Stanley Kubrick did it his way
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Starts a movie company at 21 and makes shit movies.But importantly, develops a knack for persuading people to work for little or no money convincing them that the "experience" was was worth more than money
Young Kubrick is ruthlessness and ego centric, hard to like... mature Kubrik is intriguing and softer. Then he makes some great movies, gets a family going, has money and goes nuts.
This allows him to get obsessive, neurotic, totally fixated on his work, horrifyingly oblivious to the feelings of colleagues and employees driving some to breakdown. Outraged designers, writers all persuaded for the experience and the glory of the final result. All swearing never to work with him again.
persuading people to work for little or no money for the experience and the greatness of the purpose and the final result seems like the common pattern between Kubrik and others like Jobs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr65ZIWoD6c
(Skip the first minute if you don't care for framing devices, it switches into a conventional video essay format for most of the video after that.)
According to Patrick, that is part of the reason he's unhappy with the performance he delivered for that movie.
I like movies, but admittedly know nothing about making them.
Big budget movies require hundreds of people with their own opinions working together to work towards a single vision. I don't find it impossible that demanding, narcissistic, and disagreeable people may have an advantage in that regard.
there is no shortage of absolutely elite tier directors who exhibit exceptional abilities to work well with others.
in fact. on the spectrum where most coworkers “would _love_ to work with them again” to “nope, not a chance they were awful humans” i’d make a confident bet there are far more elite tier who lean towards the former.
Now, there's an argument to be made that actors who accepted to work under Kubrick knew (or at least ought to have known) what they were getting into, which blurs things a lot in this specific case. But "It's the only way" is going too far imo.
Its going too far if industry is replete with Kubrick level work with above reproach behavior. Else I can just choose to not watch Kubrick films while stewing in my own moral superiority.
Villeneuve's good friend Christopher Nolan presents as a bit more of a prickly pear, but he has a very long list of long-time collaborators on both sides of the camera so he's probably not that bad.
In fact, more than a few of those behind-the-scenes folks collaborate with both Villeneuve and Nolan. It would be interesting to hear them compare an contrast.
I tire of movies with lazy expositional dialogue, but this was absurd in the other direction.
I totally agree with this take, but I think Dennis' directing/writing is full of 'Telling' instead of 'Showing', not that he took "Show Don't Tell" to the extreme. The entire movie is full of instances where the audience is told aspects of the characters/world, but isn't shown them in the first Dune movie:
- We are told the Atreides ruled Caladan, but at no point is the audience shown who the Atreides' subjects are, or how their subjects feel about the Atreides. The only shots the film has on Caladan are beautiful yet empty areas of the Scottish Highlands. Where are the people they rule over? What does their way of life look like? None of this is shown, but it should have been.
- On Arrakis, we are only ever told how strong and powerful the Fremen are from characters like Duncan Idaho. In fact, the only time we get to see the Fremen fight is at the end of the movie when Paul, the child _who has never been in a life or death fight before_, makes a fool of a supposedly strong Fremen fighter! Dennis clearly wants the audience to perceive the Fremen as strong, yet he fails to illustrate their strength on screen. I understand that Dennis wants Paul to be seen as powerful too, but the resulting scene undercuts everything that the movie has told us about the Fremen's fighting ability.
If it isn't already clear, I don't think Dennis Villenueve is a particularly good film maker (though this is not to call him a bad one). He likes to have large empty scenery shots which are almost monochrome. I find that it makes his imagery striking but, ultimately, boring. For instance, his shots in Bladerunner 2049 mostly depict an empty wasteland that, though striking in its scale, doesn't drive one's imagination. The original Bladerunner's shots are so cluttered with detail and color that it fills every location with a unique character. This is why I think Bladerunner inspired so much other media after it; the audience's imagination can't help but linger on the sets and one off characters of the original film.
> - We are told the Atreides ruled Caladan, but at no point is the audience shown who the Atreides' subjects are...
I'm not sure why this is particularly needed and it isn't really in the novel. The importance of Caladan in the novel is that it is wet (which we do see); and that the way Caladan is ruled (whatever that is) must necessarily be different than how Arrakis is ruled (air/sea versus desert power). I'll have to rewatch the film to see if this can be gleaned from it; but it seems largely irrelevant what day-to-day life is like for Caladanians not in the Duke's direct employ and if the Duke is particularly loved or hated there.
> - On Arrakis, we are only ever told how strong and powerful the Fremen are...
