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Panel wrap: Jan Harlan discusses Stanley Kubrick
He died 10 years ago this month, but legendary director Stanley Kubrick still draws a ton of interest from film geeks, as evidenced by the relatively-full conference room at the Convention Center Sunday afternoon.
Multi-platforming film critic Elvis Mitchell discussed Kubrick with Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s brother-in-law who also served as executive producer on some of the director’s biggest films (“Barry Lyndon,” “The Shining,” “Full Metal Jacket”). Harlan spoke of his enigmatic brother-in-law’s perfectionism and artistic vision and his role in helping some of the best of Kubrick’s best films come to life.
Some snippets from the talk:
- Although “Eyes Wide Shut” was initially panned by many critics, and audiences in small towns in America killed the film, the Japanese audiences loved it. A studio rep. actually told Harlan that Japanese couples actually left the theater holding hands, a show of affection that is generally unheard of.
- Not surprisingly, Kubrick did not enjoy the role of the critic in cinema. He was confounded by the fact that he could spend three years working on a film, only to have some critic see the movie in the morning and then write a review that afternoon. He seemingly had no use for critics, as is the case with many filmmakers and moviegoers.
- In discussing the casting process for “Full Metal Jacket” and Kubrick’s desire, borne from perfectionism, to cast 18 year-olds to play the roles of the young soldiers, Harlan said that they reviewed 2,500 casting tapes to try and find the right seven actors for the main parts before relenting and hiring actors in their twenties. “Like everything, he took it (the casting) incredibly seriously,” said Harlan.
- Kubrick, as has been well documented, hated to travel. So, when the production team needed American tanks to shoot scenes in London for “Full Metal Jacket,” they “rented” three old American tanks from the Belgian army. Apparently the Americans were reluctant to help out the team, holding a slight grudge from “Dr. Strangelove.”
- Kubrick had a brilliant memory and would concurrently play matches of chess against three different people. However, he was a much less skilled table tennis player.
- The director loved sports, and one time, after watching a semi-final between John McEnroe and Boris Becker, Kubrick turned to Harlan, exhilarated and exhausted, and proclaimed to Harlan, “No film could ever be so exciting.”
- Harlan’s biggest regret about “Eyes Wide Shut,” and the film’s biggest problem, was that the film needed two viewings to be fully understood.
- Kubrick turned over the “A.I.” project to Steven Spielberg because he believed the dark fantasy would be done better by Spielberg and be entirely too dark under his own direction.
- With regard to “A.I.,” while Harlan says Kubrick was an “optimist in his daily life,” the director believed that we were “digging our own grave” and that the human race had “no chance of survival.”
- Harlan briefly touched on a fact that I was alerted to by one of my film professors in college and a former colleague of Peter Sellers, ‘Dr. Strangelove” was initially to be made as a straight-ahead drama. The dark comedic elements were added later. My professor in Rome told me that the idea to shift the tone was one he had offered Kubrick at a dinner party … I did not get the chance at the panel to verify the veracity of that claim.
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