Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic collaborators recall the man and his very unique methods.
Without question, Stanley Kubrick was one of cinema’s most imposing, exacting, independent, and fiercely original filmmakers. His work, which sometimes took decades to reach the screen, was shrouded in mystery, and once the films were finished, many of the elements that went into them—sets, costumes, props, storyboards and preliminary designs—were destroyed. No one, certainly not his close colleagues, dared discuss Kubrick’s working methods—until now. Following the director’s untimely death earlier this year at age 70, several of his collaborators agreed to speak with AC about this often contradictory man who, it turns out, may not have been so reclusive after all. [Ed. note: Some of the following comments, including those of the late John Alcott, BSC and Douglas Milsome, BSC, were culled from past issues of AC.]
Leon Vitali (actor, Barry Lyndon, Eyes Wide Shut; personal assistant, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut; casting director, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut): All of this stuff about Stanley being a hermit—he was a homebody, but he’d go out and do his own shopping sometimes. How many A-list directors do their own shopping?
Larry Smith (cinematographer, Eyes Wide Shut): That’s a misperception, that Stanley was a recluse—he was far from a recluse. He was certainly a bit shy around people that he’d just met for the first time, but that didn’t last long. As soon as he could find something of interest that he could communicate about with that person, he was fine. Stanley had a vast vision of many things. He was an intellectual, no question about it, even though he didn’t come from an intellectual background. His father was a doctor, but Stanley was self-taught. He read books, and he could hold his own talking about anything from politics to religion to sport—you name it.
Stanley also had a very warm, earthy side as well. When I went into the kitchen at his house, he’d come ’round, make some coffee and ask, ’Do you want some toast, do you want something to eat?’ He’d put some toast in, and the toast would invariably get burnt. He would take it out with his hand and whack it on the table to get rid of the burnt crumbs. ’Let’s find a knife and put some butter on it,’ he’d say. There’d be a mess all over the place, and the coffee would get spilled. To me, that was fantastic. I’d think to myself, ’Stanley Kubrick is making me tea and toast!’ You don’t realize how important those little things are until the person dies and you realize that you’re never going to do them again.
Ken Adam (production designer, Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon): Stanley was hoping to do all of Barry Lyndon—or most of it—within literally 30 miles of his home in Elstree. At the time, A Clockwork Orange was a great success, but he had received a lot of threatening letters, which made him a bit reluctant to go to far-off locations. I told him that I couldn’t see that plan working out, because I knew where the suitable stately homes were situated, and with one or two exceptions, they certainly weren’t within that radius of Stanley’s house! His stance on the matter was enormously frustrating for me, but eventually, after five or six months, I got him to look at some of the stately homes [further away], and then to go to Ireland to shoot the Irish locations. Of course, once we were in Ireland, he wanted to do all of the continental sequences there, too.
John Alcott, BSC (camera assistant/cinematographer, 2001: A Space Odyssey; cinematographer, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining): When you’re with Stanley, the working relationship benefits from picture to picture. We’ve collaborated together since 1965, and in working with him, there is always a different outlook, a different idea: ’Let’s try something different. Is there any way of doing this differently? Is there any way of making this much better than it was before?’ I feel that when you have as much time as we had on The Shining to—make sure that the sets are right and that the art director is building them to your lighting design, it is a great privilege. You don’t have that privilege when you work with somebody who lacks the visual perception that Stanley has. He is willing to bend over backwards to give you something you may desire in the way of a new lighting technique, which is a great help. As time goes on, Stanley has become more thorough and more exacting in his demands. One has to go away after having done a film with him, gather knowledge, come back, and try to put that knowledge together with his knowledge into another film. He is, and I’ve said this before, very demanding. He demands perfection, but he will give you all the help you need if he thinks that whatever you want to do will accomplish the desired result. He will give you full power to do it—but, at the same time, it must work. (From AC Aug. 1980.)
Garrett Brown (Steadicam operator, The Shining): Stanley is correctly reported to be in charge of every detail, and interested in everything from the air-conditioning to the nature of lunch. On The Shining, we were working at Ellstree studios in Hertfordshire for a year, but at the end we needed to go on location in Hampstead Hospital (about 7 miles away), and we began debating about what would be the fastest way to transport the crew down there. Stanley’s idea was that cars would be faster, but I maintained, ’The underground is by far the quickest way.’ He didn’t believe it, so I said, ’Come with me, I’ll show you! I subsequently had the great joy of taking Kubrick for a ride on the London underground—which he hadn’t been aboard for 20 years. He was looking around as if he had just arrived from Mars. He had never seen ads and things underground, and he thought it was amazingly dirty. Of course, nobody knew who he was; they probably thought he was a mildly retarded fellow who was having a great time on the train. It was really quite fun, and of course, we beat his driver by an enormous margin, but we still ended up traveling by road.
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