Newly Released Kubrick Documentaries on DVD

Here's a snip from a review of the reissue earlier this month of a box set of special editions of five Stanley Kubrick movies on DVD:

It’s been a long, typically Kubrickian wait, but finally a worthy DVD boxset gathers five of his greatest films in scrubbed-up Special Editions (also available separately). And boy, has it been worth it. Each movie comes with its own commentary and (bar Full Metal Jacket) a second disc of gripping, intimate docs and featurettes.

The biggest of the bunch is 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film in which Kubrick went to infinity and beyond – a year before man set foot on the moon. Hours of Making Of material and legacy assessment begin with lengthy new doc The Making Of A Myth, presented by James Cameron, no less. There’s vintage footage of Kubrick on set and past and present interviews with Arthur C Clarke. There’s also fresh chinwags with Kubrick’s producer, tech crew and, well, seemingly everyone else, from William Friedkin and Spider-Man FX guru John Dykstra to Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and doughy US critic Roger Ebert. Effects maestro Douglas Trumbull and Kubrick’s wife Christiane recall the cosmic scale of the director’s demands (“Stanley would walk around saying, ‘Please draw me an image that doesn’t remind me of anything in a colour that doesn’t exist’”). Trumbull spills yet more info on the commentary, although cardboard star Keir Dullea fills the dead air with empty babble.

No danger of that from Malcolm McDowell. The bulging-eyed Brit is a tremendous presence on A Clockwork Orange’s chat-track (he’s joined by doc-maker Nick Redman) and on the terrific 86-minute doc O Lucky Malcolm!, where he rattles off fantastic stories from his entire career and gets saluted by a who’s who of the Brit film industry. Two more smashing docs complete the disc: Still Tickin’ wades through the shit-storm surrounding the film’s release, withdrawal and return, while Great Bolshy Yarblockos! sees another galaxy of filmmakers (hello, Mr Spielberg!), collaborators and critics unload a massively informed, anecdote-rich Making Of.

Nine years after Kubrick’s mesmerising horrorshow of stylised swagger and surgical intellect became the most controversial film in Brit cinema history, the director returned with The Shining. Kubrick’s stay at the Overlook gets the same quality treatment across a superb commentary by steadicam inventor Garrett Brown and biographer John Baxter, plus two utterly comprehensive Making Of docs.

Each runs to less than 30 minutes, but not a second is wasted: the weight of first-hand accounts, insight and pure affection on show here is phenomenal. Vivian Kubrick’s precious mini-doc, shot hand-held during filming, survives from the previous DVD release and there’s a further bonus in an interview with Kubrick’s longtime composer Wendy Carlos.

It was another seven years before Full Metal Jacket’s double-barrelled assault on ‘Nam and a further 12 before Eyes Wide Shut proved that even the world’s biggest movie stars would bow to Kubrick’s might. Gangs Of New York screenwriter Jay Cocks and stars Vincent D’Onofrio, R Lee Ermey and Adam Baldwin lay on Jacket’s cut’n’paste commentary, sharply edited for minimum waffle.

The disc’s Making Of doc doesn’t disappoint either, with much marvel directed at Ermey’s “endless resource for obscenities”, the fact that East London doubled for Vietnam and how Kubrick coaxes a performance (says D’Onofrio: “‘Do it again, do it better.’ He’ll say it right to you”). Just a single-discer mind, but in a boxset packed with great stories, Ermey gets to tell what might be the best…

“We’re driving in Stanley’s wife’s brand new SUV,” explains Full Metal Jacket’s iconic drill sergeant. “We’re looking for a place to do a scene. Stanley’s driving and pointing and talking. And I’m sitting there watching us driving towards a 6ft deep ditch. Stanley, as he talked, drove off into this ditch and the car went over on its side. Stanley reached up, pushed the door open, climbed up... and he’s still talking. ‘We’ll put up the tent over here...’ Then he climbs down from the car and starts walking back to the camp. Can you believe this shit?”

Kubrick’s fin de siècle sign-off Eyes Wide Shut – another masterwerk, not about sex, but about capitalism – gets the smart discussion it deserves in the commentary by Sydney Pollack and historian Peter Loewenberg, while the second disc devotes itself to the method and madness of the legendary shoot (listed as The Guinness Book of World Records’ ‘Longest Constant Movie Shoot’). There’s also a look at Kubrick’s numerous unrealised dream projects in two more stellar docs.

