KUBRICK NEWS IN BRIEF ~ SEPT 30, 2017

Full Metal Jacket turned 30 years old this summer. Commemorate the milestone by reading this excellent Birth/Movies/Death retrospective by Jacob Knight. And dig that crazy artwork, man!

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Once you're done checking out the above article, you should also give this awesome audio retrospective on the Task&Purpose podcast a listen. Entitled "To the Everlasting Glory of Full Metal Jacket", this podcast is created by, and geared towards, veterans and currently serving members of the American military, which makes for a great perspective on this cinematic masterpiece.

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And finally re: FMJ, check out this Collider article in which Matthew Modine discusses two major scenes that were cut from the final version of the film, and this CinemaBlend article about a scene inspired by R.Lee Ermey's dirty poetry. Combine all of this with a fresh viewing of the flick, and you will have properly celebrated the 30th anniversary of Kubrick's most underrated flick, the immortal Full Metal Jacket.

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Here's a funny little thing to watch...

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In this Movie Pilot overview, Eric Hanson explores Kubrick's oeuvre in terms of his accomplishments as a translator of literature into cinema, and the various conflicts and controversies that have arisen from his relationships with many of the authors whose work he has adapted. This piece is, unfortunately, short and insubstantial. Hanson doesn't even address the extremely interesting history of Kubrick's relationships with Calder Willingham, Jim Thompson, Vladimir Nabokov, or Gustav Hasford! So please don't mistake me linking to this article as giving it my seal of approval. I do NOT. However, it does point future article writers towards what I believe could be a very intriguing topic for exploration. Who knows? I might just write such an article myself for this blog.

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This little video tells the viewer how to use (and get away with breaking) the 180 degrees rule.

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You know, when it comes to oddball ways directors have scraped together money for their projects, Kubrick hustling chess games to scam unwitting potzers out of their pocket change barely even qualifies, especially when compared with what Robert Rodriguez did to finance his films. But hey, it's Kubrick, so I suppose he makes the above-linked list based the quality of his oeuvre and the pull that the authors suspected including him would have on movie geeks, in terms of getting eyeballs directed towards their article. I guess their scam worked, seeing as they got my attention.

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During the course of researching and writing his book Reconstructing Strangelove, Inside Stanley Kubrick's Nightmare Comedy, author Mick Broderick uncovered a long hidden plan by Kubrick to relocate his entire family to Australia if ever it became obvious that a nuclear war was about to start... as well as the hilarious reason why Kubrick eventually gave up on his plans:

The American director had set up accounts, transferred funds, organised visas and investigated film projects in anticipation of his move. 

However, he cancelled when he discovered he would have to share a bathroom on the ship that would take him to Australia. 

“Famous for not flying, Stanley had bought tickets for the ocean liner. But when he found out he would have to share a bathroom the trip was off,” says Broderick. 

“The idea of spending months at sea sharing toilet space with complete strangers was intolerable; he would much rather face thermonuclear war.”

You know what, folks? If you don't think this qualifies as classic, Strangelove-level comedy in a Kubrick vein all on its own, I don't know what to tell you.

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Speaking of interesting books, Robert Koller's The Extraordinary Image: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and the Reimagining of Cinema explores the obsessions of Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Welles, based on the ways in which they expanded the use of sound in cinema. Based on this lengthy, academically rigorous review, it looks very much worth checking out.

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Apparently, people are saying The Weekend's latest video, for a song called "Secrets", was influenced or inspired by Kubrick in some way. I'm not so sure about that, but you can be the judge. Here's the vid:

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Illustrator Brian Sanders offers a rare glimpse into Stanley Kubrick's creative process. Here's an example of the kind of illustrations you'll find at this link.

INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR OF "KUBRICK'S GAME" NOVEL

When I first heard about Derek Taylor Kent's novel, Kubrick's Game, I have to admit to feeling a complicated mixture of curiosity, interest, and profound self-loathing. The curiosity and interest had obvious causes... I'm a life-long and devoted Kubrick fanatic, in love with most of his movies and fascinated by the minutia of his life's story (as chronicled in my early blog posts, Confessions of a Kubrick Nut, Parts One, Part Two, and Part Three in 3D). But whence this negativity? 

