8mo ago

‘He erased the entire project’ … the book Stanley Kubrick didn’t want anyone to read to be published

www.theguardian.com ‘He erased the entire project’ … the book Stanley Kubrick didn’t want anyone to read to be published

Half a century since the perfectionist director vowed to block it, a critique that dared to discuss flaws in his films is to be published

Stanley Kubrick, the relentless perfectionist who directed some of cinema’s greatest classics, was so sensitive to criticism that, in 1970, he threatened legal action to block publication of a book which dared to discuss flaws in his films.

The director of Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey, warned the book’s author and publisher that he would fight “tooth and nail” and “use every legal means at his disposal” to prevent its publication – and he did.

Now, 25 years after his death, the book Kubrick did not want anyone to read is being published, more than half a century late.

The Magic Eye: The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick by Neil Hornick now has three prefaces reflecting its subject’s ruthlessness in trying to block publication and control his image.

Hornick, now 84, from London, said Kubrick’s legal threats had come as a shock: “I regard it as a painful episode.”

54 comments

A well regarded artistic mind being kind of a piece of shit? I am shocked! I'm just thankful personal favorites of mine like Orson Scott Card, J.K. Rowling, and H.P. Lovecraft are fine, upstanding individuals who've dodged controversy at every turn.
Wait hold on... He's a massive homophobe? She said what? He named his cat that?
Oh... well... umm... lovely weather we're having huh?
- That's the nice thing about being a Terry Pratchett fan. The more I learn about him, the more I love him.
  
  And Tolkien. Fuck his estate though
- To be fair, the name of Lovecraft's cat was the tip of the iceberg when it came to him. I love the world building he did, but it's kind of hard to read a lot of his stories filled with big-lipped, dark savages. On the other hand, with Lovecraft, it seemed less a case of "white people are superior" and more a case of "all of humanity deserves to be thrown into the hellbeast pit, but white people should be thrown in last," which is... still racist, but I guess not supremacist exactly?
  Apparently his Jewish wife occasionally had to remind him who he married when he would go off on an antisemitic tirade, which I find quite amusing.
  
  Nope. Lovecraft was about as white supremacist as it gets - he literally excused lynchings of black folks and the KKK's terrorism because, supposedly, white people had to resort to "extra-legal measures" to protect themselves from (supposed) "mongrelisation."
  Ie, just your bog-standard white supremacism on a stick.
  
  What I really love about Lovecraft was how inclusionary the community around the Cthulhu mythos has become.
  
  That’s a lot of deflection of personal self hate.
- I remember reading a biography (autobiography maybe; forget who actually wrote it) on HP Lovecraft where it mentioned his cats name and I thought "well he was from the 1800's so product of the time..." and then find out the dude was so racist, the KKK kicked him out.
- So glad someone is calling out card here.
  Orson Scott card is a pile of shit.
  
  And his work is shit. I have no idea why so many adults think that young adult level writing and storytelling is the work of a master.

I love his movies and he was definitely a genius director, but man, was he a gigantic asshole...
- A total monster. The way he treated Shelly Duvall on the set of The Shining was inexcusable. I absolutely love his films, but he was a very bad man.
  
  He also called Stephen King at 3 in the morning, asked him stupid questions about his book and then hung up on him without even saying goodbye.
  
  Yep, I have to go watch Popeye so I can see her happy again

Stanley Kubrick is my favorite director of all time. I consider Barry Lyndon such high art that if you could frame it, it would belong in the Louvre. But he was entirely about managing everything about his films and his life to precise detail, so it doesn't surprise me that he canceled a book that had criticisms he didn't care for.
Really, most unvarnished truths about Kubrick were only ever going to come out after his death when his correspondence could be studied and people could be interviewed with proper hindsight.

What a snowflake

What a baby.

My primary complaint about Kubrick is that, despite all his accolades as an auteur... Virtually all of his films are adaptations of other works.
The closest he comes to an actual original work is 2001, but even that has a basis in a few short stories, and Clarke collaborated on the film, producing the novel at the same time.
- I don’t know why that would be a complaint. A directors job isn’t to write a screenplay, let alone an original.
  
  A director, yes, but the Kubrick fanbase elevates him above being a mere director which is why I used the word "auteur".
  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/auteur%20theory
- The same is true about Shakespeare. Almost all of his plays are derivative.
- I mean, most of those "adaptations" are extremely loose, his movies differ wildly from their source material in most cases

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