Kubrick didn't deserve his only oscar

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Well, I didn't expect that. I guess that 15 years after Kubrick's death, King must feel safe. I've checked up Wikipedia, and it looks like King, to be allowed to produce his own faithful adaptation, had agreed not to make additional criticism, apart from his opinion on Nicholson being insane from the very beginning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_(TV_miniseries)#Inspirations

[Glebe]

You could accuse Trumbull of being bitchy, but he does have a point. I've still not seen Fear and Desire, Spartacus or Lolita, but what a career. The Shining is one of those films I have to watch if I happen upon it switching channels. I believe Anthony Burgess was unhappy with Kubrick's version of A Clockwork Orange (particularly the ending). I have to be boring and admit I wasn't that impressed with Eyes Wide Shut, but I must give it another watch sometime soon. Oh, and People who grouse about 2001 being long and boring can go and jump...

Kubrick went more or less nuts during the shooting of Barry Lyndon. There was the incident where he insisted on being called Isaac on the set. After that, he had a few other episodes of being clueless or just obsessed with a few minor details, unable to see the forest for the trees.

Apparently IRA threats caused problems for Kubrick on that. I've only seen Barry Lyndon once, but as a Dubliner I remember being amazed to hear Dun Laoghaire get a mention!

Certainly odd about the 'Isaac' thing... it's the cliché of the obsessive auteur, having all these eccentric habits. Isn't there a lot of conflicting opinion about Kubrick? He probably was a bit of a prick at times; Malcolm McDowell said that in his opinion the thing that stopped Kubrick from being a genius was his lack of humanity, and of course he famously tormented Shelley Duvall in order to get a properly hysterical performance from her as Wendy in The Shining. It's also been said that he was really quite shy. Apparently his reclusiveness and claim of a fear of flying in latter years were just ruses to avoid Hollywood meetings, Spielberg said he was often in contact with him.

Initially, King loved the film (there are a few ecstatic mentions in a Dark Tower volume), then took more and more distance with it... The additional scene at the hospital was cut after the preview or the first weekend of limited release.

I always though King disliked The Shining at first but eventually came to appreciate it in and of itself. Wasn't there an Australian cut of the film that retained the legendary hospital scene?

But I don't think that the final part of the film, the epilogue with the robots, was Spielberg's addition. For starters, the resurrection of David mirrors stylistically scenes from 2001. You can call Spielberg shameless or tasteless, but I don't think he would have brought this stuff on his own for a pointless coda. It's more that Kubrick deliberately wanted these scenes to echo 2001, but had only left sketches that Spielberg shot as closely as possible.

There was an interview Spielberg did with somebody (Mark Kermode?) where he claimed all that stuff was Kubrick's. I have to say, I think A.I. has been unfairly treated in some ways... it's not incredible or anything and a lot of the middle-section with Gigolo Joe etc. is a pretty weak, but it's actually a very strange and emotive film, and I'll even admit to welling up at the ending.

[great_badir]

You could accuse Trumbull of being bitchy, but he does have a point. I've still not seen Fear and Desire, Spartacus or Lolita, but what a career. The Shining is one of those films I have to watch if I happen upon it switching channels. I believe Anthony Burgess was unhappy with Kubrick's version of A Clockwork Orange (particularly the ending). I have to be boring and admit I wasn't that impressed with Eyes Wide Shut, but I must give it another watch sometime soon. Oh, and People who grouse about 2001 being long and boring can go and jump...

Apparently IRA threats caused problems for Kubrick on that. I've only seen Barry Lyndon once, but as a Dubliner I remember being amazed to hear Dun Laoghaire get a mention!

Certainly odd about the 'Isaac' thing... it's the cliché of the obsessive auteur, having all these eccentric habits. Isn't there a lot of conflicting opinion about Kubrick? He probably was a bit of a prick at times; Malcolm McDowell said that in his opinion the thing that stopped Kubrick from being a genius was his lack of humanity, and of course he famously tormented Shelley Duvall in order to get a properly hysterical performance from her as Wendy in The Shining. It's also been said that he was really quite shy. Apparently his reclusiveness and claim of a fear of flying in latter years were just ruses to avoid Hollywood meetings, Spielberg said he was often in contact with him.

