STANLEY AND THE BROTHERS SCOTT

[EDITED TO REMOVE THE
INCREDIBLY ANNOYING SELF-LAUNCHING VIDEO, 
WHICH YOU CAN STILL FIND AT 
THE LINKED-TO ARTICLE BELOW, REGARDLESS]

During the course of a Hollywood Reporter Director's Roundtable consisting of David O. Russell, Tom Hooper, Quentin Tarantino, Danny Boyle, Alejandro G. Inarritu and Ridley Scott, the ALIEN director offered a small degree of elaboration on a film industry legend of long standing involving Blade Runner, The Shining, and Stanley Kubrick's uncredited addition to what would go on to become arguably the second most influential science fiction film in cinematic history after his own 2001: A Space Odyssey.  In the article accompanying the above video, Scott explains:

I had finished Blade Runner, and it was a disaster. My investors were giving me a really hard time, saying "You can't end the film with picking up a piece of origami, looking at the girl, walk in the elevator, nod, and bingo that's it." I said, "It's called a film noir." And they said, "What's a film noir?" That was a big problem. And he said, "We have to test this with an uplifting ending, where they will go off into the wilderness together." I said, "Well if they go off into a beautiful wilderness, why do they live in this dystopian environment?"
By then I had talked to Stanley a few times. I said, "I know you shot the hell out of The Shining, can I have some of the stuff?" So at the end of the film in Blade Runner, that's Stanley Kubrick's footage.

The full Director Roundtable will air on "Close Up With The Hollywood Reporter" on Sunday, Jan 3, at 11 a.m. ET on Sundance TV, and it's allegedly "rich with discussions about the work of Stanley Kubrick", so be sure to check it out when it airs, or later on, via various online video platforms where it will surely be widely available, considering the caliber of the assembled talent.

***

Ridley isn't the only Scott brother to be tight with Stanley Kubrick. Current KubrickU favorite Guillermo del Toro recently tweeted that he'd "heard that 1 shot in Barry Lyndon was done (following very specific instructions) by none other than a very young Tony Scott!" To which Cinephilia & Beyond helpfully replied with an excerpt from an October, 2012 conversation between Tom Cruise and Terry Semel in Interview Magazine:

CRUISE: He did not want to be a celebrity. You know, [the late director] Tony Scott worked on Barry Lyndon. He was in art school at the time. Tony told me that he wrote down the exact longitude and latitude of where Stanley wanted the camera, the exact height of the camera, and the time, to get the shot that Stanley wanted. Tony said he sat there for a couple of weeks trying to get the right light. Stanley really loved the Scott brothers. I've had long conversations about this with both Tony and Ridley. Stanley was a director who did not let people borrow or rent his lens. He never gave his Apollo lens to anyone. But when Ridley was having a really difficult time with the end of Blade Runner [1982], Stanley gave Ridley footage that he had shot but didn't use for the opening of The Shining. He was offering to let him use it for Blade Runner. That's how highly Stanley thought of them.

The rest of that short interview is very much worth reading, by the way. And, finally, here, dear reader, is a shot of the shot that Tony Scott worked so hard to help shoot:

BEN WHEATLEY'S HIGH-RISE IS COMING... AND IT FEELS LIKE KUBRICK

At least a little bit, don't you think? Here, watch and decide for yourself. I get a distinct Clockwork Orange meets Eyes Wide Shut vibe.

THAT ONE TIME GEORGE "MAD MAX" MILLER ALMOST MET KUBRICK

The HitFix interview series Motion [Captured] features a couple of interview video segments with George Miller talking about everything from Fury Road to Babe the Pig, and at one time, the talk turns Kubrickean. Here is that part of the exchange...

The rest of the page is also worth checking out for Kubrick fans, as author Drew McWeeny describes some off-the-record chatting the two did about their favorite Kubrick films (Clockwork, Barry Lyndon) and why James Cameron now actually LIKES Eyes Wide Shut (the answer isn't too terribly shocking). 

