stanley kubrick Archives -

ROLAND EMMERICH’S BARRY LYNDON GREENLIT

MOVIE NEWS – In the wake of the Moonfall publicity, Roland Emmerich’s Barry Lyndon has been greenlit. It is due to start shooting in the spring. Roland Emmerich’s Barry Lyndon isn’t a combo that immediately comes to mind, so we spoke to the director about his next project.

Roland, What Made You Choose Barry Lyndon?

You mean The Luck Of Barry Lyndon. I’ve always been a fan of William Thackeray’s work, which is evident from my movies. I know people have been crying out for me to finally tackle this perfect fit. With the forecast numbers of Moonfall looking so good, I managed to get this signed off.

Isn’t It Daunting Making A Film That Will Always Be Compared To Kubrick’s Masterpiece?

Masterpiece? You mean snooze-fest. It takes such liberties with the source material. I can’t recognize it as an adaptation of the book I so dearly love.

Apart From The Lack Of 1st Person Narrative, How Does It Differ That Much?

You’re kidding me, aren’t you? I think we must have read different books. The film is this turgid study of people standing in candle-lit rooms, staring at each other. Every now and then he goes off to a war or duels. But otherwise, back into candle-lit rooms and back to staring at each other. I mean, fuck me, it’s awful. We’re going to tell the real story of The Luck Of Barry Lyndon.

Which Is?

So when Barry joins the Prussian Army, he uncovers an alien conspiracy that threatens not just this world, but the entire galaxy. So Barry builds a spaceship with the aid of some alien tech he finds in Barn 51, near Dusseldorf. He then zooms up into space to try and destroy the alien mothership, which is hiding behind Mars. And then-

For God’s Sake Man. Just Stop. STOP!

Moonfall Is Currently Showing In Cinemas.

DR SLEEP PREQUEL GREENLIT

BREAKING NEWS – With the news there has been a Dr Sleep prequel greenlit came the even more surprising news horror mega-author, Stephen King is set to direct. With the Dr Sleep prequel greenlit, The Exec sat down to talk with the writer / director.

Stephen, thanks for joining us:

Not at all. I’m happy to talk about my passion project that is finally getting off the ground. After all these years the world will finally know the story behind Danny Torrence and what happened to him as a kid.

Umm, ok. What did happen?

Well, the prequel will tell the story of his father, Jack Torrence and his mother, Wendy Torrence. Jack is a writer who takes a job at this hotel called The Overlook in off season. He moves his family to the deserted hotel in the hope he can get his writing back on track.

But that doesn’t happen?

Yeah that’s right. You guessed it. The hotel, is somehow alive and there’s also his drinking.

And there’s a maze?

NO! THERE’S NO FUCKING MAZE! TAKE YOUR MAZE AND STICK IT UP YOUR. Ahem. Excuse me. What I meant to say is no. Why would there be? There’s some topiary and a big fucking boiler in the basement.

And Jack becomes consumed by the hotel and tries to kill his family?

Yeah. How do you know?

But young Danny has what Doc calls ‘The Shining’.

Who have you been talking to? How do you know all this?

It’s your book and the Stanley Kubrick film of the same name, The Shining.

DON’T SAY THAT FUCKING NAME IN FRONT OF ME. HOW DARE YOU. Anyway. I’ve never heard of no Simon Kubrick or whatever. Or any Shining. I have no idea what you’re talking about. My film will be called The Mysterious Hotel Of Horror. None of that Shining crap. No conspiracy theories. There isn’t any moon landing bullshit. No Jack Nicholson. And certainly no groovy fucking carpets. Just some good old fashioned paper thin characters, cheap jump scares, gaping plot holes and a predictably disappointing third act.

Stephen King’s The Mysterious Hotel Of Horror starts shooting this winter.

WAS STANLEY KUBRICK MURDERED?

LONDON – A new book asks the question: Was Stanley Kubrick murdered?

Stanley Kubrick‘s life was surrounded by a miasma of legend and rumor. His films are the rich breeding ground for OCD analysis, OCD analysis and some more OCD analysis; and now his death has become the subject of a new book by Hardy Mantellance – Who Killed Stanley Kubrick?

The Stanley Kubrick scholar claims that the Spartacus director was done in by a fatal confluence of Masonic Satanism, poison and an unbalanced man who had been fatally damaged by watching Barry Lyndon every night for eighteen years.

I spoke to Hardy Mantellance in her West London home.

Stanley Kubrick suffered a myocardial infarction in his sleep shortly after completing Eyes Wide Shut. A myocardial infarction is relatively simple to provoke with the use of poison. Who do we know who uses poisons in all his films and had a deadly rivalry with Stanley Kubrick? Steven Spielberg.

