Stanley Kubrick

‘You don’t have to be a nice person to be extremely talented. You can be a shit and be talented and, conversely, you can be the nicest guy in the world and not have any talent. Stanley Kubrick is a talented shit,’ quipped Kirk Douglas after working on Spartacus with Stanley Kubrick as the director.

Stanley Kubrick butted heads with many well-respected people in Hollywood and he always demanded respect when he was on the set. Through his unique directing style and groundbreaking movies, Kubrick managed to separate his works from ‘typical’ Hollywood films. As a result, the way audiences think and interpret movies has been changed forever. Stanley Kubrick truly is a legend that will never be a forgotten name in the film industry.

Stanley Kubrick was born in the borough of Manhattan at 307 Second Avenue in Lying-In Hospital on Thursday, July 26, 1928. At the time Stanley’s father, Jacques, and mother, Gertrude, resided at 2160 Clinton Avenue, a six-story brick apartment building. Jacques was a local doctor and therefore the family was well off and lived in several nice places in New York. Stanley had one sibling, Barbara Mary, who was born on May 21, 1934.

His parents could tell their son was not utilizing his full potential.

Stanley started his schooling in September of 1934 at the local public school, P.S. 3. Throughout his years in grammar school and up through high school Stanley was absent quite a bit from school, and in the spring of 1945 he was reported to the attendance bureau for absenteeism. His parents could tell their son was not utilizing his full potential.

After trying home school for a session and then realizing their son was getting U’s (Unsatisfactory) in several different courses (including Personality, Works and Plays Well with Others, Completes Work, Is Generally Careful, Respects the Rights of Others, and Speaks Clearly), the Kubricks’ decided to send their son out to California to live with his Uncle Martin Perveler. Martin was an entrepreneur who started a chain of pharmacies on the West Coast. Through numerous wise business investments Martin eventually became a multimillionaire. It’s believed that Dr. Kubrick felt time on the West Coast could do the curious boy some good.

Stanley came back a year later and returned to his new school P.S. 90 for eighth grade. During this time, he had scored above average on the reading and intelligence tests given out by the New York school system. His parents and the school both saw this mysterious boy as untapped potential.

To stimulate outside interests, Dr. Kubrick let Stan use his Graflex camera, introduced him to his library of literature and taught him to play chess. These hobbies would eventually be vital to unlocking the potential this young boy had bottled up inside. They would stay with him the rest of his life.

Although his attendance at school was still very poor, Stanley never failed to miss a movie at the local theaters.

After moving many times between 1942 and graduation from William Howard Taft High School, Stan met someone in the Grand Concourse who also shared his love for photography. This someone was Marvin Traub. With Marvin’s own dark room in his bathroom, it was much easier for these two ambitious boys to pursue their hobby quite regularly. While most boys at the time belonged to a Social Athletic Club (SAC’s) of some sort, Marvin and Stanley did not.

Donald Silverman, an outgoing fellow resident of the Grand Concourse had this to say about Stanley. ‘Stanley was a very private person. He wasn’t invited to play stickball with us. He wasn’t invited to play roller hockey with us. He may not have wanted to, but he was so private that we never asked him. It was a very close-knit neighborhood. The fellas grew up on the Concourse. Everybody knew everybody else’s parents’Stanley and Marvin were really never in the group that I was in. I was friendly with Marvin Traub and Stanley Kubrick-I crossed boundaries’Marvin’s keen interest in photography captivated Kubrick’s interest.’

At William Howard Taft High School Stanley was a member of the band and the photography club where he was assigned to take pictures of sporting events and school sponsored events for the school magazine. Although his attendance at school was still very poor, Stanley never failed to miss a movie at the local theaters. He would go to the Loew’s Paradise and RKO Fordham twice a week to see double features.

Kubrick told Bernard Weinraub of the New York Times that watching poorly made films sparked his interests. He stated ‘One of the things of seeing run-of-the-mill Hollywood films eight times a week, was that many of them were so bad. Without even beginning to understand what the problems of making films were, I was taken with the impression that I could not do a film any worse than the ones I was seeing. I was seeing, I also felt I could, in fact, do them a lot better.’

The youngster captured a great set of photos that seemed to symbolize the nation’s feeling of despair and sold the photos to Look magazine for twenty dollars.

