590 lines
28 KiB
Markdown
590 lines
28 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2014-04-20T00:14:04.000Z'
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title: Citizen Kubrick (2004)
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url: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/mar/27/features.weekend
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author: akkartik
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points: 101
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 26
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1397952844
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_akkartik
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- story_7615271
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objectID: '7615271'
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year: 2004
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---
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Stanley Kubrick's films were landmark events - majestic, memorable and
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richly researched. But, as the years went by, the time between films
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grew longer and longer, and less and less was seen of the director. What
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on earth was he doing? Two years after his death, Jon Ronson was invited
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to the Kubrick estate and let loose among the fabled archive. He was
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looking for a solution to the mystery - this is what he found
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In 1996 I received what was - and probably remains - the most exciting
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telephone call I have ever had. It was from a man calling himself Tony.
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"I'm phoning on behalf of [Stanley
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Kubrick](https://www.theguardian.com/film/stanleykubrick)," he said.
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"I'm sorry?" I said.
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"Stanley would like you to send him a radio documentary you made called
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Hotel Auschwitz," said this man. This was a programme for Radio 4 about
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the marketing of the concentration camp.
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"Stanley Kubrick?" I said.
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"Let me give you the address," said the man. He sounded posh. It seemed
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that he didn't want to say any more about this than he had to. I sent
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the tape to a PO box in St Albans and waited. What might happen next?
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Whatever it was, it was going to be amazing. My mind started going
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crazy. Perhaps Kubrick would ask me to collaborate on something. (Oddly,
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in this daydream, I reluctantly turned him down because I didn't think
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I'd make a good screenwriter.)
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At the time I received that telephone call, nine years had passed since
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Kubrick's last film, Full Metal Jacket. All anyone outside his circle
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knew about him was that he was living in a vast country house somewhere
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near St Albans - or a "secret lair", according to a Sunday Times article
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of that year - behaving presumably like some kind of mad hermit genius.
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Nobody even knew what he looked like. It had been 16 years since a
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photograph of him had been published.
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He'd gone from making a film a year in the 1950s (including the
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brilliant, horrific Paths Of Glory), to a film every couple of years in
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the 1960s (Lolita, Dr Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey all came out
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within a six-year period), to two films a decade in the 1970s and 1980s
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(there had been a seven-year gap between The Shining and Full Metal
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Jacket), and now, in the 1990s, absolutely nothing. What the hell was he
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doing in there? According to rumours, he was passing his time being
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terrified of germs and refusing to let his chauffeur drive over 30mph.
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But now I knew what he was doing. He was listening to my BBC Radio 4
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documentary, Hotel Auschwitz.
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"The good news," wrote Nicholas Wapshott in the Times in 1997, bemoaning
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the ever-lengthening gaps between his films, "is that Kubrick is a
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hoarder ... There is an extensive archive of material at his home in
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Childwick Bury. When that is eventually opened, we may get close to
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understanding the tangled brain which brought to life HAL, the
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\[Clockwork Orange\] Droogs and Jack Torrance."
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The thing is, once I sent the tape to the PO box, nothing happened next.
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I never heard anything again. Not a word. My cassette disappeared into
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the mysterious world of Stanley Kubrick. And then, three years later,
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Kubrick was dead.
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Two years after that, in 2001, I got another phone call out of the blue
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from the man called Tony. "Do you want to get some lunch?" he asked.
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"Why don't you come up to Childwick?"
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The journey to the Kubrick house starts normally. You drive through
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rural Hertfordshire, passing ordinary-sized postwar houses and opticians
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and vets. Then you turn right at an electric gate with a "Do Not
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Trespass" sign. Drive through that, and through some woods, and past a
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long, white fence with the paint peeling off, and then another electric
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gate, and then another electric gate, and then another electric gate,
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and you're in the middle of an estate full of boxes.