This is also true of the novel. The main characters know more about the Fremen than anyone and very little at that. The Duke believes the Fremen are his 'desert power' because of the comparison to the Sardaukar on Selusa Secundus and because their estimates of the number of Fremen are greater than those of the Harkonnen or Emperor. Duncan Idaho confirms these suspicions, but the Fremen are largely mysterious even then. We also have the interaction between the Shadout Mapes and Jessica to hint at their capacity for violence.
> I'm not sure why this is particularly needed and it isn't really in the novel...
I know saying this is sacrilegious to some sci-fi fans, but I think that the novel, Dune, could do with improvement. Neither the book nor the movie spend enough time fleshing out the details of their characters, which in my opinion robs both of them their ability to connect more deeply with the audience. The scene where Duke Leto explains to Paul that they will require desert power to rule Arrakis, for instance, did not have to be set such that the characters were alone on an empty cliff above the shoreline. There could have been a city full of culture upon this shoreline with great boat yards and planes over the sea to show the audience the empire that they are leaving behind on Caladan. I want both the novel and the movie to flesh out the details which make the audience engage with the fact that Caladan is a comparative paradise to the harsh, prison-like planet called Arrakis. It would suck to be forced to leave behind all the great work that the Atreides' forefathers put into Caladan. But, ultimately, both the film and the novel fail to fully engage their audience with these facts since they don't flesh out the details about the environment and people that the Atreides rule. At least that is my opinion.
There are a number of things I'd like to change or improve upon if I had the chance to edit Dune (novel or film): the story's allusions to the Cold War fight for oil in the middle east; the poor decision making by the Harkonnens; Dr. Yueh's murder of Duke Leto etc. But I don't want to ramble on too much. My point is that I think the film could have improved upon the novel in a number of places, instead of following the novel to its detriment.
The Villeneuve movie at least gives personality to Stilgar.
I vehemently disagree, and I'm not simply being argumentative -- this is something I've held as a strong opinion for decades.
I can count on my hand the number of high fantasy series that have been filmed and that have been good. Or the number of spacefaring sci-fi films.
I've seen thousands of movies, yet I'd consider fewer than 10% of them "good". Very few sit with me for days after the theater.
This world doesn't have enough film. I know my interests aren't being catered to.
And feels like the less I watch, the less I can watch anything without immediately being annoyed at cheese, cheapness, and mostly just plain unrealistic characters or dialogue (which really and truly is 99% it seems like of shows).
I need either high art or a slice of life. Ghibli or Satoshi Kon for anime, stuff like Kubrick in film, or Mad Men for TV. Mad Men especially was my turning point where after that show I couldn't stomach much else.
Call me elitist. I watch lower quality YouTube stuff much more easily (at low attention), but once you're trying to sign me up for 30 minutes or more I just give up.
Tried watching the 3 Body Problem on Netflix and in just the first scenes (cultural revolution + the scientists convo on God) were so full of cringe. I kept it on as background a bit but petered out after a few episodes.
Calling the other two "remakes" seems unnecessarily reductive imo.
Peter Jackson got started the same way, making ultra low budget horror flicks like Bad Taste with friends and family as extras. Critically, like Kubrick and Jobs, those early attempts were actually good, good enough to kick start their respective careers.
I loved "Brain Dead"! One of the most hilarious movies I've ever seen.
What have I missed?
And trying to stop skyrocketing salaries fueled by endless poaching is also bad, but trying to only pay your employees 3-10x the median local salary its not the same as trying to flat out not pay someone.
Well if you don't have many resources, you need to persuade them somehow. Many people would pay to work with an all-time genius in their field. Wouldn't you?
> (abusive stuff)
There's no evidence or reason to think it's necessary. Power corrupts. Why look for rationalizations for assholes?
Even his very first ones are already good.
There is a fantastic 1 hr BBC documentary from the mid 2000's called 'Stanley Kubrick's Boxes' in which the documentary crew is given access to Kubrick's estate and warehouses after his passing. They examine the contents of the boxes of research and pre-production material that Kubrick accrued over several decades when crafting his films. The lengths he went to flesh them out are stunning.
The takeaway is of someone with a singular ambition and extreme thoroughness when planning their films. It's been immensely inspiring to witness just how intently a creator can focus on crafting their work. I strongly recommend it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StanleyKubrick/comments/vuzygq/kubr...
I wonder at directors: It's hard enough to find artists with the insight, vision, expressiveness, and mastery of their craft to create great art.
