An Oral History of an Orgy
June 28, 2019 12:27 PM   Subscribe

 
I find Kubrick fascinating and so devoured this yesterday. But I haven't been able to shake what actress Julienne Davis said.

She begins: Stanley said, “It’s not gonna be any of this,” and he made a thrusting gesture. Instead, he said it would be more a kind of modern dance with the inference of sex.

And ends up: They came to us and said, ‘There’s been a change of plans.” They explained that the women would no longer be wearing their G-strings and that the men would be completely naked except for a cup over their bits.

There's much more to the oral history than her thread, and more about how the filming was difficult for many of the artists involved. I mean, it's Kubrick! But the textbook sexual boundary-pushing of actresses - who are professionals feeling lucky to be working on a film with some of the most powerful movers in their industry, but are being treated as recalcitrant objects to be coerced and manipulated - is the sickening detail that's sticking with me.
posted by minervous at 1:02 PM on June 28, 2019 [20 favorites]


What? You want to hear my Eyes Wide Shut story? Okay.

I once had lunch with Sidney Pollack during which the film came up. He told me this story:

I knew Tom and I guess Tom suggested me to Stanley and when Stanley came to me, I told him I was flattered but I was a director and not much of an actor and he should find someone else. For whatever reason, he was persistent with his request so I thought, "How many people get a chance to see Stanley Kubrick work -- maybe I could learn something!"

I'm only in a few scenes but they were pivotal and I took them seriously. On the day of shooting one of them, Stanley said he wanted me to take my shirt off. I said, "Stanley, I'm an old man. No one wants to see me with my shirt off."

Again, he was persistent. However, this time, I was ready for him and I told him in no uncertain terms that I would be keeping all my clothes on in my scenes. He said, "Please, Sidney, take your shirt off," and he walked out of frame.

"Absolutely not," I said to him as he went.

I vividly remember shooting the scene. It went well. It wasn't one of those scenes where Stanley made people do a million takes. I was as happy with it as I could be.

Movie gets finished, I go the premiere. Scene comes up... and there I am on the big screen with my shirt off. How the hell had that happened?! I had no recollection of taking it off. I asked Tom if he remembers shooting the scene and he says he did. Did I have my shirt on or off? Off, he said.

To this day I have no idea how this happened. I thought I was gonna learn something--a few tricks!. I learned nothing except that when you're as talented and respected as Stanley, people do what you ask them to do.

###

What? You want to hear my, "How did you end up at lunch with Sidney Pollack?" story? Okay.

I started a new job at a Toronto company that had a lot of very rich clients -- because normal people could not afford their services.

2nd day of work at this place, I walked into the kitchen and Sidney Pollack was sitting by himself at the counter. I was a little stunned.

"Hey, you're Sidney Pollack!"

"I am."

"You made two of my favorite movies ever."

"Let me guess: Tootsie and Out of Africa."

"No. Three Days of the Condor and They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

He lit up like a lighthouse. "How'd you like to go to lunch?"
posted by dobbs at 1:10 PM on June 28, 2019 [168 favorites]


Is this the thread where I can complain about how much I hate the score? I saw the movie once in the theater twenty years ago. I can still play the score in its entirety on the piano. It's two notes, occassionally at different octaves. Those motifs aren't bad in an of themselves but there is absolutely no change to them. Nothing happening thematically in the film is reflected in the score. After awhile it's just, "oh we're hearing this again." No variation.

To be clear - I love recurring motifs and themes. But this is the laziest original score I've ever heard (I have feelings about lazy soundtracks but that's a different thing). I also do love minimalism so it's not that, either.

Example of a recurring motif in a film score that I love: Requiem for a Dream. That's how it's done.
posted by acidnova at 1:24 PM on June 28, 2019 [3 favorites]


"He was a perfectionist. And probably drove people mad. But he was one of those annoying people who’s always right."

If he was such a perfectionist, then why in heaven's name is the steering wheel of the butler's Rolls (which appears prominently 15 min. after the orgy scene) on the right hand?!?! … that's been bugging me since 1999.
posted by Omon Ra at 1:26 PM on June 28, 2019 [6 favorites]


To be clear - I love recurring motifs and themes. But this is the laziest original score I've ever heard (I have feelings about lazy soundtracks but that's a different thing). I also do love minimalism so it's not that, either.

