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Cast | Articles | Notes | Pictures | My Summary | My Review

Cast

Written & directed by Jon Ronson

Articles

Four years before the film came amount Jon wrote basically the same thing as the film would become.
The Guardian 3/27/04

Notes

• There are two versions of the film - UK & US.

• V1 UK -  Runtime: 49 minutes, fullscreen, first aired on TV4 on 7/15/08 and features a 1 minute intro by Ronson

• V2 US - Runtime 61 minutes, widescreen, first aired on The Sundance Channel 12/15/08 and has everything and more except for the intro. Has different opening title and credits, isn't separated in parts, includes Kubrick's suit against Space: 1999 and comparisons, Full Metal Jacket screen tests, more behind the scenes filming of FMJ and Van Boudreaux's Clockwork Shining parody.

Pictures

Location Research from 1970 Thamesmeade #1
Location Research from 1970 Thamesmeade #2
Location Research from 1970 Thamesmeade #3

A Shining Clockwork Title
A Shining Clockwork opening
A Shining Clockwork Kubrick as Mr. Alexander

My Summary

The director explains his film - I didn't want to make a biography on Kubrick, I wanted to show what a genius is like and I let the boxes show the story. It's exciting to get to know someone through the boxes. It's like a Miss Marple mystery. You see a name on a paper with a number and you go on a journey to find out who they are. It's about the boxes, that's what makes it a great film.
Part One
Jon - In 1996 I received a phone call out of the blue. It was a man calling himself Tony. He said his employer wanted a copy of a documentary I made about the holocaust. I said who is your employer? He couldn't say. Go on. I can't. Come on. OK it was Stanley Kubrick. At the time he was out of the public, hardly ever releasing films. It wasn't always that way. (Clip of him arriving at 2001 premiere.) In the 60s he released hit after hit, he was the most important director in the world. Then the gaps between films got longer and longer, but what happened? I sent the tape and waited for something amazing to happen. Then something did, he died after editing Eyes Wide Shut. It's a few years later and Tony calls to invite me to the house, he was reading one of my books and thought it was time to invite me up for a tour.
Tony Frewin - We have had builders here for years. Home improvements weren't high on the list of Stanley's priorities. This is one of our cabins full of stuff.
Jon - His house is full of boxes, they are everywhere. How many boxes would you say there are in total?
Jan Harlan - Clearly I can't say, over 1000, they are all over the place.
Jon - Where?
Jan - All over the house.
Jon - They say some haven't been opened in decades. I adore his films and would love to be the first person to look through them. I asked the family and they say yes.
Christiane Kubrick - It's relics isn't it? Something very strange that is left over, this person has touched that. If you are a film fan then the boxes achieve that level.
Jon - I do sense some concern of what I will do with what I find.
Anya Kubrick - That's what worries me, some people touch on some facts and build some kind of Frankenstein out of him, it's tough for us and wrong.
Jon - I start with a box marked Islington which is where I live. There is the laundry in my town, doorways in my neighborhood, one with something that has been written on them.
TF - These are all boxes from Eyes Wide Shut - doorways, cafes, apartment interiors. There is a whole box full of estate gates, for one scene.
Jon - Did you do this on all the films?
TF - Yeah.
Jon - Who are the photographers?
TF - I think most are Manuel Harlan, you can see the label there.
Jon - How many photographs did you take?
Manuel Harlan - I don't know, I think 30,000 I came up with once.
Jon - How long were you in London?
MH - A year.
Jon - Was it a good year?
MH - I think it was. I started wandering around, taking pictures of hooker doorways.
Jon - You took some on my streets, which I thought was exciting and a kick in the teeth.
MH - I took a lot of bedside tables and drying socks, radio alarm clocks, Mickey Mouse clocks. He said no art department would think of this, isn't it so bizarre?
Jon - Toy shops.
