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 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."