But before film, artists worked mostly alone. I suppose architects and composers have had to be mindful of the performance of a bunch of humans, but didn't necessarily have to manage that process. Stage directors obviously have similar jobs, but necessarily at a much smaller scale, with fewer technical demands, and by my limited understanding, stage directors lean toward overseeing and facilitating the art, which is more a product of the playwright and actors.
But film directors - as artists they must be all those things an artist is; and also they must master more domains than most artists - film, audio, script, story, costumes, sets, lighting, etc.; and on top of that they must be top-notch managers: hire and manage hundreds or thousands of highly talented people (just look at the credits), and then coordinate them all to finish on time and also manage a budget in the 10s or 100s of millions, and then also sell their vision to funders.
Where are these 'directors' found? Can they really do all that or is it handled otherwise? How are they developed? It's hard to imagine there would be more than a couple of them.
I am neither film nor stage director nor actor, but here is Lawrence Olivier, highly accomplished and respected in both mediums, on the differences:
"Now the sense of continuity in the film is provided by the director, who says that was too quiet, or that was too loud, or that was too much, or that was too slow.
Now an actor on the stage is supposed to conduct it much more for himself. The director in a stage play, he can do two things, I think, principally ...: He can give the play a point of view, which he can sell to the actors. His principle task is to make quite sure that the author is served to his best advantage, and the actors are served to their best advantage. And at the same time, he can describe, without setting, because this will vary according to performance, according to audience, but he can desribe what he thinks is the right tempo for each scene, or the comparative tempos between two scenes, three scenes, four scenes, five scenes, etc.
Whereas the director of the film is the absolute magician, who is in charge and knows the answer to every question right from the beginning of the film to the last. In directing a film, people say, 'would it be alright if she wore a red hat?' Well, simply means that you have to split your mind to every single shot that could possibly affect that situation, right to the beginning of the film, right to the end of the film, before you say, 'I don't care' or 'yes' or 'no'. It's a very precise arrangement, altogether, in a film."
From a 1973 interview: https://www.criterionchannel.com/videos/laurence-olivier-and...
* Taschen books: 'The Stanley Kubrick Archives': https://www.taschen.com/en/books/film/45439/the-stanley-kubr...
* David Mikics - 'Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker': https://archive.ph/k98vP
My review of the Kolker/Abrams book: https://niklas.reviews/2024/03/22/robert-p-kolker-nathan-abr...
1: https://www.jimcarrollsblog.com/blog/2019/6/5/yt0trf17bh9ai4...
I do photography, and a ratio of 1000 discarded photos to one you keep would far more likely mean someone doesn't know how to select their shots more carefully and can't distinguish what's important, than it would mean that they're a perfectionist genius.
If you can suggest Kubrick is inept at composition, I can't respect you as a photographer.
When I first started with my own photography, i'd often take dozens of photos of the same subject, day after day after day, trying to get my shot "just right". Eventually I noticed that this only created pointless extra revision work for me for no reasons other than that I was failing to note the difference between completely irrelevant, tiny differences and those worth adjusting, and that I was thus failing to simply compose more carefully with far fewer shots. Having learned these things, my photography became much less tedious without losing any existing quality.
But you can't argue with the results of his process. He's literally the GOAT. It's not close.
The idea that everyone has to take things easy, or that you can get the same results without some amount of obsession, is not borne out by reality - because no one has come close.
If I'm wearing blinders for saying so, then so is every respectable film critic of the last how many decades... Weird that we all love wearing those "blinders", when all those "tiny differences" were "unimportant".
Details matter, and a little respect for other people's process is in order, especially when they're widely known as the actual best ever.
If someone can't see why Kubrick is the best, I can't respect their eye. Same as I can't respect the ear of a musician who thinks the Beatles were overrated.
We all know he’s acclaimed. That doesn’t invalidate any of the points you’re trying to retort, and your disrespect for people with different viewpoints is an uninteresting contribution to this discussion.
And my argument was more than that he's acclaimed. You seem to have entirely missed the point, and I don't know how I could have been more clear.
Would you respect the skills of a coder who disrespects Richard Stallman, saying he doesn't know enough about open source software? Or an economist who thinks Marx didn't understand capitalism, citing their own work in a bank as proof?
One person made appeals to authority (themselves) while being disrespectful in this thread, and it wasn't me.