MILLION DOLLAR EXTREME RIFFS ON 2001

I may be working with the Million Dollar Extreme guys (a terrifyingly subversive comedy collective from Providence, I think) as an illustrator in the near future, so I've been checking out all their videos on Youtube (as should you be, too). I'd been skipping this one for some reason, but today, I went back and checked it out... and LOOK what I found.

SHINING REFERENCE IN RICK AND MORTY

ANOTHER KUBRICK FIRST

According to this Jamaica Observer article, "it has now been documented that the world's earliest public example of an inter-racial kiss was in a Granada Television Play of the Week broadcast in June 1962, titled You in Your Small Corner. The kiss was between Jamaican actor Lloyd Reckord and Elizabeth MacLennan. The film was based on the play written by the Cambridge educated Jamaican Barry Reckord, brother of the lead actor."

However... "In 1955, the Stanley Kubrick film Killer's Kiss featured a kiss between a white woman, Irene Kane and Jamaican-born Frank Silvera who had very light skin and was not actually playing a black character in the film. It is doubtful much of the audience at the time would have been aware he was of African descent."

Interesting, no?

STREEP ACCEPTS KUBRICK HONOUR AT BRITANNIA AWARDS

One of this generation's finest actors, Meryl Streep, was chosen to receive this year's Stanley Kubrick Award for Excellence in Film at the Britannia Awards ceremony.

The actress in turn praised the “irascibly brilliant Stephen Frears” and said he follows the tradition of people like Kubrick, who was a transformative artist. She said the previous Kubrick recipients were notable and she was “honored to join this distinguished group of men and … (pause) men.”

Heheh... cheeky.

MATT BERRY DOES KUBRICK IN TOAST OF LONDON'S LATEST EPISODE

Stanley Kubrick is all over the latest episode of Matt Berry's hilarious low-budget "theatre folk" comedy Toast of London. Check out the entire episode, below.

BEAUTIFUL NEW SHINING ANIMATED GIF

KUBRICK AT THE BACK - PETER WEBBER BUYS STANLEY'S BELOVED MERCEDES

CinephiliaBeyond.org brings us this interview with director Peter Webber in which he discusses his past work, including Girl With Pearl Earring, his upcoming work, including the documentary 10 Billion, and his habit of collecting cinematic memorabilia, including his recent purchase of Stanley Kubrick's 1984 Mercedes 500 SEL. The story of how this legendary vehicle came into Webber's possession may sound eerily familiar to readers of the KubrickU blog...

So, you bought Stanley Kubrick’s Mercedes. As far as film memorabilia is concerned, that’s more or less the Holy Grail. How did you get your hands on it? Who’s been its owner since Kubrick died?
WEBBER: It’s actually a kind of a Twitter story. You know how you can have various searches saved on Twitter? Well, one of the searches I saved was Kubrick. Every now and again when I’m bored I go up to see what Kubrick tweets have come up. I’m a big fan and I did this one day, and a tweet came up saying Stanley Kubrick’s car was for sale. I looked into it and, sure enough, it was someone who claimed to be selling Kubrick’s last car, this Mercedes, and I thought this must have been over since the ad had been up for a while. Especially when I looked at the price, which, for a second hand car in London, wasn’t expensive. So I got in touch with the guy because it looked as if it was still available, and he said someone else was interested in it. But because I lived in London, I was able to get up there straight away. It was as simple as that—the Internet led me to the car. I met the guy, who used to be an agent himself, and was a friend of the person who had bought it from Kubrick, he showed me all this documentation, and I scanned some of this stuff—especially the letter from the dealership to Stanley Kubrick. I made an offer then and there, which he accepted, I gave him a deposit, I had to go off to France that weekend, I came back from France, paid the rest and drove the car away. There we go. Very simple story.

Hey! That's exactly how I write this blog! Only I use Google News alerts instead of Twitter ones.

THE RED DRUM GETAWAY - A FANTASTIC KUBRICK/HITCHCOCK MASHUP

The Red Drum Getaway from Gump on Vimeo.

