Stanley Kubrick profile picture

Stanley Kubrick

It's difficult to say who is engaged in the greater conspiracy - the criminal, the soldier, or us.

About Me

I was born in New York City, where my father was a doctor. My parents wanted me to become a doctor, and I was supposed to go to medical school, but I was such a misfit in high school that when I graduated I didn't have the marks to get into college. But like almost everything else good that's ever happened to me, by the sheerest stroke of luck, I had a very good friend at Look [magazine], which gave me a job as a still photographer. After about six months, I was made a full-fledged staff photographer. My highest salary was $105 a week, but I did travel around the country, and I went to Europe and it was a great thing. I learned a lot about people and things. And then I made a documentary film - the first one I made - called Day of the Fight [1951]. It was about a boxer called Walter Cartier and everything that happened on the day of a fight. I thought there was a great future in making documentaries, but I didn't make any money on any of the documentaries I made. Then I made a feature, Fear and Desire in 1953.One of the things that gave me the most confidence in trying to make a film was seeing all the lousy films that I saw. Because I sat there and thought, Well, I don't know a goddamn thing about movies, but I know I can make a film better than that.

My Interests

My view is that that man will probably remain more or less in the state he is in now for quite some time. He will not evolve. Men are not really becoming more objective or rational. We are still essentially programed with the same primitive instincts we started out with four million years ago. Somebody said man is the missing link between primitive apes and civilized human beings. We are semicivilized, capable of cooperation and affection, but needing some sort of transfiguration into a higher form of life. Man is really in a very unstable condition. People have been very good, really. Countries have acted very responsibly since the nuclear bomb. But there's no question that since the means to obliterate life on Earth exist, it will take more than just careful planning and reasonable cooperation to avoid some eventual catastrophic event. The problem exists as long as the potential exists, and the problem is essentially a moral one and a spiritual one. Perhaps even an evolutionary one rather than a technical one. The technical approach, you might say, is first aid, but it can't be a very profound answer.

I'd like to meet:

Napoleon

Music:

I like classical music.

Movies:

There's no doubt that there's a deep emotional relationship between man and his machines, which are his children. The machine is beginning to assert itself in a very profound way, even attracting affection and obsession. There is a sexiness to beautiful machines. The smell of a Nikon camera. The feel of an Italian sports car, or a beautiful tape recorder. We are almost in a sort of biological machine society already. We're making the transition toward whatever the ultimate change will be. Man has always worshiped beauty, and I think there's a new kind of beauty afoot in the world.

Television:

I think that if the reigning powers had any great respect for good pictures or the people who could make them, that this respect was probably very well tempered by the somewhat cynical observation that poor and mediocre pictures might just as well prove successful as their pictures of higher value.Television has changed this, completely, and I think that, despite the unhappy financial upheavel that it's caused in the movie industry, it is also provided a very invigorating and stimulating challenge which has made it necessary for films to be made with more sincerity and more daring.If Hollywood lacks the color and excitement of its early days with Rolls-Royces and leopard-skin seat covers, I think on the other hand it provides the most exciting and stimulating atmosphere of opportunity and possibilities for young people today.

Heroes:

Napoleon

My Blog

Man and the machine

There's no doubt that there's a deep emotional relationship between man and his machines, which are his children. The machine is beginning to assert itself in a very profound way, even attracting affe...
Posted by Stanley Kubrick on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 03:08:00 PST

on having something to say...

I don't think that writers or painters or film makers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form: they like word...
Posted by Stanley Kubrick on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 02:55:00 PST

on form

I haven't come across any recent new ideas in films that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less ...
Posted by Stanley Kubrick on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 02:54:00 PST

a word about Hollywood

I think that if the reigning powers had any great respect for good pictures or the people who could make them, that this respect was probably very well tempered by the somewhat cynical observatio...
Posted by Stanley Kubrick on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 02:51:00 PST