It's not an original score. It's the second part of György Ligeti's "Musica ricercata", written between 1951 and 1953. Ligeti also composed Atmosphères, used in 2001. Ligeti said he imagined he was stabbing Stalin while he was composing that motif.
posted by Omon Ra at 1:34 PM on June 28, 2019 [30 favorites]


why in heaven's name is the steering wheel of the butler's Rolls (which appears prominently 15 min. after the orgy scene) on the right hand

I just assumed that's to show that not only is the owner rich enough for a Rolls with a driver, he's rich enough for a Rolls with a driver who knows how to drive a right-hand car on left-hand streets (and I guess for whatever permitting is required to do so.)
posted by griphus at 1:36 PM on June 28, 2019 [7 favorites]


It's not an original score. It's the second part of György Ligeti's "Musica ricercata"

Thanks! I'm not well-versed on Ligeti's work and I will check out this piece in full when I have the chance. I should have realized that it was another example of an existing classical piece used to score a Kubrick film. However, I still maintain that how it was used in the film is still an issue. I can only imagine it was the same tiny snippet of music used repeatedly and not effectively. There are some moments I can remember clearly where it felt like the film makers were going, "whelp, need to add something here - let's just play this bit again."
posted by acidnova at 1:40 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]


What? You want to hear my, "How did you end up at lunch with Sidney Pollack?" story? Okay.

I didn't have lunch with Sidney Pollack, but I did sit behind him at the Blue Note on New Year's Eve one time. And it's made for a lifetime of me referring to 'my close, personal friend Sidney Pollack' since then. And my close, personal friend did a great performance in Eyes Wide Shut and I thought he was a brave actor for going shirtless.

posted by Capt. Renault at 1:43 PM on June 28, 2019 [11 favorites]


Ligeti you say? The composer who found out after the fact that Kubrick had used his music in 2001? Without asking? Who finally gave in since his music was now part of a major groundbreaking film? Was he asked ahead of time for this film?
posted by njohnson23 at 2:20 PM on June 28, 2019 [5 favorites]


"Die Hard" be damned. "Eyes Wide Shut" is the greatest Christmas movie of all time.

Also, "Three Days of the Condor" is one of my favorite movies of all time as well. Always excited when I get a chance to see it. Would also love have had lunch with Sydney Pollack.
posted by hwestiii at 2:26 PM on June 28, 2019 [6 favorites]


If he was such a perfectionist, then why in heaven's name is the steering wheel of the butler's Rolls (which appears prominently 15 min. after the orgy scene) on the right hand?!?! … that's been bugging me since 1999.

Also, near the end we see a shot of a newspaper headline "Ex-beauty queen in hotel drugs overdose". Drugs overdose is British syntax, even though the film takes place in New York.
posted by Crane Shot at 2:41 PM on June 28, 2019


Eyes Wide Shut remains the Kubrick film I haven't seen because I can't stomach Tom Cruise. Such a shame.
posted by zengargoyle at 2:42 PM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]


He was actually very well cast for the role and not for the obvious reasons, you should give it a try
posted by each day we work at 2:48 PM on June 28, 2019 [5 favorites]


This movie,
what a letdown.
I was hoping for some big reveal. I didn't get anything that shook me to the core, had me question my values, or change my life.
Well in one respect it did, from that point on I questioned the taste of anyone who unreservedly believed Kubrick a genius who could do no wrong.
It was a boring soap about boring wealthy people and unsurprising depths they plumb.
posted by evilDoug at 2:48 PM on June 28, 2019 [3 favorites]


I thought Nicole Kidman was the one terribly miscast in that movie...
posted by PhineasGage at 2:50 PM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]


"Die Hard" be damned. "Eyes Wide Shut" is the greatest Christmas movie of all time.

I've been saying that it's basically It's a Wonderful Life since the first time I saw it all those years ago, so I'm glad to see that's become conventional wisdom now.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:54 PM on June 28, 2019 [3 favorites]


I thought Nicole Kidman was the one terribly miscast in that movie...

To my eye, she and Tom Cruise had zero sexual chemistry on camera.
posted by carmicha at 3:10 PM on June 28, 2019 [6 favorites]


I've been saying that it's basically It's a Wonderful Life since the first time I saw it all those years ago, so I'm glad to see that's become conventional wisdom now.
posted by betweenthebars at 4:54 PM on June 28


EXACTLY!
posted by hwestiii at 3:12 PM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]


One of these days I'm going to watch it again, except this time I'll watch the movie he actually made instead of the one I was expecting. I bet it works a lot better that way.
posted by sjswitzer at 3:15 PM on June 28, 2019 [4 favorites]


To my eye, she and Tom Cruise had zero sexual chemistry on camera.

Granted it's been ages since I've seen it. But isn't that at least part of the point?
posted by ODiV at 3:39 PM on June 28, 2019 [13 favorites]


They could have just got Marc Dorcel to shoot it over a weekend.
posted by klanawa at 3:52 PM on June 28, 2019


The film stock itself had been pushed two stops and had taken on a grainy, otherworldly look. Some scenes had been lit solely with Christmas lights. And then there was the deliberate, trancelike cadence of the performances.

