News just in, we've just heard that the film director
Stanley Kubrick has died at the age of 70.
Kubrick, who was an American, began his career in Hollywood
where he directed Spartacus but he decided to move to Britain
where he directed Lolita, Clockwork Orange,
2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining.
Stanley Kubrick was widely regarded
as one of the greatest and most controversial masters of cinema.
He just finished what was to be his last film, Eyes Wide Shut
which took five years to make.
Stanley Kubrick has been called the Howard Hughes of cinema
because he was such a recluse.
I prefer to think of him as the Frank Sinatra of cinema
because he always did everything his way.
You can back to any Kubrick film and feel rebirth.
Kubrick is at the very least a genuine innovator
who pushes out the boundaries of what is possible on film
and there have never been too many of those about.
He is also an elusive man
who rarely permits himself to be observed at work.
He was not any of the things that the newspapers wrote about him.
And he himself said, "It's very difficult. How do I defend myself?
"Do I write an article, you know, 'Dear public, I'm charming'?"
That's more difficult than it sounds, actually.
'Cause, you know, he never ever does a television,
or very rarely does any press interviews.
CIMENT: Well, perhaps the first question
would be about this problem of interview
because it seems that more and more
you feel reluctant to speak about your films?
KUBRICK: Well, I've never found it meaningful
or even possible to talk about film aesthetics
in terms of my own films.
I also don't particularly enjoy the interviews
because one always feels under the obligation
to say some witty, brilliant summary of the intentions of the films.
And with Dr. Strangelove
you could talk about the problems of Nuclear War,
2001 you could talk about extraterrestrial intelligence,
but I've never been able...
Clockwork Orange about violence. Yes, or future, social structures.
I mean, I don't know what led me to make any of the films, really,
that I made.
And I realised that my own thought processes are very hard to define,
in terms of, you know, what story do you want to make into a film.
In the end, you know, it does become this very indefinable thing
like why do you find one particular girl attractive
or why did you marry your wife.
Yes, and also, I suppose it is more difficult for you to analyse yourself
because the material comes from somebody else.
So, it's more difficult to see the personal reasons that were behind it since you didn't write it yourself.
But obviously the choice of the subject is a very personal thing,
because you can choose from thousands of books and you choose one.
You become the author of the book in a way by choosing it.
Well, if somebody else has written the story
you have the one great first reading.
You never again, once you read something for the first time,
can ever have that experience,
and the judgement of the narrative and the sense of excitement
of what parts of the story reach you emotionally,
is something which doesn't exist if you write a story.
We know, I mean, everybody knows,
it's notorious that you love to accumulate information, do research.
I mean, is it a thrill for you?
I mean, like being a reporter or a detective?
It is a little bit like a detective looking for clues.
On Barry Lyndon, I created a picture file
of thousands of drawings and paintings.
I think I've destroyed every art book that you can buy in a bookshop
by tearing the pages out, sorting them out.
But the costumes were all copied from paintings.
I mean, none of the costumes were, quote, "designed".
It's stupid to have a, quote, a "designer"
interpret the 18th century as they may remember it from art school
or from a few pictures they get together.
Would you agree that the more illusion works
the more realistic it is?
The cinema has to extremely realistic, you know,
to create illusion?
Well, I would always be attracted to something
which offered interesting visual possibilities
but that certainly wouldn't be the only reason.
And, since part of the problem of any story
is to make you believe what you are seeing,
certainly getting a realistic atmosphere,
especially if it's not a contemporary period,
is just necessary as a starting point.
It's why you came to this idea of shooting with light, natural light.
Well, that's something that I've always been very bothered by
in period films, is the light on interiors.
It's so false.
WOMAN: It was very different to any kind of other movies
as far as photography was concerned, because the lightning was so...
You know, lot of it was shot by candlelight,
a lot of it was shot with equipment that Stanley Kubrick had found,
that had never been used before on any other film.
So it was quite an experience working with that.
It was also quite difficult because there were times
when you just couldn't even move a fraction of an inch.
And there were days where we would sit there and just be lit all day.
You know, literally.
Samuel, I'm going outside for a breath of air.
Yes, my lady, of course.
To know about lighting and lenses and composition
has to be a help as a movie director.
