Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrickwas an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and photographer. Part of the New Hollywood film-making wave, Kubrick's films are considered by film historian Michel Ciment to be "among the most important contributions to world cinema in the twentieth century", and he is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential directors in cinematic history. His films, which are typically adaptations of novels or short stories, cover a wide range of genres, and are noted for...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth26 July 1928
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
[Making movies] you're not trying to capture reality, you're trying to capture a photograph of reality.
The reality of the final moment, just before shooting [the scene], is so powerful that all previous analysis must yield before the impressions you receive under these circumstances, and unless you use this feedback to your positive advantage, unless you adjust to it, adapt to it and accept the sometimes terrifying weaknesses it can expose, you can never realize the most out of your film.
How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.' This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001.
I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner. I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized 'realistic' story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its 'realist' style.
I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists-neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are.
When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.
The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.
Everything has changed, but the process of telling a story has not changed. It's like cavemen sitting around the fire; somebody's going to tell the story. Somebody is drawing on the wall. You're communicating. You're trying to learn and teach at the same time. You're your own student and you're your own teacher, but the process is of the communicating.
I'm a slave to my imagination in terms of making narrative films.
I used and abused drugs and alcohol. When I stopped doing that it became a lot clearer that life goes from inside to giving as opposed to taking and destroying.
Regret isn't going to get me anywhere. It's like being obsessed with something. It doesn't bring you anywhere.
A film needs more than you can give it in a lifetime.
You're constantly changing man. But the film's not changing. The film stays the same. That's the beautiful aspect of it.
In any case, once you're dealing on a nonverbal level, ambiguity is unavoidable. But it's the ambiguity of all art, of a fine piece of music or a painting - you don't need written instructions by the composer or painter accompanying such works to 'explain' them. “Explaining” them contributes nothing but a superficial 'cultural' value which has no value except for critics and teachers who have to earn a living.