But Spielberg was Stanley Kubrick’s friend!

Until they began to develop the script for AI together, at which point a deadly enmity grew between them over the creative disagreement. Kubrick wanted to make a ‘good film’. After Kubrick’s death no one was there to stop Spielberg from making a ‘bad film’, exactly as he had always wanted.

So you’re accusing Oscar winner Steven Spielberg of murder?

That’s what they want you to think.

Who’s they?

The Saturn Death Cult who Kubrick had so brilliantly exposed in Eyes Wide Shut. The Saturn Death Cult are a secret group made up of the elite from business, politics and celebrity. They perform ritual sex orgies which culminate in human sacrifice and their members include that old enemy of Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicholson.

What?

The night Kubrick died Nicholson was overheard to say at a Lakers game, ‘We did it!’ At the time people thought he was referring to the Lakers victory, but it was only afterwards some right minded folk realised he was actually referring to the successful conspiracy to do away with the man who had forced Nicholson to say ‘Here’s Johnny!’ 78 times, even though his name is actually Jack.

So Nicholson murdered Kubrick?

Ha ha, how innocent you are! But ask yourself this, if Nicholson killed Kubrick, why was Nicole Kidman unable to contain her tears on the Eyes Wide Shut featurette?

Because she was sad at the passing of a man she admired.

Those were tears of joy. Following the orders of her Svengali like husband – Tom Cruise – whose own religious cult Scientology had just signed a pact with the Saturn Death Cult worth billions of dollars, Nicole Kidman had baked some cupcakes which were laced with a powerful chemical provided by Steven Spielberg and concocted in his ‘Temple of Doom’ laboratory deep in the Hollywood hills and placed in a Tupperware container bought from a Kmart by Jack Nicholson on the twenty fifth anniversary of the Apollo moon landings, moon landings which were faked convincingly by Stanley Kubrick who was as a reward given the right to make any film he liked, even Barry Lyndon.

The fact would be exposed in Capricorn One directed by Peter Hyams, whose silence was bought by being given the apparently peach job of making a sequel to 2001: a Space Odyssey, but the peach proved to be a poison apple and the film – 2010: the Year We Make Contact – was a critical disaster. Hyams (who grew up two doors down from Ryan O’Neal) spent the rest of his life watching Barry Lyndon on a loop and plotting revenge, a revenge that was only made possible by a coincidental meeting with Malcolm McDowell, the actor made famous by A Clockwork Orange, but who Stanley Kubrick had humiliated when he once, June 7th, 1978, asked if Malcolm had lost any weight, knowing full well that Malcolm had not.

So Peter Hyams, Malcolm McDowell, Steven Spielberg, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, the Church of Scientology, Jack Nicholson and the Satan Death Cult all conspired to kill Stanley Kubrick?

It would be comforting to think so, wouldn’t it? But the truth is actually a lot darker. Shelley Duvall…

At this point my recording device cut out and the rest of the interview is lost. Coincidence? I don’t know.

**Hardy Mantellance’s Who Killed Stanley Kubrick? is available from Amazon and all good book stores.**

DAVID FINCHER: RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA IS GO

HOLLYWOOD – Director David Fincher’s next film to be Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.

David Fincher has long wanted to make a film of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Rendezvous with Rama. And now it looks like it’s finally coming true.

We spoke with the Fight Club director about Science Fiction, his new film and his rivalry with Stanley Kubrick.

David Fincher Speaks

David Fincher: Hey, Exec how are you today?

I’m good Davey. So Rendezvous with Rama… we all thought it was dead in the water.

We did too but you know Netflix. It’s Latin for too much money.

Right. So when are you filming it?

Secretly, we’ve been filming it for about six months but it will take another six months to do the post-production work. Special effects, ADR, CGI and QED.

That last one I don’t…

My motivation for going into this was simple. Fucking Stanley Kubrick. That fat fuck with the beard. Everyone always saying he’s the new Kubrick, I’m the new Kubrick. Look at the new Kubrick. So I thought to myself, I really want to do something that Kubrick has never done. And that way next time Kubrick comes out with something, it’ll be ‘He’s the new Fincher’ and then the tables will truly be turned.

But Kubrick died?

What? No. No he didn’t. But when he sees Rendezvous with Rama he’ll wish he was dead. I can hear him now. He’ll be crying and shouting: ‘Why couldn’t I have made an Arthur C. Clarke novel into a film?’

But he did?

Barry Lyndon was by William Thackeray, you twot.