I remember when I was making Spartacus,
the cameraman, Russ Metty, used to think it was very funny
that I used to pick set-ups with a view finder,
and he said to me, you know, "We're shooting in that direction
"and it's a knee figure shoot
"and just, you know, go and rehearse with the actors
"and when you come back we'll have the shot
"and the set-up and everything."
He couldn't understand why I wanted to waste time making a composition.
Certainly, photography gave me the first step
where I could actually try to make a movie
because without that, how could you make a movie by yourself
if you didn't know anything about photography?
What kind of photographs were you doing?
I mean, there is the famous photography
of the newspaper vendor and the...
Photojournalism with natural light.
Mostly things of the street like Cartier Bresson.
Well, unfortunately, because Look always did feature stories,
the subject matter always tended to be idiotic.
They would do a story like "Is an athlete stronger than a baby?"
And I would have to go and there'd be some guy
that would have to try to get in the same positions as a baby
and things like that.
They were pretty stupid feature stories
but occasionally I could do a sort of personality story,
or a story about something like a university or something like that
where you had a chance to take some reasonable photographs.
You were four years at Look?
Yes, about four years. I was about 20.
VOICEOVER: This forest then and all that happens now is outside history.
Only the unchanging shapes of fear, and doubt and death
are from our world.
These soldiers that you see
keep our language and our time
but have no other country but the mind.
You started by making almost a home movie,
when you were 23, Fear and Desire, about four men in a patrol.
What was behind this project?
That was a very arrogant, flippant script put together by myself,
and a boy that I knew who was a poet,
where we thought that we were geniuses,
and it was so incompetently done
and undramatic, and so pompous.
But I learned a lesson from that.
(GUNSHOTS)
At least it had the ambition of having some ideas in it
and I suppose you could say in that sense
there's some continuity with the rest of my films,
which I also tried to make sure
that they weren't just hollow entertainments.
(GUNSHOT)
You get the feeling from your films,
that really the world is not only a stage but it's a war
because man is fighting all the time.
Well, in a work of fiction, you have to have conflict.
If there isn't a problem in a story,
it can almost by definition not be a story.
You know, how many happy marriages are there?
And how many stepfathers love their stepsons?
And how many stepsons love their stepfather?
And how often do people
who have ambitions which only involve money,
do they find it a satisfying accomplishment?
Corporal Barry.
You are a gallant soldier and have evidently come of good stock.
But you're idle, dissolute and unprincipled.
You've done a great deal of harm to the men,
and for all your talents and bravery I'm sure you will come to no good.
REVIEWER: Barry Lyndon tells of the rise and fall
of an Irish adventurer and, let's face it, cad,
who becomes a soldier, a deserter, a gambler,
a duellist and eventually the husband of a very rich widow.
There is, I think, deliberately a distance
between the audience and the characters.
You are asked to watch the story of their adventures and misadventures
but not necessarily to identify with them.
Well, that's a dangerous approach but it works.
What also works is the leisurely pace of the film,
the pace that matches the pace of the novel
and I daresay of 18th century life itself.
So if you're expecting an all-action, swashbuckler, forget it.
What Kubrick presents instead is a hard unromantic
and unsentimental look at the life and times
of a good-looking but ill-fated opportunist.
Some people get out of the movie and said, you know,
"This character, we have absolutely no sympathy for him."
Well, I can't see how you can have no sympathy for him.
On the other hand, we're well aware of the weakness of his character
and the trap that he places himself in as a result of his ambitions,
and the limitation of his personality
that arises from the cynicism which develops,
from his early relationships with people.
He then becomes a very limited person,
he is completely unsuited for the life,
not only socially but temperamentally.
And so he puts himself into a gilded cage.
And from then on everything goes sour.
But how did you decide on Ryan O'Neal for the main role?
Well, I couldn't think of anybody else, to tell you the truth.
I mean, obviously, Barry Lyndon has to be physically attractive.
He couldn't be played by Al Pacino or Jack Nicholson.
He had to also be able to, in the beginning,
appear to be young and yet not look too young at the end.
And the actors, how do you direct actors?
Do you speak with them a lot?
Or do you let them more feel the text or do you have explanation?
Well, first of all, you discuss the character in general
and then you discuss the scene,
what the character's real attitude is in the scene.
Then comes this terrible moment of
the first time that you actually rehearse a scene
in the place you're going to shoot it.
It's always a surprise. It's never what you thought it would be.