I always though King disliked The Shining at first but eventually came to appreciate it in and of itself. Wasn't there an Australian cut of the film that retained the legendary hospital scene?

There was an interview Spielberg did with somebody (Mark Kermode?) where he claimed all that stuff was Kubrick's. I have to say, I think A.I. has been unfairly treated in some ways... it's not incredible or anything and a lot of the middle-section with Gigolo Joe etc. is a pretty weak, but it's actually a very strange and emotive film, and I'll even admit to welling up at the ending.

Fear and Desire is.........meh.  Neither terrible nor amazing and, probably, exactly what you would expect from most feature length debuts.  We're certainly NOT talking Badlands, put it that way.

Burgess had mixed opinions about Orange (the film) - he respected both the film and Kubrick, thought the lead actors were brilliant, and liked what had been done in terms of the technical side of things.  Plus he acknowledged many times that it was only down to the film that the book became well known.  But he didn't like (what he perceived as) the toning down of the blatant satire, or the lack of the book's ending.  Plus, his relationship with Kubrick soured over time.  If you go back to the film's Kubrick-imposed banning in the UK, there was a rumour-that-may-have-been-more-than-rumour going round the industry at the time that Kubrick's claim that he banned it to avoid further copycat violence was just a smokescreen and the real reason he banned it was just to piss of Burgess.

I think Kubrick's fear of flying was legit - I think I'm right in saying that Spielberg has said many times that his contact with Kubrick was either by phone (where conversation would last for hours and hours) or, if it was face to face, Spielberg would travel to the UK (the fact that Spielberg himself is a bit of an anglophile and has spent lots of time in this country notwithstanding), and that Kubrick NEVER traveled to see him in another country.

I would agree that A.I. has been unfairly treated.  Through the Spielberg assumed cliches of saccharinity (is that a word?), as Ant Farm Keyboard said, it's actually quite a dark film.  Obviously, in Kubrick's hands, that would have been more obvious, but then with Kubrick at the helm it may have lacked what it needed more of - heart, soul and, as you quoted from McDowell, humanity.  Something which Spielberg is much better at than Kubrick ever was.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

I believe Anthony Burgess was unhappy with Kubrick's version of A Clockwork Orange (particularly the ending).

Kubrick based his adaptation on a US edition of the novel, which lacks the 21st and final chapter of the book, and completely changes the perspective, as Alex grows up and changes his mind instead of just getting back to square one. Kubrick loved circular structures and the change in the 21st chapter actually feels a little rushed.
I could argue that a few of the films Kubrick directed after ACO were about somebody growing up (Barry Lyndon's fall is tragic, compared to the source novel, as he finally experiences empathy and spares the life of his stepson during the duel, Joker loses his snark when confronted to the real experience of war, the Hartfords reach maturity in their relationship).

Burgess and Kubrick had a strained relationship, because Burgess sold the adaptation rights to the book for a pittance in the early sixties. Kubrick bought the rights back to the then owner, and after Napoléon collapsed at MGM, he signed a deal with Warner, that allowed him to get final cut even if the film was to be rated X in exchange for a limited budget.
That's why Kubrick wrote the script by himself, cast mostly unknown actors and just built four or five different sets, shooting the rest of the scenes on location. Terry Southern (who had introduced him to the book in the sixties) and Burgess were willing to write the script with him, but Kubrick preferred to dispense with their services.
When ACO turned out to be a huge hit, Kubrick kept on bitching that all the money had gone to Warner.

Burgess was still interested after that in collaborating with Kubrick on his Napoléon project. He turned his rejected treatment into Napoleon Symphony.

Apparently IRA threats caused problems for Kubrick on that. I've only seen Barry Lyndon once, but as a Dubliner I remember being amazed to hear Dun Laoghaire get a mention!

