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Stanley Kubrick
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It proved to be the final shock from an American filmmaker who built his career on consistently startling the Hollywood system: Stanley Kubrick died from a heart attack on March 7. The news was unexpected. Granted, the veteran filmmaker was 70 years old, but there had been no word of health problems. Although Kubrick's reclusive lifestyle -- he refused photographs and hadn't done an interview in over 10 years -- wouldn't have provided much information anyway. Ironically, it wasn't a plane crash, train wreck or any of the other countless anxieties that kept Kubrick within a short distance of his English home that proved fatal. So with a jolt similar to a movie's sudden plot twist, Kubrick passed away in his home in Hertfordshire, north of London.
In an industry that spins out praise with an alarming lack of credibility, Kubrick is one of the few contemporary directors who earned the adjective "brilliant." Even without the praise of sympathetic remorse, Kubrick's status as a filmmaker/artist was established a long time ago.
Now, at a time when the idea of the American auteur is becoming extinct and commercial interests consume moviemaking, Kubrick's death is another nail in the coffin of independent-minded film. Today's studios boot directors off projects (Milcho Manchevski from Ravenous) and take away the final cut at a moment's notice (Robert Altman and The Gingerbread Man). It was Kubrick who built a new ideal for future filmmakers. Enjoying a unique agreement with Warner Bros. allowing him virtual carte blanche, final cut privileges, veto rights over where his films play and the ability to cut his own trailers. This freedom, not surprisingly, is why every Kubrick film also qualified as a work of art.
I first met Stanley Kubrick the way everyone should be introduced to film talent -- at the movies. At the time, I wasn't exactly sure who Kubrick was. It was 1978 and in the wake of Star Wars and the sci-fi frenzy, MGM had once again re-released 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was 13 years old and nervously standing in the lobby of a cavernous Youngstown, Ohio, theater where I normally watched Disney films about football-kicking mules and Tarzan-like athletes. The film's ad campaign had dragged me in: "Before Star Wars there was 2001." Well, if this is anything like Star Wars, I decided, then this had to be seen. Now, smoking pot -- de rigeur for the counter-cultural embrace of the film -- wasn't part of my 13-year-old life experience. So I watched the film's dazzling star gate explosion, experiencing the film's "ultimate trip" only charged with a sugar high from concession stand candy. Still, staring at the cylinder space station on the lobby display afterward, I made a point to remember the unfamiliar name: Stanley Kubrick.
Like many moviegoers, our paths would continue to cross. An early trip to an adult movie (rated "R" no less) came about by tagging along on an older sister's date to Kubrick's 1980 horror film The Shining. Forced to sit a few rows behind her (for the sake of privacy), I was a 15-year-old movie buff accustomed to Disney fluff, transfixed by Jack Nicholson's slick horrific portrayal of writer's block.
A Kubrick reunion occurred seven years later at a Michigan Avenue art house theater in Chicago, where I watched the Vietnam War tale Full Metal Jacket. By now, I was a dedicated college film geek. Kubrick had become a familiar name through countless magazine articles and trips to rep houses to watch his past films including the crime caper noir The Killing (1956) and the Cold War comedy Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963).
That trend would continue in Cincinnati with midnight showings of The Shining and Kubrick retrospectives at the now-defunct Movies downtown. And when a college professor, during the fall of the Berlin Wall, lectured on society's ignorance of Cold War paranoia I promptly disagreed. You see, I had watched and rewatched Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, so of course I new all about the nuclear scare.
My moviemade relationship now comes full circle. As a working critic, I'll review Kubrick's posthumous release Eyes Wide Shut (opening this summer on July 16). It will be our most personal encounter yet. Not that I ever expected to meet Kubrick face-to-face. Sometimes, I've learned, admired heroes should remain dreamlike.
With Kubrick -- and the long gaps between his films -- all that was often left to discuss was why there were no new films to talk about. After all, Kubrick, an expatriate American who lived more than half his life in England, made only 13 films in 40 years. His bio is a mixed-genre bag of modern classics: crime noir The Killing, the World War I drama Paths of Glory (1957), the comic pedophilia of Lolita (1962) and the contemplative violence of A Clockwork Orange (1971). Kubrick's pace slackened with an increasing sense of perfectionism: He directed only five movies in the years between 2001 (1968) and Full Metal Jacket (1987). It became the common chant for frustrated film buffs: Whatever happened to Stanley Kubrick?
Kubrick's films frequently met initial critical derision for a constant lack of humanity. Technical innovations -- after all, he was a superstar director -- sometimes took precedence over characters. But time and years of distance thawed the films and allowed them to slowly raise in critical stature.
Today, one is left to wonder what would have happened if Kubrick would have remained the director on Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks (1961); if he would have made his Napoleon epic after 2001; and what about his future plans for the World War II drama Aryan Papers and the sci-fi drama A.I. (an acronym for artificial intelligence)?
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2001: A Space Odyssey
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Now, only two years away from the year 2001 and the opportunity to compare Kubrick's vision of the world through his 1968 film, we are left with one final feature and a planned retrospective of Kubrick's films at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art.
Still, the greatest irony of Kubrick's out-of-the-blue death is that it arrived so soon after the two years of production and post production (surpassing Lawrence of Arabia for the longest shooting schedule) of his Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman drama Eyes Wide Shut. The production was pure Kubrick: Total secrecy, numerous reshoots and extensive cast changes.
It was only a few days earlier, on March 2 that Warner Bros. heads Terry Semel and Bob Daly joined Cruise and Kidman for the first screening of Eyes Wide Shut in New York City. Kubrick refused to fly in for the screening. So he sent his assistant who forced the projectionist to turn his back to the screen. Now, in the final stretch of the film's impending release, for the first time in his filmmaking career, Kubrick, the ultimate micro-manager, leaves his film in other hands. ©