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There are boxes everywhere - shelves of boxes in the stable block, rooms
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full of boxes in the main house. In the fields, where racehorses once
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stood and grazed, are half a dozen portable cabins, each packed with
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boxes. These are the boxes that contain the legendary Kubrick archive.
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Was the Times right? Would the stuff inside the boxes offer an
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understanding of his "tangled brain"? I notice that many of the boxes
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are sealed. Some have, in fact, remained unopened for decades.
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Tony turns out to be Tony Frewin. He started working as an office boy
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for Kubrick in 1965, when he was 17. One day, apropos of nothing,
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Kubrick said to him, "You have that office outside my office if I need
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you." That was 36 years ago and Tony is still here, two years after
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Kubrick died and was buried in the grounds behind the house. There may
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be no more Kubrick movies to make, but there are DVDs to remaster and
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reissue in special editions. There are box sets and retrospective books
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to oversee. There is paperwork.
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Tony gives me a guided tour of the house. We walk past boxes and more
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boxes and filing cabinets and past a grand staircase. Childwick was once
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home to a family of horse-breeders called the Joels. Back then there
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were, presumably, busts or floral displays on either side at the bottom
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of this staircase. Here, instead, is a photocopier on one side and
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another photocopier on the other.
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"Is this ... ?" I ask.
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"Yes," says Tony. "This is how Stanley left it."
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Stanley Kubrick's house looks as if the Inland Revenue took it over long
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ago.
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Tony takes me into a large room painted blue and filled with books.
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"This used to be the cinema," he says.
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"Is it the library now?" I ask.
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"Look closer at the books," says Tony.
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I do. "Bloody hell," I say. "Every book in this room is about
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Napoleon\!"
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"Look in the drawers," says Tony.
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I do.
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"It's all about Napoleon, too\!" I say. "Everything in here is about
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Napoleon\!"
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I feel a little like Shelley Duvall in The Shining, chancing upon her
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husband's novel and finding it is comprised entirely of the line "All
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Work And No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy" typed over and over again. John
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Baxter wrote, in his unauthorised biography of Kubrick, "Most people
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attributed the purchase of Childwick to Kubrick's passion for privacy,
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and drew parallels with Jack Torrance in The Shining."
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This room full of Napoleon stuff seems to bear out that comparison.
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"Somewhere else in this house," Tony says, "is a cabinet full of 25,000
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library cards, three inches by five inches. If you want to know what
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Napoleon, or Josephine, or anyone within Napoleon's inner circle was
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doing on the afternoon of July 23 17-whatever, you go to that card and
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it'll tell you."
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"Who made up the cards?" I ask.
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"Stanley," says Tony. "With some assistants."
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"How long did it take?" I ask.
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"Years," says Tony. "The late 1960s."
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Kubrick never made his film about Napoleon. During the years it took him
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to compile this research, a Rod Steiger movie called Waterloo was
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written, produced and released. It was a box-office failure, so MGM
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abandoned Napoleon and Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange instead.
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"Did you do this kind of massive research for all the movies?" I ask
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Tony.
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"More or less," he says.
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"OK," I say. "I understand how you might do this for Napoleon, but what
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about, say, The Shining?"
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"Somewhere here," says Tony, "is just about every ghost book ever
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written, and there'll be a box containing photographs of the exteriors
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of maybe every mountain hotel in the world."
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There is a silence.
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"Tony," I say, "can I look through the boxes?"
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I've been coming to the Kubrick house a couple of times a month ever
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since.
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I start, chronologically, in a portable cabin behind the stable block,
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with a box marked Lolita. I open it, noting the ease with which the lid
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comes off. "These are excellent, well-designed boxes," I think to
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myself. I flick through the paperwork inside, pausing randomly at a
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letter that reads as if it has come straight from a Jane Austen novel:
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Dear Mr Kubrick,
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Just a line to express to you and to Mrs Kubrick my husband's and my own
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deep appreciation of your kindness in arranging for Dimitri's
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introduction to your uncle, Mr Günther Rennert.
