win wide release.
Initial reactions from critics were overwelmingly negative, with most of them attacking the film's lack of dialogue and seemingly impenetrable storyline. The lone dissenter was Penelope Gilliat, though even she was ambivalent, claiming that 2001 was "some kind of a great film." Following the success of the movie, however, many critics later revised their opinions. Audiences embraced the film, especially the 60's counterculture, who loved the movie for its "Star Gate" sequence, a seemingly psychedelic (though Kubrick himself did not care for drugs) journey into the infinite reaches of the cosmos. The cult following the film acquired in the burgeoning drug culture prompted the film's distributors to add "The Ultimate Trip" to the movie's poster.
Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey are as widespread as its popularity, and though it was made in 1968 it still prompts debate today. When critic Joseph Gelmis asked Kubrick about the meaning of the film, Kubrick replied:
They are the areas I prefer not to discuss because they are highly subjective and will differ from viewer to viewer. In this sense, the film becomes anything the viewer sees in it. If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it stimulates, however inchoately, his mythological and religious yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded.
2001: A Space Odyssey may be Kubrick's most famous and influential film. Steven Spielberg has called it his generation's "Big Bang", focusing their attention on the race to space. The special effects techniques that Kubrick pioneered were later built upon by Ridley Scott and George Lucas for films such as Alien and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, respectively. 2001 is particularly notable as one of the few films in which space travel is presented in as realistic a manner as possible. For example, there is no sound in any of the space scenes, weightlessness is strictly adhered to, and sequences in which characters are wearing space suits often contain only the actor's breathing on the soundtrack. What keeps the film alive today is its sense of mystery. Its primary themes; the origins and meaning of life, superintelligent computers, extraterrestrials, the search for God and a place in the universe, rebirth and evolution; are conveyed in an artistically ambiguous and primal manner. This keeps the film ripe for debate and meditation. Whole books have been written about interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even Arthur C. Clarke has gone on record of not knowing exactly what Kubrick was up to when making the film, going as far to say that 2001 was 90% Kubrick's vision.
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A Clockwork Orange
Kubrick's next project was to be a large-scale biopic of Napoleon. He did a great deal of research, reading hundreds of books on the French general, and wrote a preliminary screenplay. Kubrick scouted locations and planned to shoot large parts of the film on the actual historical sites in which the events of Napoleon's life took place. Kubrick, in notes to his financial backers preserved in The Kubrick Archives, said that he wasn't sure how his Napoleon film would turn out, but he was expecting to create 'the best movie ever made'. The project, however, was ultimately cancelled. This was due in part to the prohibitive cost of making such an ambitious film on location, as well as the release in the west of Sergei Bondarchuk's epic film version of Tolstoy's War and Peace (1968) and the box office failure of the Napoleon-themed Waterloo (1970). The screenplay for the film has since surfaced on the Internet, and a great deal of the historical research involved would influence Kubrick's later film Barry Lyndon, which was set in the same time period.
In place of Napoleon, Kubrick sought a project which he could make quickly on a small budget. He found it in A Clockwork Orange (1971). The film is a dark and often shocking exploration of violence in human society, and remains one of the few non-pornographic films released with an 'X' rating in the United States, although it was later changed to an 'R'. Based on the famous novel by Anthony Burgess, the film tells the story of a teenage hooligan named Alex DeLarge (played by Malcolm McDowell) who gleefully murders, steals, and rapes without the slightest hint of conscience or remorse. Finally imprisoned, Alex undergoes a psychiatric treatment to be 'cured' of his violent urges. This conditions him to be physically unable to engage in violent acts, but also renders him completely helpless and incapable of moral choice, resulting in a brutal comeuppance at the hands of Alex's former victims. The film asks the question: is it better for a man to have the right to choose evil, or for a man to be forced into goodness without the possibility of free will?
Kubrick shot A Clockwork Orange very quickly and almost entirely on existing locations in and around London. Despite the comparatively low-tech nature of the film, as compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick still managed to be highly innovative within these limitations, at one point throwing a camera off a rooftop to achieve the desired vertiginous effect. For the score, Kubrick invited electronic pioneer Wendy Carlos, creator of 'Switched-On Bach', to adapt famous classical works such as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to the Moog synthesizer. Carlos created a strange yet familiar sounding score which emphasizes the dystopian fantasy of the film, while still grounding it in realism.
The film was extremely controversial upon its release, due to its explicit depictions of teenage gangs committing acts of rape and violence. By coincidence, it was released the same year as Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs and Don Siegel's Dirty Harry, and the three films sparked a ferocious debate in the media over violence in the cinema and its effect on the society at large. The controversy was only exacerbated when copycat acts of violence were committed in England by criminals wearing the same costumes and speaking the same language of the characters in A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick himself was perplexed by critics who said he was glorifying violence, but when he and his family received death threats as a result of the controversy, he took the unusual step of removing the film from circulation in Britain. The film did not appear again in the United Kingdom in any form until its re-release in the year 2000, a year after Kubrick's death. Imposing a ban on the film in Britain showed what unprecedented powers Kubrick had achieved over his distributor, Warner Brothers. For the remainder of his career he would have total control over all aspects of his films, including marketing and advertising; such was the faith Warner Brothers had in his projects.
