The Kubrick Mystique

Is it any wonder that Stanley Kubrick, who died Sunday at his home outside London, is considered the great cult director of his generation? Quirky, reclusive and fiercely idiosyncratic, he made films that were as breathtakingly original as any mad scientist’s laboratory invention.

Even if you count “Eyes Wide Shut,” which is due in July, Kubrick only made six movies in the last 35 years. But they were always an event. For kids in the flower-power ‘60s, “2001: A Space Odyssey” was as much a counter-culture touchstone as the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” album. For children of the fallout-shelter ‘50s, “Dr. Strangelove” was as influential as John Glenn’s historic ride into space.

Like Joe DiMaggio, who was Kubrick’s boyhood idol growing up in the Bronx and who died within a day of the director, Kubrick had a fierce sense of privacy that gave him built-in mystique. He was as imperious as Hitchcock, as aloof and mysterious as Garbo. When he drove, he wore a safety helmet. He refused to fly after a near-fatal crash landing at an airport in New Jersey. In later years, he stayed up most of the night and slept during the day.

It was impossible to separate Kubrick’s life from his art; each of his films reflected his darkly personal vision. For fans of Kubrick, there was no one quite like him.

Los Angeles writer Harlan Ellison recalled seeing “Paths of Glory,” Kubrick’s antiwar film in 1958 when he was a soldier stationed in Kentucky. When the lights came back up after the screening, Ellison noticed that a colonel seated in front of him was in tears. The officer ripped the eagle from his uniform lapel and threw it on the ground.

“That is the effect that Kubrick’s films have. ‘Paths of Glory,’ which I think is his greatest film, is probably the finest antiwar movie ever made,” Ellison said. “Most directors are lemmings. . . . Kubrick was a courageous man. Apart from his brilliance and expertise, he had a gift of vision.”

Everyone who worked with Kubrick it seemed had a favorite story about him. When Kubrick was completing “Barry Lyndon,” in the mid-’70s, the director suddenly decided he was unhappy with the color lab that had been handling the color separation work on the film. Kubrick found a lab on the other side of London that he wanted to handle the job instead.

However, transporting the film across town was no simple procedure, not for an artist with Kubrick’s legendary obsession with planning and detail. What if something happened to the film on the way over? The film was safely stashed away in his Mercedes, but what if some nut accidentally crashed into his car?

“Stanley was the kind of guy who worried about things like that,” recalls Dick Lederer, head of Warner Bros. film advertising and publicity at the time. “He decided that he needed an impregnable vehicle, so he rented two weapons carriers. He put one in front of his car and one behind it, and the entourage drove very slowly across London, with Stanley in his Mercedes, hanging onto the film canisters.

“He didn’t think it was a crazy idea at all. He thought it was a very sensible thing to do.”

In an era where filmmakers bounce from one studio to the next, Kubrick had a unique, nearly 30-year relationship at Warner Bros., where he was treated like a rajah. With the exception of studio chief Terry Semel, no one read his scripts, much less saw his dailies or visited his sets.

By seizing control of everything from publicity to distribution, Kubrick became a hero to an entire generation of ‘70s filmmakers.

“Long before John Cassavetes or the auteur rebels of the ‘70s came along, Kubrick was there, completely self-taught, totally uncompromising, not allowing any interference from the studios,” says Peter Biskind, author of “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” a history of ‘70s era Hollywood.

“For people like Warren Beatty, Stanley was a real role model--Warren went to school at Stanley’s feet. He was always asking the Warner guys, ‘How did Stanley do this? How did Stanley do that?’ ”

Kubrick oversaw everything from the ad campaign--he designed the classic “Clockwork Orange” ad himself--to which theaters his film would play in.

Actor Vincent D’Onofrio remembers a van full of studio types appeared one day when Kubrick was filming “Full Metal Jacket.”

“Stanley didn’t just stop shooting--he didn’t even let them get out of the van,” D’Onofrio recalls. “Until they left, no one went back to work. To me, as a young actor, it was impressive.”