I guess this is material you won't be seeing in our upcoming documentary look at Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon.

Meet Napoleon Podcast

For the benefit of the Napoleon curious I have posted this sixty-eight minute podcast of a conversation between two history buffs. The podcast introduces us to the genius of Napoleon, whose story captured the imagination of another genius, Stanley Kubrick, immediately after Kubrick had created the most imaginative film of the Sixties, 2001: A Space Odyssey. You can jump to the four minute mark to get to the meat of the discussion. Depending upon web traffic the file may take a while to completely upload before it is ready to play.

Documentary Cookbook Preface

In researching the Kubrick Napoleon project I came across this manifesto for a new movement in documentary film making. I believe in it strongly enough to try and stick to its precepts in making the Kubrick Napoleon documentary. The manifesto is in two parts. I have posted the prefatory material below.

Documentary Cookbook

*** DRAFT 02/20/02
The Center for New Documentary
Graduate School Of Journalism
University Of California, Berkeley
Introduction

The Center For New Documentary was established in the fall of 2000 to explore, test, and promote new ways of producing good quality long form television documentaries at very low cost. We opened our doors (one door, actually) in response to a rising chorus of frustration over the skyrocketing cost of mainstream documentary production, and an ever deepening exasperation with fundraising. We sensed that enormous talent and energy were being wasted in stalled production and grant writing. As a way to help break the logjam, we invited several filmmakers to experiment with very inexpensive production, and to tell us what they found.

We are not trying to make all documentaries cheaply. We do see the new little cameras as "ball point pens of television" but we have no interest in abandoning 50 years of hard won documentary craft. We are looking for those few stories and production methods that naturally lend themselves to the very low cost production with high-quality. Without compromising journalistic integrity or style, can some films be done for a fifth, a tenth, or even a hundredth of the prevailing cost? Can some of public television possibly approach the cost of public radio? Can we make a living at it? Will there be any pleasure in it? In an increasingly stagnant, market-constrained TV landscape, can low-cost production boast its own craft and virtuosity? Can it co-exist in tandem with high cost traditional (archive/witness/observational/narrated/series-driven) documentary? What strong, journalistically sound, adventuresome films for prime time television can be made by a grown up with a DVCam and Final Cut Pro? Is the whole idea self-destructive?

In practical terms, we invited three filmmakers, Peter Nicks, Lourdes Portillo, and Albert Maysles, to see what films could be well made for $100,000 per hour---about one-fifth the going rate for prime time documentaries. The obvious question is "Where do you get $100,000?" More on that later, but finding 100K is certainly easier than finding half a million, and we see the 100K target as only a first step in really drastic reductions for some films.

Our main concern is not with beginning filmmakers, students, or neighborhood filmmakers, but with journeyman documentary makers who already know the ropes, and are trying reach a large television audience. (The Center's work is not part of the regular graduate studies curriculum at the School of Journalism. Likewise, we are not skilled at shepherding photojournalists into television magazine work or breaking news; that is being well handled by Dick Halstead and others at the "Platypus" workshops, www.digitaljournalist.com. Likewise, international digital journalism is being well considered by the Pew International Journalism Program www.pewfellowships.org).

By now, virtually everyone working in documentary in this country has brushed up against DV production, and many producers have embraced it exclusively. But despite the emergence of a robust folk culture surrounding digital non-fiction, we still see little evidence of filmmakers aggressively searching out stories, styles, and techniques which naturally fit the new tools. Most of the work seems aimed and squeezing blood from the turnip, by digitally making the same sorts of traditional films with the same methods for less money.

Many cost saving devices are already in play. Most of it is not rocket science, but rather a cagey sort of "preventive production," as described below. It turns out that the technical advantages of DV are not as much of a cost lever as personnel time or rights costs. Story choice seems to make the greatest difference, followed by extreme schedule efficiency, and extreme technical discipline. Then comes a nearly dogmatic avoidance of archive footage, archive music, and travel. Everyone gets paid professional rates, and cost savings are achieved by adjusting methods and schedules, not day rates. We look for generally non-technical "evergreen" devices that will long outlast changes in hardware and software.

The Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and Gerbode Foundation stepped forward to fund our first round of work. The Rockefeller Foundation supports the development and distribution of a "Documentary Cookbook." Our first project, "The Wolf" by Peter Nicks, was completed for $100,000, and has been acquired by ABC Nightline for broadcast over two nights this spring, where it will probably be seen by 2,000,000 people. It's a good start.