Contrary to popular belief, Anthony Burgess did not hate Kubrick's film. In fact, he called it 'brilliant'. Though Kubrick's film has a different ending from Burgess's original novel, Burgess blamed his American publisher for this, and not Kubrick. Kubrick based his screenplay on the American version of the novel, from which the final chapter had been removed. In the book's original ending, Alex, the anti-hero of the story, chooses to give up his criminal ways and lead a peaceful and productive life. Kubrick did not read the final chapter until well into production and decided that it was out of keeping with the tone of his film. Burgess eventually dedicated his book Napoleon Symphony to Kubrick, who had given him some of the ideas that Burgess used in the novel. In fact, according to the online Kubrick FAQ, Napoleon Symphony was considered by Kubrick as the starting point for the cancelled Napoleon film he once wished to make. According to Burgess's autobiography You've Had Your Time and his 1986 introduction to A Clockwork Orange, Burgess was irritated that Kubrick, according to Burgess, ignored the controversy surrounding the film adaptation and left Burgess alone to defend a work of art that was not his own. Another likely reason for Burgess's ambivalence regarding the film is that he considered the novel to be one of his lesser works and wanted to be remembered for the books he considered superior. In large part due to the movie's success, however, A Clockwork Orange has become Burgess's best known work. It remains Kubrick's most notorious and controversial film.
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Barry Lyndon
Returning to the Napoleonic era he had abandoned to make A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick's next film was an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon, also known as Barry Lyndon, a picaresque novel about an 18th century gambler and social climber who slowly insinuates himself into high society. It would be Kubrick's least appreciated post-Strangelove film, despite the strong performances of Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson and Irish actress Marie Kean, as well as Kubrick's innovative cinematography and attention to period detail. While a box-office failure in the United States, the film found a large audience in Europe, particularly in France.
Barry Lyndon (1975) was considered by some critics, especially by one of Kubrick's greatest detractors Pauline Kael, to be cold, slow-moving, and lifeless. The film's length - over three hours - and measured pace put off many critics as well as US audiences. However, the film also received many rave reviews in the United States with such noted critics as Rex Reed and Richard Schickel praising the film. A Time Magazine cover story on the film was published and Kubrick himself was nominated for an Oscar. As with most of Kubrick's films, Barry Lyndon's reputation has grown over the years, particularly among other filmmakers. Acclaimed director Martin Scorsese has cited it as his favorite of Kubrick's films and his favorite American film. Steven Spielberg has praised its "impeccable technique", though when he was younger he famously described it as "like going through the Prado without lunch."
As in his other films, Kubrick again made use of innovative camera and lighting techniques. Most famously, many of the interior scenes were shot with a specially adapted high-speed still camera lens which had originally been invented for the NASA space program. This allowed many scenes to be lit only with candlelight and created an almost two-dimensional diffused image reminiscent of 18th century paintings. Kubrick's blending of music, mise en scene, costume and action would set standards for period dramas that few other films have matched. The film ended up winning four Academy Awards, more than any other Kubrick film. In spite of this, Barry Lyndon was not the box office success some of Kubrick's previous films had been, and he was reportedly deeply discouraged by its poor reception. Again the film seemed to foreshadow academic and political discourse taking on the themes of identity and post-colonialism as seen in Barry Lyndon as hapless Irish crook and fraud, in a colonial world beyond his understanding and control. It is also the first major surfacing of the Freudian themes which would add backdrop to his later works, usually with the same sardonic tones of the earlier films.
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The Shining
Kubrick's pace slowed considerably after the release of Barry Lyndon, and he would not make another film until The Shining. Released in 1980, the film was an adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel of the same name. The film starred Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall and is the story of a failed writer who takes a job as the off-season caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, a high class resort deep in the mountains of Colorado. The job demands that he and his wife and child spend the winter alone in the hotel, cut off from the rest of the world. His child, Danny, is gifted with the power of the "shining", a psychic ability which allows him to communicate telepathically as well as glimpse visions of the past and future. The hotel begins displaying increasingly horrifying and phantasmagoric images to Danny, most famously the apparition of two little girls murdered years before by their father, the former caretaker. Jack is slowly driven mad by the haunted Overlook Hotel until he collapses into a homicidal psychosis, and tries to kill his family with an axe.
The film was shot mostly at Pinewood Studios in London, where the labyrinth was built in its entirety. The exterior of the Overlook Hotel is Timberline Lodge, a ski resort on Mount Hood, Oregon, USA. Kubrick made extensive use of the newly invented Steadicam, a gyroscope ( "...there are no gyroscopes in a Steadicam!" -- [1]) mounted camera which allowed smooth movement in enclosed spaces, in order to convey the claustrophobic oppression of the haunted hotel. The Shining, more than any other film, gave birth to the legend of Kubrick as a megalomaniacal perfectionist. He reportedly demanded hundreds of takes of certain scenes and drove actress Shelley Duvall, who was not used to Kubrick's highly structured approach to filmmaking, to distraction. Kubrick's daughter, Vivian Kubrick, shot a short documentary film during production. It is available on the DVD release of the film and is one of the few documents of Kubrick in action during the latter half of his career.