The text usually has to be changed in some way or another.
Then they have to get it to a level where it's realistic and interesting.
And at that point it then becomes relatively easy.
MAN: It was an extraordinary experience doing Clockwork Orange.
A very long and arduous film to shoot.
It was seven months shooting.
And I was injured a couple of times on the film,
I had my ribs dented.
I was off for two weeks with that.
I think I had tonsillitis or something I...
One disaster after another as far as as I, my health was concerned.
I got a couple of scratched corneas on my eyes.
But having said all that, of course,
I suppose one can say it was worth it.
And if Stanley trusts you,
if he trusts you, you're alright.
If he doesn't, beware.
Very well, now listen to me carefully.
The base is being put on condition red.
I want this flashed to all sections immediately.
I had the worst time I've ever had on a picture.
And, nothing to do with Stanley.
And everything to do I guess with my own hang-ups.
I worked the first day at Shepperton.
And I had a great deal of technical jargon, you know.
And so I started to work and I began to blow.
You know those clowns outside
are gonna give me a pretty good going over in a few minutes.
OK, so he went something like 38 takes.
I don't know how well I could stand up under torture.
And I was getting worse and worse.
So finally, he began to do pick-ups.
A sentence at a time.
And I mean this is painful. This is embarrassing.
You know, I'm here and I want to do well.
I know I'll have to answer for what I've done.
And finally I walked up and said,
"Stanley I'm sorry but there is nothing I can do."
He said, "I know that."
He said, "You know, there is nothing I can do." I said, "I know that."
He said, "But I'll tell you one thing,"
He said, "The terror, the terror that's in your eyes
"may just give us the quality that we want."
He is a perfectionist. But, I mean, on a more provable level.
I mean, you know, it's different in a movie situation
if you say, "How was it?" to the operator.
Stanley has the teleprompter now, so he knows.
And the amount of reason that he has why a take is not acceptable,
quintessentially perfectionist.
MAN: We had discussions about the elusive quality of perfection
because down by take 75, a host of other things start going wrong,
the tape finally gives out that held something on to the wall.
Entropy takes over, we're all growing older, you know.
The search is extraordinary, he never gives up.
MAN: It was during a scene of a great many army people,
or Irish army, whatever it was,
but we utilised a lot of material that was absolutely authentic.
Authentic flutes from museums, authentic drums
and so on and so forth.
And it was very easy.
I have, after all, recorded some very avant-garde music
that's very difficult
and this was a cinch.
We did a 105 takes on this thing and take two was perfect.
And the orchestra looked at me and I looked at them,
as though, we're dealing with an insane person.
And 105 takes, and finally I threw down the baton,
ran into the thing, and grabbed him by the neck.
I wanted to throw him through the window
when everyone starting laughing, kind of nervously.
And he said, "You're crazy."
And I said, "Well, you've driven everybody crazy, that's the problem."
Directing a movie, if you try to do it properly, is not always fun
because you are in conflict with people.
If you try to get it right and you care about it,
it isn't something which is the greatest fun in the world.
It's immensely satisfying, sometimes,
but it is a lot of hard work
and there is a lot of personal tension that occurs with everybody.
The analogy would better in a sort of military sense in that Napoleon,
if he didn't pay as much attention
to the precise details of his marching,
how he brought his troops to the right town on the right day,
he worked out all the calculations
where they would come from different places,
and did all the mathematics himself, and got them there at the right time.
He would never have an opportunity to be a genius on the battlefield.
Battles were like the equivalent of making a film.
MAN: The key to his success as a filmmaker
is that he was the ruthless general everyone wanted to march with.
He got everyone on his side and no matter what happened
he expected his cast and crew to keep up with his standard.
In a way, he kind of represented something to all of us
because he was over there on his estate in England,
he was far away from Hollywood, he owns his own cameras,
his own editing equipment, his own sound
and he worked entirely accord to his own schedule.
It's kind of inspiring at a time
when everybody else seems to be marching to the drums of commerce and promotion.
Do you know what kind of camera that is, what it's called?
It's a home movie. Arriflex.
Napoleon is still in his grave, waiting,
waiting to be brought back to life.
I wonder what Napoleon would think of Lew Wasserman and David Picker,
whether he would've liked to have them passing judgement on his life.
You worked in a disaffected plant?