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Sincerely,
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Mrs Vladimir Nabokov
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I later learn that Dimitri was a budding opera singer and Rennert was a
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famous opera director, in charge of the Munich Opera House. This letter
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was written in 1962, back in the days when Kubrick was still producing a
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film every year or so. This box is full of fascinating correspondence
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between Kubrick and the Nabokovs but - unlike the fabulously
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otherworldly Napoleon room, which was accrued six years later - it is
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the kind of stuff you would probably find in any director's archive.
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The unusual stuff - the stuff that elucidates the ever-lengthening gaps
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between productions - can be found in the boxes that were compiled from
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1968 onwards. In a box next to the Lolita box in the cabin, I find an
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unusually terse letter, written by Kubrick to someone called Pat, on
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January 10 1968: "Dear Pat, Although you are apparently too busy to
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personally return my phone calls, perhaps you will find time in the near
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future to reply to this letter?"
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(Later, when I show Tony this letter, he says he's surprised by the
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brusqueness. Kubrick must have been at the end of his tether, he says,
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because on a number of occasions he said to Tony, "Before you send an
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angry letter, imagine how it would look if it got into the hands of Time
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Out.") The reason for Kubrick's annoyance in this particular letter was
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because he'd heard that the Beatles were going to use a landscape shot
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from Dr Strangelove in one of their movies: "The Beatle film will be
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very widely seen," Kubrick writes, "and it will make it appear that the
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material in Dr Strangelove is stock footage. I feel this harms the
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film."
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There is a similar batch of telexes from 1975: "It would appear,"
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Kubrick writes in one, "that Space 1999 may very well become a
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long-running and important television series. There seems nothing left
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now but to seek the highest possible damages ... The deliberate choice
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of a date only two years away from 2001 is not accidental and harms us."
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This telex was written seven years after the release of 2001.
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But you can see why Kubrick sometimes felt compelled to wage war to
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protect the honour of his work. A 1975 telex, from a picture publicity
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man at Warner Bros called Mark Kauffman, regards publicity stills for
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Kubrick's sombre reworking of Thackeray's Barry Lyndon. It reads:
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"Received additional material. Is there any material with humour or
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zaniness that you could send?"
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Kubrick replies, clearly through gritted teeth: "The style of the
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picture is reflected by the stills you have already received. The film
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is based on William Makepeace Thackeray's novel which, though it has
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irony and wit, could not be well described as zany."
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I take a break from the boxes to wander over to Tony's office. As I walk
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in, I notice something pinned to his letterbox. "POSTMAN," it reads.
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"Please put all mail in the white box under the colonnade across the
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courtyard to your right."
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It is not a remarkable note except for one thing. The typeface Tony used
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to print it is exactly the same typeface Kubrick used for the posters
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and title sequences of Eyes Wide Shut and 2001. "It's Futura Extra
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Bold," explains Tony. "It was Stanley's favourite typeface. It's sans
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serif. He liked Helvetica and Univers, too. Clean and elegant."
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"Is this the kind of thing you and Kubrick used to discuss?" I ask.
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"God, yes," says Tony. "Sometimes late into the night. I was always
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trying to persuade him to turn away from them. But he was wedded to his
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sans serifs."
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Tony goes to his bookshelf and brings down a number of volumes full of
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examples of typefaces, the kind of volumes he and Kubrick used to study,
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and he shows them to me. "I did once get him to admit the beauty of
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Bembo," he adds, "a serif."
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"So is that note to the postman a sort of private tribute from you to
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Kubrick?" I ask.
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"Yeah," says Tony. He smiles to himself. "Yeah, yeah."
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For a moment I also smile at the unlikely image of the two men
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discussing the relative merits of typefaces late into the night, but
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then I remember the first time I saw the trailer for Eyes Wide Shut, the
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way the words "CRUISE, KIDMAN, KUBRICK" flashed dramatically on to the
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screen in large red, yellow and white colours, to the song Baby Did A
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Bad Bad Thing. Had the words not been in Futura Extra Bold, I realise
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now, they wouldn't have sent such a chill up the spine. Kubrick and Tony
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obviously became, at some point during their relationship, tireless
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amateur sleuths, wanting to amass and consume and understand all
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information. Tony obviously misses Kubrick terribly.