MH - Yeah those, mortuaries, costume shops was a long one, all of Southeast England.
Jon - Did he look at them all?
MH - All of them, he got so excited. He called me 4-5 times a day asking if I got anything excited.
Jon - Are you overwhelmed at what he took?
CK - No, he was a very impatient man. All the doors had to be closed, be quiet. If he was interrupted he would go back to what he was doing without change.
MH - One time he wanted to me to take pictures of all of Commercial Road from one end of the street to the other and it's a long street, but he didn't want the buildings to tilt forward or back. I had to bring a 12 foot ladder, climb up, take the shot, move, take the shot, and keep moving to get all the whole 6 meter road. He would call and say how fast can you get here? I had to take them all to Snappy Snaps.
Kubrick's photographic processing store is shown.
Jon - After MH got the photos together he had to cellotape them all together to create the perfect panorama of Commercial Rd. He took them back home where SK was waiting with his art director Roy.
MH - He said to Roy it sure beats gong there and Roy said you'll have to go there eventually.
Jon - This is the hooker doorway scene (plays EWS clip), it was eventually shot on a set in Pinewood.
Part Two
Jon - A random search of 1000 boxes can drive someone crazy, so I try to be chronological about it. There isn't much early stuff, just cans of screen tests from long ago. Sue Lyon's test from Lolita is shown. Inevitably the boxes are filled from the later years from 2001A a space odyssey onward from the ever long gap between films. They tell a story, mainly of the gaps.
Julian Senior - 2001 was a watershed, prior to that the way films were made was go to Spain for Spartacus or Paths of Glory. He made films more than anyone else did at that sage. After 2001 Stanley got involved in everything that went on.
TF - He had a tough time keeping up with himself. These memos date back to space odyssey from 1968. "Always keep melons in the house. Do not let the number go below 3, thanks Stanley." And " Please check the weather bureau and find the weather last Friday, find the average barometric pressure and what is extremely high or extremely low for the year." God knows what that was about.
Jon - He doesn't say why he needs to know.
TF - No, it was strictly need to know.
Jon - Then there are the fan letters. Even though he rarely wrote back to the fans, they are perfectly preserved. The way they are filed is extraordinary. Kubrick has written on them FP for positive, FN for negative and they are filed by town. On the crazy letters he wrote 'crank.' Why did he keep a crank file?
TF - In case someone spun out of the woodwork and did something we would know who he was.
Jon - In case he was assassinated?
TF - We would certainly have the crank files. We had general files and ones broken up by films as well.
Jon - Why?
TF - More ordinary and logical.
Vincent Tilsley wrote this letter in 1973. "Dear Stanley I can no longer rest what I hope is a brotherly urge to write to you. It baffles and infuriated me how someone of you talent can be so perverse, so blind or whatever it was…
Jon - I wonder what causes someone to wrote a crank letter so I see Vincent who wrote one. He wasn't a nobody, he wrote a TV movie called The Death of Adolf Hitler.
VT - It was 6 hours, but they cut it down.
Jon - It was 1973 and Stanley was showing the way how we were changing cinema and the way people wrote films back hen, that was why he was so inspired to write it.
VT - So they edited it down to 1:56 and they cut out all the bits I wrote from my heart, it was like cardboard.
Jon - The Death of Adolf Hitler is similar to Dr. Strangelove, but definitely not as good as it.
(Clips of both films are shown)
VT - They reduced it, reduced to a very mediocre thing. It was unjust and I thought I was in the ranks of Kubrick and I wasn't. I remember the night I saw it I went out under the stars with a bottle of scotch and thought that was the end.
Jon - It was then he went inside and wrote the letter. His letter is very long, he tells him 2001 was a very grave error and explains why in details.
VT - I thought to myself I should be in that Kubrick league if they did my play properly. So I reached out to him to be at his level.