Well, first thing I noticed
was that the architecture in the peripheral areas
where the fighting seemed to be,
was this sort of 1930s industrial functionalism,
and by the sheerest accident we found this area
that is about a square mile,
and it was designed by a German architect in the '30s,
and it looked exactly like photographs we'd seen
in Hue and Saigon, the border... the outskirts of the city.
And it just seemed like a miracle,
because, I don't know where,
looking back I don't know how we would have done those scenes
with a tiny fraction of the reality
and interest that we got from this location.
In Hue we could never have achieved this vision of hell
that actually Hue looked like.
And I had done tremendous research,
I had thousands of stills
and as much documentary footage as we could get from archives.
There was so much wonderful documentary material on Vietnam
you know, that had not been shot in any other war,
including scenes of men dying.
So, looking at 100 hours of documentary films,
actually probably tells you more than if you were there
and didn't actually have combat.
The title, Full Metal Jacket, how did it come?
Full Metal Jacket is a type of bullet design,
which...where the lead of the bullet is encased in copper.
It's done to increase the reliability of the bullet,
feeding up the ramp into the chamber from the magazine
because it's smoother.
And also, I think the Geneva Convention has laid down
that it's a more humane type of bullet
because lead expands a little bit
and this one just goes and makes a nice clean hole.
(GUNSHOT)
Do you think the problem of a war film
is whatever you do to not to involve the audience into the battles,
not to give them a vicarious experience?
But isn't it an ethical problem for a filmmaker?
When you read the memoirs of people that have survived the war,
many of them look back on it
as being the greatest moments of their lives.
So obviously there must be an aspect to it that is genuinely inspiring
and spectacular in the real sense of the word.
And the elements of comradeship, loyalty, courage, those things,
in retrospect, people who take part in it are moved.
It is then with great pride that I note the fine work done
by the soldiers of this command during the recent operation.
It is with pleasure that I say a job well done.
If you are interested by war in itself and the ambiguity of war,
there is not ambiguity in the way you look at the hierarchy,
I mean, whether in Dr. Strangelove or even in Paths of Glory,
or in this film, the drill instructor.
Well, the drill instructor in this film
I think is naive as the boys are, he is just programmed to do that.
Did your parents have any children that lived? Sir, yes, sir, yes.
I bet they regret that.
You're so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece.
Lee Ermey was a Parris Island drill instructor,
he actually was the way he played.
He was hired as a technical adviser,
and I was looking for an actor for the part.
But when we started interviewing boys,
for the recruits at Parris Island,
we had the idea that Lee would do an improvisation with them,
just originally this was just to see how they would react.
And he did what he did in the scene,
the most bizarre, off-the-wall dialogue you can ever imagine.
He asked one guy what his name was, and he said, "Lawrence,"
and he actually said to him...
Lawrence? Lawrence, what, of Arabia? Sir, no Sir.
That name sounds like royalty. Are you royalty? Sir, no Sir.
Do you suck dicks? Sir, no Sir.
Bullshit. I'll bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose.
So, I suppose drill instructors, you know,
are in some way or another actors, but Lee of course I think is special.
I don't like the name Lawrence.
Only faggots and sailors are called Lawrence.
From now on you're Gomer Pyle. Sir, yes, sir.
Tell me, you were in Vietnam. Is this realistic?
When you look at the movie is that...? It's very realistic.
I have a cross section.
When somebody hires me to do technical advice,
I like technical advice because I like putting realism in there.
It's good for me. Why?
Good therapy, I think, maybe.
But when you look at it, I mean, does it ring true with you? Is it hard for you to watch?
Because you didn't even like talking about your experiences in Vietnam.
It's really not that difficult for me to watch
because I know it's not...
..it's not something that directly...
..that I was involved with, OK?
I don't see the face of my friend
or...I don't have any problem with this.
But realism is there.
And you can take a circle of 10 Vietnam vets
and give them a situation
and they will have 10 different ways to solve the problem.
So what's real, you know?
One of the other central features of the war
was the manipulation of the reality of the war,
by technocrats and hawk intellectuals in Washington,
who are always finding light at the end of the tunnel
and, encouraging the men there to lie and to exaggerate kill ratios.
There was an arrogance, back in Washington by these,
quote, "intellectuals" who ran the world like an advertising campaign.
When they suffered terrific casualties
and they accomplished nothing that they thought they would.