Stanley Kubrick was also a member of his school’s band (called the Taft Assembly), in the percussion section. With this love he joined a few other band members and formed the Taft Swing Band. It was there that Stan befriends Robert M. Sandelman. Stanley also started to explore his artistic side by enrolling (in February of 1943) in a Saturday morning art class at the Art Students League of New York and watercolorist class (in high school) taught by Anne Goldthwaite.

In Stanley’s senior year he continued to take photographs on a regular basis. After the death of the President FDR, Stanley happened to stumble upon a chance encounter with a newspaper salesman (holding a paper with the news of the tragedy) who looked quite distraught. The ever-ambitious youngster took full advantage of the opportunity and captured a great set of photos that seemed to symbolize the nation’s feeling of despair. He sold the photos to Look magazine for twenty-five dollars. He continued to take photos for the magazine the rest of his senior year and was published quite frequently. This opportunity would end up jump-starting his artistic inhibitions and provide a job for Stanley after high school.

Due to a poor 70.1% high school grade point average, a class rank of 44 out of 509, a future in college was not foreseeable for young Stanley Kubrick.

In those days to graduate from high school you needed a major. Not sure what his major could be, Stanley’s art teacher, Herman Getter, advised Stan to be an art major and explained that his photographs were art. It was in this class where Stanley met Alexander Singer. Alex was also an art major who wrote and illustrated for the Taft Literary Art Magazine. In this class Mr. Getter told the adventurous boys about the art films he had made and showed them the different techniques. This helped to further the curiosity of film for Stanley.

While the Kubrick family continually moved around New York, Stanley met the first love of his life at 1414 Shakespeare. Her name was Toba Metz. She would eventually become his first of three wives.

Due to a poor 70.1% high school grade point average, a class rank of 44 out of 509 and the influx of war veterans filling spots at universities across the country, a future in college was not foreseeable for young Stanley Kubrick. Due to this, after high school Stanley enrolled in Night School at City College of New York. After doing some good work for Look magazine the year before, the picture editor gave Stanley a job and he therefore dropped out of school.

Stan has always been very appreciative of the people at Look for helping him out in his time of perplexity. He stated once to Michael Ciment ‘I worked for Look magazine from the age of seventeen to twenty-one. It was a miraculous break for me to get this job after graduation from high school. I owe a lot to the then picture editor, Helen O’Brian, and the managing editor, Jack Guenther. This experience was invaluable to me, not only because I learned a lot about photography, but also because it gave me a quick education in how things happened in the world.’

During this time, Stanley began to develop a love and passion for aviation (which would later be adapted in a film). On August 15, 1947 Stanley received his private pilot’s certificate. This passion for aviation and eventual fear would both be displayed later in both work and life itself.

“To make a film entirely by yourself, which initially I did, you may not have to know very much about anything else, but you must know about photography.’

On May 25, 1948 Toba Metz and Stanley Kubrick, two high school sweethearts, prepared to leave the Bronx and start a life together. The two moved to Greenwhich Village, a community of artists, performers, writers, and musicians. They got married at 10:30 AM on May 29, 1948 at the home of acting Judge Harry Krauss. Toba was an eighteen-year-old secretary and Stanley was a nineteen-year-old photographer.

Stanley got to travel a lot with his job with Look, but got bored with most of the assignments and said this of his first job. ‘It was tremendous fun for me at that age, but eventually it began to wear thin especially since my ultimate ambition had always been to make movies. The subject matter of my Look magazine assignments was generally pretty dumb. I would do stories like ‘Is an Athlete Stronger Than a Baby” photographing a college football player emulating the ‘cute’ position that a fifteen-month-old child would get into. Occasionally I had a chance to do an interesting personality story. Photography certainly gave me the first step up to movies. To make a film entirely by yourself, which initially I did, you may not have to know very much about anything else, but you must know about photography.’

In 1950 Stanley put aside his photojournalism for a period of time to work on his first film. The subject was Walter Cartier, a Look magazine subject of Stanley’s at one point. Day of Fight was a nine-minute documentary on the life of a boxer as he prepared to step into the ring for a big fight. This fight was against Bobby James, and was taped live for the documentary. Already his presence on the set and behind the camera was quite evident as he made it clear exactly who was in charge. Walter’s twin brother Vincent who had a lot to do with the production of this film stated, ‘Stanley comes in prepared like a fighter for a big fight, he knows exactly what he’s doing, where he’s going and what he wants to accomplish. He knew the challenges and he overcame them.’