Jon - He thought it was a crank.
VT - That's what he wrote on it.
Jon - After Death he had one more go, he tried to write the Birth of Jesus Christ.
VT - I spent the next 2 years, and I never got past page 3 or 4 and it was drivel. I never got past that.
Jon - You just rewrote those 3 pages?
VT - Yeah.
Jon - You are like Jack Nicholson in The Shining writing over and over again all work and no play.
VT - Not far off that it was.
Jon - Golly.
VT - Yeah, golly.
Jon - I start combing through Kubrick's house to look through the boxes and it's hard, they keep getting rearranged. There are no films to make, but there are boxes to oversee. I think of Vincent as I look through them. Vincent later became a psychoanalyst, he felt imperfect people in an imperfect industry damaged his work. The boxes show that Kubrick was forever doing the same thing, like measuring the newspaper ads of his films.
JS - He thought an ad in Germany we had reserved was short, it was few millimeters short.
Jon - How did he notice it, by looking?
JS - He did, he noticed it with his naked eye, he noticed a lot of things that way.
Jon - He went through each ad?
JS - He had ads in all the papers that were supposed to be 450mm, he measured them as 437mm and wanted to know what was going on. So I flew to Germany and measured the plates and there was shrinkage on each side. He was then satisfied. He said you have to come up with a better way, photographically, not on metal plates and he was very prescient because that's the way we do it now.
Jon - Was he happy because he was right?
JS - He learned something new because that happened with ads.
Jon - He wasn't a fan of holidays?
Rick Senat - I don't think he knew what they were about. I remember I was desperate to go on holiday to the beach with my wife and young daughter who was walking along with a bucket ready to go. He called and the last thing I wanted to tell him was I wanted to go to the beach. He wouldn't understand it or appreciate it. It went on so long my families were making signs to me. I said I had to go and he asked where I was. I'm in France, at Cannes. He asked why, then the conversation went on about that. I felt like such an idiot trying to explain to Kubrick why I'm going to the beach to built sand castles and I couldn't.
Jon - Look at the photos I found. Kubrick was looking for the perfect sinister hats for ACO. How did he know when he found them? I wondered if he was hard to live with.
Anya - My father wasn't the same person who he was on the film set or who he was with colleagues. To me he was my father, I felt I dare not disobey him ever. If he was here he would laugh at loud that I had fear of disobeying him.
CK - We were the perfect match,
TF - (Reading) "Please call up some cat league society or something like that or a pet shop. Find if they make a collar they can attach a kind of bell to, to keep the cat from killing too many birds, but will break away if the cat catches himself on a tree or branch instead of hanging the cat." Stanley was mightily preoccupied with the health and safety of his cats and dogs. Eventually we made our own collar. We took regular collars and added breakable cotton.
Jon - Did he laugh at himself?
TF - Yes, he would stop in his tracks and say this is silly.
Jon - This is the attitude that made every frame of the films so special.
TF - If he wasn't so obsessive he wouldn't have made the films he did.
CK - Every film he did was a new subject entirely. He loved that, with every new film was like a child. That's why the archives got so big.
Jon - Then after Barry Lyndon the gaps between films got longer. Why? The boxes had he answer.
Part Three
Jon - Many of the 1000 boxes he left behind are filled with the search for a story.
TF - (Reading) "Intelligent kangaroo shaped reptiles on another planet intrigue a Catholic priest."
Deborah Davis - "After a holocaust humans escape earth and go to a planet called Geta where cannibalism is practiced."
TF - "A man creeps through a crack in search for golden worms, has many adventures and finally makes it back to out the outside world with a herd of white horses and a girlfriend."