Lederer says he got to know Kubrick when the director, at the time of “Clockwork Orange,” decided that to prevent anyone from reading his telexes to the studio, it was imperative to send messages about the film in code. Lederer, who had been a cryptogram-analyst during World War II, sent Kubrick a telex in code, received one in return and was off to the races.

“When Stanley screened ‘Clockwork’ for us in London, he sent a car for me, ostensibly so we could plot out the marketing campaign,” Lederer recalls. “But all he really wanted to talk about was how we broke the German codes in the war.”

A Lengthy Debate Over $40,000

Sony Pictures Chairman John Calley, who first met Kubrick in the late 1950s, brought him to Warners in 1971 to make “A Clockwork Orange.” Calley recalls having a two-week debate with Kubrick over the budget. Calley wanted the movie made for $1.18 million. Kubrick held out for $1.22 million. Guess who won?

“It didn’t matter--you got more bang for your buck with Stanley than anyone,” Calley says. “That was his deal, the way he lived his life. As a director, he didn’t believe in collaborating any more than if he were the author of a novel or the composer of a symphony. He insisted on making movies on his own terms.”

His movies--including “Eyes Wide Shut’--often took years to make. If Kubrick was shooting outside and the light wasn’t right, or the clouds were too high, filming was off. “Sometimes we’d have 300 extras waiting for us,” D’Onofrio recalls. “But when Stanley drove up in his Mercedes, if his hair was all ruffled, you could tell by his posture we weren’t going to film that day. We’d go into his trailer and watch videos of football games people had sent to him.”

Kubrick’s rambling home in St. Alban’s seemed in many ways to reflect his unique sensibility. An old manor on a 172-acre estate north of London, it had rooms devoted to different family pursuits: an editing area for Kubrick; a computer room and an art area for his wife, Christiane, who also built Punch and Judy theaters, putting on shows for their grandchildren. When Calley visited, he remembers marveling at a cavernous kitchen “three times bigger than any kitchen I’d ever seen.”

Blessed with a restless intellect, Kubrick was always fascinated with ideas and inventions. He was using an IBM 360 mainframe computer to plan his production schedules years before anyone else had heard of it. Having began his career as a photographer, he designed and ground his own camera lenses.

Besides film, his passions included chess, sports and cryptography. Before the days of satellite hookups, Joe Hyams, Kubrick’s longtime publicity contact at Warners, would send the director tapes of big football games and World Series telecasts. “No one was allowed to talk about the outcome until Stanley had seen the game,” Hyams recalls.

As a director, Kubrick had little patience for Method acting. “He never talked to us about our performance,” D’Onofrio remembers. “He was always focused on the film as a whole. The only note he ever gave me was when he wanted me to do something big, he said, ‘Make it big, Lon Chaney big.’ ”

To know Kubrick, his friends say, was to be dazzled by his artistic intellect. “He was a man apart,” Calley says. “But he had a happiness within himself that I’ve rarely seen achieved by anyone else. He didn’t live for outside approval. He was simply devoted to having an exciting creative life.”

For those who knew Kubrick only through his work, the feelings were equally strong. After his death, the Kubrick newsgroup on the Internet buzzed with heartfelt tributes to their hero. Said one Web user: “Kubrick’s movies put me in a state of awe. He was a rare artist in a medium devoted to empty entertainment.” And another wrote: “Thanks, Mr. Kubrick, for changing the world.”

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Freelance writer Saul Rubin contributed to this story.

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“As a director, he didn’t believe in collaborating any more than if he were the author of a novel or the composer of a symphony.”

John Calley

studio executive

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“Long before John Cassavetes or the auteur rebels of the ‘70s came along, Kubrick was there . . . not allowing any interference from the studios.”

Peter Biskind

writer

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“He never talked to us about our performance. He was always focused on the film as a whole.”

Vincent D’Onofrio

actor