Stanley Kubrick

[Nothing]

how do I see these cuts? I would love to see the 20-30 minutes excised from the Shining including the alternate ending.

The US release is the longer cut and the European release is the shorter one, although neither contain the scene in the hospital.

[TedW]

Gee, can I see the drawings he made on a cocktail napkin, too?

[Nothing]

Who, Kubrick? This should suffice for now.

[MichaelB]

how do I see these cuts? I would love to see the 20-30 minutes excised from the Shining including the alternate ending.

The US release is the longer cut and the European release is the shorter one, although neither contain the scene in the hospital.

This is what you're missing:

Spoiler

Starting after the closeup of frozen Jack, the camera goes to a pullback shot with part of a state trooper's car and the legs of troopers walking around in the foreground. We then cut to the hotel manager Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson) walking down a hospital hallway to the nurse's station to inquire about Danny and Wendy. He's told they're both doing well and proceeds to Wendy's room. After some gentle conversation, he tells Wendy that searchers have been unable to locate any evidence of the apparitions she saw. Additionally, Jack's body cannot be located. We then cut to the camera silently roaming the halls of the Overlook Hotel for about a minute until it comes up to the wall with the photographs, where it [back to the ending as it is now known] fades in on the photo of Jack in the 1921 picture.

...and it doesn't sound as though you're missing much. Or indeed anything - Kubrick was a painfully over-literal director at times, and I suspect the penny finally dropped that this footage was entirely redundant, albeit after the film had already gone on release.

On the other hand, the longer US cut is definitely superior to the European one - thankfully, the US Blu-ray is region-free.

[Nothing]

Interesting, I haven't seen quite such a detailed description before. I've always found the close-up of the frozen Jack a little atypically crass, in a formal sense - and this explains it: the image was originally the starting point for a longer moving take. Interesting.

[tavernier]

Look magazine exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York includes Kubrick photographs.

[Anthony Thorne]

The extended ending notes by MichaelB above is missing one additional tidbit that makes things a little more interesting. Barry Nelson mentioned in an interview that after the Stuart Ullman character finished talking to Wendy in the extended ending, we saw Danny sitting to one side looking forlorn. Ullman says a word of encouragement to Danny, and to cheer him up, rolls him a ball - the very same ball that, in the hotel, rolled out of nowhere prior to the spooky apparition of the twins. Nelson noted that the hospital scene concluded with a close-up of the Ullman character smiling and (in his words) 'looking a bit like the devil', hinting that the manager was in the know somehow and, obviously, might not have been all that he appeared to be.

[MichaelB]

Thanks for that - that's the first time I'd ever heard that, and it certainly makes the scene seem less redundant than the old description suggested. But if it hasn't surfaced on DVD/Blu-ray by now after umpteen special editions, I suspect it never will.

[perkizitore]

Who, Kubrick? This should suffice for now.

Better buy it from here, it works out cheaper.

[Foam]

Lady Gaga's Bad Romance video



I'm getting a masked EWS orgy vibe meets Clockwork Orange.

[Oedipax]

The floor/ceiling is right out of 2001, as well.



Of course Jonathan Glazer mined a lot of Kubrick's work for his music videos a more than a decade ago (Clockwork with Blur's "The Universal," The Shining with Massive Attack's "Karmacoma," etc.)

[Galen Young]

Kubrick fans may be interested to know there is a new book all about A.I. that seems to have suddenly come out of nowhere. It features a fantastic look at his writing process as well as how the visual look of the Spielberg film came to be.

It's yet another physically huge Kubrick book -- 16 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches, cripes! And considerably more affordable than Taschen's magnum opus on Napoleon. (which I sincerely hope they reissue at a later date as a single volume with a smaller size like they did with the Kubrick Archives book, and costing less than five hundred freaking dollars.)

[perkizitore]

The original Kubrick Archives was worth it in my opinion, but the Napoleon book is a bit extravagant.

[tajmahal]

The original Kubrick Archives was worth it in my opinion, but the Napoleon book is a bit extravagant.

I have literally opened the box containing the Kubrick Archives book. My god this is an impressive tome. I can only imagine the larger first edition in the flesh.

For those interested in the A.I book, Cdwow Australia (other Cdwow sites should be similar) have the book, postage free for $49.95.

http://www.cdwow.com.au/books/Jan-Harla ... pc/9860669" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'd grab it fast if you are interested.

[Galen Young]

The original Kubrick Archives was worth it in my opinion...

Completely agree. Best two c-notes I've ever dropped on a single book, at least until the Ingmar Bergman Archives came out. That book is amazing! Now if only they could the same for Tarkovsky or Antonioni or Lang or Kieslowski or Godard or.......... 700 bucks for a book about a film that was never made, that's just plain silly.

[taylora98]

A small story regarding the £450 Napoleon book....and a surprise evening....

I bit the bullet and bought myself a copy from the Taschen store in London and lugged it home on the train.

A couple of days later I was looking at their website and noticed an interesting announcement that all purchasers of the book would be invited to a special drinks party at the Kubrick family home!

An invite duly arrived in the mail.

On Tuesday 8th December a work colleague and myself drove up to Childwickbury Manor to attend the event.

The house (more the size of a stately home, set in 100 acres) is off the main road between St Albans and Harpenden in Hertfordshire. The turning to the estate took us down a series of pitch black country lanes, with placards directing us to the “Childwickbury Event”. After parking up at what we thought was an appropriate spot, we emerged from the car and wandered round.