According to a biographer, the threats were because Kubrick was losing a lot of time on location, and still wanted to shoot more there. The British crew started to mingle with the Irish girls who were extras on the set, and the last thing the IRA wanted were Irish girls pregnant with a Protestant baby.
Returning to Britain helped Kubrick find back some kind of focus.

Certainly odd about the 'Isaac' thing... it's the cliché of the obsessive auteur, having all these eccentric habits. Isn't there a lot of conflicting opinion about Kubrick? He probably was a bit of a prick at times; Malcolm McDowell said that in his opinion the thing that stopped Kubrick from being a genius was his lack of humanity, and of course he famously tormented Shelly Duvall in order to get a properly hysterical performance from her as Wendy in The Shining. It's also been said that he was really quite shy. Apparently his reclusiveness and claim of a fear of flying in latter years were just ruses to avoid Hollywood meetings, Spielberg said he was often in contact with him.

He was in touch with the outside world through the phone, and people who visited him. He was among the first people to have a telex, a fax or the Internet installed at home. If you stay out of the conspiracy theory, these habits also contributed to his death. Kubrick woke up at British times, then went to bed with New York and Los Angeles, because his contacts lived there. That, and the fact that, as a doctor's son, Kubrick had a tendency to take care of his health himself, without having any physician examining him. With a routine checkup, he would have known he had hypertension or something like that.

Kubrick actually had a pilot's license. But, during the early sixties, he made a mistake that nearly cost him his life. When he landed, he decided that any pilot could make the same mistake, ergo flying was unsafe. According to the legend, he never took a plane after that. When he definitely moved to Britain (I guess he considered shooting Dr. Strangelove in New York at one point), he just visited the US once, for the premiere of 2001. He and his family took the Queen Elizabeth to be at the premiere and return.

But it's true that he was definitely shy (Ken Adam mentioned that he had to vomit on his way to a press conference) and the crowd scenes in his later films are almost always oppressing (cf. the ball in The Shining or Eyes Wide Shut). Kubrick picked England to stay out of the control of Hollywood. His first choice would have been New York, but New York didn't have the production capacities of London studios.

I always though King disliked The Shining at first but eventually came to appreciate it in and of itself. Wasn't there an Australian cut of the film that retained the legendary hospital scene?

Unlikely. At the time, the habit for films was to have a limited release in a couple of American towns, then to expand to more cities every week. That's why Kubrick could afford recutting The Shining even after its release. Australia got prints months later. Most likely it was the longer edit of The Shining that was screened accidentally there and was labelled the complete cut of the film. Until the late nineties, few people had actually compared the different cuts or even known about the differences. Then the Internet and the DVD allowed us to check up what we had missed for two decades.

There was an interview Spielberg did with somebody (Mark Kermode?) where he claimed all that stuff was Kubrick's. I have to say, I think A.I. has been unfairly treated in some ways... it's not incredible or anything and a lot of the middle-section with Gigolo Joe etc. is a pretty weak, but it's actually a very strange and emotive film, and I'll even admit to welling up at the ending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz7sPiOoU7A

Kubrick wanted to retell the story of Pinocchio with a robot. Brian Aldiss and Ian Watson both confirmed this. The family stuff at the beginning was mostly Kubrick, the middle section is more Spielberg. Kubrick tried to work with some kind of six parts structure in his scripts, rather than linear writing. Some of the parts were more advanced than the others when he died.
I agree that Spielberg gets unfair blames on this. Of course, the result is far from being flawless. Of course, Kubrick would have done a few things differently. But when you have to complete and produce an unfinished project on which Kubrick worked during 15 years, either you mimic Kubrick or you make it yours, or something in-between, but there's no automatic good answer. The script was still unfinished. It's not as if Spielberg could check what Kubrick had thought of for a particular scene. If the idea was clear, the script would have been completed. And Kubrick somewhat trusted Spielberg to direct this.