Jon - In the 80s he had a team reading 1000s of novels and sending them back for the next Kubrick film, but they had no idea who their boss was.
TF - I started a company called Empyrean films, which Stanley thought sounded like a no hope company that couldn't get off the ground. He didn't want the readers to know whom they were working for. It was run like a communist spy cell, no one knew anyone else. It was all run out of New York by Judy Tobey.
Jon - Did you ever wonder to yourself all those years what was going on?
Judy Tobey - I did. I had visual images of this hermit sitting there pouring through things. I had no idea why it would take somebody that long. Previously he making them a year apart, but maybe it was me.
Jon - I've got a bit of bad news for you Tony. There was one you read and didn't recommend it getting filmed.
TF - And it was filmed and became the biggest blockbuster ever? The Killing Fields by Prince Robinson. My comments - the book was boring to read, I kept flicking the pages to see more I had to read, it was overwritten and contained long, boring passages…
CK - Certainly he was sad he couldn't find a story he wanted to do. He was depressed. He would start, do research and give up. He felt it was bad luck he wasn't doing another film.
Jon - What was he looking for?
CK - That magic moment of falling in love with a story.
Jon - I suppose the downside of immersing yourself in the details is then your thought process takes you to when the details are too much to take. From the 80s are boxes and boxes on the holocaust film Wartime Lies.
CK - You almost lose your life because it's so depressing. You don't want to do anything if you read a lot of that stuff.
Jon - Not even easy to look through?
CK - No, you sit in a corner and start to cry, it's so awful. I was very glad he gave it up, I didn't want to see another.
TF - We spent 2 years preproduction. We built a massive archive of Poland, concentration camps, everything. While we were doing this Spielberg came along shot and released Schindler's List. He then didn't want to do it because he thought it would be overlapping.
Jon - So he shot and released the film in the time it took you do the research?
TF - Yeah.
Jon - Isn't there a lesson there?
TF - I didn't think so, that was way the Stanley made films.
Jon - I know one thing he was doing during those years. He was getting annoyed with the boxes, he thought the lids were getting too tight.
TF - There was a company called Ryder G & Co. Ltd in Milton Keynes. We phoned them up, spoke to them. Stanley worked out what was the optimum size for a box, easy to handle, easy to store. He figured it couldn't be rocket science to make a box with a lid too snug that came off easy.
Jon - Did he work it out?
TF - Yes, we gave them the dimension of the inside of the box, gave that to them and specified what size of cardboard he wanted.
Manufacturer - We have the instructions. He wanted the lid not to tight, not to loose, just perfect.
Jon - Give it a try.
Man - As you can see it comes off perfectly.
Jon - It's a lovely box, the 2001 of boxes.
TF - I found a memo in one of the boxes the production chief sent to their floor manager on their letterhead. Written on it, let me get the words right, 'fussy customer, make sure the lid slides off properly.' Stanley found that terribly amusing. I guess we were fussy customers, as opposed to customers who didn't want to spend all afternoon struggling to get a lid off.
Jon - He started staying in a lot more, so much so the outside world didn't know what he looked like anymore. Though he did go out to the St. Albans branch of Ryman's.
Jan - He was very fond of beautiful things that you buy in a stationary store, pads, notebooks, inks. He has 100s of bottles of inks.
TF - We could almost have opened out own stationary store. He was obsessed with a fear of running out of stationary. We had more than you can imagine.
Jon - There are still boxes full of ancient Ryman's stationary from days gone by.
TF - He often joked he would open a stationary nostalgia museum.
Jon - I guess stationary collecting is the obvious hobby for a perfectionist. What could be more flawless than stationary?
Jan - He would see if they had anything new.
Jon - Nobody knew what he looked like?
