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.

Production Diary - Day Twelve

Legal limbo. The Kubrick Napoleon documentary is paused as the director negotiates his contract. Thomas Bender made his first documentary on his own so he had no need to negotiate terms with himself, unless he is hiding some deep psychological problem. The contours of La Boca Productions original offer to the director to work on the project have shifted. Originally, we offered him a deal where La Boca would supply the entire budget, a location camera kit and the use of our business operations to produce the Kubrick Napoleon documentary. The thinking behind that deal was that it would free up the director to focus on the creating the picture and remove the distractions of insurance brokers, lawyers and accountants from the process. But moving from calling all the shots on his first documentary to having to deal with an established production company has proved to be a challenge for Thomas. So La Boca presented the director with another alternative. For a reduced budget figure, the director would produce the Kubrick Napoleon documentary on his own, without the camera kit or support from La Boca Productions. This alternative would provide the director with maximum flexibility but he would in essence become his own indie producer and take on the business burdens directly. La Boca would benefit by not going into the equipment business by purchasing the camera kit and by saving money on the budget at the outset. But while the director was considering the two alternatives, internally at La Boca, fear started to creep in. Thomas Bender had only made one other documentary in a small town in rural Illinois and La Boca was contemplating spanning the globe for the Kubrick Napoleon documentary. The feeling inside La Boca was that this project may prove to be too complex for a newbie film maker and it was still not too late to consider partnering with a more experienced documentarian to make the film. In a compromise, La Boca offered the director a third alternative: a scaled back production of the Kubrick Napoleon documentary reduced to 6 weeks and two locations, Paris and New York, and a budget closer to the budget of the director's "Hoopeston" project. La Boca believes in supporting emerging talent, but it does have to protect itself from the risk and expense of the director abandoning the project part way during production. So now we wait as the director considers his options.

Picture of the day. After joining the staff of Look magazine as a photographer, Kubrick eventually graduated from Taft High School in the boogie down Bronx. He watched movies at the Museum of Modern Art and took some classes at Columbia University while working the New York City chess circuit to make spending money. (Imagine if the Matt Damon movie "Rounders" was set in the late 1940s in the seedy world of chess clubs and outdoor park chess boards.) It took him several years working at Look magazine until he decided to make his first film. He was inspired by the subject of one of his photo assignments for Look, the journeyman boxer Walter Cartier, and his twin brother Vincent. He shot the sixteen minute film, Day of the Fight, and had it picked up by RKO for distribution. The short subject is posted in two parts on You Tube. Here are both parts.

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."

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.

Production Diary - Day One

Production diary. Day one. The budget arrives. I look it over and find that we have to start spending money again on a new film. The Interesting Motion Picture Company is launched. Shooting begins 21 February in the birthplace of the cinema. Alison Castle is going to take us through the bulk of Stanley Kubrick’s archive of material for his aborted Napoleon project. Kubrick kept very detailed notes over every aspect of pre production, including a floor to ceiling chart with a precise minute-by-minute breakdown of every shot in the picture. Brother Kubrick even hired Oxford don Felix Markham and staff to help him catalogue the movements of Napoleon and the fifty most significant people in his life. The documentary will not only look at Kubrick's obsession with Napoleon during the filmmaker's creative peak, but will also look at the cult of Kubrick that includes billionaires and barbers alike. I will be taking a camera along and through the magic of digital cinema I will be posting behind the scenes footage of the making of Thomas Bender’s documentary on Stanley Kubrick. I will be posting rather infrequently between now and the premier of the movie. But what I will be posting in this blog will be choice, with hopefully some cool links to benefit film scholarship and knowledge. Let the free content rain.

The picture of the day is of the camera Thomas will use to shoot the documentary, the Sony EX1. He will be using a Mac Book pro and editing software to render the digital video.

I needed a refresher course in making a movie so I sent for the filmmaking guides from Living Spirit Studios in Ealing. I met with a solicitor earlier this week and started a search for the day-to-day production supervisor here in the UK. A friend from Princeton is trying to hook me up with a local distributor. I announced the start of production to our distributor in Hollywood.