|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
| Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26, 1928 in the Bronx, New York City. By the age of thirteen he had developed passions for jazz drumming, chess, and photography. He sold his photos to Look magazine while he was a student at William Taft High School. At seventeen he began working at Look magazine; he stayed there for several years. In 1951 Stanley made his first film. It was a sixteen minute documentary about Walter Cartier, a boxer. He directed, edited, and filmed it all by himself. "Day of the Fight" was played at the Paramount Theatre in New York. Flying Padre, Stanley's second film was a nine minute film about a priest named Father Fred Stadtmueller he flew around his 400 mile New Mexico parish in a Piper Cub. In 1953 he was offered the chance to make a documentary by the Atlantic and Gulf Coast District of the Seafarers International Union. The film was called The Seafarers, it was his first film in color. In 1953 Kubrick raised enough money from his relatives to make his first feature length film called Fear and Desire, it cost him 13,000. Two year later in 1955 he had raised 40,000 and he shot his second feature film Killers Kiss. In 1956 he got to make his first studio film. Kubrick together with producer James B. Harris and with a budget of 320,000 and a cast of Hollywood character actors he made The Killing. In '57 teamed up with Jim Thompson and Calder Willingham. Together they wrote an adaptation of Humphrey Cobb's novel Paths of Glory. Every studio turned the project down until Kirk Douglas agreed to star. In 1959 Kubrick meet up with Kirk Douglas again. Kirk was producing Spartacus. The original director Anthony Mann was fired after two weeks of production; Douglas offered Kubrick the job. The film was his first hit. In 1961 Kubrick made Lolita based on Vladimir Nabokov's novel. The film was shot entirely in England which is where Kubrick made the rest of his films. Dr. Strangelove was his next film; it was adapted from the novel Red Alert. Kubricks next two films were science fiction related. 2001: A Space Odyssey , considered to be one of the greatest science fiction films ever made was the first. Kubrick teamed up with science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke to develop the story. The film won him his only Oscar for designing and directing the films special effects. He wanted to make a film about Napoleon next, but because of buget limits he was not able too. In 1971 he adapted a novel by Anthony Burgess to make the film A Clockwork Orange It was initially rated X in the United States, but footage was cut to give it an R. The film recieved three Oscar nominations for Kubrick as writer, director, and producer. Kubrick completely switched modes with his next film Barry Lyndon which was based in the 18th century. The 11 million dollar production recieved 7 Oscar nominations. Five years later in 1980 Kubrick directed his first horror film. The Shining adapted from the Stephen King novel. The film did okay financially, but was not accepted by critics, recieving no nominations for awards. It was another 7 years before Kubrick released his next film, Full Metal Jacket. Despite arriving on the heels of the blockbuster hit Platoon, the film was a box office success and critical favorite but only one received Oscar nomination for writing. At this time Kubrick gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine where he refuted many of the persistent rumors of his eccentric behavior. Kubrick became involved in supervising the transfers of some of his films for the home video market and also creating a new negative of Dr. Strangelove from the highest quality prints available after it was discovered the original negative was lost. In May of 1990 Kubrick joined with directors Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Francis Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack, and George Lucas in forming the Film Foundation, an organization meant to promote the restoration and preservation of films. Kubrick developed another science-fiction project called AI (Artificial Intelligence), but he determined that special effects technology could not handle the requirements of the story, so the project was put on hold. In April of 1993, Variety announced Kubrick's next film would be an adaptation of Louis Begley's first novel Wartime Lies, about a Jewish boy and his aunt trying to survive in Nazi occupied Poland in WWII by passing as Aryan. Joseph Mazzello, from Jurassic Park, was set to play the boy and rumors had Kubrick looking to Julia Roberts, Uma Thurman, or Jodie Foster to play the aunt. The 100 day shoot was to begin that summer for a Christmas 1994 release. Kubrick had sent location scouts to Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia and he was to base the production out of Bratislava, Slovakia. Then, in November of 1993, the L.A. Times reported: "Stanley Kubrick has decided to produce and direct AI, an epic science-fiction story named for the abbreviation for artificial intelligence. Kubrick put the Warner Bros. project aside in 1991 because he felt that the visuals were beyond what special effects could then accomplish. After reportedly being impressed with the technology in Jurassic Park, Kubrick has given the film the go-ahead, with production planned next year. The story is set in a future when intelligent robots serve in many capacities, the greenhouse effect has melted the ice caps and many great cities, including New York, are drowned." Around the same time The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported that the film is a big budget, effect heavy spectacular. The project is shrouded in secrecy and Warner Bros. will say only that the film is set in a post - greenhouse effect world in which many daily tasks are performed by robots. To do AI, Kubrick set aside plans to direct Aryan Papers, a nazi-era story based on the novel Wartime Lies by Louis Begley. In mid-December of 1995, Warner Bros. released the news that Kubrick was still in pre-production for the very complicated AI, but would first make a film called Eyes Wide Shut starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. The film began shooting in late 1996 and finished shooting in early 1998. On Saturday March 8th, 1997, the Director's Guild of America awarded Stanley Kubrick its highest honor,the D.W. Griffith Award. The 68 year old Kubrick did not attend but did send an acceptance speech on videotape. Jack Nicholson accepted the award for Kubrick and said: "My first impulse was to quote Bum Phillips when he said of Earl Campbell the running back that he was in a class all of his own, and if he wasn't, it don't take long to call the roll." In September of 1997, Kubrick was also awarded the Golden Lion Award at the 54th Venice International Film Festival. In the first week of March 1999, Kubrick arranged a special screening of Eyes Wide Shut for two Warner Brothers studio heads and the film's two stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. By all accounts reaction was very favorable and Kubrick was very excited about the film. One report claims he said he thought it was his best film. On March 7th, 1999, Stanley Kubrick died in his sleep of a heart attack. He was 70 years old. |
|
|