Jan - No. He would always use cash. He didn't use a credit card so no one would discover his name and get into awkward conversations. He found it to be uncomfortable to be asked, 'Oh, are you Kubrick? Did you do 2001? What did the end mean? I didn't understand.' He liked the fact that he wasn't recognized easily, not that he gave them many chances, he didn't go out much.
Jon - He didn't need to?
Jan - He loved it here. People like to point the finger and say he was a strange guy, but people loved him, they came to him.
Jon - I sometimes wonder what Kubrick would've made of this documentary. Jan says he thinks he would've been intrigued. He didn't throw anything away and would've liked someone years later trying to make sense of it all. In the last 19 years he only made 3 films, including one in 1987.
TF - He has a random notebook he carried around and would jot down odd notes at odd times.
Jon - Would you read some of them out?
TF - "Include utter banalities."
Full Metal Jacket clip - They call me the joker.
Jon - For months I've noticed some old film cans on the shelf on a stable block. Nobody knows what's on them, they've been sitting there for decades. They can't be outtakes as he's had them all incinerated. It turns out to be 18 hours of footage shot by his daughter Vivian on FMJ. I never met her because she lives in Los Angeles now.
(On the set of FMJ) Kubrick - We've fucked around for an hour and 20 minutes and we haven't gotten it over here. Man - We had the tea breaks. This is a fresh tea break. SK - No, you had a tea break at 4 o'clock and 6 o'clock. This is a complimentary tea break. If you broke for tea at 4 you don't have to break for tea at 6 and at quarter to 7 and break for a meal at 7:30 so figure it out. So figure it out. Terry - It gives me more fucking headaches, I want to sling them down there. SK - Alright Terry. Terry - This is the sort of man we need Stanley. SK - That's right. (Getting the bodies limed in the mass grave) SK - These two men are a little far apart. Terry there is quite a solid mass of men on the left now, stay there we are getting ready to shoot. They shoot the scene and afterwards everyone claps and people dust the white off themselves. (Parris Island) SK - They should only do this (grabs crotch) when this say this is my gun, do that. One other thing, there is 3 beats, 3 shakes, this is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting, this is for fun. (The cast is there and laughs) Some people are just touch and go.
Jon - It was around the time of the release of FMJ that rumors of Kubrick's excessive behavior started appearing in the papers.
Rick Senat - Quote, "We are hearing stories that suggest Kubrick is even more insane than psychiatrists have led us to believe. There is a thin line from being a perfectionist to a barking loon. Stanley has clearly crossed that line. He insists on eating all 3 courses of his dinner simultaneously like Napoleon, was afraid to drive over 25mph, afraid to fly even with a pilots license." He was not insane, he was one of the smartest men who ever lived.
CK - He felt it had 'gone wrong that I have stayed secretive, private.' I'm using the present term. 'I'm not secretive, I just don't.' What had been very understandable, in fact envied by many who are in public life turned sour.
Jon - The truth is Kubrick didn't need to go out, the whole world came to him and it's all right here in the boxes.
Part Four
Jon - I've been coming to the Kubrick house for 5 years on and off, that's how long it takes to go through 1000 boxes. I suppose the closer you get to an enigma, the more inexplicable it becomes. Even the crazy stuff like filing the fan letters by town makes sense after a while.
TF - He thought mainly, 'I'm a spy, with an agent in Albuquerque', so he had a name and a number.
Jon - We thought they would be showing The Shining at the Odeon?
TF - Right, they could go down and check the print, his agents in the field, his regulars.
Jon - It's very thoughtful. It's been 9 years since Kubrick died and then one day in 2007 the silence is broken, the boxes are leaving. This is Byrne Eichorn, he's a German archivist who is archiving the boxes. He's the only other person besides myself and the family who have seen the boxes.