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But this attention to detail becomes so amazingly evident and seemingly
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all-consuming in the later boxes, I begin to wonder whether it was worth
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it. In one portable cabin, for example, there are hundreds and hundreds
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of boxes related to Eyes Wide Shut, marked EWS - Portman Square, EWS -
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Kensington & Chelsea, etc, etc. I choose the one marked EWS - Islington
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because that's where I live. Inside are hundreds of photographs of
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doorways. The doorway of my local video shop, Century Video, is here, as
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is the doorway of my dry cleaner's, Spots Suede Services on Upper
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Street. Then, as I continue to flick through the photographs, I find, to
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my astonishment, pictures of the doorways of the houses in my own
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street. Handwritten at the top of these photographs are the words,
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"Hooker doorway?"
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"Huh," I think. So somebody within the Kubrick organisation (it was, in
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fact, his nephew) once walked up my street, on Kubrick's orders, hoping
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to find a suitable doorway for a hooker in Eyes Wide Shut. It is both an
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extremely interesting find and a bit of a kick in the teeth.
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It is not, though, as incredible a coincidence as it may at first seem.
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Judging by the writing on the boxes, probably just about every doorway
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in London has been captured and placed inside this cabin. This solves
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one mystery for me - the one about why Kubrick, a native of the Bronx,
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chose the St Albans countryside, of all places, for his home. I realise
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now that it didn't matter. It could have been anywhere. It is as if the
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whole world is to be found somewhere within this estate.
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But was it worth it? Was the hooker doorway eventually picked for Eyes
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Wide Shut the quintessential hooker doorway? Back at home, I watch Eyes
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Wide Shut again on DVD. The hooker doorway looks exactly like any
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doorway you would find in Lower Manhattan - maybe on Canal Street or in
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the East Village. It is a red door, up some brownstone steps, with the
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number 265 painted on the glass at the top. Tom Cruise is pulled through
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the door by the hooker. The scene is over in a few seconds. (It was
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eventually shot on a set at Pinewood.) I remember the Napoleon archive,
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the years it took Kubrick and some assistants to compile it, and I
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suggest to Jan Harlan, Kubrick's executive producer and brother-in-law,
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that had there not been all those years of attention to detail during
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the early planning of the movie, perhaps Napoleon would actually have
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been made.
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"That's a completely theoretical and obsolete observation\!" replies
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Jan, in a jolly way. "That's like saying had Vermeer painted in a
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different manner, he'd have done 100 more paintings."
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"OK," I say.
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Jan is right, of course. So why am I so keen to discover in the boxes
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some secret personality flaw to Kubrick, whose films I love so much? He
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was the greatest director of his generation. Jack Nicholson's "Here's
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Johnny\!" Lolita's heart-shaped sunglasses. The Dr Strangelove cowboy
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riding the nuclear bomb like it's a bucking bronco. And on and on. So
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many images have implanted themselves into the public consciousness,
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surely because of the director's ever-burgeoning attention to detail.
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"Why don't you just accept," says Jan, "that this was how he worked?"
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"But if he hadn't allowed his tireless work ethic to take him to
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unproductive places, he'd have made more films," I say. "For instance,
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the Space 1999 lawsuit seems, with the benefit of hindsight, a little
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trivial."
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"Of course I wish he had made more films," says Jan.
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Jan and I are having this conversation inside the stable block,
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surrounded by hundreds of boxes. For the past few days I have been
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reading the contents of those marked "Fan Letters" and "Résumés". They
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are filled with pleas from hundreds of strangers, written over the
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decades. They say much the same thing: "I know I have the talent to be a
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big star. I know it's going to happen to me one day. I just need a
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break. Will you give me that break?"