Following is some of what we've learned. Please send your experiences, suggestions, lessons, tips, lists of what to do, etc, to dvtv@berkeley.edu. Please do not send proposals; that will come later.

The Problem

It had become clear by the early 1990s that most available documentary money, especially in pubic television, was going to a shrinking and increasingly risk-free pool of veteran producers making increasingly risk-free documentaries. These were more often than not earnest, predictable, and sometimes brilliant programs about dead people. For reasons involving public policy, the commercialization of public television, corporate consolidation in commercial television, partisan congressional politics, and the rising costs of production, new voices and new forms could emerge only with great difficulty. Even well established documentary makers could seldom explore new ground.

The average cost of a prime time documentary television hour had risen to around $500,000, of which a large portion generally had to come from the advertising budgets of ratings-hungry corporate underwriters. As the funding and underwriting stakes rose, idiosyncratic "one-off" programs and unpredictable forms like cinema verite all but vanished from public television, except for work within ITVS and POV. Long form was dead at the networks. HBO soldiered on, and together with MTV has become generally more accepting of idiosyncratic fare.

The cost of traditional production rose, due largely to 16mm film costs (before the wholesale transition to video), skyrocketing archive footage and music costs, travel costs, and long production and post-production schedules often made even longer by delay in executive sign off.

As independent producers, we knew even by the early �90s that a good one-hour prime time idea pretty well condemned us to raising half a million dollars, and that it would take five years of fundraising---work for which we had no talent, no training, and less than no interest. Small, experienced independent production houses and producers of on-offs were particularly hard hit, and the pipeline became increasingly clogged with unfunded and partially funded $500K projects. Henry Hampton took ten years to fully fund Eyes on the Prize. Cadillac Desert required 307 separate funding applications, and for Sing Faster: The Stagehands Ring Cycle, Jon Else prepared and submitted 137 separate grant applications over nine years. Who does not have a seed-funded, embryonic, or half-grown single program or mini-series festering on the shelf?

In a trend that has accelerated ever since the ratings success of The Civil War, public television especially embraced huge, market-friendly series projects while generally consigning single programs to the dustbin. We came to live in a world of exemplary but chillingly expensive series and mini-series like Africans in America, Frontline, The American Experience, and New York. But not every idea was a series idea, and not every one-off fit into an established strand.

We complained that Ken Burns got all the money (not noticing that his passions for serial American history correlate almost exactly with funders' desires). We became a culture of complaint, with journeyman filmmakers frustrated at moving beyond traditional forms, and young professionals frustrated at trying to launch new projects. The important role of television documentary in vigorous civil dialogue, in collective memory, education, entertainment, and public policy formation was not well served. Over the years, a great pool of young documentary talent became increasingly unhinged from prime time television.

The aggregate level of support for long form documentaries at the networks, PBS, cable, foundations, and endowments, has not increased significantly, nor is it likely to. As producers scramble to get anything made---anything---these funding imperatives erode the traditional fire wall between non-fiction television and the marketplace, and journalistic standards begin to erode. Despite rare exceptions like The Farmer's Wife and the heroic efforts at ITVS, POV, HBO, and a few foundations, idiosyncratic one-offs are off the table.

The new Juggernauts

Some production institutions have chosen to attack the problem of escalating cost with brute force, by designing ever-larger documentary projects as "product lines" intended for a market-driven television system. These typically include the films themselves, web sites, interactive enhancement, outreach programs, and curriculum materials, as well as companion books, videos, CD-ROMs, DVDs, and CDs sold via on-air advertising. Many public television venues are, in fact, now demanding that proposals come through the door not as films, but as "projects" with web sites, outreach, and educational materials. Even the cheapest documentary can now easily balloon into an expensive multi-layered project. Cable channels appear more flexible, and somewhat less demanding.

Many producers now find themselves in a surreal vortex where the longer a project takes to fund, the more it costs, and the more it costs, the longer it takes to fund, and the longer it takes, the more it costs� ad infinitum. The more films cost, the less risk the funders can stand; at $1,000,000 per hour, who can dare risk a ratings misfire? Some half-funded Juggernauts have been inching their way through the system for years.

Hamster Wheel

Then, there were those of us who scampered to make as many corporate videos, TV commercials, airline tech reports, depositions and wedding videos as we could, trying desperately to save a few hundred thousand dollars for MY BIG FILM. We should live so long.