Jon - Do you feel like your children are going off to university?
BE - They are going forever. When they go to school they come back, they won't come back. I've kept my eye on these boxes for 4 years now.
Jon - For Byrne and me they are puzzles and curiosities, but to CK they are something else.
CK - I get very upset seeing those old things, because they are so old. I find old notebooks because the paper is old, dusty, yellow and it is so sad, the person is so very dead when the paper is so yellow. Going through somebody's stuff is so melancholy.
Jon - CK says it's time to let go and move on. So they've donated the archive to the University of Arts London.
CK - To just throw the stuff away would be like burying Stanley again, it would be terrifying to say we don't need it anymore.
Jon - The boxes will be housed in a climate controlled facility where film students can go and learn from them, how his incredible attention to detail created images like these. One of the very last boxes I opened at the Kubrick house contained a video tape. On it Kubrick was addressing the camera looking very nervous. It was filmed by Leon Vitali, it was an acceptance speech for the DW Griffith Award.
Leon Vitali - He really was a very shy man. He was a shy man, to stand up in front of a camera he put on a little blue blazer and had a little bag with a comb and mirror, he called it his little actor's kit, it was all so sweet and charming.
Speech - (Quoted in it's entirety) "Good evening. I'm sorry not to be able to be with you tonight to receive this great honor of the D.W. Griffith Award, but I'm in London making Eyes Wide Shut with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and, just about this time, I'm probably in the car on the way to the studio. Which, as it happens, reminds me of a conversation I had with Steven Spielberg about what was the most difficult and challenging thing about directing a film. And I believe Steven summed it up about as profoundly as you can. He thought the most difficult and challenging thing about directing a film was getting out of the car. I'm sure you all know the feeling. But at the same time, anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car at an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling. I think there's an intriguing irony in naming the lifetime achievement award after D.W. Griffith because his career was both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. His best films were always ranked among the most important films ever made. And some of them made him a great deal of money. He was instrumental in transforming movies from the nickelodeon novelty to an art form. And he originated and formalized much of the syntax of movie-making now taken for granted. He became an international celebrity and his patronage included many of the world's leading artists and statesmen of the time. But Griffith was always ready to take tremendous risks in his films and in his business affairs. He was always ready to fly too high. And in the end, the wings of fortune proved for him, like those of Icarus, to be made of nothing more substantial than wax and feathers, and like Icarus, when he flew too close to the sun, they melted. And the man who's fame exceeded the most illustrious filmmakers of today spent the last 17 years of his life shunned by the film industry he had created. I've compared Griffith's career to the Icarus myth, but at the same time I've never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, 'Don't try to fly too high,' or whether it might also be thought of as, 'Forget the wax and feathers and do a better job on the wings.' One thing, however, is certain. D.W. Griffith left us with an inspiring and intriguing legacy, and the award in his name is one of the greatest honors a film director can receive, something for which I humbly thank all of you, very much."
Jon - All this time I suppose I've been searching for some sort of Rosebud, something that is the essence of Kubrick and I suppose I've found it. I think Kubrick knew he had the ability to make films of genius and to do that when most films are so bad there has to be a method and the method for him was precision and detail. I think these boxes for him contain the rhythm of genius.