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All these letters are - every single one of them - written by people of
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whom I have never heard. Many of these young actors will be middle-aged
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by now. I want to go back in time and say to them, "You're not going to
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make it\! It's best you know now rather than face years of having your
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dreams slowly erode." They are heartbreaking boxes.
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"Stanley never wrote back to the fans," says Jan. "He never, never
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responded. It would have been too much. It would have driven him crazy.
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He didn't like to get engaged with strangers."
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(In fact, I soon discover, Kubrick did write back to fans, on random,
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rare occasions. I find two replies in total. Maybe he only ever wrote
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back twice. One reads, "Your letter of 4th May was overwhelming. What
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can I say in reply? Sincerely, Stanley Kubrick." The other reads, "Dear
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Mr William, Thank you for writing. No comment about A Clockwork Orange.
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You will have to decide for yourself. Sincerely, Stanley Kubrick.")
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"One time, in 1998," Jan says, "I was in the kitchen with Stanley and I
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mentioned that I'd just been to the optician's in St Albans to get a new
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pair of glasses. Stanley looked shocked. He said, 'Where exactly did you
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go?' I told him and he said, 'Oh, thank God\! I was just in the other
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optician's in town getting some glasses and I used your name\!'" Jan
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laughs. "He used my name in the optician's, everywhere."
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"But even if he didn't reply to the fan letters," I say, "they've all
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been so scrupulously read and filed."
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The fan letters are perfectly preserved. They are not in the least bit
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dusty or crushed. The system used to file them is, in fact,
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extraordinary. Each fan box contains perhaps 50 orange folders. Each
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folder has the name of a town or city typed on the front - Agincourt,
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Ontario; Alhambra, California; Cincinnati, Ohio; Daly City, California,
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and so on - and they are in alphabetical order inside the boxes. And
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inside each folder are all the fan letters that came from that
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particular place in any one year. Kubrick has handwritten "F-P" on the
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positive ones and "F-N" on the negative ones. The crazy ones have been
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marked "F-C".
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"Look at this," I say to Jan.
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I hand him a letter written by a fan and addressed to Arthur C Clarke.
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He forwarded it on to Kubrick and wrote on the top, "Stanley. See P3\!\!
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Arthur."
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Jan turns to page 3, where Clarke had marked, with exclamation marks,
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the following paragraph:
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"What is the meaning behind the epidemic? Does the pink furniture reveal
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anything about the 3rd monolith and it's emitting a pink colour when it
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first approaches the ship? Does this have anything to do with a shy
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expression? Does the alcohol offered by the Russians have anything to do
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with French kissing and saliva?"
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"Why do you think Arthur C Clarke marked that particular paragraph for
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Kubrick to read?" I ask Jan.
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"Because it is so bizarre and absurd," he says.
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"I thought so," I say. "I just wanted to make sure."
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In the back of my mind, I wondered whether this paragraph was marked
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because the writer of the fan letter - Mr Sam Laks of Alhambra,
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California - had actually worked out the secret of the monolith in 2001.
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I find myself empathising with Sam Laks. I am also looking for answers
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to the mysteries. So many conspiracy theories and wild rumours
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surrounded Kubrick - the one about him being responsible for faking the
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moon landings (untrue), the one about his terror of germs (this one
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can't be true, either - there's a lot of dust around here), the one
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about him refusing to fly and drive over 30mph. (The flying one is true
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- Tony says he wasn't scared of planes, he was scared of air traffic
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controllers - but the one about the 30mph is "bullshit", says Tony. "He
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had a Porsche.")
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This is why my happiest times looking through the boxes are when things
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turn weird. For instance, at the end of one shelf inside the stable
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block is a box marked "Sniper head - scary". Inside, wrapped in
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newspaper, is an extremely lifelike and completely disgusting
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|
disembodied head of a young Vietnamese girl, the veins in her neck
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protruding horribly, her eyes staring out, her lips slightly open, her
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tongue just visible. I feel physically sick looking at it. As I hold it
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up by its blood-matted hair, Christiane, Kubrick's widow, walks past the
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window.
