[HN Gopher] Stanley Kubrick did it his way
___________________________________________________________________
Stanley Kubrick did it his way
Author : prismatic
Score : 81 points
Date : 2024-04-08 21:15 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apollo-magazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apollo-magazine.com)
| Jgrubb wrote:
| Not nearly long enough, but I'll take what I can get.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The book they're reviewing is out, only $30 in hardback on
| Amazon. Ordered...
| morkalork wrote:
| I'm sure it felt plenty long enough for the people he was
| directing.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Nobody had a gun at their head.
| hinkley wrote:
| Lost a lot of respect for this man after I found out how he
| treated Shelley Duvall.
| eikenberry wrote:
| But gained a lot for Shelley... that she was able to direct her
| terrible emotional state into her acting and give one of her
| best performances speaks greatly of her.
| tehnub wrote:
| Most of what you hear about that are exaggerations and rumors,
| mostly based on this video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o-n6vZvqjQ. People cite lines
| like "don't sympathize with Shelly" to jump to the conclusion
| that Kubrick "ordered the cast and crew to alienate her". Or
| they cite making her do 60 or however many takes, as if that
| constitutes abuse. I wonder if the abuse allegations are
| compounded by Wendy Torrance being so vulnerable and scared in
| the movie influencing perception of the actress, and also some
| kind of collective guilt for the initial uninterested to
| negative critical reaction to her performance.
| hinkley wrote:
| Stephen King referred to the movie as "misogynistic".
|
| And it was apparently 127 takes.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Highly recommend watching "room 237" a documentary about
| the shining, some of it veers into speculation but one
| interesting take was that Kubrick in the film specifically
| lets Stephen King know that this is his vehicle(the movie)
| and is quite subtle about the message.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Thats a lot for sure but I really dont think the number of
| takes shows abuse or not. I dont have an opinion on any
| alleged abuse of Duvall either way, because it just doesnt
| matter enough for me to form an informed opinion.
| Regardless the number of takes and the opinion of the
| author certainly dont mean much.
| tehnub wrote:
| He was probably talking about the story. In the book, Wendy
| is supposed to be strong, not one to be pushed around. In
| the movie, it's the total opposite.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| The quotation from a BBC interview is, "Shelley Duvall as
| Wendy is really one of the most misogynistic characters
| ever put on film, she's basically just there to scream and
| be stupid and that's not the woman that I wrote about."
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-24151957
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Most of what you hear about that are exaggerations and
| rumors..._
|
| Are they? Kubrick is known for being difficult and for his
| shallow portrayal of women. And whether it was due to
| misogyny or his personal view of Duvall, even Kubrick's
| daughter called her father "a different director" when
| referring to how he singled her out.
|
| > _People cite lines like "don't sympathize with Shelly" to
| jump to the conclusion that Kubrick "ordered the cast and
| crew to alienate her"._
|
| Except he literally did that in order to alienate her and
| extract a slightly more authentic performance, which is the
| same reason he spent three weeks on the baseball bat scene.
| gofreddygo wrote:
| Born in the great depression. little to no interest in education.
| Picks photography, gets a job as a photographer for a magazine.
|
| Starts a movie company at 21 and makes shit movies.But
| importantly, develops a knack for persuading people to work for
| little or no money convincing them that the "experience" was was
| worth more than money
|
| Young Kubrick is ruthlessness and ego centric, hard to like...
| mature Kubrik is intriguing and softer. Then he makes some great
| movies, gets a family going, has money and goes nuts.
|
| This allows him to get obsessive, neurotic, totally fixated on
| his work, horrifyingly oblivious to the feelings of colleagues
| and employees driving some to breakdown. Outraged designers,
| writers all persuaded for the experience and the glory of the
| final result. All swearing never to work with him again.
|
| persuading people to work for little or no money for the
| _experience_ and the greatness of the purpose and the _final
| result_ seems like the common pattern between Kubrik and others
| like Jobs.
| dgllghr wrote:
| It doesn't have to be like this though. Actors and others who
| work on sets with David Lynch always talk about how wonderful
| he is to work with and how well he treats everyone. And he is
| also a man with singularity of vision who does things his way.