Napoléon would be a different business. There's a full script that exists. It may have to be updated because it was written taking into accounts the benefits (cheap extras) and the limitations (complicated SFX) of early 70s filmmaking. And if Spielberg can get it made at H.B.O., it could be expanded, something Kubrick considered half-jokingly. Anyway, it's more than a series of scenes, drawings and ideas, the way A.I. was still being developed.

[Glebe]

Cheers for that Ant Farm... I was aware that he had a pilot's license, and (as great_badir has pointed out) that Spielberg was often on the blower with him. Wasn't it Jurassic Park that encouraged Kubrick to finally attempt A.I.?

Forgot about the missing A Clockwork Orange chapter, and speaking of which:

http://www.thewrap.com/clockwork-orange-anthony-burgess-stanley-kubrick-robert-hofler-sexplosion

Burgess, for his part, grew to hate the film. Or Kubrick. Or both. A decade later when he adapted his novel for the stage, he made sure to include the following stage direction: "A man bearded like Stanley Kubrick comes on playing, in exquisite counterpoint, 'Singin' in the Rain' on a trumpet. He is kicked off the stage."

[Sam]

The lack of humanity and the coldness remains a problem for me. Technically he's one of the best directors in history, but there are equal technicians who imbued their work with more humanity, compassion, pathos and understanding. Tarkovsky is one. Mise en scene and camera movement that make you marvel, with the beating heart of the universe at the centre.

[Mango Chimes]

This is third-hand rememberances from a decade old forum, but I assume it's easily verifiable if you can be arsed:  As I recall (being told), the treatment for AI included the ending with slight differences. 

Spoiler alert

Instead of the convenient lock-of-hair nonsense, it was simply recreated in David's head, the idealised home having a black hole of nothing where the brother's bedroom was.

[close]

Oh, grief, there's too much to spoiler, isn't there?  SPOILERS:

The problem with the ending is there, though, and I put the blame on the voice-over.  Ben Kingsley's narration opens the film, then completely fucks off for a couple hours.  When it comes back in, David underwater, it feels like the film is wrapping up when it's actually got a good fifteen minutes or so left.  I reckon if you got rid of that, or have it come in a few more times earlier on, it wouldn't feel like "oh, Spielberg's chucked a coda on."  (It'd also help if it was a tad more clear that they were super mecha, not the aliens appearing out of nowhere.)

I don't think I've seen it since the cinema, but I always loved AI including the ending – that long shot flying into the ice was exhilarating.  Visually, the film is astonishing, again showing that Spielberg was top of the game in integrating CGI (what the fuck happened with Crystal Skull years later, fuck knows.)  It feels long, (and I think Teddy is a huge problem narratively – David's supposed to be special and possibly the first proper AI, but Teddy – a toy – feels perhaps more developed,) but there's so much stunning, weird stuff, and Osment is so great, I think it's mad people ever disliked it.


A Clockwork Orange, I was so disappointed by, but largely due to expectation and disconnect.  It'd been built up as this amazingly dark, heavy thing – banned and illicit, dangerous – and then it got re-released and it turns out it's a goofy comedy.  I think the film's ending is sorta maybe problematic, (or not,) but the book's ending is problematic too. 

Spoiler alert

That final chapter is such a swift turnaround, it doesn't convince like the rest.  Alex, following his droogs doing the same, basically just declaring, "Eh, I'm a bit fed up, so I guess it's time to grow up.  I've matured out of horrific violence, through natural maturity and free will.  Teenagers, eh? Tsk!"

[close]

Aaaaaand, Eyes Wide Shut: I still have no idea if it's a good film or not.  On the one hand, it's shit.  On the other, it can't be shit, can it?  I don't think you can dismiss the idea that it's all intentional – the dreamlike nature of the super artificial New York, etc. etc.  And there is something fun/interesting/something in the thematic/narrative thing that in a film all about sexy sex sex,

Spoiler alert

and infidelity, the protagonist never has sex, and only commits to doing so – with his wife – at the very end.  That's neat, innit.