He also read a small library of film books that were available.

Stanley borrowed money from family and friends to cover the $3,900 budget of the movie. The film was sold to RKO-Pathe for $4,000, making the independent filmmaker a $100. More importantly RKO gave Stanley $1,500 for his next short. The movie ran in RKO’s ‘This is America’ series and opened at the Paramount Theatre in New York on April 26, 1951.

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.

His next project was presented to him by the Seafarers International Union (SIU) in 1953. They gave him a commission to make a thirty minute industrial promotional film. It would be his first color film. There was not much creativity to it and as Kubrick recalled it was quite a bore.

For his next movie Stanley wanted to make a full-length feature film. To help produce money for the movie Stanley played chess at Washington Square Park and made $20- $30 a week. He also borrowed $10,000 from friends and relatives and haggled his millionaire Uncle to go in on the venture with him. His Uncle agreed but insisted on being assistant producer. Fear and Desire was a true independent production. They worked with a thirteen-person crew. In one scene to get the effect of fog, Kubrick used a California crop spray and nearly asphyxiated the whole cast and crew.
Stanley utilized a Mitchell camera, which he learned how to use by the Camera Equipment Company (and rented it for $25 a day). An extra $30,000 was added on at the end of the movie to dub in the sound. To cover this unexpected cost Stanley received a loan from Richard de Rochemont. The film was about four soldiers trapped behind enemy lines during an unknown war while women were held hostage. Kubrick’s high school buddy Alex Singer remembers seeing the movie, ‘I was a snotty kid in terms of arrogance. I wanted to make films like the greatest things ever done, and if this wasn’t the greatest, then it was of little importance. I gave it short shrift except I was aware of what an astonishing performance this had been from Kubrick. This was a polished work as a piece of professional filmmaking.’

“We used to go to terrible double features on 42nd Street simply because Stanley wanted to see everything that was being put out.”

During production Kubrick met another woman, Ruth Sabotka, and began to have an affair. As a result, he and Toba Metz got a divorce. Ruth was a student at the American School of Ballet and danced with the New York City Ballet. She emigrated to USA at the age of fourteen and the two were married in Albany, NY on January 15, 1955. Stanley moved into her place in East Village, a quiet neighborhood populated by Ukrainians. The two of them and Ruth’s ex-roommate David Vaughn became good friends.

David recalls Stanley’s obsession with film, ‘We used to go to movies all the time because Stanley used to go to every movie. We used to go to terrible double features on 42nd Street simply because Stanley wanted to see everything that was being put out. He was only interested in the way the film was made visually. If the actors started to talk too much, he would start reading his paper by whatever light he could until they stopped talking.’

For his next project, Killer’s Kiss, the main proprietor was Morris Bouse, a Bronx pharmacist who helped with the film’s $40,000 budget. Kubrick would later describe the style of filmmaking ‘guerilla-filmmaking’. They literally filmed on the busy streets of New York and were forced to bribe the NYPD on a regular basis to keep them off their case. It was during the production of this film that the dominance and control Kubrick demands out of his staff when working on a picture becomes known.

Soundman Nat Boxer recalls the situation in 1976 interview with Filmmakers Newsletter, ‘He wouldn’t let us in there, and then he finally did. It was very handsomely lit, but when we went in and placed the microphone where we normally would, there must have been seventeen shadows in the picture. What do still photographers know about the problems of a movie’ Well, he looked at the set and said, ‘Is that the way you do it’ You mean you’re going to put the microphone there’ But that’s impossible.’ ‘But that’s the way we do it,’ I said. And then the actor started moving and all the shadows started moving and Kubrick yelled, ‘Cut! You don’t make a movie that way. You guys are all fired!’ Then he brought in a Webcor, a little school audiovisual tape recorder, and looped the whole picture because he didn’t know how to light yet. On his next picture, The Killing with Sterling Hayden, he hired a professional lighting man, and it must have been a real education.’ This would not be the last time Stanley established his ‘My way or the highway’ philosophy on the set. United Artists bought the film for worldwide distribution, although Kubrick didn’t even break even on the $75,000 adventure.