| kman82 wrote:
| Lynch is good. But comparing him to Kubrick is like chalk and
| cheese
| subsubzero wrote:
| I like each in their own way, I may be more biased towards
| Kubrick as I consider the Shining one of my top 3 movies of
| all time. Lynch may be the ultimate auteur in making a
| certain type of movie or tv show that really no one else
| was making or thinking about(Blue Velvet, Mulholland dr.
| etc). Twin Peaks season 3 might be one of the best tv shows
| ever made(and also one of the weirdest) and its why I like
| David Lynch so much. Kubrick touched on that side a bit
| with 2001(my second favorite of his movies) but his style
| is much more traditional.
| hnbad wrote:
| Maggie Mae Fish did a very interesting long form video on
| this exact comparison:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr65ZIWoD6c
|
| (Skip the first minute if you don't care for framing devices,
| it switches into a conventional video essay format for most
| of the video after that.)
| hammock wrote:
| David Lynch's oeuvre, while unquestionably idiosyncratic, is
| also characterized and widely criticized for its obvious
| compromises. Kubrick puts the art above the artists, it's the
| only way
| Chabsff wrote:
| It's not, in fact, the only way. The alternatives are time
| and/or money. Not having access to the resources needed to
| accomplish something is not a license to resort to socially
| unacceptable means.
|
| Now, there's an argument to be made that actors who
| accepted to work under Kubrick knew (or at least ought to
| have known) what they were getting into, which blurs things
| a lot in this specific case. But "It's the only way" is
| going too far imo.
| geodel wrote:
| > But "It's the only way" is going too far imo.
|
| Its going too far if industry is replete with Kubrick
| level work with above reproach behavior. Else I can just
| choose to not watch Kubrick films while stewing in my own
| moral superiority.
| seanc wrote:
| Denis Villeneuve is another example of a universally loved
| director, and he is not often criticized for obvious
| compromises.
|
| Villeneuve's good friend Christopher Nolan presents as a
| bit more of a prickly pear, but he has a very long list of
| long-time collaborators on both sides of the camera so he's
| probably not that bad.
|
| In fact, more than a few of those behind-the-scenes folks
| collaborate with both Villeneuve and Nolan. It would be
| interesting to hear them compare an contrast.
| hammock wrote:
| Not sure I'm following on Denis, his most loved movies
| are all remakes of singular masterpieces (Dune, Sicario,
| Blade Runner)
| pja wrote:
| Sicario was an original screenplay by Taylor Sheridan:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicario_%282015_film.
|
| Calling the other two "remakes" seems unnecessarily
| reductive imo.
| feoren wrote:
| You conveniently left out Arrival. Also, Blade Runner
| 2049 was not a remake, but a sequel with original
| content. Also, Dune was a book adaptation, not a remake.
| Also, that's just a weird reason to reject a director. Is
| it easier to direct a movie that's set in an existing
| universe? Should we reject all World War 2 movies as
| potential masterpieces since they're just remakes of a
| thing that happened?
| mattbuilds wrote:
| Just to further your point, we are in a thread about
| Kubrick who did numerous book adaptations including
| Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, and Clockwork
| Orange and this is just off the top of my head. Tons of
| directors adapt novels. Bringing the story to the screen
| is the skill.
| jajko wrote:
| Please don't troll here, its not well received (and
| shouldn't be)
| martin_balsam wrote:
| Chris Nolan famously drives all his production designers
| insane! No one has made more then one film with him.
| Apparently he also only shoots 3 or 4 takes per shot, and
| goes ballistic if somethings goes wrong.
| echelon wrote:
| Dune took "Show Don't Tell" the the utmost extreme that
| it practically inverted upon itself. There's no character
| development to speak of, the plot is secondary, and
| visual spectacle is placed front and center.
|
| I tire of movies with lazy expositional dialogue, but
| this was absurd in the other direction.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's an excuse for those who can't achieve greatness while
| being great.
