Summary

Footage Information

ABCNEWS VideoSource
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: UK: KUBRICK FUNERAL
03/12/1999
APTN
VSAP111051
TAPE_NUMBER: EN9911 IN_TIME: 10:07:41 LENGTH: 00:38 SOURCES: APTN RESTRICTIONS: FEED: VARIOUS (THE ABOVE TIME-CODE IS TIME-OF-DAY) SCRIPT: xfa English/Nat Reclusive director avoids funereal fanfare ---------------------------------------------------------- Friends and family said farewell to celebrated filmmaker STANLEY KUBRICK today at a discreet service held at his manor just outside London. A procession of cars with blacked out windows swept through the entrance to the Hertfordshire estate to attend a low-key ceremony befitting the director's reclusive lifestyle. Among the mourners were TOM CRUISE and his wife NICOLE KIDMAN, who star together in Kubrick's last film, `Eyes Wide Shut'. The pair said Kubrick had become "like family" since they collaborated on the film. Yesterday the world got its first glimpse of his long-awaited final movie. Five years in the planning and two years in the making, the obsessive film-maker reportedly put his two stars through an endurance test in movie acting. Countless takes and re-takes and a shooting schedule that stretched endlessly on as the notoriously perfectionist Kubrick strove to match his inner vision. The film set was firmly closed to press, outsiders and even to executives from the film company that put up the sixty million US dollars. As Kubrick worked on, reshooting and re-editing his work, there were rumours that the movie might never see the light of day. But it now emerges that Kubrick finally finished the final cut of his film a week before his death last Sunday. A sneak trailer has now been released. The film was set for release at the end of the year but studio execs now say they plan to release it in July. Based on the 1926 Arthur Schnitzler novella called 'Dream Story' , the film, a psychosexual thriller began filming in 1996 and wrapped last June. The director insisted on 40 or 50 take shots. A large part of Kubrick's legacy will depend on the film's reception on it's eventual release. His millions of fans will be hoping that Eyes Wide Shut matches the classic status of previous Kubrick fare like "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "A Clockwork Orange". Stanley Kubrick was widely hailed as an icon of modern cinema, producing 10 feature films in 31 years which earned eight Oscars and 14 nominations. As a director he was famous for his unswerving search for perfection. As a person he was a recluse, who avoided the Hollywood glitz and glamour. Born in the Bronx district of New York in 1928, Kubrick first became interested in directing via photography, his teenage hobby. After making a couple of documentary shorts, he got together financing for a first short feature "Fear and Desire", which he wrote, produced, edited and photographed as well. In 1957 he broke through with the powerful anti-war drama "Paths of Glory", starring Kirk Douglas. Douglas was impressed enough with Kubrick to place him in the director's chair for the 1960 costume epic "Spartacus". Director and star clashed mightily during production, and the experience was so unpleasant for Kubrick that he turned his back on Hollywood altogether and moved to London. In 1979 he bought an old manor house just outside the city in 172 acres in the exclusive estate of Childwickbury, near St Albans, Hertfordshire, with his third wife Christiane. Kubrick's desire to work with the British actor Peter Sellers in the anti-war masterpiece "Dr Strangelove" brought him to England in 1964. Perhaps his most famous film was the science-fiction epic "2001: A Space Odyssey" in 1968 which had critics divided as to whether it was prophetic or silly. His next film "A Clockwork Orange", featured Malcolm McDowell as a Beethoven-loving thug who leads his vicious gang through a bleak, futuristic London. After reports of an alleged copycat crime - in which an English gang mimicked a rape scene in the film - Kubrick insisted the film be withdrawn in the UK. It was around this time Kubrick's reputation as a relentless, near-obsessive perfectionist began to get a good deal of play in the press. Reports that his 1975 William Thackeray adaptation "Barry Lyndon" required 300 days just to shoot sent many reeling. Similar reports came from the set of 1980's `The Shining': one story had Kubrick asking elderly actor Scatman Crothers for 75 takes of slamming a car door. His last film to be screened was Full Metal Jacket in 1987, a brutal and stark tale from the midst of the Vietnam War. His refusal to fly anywhere meant that all his films were made in Britain - even "Full Metal Jacket", which made creative use of London's derelict docklands. For the final year of his life he worked, in total seclusion, on "Eyes Wide Shut", an erotic thriller, at London's Pinewood Studios. The film is said to run slightly longer than two hours and is expected to earn an R rating in the States because of the high sexual content. SHOTLIST: SHOWS: WS HOUSE ; CU NO MOTORIST SIGNS ; ARRIVAL NICOLE KIDMAN AND TOM CRUISE IN BACK OF CAR ; MORE MORUNERS ARRIVING ?
Summary
}