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.

Alex Singer, photographer in the last few movies with Stanley and former high school classmate, met James B. Harris while in the Korean War’s Signal Corps. The two began making training films and clearly both shared an interest in filmmaking. Singer told Harris about director friend Stanley Kubrick. The two met and agree to team up as director and producer in what would later be called Harris-Kubrick Productions. Harris brought some financial help to a lot of the projects and helped open the doors to some untapped resources for the two independent filmmakers.

Stanley looked up at Lucien Ballard and said, ‘Lucien, either you move that camera and put it where it has to be to use a 25mm or get off this set and never come back!’

For their first group effort Harris suggested the book Clean Break by Lionel White. Stanley liked the idea and Harris bought the rights to the book for $10,000. In collaboration with Jim Thompson, they presented the screenplay The Killing to United Artists (UA). UA said they liked the idea but needed the assurance of an actor to sign. After searching they told UA Sterling Hayden was very interested, but UA wanted to wait 18 months for Victor Mature to become available. Harris and Kubrick didn’t want to wait so they took the stricter budget of $200,000 for being impatient.

The cameraman’s union forced Stanley to hire a cameraman, and he hired the well-known and well-respected Lucien Ballard. Stanley and Lucien didn’t get along well, and one day on the set control was almost lost. Alex Singer recalls the incident, ‘Stanley looked up at Lucien Ballard and said, ‘Lucien, either you move that camera and put it where it has to be to use a 25mm or get off this set and never come back!’ There’s a long silence and I’m waiting for Lucien to say the appropriate things in two or three languages to dismiss this young snot-nose, but no, he puts the camera where it has to be and there is never an argument about focal and length and lenses again. To me it was a defining moment. I don’t think Stanley did it casually and it cost him something, but it was done without hesitation. It was done calmly, unhysterically, and in deadly earnest. It marked the kind of control and icy nerve he brought to the job at the very beginning.’

The movie was about a racetrack robbery but was oddly presented in a nonlinear fashion. This caused for terrible reviews and right before the movie premiered they discussed changing the form. They eventually decided against the idea feeling that the movie would lose touch from the book. The film ended out totaling $330,000.

During the production process of the movie Stanley was spending extremely long hours on the set causing him to not be at home with his new wife as much as she would have liked. This eventually was the demise of their marriage.

For their next film Harris and Kubrick decided on Paths of Glory. UA denied the script the first couple of attempts, but said that if they got a big time actor they would reconsider. After a long and arduous search they found Kirk Douglas. The terms of the deal were not very good for Kubrick and Harris. The deal was that Kirk Douglas would get $350,000, first class accommodations, a staff for on location work, and the delivery of a 16mm print of the film. ‘The killer was Harris–Kubrick had to sign a deal with Bryna for five movies,’ recalls Harris, ‘two of which he would be in and three of which he did not have to be in. So we were going to work for Kirk Douglas at this point for our future.’

To top it off UA still gave them a low budget of $850,000 and the movie ended up costing $950,000. The movie was shot in Munich, Germany for two main reasons. First, they needed the World War I trench warfare effect, and second because it was impossible to try and film in France. Instantly Kubrick and Douglas did not get along. Douglas arrived on the set and read the script (which had been revised a bit), and he was furious. As a result, they returned to the original script. Also on the defensive, throughout the movie Kubrick was putting up posters hailing Harris-Kubrick Productions responsible for the film but Bryna had the rights to it. Douglas never said anything.

Kubrick felt nothing constructive was going to come out of the eccentric Marlon Brando.

Kubrick met his future and lifelong wife Katherina Christiane on the set of Paths of Glory. She played the part of a German girl who sang to the shell-shocked men. Katherina was born in Nazi Germany and had been divorced four years earlier from German actor, Werner Bruhns. She enjoyed painting and drawing.

When the movie was released in Europe, French troops stood in front of the theatres in protest. The movie was banned all over Europe but was eventually legal everywhere in 1974. It won best foreign film in Italy and Winston Churchill was said to have like the authenticity of the movie.