2001: a Space Odyssey was by Arthur C. Clarke. Actually, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick were both credited as the authors of the novel.

That wasn’t Isaac Asimov?

No.

Oh, I wish I was dead.

That’s so Kubrick.

What? This. Conversation. Is. Over.

Rendezvous with Rama will be released in 2021.

FORGET DIE HARD – THE SHINING IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIE EVER

HOLLYWOOD – The Shining is the best Christmas Movie Ever.

Die Hard might be yuletide fun, but Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is the best Christmas movie of all. The 1980 Stephen King adaptation always makes me feel Christmassy. Okay there are no Christmas carols, no one says Merry Christmas, no Christmas tree or Christmas decorations. But all the same for me ever Christmas Eve I don’t feel like Christmas has properly come until blood gushes from the opening doors of a pair of elevators. But why? Why? WHY??

Snow

As a horror film, The Shining – let’s face it – isn’t scary. But it is cosy. Mmmm. The light of the snow coming through the windows. The snow maze, The snow drifts. Escaping from the bathroom via a snow slide. A snow mobile for crying out loud. Did I mention a snow maze? The Shining is a tone poem in love with snow.

Children

Home Alone is essentially The Shining but with Kevin projecting unknown burglars onto the faces of his parents to shield him from the Freudian terror that his mum and dad actually want to kill him. Danny is resourceful like Kevin. He knows how to escape his father because he knows how to play. And Danny has an invisible friend – kinda like how Jesus has an invisible dad.

Jumpers

Knitwear is a vital part of the first chapter of the Greatest Story Ever Told: The Nativity. The unironically great jumpers worn by Jack Torrance and Danny, not to mention Wendy’s choice winter woollies.

A Family Movie

A movie for the whole family. Christmas is a time that family comes together, isolated from the outside world for at least a day. And The Shining gives a lesson in how terrible your family can be. From your alcoholic abusive father, to your weak mother to your annoying bowl haired child. There’s something for everyone. Except black chefs. There’s nothing here for them. Nothing.

The Shining is everywhere.

IS CHRISTOPHER NOLAN THE NEW STANLEY KUBRICK?

HOLLYWOOD – Studio Exec answers the age old question: is Dunkirk director Christopher Nolan the new Stanley Kubrick?

As part of a new series of short answers to long questions, the Studio Exec faces the poser is Christopher Nolan director of Memento, Inception, Interstellar, the Dark Knight trilogy and Dunkirk the new Stanley Kubrick? Continue reading “IS CHRISTOPHER NOLAN THE NEW STANLEY KUBRICK?”

ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY TO MAKE EDGAR WRIGHT ANT-MAN DOCUMENTARY

HOLLYWOOD – Surrealist director Alejandro Jodorowsky will direct a documentary chronically the ill-fated Edgar Wright Ant-Man film.

Famed El Topo director Alejandro Jodorowsky turns his attention to another filmmaker in a new documentary about Edgar Wright’s unfinished Ant-Man movie. Speaking EXCLUSIVELY with the Studio Exec, Jodorowsky had this to say:

I love cinema. But more than cinema even I love the impossible cinema of the incomplete. No film is more pure than the unmade film. This was seen already with my version of Dune. Then there was even Rob Schneider’s version, which I would have loved to have seen. Edgar’s version of Ant-Man is another of these invisible visions. A silent echo of a master imagination, which we now only hear hushed voices speak of.

Edgar Wright signed on to direct Ant-Man for Marvel and he and Joe Cornish wrote a screenplay. However, when Marvel wanted to have a rewrite Wright wrote it couldn’t be rewritten. Jodorowsky continues:

Wright had worked on Ant-Man for eight years. It was a project close to his emotional core. The vision he pursued looked to change the history of cinema as we know it. Imagine what Paul Rudd, in the hands of a master such as Wright, could have become. How he would mould him. Change him. Instead Peyton Reed came along and just made yet another Marvel film. I was sick to my stomach when I saw it. It is a missed opportunity to put beside Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon movie and Steven Spielberg remake of The Human Centipede.

Alejandro Jodorwsky’s next film is Barnacles.

SNEAK PEEK AT TOM HIDDLESTON IN SHINING PREQUEL

HOLLYWOOD – The first image from Mark Romanek’s Shining prequel starring Loki star Tom Hiddleston has hit the internets and caused a stir.

Tentatively entitled Delbert: A Shining Story, the film starring Tom Hiddleston will tell the backstory to the most infamous butler in movie history.