You know, they thought people would actually rise up and join them.
But because of the lying, the press and the public were so shocked.
Well, it's a bit like the generals and the men in Paths of Glory,
but in this case it was more
than just the ambition of the generals versus the men's lives.
I ordered an attack.
Your troops refused to attack.
My troops did attack, sir, but they could make no headway.
Because they didn't try, Colonel. I saw it myself.
Half of your men never left the trenches.
A third of my men were pinned down because the fire was so intense.
Don't quibble over fractions, Colonel.
The fact remains that a good part of your men never left their own trenches.
Colonel Dax, I'm going to have 10 men from each company in your regiment
tried under the penalty of death for cowardice.
Penalty of death? For cowardice.
(DRUM BEATS SLOWLY)
Aim.
Fire.
But Paths of Glory
was not fundamentally different in philosophy from this film.
WWI was really fighting for nothing.
For nothing.
Certainly, WWI was a big turning point,
certainly the Vietnam War for Americans,
because it was the first time that America really lost a war.
So, it's a big trauma.
I think it taught America
that you don't fight a war because some intellectuals decide
that it might be a good thing, you know.
I don't think you're gonna get Americans to fight a war again
unless they think it really means something to them.
Now, how far that kind of isolationism will go I don't know.
Colonel.
Marine, what is that button on your body armour?
A peace symbol, sir. Where'd you get it?
I don't remember, sir.
What is that you've got written on your helmet? "Born to Kill" sir.
You write "Born to Kill" on your helmet and you wear a peace button.
What's that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke? No, sir.
What is it supposed to mean?
KUBRICK: And that, of course, is playing off on the Jungian, you know,
ideas of the duality of men, altruism and co-operation
versus xenophobia and aggression, you know.
The fact that people do not see the dark side of themselves,
and tend to externalise evil.
People do only see themselves as good
and everybody else as either weak or evil.
I mean, there is always a problem
when people are confronted with the shadow side.
Arrgh!
(SIREN WAILS IN THE DISTANCE)
Certainly in the case of Alex,
he must be aware of his duality
and he must be aware of his own weakness
in order to be good,
or prevent the worst kinds of personal and social evil.
What crime did you commit?
The accidental killing of a person, sir.
He brutally murdered a woman, sir, in furtherance of theft.
14 years, sir.
Excellent.
He's enterprising aggressive, outgoing.
Young. Bold. Vicious.
He'll do.
In Clockwork Orange, he was in conflict with people
who in a way were just as bad as he was in a different sense
and I suppose, in an emotional way, seemed less sympathetic.
(SHRIEKS)
Arrgh!
No!
Arrgh.
Stop it, stop it, please. I beg you.
It's a sin. It's a sin.
It's a sin.
It's a sin. It's a sin.
Sin? What's all this about sin?
KUBRICK: One of the really most puzzling social problems today
is how can authority maintain itself without becoming repressive.
You have ever-increasing feeling among young people
that politics and legal means of social change
are too slow and maybe useless.
On the other hand, you have authority that feels threatened
by terrorism and this growing sense of anarchy they could feel.
And the question is, how do you achieve,
if it is possible anymore,
some kind of balance.
It certainly doesn't lie in this very utopian
sort of optimistic view
that if you destroy authority then something good will come of it.
And it equally doesn't lie by saying, you know,
authority must impose its will with greater and greater force.
It's a dilemma.
The Scala cinema in London is in court today
accused of a breach of copyright
after allegedly showing the controversial film Clockwork Orange.
The film has been banned in Britain for 20 years
at the request of its director
after critics claimed it glamorised violence.
MCDOWELL: You see more violence on the news program.
You know, you see more violence in a John Wayne film
Because John Wayne always shoots
and you always feel, "Oh, good old John Wayne.
"He's the goodie and he shot the baddie."
And it's an emotional response, you know.
I personally feel that it's more violence of the imagination,
of the mind.
I think the film is very important because the statement it makes
is about the freedom of human beings to choose.
And that's more important than any of the sensational elements
that the press and people have been talking about.
Nobody, except people who were trying to prove that
Clockwork Orange was an evil film,
nobody could believe that one was in favour of Alex,
it's only that in telling a story like that
you want to present Alex as he feels and as he is to himself.