The film opened to mostly negative reviews but did very well with audiences and made Warner Brothers a considerable profit. Like most of Kubrick's films, subsequent critical reaction has looked at the film in a more favorable light. Stephen King himself was not satisfied with Kubrick's movie, calling Kubrick "a man who thinks too much and feels too little." King later collaborated with Mick Garris to create a made-for-television miniseries version of the novel in 1997. Since then, King has spoken with less hostility toward Kubrick and his film. It has been said that part of the reason for King's dislike of the film was that Kubrick pestered the author with constant phone calls throughout the production. At one point Kubrick reportedly woke King up at three o'clock in the morning and asked "Do you believe in God?"
Among horror fans, The Shining has become a cult classic, often appearing alongside The Exorcist at the top of lists of the best horror films ever made. Some of its images, such as an antique elevator disgorging a tidal wave of blood, have become among the most recognizable and widely known images from any Kubrick film. The Shining renewed Warner Brothers faith in Kubrick's ability to make both artistically satisfying and successful films after the commercial failure of Barry Lyndon in the United States. As a pop culture phenomenon, the film has been the object of countless parodies, from The Simpsons and MAD Magazine to recent films such as Seed Of Chucky.
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Full Metal Jacket
It would be seven years until Kubrick's next film, an adaptation of Gustav Hasford's Vietnam War novel, The Short-Timers, starring Matthew Modine as Joker, Adam Baldwin as Animal Mother, Lee Ermey as Gy Sgt. Hartman and Vincent D'Onofrio as Pvt. Pyle. The film begins at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, where GySgt. Hartman ruthlessly pushes his new men through punishing recruit training in order to release their repressed killing instincts and transform them from "maggots" to Marines. Pvt. Pyle, an overweight, mentally challenged conscript subjected to relentless physical and verbal abuse by GySgt. Hartman, cracks under the strain. As a result, Pvt. Pyle executes GySgt. Hartman before taking his own life as he repeats the then familiar Marine mantra: "This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine..." This scene concludes the bootcamp portion of the film.
The second half of the film follows Pvt. Joker as he tries to stay sane in Vietnam. As a reporter for the United States Military's newspaper the Stars and Stripes, Joker occupies a middle ground in the conflict, using his wit and sarcasm to detach himself from the absurd nature of war. While an American and a member of the United States Marine Corps, he is also a reporter and compelled to abide by the ethics proscribed by this profession. The film's denouement follows a platoon's advance on Hue City, decimated by the major urban warfare which occurred during the Tet Offensive. The film ends in a climactic battle between Joker's platoon and a lone sniper among the rubble of Hue City and Joker's first kill.
Full Metal Jacket (1987) opened to mixed reviews but found a reasonably large audience despite much of its impact being overshadowed by Oliver Stone's Platoon which eventually became one of the reasons Kubrick did not make Aryan Papers in fear that its publicity would be stolen by Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. The film does offer a markedly different and patently Kubrick-esque view of Vietnam. Instead of being set in the pervasive tropical jungle of South-East Asia, the second half of the movie unfolds in a city, bringing the element of urban warfare to an otherwise jungle war. This adds a certain element of surreality, as the common viewer's concept of Vietnam is negated. Kubrick said to Gene Siskel that his attraction to Hasford's book was because it was "neither anti-war or pro-war" and had "no moral or political position" and was primarily concerned with "the way things are."
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Eyes Wide Shut
Kubrick remained silent for over ten years following Full Metal Jacket, and speculation arose that he had essentially retired from filmmaking. While rumors surfaced from time to time regarding possible new Kubrick projects, including Aryan Papers and the posthumously produced A.I., Kubrick's final film would be Eyes Wide Shut, starring then married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as an upper middle class Manhattan couple caught up in a sexual odyssey. The story, based on Arthur Schnitzler's novella Traumnovelle, known in English as Dream Story, follows Dr. William Harford on a journey into the sexual underworld after his wife, Alice, shatters his faith in her fidelity when she confesses to nearly giving him and their daughter up for just one night with another man. After trespassing on to the rituals of a sinister and mysterious cult, Dr. Harford thinks twice before seeking revenge against his wife and learns he and his family might be in danger. In 1999, days after screening a final cut of Eyes Wide Shut for his family, lead actors Cruise and Kidman, and Warner Bros. executives, Kubrick died of a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 70. He was interred in the grounds of Childwickbury Manor, Hertfordshire, England. Steven Spielberg supervised the completion and release of the film.
The film was in production for over two years and two of the main cast members, Harvey Keitel and Jennifer Jason Leigh, had to be replaced during the course of filming. While set in New York, the film was shot entirely on London soundstages with only a few locations. Shots of Manhattan itself were pick-up shots filmed in New York by a second-unit crew. Due to Kubrick's secrecy about the film, rumors flew about the plot and content of the film, most of it highly inaccurate. Most especially, the film's sexual content caused a firestorm of speculation, with some journalists speculating that it would be "the sexiest film ever made." The participation of celebrity couple Cruise and Kidman did little to control the pre-release hype.
The film opened to smash box-office business which slowed down considerably in the weeks following the film's release. Far from an erotic thriller, Eyes Wide Shut proved to be a slow, mysterious, dreamlike meditation on the themes of marriage, fidelity, betrayal and the illusion versus the reality of sex. Critics were mostly negative in their reaction to the film, attacking its slow pace and what they perceived as emotional inertia. Kubrick's defenders have speculated that the mixed critical and box-office response to the movie was deeply affected by pre-release misconceptions of the film. The movie was disliked, they claimed, because it frustrated audience expectations. Like most of Kubrick's films, Eyes Wide Shut has improved its reputation with critics and audiences over time. According to friends and family, Eyes Wide Shut was Kubrick's personal favorite of his own films.