Speaking EXCLUSIVELY to the Studio Exec, the Loki star explained the idea behind the prequel to Stanley Kubrick’s famous masterpiece:

I don’t know about you but when I first saw The Shining I was absolutely fascinated by Philip Stone’s amazing performance as Delbert Grady. We had already heard about the butler before we met him and we knew the story of the murders he had committed but then we meet this mild mannered Englishman, so in contrast to Wolfman Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance. Chilling indeed. With the new film, we will go back and find out how Delbert Grady became the butler at the Overlook Hotel.

Wow! Amazing.

I know it is. We see Delbert coming over from England after the war and getting a series of jobs in hotels up and down the country. He meets and falls in love with chamber maid, Doris and Delbert and Doris marry and both find work at the newly built – on an Indian burial ground – Overlook Hotel. Here Doris gives birth to two beautiful twin girls. This is the happy times for the family but when one of the girls fails to use an apostrophe correctly Delbert becomes infuriated and ‘corrects’ them.

You mean he kills them because of punctuation. Thats stupid.

What did you say?

I said…

You said ‘thats stupid’ and you should have said ‘that’s stupid.’

How can you tell I didnt use an apostrophe just by listening?

I know your site of old.- You must be corrected!

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo argggggghh!

Ha ha!

Image courtesy of @GetHill.

DR STRANGELOVE 2 GREENLIT

HOLLYWOOD – Dr Strangelove 2 has been green lit.

With World War 3 just a beautiful piece of cake and a twitter rant away, Stanley Kubrick’s classic of Cold War paranoia is to get a sequel with Dr. Strangelove 2. Director Steven Spielberg had this to say:

I’ve always loved Stanley’s film but I was also dissatisfied by the ending. What? Everyone dies? That’s it. I knew when I first saw the film that it wasn’t true. Here I was after all, alive, watching the film. So I decided that something must have happened. A short circuit, or maybe everyone hid in a fridge, and the world somehow continues. My film takes that premise. We are going to see that now General Buck Turgidson, played by George C. Scott in the original – John Goodman plays him for me – has become President of the United States of America. He wants to renew mining because he doesn’t want a mine shaft gap to develop between the US and the Chinese and North Koreans. Unfortunately things go bad.

Someone goes crazy and tries to set off a bomb?

No. In our version it’s the President who is trying to set off the bomba nd everyone else who is trying to stop him. It just seemed more realistic that way.

Dr Strangelove 2 will be released in 2019.

MICHAEL BAY IS TO REMAKE BARRY LYNDON

HOLLYWOOD – Michael Bay plans to remake Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.

Barry Lyndon is a classic of cinema and will finally get a remake. Transformers and Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay plans to remake Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of William Thackery’s novel of the same name. Longtime Kubrick fan, Bay spoke EXCLUSIVELY with the Studio Exec:

I love all of Kubrick’s work, but Barry Lyndon for me is the film that most completely sums up the potential of cinema. It is a subtle and beautiful, frequently moving achievement. Technically masterful, there is a tone of melancholy about the story of the young Irish rogue who rises through the English aristocracy only to fall again. The composition, the use of light and color, the performances. The great use of Thackery’s own words in Michael Horden’s narration… everything is almost cinematic perfection.

So what are you going to bring to the remake?

First of all, my version is going to be updated. Set in 2018, Andrew Garfield plays Barry. He comes to Los Angeles just as massive robots invade the Earth. Bang, bang, crash, crash. Candlelight. You get the picture.

Barry Lyndon: 2018 will be released in 2018.

HIDDEN GEMS: 20. THE SHINING

Hidden Gems brings to light little known film gems which have somehow slipped through the collective cinematic consciousness. This week ‘horror’ film: The Shining. You’re welcome.

Man with family stays in snowbound hotel for the winter and can’t write a book. I know. Doesn’t sound like a great film, does it? Would it help if I told you that the film has some of the most revolutionary trike shots in the history of film? No, probably not. Shelley Duvall is in it. Still not interested? Jesus.

Based on a book by an American writer called Stephen King, The Shining was so poorly received even Stephen King, the writer, came out publicly to denounce the film as ‘an unflushed toilet’ in his essay ‘Supernatural Fiction (and Shit I Think)’. Director Stanley Kubrick had given up directing. He’d moved to England and was hosting a popular chat show for the BBC called ‘Parkinson’ when he read the novel. He immediately saw the potential for a hilarious comedy. He told Jack Nicholson: ‘It’s about a bad writer, who becomes a bad ax murderer.’ Jack Torrance, the murderous novelist, is terrible at killing people, repeatedly bested by his child and wife. The only victim he manages to kill is a man who can see into the future who is worse at seeing into the future than Jack is at killing people with an ax.

The film is neither scary nor funny, but a weird amalgam of the two. It was released to huge indifference and Kubrick went back to being a TV chat show host and never made another film again.