EYES WIDE SOCK

Please enjoy this hand puppets only parody short film of Eyes Wide Shut for a 30 second bumper contest for the upcoming Fantastic Fest! Check it out and if you dig it, give it a LIKE above the video in the following link!

Writer/Director - Christopher Baker Director of Photography - John J. Miller IV Edited by - Christopher Baker John J. Miller IV Gaffer - Jim Cote Set Design/Construction - Jeff Hamrick and Jordan Kent of Big Bad Props Puppets by - Christopher Baker Puppet performers - Juli Emmons Patrick Keenan Eric Ho Morgan Walston Chad Schwartzkopf Doug Fisher A Baker's Dozen Films Production

MOON LANDING CONSPIRITARDS TAKEN TO THE TOOL SHED

During the course of this epic take-down of the (literally) lunatic fringe conspiritard proponents who claim that the moon landing was hoaxed, Youtuber Steve Shives asserts the following gem:

"The theory asserts that NASA hired Kubrick to direct the (fake moon landing) project in 1968, when he was still in post-production on 2001. And if you believe that he would have allowed NASA to distract him from finishing his movie... then you don't know dick about Stanley Kubrick."

The ensuing footage of Buzz Aldrin punching a conspiritard moonie in the face is just icing on the cake, if you ask me. Enjoy!

ONE HELL OF AN ANIMATED GIF!

KUBRICK, THE BEATLES, AND THE ROLLING STONES

The Beatles almost starred in Lord of The Rings and the Rolling Stones almost made A Clockwork Orange. Stanley Kubrick was tapped by both.

Interesting new article covering Stanley Kubrick's almost-but-not-quite partnership(s) with rock's two biggest acts, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones (with a brief mention of his almost-but-not-quite partnership with, arguably, rock's third biggest act, Pink Floyd). The circuitous tale of juggled movie rights to two hot literary properties - The Lord of the Rings and A Clockwork Orange - really helps illustrate the huge role that chance plays in cinematic history. It reads, in part:

Like their albums, The Beatles wanted each of their films to be different from the one before. A Hard Day's Night was a mock-documentary. Help! was a James Bond spoof written by Marc Behm and Charles Wood. The Beatles again played versions of The Beatles. Their films’ producer Walter Shenson said the band wanted to play something other than themselves. Before J. R. R. Tolkien sold the film rights for The Lord of the Rings to United Artists, who produced A Hard Day’s Night, in 1969, The Beatles thought it might fulfill their contract nicely. Lennon, one of the best songwriters in music contacted Stanley Kubrick, one of the best directors in the movies, to make it. Lennon reportedly wanted to play Gollum. He cast Paul as Frodo, Ringo as Sam, and George as Gandalf.

J.R.R. Tolkien, who was an English professor at Oxford at the time, was initially in favor of the idea. ... Stanley Kubrick had not yet screwed Pink Floyd out of doing the music for his masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ever the perfectionist filmmaker, Kubrick told Lennon that he suspected the novel Lord of The Rings was too big to be filmed.

And then, coming in second as always, came The Rolling Stones, and their - or more specifically Mick Jagger's - attempts to bring Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange to the silver screen. The article continues:

(Stones associate Andrew) Oldham discovered the novel while he lived with Jagger and Richards in London in 1964. He wanted to make the anti-A Hard Day’s Night. 

“I couldn’t get the rights to make A Clockwork Orange because Anthony Burgess thought that he had cancer and just wrote furiously and took money in from others,” Oldham told contactmusic.com in 2007. 

In 1967, while the Rolling Stones were making Their Satanic Majesties Request, they reportedly started a collaboration with photographer Michael Cooper to produce a film adaptation A Clockwork Orange with Terry Southern. Southern wrote the novel Candy, which would be made into a soft porn movie with Ringo Starr. The Stones wanted Richard Lester to direct and wanted David Hemmings, the star of Blow Up and Barbarella, to play Alex. 

Terry Southern was the man who introduced Stanley Kubrick to A Clockwork Orange. He’d given a copy to the director when Kubrick was adapting his Dr. Strangelove.

More at the link. Not much... but more.