| wil421 wrote:
| Who is David Lynch? I don't have to ask myself the same
| question about Stanley Kubrick.
| soperj wrote:
| That says more about you than it does about David Lynch.
| eggdaft wrote:
| People at Apple didn't earn much money? Jonny Ive?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > persuading people to work for little or no money for the
| experience and the greatness of the purpose and the final
| result seems like the common pattern between Kubrik and others
| like Jobs.
|
| Well if you don't have many resources, you need to persuade
| them somehow. Many people would pay to work with an all-time
| genius in their field. Wouldn't you?
|
| > (abusive stuff)
|
| There's no evidence or reason to think it's necessary. Power
| corrupts. Why look for rationalizations for assholes?
| abraae wrote:
| > persuading people to work for little or no money for the
| experience and the greatness of the purpose and the final
| result seems like the common pattern between Kubrik and others
| like Jobs.
|
| Peter Jackson got started the same way, making ultra low budget
| horror flicks like Bad Taste with friends and family as extras.
| Critically, like Kubrick and Jobs, those early attempts were
| actually good, good enough to kick start their respective
| careers.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| Kubrick was remarkable in his singularity as a filmmaker.
|
| There is a fantastic 1 hr BBC documentary from the mid 2000's
| called 'Stanley Kubrick's Boxes' in which the documentary crew is
| given access to Kubrick's estate and warehouses after his
| passing. They examine the contents of the boxes of research and
| pre-production material that Kubrick accrued over several decades
| when crafting his films. The lengths he went to flesh them out
| are stunning.
|
| The takeaway is of someone with a singular ambition and extreme
| thoroughness when planning their films. It's been immensely
| inspiring to witness just how intently a creator can focus on
| crafting their work. I strongly recommend it.
| philwebster wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! Looks like the documentary is available on
| Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/322890808
| ryandrake wrote:
| One of the cool facts about Kubrick I've always admired as a
| testament to his perfectionism is his typical "shooting ratio":
| The ratio of how much film was shot vs the run time of the final
| product. For _The Shining_ he exposed 1.3 million feet of film
| for a movie that runs for 142 minutes, a ratio of over 100:1. The
| baseball bat scene alone took 127 takes to get right[1].
|
| 1:
| https://www.jimcarrollsblog.com/blog/2019/6/5/yt0trf17bh9ai4...
| js2 wrote:
| _Barry Lyndon_ is probably my favorite (or at least, the one I
| appreciate the most) of Kubric 's films when it comes to his
| perfectionism, but perfectionism alone isn't a great metric for
| the resulting film:
|
| > Cimino shot more than 1.3 million feet (400,000 metres;
| nearly 220 hours) of footage, costing the studio approximately
| $200,000 per day in salary (equivalent to $720,000 in 2022),
| locations and acting fees.Privately, it was joked that Cimino
| wished to surpass Francis Ford Coppola's mark of shooting one
| million feet of footage for Apocalypse Now (1979).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(film)#Product...
|
| _Heaven 's Gate_ isn't even all that great to look at. There's
| still the matter of taste involved, and well, Cimino made some
| questionable decisions.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| This could also mean that he's inept at getting composition
| right, and neurotically obsessive about things that don't
| really matter.
|
| I do photography, and a ratio of 1000 discarded photos to one
| you keep would far more likely mean someone doesn't know how to
| select their shots more carefully and can't distinguish what's
| important, than it would mean that they're a perfectionist
| genius.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > he's inept at getting composition right
|
| If you can suggest Kubrick is inept at composition, I can't
| respect you as a photographer.
| whycome wrote:
| So far ahead of his time.
|
| He really wanted to make a film on Napoleon. Though not
| officially related to his work, one got made last year to mixed
| reviews. And he started production on the movie "AI - Artificial
| Intelligence" after a short story from 1969. He handed it off to
| Steven Spielberg.
|
| ///
|
| Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made -
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9671018
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The crazy thing is, we now have "Dr. Know" from AI, and nothing
| is really stopping us from building that bear. Nothing but
| battery life, I guess.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Lots of films have been made about Napoleon, many long before
| Kubrick (before he was born, even) and several while he was an
| active director, I don't how him wanting to do one and one
| recently being made makes him "ahead of his time".