I saw it when it came out on a 35mm print and remember how striking the visible film grain was and was sad when I saw it on video at how smoothed out the digital version of the film looks.
posted by octothorpe at 3:56 PM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]


"...a driver who knows how to drive a right-hand car on left-hand streets (and I guess for whatever permitting is required to do so.)"
As a person who was once rich enough to have owned a surplus postal jeep I can assure you that there are no special permits required.
posted by Floydd at 4:23 PM on June 28, 2019 [8 favorites]


The problem with the film is that it should have been about Milich, trying to run a shop catering to wealthy people attending boring sex parties while his family life spirals out of control. Also, everyone needed to talk 75% faster.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:37 PM on June 28, 2019 [3 favorites]


dobbs, I believe we worked at the same place. My job included ensuring photos of Sidney didn't make it into the photo archive.
posted by avocet at 4:37 PM on June 28, 2019


If he was such a perfectionist, then why in heaven's name is the steering wheel of the butler's Rolls (which appears prominently 15 min. after the orgy scene) on the right hand?!?! … that's been bugging me since 1999.

The only time I've been in a Rolls Royce in the US, it had right hand drive. I vaguely assumed that they were all that way and RR didn't have left hand drive versions because why the hell should they? You want a Rolls Royce, you get it their way. There are left hand drive Rolls Royces, however, so you can forget that theory.

(You don't need a special license. Driving it in the US is a lot easier than driving a left hand drive car in the UK, because UK roads require a lot more overtaking and that's hard with that steering wheel placement).

It might have been a deliberate choice, but if it was an accident it's still not necessary wrong.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 4:51 PM on June 28, 2019


As a person who was once rich enough to have owned a surplus postal jeep I can assure you that there are no special permits required.
Mine was a surplus postal International Scout (and I didn't own it so much as borrow it because who knew it would take more than two days to completely rebuild the suspension in a 1970 Impala) but I was gonna say the same thing.
Right hand drive is fun to mess with drive-through fast food places, I will say...
posted by notsnot at 4:54 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm on team "the Rolls was a deliberate choice," but I'll say this: I will never drive a car in a left-hand country. As a passenger in Hong Kong, my brain practically exploded (wrong! wrong! wrong!) on a freeway on-ramp. (BTW, cudos to the Brits looking out for the foreigners with the very helpful "look right" warnings stencilled at crosswalks in London. It almost certainly saved my life.)
posted by sjswitzer at 5:01 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]


If we're going to discuss the substance of the movie and not just the orgy scene, I've always really liked this essay, discussed previously (13 years ago!) on MeFi.

TL;DR: "The real pornography in this film is in its lingering depiction of the shameless, naked wealth of millennial Manhattan, and of its obscene effect on society and the human soul...." Just as relevant now as it was then, though I might set it in San Francisco now instead of NYC. In fact, I would definitely set it in SF now.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 6:07 PM on June 28, 2019 [11 favorites]


The orgy idea was a total fucking let down. The idea that sex could be made better with by adding ritual and ceremony doesn’t resonate with me. I can’t even suspend disbelief and imagine that the uber wealthy would ever seek that out.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:01 PM on June 28, 2019


dobbs, I believe we worked at the same place.

Hmm. Maybe, but I doubt it. Was it a well-respected travel company owned by an idiot and run by morons?
posted by dobbs at 7:23 PM on June 28, 2019 [4 favorites]


The orgy idea was a total fucking let down. The idea that sex could be made better with by adding ritual and ceremony doesn’t resonate with me.

The orgy was deliberately cold and lacking in sexual energy because it was actually a code revealing Kubrick's role in faking the moon landing. If you pause it at just the right moment, you can see that the bare limbs and capes are spelling out the word
posted by betweenthebars at 7:35 PM on June 28, 2019 [9 favorites]


dobbs, you got it!
posted by avocet at 8:13 PM on June 28, 2019 [4 favorites]


The orgy idea was a total fucking let down. The idea that sex could be made better with by adding ritual and ceremony doesn’t resonate with me. I can’t even suspend disbelief and imagine that the uber wealthy would ever seek that out.

I don't think the idea behind any of the secret statuspeople sexy society stuff was in fact that it makes sex better or to be any sort of aspirational or erotic model, except possibly one that serves as commentary about the vain and ultimately objectifying/dehumanizing nature of that ambition, especially once the point of status beyond accountability is reached.
posted by wildblueyonder at 2:05 AM on June 29, 2019 [2 favorites]


To my eye, she and Tom Cruise had zero sexual chemistry on camera.

Perhaps it is deliberate. Alan Cumming and Cruise were portrayed on-screen with more affection. The (heterosexual) orgy scene presents Cruise trying and failing to join in.

He is good at acting the part — superb, even, as decades of financially successful movies attest — but how genuine is the performance, underneath the facade?

