Farewll Stanley Essay, Research Paper
Stanley Kubric was one of the great filmmakers, died in his bed of a heart attack on Sunday
morning, March 7th 1999. When I first heard the report, I blinked twice
in disbelief. It just seemed WAY too soon to bid good-bye to Stanley.
Somehow, he was one of those people you get to think will always be
there. And it’s appealing to have known all these years that up there in
Hertsfordshire, he was working away on some new project or other.
SOMEone had been doing something new and special. After all, creative
perfectionists have become nearly an anathema as the centuries
increment. So much of what we are asked to read, to hear, to look at,
even to eat, seems the result of expedience, a matter of pure commerce.
Intelligence, even touches of genius (as he had ample times,) have
become quaint relics of an earlier age. Our loss, more than you may
think.
I was one of the few artists to have worked more than once with him. The
experience and memories are indelibly etched on my brain. The
face-to-face meetings for spotting music to compose for “A Clockwork
Orange” and “The Shining” couldn’t have lasted very much more than a
week or two each for me and my then partner and producer, Rachel (it
would be unfair to Rachel to characterize her impressions here, and so
these are only my observations, although she was present and worked with
me throughout the details that follow.) Since my none-too-portable
studio was located in New York, and Kubrick didn’t travel, the rest of
the collaboration took place via long phone calls and messages, express
packages of cassettes, tapes, film and video footage, and written memos
and notes. If faxing had been more available, and the Web had existed
back then, it’s certain we’d have used these media to communicate in
great detail, too!
Stanley Kubrick was not an easy man to work for. He was vastly
interesting, completely open about all his “secrets”, and had a dry
sense of humor. You were always stimulated working with him. But it was
seldom painless. I would truly have preferred to be another director or
friend. Read Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Lost Worlds of 2001″ for another
parallax on this observation — even if it’s essentially a congruent
conclusion. (Once Stanley told me that aside from A.C.C. I was the most
outspoken, candid person he had worked with. This merely means in my
case that I had a big mouth, and sometimes still say too much, perhaps
even here.) One works (damn, I keep using the present tense…) worked
with him for other good reasons.
All of this is completely in keeping with a demanding, even obsessive
person of great depth who is trying to find the optimum answer for the
smallest decision, however much time and effort it takes. I’m rather
“tarred by the same brush” in many ways, close (= brave) friends inform
me , and understand, even empathize with such an attitude, including
the times when it bites back. It’s just that my new media music medium
is more tractable to watch-making “godzinthuh” details, than the
large-scale collaborative and social interactivities of making feature
films. Who’s to complain if I go for a fifty-seventh retake except my
lazy side alter-ego (or possibly Heinz…?) Whereas Stanley got tagged
early on as “overly demanding” or “inhumane”. Having been the target
myself of redo after redo, I empathize with both sides of this coin.
You can understand why recent attempts since his death to paint a
revisionist (revisionary “historians” — right out of Orwell — feh!)
image of Kubrick as some kind of warm and fuzzy fond old uncle are both
ignorant and bizarre. The world has plenty of avuncular supportive
seniors already. What’s in short supply in the world is Stanley
Kubricks: artists who will spare no effort to do work of the highest
caliber. Yes, it’s impractical, and not a role most artists are able to
inhabit with comfort, unless you command the respect and financial
support system he needed.
It allowed him to “wing it”, the way most creative projects are
intuitively “steered”, kind of groping forward towards some kind of
inevitability. He’d often risk experiments, creative trial and error.
When Stanley liked what you were doing he supported you “all the way”;
you’d be hard pressed to find a more canny supporter. Many young
directors got messages and calls from him if he loved their newest film.
(I’ll bet Hitchcock, another real master, never did that!) Kubrick
assembled a support system/nest to avoid most usual external needs to
compromise. We may all envy him in this.
Stanley loved animals, and was often surrounded by assorted purring cats
and affable dogs. He was mostly quiet-spoken and easy to take in person,
a bit detached like the cool chess expert he also was, and I seldom
heard him angry. That left me to be the more volatile and voluble one in
our meetings and conversations. He would meet you and at once gather
closer and focus on you, your thoughts, experiences, and collected
tidbits of knowledge and expertise. It made one feel rather important,
and valuable to the project afoot, you know? But it did not seem to me
to be either planned or phony. Since he also held his own methods and
“secrets” as fair game to any impertinent question (my spe-ci-al-i-ty
, what transpired probably could be best described as a “mutual
brain-pick”. And why not? A chance to showoff and absorb, play with the
language and ideas, and feel intellectually stimulated. It’s a style of
personal interaction that’s quite familiar to me, especially in New York
City, which is where he was born and grew up, not so coincidentally…
It’s also said that he was a recluse. Not really. A true recluse does
not enjoy meeting new people, having hour-long phone calls with friends
and associates, and inviting many of the most able people in a given
field to come work with him. That allowed him to study them and their
Stanley Kubric..
Loved life. His ideas, to figure out what makes them tick, in those most agreeable,
flattering ways. I had the feeling Stanley enjoyed getting to know
people. The reasons he seldom traveled were due more to human foibles:
the risks of flying, or even driving much in a car, were unacceptable to
him. It’s an understandable matter of fear and statistics. With modern
communications technology, it gets easier to pull this off each day,
without becoming a hermit or misanthrope. Sad that with all the
precautions he took, he did not gain a notably long life, as one might
expect as fair trade for so modest a lifestyle.
Many others knew him and his wonderful wife (Christiane is a genuinely
gifted painter and artist,) daughters (Vivian’s a fine film maker and
talented musician,) and family much deeper than I did. Others worked
much longer right there with him, not “remote control” as we had to.
Still others, like his urbane and witty, ultra-sharp Brother-in-law,
Jan, were truly close, and knew him when no project was in progress,
when he was relaxing, in “off” mode. They will have to speak for
themselves. We shall miss him not as a mere celebrity (which many news
reports and broadcasts did, damn them), but as a gifted artist and
creator of some of the best films ever made. They will be watched,
studied, and remembered long after the rest of us are gone, too. Pace,
Stanley.