Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures

By Ted Elrick
Photos By Robert Hale

Director Jan Harlan and Christiane Kubrick

The documentary, which mixes interviews with archival behind-the-scenes photos and film, as well as some of Kubrick's home movies, has played in a number of film festivals and is being included in a new DVD collection of digitally restored films by Kubrick.

The evening began with a reception in the DGA's atrium. Among those in attendance were Sydney Pollack, Robert Wise, Tom Cruise, John Frankenheimer and Miguel Arteta.

Before the screening, DGA President Jack Shea addressed the audience observing that, "Most films are viewed, but Stanley Kubrick films are studied. Each and every one of his films, in every way, is a Kubrick film. Kubrick accepted nothing less than total control of his films.

"His films sent waves of anticipation through the film industry, as well as through the movie-going public," Shea added. "Audiences went to a Kubrick film because of Stanley -- no matter what the subject or who played the starring role. I think that all directors hope that at least once, one of their films will make a difference. As a testament to his vision and skill, nearly all of Kubrick's did."

Shea then thanked Harlan and paid special acknowledgment to Kubrick's widow, Christiane, both of whom also attended the event. "It is only with her participation that we are able to share a part of Stanley Kubrick few have known."

DGA President Jack Shea, actor Tom Cruise, director Sydney Pollack and Warner Bros. Chairman and CEO Barry Meyer.
(Photo: Robert Hale)

In a separate interview, DGA Magazine spoke with Harlan about his documentary and its rare look at the director who became a legend. Harlan's first credit on a Kubrick film was as assistant to the producer on A Clockwork Orange. Then he served as executive producer on Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut and the recent A.I. Artificial Intelligence which began as a Kubrick project and was recently made by director Steven Spielberg.

"I had known Stanley since the '50s," Harlan said. "We saw each other regularly at family gatherings, New Year's Eve, stuff like that. I was working in Zurich and he asked me to go with him as a liaison to Romania on the film Napoleon. That film fell apart but I had gone to England for pre-production and to familiarize myself with all the aspects [of film production]. My wife and I loved England and I decided, 'OK, I'll stay here and work with Stanley because it's interesting and good fun.' So I learned a new profession. Years later on Barry Lyndon I began to really learn about the business."

After having worked on so many of his brother-in-law's classic films, Harlan is reluctant to classify A Life in Pictures as a film. "It's a documentary. It's different from a feature. I did the interviews, but I'm not really a film director. I'm good at getting people to let me interview them. I was very glad to get Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson to open up about Stanley."

Harlan conducted his interviews on digital video and obtained massive amounts of material. For instance, his interview with Scorsese lasted two and a half hours. "So much was just wonderful, and the problem was that you have to throw out 95 percent of it. That was the tough part of editing because I had so much more material."

He particularly wished he could have included another ten minutes on the art department from 2001 but ultimately had to cut it because, "[the film] would be too heavy on 2001 and you have to be reasonable even when you go through 13 films. The first two or three films you can hurry up, but after, these were all major films, from Dr. Strangelove on."

"They sort of make fun of the fact that Stanley took such a long time [to make a film]," Harlan said. "That's an important sequence because he was so heavily criticized by everybody that he took so long. What people don't realize is that we had a very small crew. We could afford to do it. We would typically spend in a week what other major films spend in a day. So we were very, very tight in those things because we put the money in time. Many journalists sometimes wrote, 'How can Warner Bros. let this lunatic get away with this?' It's totally uninformed. Warner Bros. didn't care. They just wanted to have a good film that hopefully doesn't go too much over budget. If it goes over schedule, it wasn't their concern."

Harlan's main concern in putting the two hour and 15-minute documentary together was that he never wanted it to be boring. "You cannot preach to people. It cannot be a lecture; that has to be avoided. Sometimes documentaries dig themselves into this trap of only giving information. People don't want to go to school.

"Stanley was a terrific guy. When someone is as talented and as strong as he was, you don't have to improve on him. You also don't have to say he was holy, because he wasn't. I was not going to make him into St. Stanley. That was absolutely unnecessary. He was OK as he was."

In addition to Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, the DVD Stanley Kubrick Collection includes restored and remastered versions of Lolita, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut.

see Kubrick on the set of 2001 in DGA Scrapbook

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