[close]

But it definitely didn't live up to the Baby Did A Bad Thing, CRUISE. KIDMAN. KUBRICK. trailer, which was fantastic and so exciting, and which I downloaded in postage-stamp format over dial-up on this newly popular internet thing way back when.

I was always suspicious about it actually being Kubrick's completed version, though.  It was awfully, awfully convenient that he apparently delivered his final cut just a day or few before he died.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Kubrick had to deliver a trailer for Eyes Wide Shut at an exhibitors conference, or the film wouldn't be picked up for the summer season. And after such a long delay in filming, he had to show Warner Bros. a cut at some point, didn't he?

I don't know if Kubrick would have made many significant changes in his final cut. Sure, he would have tried different things because he had three months before premiere and release, but I'm not sure that it would have improved or changed the tone of the film. He would have made changes for the sake of it, but it's hard to say if these changes would have been beneficial or detrimental. This is the guy who could say one day to people he knew that it was his best film and the next day to other people that it was a complete failure, and who was probably sincere in both statements.

[Steven]

I thought Eyes Wide Shut, as well as the themes of indfidelity and secrecy, was about cults and altered personality. Hence Kidman's weird dreams about being at naked parties, she was one of the masked women at the house Cruise visits.. but y'see it's still not a very involving film so I can't even remember the names of the characters, it does have that sort of anonymous dreamlike quality but sits between film-noire and just 'seeming' artificial, Cruise himself I can't even buy in most roles so that adds to the artificiality and don't know if Kubrick thought it was an element of satire casting him in a film about Hollywood cults?

I watched The Shining over Christmas and it occurred to me a small detail that never really made much sense. When Torrence is in the Hotel Manager Ullman's office being briefed on the caretaker job, he asks if he'd heard about what happened to the previous caretaker Charles Grady who went mad and chopped up his family.

When Torrence eventually meets Charles Grady in one of his dreamlike sojourns from the writing room where the hotel has seemingly come back to life he's actually a butler now called Delbert Grady and has no memory of being the caretaker, insisting Torrence has always been the caretaker, also he mentions having two daughters but doesn't clarify if they're twins. Though when Torrence questions Delbert he does mention that "you chopped up your wife and daughter into little bits." So why the changes? Since a lot of writers take instances from real life and chop (exuse the pun) and change them in fiction this could make some sense of what is going on in Torrence's mind. Having no clear idea for the novel he is writing he starts to incorporate elements from real life, such as the hotel they are staying at and the cast of characters such as Grady the caretaker and changing elements to come up his fictionalised narrative. There is part in the novel about Torrence researching the history of guests at the hotel, which Ant Farm Keyboard mentions above somewhere that were shot and later removed from the movie. Essentially the ghosts that appear may be real tragedies Torrence has read about and been thinking about to use in his novel where he recounts the history of the hotel but seem to come alive through his madness whether linked to some inherent evil in the building or not.

As he's going slowly doolally hunched over the typewriter the elements from real life and his novel start to coalesce, the typewriter functions as portal through which Jack Torrence switches personality from Jack Torrence to the caretaker character in the book. The real-life murders of Charles Grady the caretaker become the work of this central character, in Torrence's novel the fictional character of Delbert Grady is now just the name of one of the butlers. In this madness he basically fixes on he has to carry out the narrative from the book and chop up his wife and kid, there are elements that make it seems like the ghosts of the hotel are helping Torrence, or certainly scenes where it makes it seem it can't be entirely in his head such as Danny and Wendy seeing the ghosts.

You could even take it to the meta-level where Torrence has finally committed to the caretaker character and is writing the rest of his thriller novel with each action of his narrative, finally ending up with the dash through the hedge-maze. I looked up this idea and someone on YouTube has a similar perception but has noted the detail of maybe a second Torrence being visible in the lobby when the Torrence family are first escorted through, Nicholson aping his later limp. I'm not quite sure I buy that, but his other video showing the massive continuity errors in and around Torrence's writing room makes it seem Kubrick was trying to be blatant there were two seperate realities linked from this room.