It's not an appeal to authority to say that Kubrick made the most beautifully framed movies, by a long shot, of any director ever. It's about as close to objective truth with such a subjective question as possible. Ask ChatGPT to tell you who made the most beautifully composed movies! I did - it told me Kubrick.
To say that Kubrick tried too hard, and could have got the same result with less effort, is bananas. It's clearly untrue on its face, because no one else ever has gotten the same result with less effort. It demonstrates a damning lack of understanding & appreciation for the art form. Which, by the way, is actually pretty different to photography - adding time changes the game.
You can say Steve Jobs could have been nicer to his employees - and you'd be right. But you can't seriously claim that you'd have gotten the same results with less effort, citing your experience as general manager of a tech store. Would you hire such a guy as your PM?
This is a bit hyperbolic, but in a way I get the point OP was trying to make.
> Cimino shot more than 1.3 million feet (400,000 metres; nearly 220 hours) of footage, costing the studio approximately $200,000 per day in salary (equivalent to $720,000 in 2022), locations and acting fees.Privately, it was joked that Cimino wished to surpass Francis Ford Coppola's mark of shooting one million feet of footage for Apocalypse Now (1979).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(film)#Product...
Heaven's Gate isn't even all that great to look at. There's still the matter of taste involved, and well, Cimino made some questionable decisions.
Though I love the film, the very slow rythme makes it hard to re-watch, and probably impenetrable to today's young audience.
Are they? Kubrick is known for being difficult and for his shallow portrayal of women. And whether it was due to misogyny or his personal view of Duvall, even Kubrick's daughter called her father "a different director" when referring to how he singled her out.
> People cite lines like "don't sympathize with Shelly" to jump to the conclusion that Kubrick "ordered the cast and crew to alienate her".
Except he literally did that in order to alienate her and extract a slightly more authentic performance, which is the same reason he spent three weeks on the baseball bat scene.
He may or may not be known for that, but is it really true? Part of the point of my comment is to dispel common misperceptions. Is Alice in Eyes Wide Shut shallow? Or the women in Barry Lyndon, particularly his mother?
>Except he literally did that in order to alienate her [...]
Or he did it as a joke. Maybe he thinks it's funny to say that to Duvall as she's saying her hair is falling out, because he has a big bald spot. Hey, isn't Kubrick also known for his dark humor?
Think about his male characters. His films are full of men who are neurotic losers, corporate conformists, cynical opportunists, or violent lunatics. Not that he never presents conventional male heroes, but they are rare in his work as a whole.
He certainly seems to be more interested in male characters than in female characters on average, judging by who gets more screen time. But he is not especially kind to the male gender. If he was a misogynist, perhaps we might just as justly call him a misandrist.
He very well might actually have been more of a misogynist than a misandrist, but if he was I'm not sure that it really shows through in his movies.
And it was apparently 127 takes.
The footage you see of Kubrick “abusing her” was cherry-picked by Kubrick himself in order to promote his film. He had a reputation as a “perfectionist” so he thought the footage would drive ticket sales.
I think it’s a form of sexism to assume that Shelley was somehow weak and not able to make her own decisions here. If we were talking about Leo DiCaprio or Daniel Day Lewis, we’d all be talking about how much of a dedicated actor he is that he would go through all that hardship just to get a great performance.
He really wanted to make a film on Napoleon. Though not officially related to his work, one got made last year to mixed reviews. And he started production on the movie "AI - Artificial Intelligence" after a short story from 1969. He handed it off to Steven Spielberg.
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Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9671018
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9671018
> Slated for production immediately following the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey , Kubrick’s "Napoleon" was to be at once a character study and a sweeping epic, replete with grandiose battle scenes featuring thousands of extras. To write his original screenplay, Kubrick embarked on two years of intensive research; with the help of dozens of assistants and an Oxford Napoleon specialist, he amassed an unparalleled trove of research and preproduction material , including approximately 15,000 location scouting photographs and 17,000 slides of Napoleonic imagery. No stone was left unturned in Kubrick's nearly-obsessive quest to uncover every piece of information history had to offer about Napoleon. But alas, Kubrick’s movie was not destined to the film studios, first M.G.M. and then United Artists, decided such an undertaking was too risky at a time when historical epics were out of fashion.
He also backed off on AI because the scale/requirements.
In my opinion he had the vision, but the tech and audiences just weren't ready. But maybe the same things might have been said about 2001.
Here is a nice write up on how he apparently encoded his confession into his films.