I really enjoyed the following short interview and couldn't resist doing a typescript, so am posting it here for other movie buffs. It's always good to hear people who are masters of their craft speaking, but to hear one master talking about someone he considers to be his own master, is even better.
LunarOrbit – fell free to delete the thread if there are likely to be copyright issues.
From the DVD Eyes Wide Shut
Steven Spielberg interviewed by Paul Joyce at
Dreamworks Offices, Hollywood, California
10:20 am 22 July 1999
Spielberg on Kubrick
0:00:07 When we first met, which was 1980, when he was just finishing the construction of his sets for
The Shining and we met for the first time, we talked a lot about movies. I was about to make
Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I was actually moving onto his stages. When he finished, I was moving in.
0:00:27 And, of course, when his stage burned down it changed my schedule. We had to go to France first to start shooting to give Stanley a chance to finish, strike, and let us build the Well of the Souls where the Overlook main hotel lobby was – the main room where Jack Nicholson did the infamous typing.
0:00:44 When it was all over and the movie was done, I saw Stanley again and went to his house for dinner in London, in Saint Albans. And he asked me, “How'd you like my movie?” I'd only seen it once and I didn't love
The Shining the first time I saw it.
0:01:01 I have since seen
The Shining 25 times. It's one of my favourite pictures. Kubrick films tend to grow on you, you have to see them more than once. But the wild thing is, I defy you to name me one Kubrick film that you can turn off once you've started it. It's impossible! He's got this fail-safe button or something. It's impossible to turn off a Kubrick film. But I didn't like it the first time I saw it. I was telling him all the things I liked about it and he saw right through me.
0:01:27 He said, “Well, Steven, obviously you didn't like my picture very much.” And I said, “Well, there's a lot of things I loved about it.” And he said, “Yeah, but there's a lot of things you didn't, probably more things you didn't than you did. So tell me what you didn't like about it.”
0:01:38 And I said, “Well, the thing that I... I thought Jack Nicholson, who's a great actor, I thought it was a great performance, but it was almost a great kabuki performance. It was almost like kabuki theatre.”
0:01:51 He said, “You think Jack went over the top.” And I said, “Yeah, I kind of did.” And he said, “Okay. Quickly, without thinking, who are your top favourite actors of all time? And I don't want you to think, just name off some names.” So I quickly went, “Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Clark Gable...” He said, “Stop.” He stopped me. He said, “Okay. Where was James Cagney on that list?” And I thought, “Well, he's up there, high.” Stanley said, “Ah, but he's not in the top five. You don't consider James Cagney one of the best five actors around. You see, I do. This is why Jack Nicholson's performance is a great one.”
0:02:33 Every film conversation was just an inspiration for me, personally. Stanley liked information. I supplied him with a lot of information. Sometimes information he asked me for, or information I volunteered. In getting to know him, I understood what the dynamic of the relationship was. That Stanley would give me advice, he'd collaborate with me. I'd tell him a story I was interested in directing as a movie, and he'd ask me all the tough questions.
0:02:58 “What do you find interesting about that story? Why do you want to make that picture? Gee, that sounds kind of boring to me. How can you make that interesting?” I mean, he was challenging me constantly. He gave me as much, if not more, than I feel I ever could possibly give him. First, he gave me all his movies and then he gave me his friendship, which meant he gave me his time, and there's no greater gift a person can give to another person.
0:03:22 When you look at all of his films, even though they all have one thing in common, for me, anyway, the craft is impeccable. Every film he's ever made, the craft is impeccable. The lighting, the dolly shots, the crane moves, the zoom-ins on
Barry Lyndon, the framing, the lighting, the hot windows as backlight. There's the compositions. The exact compositions. You had to hit your mark precisely to please Stanley so he'd get his painting, the painting he was putting on canvas for you to appreciate. It had to be perfect. His choice of lenses, his Steadicam work in latter year films, impeccable. The best in history. Nobody could shoot a movie better than Stanley Kubrick, in history.
0:04:07 That was impeccable, but the way he told stories was sometimes antithetical to the way we're accustomed to receiving stories. And I think sometimes Stanley just did that because he didn't want to be like everybody else and he had a very specific way of telling a story. It's not that he wanted to show off – “I'm so different than you.” But he said, “Why does every story have to be told the same way?”
0:04:28 He would tell me, the last couple of years of his life when we were talking about the form, he kept saying, “I want to change the form. I want to make a movie that changes the form.” I said, didn't you do that with
2001?” He said, “Just a little bit, but not enough. I really want to change the form.” So he kept looking for different ways to tell stories.
0:04:48 I think the first thing that makes Stanley Kubrick so special was, he was a chameleon. He never made the same picture twice. Every single picture is a different genre, a different period, a different story, a different risk. The only thing that bonded all of his films was the incredible virtuoso that he was with craft, and with editing, and with performance, and with camera placement, and with composition. But every single story was different. And every single story, somehow, was so mysterious in the way the story was told, it so kept you guessing, “How's this gonna turn out? What's gonna happen next? I can't even imagine...” And all his films are so filled with hairpin turns and story surprises, and character surprises, that you must see his films more than once, because you yearn for those same surprises.
0:05:42 And the genius of Stanley is, you could look at a movie of his 15 times and even though you know what's right around the corner, you'll still give it up and you'll be surprised all over again. And I don't know anyone else who possesses that kind of magic.
0:06:00 The thing that I return to again and again in my mind was the film that I elected to show my friends on the Sunday, America time, that Stanley died – when I got the news. And some people came over to the house that night, they were scheduled to come over for dinner anyway, and we talked the whole night about Stanley. And I wanted to show all of them a scene from a movie that for me represented how deep Stanley's heart was and how much he could love and how much he could show emotion, because he had so often been criticised for not being an emotional director. I thought he was a very emotional director.
0:06:38 And so I put on the last scene from
Paths of Glory, where Christiane, who he then married, who plays the German captive girl, stands up in front of all the French soldiers and sings that song and brings down the house in tears. And we were all crying. As the soldiers were crying we were crying, watching just the last scene. I didn't show them the whole picture. And that isolated last scene so hit a chord with everyone in the room. Two people that night had never seen
Paths of Glory, but were still totally affected by that sequence. And that, to me, represented who Stanley was as a human being. [0:07:16]
Stanley Kubrick's Movies
Video & Maltin
DVD Guide
1 Killer's Kiss 1955 40 50
2 The Killing 1956 80 88
3 Paths of Glory 1957 100 100
4 Spartacus 1960 90 88
5 Lolita 1962 60 75
6 Dr Strangelove... 1964 100 100
7 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 100 100
8 A Clockwork Orange 1971 80 88
9 Barry Lyndon 1975 60 88
10 The Shining 1980 50 50
11 Full Metal Jacket 1987 80 75
12 Eyes Wide Shut 1999 60 75