I wonder if Kubrick made a film that operates on two levels, where the first is along the lines of Tim Kreider's thesis, while second is, perhaps, a metacommentary on the sexuality of lead actors in film, about what identity is within the commerce of film. Or perhaps some of it is even a commentary more directly about Cruise, himself, on some level. As if Kubrick is trying to puzzle it out.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:43 AM on June 29, 2019 [1 favorite]


I mean, Cruise and Kidman were the biggest movie star couple in the world at the time. Him casting them was no coincidence.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 2:10 PM on June 29, 2019


LA Weekly: The 1999 viewing public, anxious for a Kubrick film after 12 years since the release of Full Metal Jacket, expected Eyes Wide Shut to be a movie about fucking. But it’s not. It’s a movie about not fucking.
...
It’s no coincidence that Cruise and Kidman were married at the time, and some have suggested the endless shoot (it held the record for length of a continuous film shoot) played a significant part in the star couple’s divorce. They are foils to Stanley Kubrick and his wife, Christiane, whose paintings litter the cloistered interiors and who sustained a decades-long romance without the entertainment industry being able to corrupt it. By all accounts, it was an enviable relationship.

posted by RedOrGreen at 7:05 PM on June 29, 2019 [1 favorite]




This is the only movie in my entire life that I have turned off. I tried to watch it a second time, and turned it off again. Granted, this was close to 20 years ago.

I say that as a person whose favorite Kubrick pic is 2001, and I have no real particular taste when it comes to film.

The most recent film I worked on, a few conversations with people in the industry resulted in me *thinking* about giving it another chance, but I still haven’t moved forward with the idea.

Am I missing something? No hamburger.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 7:14 PM on June 29, 2019


> Am I missing something?

Consider the article linked above, "So... do you... do you suppose we should... talk about money?"

Kubrick had something to say, and while it may have been about prostitution, it wasn't about fucking. Now, biting commentary on social class and the obscenely wealthy and what is available for sale is not necessarily everyone's cup of tea when choosing a movie to watch - nor should it be. But it's not a shallow movie.

(I don't even like the movie. In fact, I quite dislike it.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:24 PM on June 29, 2019 [1 favorite]


I told him I was flattered but I was a director and not much of an actor and he should find someone else.

I refute it thus:
Let me spare us the awkwardness. I killed my wife. Not that it's any justification. I had reason to suspect she was cheating on me with her chiropractor. Granted, I was abusing cocaine at the time. And alcohol, but, came home one day and shot her four times. Twice in the head. I killer her aunt, too. I didn't know she was there. And the mailman. At that point, I had to fully commit. Why are you here exactly?
I loved Sydney Pollack as an actor. (And a director, of course.)
posted by kirkaracha at 10:38 PM on June 29, 2019 [1 favorite]


I just rewatched that scene thanks to this thread, and discovered that I am now bored by the orgy part, but lusting after Elveden Hall, where it was filmed.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:07 PM on June 29, 2019


The first time I saw this scene I was super-distracted by David Lynch, who was sitting behind me, murmuring.

I was a student at UW-Madison and Lynch had been in town making The Straight Story and working with Tandem Press on a project. I'd been eagerly anticipating EWS so I biked out to Hilldale Theatre, which had a matinee screening on opening day. Not many people were there on a Friday afternoon in July, so it was easy to spot Lynch in the lobby with a teenage boy and girl (the boy was his son, I think).

I like to sit in the middle of a theater, slightly forward of the exact center. So did Lynch apparently, because in a mostly-empty theater his group chose to sit directly behind me. I pretty much forgot he was back there until this scene began and he started making soft, repeated "hmmmmm" sounds with a descending tone, like you'd do if you were faced with a mysterious, but minor problem with a kitchen appliance. This changed to apprehensive "errmmmm" sounds. Then, it was "well.. well..." Finally he was shushed by one of the kids.

I had to hurry out during the closing credits because I was late for work, but as I headed up the aisle I overheard Lynch say to the kids, "Well that was a little strange, wasn't it?"
posted by theory at 7:33 PM on June 30, 2019 [13 favorites]




I was kind of hoping that link would go to a static website with just the word "NOTHING" on it.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:59 AM on July 1, 2019 [1 favorite]


Complicity is what Harford seeks: He’s desperate to be on the inside... She, too, is choosing complacency. Her marriage depends on it.

It's an interesting article. I'm really starting to wonder if Kubrick also made a movie as an indictment of this particular Hollywood power couple. One could replace the Harfords' names with those of the principal actors and the same ideas might just as well apply.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:49 AM on July 1, 2019


I guess I need to watch this again. I remember liking it at the time, in spite of the ridiculous slow talking (which was kind of funny) and kind of surprised everyone hated it. Everyone doesn't hate it now? But apparently it's been too long because I had no idea what "that scene" referred to.
posted by bongo_x at 2:23 PM on July 1, 2019


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