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Comment by lqet | Hacker News Reader

I highly recommend the documentary Filmworker to anyone interested in Stanley Kubrick's character.

It's about Leon Vitali, the actor who played Lord Bullingdon (the neurotic brother of Lady Lyndon) in Barry Lyndon. After filming Barry Lyndon, he quit acting and became Kubricks personal assistant / factotum for over 20 years. Although some would say he was Kubrick's personal slave. It is utterly shocking to see how badly Kubrick treated him at times. Vitali did the work of 4-5 assistants, completely neglected his family, destroyed his health, spend the best years of his life re-cutting scenes until 5 in the morning while listening to Kubrick's violent tantrums, and ended his successful acting career for him. But apparently he was paid so little by Kubrick that he ran into financial trouble after the director's death. Yet for some mysterious reason, he remained completely loyal to his master until his own death in 2022.

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Leons daughter Vera talked a bit about her father, his relationship to Kubrick, art and family in “Sommar i P1”, a Swedish national radio show where people in “public interest” talk about whatever for an hour or so. It’s pretty interesting and provide some insights, but unfortunately it’s only in Swedish

https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1319508#

can someone post some cliffnotes please?

There are many people who believe that something outside themselves is more important than their own personal happiness or even basic sustenance/stability. Whether that’s something to be admired, damned, or merely observed — it would seem Vitali made choices for reasons worth it to him, personally.

Lots of people make bad choices for themselves and others due to psychological control, manipulation, and/or abuse, such as people who willingly join cults.

I’m not saying that is what happened to Vitali, but I think it’s the open question being alluded to.

It is important to be aware and concerned about cultures or industries that foster cult like personality leaders.

Exactly right. But people today are extremely resistant to this fact.

It's very clear that many, many people would give up nearly anything -- including years of their lives -- to work with someone as talented as Kubrick. Is that crazy? I wouldn't do it, but others would.

This is not the issue. The issue is that some people (like, probably Kubrick) will abuse this.

There is nothing wrong in loyalty. What is wrong is unilateral loyalty.

I hope this doesn’t come off as snide, but is there a positive trait that abusive people won’t abuse for their own benefit?

In my view, if there is one I’ve yet to encounter it.

Which would suggest it’s largely the responsibility of each individual to decide what is important to themselves, and how much of themselves they’re prepared to sacrifice in pursuit of said thing.

For some, perhaps works of art that hold meaning for millions of people over many, many years would qualify. For others, it’s a highly paid dev job. I suspect the difference between the two (and all others) “exists” more in the eye of the beholder than folks on any side of the equation would care to accept.

You see it as unilateral loyalty. Perhaps he saw it as something different, or at least lived his life with both eyes open to his own experience. The only thing we can both say for sure is that we will never know for certain.

He had a family. While clearly he thought it was worth it personally, he wasn't making choices just for himself.

That is true. This is the belief on which this entire, perpetual, scam of "die working for this startup for peanuts" for the great purpose of "changing the world" has been running. Every time a founder finds such sheep, mostly fresh ones but some old ones too once in a while.

Sadly all that almost looks like "grateful to be abused".

> Lord Bullingdon (the neurotic brother of Lady Lyndon)

It's her son from the first marriage.

You are right of course!

Sounds like a two person cult.

Sounds like an Apple employee to Steve Jobs.

Also very enjoyable, Emilio D'Alessandro’s book Stanley Kubrick and Me

Go and photograph commercial street - right away! After completing the task, he found it was just for Kubrick to show off to his colleague

You can see his name in a newspaper article in Eyes Wide Shut at 2:21:03 (timing from Apple "TV" app version)

He also played the red cloak.

How is this any different than say working at Tesla today?

Shades of that Twitter executive who shared a picture of herself in a sleeping bag at the office, presumably doing "hardcore engineering". She later got fired regardless.

Anecdotally, some managers like to show how they're present physically yet they don't actually contribute anything.

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