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"I found a head\!" I say.
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"It's probably Ryan O'Neal's head," she replies.
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Christiane has no idea who I am, nor what I'm doing in her house, but
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she accepts the moment with admirable calm.
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"No," I say. "It's the head of the sniper from Full Metal Jacket."
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"But she wasn't beheaded," calls back Christiane. "She was shot."
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"I know\!" I say.
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Christiane shrugs and walks on. The sniper head would probably please Mr
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Sam Laks, on a superficial level, because it is so grotesque. But in
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general the most exotic things to be found here are generated from the
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outside, from the imaginations of fans like him.
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"I was just talking to Tony about typefaces," I say to Jan.
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"Ah yes," says Jan. "Stanley loved typefaces." Jan pauses. "I tell you
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what else he loved."
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"What?" I ask.
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"Stationery," says Jan.
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I glance over at the boxes full of letters from people who felt about
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Kubrick the way Kubrick felt about stationery, and then back to Jan.
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|
"His great hobby was stationery," he says. "One time a package arrived
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|
with 100 bottles of brown ink. I said to Stanley, 'What are you going to
|
|
do with all that ink?' He said, 'I was told they were going to
|
|
discontinue the line, so I bought all the remaining bottles in
|
|
existence.' Stanley had a tremendous amount of ink." Jan pauses. "He
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|
loved stationery, pads, everything like that."
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|
Tony wanders into the stable block.
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"How's it going?" he asks.
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"Still looking for Rosebud," I say.
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"The closest I ever got to Rosebud," says Tony, "was finding a daisy gun
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that he had when he was a child."
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|
As I look through the boxes over the months, I never find my Hotel
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|
Auschwitz tape. Nor do I get around to opening the two boxes that read
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|
Shadow On The Sun. But, one evening just before last Christmas, I decide
|
|
to take a look. The boxes contain two volumes of what appears to be a
|
|
cheesy sci-fi radio drama script. The story begins with a sick dog: "Can
|
|
you run me over to Oxford with my dog?" says the dog's owner. "He's not
|
|
very well. I'm a bit worried about him, John." This is typed.
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Kubrick has handwritten below it: "THE DOG IS NOT WELL." It soon becomes
|
|
clear - through speed-reading - that a virus has been carried to earth
|
|
on a meteorite. This is why the dog is listless, and also why humans
|
|
across the planet are no longer able to control their sexual appetites.
|
|
It ends with a speech: "There's been so much killing - friend against
|
|
friend, neighbour against neighbour, but we all know nobody on this
|
|
earth is to blame, Mrs Brighton. We've all had the compulsions. We'll
|
|
just have to forgive each other our trespasses. I'll do my part. I'll
|
|
grant a general amnesty - wipe the slate clean. Then perhaps we can
|
|
begin to live again, as ordinary decent human beings, and forget the
|
|
horror of the past few months."
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|
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|
This, too, is typed. But all over the script I find notes handwritten by
|
|
Kubrick. ("Establish Brighton's interest in extraterrestrial matters";
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|
"Dog finds meteorite"; "John has got to have very powerful connections
|
|
of the highest level"; "A Bill Murray line\!") "Tony\!" I say. "What the
|
|
hell is this?"
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|
I believe I have stumbled on a lost Kubrick radio play. Perhaps he did
|
|
this in his spare time. But, if so, why?
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|
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|
"No, no," says Tony. "I know what this is."
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|
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|
Kubrick was always a keen listener to BBC Radio, Tony explains. When he
|
|
first arrived in the UK, back in the early 1960s, he happened to hear
|
|
this drama serial, Shadow On The Sun. Three decades later, in the early
|
|
1990s, after he had finished Full Metal Jacket, he was looking for a new
|
|
project, so he asked Tony to track down the scripts. He spent a few
|
|
years, on and off, thinking about Shadow On The Sun, reading and
|
|
annotating the scripts, before he abandoned the idea and eventually -
|
|
after working on and rejecting AI (which was filmed by Steven Spielberg
|
|
after Kubrick's death) - made Eyes Wide Shut instead.