For their next project Marlon Brando teamed up with Kubrick. The movie was called One Eyed Jacks and was about Billy the Kid. Unfortunately, the egos of both Kubrick and Brando saw too many differences. Kubrick felt nothing constructive was going to come out of the eccentric Brando. Brando’s ‘no shoes’ meetings with gongs at his house and the constant playing of games such as poker, dominoes, or chess made it impossible to get anything done. Eventually Kubrick was removed from the project.

While all of this was going on Harris was fulfilling their obligations to Kirk Douglas. The two had decided that five movies together would be too much. So, they agreed that making two movies together would be binding to both sides.

As 1959 was nearing Stan and Christiane Harlan moved to Beverly Hills. Katharina (Stanley’s first daughter) was six now and Christiane was expecting her first child with Stanley.

Kirk Douglas came to Stanley and Harris for their next work and suggested the novel Spartacus by Howard Fast. Before talks about Stanley at the helm of the project got serious however, Douglas’s agent, Lew Wasserman, persuaded him they needed a ‘big-name’ director. Instead of Kubrick, Anthony Mann was chosen. On January 27, 1959 the project started filming in Death Valley. Mann shot the film for three weeks, but as Vincent LoBrutto stated, ‘Douglas felt that the director was allowing actor Peter Ustinov to direct himself by his docile acceptance of many-if not all- of the actor’s suggestions.’ Kubrick was then called.

He came to the set over the weekend and was directing in days. With such a star studded and a young cocky director, no one got along and it was obvious. Kubrick’s numerous takes were growing on the large cast. Loren Janes recalls, ‘I said, ‘Well, the only way would be shooting straight up and putting the camera on the ground. He’ll probably come and dig a hole and put the camera down in the hole to shoot up,’ and just as I said this, five guys walked by with shoves and started digging a hole. Kubrick loved weird and unusual camera angles.’ There were numerous times like this in the making of this film where the cast thought the cocky and young Kubrick would never get the take he wanted. But, he always did and that’s the way he worked. The movie did very well in the box office and won four Oscars, but nothing for Kubrick.

During the production of Spartacus Stanley became a father to Vivian Vanessa on August 5, 1960.

Harris decided during this time in his career that he wanted to direct himself and consequently left the team.

Next in line was Lolita. He was just itching to start it ever since the episode with One Eyed Jacks, but Spartacus had priority because of the Kirk Douglas deal. They had already bought the rights to the book and convinced the author Vladimir Nabokov to write the screenplay adaptation. This book was very popular and it was known about all over the world. The story is about an older man falling in love with a fourteen-year-old girl. Harris borrowed a million dollars from Kenneth Hyman for the making of the movie.

They opted to film in England at the Elstree Studios because it was cheaper and also because Stanley was getting sick of the Hollywood scene. They had to delete a lot of scenes because of the touchy subject, which made it hard to get the Code Seal. After deleting a lot of scenes they finally had it approved and the movie ended up costing two million but made $4.5 million at the box office. This movie was a huge success for the two at the time and Kubrick was slowly starting to get the respect he deserved. Kubrick told Newsweek in 1972 that, ‘Had I realized how severe the limitations were going to be, I probably wouldn’t have made the film.’ Clearly Stan didn’t feel he got to truly represent Nabokov’s work, despite it fairing well in the box office.

For the next project they bought the rights to Red Alert for $3,500 and started working on a script for Dr. Strangelove (a.k.a. How I learned to Love the Bomb). They joked around one day pretending the movie could be satiric. The more he thought about the idea the more he liked it, and with the help of Terry Southern Stan decided to go for it. Harris decided during this time in his career that he wanted to direct himself and consequently left the team. He remembers the silly idea of making the movie satiric. ‘I said to myself, ‘I leave him alone for ten minutes and he’s going to blow his whole career.’ I was actually convinced he was out of control to do this as a comedy-as it turns out, it’s my favorite Kubrick picture.’

Harris and Kubrick had been a great team but their careers were at a fork in the road and they were both going in different directions. Harris went back to the US, while Kubrick decided to film in England again. Kubrick completed the film there for $2 million. MCA executives whom all hated the film screened the finished picture. After the JFK assassination he made some minor adjustments and the film was released on November 22, 1963. Although at the time it was given mixed reviews, today Dr. Strangelove is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time by the American Film Institute .