A few good, cheap, fast films

We are interested in the exact opposite approach: drastically limiting cost in order to get more documentaries made more quickly. We want to break the queue by lowering the entry fee, not raising it. It is the television equivalent of watercolor instead of oil paint, mimeograph instead of linotype, garage bands instead of stadium rock, guerrillas instead of armies. The aim is to find methods and stories that are so naturally inexpensive that they can slip below the radar of financing. It worked in the �60s.

We were first inspired by public radio, seeing the refreshing power of programs like the early "This American Life," "Lost & Found Sound" and "Soundprint." There were glimmers of real possibility in late 90s with The Cruise, Salt Men Of Tibet, digital work by Ricky Leacock, experiments at Frontline, Nightline, and the National Film Board Of Canada, and the narrative productions of Jon Jost and the Dogma '95 group. And on the un-cool sidelines, a shadow world of very fast very cheap and sometimes very good corporate production had also taken hold.

An old truism in Hollywood is, "Cheap, fast, good� Pick any two." Clearly with the right methods, some small percentage of documentaries can be cheap, fast, and good. In the bargain, as we found with "The Wolf," there is the prospect of retaining true independence by avoiding early funding from any specific broadcaster, and thus being able to offer the finished documentary to all possible broadcasters.

Part 1 will follow in a future post.

Picture of the day. I could make a rude joke about the real reason Napoleon stuck his hand in his clothes but if the current governor of New York had been a French politician instead of a Dick Tracy square-jawed type he could have survived the discovery of his sessions with prostitutes from the Emperor's Club with mere public scorn and cries of hipocracy and not calls for his resignation and impeachment. Or maybe he should have been a US senator from Louisiana. Lagnappe. Click the link below to hear about the Napoleon who fascinated me as a tot in the 1960s.

March 7, 1799

A snip from Chapter 18 of the Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne which documents the siege of Jaffa during Napoleon's expedition to Egypt. Napoleon's army secured the city of Jaffa on 7 March, 1799 and after a two day deliberation over the fate of his Muslim prisoners he decided to slaughter over twenty five hundred troops who had previously sworn an oath never to take arms against the French after they were released by Napoleon after the battle of El Arish.

Arrival at Jaffa--The siege--Beauharnais and Croisier--Four thousand prisoners--Scarcity of provisions--Councils of war--Dreadful necessity--The massacre...

On arriving before Jaffa, where there were already some troops, the first person. I met was Adjutant-General Gresieux, with whom I was well acquainted. I wished him good-day, and offered him my hand. "Good God! What are you about?" said he, repulsing me with a very abrupt gesture; "you may have the plague. People do not touch each other here!" I mentioned the circumstance to Bonaparte, who said, "If he be afraid of the plague, he will die of it." Shortly after, at St. Jean d'Acre, he was attacked by that malady, and soon sank under it. On the 4th of March we commenced the siege of Jaffa. That paltry place, which, to round a sentence, was pompously styled the ancient Joppa, held out only to the 6th of March, when it was taken by storm, and given up to pillage. The massacre was horrible. General Bonaparte sent his aides de camp Beauharnais and Croisier to appease the fury of the soldiers as much as possible, and to report to him what was passing. They learned that a considerable part of the garrison had retired into some vast buildings, a sort of caravanserai, which formed a large enclosed court. Beauharnais and Croisier, who were distinguished by wearing the 'aide de camp' scarf on their arms, proceeded to that place. The Arnauts and Albanians, of whom these refugees were almost entirely composed, cried from the windows that they were willing to surrender upon an assurance that they would be exempted from the massacre to which the town was doomed; if not, they threatened to fire on the 'aides de camp', and to defend themselves to the last extremity. The two officers thought that they ought to accede to the proposition, notwithstanding the decree of death which had been pronounced against the whole garrison, in consequence of the town being token by storm. They brought them to our camp in two divisions, one consisting of about 2500 men, the other of about 1600.