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|
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|
"But the original script seems so cheesy," I say.
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|
"Ah," replies Tony, "but this is before Stanley worked his alchemy."
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|
And I realise this is true. "Dog finds meteorite." It sounds so banal,
|
|
but imagine how Kubrick might have directed it. Do the words, "Ape finds
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|
monolith" or, "Little boy turns the corner and sees twin girls" sound
|
|
any less banal on the page?
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|
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|
All this time I have been looking in the boxes for some embodiment of
|
|
the fantasies of the outsiders like Mr Sam Laks and me - but I never do
|
|
find anything like that. I suppose that the closer you get to an enigma,
|
|
the more explicable it becomes. Even the somewhat crazy-seeming stuff,
|
|
like the filing of the fan letters by the town from which they came,
|
|
begins to make sense after a while.
|
|
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|
It turns out that Kubrick ordered this filing in case he ever wanted to
|
|
have a local cinema checked out. If 2001, say, was being screened in
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|
Daly City, California, at a cinema unknown to Kubrick, he would get Tony
|
|
or one of his secretaries to telephone a fan from that town to ask them
|
|
to visit the cinema to ensure that, say, the screen wasn't ripped. Tony
|
|
says that if I'm looking for something exotic or unexpected or extreme,
|
|
if I'm looking for the solution to the mystery of Kubrick, I don't
|
|
really need to look inside the boxes. I just need to watch the films.
|
|
|
|
"It's all there," he says. "Those films are Stanley."
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|
|
|
Although the Kubricks have always closely guarded their privacy inside
|
|
Childwick, I come to the end of my time at the house during something of
|
|
a watershed moment. Christiane Kubrick and her daughter Katherine are
|
|
soon to open the grounds and the stable block to the public for an art
|
|
fair, displaying their work and the work of a number of local artists.
|
|
The boxes are going to be moved somewhere else. Many, in fact, have now
|
|
been shipped to Frankfurt. On March 31, the Deutsches Filmmuseum will
|
|
launch a major Kubrick exhibition, including lenses, props, cameras and
|
|
some of the stuff that I found in the boxes. This will tour across
|
|
Europe and hopefully visit London, if the BFI can find a suitable
|
|
exhibition space. And the German publisher Taschen is soon to bring out
|
|
a book on Kubrick that will reproduce some of the Napoleon archive.
|
|
|
|
Towards the end of my time at the Kubrick house, Tony mentions something
|
|
seemingly inconsequential, but as soon as he says it I realise that the
|
|
Rosebud I was after - the quintessence of Kubrick - has been staring me
|
|
in the face from the very first day. From the beginning, I had mentally
|
|
noted how well constructed the boxes were, and now Tony tells me that
|
|
this is because Kubrick designed them himself. He wasn't happy with the
|
|
boxes that were on the market - their restrictive dimensions and the
|
|
fact that it was sometimes difficult to get the tops off - so he set
|
|
about designing a whole new type of box. He instructed a company of box
|
|
manufacturers, G Ryder & Co, of Milton Keynes, to construct 400 of them
|
|
to his specifications.
|
|
|
|
"When one batch arrived," says Tony, "we opened them up and found a
|
|
note, written by someone at G Ryder & Co. The note said, 'Fussy
|
|
customer. Make sure the tops slide off.'"
|
|
|
|
Tony laughs. I half expect him to say, "I suppose we were a bit fussy."
|
|
But he doesn't. Instead, he says, "As opposed to non-fussy customers who
|
|
don't care if they struggle all day to get the tops off."
|
|
|
|
The thing is, nobody outside the Kubrick house got to see the boxes
|