davextreme: stanleykubrick

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27 January 2011

The Newman Sinclair

There’s a part in A Clockwork Orange where Alex (Malcolm McDowell) jumps out of a window. The shot is done from his point of view as he falls. I’d heard before that Stanley Kubrick accomplished this by dropping a camera, but not this:

We bought an old Newman Sinclair clockwork mechanism camera (no pun intended) for £50. It’s a beautiful camera and it’s built like a battleship. We made a number of polystyrene boxes which gave about eighteen inches of protection around the camera, and cut out a slice for the lens. We then threw the camera off a roof. In order to get it to land lens first, we had to do this six times and the camera survived all six drops.

—Interviews with Stanley Kubrick

Six takes!

07 January 2011

Todd Alcott on The Shining

Screenwriter Todd Alcott’s seven-part series on The Shining: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Lots of great insight into the film, its structure, and who the actual protagonist is. I hadn’t heard this one:

One of my favorite factoids regarding the movie is that Kubrick didn’t just have a ream of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” typed up, no — he had reams and reams typed up, in different languages, one for every major territory the movie would play in — Spanish, Italian, French, German, etc., all with a regional phrase specific to the territory. Production Assistant on a Kubrick movie must have been the worst job available in show business.

(via)

10 November 2010

What The Old Timers Used To Call Cabin Fever

From left to right, every costume change Jack makes in The Shining.

30 October 2010

Kubrick

Tony Frewin and Leon Vitali, who’d been working as Stanley’s assistants for years, said there was a staff joke about the one phrase you would never hear at Childwick Bury, and a week after Stanley’s death someone actually said it to them. It went, “Use your own judgment, and don’t bother me with the details.” His concerns ran from the ethereal-aesthetic through the technical to the crudely logistical, no detail too prosaic, all the way down to stationery and paper clips.

—“Kubrick” from Vanity Fair

23 July 2010

Kier Dullea on 2001

“You’ve just been offered the lead in Stanley Kubrick’s next film.”

Kier Dullea on 2001

14 April 2010

Lunatic at Large

The Guardian:

Among the discarded projects of the famously fastidious Stanley Kubrick are “lost” movies about Napoleon Bonaparte, the Holocaust and the American civil war. Now, 11 years after his death, a treatment by the legendary film-maker titled Lunatic at Large looks set to make it to the big screen, with Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell attached to star.

05 October 2009

Flatware From 2001

Alice Rawsthorn writes about the Arne Jacobsen flatware Stanley Kubrick used for his astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s available from the MoMA store.

16 July 2009

Rainbow Costume Shop

Never noticed this. In Eyes Wide Shut, when Bill goes to the costume shop:

As Mr. Milich steps out of his apartment, we can see some lights reflected on the glass door of the building. These lights are the neon signs in front of Sonata Cafe and Gillespie’s Diner. Upon cutting to a reverse we can see both buildings directly behind Bill. He’s apparently hired a cab to drive him to a destination that was right across the street from where he was. The cabby most likely drove around, then dropped his clueless passenger off.

—The Mutiny Company