I was walking with General Bonaparte, in front of his tent, when he beheld this mass of men approaching, and before he even saw his 'aides de camp' he said to me, in a tone of profound sorrow, "What do they wish me to do with these men? Have I food for them?--ships to convey them to Egypt or France? Why, in the devil's name, have they served me thus?" After their arrival, and the explanations which the General-in-Chief demanded and listened to with anger, Eugene and Croisier received the most severe reprimand for their conduct. But the deed was done. Four thousand men were there. It was necessary to decide upon their fate. The two aides de camp observed that they had found themselves alone in the midst of numerous enemies, and that he had directed them to restrain the carnage. "Yes, doubtless," replied the General-in-Chief, with great warmth, "as to women, children, and old men--all the peaceable inhabitants; but not with respect to armed soldiers. It was your duty to die rather than bring these unfortunate creatures to me. What do you want me to do with them?" These words were pronounced in the most angry tone. The prisoners were then ordered to sit down, and were placed, without any order, in front of the tents, their hands tied behind their backs. A sombre determination was depicted on their countenances. We gave them a little biscuit and bread, squeezed out of the already scanty supply for the army.

On the first day of their arrival a council of war was held in the tent of the General-in-Chief, to determine what course should be pursued with respect to them the council deliberated a long time without coming to any decision. On the evening of the following day the daily reports of the generals of division came in. They spoke of nothing but the insufficiency of the rations, the complaints of the soldiers--of their murmurs and discontent at seeing their bread given to enemies who had been withdrawn from their vengeance, inasmuch as a decree of death; in conformity with the laws of war, had been passed on Jaffa. All these reports were alarming, and especially that of General Bon, in which no reserve was made. He spoke of nothing less than the fear of a revolt, which would be justified by the serious nature of the case. The council assembled again. All the generals of division were summoned to attend, and for several hours together they discussed, under separate questions, what measures might be adopted, with the most sincere desire to discover and execute one which would save the lives of these unfortunate prisoners. (1.) Should they be sent into Egypt? Could it be done? To do so; it would be necessary to send with them a numerous escort, which would too much weaken our little army in the enemy's country. How, besides, could they and the escort be supported till they reached Cairo, having no provisions to give them on setting out, and their route being through a hostile territory, which we had exhausted, which presented no fresh resources, and through which we, perhaps, might have to return. (2.) Should they be embarked? Where were the ships?--Where could they be found? All our telescopes, directed over the sea could not descry a single friendly sail Bonaparte, I affirm, would have regarded such an event as a real favour of fortune. It was, and--I am glad to have to say it, this sole idea, this sole hope, which made him brave, for three days, the murmurs of his army. But in vain was help looked for seaward. It did not come. (3.) Should the prisoners be set at liberty? They world then instantly proceed to St. Jean d'Acre to reinforce the pasha, or else, throwing themselves into the mountains of Nablous, would greatly annoy our rear and right-flank, and deal out death to us, as a recompense for the life we had given them. There could be no doubt of this. What is a Christian dog to a Turk? It would even have been a religious and meritorious act in the eye of the Prophet. (4.) Could they be incorporated, disarmed, with our soldiers in the ranks? Here again the question of food presented itself in all its force. Next came to be considered the danger of having such comrades while marching through an enemy's country. What might happen in the event of a battle before St. Jean d'Acre? Could we even tell what might occur during the march? And, finally, what must be done with them when under the ramparts of that town, if we should be able to take them there? The same embarrassments with respect to the questions of provisions and security would then recur with increased force. The third day arrived without its being possible, anxiously as it was desired, to come to any conclusion favourable to the preservation of these unfortunate men. The murmurs in the camp grew louder the evil went on increasing--remedy appeared impossible--the danger was real and imminent. The order for shooting the prisoners was given and executed on the 10th of March. We did not, as has been stated, separate the Egyptians from the other prisoners. There were no Egyptians. Many of the unfortunate creatures composing the smaller division, which was fired on close to the seacoast, at some distance from the other column, succeeded in swimming to some reefs of rocks out of the reach of musket-shot. The soldiers rested their muskets on the end, and, to induce the prisoners to return, employed the Egyptian signs of reconciliation in use in the country. They, came back; but as they advanced they were killed, and disappeared among the waves.

I confine myself to these details of this act of dreadful necessity, of which I was an eye-witness. Others, who, like myself, saw it, have fortunately spared me the recital of the sanguinary result. This atrocious scene, when I think of it, still makes me shudder, as it did on the day I beheld it; and I would wish it were possible for me to forget it, rather than be compelled to describe it. All the horrors imagination can conceive, relative to that day of blood, would fall short of the reality. I have related the truth, the whole truth. I was present at all the discussions, all the conferences, all the deliberations. I had not, as may be supposed, a deliberative voice; but I am bound to declare that the situation of the army, the scarcity of food, our small numerical strength, in the midst of a country where every individual was an enemy, would have induced me to vote in the affirmative of the proposition which was carried into effect, if I had a vote to give. It was necessary to be on the spot in order to understand the horrible necessity which existed.