For more Hidden Gems CLICK HERE.

SIR EDWIN FLUFFER RECALLS LEE MARVIN

HOLLYWOOD – Sir Edwin Fluffer returns just in time to cast his gimlet eye over the dream factory of Hollywood, turning his attention specifically to War Movies.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that war can be an utterly ghastly affair. It really does have a tendency to drag on a bit. That said war movies can be very jolly indeed. I’ve been in more than I care to remember, and would’ve starred in The Dirty Dozen as well if they hadn’t already hired too many actors. I said they should just change the name to The Filthy Thirteen, but the studio wasn’t interested.

War movies are a bit like actual wars really in that ideally you want to end up on the winning side. When you get the script have a flick through, and if you have the line ‘for you my friend ze var iss over’ or anything like that then you’re in trouble. The best thing to do is find someone in the costume department and bung them a few quid in the hope they’ll give you the other team’s uniform. It worked for Gary Cooper in Sergeant York, that’s all I’m saying.

There’s also a fair chance that you’ll have to do a bit of marching. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds as long as you can remember the hokey-cokey! Basically there’s a chap at the front with a moustache, you all line up behind him, and he starts shouting out the moves. When he says ‘left’ you put your left leg in, when he says ‘right’ you put your right leg in, and you just carry on from there really. Burt Lancaster was a lovely marcher, despite his many failings as a human being. His secret was he had not one, but too wooden legs. He’d screw them on, the director would shout ‘action’ and he’d go for miles! The rest of us would have trouble keeping up! It was a great sadness that he got set upon by a family of beavers, ending an otherwise glittering career. To this day I still maintain that he could’ve marched in the Olympics he was that good.

The finest war movie ever made has to be Pearl Harbour, and were Stanley Kubrick alive to have seen it I know he would’ve agreed with me. It was my idea to cast the late Elizabeth Taylor as Pearl, and for my money it was one of her very finest performances. Goodness knows how many hours she had to spend in make up, but it was worth every moment, and with characteristic grace she refused to be credited for the role. We all laughed when she insisted on being paid in bitcoins, then we found out that the fortune she made from that was what funded her fracking operations in the North Atlantic.

But that’s another story…

For more Fluffer please be so good as to CLICK HERE.

STANLEY KUBRICK REALLY WANTED TO MAKE CUJO

HOLLYWOOD – Stanley Kubrick’s lost Stephen King movie – Cujo – revealed by scholar.

Stanley Kubrick completed thirteen feature films in his career. However, the director was known to have planned other films such as an adaptation of Perfume, his Holocaust drama The Aryan Files, a biopic of Napoleon and revealed in a new book, the Stephen King novel Cujo.

Kubrick scholar Alfonso Bratt talked EXCLUSIVELY to the Studio Exec about this new discovery.

Stanley loved Stephen King’s work, and he planned after completing The Shining to make another Stephen King immediately. Originally he was writing a screenplay for The Stand, but he found the story difficult and then in 1983 Cujo came out and Stanley was really taken by it. He immediately contacted NASA and asked them to make him a large dog, which they did. NASA would do anything for Stanley. With British horror writer James Herbert, Kubrick began to breakdown the novel and write a first draft screenplay, but then King began to play tough about the rights. King did not like what Kubrick had done with The Shining. And he was not happy at the prospect of Kubrick adapting another of his books. So he basically kept raising his asking price until Kubrick realized it was never going to happen.

What happened next?

Stanley got interested in The Shorttimers, as Full Metal Jacket was then called. Stephen King let an adaptation of Cujo be made by another director and Stanley’s love affair with Stephen King was pretty much over. Although I believe there’s still a NASA made robotic dog somewhere in a barn in the south of England.

The Cujo that Could Have Been by Alfonso Bratt is available from all good bookshops and Amazon.

NEW BOOK REVEALS THE FART OF STANLEY KUBRICK

HOLLYWOOD – New book about Stanley Kubrick has been published, revealing the director’s obsession with farts.

Stanley Kubrick is one of the most famous directors in world cinema and a new book has revealed how many of his films are actually about farting. Author Rita DaVerde told the Studio Exec EXCLUSIVELY that the book was inspired by doodles that she made at school on history books.

I found that we used to be able to put the phrase ‘Who’s Farted?’ into pretty much any photograph it would make it automatically funny. I wondered if the same method could be applied to the work of Stanley Kubrick. And I found to my unalloyed joy, that it could.

The Fart of Stanley Kubrick is available from Amazon and other respected book sellers.

Images courtesy of @ThePixelFactor.