THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF STANLEY KUBRICK THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF STANLEY KUBRICK GENE D. PHILLIPS RODNEY HILL with John C.Tibbetts James M.Welsh Series Editors Foreword by Anthony Frewin Afterword by Leon Vitali The Encyclopedia of Stanley Kubrick Copyright © 2002 by Gene D. Phillips and Rodney Hill All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hill, Rodney, 1965– The encyclopedia of Stanley Kubrick / Gene D. Phillips and Rodney Hill; foreword by Anthony Frewin p. cm.— (Library of great filmmakers) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8160-4388-4 (alk. paper) 1. Kubrick, Stanley—Encyclopedias. I. Phillips, Gene D. II.Title. III. Series. PN1998.3.K83 H55 2002 791.43'0233'092—dc21 [B] 2001040402 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Text design by Erika K.Arroyo Cover design by Nora Wertz Illustrations by John C.Tibbetts Printed in the United States of America VB FOF 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. CONTENTS FOREWORD vii PREFACE ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii INTRODUCTION: REMEMBERING STANLEY KUBRICK xv ENTRIES A–Z 1 AFTERWORD 407 CONTRIBUTORS 410 STANLEY KUBRICK: A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 411 INDEX 413 For my first and most important teacher, Elaine W. Hill. —Rodney Hill This book is dedicated to Milton Rosenberg, educator and dean of radio commentators on the arts. —Gene D. Phillips FOREWORD It was September 1965, and I was a week into my A figure suddenly appeared behind me. He was 17th year when I started as a runner on the prepro- wearing a somewhat worn lightweight dark blue duction of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the MGM Stu- jacket, an open-neck white shirt, a baggy pair of dios in Boreham Wood. My father had been telling trousers, and scuffed shoes. He had a mass of black me for over a month that there was a vacancy on the hair. And there were his eyes—large and penetrating film and would I go down and have an interview and impish. He offered his hand and said in a quiet, with the director? I dragged my heels.Why would I warm voice that was recognizably New Yorkish,“Hi, want to work in the British film industry? All those I’m Stanley.You must be Eddie’s son?” dreadful films that my dad had worked on—why There was a shyness and hesitancy about him. would I want to have anything to do with them? My “Yes,I’m Tony.” friends and I only ever went to see foreign-language He saw I had open in front of me a copy of films—Buñuel, Bergman, the French nouvelle vague, Patrick Waldberg’s book on Max Ernst, the German the Italian directors, and so on.That was cinema to us. painter.“You like Max Ernst?” I eventually realized that the only way I was going “The greatest!” I replied. to get my father off my back was to go down and see “I’ve got to create these extraterrestrial land- this director; and so, early one Sunday morning I scapes and he’s got some really good ideas.You know found myself sitting alone at the studios in an office that painting,‘Europe after the Rain’? A great extra- (or was it a library?) waiting for Stanley Kubrick. terrestrial landscape! [Then with a smirk] Max The name rang a bell.Yes, he had directed the one should have been a Hollywood art director—he’s English-language film we had all gone to see and got a name like a Hollywood art director, don’t you raved about—Dr. Strangelove. But I still didn’t want think? [Back on track] Who else should I be look- the job. ing at? Who do you recommend? Who’s missing The books. There were hundreds of them—vol- here?” umes on surrealism, dadaism, futuristic and fantastic Stanley sat down opposite me and we spent the art—in English, German, Italian, and other languages. next two hours going through some of the art books There were works on astronomy,rocketry,cosmology, as he explained what 2001 was about and what he extraterrestrial life and unidentified flying objects. wanted to achieve. He was an exhilarating Catherine Well, I thought, this is the stuff that interests me; I wheel of ideas and speculations on the future of wouldn’t mind the job just to get my hands on these. humankind, the evolution of intelligence, the possi- I vii I viii I Foreword bilities of extraterrestrial life and the ultimate fate of knew the man who was directing and producing the the cosmos. film had integrity and courage, wit, imagination, and The next morning I was in my