War, unfortunately, presents too many occasions on which a law, immutable in all ages, and common to all nations, requires that private interests should be sacrificed to a great general interest, and that even humanity should be forgotten. It is for posterity to judge whether this terrible situation was that in which Bonaparte was placed. For my own part, I have a perfect conviction that he could not do otherwise than yield to the dire necessity of the case. It was the advice of the council, whose opinion was unanimous in favour of the execution, that governed him, Indeed I ought in truth to say, that he yielded only in the last extremity, and was one of those, perhaps, who beheld the massacre with the deepest pain. After the siege of Jaffe the plague began to exhibit itself with a little more virulence. We lost between seven and eight hundred, men by the contagion during the campaign of Syria'

A muslim account of the massacre describes Napoleon's men using their bayonets to kill the prisoners when they ran out of ammunition and looting and pillaging the city until the point of exhaustion two days later.

Picture of the day. Napoleon lost more men to disease than to the enemy during his siege of Jaffa. The shame and disgrace the Bush fils White House let the wounded veterans of his war suffer at the Walter Read medical center will be remembered long after his swan song this weekend to the Washington establishment, which in their clubby way was acknowledged with a standing ovation from the partisan crowd. Stephen Colbert gave Bush his proper send-off in 2006.

Production Diary - Day Fifteen

This is from an email I just sent to Thomas Bender. He is back on board and is asking for time to wrap up his current gig with the Howcast website before signing on to the Kubrick Napoleon documentary.

Kubrick's work as a magazine photographer in New York has great potential for story ideas. He was like this prodigy at sixteen who was working for one of the biggest photo journals of the time. He was living in the boom times after the end of World War II, when big cars and big furniture with stereos and television built-in were spreading into newly developed suburbs. Kubrick lives this bohemian life, playing chess for spending money so that he could buy the latest camera gear. He was a real gear head when it came to cameras and would never lose that as he grew older. There's a lot of fodder there. It was actually one of his photo assignments that gave birth to his first picture, a short subject looking at boxing and a day in the life of a boxer.

We've been exploring Kubrick's early life on this blog before he ever dreamed of making a sweeping epic portraying Napoleon's life. It sometime feels like we are spending more time exploring Kubrick's youth than Kubrick did studying Napoleon. Kubrick hired Felix Markham to pick the Oxford don's brain on Napoleon and his world. They met one morning during the in-between time after the release of 2001 and before "A Clockwork Orange." Kubrick had the conversation taped and I found a transcript of that interview in the Kubrick archive. I took the tube to Elephant and Castle and found myself in a maze of subways built under the busy street above. One tunnel led directly from the tube stop to the University of Arts. I did not find it until after I followed another tunnel that took me the long way.

Kubrick spoke to Markham about a wide range of subjects, from the political economy of post revolutionary France to Napoleon's love affairs. He actually started by quizing Markham about a cognate for Napoleon's Corsican accent in English. Markham suggested that Napoleon would sound like a highlander from Scotland. Later, Kubrick confessed that he was sympathetic to Napoleon's form of "enlightened despotism." Markham understood Napoleon to have created his own aristocracy, one that was only preserved by Napoleon's military grip on the leading houses of Europe. Kubrick supported Napoleon's actions in clamping down on the press during the early days of his rule: France was still unstable and agitation from the media would have promoted continued chaos. Surprisingly, Kubrick spent little time discussing the battles other than complimenting Markham on the clarity of the word pictures he used to describe Napoleon's key battles in his biography of the man. Kubrick understood that in war victory was a matter of making fewer mistakes than your opponent.

What Kubrick admired how as an emperor Napoleon made battle so efficient he turned war into a "going concern" for France. Markham reminded Kubrick that in order to keep making a profit he had to keep winning all his battles. Ultimately, it was chess is what helped Kubrick nail down Napoleon's personality. To Kubrick, Napoleon's achilles heel was his inability to play the "in-between" moves of battle. "Un-swish-en-sug" is how Kubrick spelled it out for the benefit of the transcription. It is a chess term for moves played in the limbo between attack and defense, when there is nothing to attack or defend. Kubrick put it this way: "The situation between attacking and retreating [Napoleon] finds unbearable. He will take it either way. Whatever circumstance dictated, he can accept it and function well. But he can't function in that in-between spot. He doesn't like it. It makes him anxious." Markham added that the ruling families of Europe had the conventional aristocracy behind them. Napoleon only had the prestige of battlefield victories over the armies of these families; he did not share in their bloodline. It was only in blue blood spilt did Napoleon have any claim on legitimacy. Napoleon as the ultimate class warrior.