My Review

    The host is some unknown British fanboy geek who loves saying the word "boxes". In his intro he starts out annoying, but turns harmless pretty quick and isn't that bad. He would've done better to not appear on camera and have a professional actor like Malcolm McDowell narrate, but the main problem is that he says he spent 5 years going through the boxes and only came up with a 50 minute documentary? Out of that it features mostly interviews and some film clips. Is it a red herring that most of the boxes weren't that interesting or did he just drop the ball? It would've been like showing buried treasure if he was shown opening a box up and pulling out all sorts of things, but he never does. He also never says what he's really doing there. Has he been hired to archive the boxes? I can't imagine they'd just let him walk around and do whatever he wanted for as long as he wanted. Regardless what fan wouldn't want to be able to dig for treasures like theses?
    If you read the article I linked above that he wrote 4 years earlier there are things that don't match up starting with his first story of how Tony wouldn't tell him Stanley wanted the tape right to the last story. He said the Rosebud was the boxes in it, in the film he said it was the DW Griffith award speech which isn't profound as every fan has seen it since it had been around since 1998, he didn't show it all AND it was released in it's entirety on the Eyes Wide Shut DVD in 2007 long before his documentary was released. It seems like he went back and filmed this all quick after writing the article instead of filming it over 5 years or anything like he says.
    He also makes it seem like the family had no interest in the boxes, no idea how many there were and didn't go through them until he suggested it. Maybe that was why Tony asked him out there in the first place, he gave him a job to do, but why him? Surely Jan could've done a better job and knew what was there all along. It's not like they had any new films to make after they finished with the DVD releases.
    He starts out backwards with Eyes Wide Shut. We see Kubrick had his nephew take tens of thousands of pictures for preproduction on the film. It makes him seem crazy and excessive, especially since he didn't film on location. A quick note about Kubrick seeing what he wanted in the photos and recreating it on a set would've tied it up nicely. Instead the only line is "it sure beats going there" which means Kubrick didn't want to go there and how excited he was having the world brought to him so he could analyze it with precision at home. It was more surprising to me that he didn't have a photo lab at home with someone to develop the pictures, it seems like it would've saved money, been faster and more private. Too bad this was before the advent of high quality digital cameras, I bet Kubrick would've gone wild over those and not having to process the scans with instant access to them.
    Then he decides to go back to the start and shows one screen test from Lolita, isn't there more? I mean from every film too. I guess this means SK didn't save anything at all from his five films and his shorts? That's a damn shame.
    Instead of showing him opening boxes and pulling things out, he starts interviewing obscure people, which takes away from the fun of discovery. Nothing is shown from Dr. Strangelove and he claims there is a lot from 2001, but we don't see anything from it except memos and fan mail. He spends way too long with Vincent who wrote one of the letters since he was in the business and even shows a clip of his film. It would've been much more interesting to have him read the whole letter. Did SK even know who he was? While it was different that someone well known at the time wrote him, it would've been more fun to track down a real loony tune who wrote something insane and get them to explain it.
    Suddenly he says the boxes are getting arranged, so he isn't the only one doing anything with them. Is he marking down the contents of each one? We aren't told. Then he goes into a long story how SK had an excellent eye and knew his movie ads were being printed a little short. While an interesting new story on SK, it has nothing to do with hidden things in the boxes. It presumably ties in with finding the ads inside, but it's still a reach. From there we get another story that has nothing to do with the boxes, just another story that makes SK look a bit weird because he wasn't into holidays or vacations. If the man loved his work, he wouldn't want to get away from it.
    Suddenly something from ACO pops up at random. He acts like he found something new with the ACO hats, but some of them were shown in the Kubrick Archives book before the film came out which he doesn't mention. Has this film been sitting around for years or is it he just hasn't paid attention? He does show more here and it's fun to see them. Too bad none of the shots are of Malcolm.
    He then asks the family what SK was like. What happened to the intro where he didn't want the film to be about SK, but about the boxes? So far we've heard little about them.
    He then jumps ahead even more saying the gaps got longer after Barry Lyndon. That's not what I wanted to hear by skipping ACO after one batch of pictures. At least he starts digging in again by detailing that SK went into a long search for the perfect story to film. What he doesn't say is that this was made harder because SK wanted to find a new genre each time, so he was running out of options. The stuff they read in this sequence is absolutely hilarious. "Intelligent kangaroo shaped reptiles on another planet intrigue a Catholic priest" had me laughing so hard I had to stop the film. Why would reptiles be shaped like kangaroos on another planet and what does a priest have to do with it!? Tony reveals he set up a dummy company to have people read books for the next SK film, except they didn't know who they were working for. I wonder how much time and money was spent doing this and who ultimately paid for it all. It makes me wonder why SK did just write something original himself, wouldn't that have saved time? If not weren't there any classic books he'd like to film his way? Things that were made before that he could make so much better?
