Foucault’s Pendulum would have been awesome. I was referring to the Napoleon book.
Kubrick’s Napoleon
www.donkeyontheedge.com/i/napoleon.pdf
What is in the Kubrick Archives? Mostly just pictures? Essays?
>>is A.I. proof that they should leave Kubrick’s work alone?<<
I liked AI better than any other Spielberg film I’ve seen.
>>My only super-regret, from the “unfinished” projects of Kubrick that I know of, is “A.I.”. The Spielberg film is OK, and he no doubt meant to honor Kubrick’s intentions with it, but he can’t help his own precious and shallow way of making movies, especially with sci-fi subject matter. The material is really intriguing and undoubtedly would have been much deeper and powerful, not to mention visually superior in every way, in Kubrick’s hands.<<
It might have been deeper and more powerful (I found it very resonant), but while I think Kubrick is the superior film-maker, Spielberg is a great deal more visually stylish.
>>Am I a minority for actually loving AI?<<
Yes, we are.
It’s 1/2 pictorial essays of each of his films, and 1/2 essays, articles, interviews and behind-the-scenes pictures. Really an amazing book.
One interesting example, Kubrick received a letter from a teenage girl after 2001 was released in which she offered her analysis of the film (it’s reprinted in the book). It was so spot-on (at the time major film critics were fumbling around with the film) and Kubrick was so taken with it that I believe he responded to thank her.
Would Kubrick have cast Robin Williams…..?
“He was also goimg to do Foccaults Pendulum by Umberto Ecco. I wonder how that would have been.”
Annaud’s Name of the Rose killed any chance of that happening.
Apparently, Kubrick’s brother-in-law wants to get things going on an Aryan Papers movie. He wants Ang Lee to direct.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6788693.ece
I guess this is pretty cool. It’s hard to get psyched for another Holocaust movie, hopefully this will be the last of them. Who do you think would be a good director? Someone new, like Paul Thomas Anderson? Maybe Scorsese? Todd Field?
I hope the above doesn’t happen, whether whatever directore they get attempts to ape kubricks tone or not. I find it interesting that Kubrick himself supposedly felt, upon giving up on Aryan Papers, that no narrative film could adequately handle it.
I’ve always had a dual fascination with Papers & Jerry Lewis’ Day the Clown Cried; I kind of wonder of legalities and the supposed awfulness of the film aside, we’ll never see it because Lewis may have realized the same thing.
Casey- I’ve never put myself through Jakob the Liar. Supposedly Williams did that instead of a later more legal attempt to do Day the Clown Cried, which doesn’t bode well for it.
I’m reading the Napoleon script at the moment, and if this is indeed Kubrick’s script, I must say that I am not terribly impressed by it. I’m not sure which project he began work on first, but it feels too similar to the dry and cold nature of the “Barry Lyndon” film. And being essentially the same kind of settings, I can’t see how this film would be all that different from BL in mood and atmosphere, and I think it would be almost pointless to make both films.
I’m further turned off by the use of narration and the typical story arc that has the obligatory scenes from childhood, and essentially follow the same template that most biopics follow hitting the high points and low points of his life, while not necessarily getting very close to the person.
Also, being just another biopic, what we essentially have here would be a documentary, and not a film. If the main character were Joe Blow, rather than Napoleon, the film would likely be boring and not worth devoting 180 minutes to, something common to most biopics.
But no one thinks the success of any Kubrick film is the script alone. Any of his film’s scripts could be read as flat.
I understand that Josh, but what would have been different in the shooting of this and Barry Lyndon? ‘Maximum erotica’? Or if he could have shot this, would he never have shot BL?
Who can say? It was his inability to make Napoleon that led to BL. As to the differences in how he would have shot them—they’re about completely different character types with completely different stories, so again, who knows?
I bought the stanley kubrick archives a couple days ago and have not put it down. There’s an interview in it too where he’s asked about not making Napoleon during the time he was making Full Metal Jacket and he said he “hasn’t given up on it yet.” So maybe even after making Lyndon he still wanted to make it.
I wished Kubrick had made the Napoleon film that he had considered making. I think it would have been a fantastic film. If someone were to make a movie about Napoleon, I don’t know if they could really use Kubrick’s script or not, based on what was expected of how it would be received. I think they may have to do it their own way, so maybe the Kubrick script would get in the way of the way of how good they could make the film because they probably could not pull it off too well. I saw on a documentary on Stanley Kubrick that Kubrick scouted locations for the Napoleon film and was allready to shoot when he found out that there had been a film about Napoleon starring Rod Steiger called Waterloo. I don’t know how successful that film was, but I wished that Kubrick would have made that film anyway.
Waterloo with Steiger was not a very good film. Its not a god Idea to make a film about one battle.
If I were to make a film about Napoleon, I wouldn’t use any of Stanley’s script. Nor would I use any part of his life before the invasion of Italy, except maybe in flashback, as that has been covered by Gance’s great film.
My film would start with the Battle of the Pyramids and end with the retreat from Moscow and his first banishment.