There is much more material in the Markham transcripts from the Kubrick archive. Too much for one post, but this one is a real nugget of gold.

Picture of the day. Reasons to be cheerful, part three. The New York Times published an article suggesting John McCain had an affair in the Nineties. Now the conservatives who were shunning him are coming to his side. The New York Times is making the reporters available on the InterWebs to prop up the legitimacy of the story. This is an in-between time for McCain because he had no one to attack yet on the Democratic side in the election. Hilary Clinton hinted at the prospect of losing the nomination in a Texas debate last night on CNN. Barack Obama is closing the gap down to single digits in Ohio and is even in Texas with Clinton. Obama Edwards anyone? Here's a shout out to John Malkovich, inventor of the Jell-o diet and a festival of style.

Stanley Kubrick's Achilles Heel

A lot of people ask what inspired me to make this documentary. It was a visit to this traveling exhibition from the Stanley Kubrick Archives on display in the Zurich in 2007. The following snip from a New York Times review of the exhibition correctly sums up the essence of the exhibition.

"For those intrigued by his work habits -- he made only eight films after 1962 -- the show answers an enduring question: What took him so long? Kubrick did his homework with a zeal that would make the most conscientious planner look rash. His reputation as a stickler for detail is well known. But the sheer mass of primary materials he used is staggering. At times the prep work seemed an end in itself...[T]he most interesting section concerns a film he never made, 'Napoleon.' In the course of a three-decade quest to film a biography, Kubrick pored through more than 18,000 documents and books about Napoleon's life. He amassed a card file that recorded every significant event in the life of Napoleon, day by day. Kubrick's ambitions were summed up in a letter he sent to a studio in 1971: ''It's impossible to tell you what I'm going to do, except to say I expect to make the best movie ever made.'' No amount of labor was able to save the project, however. MGM pulled the plug because of ever-increasing costs. (Rubbing salt into the wound, a polite letter from Audrey Hepburn turns down his offer of a part.) 'Stanley was devastated,' said Jan Harlan, his executive producer. 'He was very depressed for a while.'"

Apparently Brother Kubrick did not know when to stop. No doubt a cautionary tale can be drawn from this material. Here is a snip from a think piece on the hit play "August: Osage County" currently running on Broadway.

Finally, at least for this go-round, I like what this play represents: a life-long association of a writer with a group of actors and a theater. This is why Shakespeare wrote so much, he had a whole gang of actors waiting to do his work. Go down the list — the writers who wrote a lot of wonderful plays were always associated with a community of actors they could write for: Shepard, Chekhov, Brian Friel, Alan Ackbourne, David Mamet, Lanford Wilson, Caryl Churchill, Richard Foreman, Wendy Wasserstein.

After reading this entry by playwright, librettist and screenwriter Marsha Norman from a New York Times blog, she may have hit on the another reason why Kubrick made so few pictures as a mature artist. He did immerse himself in a subject rather than surround himself with a society of artists eager to perform. Remember, Kubrick started out as a visual storyteller, using his camera to capture images that told a tale, so there is nothing wrong to playing to your strength. Nevertheless, perhaps there is in the cinema more virtue in having your words come alive during the early stages. Perhaps the study of the drama of your story is preferable to piling a mountain of books on your table and creating a visually rich universe around your words.