    Jon starts out with a gotcha moment that Tony told SK The Killing Fields was a boring story. He doesn't go much farther from there though. What did he think of the highly rated 1984 film and did SK know he could've had it? Nothing.
    SK's wife says he just didn't fall in love with a story, this should've been mentioned earlier. Jon then explains that years were lost in preparation of making Wartime Lies, but he doesn't call it the Aryan Papers. Even worse he says there was 2 years of pictures and research, but he doesn't show a single one of them. He does ask the burning question that if SK didn't spend so much time on all this production he could've made more films. Tony says that was the way SK did it. This is true later, but the big followup question was that SK made ACO fast, on location, cheap and it's his best film! Why did he need to go through such painstaking lengths to get a film made after it when he proved greatness on a shoestring? What about his most famous film he never made, Napoleon? He spends time in the article saying there is a room full of information on it, but doesn't show any of it.
    Then the film changes to not what's in the boxes, but about the boxes themselves. It turns out SK also wanted the perfect box designed and commissioned it. Jon even goes to the manufacturer, but doesn't tell us his name. The man seems pretty uninterested in it all. The question would be - did he keep the box as part of his line? Was he impressed with the design? Can anyone now order the Kubrick Box?
The next obsession revealed is SK loved stationery and horded it inside the boxes, many of it he never used. He could've showed off some of it, but once again does not. What about even a picture of SK writing on paper? It makes it seem he was more into keeping it unused than using it. Instead Tony has a notebook he used on FMJ, but he only reads one line from it instead of showing a few pages.
Then comes the highlight of the film for "lost footage." I can't imagine the FMJ footage was sitting around unlabeled like he says. Every big Kubrick fan has known for years the footage is there, but never how much. Now we are told it's 18 hours worth, so the mind reels with how much we could ever see and how it could all be released. Release it all in a DVD set, don't edit it down to such a short amount like on The Shining. Jon makes it like he discovered the stuff. No, but he is the first to have any of it shown in a film. It's great to finally see any of it and it's wonderful to see SK arguing with the British cast over tea time. Surely after decades of making films in England he was used to that behavior? It seems like it must've gotten out of hand that day.
    It ends too fast and goes back to the old standard that SK was reclusive and he is defended. He then goes back to the fan letters and Tony says he filed them so they could contact those people about checking prints for them in their home towns. Did they ever really do that? I've never heard a story about it. It would be great to find one of those people if they were contacted by Tony about what that was like.
    Then the boxes are going away and we know it's been filmed years ago because these are the things that have been in the Kubrick exhibition that has been traveling around the world for years.
    There is a great segment that has lots of location photos for ACO. There is also a fast shot of a man wearing a fighter pilot's helmet as a costume test, which would've been bizarre if it made it into the film. There is also a selection of EWS location footage that goes by unbelievably fast. Even at the slowest frame rate on my DVD it still is fast. He asks what SK would've thought of his film. I would think SK would've hated him flying past things so quickly like this and giving the viewer no time to dissect it all. And jumping over things and not just showing them chronologically also makes for a disjointed narrative.
    He thinks the DW Griffith speech is the essence of Kubrick. I don't think it is, it's only special because he never did things like that and it's the last time he was filmed for public consumption and the first time probably since the premiere of 2001. What Jan says is it true, it's all in the films, that is essence of the man. After the whole time of painting SK as someone with severe OCD and making him look a little mad he ends with, "I think these boxes for him contain the rhythm of genius." Is he saying SK wasn't mad after all? To me the part "for him" means that it worked for SK, but he is still painting SK as someone gone a little crazy and spending too much time hording and not enough time making films like he did in his early days.
    In conclusion however all over the map this film is, there are lots of great new things to see. The ACO preproduction photos and FMJ making of footage are certainly the highlights. It just makes me wonder why he couldn't focus on more things like that instead of the random interview here and there. More artifacts, less talk with former Warner Brothers executives, those belong in another film. Where was all the stuff from 2001, Barry Lyndon or The Shining? What about the Dr. Strangelove pie fight? Are the cut scenes from 2001 and The Shining around somewhere? I think it might've been more about Jon's ego than about really finding things in the boxes, at least that's how he presented himself. I'm glad he did make it, I wish someone better would've actually done it, but I'm glad for the new things that were shown and it was fun to watch.

Rating: 7.5/10

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