In analysing the film you could think there was more sympathy for Alex,
but since it's a satirical story, and since the nature of satire is
that you state the opposite of the truth as if it is the truth,
I don't see how anybody of any intelligence
or even any ordinary person could think that you really
thought Alex was the hero.
It's probably what attracted me to the book.
It was this strange duality of a character who is plainly evil
and yet because of him operating on this unconscious level
makes you aware of things in your own personality
which you then identify with him.
You are more attracted by evil characters rather than by good ones,
I was thinking of Milton, you know,
making Paradise Lost much more interesting.
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
(TYPEWRITER CLACKS)
How do you see your character in this film?
How do you see the reason of his behaviour?
It's very ironical because he wants to write, to be creative...
Yeah. ..and he wants to be free
and he is a slave, in fact, of his own neurosis.
Well, you can only fill in the details of Jack's personality.
He is bitterly disappointed with himself.
He's a person who obviously has immense rage.
He is married to a woman
who he obviously has nothing but contempt for
and doesn't like his son.
You then put him in a situation, you know,
where he then is exposed to the evil forces in the hotel.
Now you're getting into the supernatural side of the story
and all those other factors simply serve to prepare him
to make him a suitable servant of their wishes.
(SCREAMS)
Don't! Please! (SCREAMS)
No! Please!
In this story, I mean, at least the way you have shot it,
there is always the possibility that everything is in the mind.
Well, this is what I found so ingenious
about the way the novel was written.
And you assume as you read it that the things that are happening
are probably going to be a product of his imagination.
And I think this allows you to start accepting them.
You think there is an interaction between the souls in the hotel
and it's not purely a projection of his mental thing,
well, you can interpret that.
Well, I mean I interpret the story as being real.
I mean, I just accept for the story purposes that everything is true.
There are three mazes, if I remember well.
There is the real maze, there is a kind of map or plan of the maze,
and it's also the maze is, in a way, is the hotel in reduction
because hotels are full of corridors and things like that.
Yeah, yeah.
This idea is extremely powerful
and it goes with the imaginary dimension of the film.
I remember once reading something about which were,
maze seem the perfect kind of metaphor for many things about life
in that somebody was describing how in a maze everybody is giving advice
to each other, and misleading each other completely by their advice.
That nobody knows quite what to do.
They are all giving each other ideas, which are all wrong.
Many types of genre material are really ways of thinking about death.
That in a way it is, on a psychological level,
possibily a way of exploring attitudes towards death.
Your films give a feeling of great despair.
If you make certain assumptions about the nature of man
and you build a social situation on false assumptions,
if you assume that man is fundamentally good,
it will disappoint you.
MAN: What we're doing in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey
is showing some of the things that will develop
in the world of the future
as a result of our present first steps into space.
The next generation will explore the planets,
bring back new knowledge, answering old questions,
and, of course, asking fresh ones.
It's really the next stage in the evolution of mankind.
About half a century ago the great Russian space pioneer,
Tsiolkovsky said, "Earth is the cradle of mankind,
"but you cannot live in a cradle forever."
And that is very true.
And out here among the stars lies the destiny of mankind.
The human species hasn't changed since Cro-Magnon man,
and in terms of evolutionary time we're not gonna change much
in the next hundred, two hundred years.
Now, the critical problem of our survival is going to have
to be settled long before a hundred or two hundred years.
Now, where is this source of intelligence gonna come from?
HAL: Good evening, Dave. How you doing, Hal?
Everything's running smoothly. And you?
Oh, not too bad.
Have you been doing some more work? A few sketches.
May I see them?
Sure.
That's a very nice rendering, Dave.
I think you've improved a great deal.
There is something that's happening already today,
you might say, a mechaniarchy or whatever the word would be,
the love that we have now for machines,
the smell and the feel of a beautiful camera,
or a tape recorder,
there is an aesthetic, an almost sensuous aesthetic about machines.
I'm sure it will be useful to them to know what human feelings are
because it will help them understand us.
HAL: The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made.
No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information.
We are all, by any practical definition of the words,
foolproof and incapable of error.
MAN: Hal, despite your enormous intellect are you ever frustrated
by your dependence on people to carry out actions?
Not in the slightest bit.
I enjoy working with people.
We do obviously need some source of intelligence of a magnitude
considerably greater than seems to exist at the moment.
And you could say that man's survival
depends on the ultra-intelligent machine.
