American Masters - You Must Remember this: The Warner Bros. Story: Episode Four Starting Over (1970-90)

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Cast | Notes | My Summary

Directed & Written by Richard Schickel

Notes

• This was a 5 episode series, each part was an hour and part 4 covered Kubrick.

My Summary

    WB were bought out in 1969. Woodstock was their first film and cost $350,000. Then Dirty Harry in 1971 which was sold to them by Fox. A Clockwork Orange 1971. Clip - opening shot. Clint Eastwood - There was a lot of the 70s in ACO too. Stanley Kubrick's first Warner Brothers film, brutally, perversely argued that violence might be a form of creativity. Stephen Tropiano - ACO is groundbreaking on so many levels especially what it is saying about violence, it was a very controversial film. Clip - tramp attack. Kenneth Turan - You weren't seeing movies like that, it was like where did this come from? Clip - Mr. Alexander attacked. It's sort of calling into question society at the time, in the early 70s it was sort of a bit post-Vietnam film about our reaction to and our immunity to violence. It was very stylized in the way it presents violence and that's kind of how I think that's how he gets away with it. It's not being depicted in a sort of realism, it's a futuristic world, I don't think violence is simply gratuitous, it shows violence in a way I don't think people had seen before in a pseudo-surreal and comic way. Then it shows Deliverance 1972, Mean Streets 1973, The Exorcist 1973, Blazing Saddles 1974, Dog Day Afternoon 1975 and All the President's Men 1976.
    A Genius in the System. 
    Clint - Barry Lyndon rode out of history in a second rate novel. Stanley Kubrick saw Barry as a modern man projected back in time to the 18th century, immoral and empty of qualities except an ambition to rise in society, which he does, only to fall. The film was very beautiful, very bleak and very serious without any natural audience, which Warner's didn't seem to care about. People like John Calley thought Kubrick was a genius. Find me another example of a studio that for 20 years who backed a genius when they weren't even sure that genius would them make money. It doesn't happen. Clip - duel. One of Kubrick's ambitions was to tell a story largely in images and not dialog. This picture is as close as he would come to realize that goal. 
    The Shining was born of a different kind of novel, a modern horror story. A writer and family become off season caretakers at a hotel, he'll have plenty of time to finish that novel, too much time as it turns out. David Thomson - I think the hotel is the cinema and Jack is the one person who was meant to be there. There are ways in which Kubrick may have felt he was Jack. Clint - Perfect creative conditions create a brain cracking writers block, it's been known to happen. David - The Shining is grown-ups making a horror film. Stanley is pulling the legs of the horror film all the time, making fun of it. Clip - great party, here's Johnny. Jack Nicholson - Whatever movie Stanley made, what I love about his work is they are completely conscious. You may like them, you may not like them, you may say well what about this, that or the other thing, but you know everybody pretty much acknowledges he is the man. M - It's the one film that I have had an immediate, direct, uncomplicated contact with the hero, my kind of guy. Terry Semel - I must say even over a 20 year period, I think we did only 4 movies. It was the greatest challenge and the greatest pleasure of my job. He was really genuine, very open, very warm. The rap on Stanley was that he was a hermit, he doesn't ever see people, that's not the case. He saw everybody except more often than not, in his home in the countryside. Robert Daly - When you went to his house, if you went there in the Wintertime, even in the Springtime, you had to wear, you had to keep your overcoat on. It was the coldest house I've ever been to in my life. Whether he had heat or not I don't know, but he kept the house very cold. Joe Hyams - Stanley never had to raise his voice, except to one of his daughters, maybe creeping around with a 60mm camera. 
    Full Metal Jacket 1987. Clip - kill kill kill. Michael Herr - He was thinking I wanted to make a war move, just to consider the subject, without a moral position without a political position, but as a phenomenon. Clip - Pyle kills Hartmann. Clint - Kubrick never repeated himself narratively, he always repeated himself thematically. Mathew Modine is a walking billboard for the films ambiguities, on his helmet Born to Kill, on his chest a peace button. Stanley was a most obsessive of directors, but he was beloved by his often overworked, underpaid crews. Making of clip - Kubrick - That looked like something didn't it? This image, Modine losing himself in the fog of war is the dark essence of Full Metal Jacket.
    Then it goes into - The Outlaw Josey Walls 1976. The Enforcer 1976. Every Which Way But Loose 1978. Bronco Billy 1980, Superman 1978, Time for Change - Body Heat 1981, The Color Purple 1985, Empire of the Sun 1987, Driving Miss Daisy 1989, Batman 1989.

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