Eyes Wide Shut, like Lolita before it, faced a certain amount of censorship before being released. In the United States, digitally manufactured figures were strategically placed in order to mask some of the explicit sex scenes. This was done to secure an "R" rating from the MPAA. In Europe and the rest of the world, the film has been released in its uncut, original form.
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Unrealized Projects
An exacting perfectionist who often worked for years on pre-production planning and research, Kubrick had a number of unrealized projects during his career. All but one were never completed as films, but are of some interest to fans of the director.
Most famously, he never filmed his much-researched biopicture of Napoleon (Bonaparte) I of France, which was originally to star Jack Nicholson as Napoleon after Kubrick saw him in Easy Rider. Kubrick and Nicholson eventually worked together on The Shining. After years of preproduction, the movie was set aside indefinitely in favor of more economically feasible projects. As late as 1987, Kubrick stated that he had not given up on the project, mentioning that he had read almost 500 books on the historical figure. He was convinced that a film worthy of the subject had not yet appeared.
In the early 1990s, Kubrick almost went into production on a film of Louis Begley's Wartime Lies, the story of a boy and his mother in hiding during the Holocaust. The first draft screenplay, titled "Aryan Papers", had been penned by Kubrick himself. Kubrick chose not to make the film due to the release of Steven Spielberg's Holocaust-themed Schindler's List in 1993. In addition, according to Kubrick's wife, Christiane, the subject itself had became too depressing and difficult for the director. Kubrick eventually concluded that an accurate film about the Holocaust was beyond the capacity of cinema.
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AI: Artificial Intelligence - posthumous completion
One Kubrick project was eventually completed by another director, Steven Spielberg. Throughout the 1980s and early 90s, Kubrick had collaborated with a number of writers (including Brian Aldiss, Sara Maitland and Ian Watson) on a project called by various names, including "Pinocchio" and "Artificial Intelligence". The film was an adaptation of Aldiss' short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long", which Kubrick and his writers expanded into a feature-length film in three acts. It was to be a futuristic fairy tale about a robot built to resemble and behave as a child, who is sold as a temporary surrogate to a family whose only son is in a coma. The robot, however, learns of this, and out of sympathy is left abandoned in the woods by his owners instead of being returned to the factory for destruction. The rest of the story concerns the robot's programmed efforts at understanding how he is different from humans, and whether it is worth remaining functional in a world on the brink of self-destruction.
Kubrick reportedly held long telephone discussions with Steven Spielberg regarding the film, and, according to Spielberg, at one point stated that the subject matter was closer to Spielberg's sensibilities than his own. In 2001, following Kubrick's death, Spielberg took the various drafts and notes left by Kubrick and his writers, and composed a new screenplay, and in association with what remained of Kubrick's production unit, made the movie AI: Artificial Intelligence, starring Haley Joel Osment.
The film does not mention Kubrick's name in the credits, but it ends with the brief dedication "For Stanley". Many of Kubrick's recurrent motifs are present in the film, such as an omniscient narrator, an extreme form of the three act structure, the themes of humanity and inhumanity, and a sardonic view of Freudian psychology.
AI was not a major box office or critical success, and the unorthodox combination of two vastly different directorial visions was considered by some critics to be a confusing failure unappealing to fans of both Spielberg and Kubrick [citation needed]. However, the film has a cult following among science-fiction fans and is considered by some to be one of Spielberg's finest films. [citation needed]
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Character
Kubrick was frequently unwilling to discuss personal matters publicly, and had a reputation in the media as a reclusive genius akin to Howard Hughes, something that his family and close friends denied after his death. It has since become clear that he left behind a strong family, many friends, and many who worked for him who speak highly in his favor. The rumor regarding his reclusiveness is purely a myth, and may have resulted from his aversion to travel once he was installed at St. Albans. He once told a friend that he went to London (about 40 minutes by car) four to five times a year solely for appointments with his dentist. His appearance not being well known before the time of his final movie, a British man by the name of Alan Conway successfully pretended he was Kubrick in order to meet several well-known actors and get into fancy clubs. Conway is the subject of the film Colour Me Kubrick (2005), written by Kubrick's assistant Anthony Frewin and Directed by Brian Cook, Kubrick's First Assistant Director for 25 years.
He was constantly in contact with family members and business associates, contacting collaborators at all hours of the day to have conversations that lasted from under a minute to several hours. He also invited various people to his house, ranging from actors, to close friends, admired film directors, writers and intellectuals. Kubrick was also an animal lover. He owned many dogs and cats throughout his life and showed an extraordinary affection for them. Christiane, Kubrick's widow, said in her book version of Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures that Kubrick brought his cats into the editing room so he could spend time with them that was otherwise lost while he was shooting his films. Matthew Modine remembers Kubrick being deeply upset when a family of rabbits were accidentally killed during the making of Full Metal Jacket. He was so upset, in fact, that he called off shooting for the rest of the day. Philip Kaplan, one of Kubrick's lawyers and friends, reports that Stanley once cancelled a meeting with him and another lawyer at the last moment, both of whom had flown to London from the United States for the meeting, because he had sat up all night with a dying cat and was in no shape to participate. Kaplan also reports that the huge kitchen table at St. Alban's was supported by an undulating base and that within each curved space was a dog, most of no recognizable breed and some not notably friendly to strangers.