I can't think of any reason why it's a frightening prospect,
because intelligence seems to me to be something which is good,
and so I can't see how your ultra-intelligent machine
is going to be any worse than a man.
Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
What's the problem?
I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
What are you talking about, Hal?
This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardise it.
I don't know what you're talking about, Hal.
I'm afraid.
I'm afraid, Dave.
At the moment, the problems of the world appear to be problems
only because man seems to lack the intelligence to
think his way out of the present trap that we seem to be in.
Dave...
My mind is going.
I can feel it.
(GUTTURAL CHANTING)
You have no other project now?
As usual. No, I wish I did.
But Schnitzler you still don't want to do that, Traumnovelle.
I'm not sure. I might. It is interesting. You've read it?
It's extraordinary. Yeah.
(GUTTURAL CHANTING CONTINUES)
TOM CRUISE: It's not about sex.
Stanley never said it was about sex.
It's about sexual obsession.
It's a thriller about sexual obsession and jealousy.
And all the rumours that surfaced about
just the wildest stories you could ever imagine.
It's not pornography.
If he wanted to do that, he would have done that.
If you men only knew.
I'll tell you what I do know, is you got a little stoned tonight,
you've been trying to pick a fight with me,
and now you're TRYING to make me jealous.
But you're not the jealous type, are you?
No, I'm not.
You've never been jealous about me, have you?
No, I haven't.
And why haven't you ever been jealous about me?!
Well, I don't know, Alice. Maybe because you're my wife.
Do you think monogamy is a natural state?
I think it's a choice.
I mean, if it was just a natural state
why would people desire other people?
Do you think that there is in everybody a thin edge,
of depravity or extreme danger of desire I suppose?
Is it in everyone?
Sure. Yeah.
How honest people are about it
is a different thing, but I think we all have it.
Most situations where somebody is hopelessly in love with someone
who they shouldn't be, it always is really,
it tends to be physical.
And, most tragic masochistic relationships that I'm aware of
are essentially physical attraction, and this seemed to say it.
The sort of primitive part of your mind
that just is fascinated by the mystery of what's going on.
It's all part of the sort of the gigantic fantasy,
the male sex fantasy.
I think that the story would become impossible
if you tried to give reasons for it.
I think that you are an innovator.
I mean, you like very much to break things, new things.
But at the same time, you are very conscious of tradition.
Well, I think that one of the things that characterises
some of the failures of 20th century art, in all art forms,
is an obsession with total originality.
Innovation means moving it forward,
but not abandoning the classical form,
the art form that you are working with.
But I do think that the real explosion will come when someone
finally liberates the narrative structure.
What surprises me is that you have absolutely no prejudice
toward choice of a subject, I mean, anything can happen.
I might, but I'm not aware of it.
I mean, a good story that you make into a film is a miracle,
and, you know, it's very hard to work miracles.
Someone sent me an article about Schnitzler,
he died in the most wonderful way.
He was sitting, writing at the typewriter, and...
..somebody was in the next room and he got up to give them a page
and just... (CLICKS FINGERS) ..fell over and that was it.
He hadn't been ill or anything, he was just working, and dying.
TOM CRUISE: I was supposed to talk to him on Sunday.
And sometimes Stanley would call, you know in the middle of the night.
I remember thinking... The phone rang.
I thought it was either Nick or Stanley,
that's the only people who usually call in the middle of the night.
And it was Leon, and...
And he said, "Tom, you know, Stanley Kubrick died in his sleep."
And...
And I remember just thinking,
"You know, this just isn't happening."
How disappointing you make the end of a film is a matter of I suppose
taste or artistic balance, whatever it is,
but you always are faced with the problem of
are you going to try to reinforce this illusion which melodrama fosters
or are you going to try to reflect what one sees about life?
Melodrama uses all the problems of the world and all the disasters
which befall the main characters
to finally show you that the world is a benevolent and fair place.
And all the tests and trials and seeming misfortunes which occur,
in the end, just reinforce this belief.
But tragedy, or honesty, or an attempt at presenting life
in a way that seems closer to reality than melodrama,
can leave you with a feeling of desolation.
But certainly, the formula approach,
which presents the world in a way other than it is,
doesn't seem to have a great deal of merit
unless you're just making entertainment.
Fini?
Thank you very much.
Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2020