office next to intelligence. Stanley’s suite at 7:30 A.M., and the paintbrush fac- We knew he would take the cinema where it had tory where I had been working now seemed a mil- never gone before.And he did. He really did. lion light years away . and ago. This was Warp —Anthony Frewin Factor 9 and it would be for the next three years as October 26, 2000 we followed SK out into terra incognita. All of us on the crew knew that 2001 was going ❋❋❋❋❋ to be different.We all knew that this wasn’t going to be a Buck Rogers space opera nor a half-assed Anthony Frewin served as Stanley Kubrick’s produc- George Pal production. We all knew that this was tion assistant from 1965 to 1968 and from 1979 going to be so different it would be unique. We all through 1999, and he now represents the Kubrick knew that it wasn’t just another film. We all knew estate. He also served as associate producer on the that in the year 2001 audiences would still be going documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures to see the movie 2001. We knew all this because we (2001). PREFACE ADAPTING TO CINEMA: KUBRICK,THE VISUAL, AND THE VERBAL Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) began his career as a which Kubrick shifted the emphasis from the boy, photographer for Look magazine and went on to Danny, to mad Jack, the father, made crazier by the make films that were thoroughly grounded in the manic talents of Jack Nicholson, playing a blocked visual: 2001 was a triumph of visual design, for writer, Jack Torrance, reduced to being an insane typ- example, and so was Kubrick’s imaginary futurist ist. “All work and no play,” he wrote, “makes Jack a landscape for A Clockwork Orange. In Barry Lyndon he dull boy,” but this Jack was anything but dull. sought to reconstruct the 18th century and did so Ultimately, Stephen King was not satisfied with brilliantly, even if that film did not number among Kubrick’s treatment of The Shining and remade his his most commercially successful. British critic Ken- own television adaptation in 1997, but that version neth Tynan admired the film “enormously,”however, hardly eclipsed or replaced Kubrick’s transformation as he wrote in his journals, for the way Kubrick of the story into an unforgettable psychological study recreated “the 1760’s on their own terms, at their of Jack Torrance. After all, there have been instances own pace, inevitably more leisurely than ours.” where the adaptations have made improvements over Although the film was “breathtakingly beautiful,” it their sources, and, arguably, Kubrick “outshined” was “never merely pretty: the beauty is always func- King. Other Kubrick adaptations were more faithful tional, building up shot by shot a social panorama, a to their sources, but all were perfectly attuned to portrait of a way of life as complete as any that the Kubrick’s sensibilities. By what magic was this most cinema has ever achieved.” Contacted by Benjamin visual of filmmakers able to conjure some of the most Svetkey of Entertainment Weekly (March 19, 1999) remarkable adaptations ever realized on the screen? after Kubrick’s death, Steven Spielberg called Not that Kubrick lacked verbal skills. He apparently Kubrick “the greatest technical craftsman in our col- wrote almost all of the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket lective history.”As a filmmaker’s filmmaker, Kubrick himself, for example, even though Vietnam veterans was widely respected. Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford got screenwriting Of course, all of Kubrick’s films were eminently credits. watchable, but they were also outstanding adaptations Greg Jenkins wrote a book entitled Stanley of literary sources, often examples of transforming Kubrick and the Art of Adaptation (McFarland, 1997) satire—Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, and A Clockwork but, surprisingly,limited his scope to only three films Orange, in particular, but bizarre satiric touches can (Lolita, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket), at the also be found in other films, such as The Shining, in expense of such “classics” as Barry Lyndon, A Clock- I ix I x I Preface work Orange, and Paths of Glory, privileging Vladimir 15 years old when he was sent to prison, has matured Nabokov, Stephen King, and Gustav Hasford but and mellowed, and, passing the age of 21, begins to oddly ignoring William Makepeace Thackeray, think about having a family and settling down.