Kubrick had often been reported of being rather tactless and rude to many of the people he worked with, not all of it was without merit. Although he apparently became close friends with Clockwork Orange star Malcolm McDowell during filming, Kubrick abruptly terminated the friendship soon after the film was complete and the schism that resulted lasted until Kubrick's death. Michael Herr, in his otherwise positive memoir to Kubrick, reports that Kubrick was extremely cheap and very greedy when it came to money, and a "terrible" man to do business with and that he was upset til the day he died that Jack Nicholson made more money than him on The Shining (which, Herr notes, if he really did). Brian Aldiss was fired from Kubrick's never completed project AI for going on vacation with his family, which went against his contract even though the two had the project on hold anyway. Numerous other writers were brought in by Kubrick to help write the script for AI, but were also fired when Kubrick found them to be useless. Kirk Douglas often commented on Kubrick's unwillingness to compromise, his out of control ego and ruthless pursuit to make a film his own distinct work of art, instead of a group effort (it must be noted, however, that in interviews Kubrick often acknowledged and admired the effort of his team, especially those who made the special effects for 2001 possible). James Earl Jones, though he admired Kubrick on an artistic level, when remembering his experience with Dr. Strangelove he felt Kubrick was disrespectful toward actors because he seemed to use them as instruments in a grand design rather than allowing them to be creative artists in their own right. George C. Scott, who in retrospect admires Kubrick, famously resented Kubrick using his most over-the-top performances for the final cut of Dr. Strangelove, when Kubrick promised him they would not be seen by audiences. His crew also said Kubrick was notorious for never complimenting anyone and hardly showed admiration of his co-workers in fear that it would make them try less hard, and said that he reserved his positive comments on their work only after the movie was finished, unless he felt their work was "genius" - the only three actors on record that he called "genius" were Peter Sellers, James Mason and Malcolm McDowell.
Upon purchasing the Childwickbury Manor in Hertforshire, England, Kubrick set up his life so that family and business were all one. He purchased top-of-the-line film editing equipment and owned all of his own cameras. Children and animals would frequently be found coming in and out of the room as he worked on a script or met with an actor.
With his life in order and the financial backing of a major Hollywood studio, Kubrick had all the time and money he needed in order to create a film. Often, he would spend years making a single film, allowing him to make a series of films now regarded as masterpieces by the critical community. As mentioned, Kubrick was greatly disliked by many of the people he worked with. On the other hand, many speak kindly of him, including co-workers and friends Jack Nicholson, Diane Johnson, Tom Cruise, Joe Turkel, Con Pederson, Sterling Hayden, Scatman Crothers, Carl Solomon, Ryan O'Neal, Anthony Frewin, Ian Watson, John Milius, Jocelyn Pook, Sydney Pollack, R. Lee Ermey, and others. Michael Herr's memoir to Kubrick and Matthew Modine's book Full Metal Jacket Diary show a different, much more kind, sane and warm version of Kubrick than the conventional view of him as cold, demanding and impersonal. In a series of interviews found on the DVD of Eyes Wide Shut, a teary eyed Tom Cruise remembers Kubrick shortly after his death with great affection. Nicole Kidman also shares her sentiments. Shelley Winters, who when asked what she thought of him answered, "A gift." Shelley Duvall, who played Wendy in The Shining did not always get along with Kubrick, as seen in The Making of the Shining, but she has since said that in retrospect it was a great experience that made her smarter - though she'd never want to do it again. Also, Malcolm McDowell in retrospect said, he felt some of the things he said about Kubrick were "unfair" and were a "cry out" to Kubrick to call him. He has mused that it was because Kubrick saw some of Alex (the main character in A Clockwork Orange) in McDowell, and McDowell has commented on how much this termination of friendship personally hurt him. McDowell said that he was very sad when he heard Kubrick had died.
It has been speculated that Kubrick had Asperger syndrome, displaying many of the idiosyncratic symptoms of the disorder. Lyons, V (2005). Asperger syndrome : a gift or a curse?. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
[edit]
Politics
In his memoir of Kubrick, Michael Herr, his personal friend and co-writer of the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket, wrote:
"Stanley had views on everything, but I would not exactly call them political... His views on democracy were those of most people I know, neither left or right, not exactly brimming with belief, a noble failed experiment along our evolutionary way, brought low by base instincts, money and self-interest and stupidity... He thought the best system might be under a benign despot, though he had little belief that such a man could be found. He wasn't a cynic, but he could have easily passed for one. He was certainly a capitalist. He believed himself to be a realist."
Herr also wrote that Kubrick owned guns and that he did not think war is entirely a bad thing. In the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Herr says "...he also accepted to acknowledge that, of all the things war is, it is also very beautiful." Herr's memoir is considered by Kubrick's closest friends and family to be the most accurate depiction of the man himself.[citation needed]
Kubrick's works depict his own view of human nature and are critical of moral/political stances based on other views of human nature. For example, in A Clockwork Orange, the police are as violent and vulgar as the droogs, and Kubrick depicts both the writer Mr. Alexander (a figure of the Left) and the authoritarian Minister of the Interior (a figure of the Right), as manipulative, hypocritical and sinister. In regard to A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick said to the New York Times,
Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved - that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.