Next to the main house was the stable area when Kubrick’s boxes had been stored until their relocation to the archive in the University at Elephant and Castle. Everywhere was deserted. We made our way up to what we thought was the way in through a gate and got to the edge of the house and peered into the window. Again, deserted. Retracing our steps we went through a set of car-width gates which had opened on their own since we had walked up the driveway. Relocating to the courtyard, fortunately another car arrived and we followed a couple who seemed to know their way around.

Arriving at what turned out to be the entrance to the event, we were greeted by “Lucy from Taschen” who had sent the invites and we were ushered into a long atrium which housed many paintings by Kubrick’s wife Christiane. From there into a library where the event itself was concentrated: Kubrick’s daughter Katharina was in the corner of the room chatting to other guests. Kubrick’s widow and her brother Jan Harlan (producer of many Kubrick films) were also in attendance. The library contained thousands of books, some referred to in Kubrick’s interviews such as his complete set of Thackeray volumes from which the Barry Lyndon story was drawn.

We chatted for a while and met a couple of other members of Joe Public who had bought the book and received invites. A few well known faces were in attendance – Tony Frewin – Kubrick’s personal assistant who featured heavily in the “Boxes” documentary on Channel 4; Jon Ronson who made the doc; Stephen Frears (director of The Queen with Helen Mirren) and others.

We met Andrew Birkin (brother of Jane) who had worked his way up in the Kubrick team from tea-boy on 2001 to location scout and assistant special effects supervisor. He told us a few stories about his experiences and how Kubrick was to work for. Birkin had taken thousands of location photos for Napoleon and a number of them feature in the book. He seemed genuinely interested in sharing his stories with us.

Harlan and the Taschen team made some speeches about the book and its background, including one slightly nervous contribution from the editor Alison Castle. Those who had taken their books along were able to get them signed, but I hadn’t thought of that.

We weren’t able to see much of the remainder of the house, but we did get to see a very ornate “billiard room” and a hallway with all the venetian masks from Eyes Wide Shut mounted on the walls. All in all there were probably 150 people in attendance.

After a couple of hours the event drew to a close and the “general public” made their way out of the house. It was an amazing experience and certainly one I never thought would happen especially when, during his lifetime, there were so many stories of secrecy and how difficult it was to get anywhere near the location.

There’s a follow up event at the BFI in January (11th, now sold out) where Harlan, Birkin and Castle will be in attendance. I hope to get a small piece of my book set signed at that event!

I even managed to somehow get myself in the publicity photo on the front page of the Taschen web site (which has since been archived away)

[antnield]

This should be of interest to UK users of this forum:

Fear and Desire is currently available to view online for LoveFilm subscribers at no extra cost. Link.

[Person]

Wow, someone gets into the Kubrick lair and gets no responses! Odd. Cool story, bro. Thanks for sharing.

[Roger Ryan]

Here's a CGI recreation of the "Elevator Bloodbath" shot from THE SHINING.

It's intriguing to see the shot in real time and from the overhead angle, but it mostly makes me realize how happy I am that Kubrick did this shot practically in the original film. If remade today, I fear that a CGI alternative would prove too attractive to the filmmakers.

[ivuernis]

Guardian interview with Christiane Kubrick. It's very sad to hear what has happened to 2 of her daughters in the years following Stanley's death. I had no idea.

[mfunk9786]

Beautiful article that choked me up quite a bit. Even if he never made another film, I wish Stanley were still around merely to spend time with his wife.

[aox]

The best way to experience Kubrick is...........on acid:

It's all fun and games until 2001 gets a little too heavy.

[movielocke]

saw Fear and Desire last night. The acting is abysmal, the pretentious writing even worse, but the visuals are wonderful. Presuming Kubrick shot the film in sequence you actually see his direction of the actors (and the rapport of the actors) get better as the shoot went on, as the latter half of the film is better acted than the horrendous opening scenes. It's fascinating to see such proto-Kubrick filmmaking, you see his ability to assemble cinematic ideas grow throughout the film, its sort of like watching his mind work, in a way. A fascinating failure, not remotely a good or even great film, but essential, I think, for auteurists.

to put to rest some rumors. Kubrick didn't try to destroy the film, it just fell into neglect. The george Eastman house got hold of pretty much the only surviving print almost by accident when a distribution house with the rights went under. They screened it in the seventies and eighties and no one really noticed. Boorman screened it at Telluride and Kubrick got really upset about it and tried to persuade GEH to stop screening it. They didn't, but then Kubrick got hold of Scorsese while Scorsese was writing Casino and asked Scorsese to persuade GEH to stop making Fear and Desire available for screenings. He did and they did, and I think last night's screening was the first public screening of F&D since Scorsese made that request on the behalf of Kubrick.

[Napier]

Maybe you should have taken acid.

[Roger Ryan]

...I think last night's screening was the first public screening of F&D since Scorsese made that request on the behalf of Kubrick.

I believe there may have been one or two previous screenings within the past decade, but perhaps not official. I actually sympathize with Kubrick's (fear and...) desire to keep this film out of the public consciousness. This is not an example of "nutty" Kubrick trying to prevent people from seeing his work. He seemed to not have a problem with the availability of KILLER'S KISS which is pretty weak, so before seeing FEAR AND DESIRE, I wondered why his first film caused him so much consternation. Well, now I know: it's awful! But as "movielocke" points out, it's an important document in understanding the development of its director. The fact that he could go from F & D to THE KILLING in two films/three years is astonishing; it's almost unbelievable to think that he would go on to do what he did in the 60s and beyond. Even John Waters had a steadier cinematic vision with his first feature!