July 2024

Stanley Kubrick: Quest for Perfection

This article originally appeared in AC Oct. 1999. 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 — on March 7 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....more