Production Diary - Day Ten

The scope of the production may be to big for the director. Thomas Bender has only made one feature about a small Midwestern American town, Hoopeston, Illinois. He self financed the documentary. Made it on a shoestring. He still hasn't finished it. A distributor wants to release the movie and is eager to release the Kubrick Napoleon documentary as well. He resisted comments from me and the distributor to make "Hoopeston" longer (not shorter) and tweaks to make the story stronger for a long time. But to his credit he has agreed to give the picture another pass through the edit machine. He has a day job making digital shorts but now is facing the daunting task of making a documentary on an unrealized passion project of one of the most revered visionary filmmaker. And facing a budget exponentially bigger than his first film. I think his brain may begin to fry given the locations contemplated for the story: Paris, London, Los Angeles, Kansas City, New York. The logistical complexity of this shoot may be overwhelming him. Yet it shouldn't. I keep telling him that La Boca Productions will handle all the mundane business details like booking travel and ensuring the production, but he wants to be involved in those details as well. The tipping point came when he insisted that he could not sign a contract to make the Kubrick Napoleon documentary until he completed a production breakdown. Now typically, the production breakdown is completed once the script is finished. He is in the middle of research and wants to start a production board before he has finished writing the script. I don't want him to burn out but I don't want to derail him or dampen his enthusiasm for the picture. I am thinking about scaling back the production to make it less ambitious in terms of locations and shooting days. Or else I might adopt a "scared straight" approach and throw him into the deep end of this production without the life jacket of La Boca Productions to cling to. Stay tuned.

Picture of the day. Yesterday was St. Valentine's Day and another Illinois city was cleaning up a bloody massacre. It was a shooting rampage that rivaled the gangland shooting in Chicago on that very day early in the century just past. When the mysteries of the human heart call out for explanation folks turn to art. Here is a snip from the website of Canada's Virtual Museum: "The first years of love between Josephine Beauharnais and France's most powerful general can scarcely be eclipsed in their passion, yet the political reality of Napoleon's position assured a love equally tumultuous. His desire for an heir led to their divorce, yet at the ceremony each read to the other a statement of lasting devotion, as a testament to their enduring love."

Production Diary - Day Eight

I have to start getting the word out about this Kubrick Napoloen documentary I am financing. I like problems that tickle my brain but I find publicity and advertising to be tedious to consider. I know that making a movie is literally launching a new business each and every time and entering a crowded marketplace where I will be competing with the Fortune 500 as well as Michael Moore. My primary impulse in backing my pictures lies with story. I will be living intimately with the story for years so if it does not excite me on a gut level I will certainly lose interest in the project. So the trick is to sell others the same way I sell myself; I have to launch a movement of strong supporters for the story. I have tried to convince the director to take the same approach in his community and raise money for a location production kit he can use for this shoot. He is resisting becoming what in his mind would be either a shill or a charity case. Hopefully he will not denigrate charity for much longer. He's still young and has plenty of time to learn. Which gets me to the point of this entry today. I hope to reverse engineer publicity for the Kubrick Napoleon documentary. I will have to brainstorm some ideas on how do it but I already have an idea that will use Google Adwords. I will keep you posted.

Picture of the day. Marilyn and Ella, a musical based on racial unity set during the Jim Crow era of the United States of 1955, opens this weekend in Stratford. It is selling out quickly. Kubrick put brown faces in his first three mid-century features, Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss, and The Killing. No brown people in the French trenches of Paths of Glory, but he has Laurence Olivier kill Woody Strode in Spartacus, put James Earl Jones on board the cold war bomber in Dr. Strangelove. Then Kubrick travels to the future and to 18th Century Europe where they keep the brown faces out of sight. It isn't until Kubrick has Jack Nicholson kill Scatman Crothers at the Overlook Hotel in the Shining do the brown faces reappear.

Creative Clashes

The creative mind may seem inscrutable to you and me, but conflict seems to be a constant theme. Artists love to fight. Who has seen this clip of his handling of a heckler at a recent movie awards dinner and does not think that the director of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" was spoiling for a punch up? And what about Natalie Cole scolding the Grammy voters for raining awards down on Amy Winehouse instead of shunning the party girl for her recent downward spiral into drugs and dissolution? So be prepared to have a screaming match at some point in the production and don't let it slow you down in making the movie. On the Kubrick Napoleon documentary there may be more philosophical differences than creative. This is because the director Thomas Bender has still not finished his first documentary on the Witch School of the Sweet Corn Capital of the World, Hoopeston, Illinois and is trying to manage upwards and sideways on this new La Boca picture. And it will be up to me to contain any instability. It may sound like a losing game but I don't mind a good fight. It helps to cleanse the palate.

Picture of the day. Napoleon at the scene of one of his greatest triumphs, the battle of Austerlitz. Kubrick paid close attention in his script to the constant conflict between Napoleon and Alexander, the Russian emperor. Although Alexander suffered a decisive defeat at Austerlitz, Napoleon was to suffer a humiliating retreat from the Russian capital of St. Petersberg during Napoleon's expansionist period.