In a Speilburg interview, he talked about a chat he had with Kk. Kk had questioned Sp about the importance in the main ideas of one or more of Sp’s films. Kk told Sp that he (Kk) was trying to change the “current form” of movies, to reinvent the form. Clearly his deliberate and precise intent in all his scenes, 20 or 30 takes for a seemingly simple action, shows it’s all about subtext with him. What was under the surface in his characters, sprang from Kk’s mind. He’s dead and channeling is a myth. Taking a Kk script to screen would cheapen Kk’s vision, regardless of the sincere intent. Yes, it would be a Kk (?) product brought to the shelf, but a knockoff none the less. Kk succeeded brilliantly in Odyssey. Everybody who loves Kk films knows the subtext of that masterwork. It becomes obvious to the mind and heart, yet never obvious to the eye. It is simply the day to day life of people responding to a dramatic event, yet it reveals the deeper meaning and broader consequences of that event. That is the new form Kk was trying to communicate, not always successfully, in all his films. Everyone should spend at least some time thinking about the “current form” of their own lives. Kk was an unfinished project himself. That is not “high falutin”. Kk was about what was extremely important and deeply personal to him. That interview about Kk’s question to Sp is in the making of The Shining.
I remember some critics referring to Eyes Wide Shut as an unfinished film when it came out (maybe Hoberman in the Voice?), arguing that Kubrick wasn’t done with it before he died. I never quite understood that. It seemed perfectly finished to me…
I would like to see someone use his material for Napoleon and do a feature. It would have to be very, very epic in scale, though. Maybe Aronofsky?
Ari, EWS wasn’t fully edited when Kubrick died. He had only finished it to the point where he could screen it for the studio, then he died. WB was scared shitless to touch it though so they left it in the hands of Jan Harlan (Kubricks longtime collaborator and brother-in-law). Jan ran into issues with the rating and ended up adding in digital silhouettes in places for the orgy scene in order to get an R rating, otherwise it was left as it was.
Tom, Aronofsky would be an interesting choice to take up the Napoleon project. I would also be interested to see what Tod Field would do with it. Field’s sensibilities as a director are closer to Kubrick but Aronofsky would certainly bring something interesting to the project.
I do not think that Aronofsky could pull off Kubrick. Aronofsky is stylish and he is good, and I love him dearly, but Aronofsky is almost Kubrick’s opposite in terms of intimacy. Kubrick preferred a distance from his characters, and subtext through observation instead of immersion. Aronofsky is the single most immersive filmmaker I’ve ever seen, who sends the audience directly into the emotional arena of his characters.
Earlier on this thread someone mentioned Ang Lee. Now Ang Lee could pull off a decent Kubrick knock-off. He has an invisibility of tone to his subject matter and his movies do seem very removed and observational, almost to the point of being “cold” sometimes (like Kubrick is often criticized for but which is a huge part of how his films affected us). I would say that Ang Lee could pull off Napoleon or Aryan Papers quite well. That said, I do not believe that either movies should really be made, simply because even on the level of research Kubrick didn’t feel he was ready to make them (I’m referring to what I learned from the Life in Pictures documentary). Best to leave what is, is, and what isn’t as a regretful if-it-was. No need to actually “recreate” what doesn’t exist.
—PolarisDiB
lunatic at large is coming out
Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell have signed on to star in the movie, with Chris Palmer directing.
Anyone know who Chris Palmer is? There are about a 100 of them listed on IMDB.
Thanks for the link.
According to this recent article, he is:
http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2010/04/the-hypothetical-treatments-of-five-lost-stanley-k.html
Sorry about the lousy link.
I wonder if it would be be possible to adapt Kubrick’s un-filmed scripts into graphic novels.
I am very interested to hear more on Lunatic at Large, If it is starring scarlett johansson and Sam Rockwell i am sold.
-I remember some critics referring to Eyes Wide Shut as an unfinished film when it came out (maybe Hoberman in the Voice?), arguing that Kubrick wasn’t done with it before he died.-
Hoberman original review said it “may be scarcely more Kubrick’s film than Juneteenth is Ralph Ellison’s novel. Whether or not one believes the rumors that the Eyes Wide Shut release version was supervised by Steven Spielberg or Sydney Pollack or even Tom Cruise, the ponderous Temple of Doom orgy, crassly matched location inserts, overreliance on cross-cutting, and atrocious mixing (most obvious in the orgy’s dreadful dubbing and oscillating hubbub level) all suggest the movie was quite far from completion when its notoriously perfectionist author passed away”. The current _Voice_capsule review he wrote simple calls it a “rough draft.”
As I recall, Amy Taubin wrote something similar (but more neutral) in Film Comment at the time, but she put it at #7 in her year-end poll ballot for the Voice that year.
Technically, as Kubrick was fond of editing right up to the general release of a film, I suppose that it’s accurate to consider it unfinished, but I agree that it’s finished enough to stand on its own without qualifier, and the general critical consensus seems to have now come around to that perspective.
@ Matt Parks
The Chris Palmer you’re referring to is mainly a director for ads.
In December 2009, he directed the music video: “All You Need Is Love”.
156 countries sent in their live feeds and Chris directed the whole project.
It was mainly: “Starbucks Love Project” meant to raise awareness for AIDS in Africa.
It was in collaboration with (RED)™ and Global Fund.
He was working for / with Gorgeous Enterprise (UK) for that one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHAXqwRGoI
I was involved in the project from Malta (EU).
Tommy
He was also goimg to do Foccaults Pendulum by Umberto Ecco. I wonder how that would have been.