A Space Odyssey: 2001 was Stanley’s next film, based on the book The Sentinel by Arthur Clarke. The two worked on a script together in New York. To get the effect he wanted Stanley was going to have to get some of the industry’s top special effects people. He hired Harry Lange who eventually helped make space vehicles for NASA and Frederick Orway who worked for NASA as well. They also worked with special effects team Wally Veevers, Douglas Trumball, Con Pederson, and Tom Howard.

Stanley was in a science fiction phase and couldn’t stop reading and talking to people. Even the renowned Carl Sagan spoke with Stanley one night about the movie and said this about it. ‘I argued that the number of individually unlikely events in the evolutionary history of man was so great that nothing like us is ever likely to evolve again anywhere else in the universe. I suggested that any explicit representation of an advanced extraterrestrial being was bound to have at least an element of falseness about it and that the best solution would be to suggest rather than explicitly to display the extra-terrestrials.’

When it was finally released it broke opening day records at the box office despite an influx of reviews despising the movie.

On May 1st a fire ruined the rough copy screenplay. After the fire Clarke was very worried the script would never get done. ‘Clarke was increasingly fearful that he would never come up with a suitable plot for the film. Nightmares interrupted his fitful sleep. He has described one that envisioned the writer on the set-the shooting had begun-and actors were standing around with nothing to say, while Kubrick continued to question and probe the writer, who still hadn’t found the story line the director was searching for. In Clarke’s waking hours, long walks with Kubrick ended at the East River with few answers and many new prospects to consider.’ On December 25 the script was eventually finished. Kubrick loved it and apparently so did MGM, who gave the green light with a $6 million budget.

Stanley was only working with a few actors but there were 35 designers and 25 special effect technicians. In February of 1968 Stanley had a premonition that this was his masterpiece and it would do very well. So, he purchased $20,500 worth of MGM shares. After the MGM executives saw a screening on April 15 they felt it was too long and boring. So before the world premiere he cut seventeen minutes. When it was finally released it broke opening day records at the box office despite an influx of reviews despising the movie. Vogue magazine’s Stanley Kauffmann called 2001,’a film that is so dull, it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has allowed it to become dull. He is so infatuated with technology-of film and of the future-that it has numbed his formerly keen feeling for attention-span.’

He was so paranoid of the doctors in England that when he needed oral surgery he paid for his longtime doctor who lived in the Bronx to fly to England and perform the operation.

Despite the negative and nasty reviews, herds of people thirty years and under were going to see it. In his book, Stanley Kubrick-A Biography, Vincent LoBrutto had this to say, ‘At one screening a young man ran down the aisle during the Star Gate sequence and crashed through the screen screaming, ‘I see God!’ The smell of burning marijuana permeated theaters packed with young people, their pupils dilated, their minds stimulated with the power of pure film.’

Kubrick had told Rolling Stone, ‘I have to say that it was never meant to represent an acid trip. On the other hand a connection does exist. An acid trip is probably similar to the kind of mind-boggling experience that might occur at the moment of encountering extraterrestrial intelligence. I’ve been put off experimenting with LSD because I don’t like what seems to happen to people who try it.’

The film grossed more than $40 million worldwide, going on MGM’s top three list with Gone With the Wind and Dr. Zhivago.

After filming several of his films in England, Stanley decided to stay there permanently and live in the countryside of Hertfordshide. With the huge success of 2001 and wealth there was bound to be a down side.

After a near fatal plane incident it is believed Stanley became afraid to fly and therefore stopped going back to the US. In addition he instructed his drivers never to drive over 35 miles per hour. He was so paranoid of the doctors in England that when he needed oral surgery he paid for his longtime doctor who lived in the Bronx to fly to England and perform the operation.

While 2001 was making Stanley millions he was already thinking about his next project. He became obsessed with the life of Napoleon. The film would never be made however because of comments Stanley received from rival foreign filmmakers stating, ‘If you work with these people we’re going to kill you.’

This popularity sparked a series of acts of violence in England that were so heinous the film was banned for twenty years.

His next project would come from the book A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Stanley got Warner Bros. to buy the rights for $200,000. Stanley adapted this book into a screenplay all by himself. The movie was set in the future and was about how criminals were treated in the future. It featured some extremely racy scenes in which the main character Alex, played by Malcolm McDowell, committed rapes and brutal crimes. For the nature of some of the scenes the movie was first branded an X rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice gave a horrible review of the movie that read, ‘What we have here is simply a pretentious fake.’

