Full Metal Kubrick

March 8, 2011 10:46 PM

"I'm not going to be asked any conceptualizing questions, right?" STANLEY KUBRICK - THE ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW. Conducted in 1987 by Tim Cahill to promote Full Metal Jacket, it's considered one of the longest he ever gave.
posted by philip-random (19 comments total)

Nice post. The print link is easier to read in one go.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:01 PM on March 8, 2011 [6 favorites]

I don't really know anything at all about Kubrick, apart from having seen some movies, but on this evidence he seems (surprisingly?) likable.
posted by brennen at 11:12 PM on March 8, 2011

Thanks for posting this, and is it just me or do other people remember Full Metal Jacket not getting quite the attention it deserved when it was released because of Platoon being released the year before?
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 11:12 PM on March 8, 2011

It's a good interview. I would have expected him to be more like the legends, but I suppose that's why they call them legends.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:04 AM on March 9, 2011

This is a good interview with Kubrick. I tracked down Short Timers years
ago after being baffled by the idea that a screen writer could come up with
this stuff (Full Metal Jacket dialogue) on their own. After reading it I realized
how important the source material was for Kuberick. When I was younger
I didn't know that he never wrote an original script. Being older and understanding
his process better has only deepened my respect for a director that knew his limitations
and created a wonderful film making process from them. Thanks for the post.
posted by coolxcool=rad at 12:40 AM on March 9, 2011

* not the drill instructors' dialogue btw, it was mostly written by him.
posted by coolxcool=rad at 12:47 AM on March 9, 2011

This is great. I want to have a few beers with the guy.
posted by Night_owl at 1:18 AM on March 9, 2011

is it just me or do other people remember Full Metal Jacket not getting quite the attention it deserved when it was released because of Platoon being released the year before?

It's not just you.
posted by Dr-Baa at 5:46 AM on March 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

This is great. I want to have a few beers with the guy.

A little late for that...
posted by kuanes at 6:14 AM on March 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, obviously I can't. But that doesn't take away from my desire.
posted by Night_owl at 6:18 AM on March 9, 2011

This is great. I want to have a few beers with the guy.

Well he did like beer commercials:

Give me an example.
The Michelob commercials. I'm a pro-football fan, and I have videotapes of the games sent over to me, commercials and all. Last year Michelob did a series, just impressions of people having a good time —

The big city at night
And the editing, the photography, was some of the most brilliant work I've ever seen. Forget what they're doing — selling beer — and it's visual poetry. Incredible eight-frame cuts. And you realize that in thirty seconds they've created an impression of something rather complex. If you could ever tell a story, something with some content, using that kind of visual poetry, you could handle vastly more complex and subtle material.

posted by octothorpe at 8:50 AM on March 9, 2011

The big city at night
And the editing, the photography, was some of the most brilliant work I've ever seen. Forget what they're doing — selling beer — and it's visual poetry. Incredible eight-frame cuts. And you realize that in thirty seconds they've created an impression of something rather complex. If you could ever tell a story, something with some content, using that kind of visual poetry, you could handle vastly more complex and subtle material.

I worry that this explains "Eyes Wide Shut"
posted by chavenet at 9:19 AM on March 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

I worry that this explains "Eyes Wide Shut"

I've seen Eyes Wide Shut twice and have come to conclude that, short of one particularly failed scene (Tom and Nicole stoned, and totally unconvincing), it's quite a fine movie -- weird, beautiful, sometimes hilarious, loaded with undertones of threat and menace. And for me, it's absolutely no coincidence that Kubrick wanted Tom Cruise in the lead roll -- a man totally out of his depth and generally wearing a suit that's a size or two too big for him.

Maybe, if they'd called it "Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man" ...
posted by philip-random at 11:09 AM on March 9, 2011

Maybe, if they'd called it "Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man" ...

I mean that is basically what the film is about. The film starts off and we see that dude is rich, has a beautiful wife, adorable kid, lives in a great apartment, and then the first thing he does is go to some friend's enormous mansion filled with models and Hungarian diplomats and live music and then dude gets called in to some embarrassing situation to be reminded that he works for a guy much richer and more fabulous than himself. Dude then spends the rest of the movie trying to assert his right to do stuff that he has no access to, and says to pretty much everyone he meets, 'I'm a doctor,' like it's a secret word. Then he goes back to rich friend/client's house and is told 'You're out of your element, and everyone laughs at you, and by the way do you like this ridiculously expensive scotch? I'll send you over a case, you moron.' Then dude goes home and his wife sexually humiliates him and then they go to a toy store and she's like 'Nah, we're cool' and he is desperate enough to consider it a happy ending.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:44 PM on March 9, 2011 [9 favorites]

That was actually a very good summary.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:07 PM on March 9, 2011

I mean there's also the whole narrative about the movie attempting to tease out the difference(s) between sex and fucking (which makes the last exchange particularly tragic), but I'm okay with more than one narrative of the film exist side-by-side.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:11 PM on March 9, 2011

I like to think of it as a feminist film about how the patriachy buys and sells women (right down to the daughter doing her maths homework question on how much money a boy has). More recently I've been thinking I should re-watch it with rising income inequality and the Kochs/Murdochs of the world in mind. I like your reading too.

It's a nice interview - it gives a much different view than the one that's been posted here by one of the screenwriters who worked with him, without really contradicting anything, just giving a different angle.
posted by harriet vane at 5:34 AM on March 10, 2011

(right down to the daughter doing her maths homework question on how much money a boy has)

Ooh, hadn't considered that. I do think there's a lot of feminism going on in EWS, some of it pretty humorously blatant, like when the woman from the orgy is seen again in the morgue as literally nothing more than a naked body with Tom Cruise remembering only the bit about her that was her talking about him.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:37 AM on March 10, 2011

Hah, yeah, that's pretty blatant. Apparently much of the artwork on the walls is by Kubrick's wife, and he considered EWS a collaboration with her. I'd love to see her give an interview about herself instead of him, it'd be fascinating.
posted by harriet vane at 8:58 PM on March 10, 2011