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Cinema is a collaborative art, and auteurist accounts that
| centre the director's vision often seem at odds with the actual
| process of film-making. But Stanley Kubrick was a special case; a
| director who won an astonishing degree of autonomy from the
| Hollywood studios that financed his films and used it to control
| almost every aspect of those films: the scripts, the
| performances, the lighting and camerawork, the mise en scene down
| to the smallest details of sets and props, the gradations of
| colour in the prints, how the films were promoted and, later,
| even the typefaces on the boxes of VHS and DVD releases
|
| I wonder at directors: It's hard enough to find artists with the
| insight, vision, expressiveness, and mastery of their craft to
| create great art.
|
| But before film, artists worked mostly alone. I suppose
| architects and composers have had to be mindful of the
| performance of a bunch of humans, but didn't necessarily have to
| manage that process. Stage directors obviously have similar jobs,
| but necessarily at a much smaller scale, with fewer technical
| demands, and by my limited understanding, stage directors lean
| toward overseeing and facilitating the art, which is more a
| product of the playwright and actors.
|
| But film directors - as artists they must be all those things an
| artist is; and also they must master more domains than most
| artists - film, audio, script, story, costumes, sets, lighting,
| etc.; and on top of that they must be top-notch managers: hire
| and manage hundreds or thousands of highly talented people (just
| look at the credits), and then coordinate them all to finish on
| time and also manage a budget in the 10s or 100s of millions, and
| then also sell their vision to funders.
|
| Where are these 'directors' found? Can they really do all that or
| is it handled otherwise? How are they developed? It's hard to
| imagine there would be more than a couple of them.
| wizardwes wrote:
| I'd say that most of those things you list film directors
| needing to worry about are just as important to stage
| directors, but also, film directors have crew and other experts
| to fill a lot of those gaps. Directors aren't writing scripts,
| there are scriptwriter for that, just like playwrights, the
| director just gets some input, which happens in live theater
| right now. I know a director who is having to edit the script
| of Hamlet himself right now due to time constraints. A film
| director doesn't necessarily need to know _everything_ they
| just need to be able to vocalize their wants and vision to
| other people who know more, and be able to receive feedback
| from that. Also, to my knowledge, directors aren 't hiring
| everyone. They might pick a few key people, but that's why you
| have producers, and you let your key people pick their people
| under them.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| What do you think of my comments on stage directors in the GP
| (rather than my pedantically repeating them). Also, more
| delegation requires substituting more management skill for
| artistic skill - and IME many highly talented people hate to
| delegate for that reason.
|
| I am neither film nor stage director nor actor, but here is
| Lawrence Olivier, highly accomplished and respected in both
| mediums, on the differences:
|
| _" Now the sense of continuity in the film is provided by
| the director, who says that was too quiet, or that was too
| loud, or that was too much, or that was too slow.
|
| Now an actor on the stage is supposed to conduct it much more
| for himself. The director in a stage play, he can do two
| things, I think, principally ...: He can give the play a
| point of view, which he can sell to the actors. His principle
| task is to make quite sure that the author is served to his
| best advantage, and the actors are served to their best
| advantage. And at the same time, he can describe, without
| setting, because this will vary according to performance,
| according to audience, but he can desribe what he thinks is
| the right tempo for each scene, or the comparative tempos
| between two scenes, three scenes, four scenes, five scenes,
| etc.
|
| Whereas the director of the film is the absolute magician,
| who is in charge and knows the answer to every question right
| from the beginning of the film to the last. In directing a
| film, people say, 'would it be alright if she wore a red
| hat?' Well, simply means that you have to split your mind to
| every single shot that could possibly affect that situation,
| right to the beginning of the film, right to the end of the
| film, before you say, 'I don't care' or 'yes' or 'no'. It's a
| very precise arrangement, altogether, in a film."_
|
| From a 1973 interview:
| https://www.criterionchannel.com/videos/laurence-olivier-
| and...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-04-11 23:00 UTC)