Most of the reviews expressed how they were very disturbed by the movie and it definitely wasn’t ready for the USA. It was very popular in Europe, especially England. This popularity sparked a series of acts of violence in England that were so heinous the film was banned for twenty years.

After A Clockwork Orange audiences were patiently waiting for Kubrick’s next masterpiece. He kept a tight lid on his next movie however, and no one really knew what the mastermind was up to yet. It was called Barry Lyndon, based on William Makepace Thackery’s The Luck of Barry Lyndon. For the starring role Kubrick chose Ryan O’Neal. The movie premiered on December 18, 1975. It grossed over $11 million, which did much better (once again) than most critics had predicted. Michael Billington of the London Illustrated News wrote, ‘Barry Lyndon is an egocentric film, made by a man who has lost touch with his peers, his critics and his audience.’

Although the film was a mediocre success in the US, in Europe it is hailed as one of the best films of all time.

He was really tough on his actors. He tried getting everything out of them.

Once again Stanley would be taking advantage of some of the technological advances (such as Steadicams) in his next film The Shining. The movie was based on a Stephen King novel in which a man gets writers block and goes crazy and tries killing his wife and son. Shelley Duvall played the wife in the movie and the husband was played Jack Nicholson. Shelley was not quite equipped to handle all that comes with working with Stanley Kubrick. He was really tough on his actors. He tried getting everything out of them. Stanley constantly verbally abused the timid actress. After Duvall messed up a take Stanley erupts, ‘There’s no desperation! We’re fucking killing ourselves out here and you’ve got to be ready!’ She has always been a little hostile towards Kubrick since the movie.

During production a set caught on fire costing $2.5 million to rebuild. When things finally got back on track the movie premiered on May 23, 1980 and did very well in the US. The use of the Steadicam in the movie was groundbreaking for chase scenes.

After the movie was released Stanley’s good friend and colleague John Alcott, cinematographer, died of a heart attack at the age of 55.

On March 10, 1984 Stanley becomes a father-in-law when his daughter Katharina at the age of thirty marries caterer, Philip Eugene Hobbs.

For his next film Kubrick went back to the tragedy of war to captivate his audience. Full Metal Jacket was based on the book The Short-Timers by Gustov Hansford. It is about the horrible things that young men go through before and during the Vietnam War. Kubrick took an emotional set back during the making of this classic when both of his parents died. Gertrude Kubrick died on April 23, 1985 in L.A. at the age of 82 and Jacques Kubrick died on October 19, 1983 in L.A. of bacterial pneumonia. On a lighter side, on January 20 1985, Stanley’s daughter had a son, Alexander Phillip Hobbs.

Stanley Kubrick sparked a different style of movie making by concentrating on the visual art at hand rather than worrying about dialogue.

Full Metal Jacket was released on June 26, 1987 and in the first ten days it made over $5 million. In its first fifty days, the film grossed $38 million. The film didn’t get bad reviews which was almost a first for Kubrick, and was also one of his best selling movies.

For his next project Kubrick was thinking of a movie about the fall of the Berlin Wall, but he felt it was going to be too similar to Schindler’s List. So he moved on. Next he was thinking of a movie called AI (Artificial Intelligence) which was supposed to be something like Waterworld. Kubrick didn’t think the technology was ready for what he wanted however, and he therefore placed this movie aside as well. After seeing Jurassic Park he had a change of heart. Before he could get started on AI, Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler’s came to him.

The screenplay took the name Eyes Wide Shut and starred Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. It was a story about fantasy, trust, and marriage. This movie had some trouble getting an R rating because of some risky sex scenes, so during the editing process bodies had to be placed in the way of some sex scenes that were thought to be too explicit.

The great director never lived to see this one hit the big screen. Just one month before it was released on March 7, 1999 Stanley Kubrick, age 70, died of natural causes in his sleep in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom. The movie was the first number one at the box office for Kubrick. Some critics argue that it may not have ended out the way he wanted it to because he was always a big part of the editing process.

As for AI, director Stephen Spielberg is going to pick up where Kubrick left off.

Stanley Kubrick sparked a different style of movie making by concentrating on the visual art at hand rather than worrying about dialogue. Because of this, some consider him the best director that has ever graced cinema.

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