Nerd Pride Radio

I guess we should get all this out there at once, because y'all crazy if you think Stanley Kubrick was overrated. Did he make some duds in his day? Some weird stuff? Yeah. So what? Did he also make some works of incredible, profound, hilarious genius? Yeah. Yeah he did. Fight me, I've had A WEEK AND A HALF and I'll wrestle anyone down right here who wants to tell me Dr. Strangelove isn't a perfect work of genius. You fucking FIND THE FLAW IN IT.

The flaw is, I fell asleep during Dr. Strangelove.

I'm failing to see how that's a flaw. You got sleep, did you not?

Your remarks are, overall, positive enough that I'm not going to have to fight you, but I'm watching you.

The man is fighting his own hand. His Nazi hand is fighting him.
I don't even know how to help you.

And...it ate my post. And I definitely don't give enough about Kubrick to redo the whole breakdown.

He gets credit for Spartacus and Eyes Wide Shut. Everything else is a hot mess, largely due to Kubrick (though Mike has it right about Sellers and 2001). He also BROKE A WOMAN'S GODDAMN MIND.

Team Phoebe until we meet again...

I don't think that's why she is mentally ill, if she is. A lot of people made hay with that on the basis of pretty minimal evidence, and despite her appreciation for him as a director. It also never seems to occur to these writers that she embarked upon filming right after having a bad breakup with Paul Simon. Anyway, she went on to do a lot of other cool things.

It's in no way meant to say it is the root cause for her potential mental illness. It is however meant to point out the rather well-documented abuse she suffered under that fucking nutbag. One doesn't generally consider presenting a person with clumps of your own hair as a sign of health and wellness.

And the Shining may be the shining example of his utter inability to get the hell out of his ego's own way. He took source material, largely tossed it, and then decided that it was better done with major influence from an entirely different book from an entirely different author and a television episode he directed once. He cast a person who can barely pass for sane in real life, and decided the best way to tell a story about a sane person losing their mind was to use that fellow. Perfectionist directors are enough of a problem (my favorite director is absolutely that type). Being a raving goddamn egomaniac is an entirely different beast. That's one of the many reasons why Kubrick and Hitchcock both get the highly overrated director tags. Hell, Kubrick made into actual film school textbooks literally under the heading of "how not to adapt existing material."

I've watched that short film (where the hair clumps scene happens) and it really doesn't come off that way to me. If she would have said he was abusive or heartless or whatever - unreasonably hard on her - then I'd feel differently. But that's not what she says about Kubrick, and the effort to insist a person was mistreated when she isn't saying that herself always bothers me. Sometimes it has merit but major caution warranted. People who have serious anxiety disorders are also not well-served by reassurance, which is not an option that people who wrote about the scene considered. But Kubrick points out that it's not good for her. Again, her two-year intense relationship had just ended when the guy (Paul Simon) left her for a friend to whom she had introduced him (Carrie Fisher). This is a period when former boyfriend, at least, was heavily into drugs. Being immersed in a grueling work situation might have been a good thing for a person who would have been suffering some ills regardless. Not saying that's the case, just that it easily could be, and meshes better with what Duvall said, and is more charitable in a situation where the lack of charitable interpretation seems unnecessary (or necessary to sell media).

Whoopsie, forgot the adaptation issue. I don't think his goal had a thing to do with faithfulness to the source material, and that's fine. He was inspired by things and remade them into his own, much like Miloš Forman made One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest his own new and improved thing. Of course, in the most colossal example, he definitely did not and could not improve upon or even make an equivalently good thing to Lolita. No one could. Nor could the truth of that book have been put on film at that time... or at all? But he made a different and iconic thing out of it. I used to hate it just out of solidarity with Nabokov's position, but I admit the movie does something else interesting. The Shining is plain awesome.

Definitely would have been a better choice for director.

Well Stephen King did have a chance to give the world his pure vision for the shining. This was the result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny1tTTJk9Ok

OMG is that real? I mean, that's not a parody video?