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
No philosophy based on an incorrect view of the nature of man is likely to produce social good.
I don't think that writers or painters or filmmakers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form; they like words, or the smell of paint, or celluloid and photographic images and working with actors. I don't think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was.
Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved-that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.
A satirist is someone who has a very skeptical view of human nature, but who still has the optimism to make some sort of a joke out of it. However brutal that joke might be.
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.