He also said in the same interview:
The idea that social restraints are all bad is based on a utopian and unrealistic vision of man. But in this movie you have an example of social institutions gone a bit berserk. Obviously social institutions faced with the law-and-order problem might choose to become grotesquely oppressive. The movie poses two extremes: it shows Alex in his precivilized state, and society committing a worse evil in attempting to cure him."
Kubrick's earlier work can be seen as more "liberal" than his later work. Colonel Dax in Paths of Glory and Spartacus in Spartacus are comparable to liberals, and the satire of government and military in Dr. Strangelove seems to point to a liberal political perspective (although the ignorant, hawk General Turgidson in the "War Room" is still more decisive than the peaceful, pacifist President Merkin Muffley). Kubrick's more mature works are more pessimistic and suspicious of the so-called innate goodness of mankind. In a letter to the New York Times in response to Fred M. Hechinger declaring A Clockwork Orange "fascist", Kubrick wrote:
It is quite true that my film's view of man is less flattering than the one Rousseau entertained in a similarly allegorical narrative -- but, in order to avoid fascism, does one have to view man as a noble savage, rather than an ignoble one? Being a pessimist is not yet enough to qualify one to be regarded as a tyrant (I hope)...The age of the alibi, in which we find ourselves, began with the opening sentence of Rousseau's Emile: 'Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society's fault.' It is based on two misconceptions: that man in his natural state was happy and good, and that primal man had no society...Rousseau's romantic fallacy that it is society which corrupts man, not man who corrupts society, places a flattering gauze between ourselves and reality. This view, to use Mr. Hechinger's frame of reference, is solid box office but, in the end, such a self-inflating illusion leads to despair.
Kubrick shares much of this view with Robert Ardrey, author of African Genesis and The Social Contract (not to be confused with Rousseau's) and author Arthur Koestler who is famous for writing The Ghost In The Machine, both of whom Kubrick quotes in his defense against Hechinger. Both authors (Koestler through psychology and Ardrey through anthropology) search for the cause of humanity's capacity for death and destruction and both, like Kubrick, are suspicious of the liberal belief in innate goodness of mankind (which Ardrey and Kubrick attribute to Rosseau, who, in Ardrey's words: "Fathered the romantic fallacy") and Behaviourism, especially what they consider "radical Behaviourism", whom they blame primarily on B.F. Skinner. (Mainstream anthropology contests Ardrey's view of man having an ancestor that was unremorsefully murderous and destructive, and mainstream psychologists' belief in innate empathy contradicts Koestler's or Kubrick's view of man as innately evil, or sadistic and unempathetic).
Reading Ardrey's African Genesis reveals he shared Kubrick's bleak view of man, and the growing concern of the juvenile delinquent, as Ardrey writes:
"Society flatters itself in thinking that it has rejected the [juvenile] delinquent; the delinquent has rejected society. And in the shadowed byways of his world so consummately free, this ingenious, normal adolescent human creature has created a way of life in perfect image of his animal needs."
Such a description brings to mind Alex, the delinquent thug in A Clockwork Orange. Ardrey also says society might eventually domesticate man through slavery and cure his innate urge to kill and destroy:
"We and our greater philosophers must grant, I believe, that the masters of a universal society with the aid of a captive science might just possibly succeed in producing, over a long period, a lasting answer to the problem of our animal nature: a universal human slave inherently obedient to other people's reason."
This brings to mind the Minister of the Interior and his proposal for the answer to street violence in Kubrick's film. However Ardrey also believes:
"Whether through sentimental attachment or rational choice, I find myself moved to prefer the wild creatures among who I was born to the more literal Homo sapiens that science and tyranny might produce."
Kubrick shows this in A Clockwork Orange, that a quick "cure" is not the answer to juvenile delinquency or violence, but that, as the clergyman in A Clockwork Orange, whom Kubrick has called "the moral voice of the story" says, "Goodness must come from within. Goodness must be chosen. If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." In fact, Kubrick said in an interview with The New York Times that his view of man was closer to the Christian view than humanistic or Jewish views, as he said, "I mean, it's essentially Christian theology anyway, that view of man." [citation needed] In this context, Kubrick's film is neither amoral or fascist, but has a strong moral stance and is strongly anti-totalitarian. As Kubrick said in an interview with Gene Siskel:
To restrain man is not to redeem him...I think the danger is not that authority will collapse, but that, finally, in order to preserve itself, it will become very repressive...Law and order is not a phoney issue, not just an excuse for the Right to go further right.
[edit]
Religion
Stanley Kubrick was born Jewish, but never much practiced this religion, as his parents were not very religious either. When asked by Michel Ciment in an interview if he had a religious upbringing, Kubrick replied: "No, not at all."[citation needed]
Kubrick is often said to be an atheist, but this may not be quite true. In Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Jack Nicholson recalls that Kubrick said The Shining is an overall optimistic story because "anything that says there's anything after death is ultimately an optimistic story."