Most likely, it probably stemmed from the fact that I've long wanted to try writing a "Kubrick novel" of my own, and I've been too damn lazy and/or procrastination-bound to work up the gumption to actually DO IT, goddamn it. 

Anyway, I've recently heard good things about Kent's book, so I went ahead and ordered it. I'll write a review and publish it here as soon as I've read it, but in the meantime, enjoy this recent interview with Kent, published at BigShinyRobot.com. 

Here are the interview's pre-amble, followed by the first question and (surprising to me!) answer:

Sometimes a book hits all your interests all at once, and there's really nothing else quite like it out there. The key to Kubrick's Game is that it is filled with startling plot twists, and almost every chapter ends with a 'cliffhanger,' so you have to keep reading to see what will happen next. On the whole, the story is compelling and interesting, despite my workman-like appreciation for Kubrick’s films. It reads like a high-end Da Vinci Code (better yet, think a cinephiles Ready Player One) but is built with both greater complexity and subtlety. Twist after twist, revelation after revelation, the plot becomes a tangled net of intrigue as the characters race toward a showdown where truths and identities are shockingly uncovered. A must read for any Kubrick fan. 

BSR: Do you believe in any conspiracy theories? 

KENT: In terms of Stanley Kubrick conspiracy theories, I believe the theory that holds the most weight is that he had something to do with the Apollo 11 moon landing or at least that something was fishy about it. I wouldn't go as far as to say the whole thing was faked, but as is detailed in the book, let's just say I would not be surprised if what the world saw on television wasn't what actually happened,

IRVINE WELSH ON THE SAVAGE GREATNESS OF A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

From a think-piece on the legacy of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange, written for the Telegraph UK, published October 1st of this year:

Few writers, whatever the claims made for them by literary critics, ever manage to spawn big cultural moments. One who genuinely did so was Anthony Burgess, with his novel A Clockwork Orange. And, as novelists are often contrary by nature, he was highly ambivalent about this state of affairs. Burgess would disparagingly refer to the book, published in 1962, as a “novella”, regarding it as an inconsequential sliver of his Brobdingnagian canon. He blamed (and there’s really no other term for it) the book’s resonance on the Stanley Kubrick film adaptation, which appeared nine years later. 

My generation was obsessed with this stylistic, inventive affair, a movie that spurned both mainstream Hollywood concerns and European art house affectations to stake out a unique terrain for British independent cinema. Kubrick’s movie was an influence on the Ziggy-era David Bowie, and it was those cool credentials that made me backtrack to the film, which I first saw at a late-night screening several years after its release. As is generally the way of those things, far fewer of us had enjoyed any exposure to the novel. As a writer who has had many of his own books adapted for screen, I’m a little uncomfortable at conceding that I was in this camp. 

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Much of Burgess’s enmity towards his creation stems from the missing last chapter in the American editions of the novel. His US publisher omitted it on the quasi-religious principle, beloved of that culture, that over here all is good, while across the street evil abounds. This is the childlike thinking that allows authors, film-makers and governments to create monsters in order to terrorise and manipulate the domestic population of that nation. 

In this final chapter, Burgess has Alex growing out of his wrongdoings, looking back and regarding it as all a little bit sad and embarrassing – the antics of daft kids – and, as the cliché goes, determined that his own children won’t make the same mistakes he did. Basically, it’s the beautiful truth of redemption, and the stunningly mundane lesson of real life. It profoundly isn’t dramatic; but it has social truth, intellectual honesty and the intrinsic morality of proper storytelling. This raises the uncomfortable question: which is more important to the novelist? To the reader? 

Burgess originally agreed to dispense with chapter 21 for money but, once he had made enough, insisted that it was reinserted. He was correct in doing this, although you can understand why Stanley Kubrick, though filming in Britain, chose to work from the US edition and omitted it. This understandably was a running sore for Burgess, though his ire was directed not at the film-maker, with whom he remained on good terms, but his American publishers.

Read the rest of this intriguing piece at the link provided above. Also, if you plan on reading any of Irvine Welsh's novels, I'd recommend Filth. It's pretty crazy.