In Kubrick's interview with Craig McGregor, he said:
2001 would give a little insight into my metaphysical interests," he explains. "I'd be very surprised if the universe wasn't full of an intelligence of an order that to us would seem God-like. I find it very exciting to have a semi-logical belief that there's a great deal to the universe we don't understand, and that there is an intelligence of an incredible magnitude outside the earth. It's something I've become more and more interested in. I find it a very exciting and satisfying hope.[2]
When asked by Eric Nordern in Kubrick's interview with Playboy if 2001: A Space Odyssey was a religious film, Kubrick elaborated:
I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001 but not any traditional, anthropomorphic image of God. I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe. Given a planet in a stable orbit, not too hot and not too cold, and given a few billion years of chance chemical reactions created by the interaction of a sun's energy on the planet's chemicals, it's fairly certain that life in one form or another will eventually emerge. It's reasonable to assume that there must be, in fact, countless billions of such planets where biological life has arisen, and the odds of some proportion of such life developing intelligence are high. Now, the sun is by no means an old star, and its planets are mere children in cosmic age, so it seems likely that there are billions of planets in the universe not only where intelligent life is on a lower scale than man but other billions where it is approximately equal and others still where it is hundreds of thousands of millions of years in advance of us. When you think of the giant technological strides that man has made in a few millennia -- less than a microsecond in the chronology of the universe -- can you imagine the evolutionary development that much older life forms have taken? They may have progressed from biological species, which are fragile shells for the mind at best, into immortal machine entities -- and then, over innumerable eons, they could emerge from the chrysalis of matter transformed into beings of pure energy and spirit. Their potentialities would be limitless and their intelligence ungraspable by humans. [3]
In the same interview, he also blames the poor critical reaction to 2001 as follows:
Perhaps there is a certain element of the lumpen literati that is so dogmatically atheist and materialist and Earth-bound that it finds the grandeur of space and the myriad mysteries of cosmic intelligence anathema. [4]
In an interview with William Kloman of The New York Times, when asked why there is hardly any dialogue in 2001, Kubrick explained:
I don't have the slightest doubt that to tell a story like this, you couldn't do it with words. There are only 46 minutes of dialogue scenes in the film, and 113 of non-dialogue. There are certain areas of feeling and reality - or unreality or innermost yearning, whatever you want to call it - which are notably inaccessible to words. Music can get into these areas. Painting can get into them. Non-verbal forms of expression can. But words are a terrible straitjacket. It's interesting how many prisoners of that straitjacket resent its being loosened or taken off. There's a side to the human personality that somehow senses that wherever the cosmic truth may lie, it doesn't lie in A, B, C, D. It lies somewhere in the mysterious, unknowable aspects of thought and life and experience. Man has always responded to it. Religion, mythology, allegories - it's always been one of the most responsive chords in man. With rationalism, modern man has tried to eliminate it, and successfully dealt some pretty jarring blows to religion. In a sense, what's happening now in films and in popular music is a reaction to the stifling limitations of rationalism. One wants to break out of the clearly arguable, demonstrable things which really are not very meaningful, or very useful or inspiring, nor does one even sense any enormous truth in them.
Stephen King recalled Kubrick calling him late at night while he was filming The Shining and Kubrick asked him, "Do you believe in God?" King said that he had answered, "Yes," but has had three different versions of what happened next. One time, he said that Kubrick simply hung up on him. On other occasions, he claimed Kubrick said, "I knew it," and then hung up on him. On yet another occasion, King claimed that Kubrick said, before hanging up, "No, I don't think there is a god." Stephen King said that the primary reason why he didn't like Kubrick's adaption of The Shining was as follows:
"I think there are two basic problems with the movie. First, Kubrick is a very cold man - pragmatic and rational - and he had great difficulty conceiving even academically, of a supernatural world...Not that religion has to be involved in horror, but a visceral skeptic such as Kubrick just couldn't grasp the sheer inhuman evil of the Overlook Hotel. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones. That was the basic flaw: because he couldn't believe, he couldn't make the film believable to others."
Curiously and ironically, King's choice for directing the 1997 miniseries version of The Shining was Mick Garris, who, according to the interview with his wife found on the DVD of the Masters of Horror series episode of Chocolate, was a "confirmed atheist", who does not believe in the supernatural at all, while Kubrick was actually more open to the possibility. Also, King said that he believed HP Lovecraft was the greatest master of the classic horror tale (something he shared in common with Kubrick), but Lovecraft famously scoffed at the notion of a literal belief in the supernatural and was a very rational and pragmatic man himself.
Finally, Katharina Kubrick Hobbs was asked by alt.movies.kubrick if Stanley Kubrick believed in God. Here is her response:
"Hmm, tricky. I think he believed in something, if you understand my meaning. He was a bit of a fatalist actually, but he was also very superstitious. Truly a mixture of nature and nurture. I don't know exactly what he believed, he probably would have said that no-one can really ever know for sure, and that it would be rather arrogant to assume that one could *know*. I asked him once after The Shining, if he believed in ghosts. He said that it would be nice if there "were" ghosts, as that would imply that there is something after death. In fact, I think he said, "Gee I hope so."...He did not have a religious funeral service. He's not buried in consecrated ground. We always celebrated Christmas and had huge Christmas trees." [5]
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More Trivia
Kubrick's later films were usually filmed at Borehamwood Film Studios in Hertfordshire. The Docklands area of London was also used as a stand in for Vietnam in Full Metal Jacket.
Trey Parker, movie director and co-creator of the television show South Park, said that Kubrick was his favorite film director and his movies, especially A Clockwork Orange, were a big influence on his political views, which can be seen in South Park.
The last occasion on which Kubrick was seen in public was at a performance of The Blue Room at the Donmar Warehouse, then starring Nicole Kidman.
Over the years, Kubrick worked on a number of projects which did not evolve beyond the script stage: Napoleon (1969-1971); Aryan Papers (1988-1991), a Holocaust story postponed because of Schindler's List; and Blue Movie (late 1960s, early 1970s), about a director so highly regarded he is allowed to direct a pornographic movie starring major Hollywood stars. This project was proposed by Terry Southern, following their collaboration on Dr. Strangelove, and was the basis of his novel Blue Movie. In 1997, it was believed Kubrick was making his own 'blue movie' with Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise (this later turned out to be Eyes Wide Shut).
Kubrick's likeness was used in 2010: The Year We Make Contact as the Soviet Premier on a cover of 'Time' magazine. On the same cover, Arthur C. Clarke's likeness was used as the American President.
According to his wife, Christiane, some of his favorite films were Eraserhead, The Godfather, The Jerk and Summer of '42. He was a fan of Seinfeld, and The Simpsons, which has often referenced his films.
Variations of 'CRM-114', which was a device used on the B-52 bomber in Dr. Strangelove, have appeared as a re-occurring theme in other Kubrick films. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the space pods was labeled with serial number CRM-114. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex was injected with 'serum 114' (serum = CRM). In Eyes Wide Shut, the mortuary was located on Level/Wing C, Room 114.
The phrase 'eyes wide shut' may have an antecedent from a quote by Benjamin Franklin on marriage: 'Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.'
In the mid-1980s. when personal computers arrived in the mainstream, Kubrick became an enthusiast. He upgraded as each new generation of PC was produced, with the discarded version joining its predecessors on the industrial shelving in his workspace. The collection soon became an impressive one.
The Japanese toy company MediCom Toy Inc. created a brand of toys called Kubrick, named in honor of the filmmaker. The logo for Kubricks was also influenced by the poster for A Clockwork Orange.
"Stanley Kubrick" is the name of two songs, one by the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai, the other by underground rapper R.A. The Rugged Man.
Kubrick is the name of the default template for the open source blogging engine, WordPress.
He also kept several online personas as well: Alex and God at his own servers, which were denoted as Clockwork and 2001.
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Filmography
Documentary Short Films
Day of the Fight (1951)
Flying Padre (1951)
The Seafarers (1953)
Feature Films
Fear and Desire (1953)
Killer's Kiss (1955)
The Killing (1956)
Paths of Glory (1957)
Spartacus (1960)
Lolita (1962)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Barry Lyndon (1975)
The Shining (1980)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
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References
1. http://www.krusch.com/kubrick/Q13.html
2. http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0037.html
3. David Hughes (2000). The Complete Kubrick. London: Virgin. ISBN 0-7535-0452-9.
4. Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. Documentary film. Dir. Jan Harlan. Warner Home Video, 2001. 142 min.
5. The Hechinger Debacle
6. Anthony Burgess, (1962, 1986). A Clockwork Orange. Norton. ISBN 0393312836.
7. Stanley Kubrick, (2001). Stanley Kubrick: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1578062977.
8. Jeremy Bernstein (November 1966). "A Day in the Life of Stanley Kubrick". The New Yorker.
9. Lyons, V and Fitzgerald, M. (2005) ‘’Asperger syndrome : a gift or a curse?’’ New York : Nova Science Publishers. ISBN 1594543879
[edit]
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Stanley KubrickStanley Kubrick's Napoleon - The Greatest Film NEVER Made?
Filming Location of "The Shining"
The Authorized Stanley Kubrick Web Site by Warner Bros.
Stanley Kubrick: The Master Filmmaker
Stanley Kubrick at the Internet Movie Database
Essay on Kubrick and genius
Essay on Full Metal Jacket
Stanley Kubrick at All Movie Guide
The Guardian: Citizen Kubrick
Kubrick Multimedia Film Guide
The Kubrick Site
List of interviews and Look photographs
Multi-media Kubrick archive
Biographical notes
Red Alert by Peter George at Rosetta Books
The Stanley Kubrick Archives and Stanley Kubrick: Drama And Shadows book reviews at KultureFlash
Eyes Wide Shut: Shot by Shot
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For Stanley’s next short he borrowed more money from friends and relatives to cover the cost of his film. The Flying Padre was an eight and a half-minute human-interest documentary of two days in the life of a southwestern priest, the Reverend Fred Stadtmueller. For Kubrick that short film was very significant. “It was at this point that I formally quit my job at Look to work full time on filmmaking,” he told Joseph Gelmis. He was learning more film technique by asking film technicians, salesmen, and craftsmen about the mechanics of filmmaking. He spent a great amount of time speaking with Faith Hubley in the cutting room about filmmaking as well. She gave him movies to watch and he became a regular at the Museum of Modern Arts film programs. He also read a small library of film books that were available.
Kubrick kept his passion for chess by joining the exclusive Marshall Club in Manhattan where some of the chess world’s finest players mingled. Eventually Kubrick won the respect of many of these top players. It was at that club where Stan met Alton Cook, a film critic for the New York Telegram and Sun. At this point Stanley began to network his way into the Hollywood limelight despite residing in New York. This is something that was very rare at the time
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