Stanley Kubrick Interview Part 1

Ten years ago today one of the greatest movie directors of all time, Stanley Kubrick, passed away at the age of 70.

He only made a handful of movies in an almost 50 year career but they were almost all classics: The Killing, Killer's Kiss, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut. Any of those movies I could watch over and over again.

Kubrick was a native of the Bronx and, in this interview from 1966, you can hear his distinctive New York accent. This is the first part of an hour and ten minute interview that is posted in nine parts on YouTube.

In this part of the interview, Kubrick talks about his early life in New York and the influences that shaped his career. You might not know that he started his career as a photographer for Look magazine. He's the one who took this picture that I posted in a December blog post: a picture from 1945 the day FDR died. Kubrick took it as a teenager and the rest was movie history.

Picturing the City

Among the many, many, many-to-infinity things I have no talent at, you can include drawing and photography among them. I can't take a decent photograph to save my life (ask my wife, ba dum bum) and, when it comes to drawing, it's like trying to breath in outer space -- hopeless, not at all possible, entirely for naught.

So people who can draw well and take great photographs, I admire the hell out of.

Naturally, a beautiful, diverse, teaming city like New York provides ample opportunities for sketchers and photographers to record great images. Be it the buildings, the streets, the parks, the people, the opportunities NYC affords to such artists is never-ending.

That takes us to two very different projects, currently on display in NYC, where you can see photos and drawings of the city that'll amaze you.

First, Stanley Kubrick. Yes, that guy, one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived. Years before he made such classics as Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick was a kid photographer from the Bronx, working for Look magazine. He took a vast number of pictures all over the city in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and you can see them in an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. These pictures are amazing, brilliant captures of New Yorkers and the post-war city. If he had never directed film, Kubrick's photography would still be worth showing all these decades later. It's amazing to think that these photos, which look like they were done by a seasoned professional, were made by someone just out of high school with no formal training. You can see how Kubrick, even then, had impressive visual sensibility, a great "eye", and an innate ability to recognize and frame memorable images. Years before he had a guy riding a missile and crafting some of the most memorable images in cinema history, Kubrick's vision was at work on the streets in NYC.  

Second, the subway. A man named Philip Coppola has undertaken a mission to sketch every one of the 400+ subway stations in NYC. He's been doing it since 1984 and has so far produced six volumes of these drawings. These are meticuleous, finely realized pictures and reveals the true beauty and craftsmanship that went into the building of many of these stations. Right now, at the New York City Transit Museum Annex at Grand Central there is exhibit of several of these pictures and they really make you look at the subway, literally, a different way. Coppola says that he think he'll be dome by 2030 so there's lots more to come.

Picturing NYC is truly an art unto itself.

From the Bronx to Jupiter: Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

"I'm sorry ... Dave" but I'm having a Stanley Kubrick moment.

Lately Dr. Strangelove has been on TCM. I hadn't seen it in a while but, as always, it's the funniest movie ever made about the end of the world and one of my favorites.  

Also, this past March was the 20th anniversary of the great Bronx-born director's death, just months before the release of his last movie, the bizarre (and NYC-based) Eyes Wide Shut. 

But Kubrick's masterpiece of masterpieces is 2001: A Space Odyssey which came out in 1968 and changed science-fiction and movies forever. It was, to put it mildly, daring -- little dialogue, little character development, almost pure visual storytelling, a plot that slowly, slowly reveals itself about a mission to Jupiter gone wrong, a story where the villain (HAL) is a computer and not a person, and an ending that can only be described as inscrutable. It's a movie that frustrating to watch the first time you see it but, like all great movies, it gets better and better with repeat viewings. 

So how did 2001 come to be? How did this poor kid from the Bronx wind up making an American classic that inspired the world?

You MUST listen to this episode of Studio 360 about the history of 2001 and Kubrick's back story that led him to make it. It's an amazing only-in-NYC story, of how a kid dreamed big -- universally big! -- and changed the world.

Also, please read my 2008 interview with Kurt Anderson, the host of Studio 360. He's fascinating too!

Review: "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999)

The news that Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman is getting her second divorce made my mind race back to the early 2000s when she divorced movie star Tom Cruise.

In the 1990s "Tom and Nic" were the biggest celebrity couple in the world. Great actors, huge stars, they made lots of big hit movies (A Few Good Men, Jerry McGuire, To Die For, and many others), and they also made three together, including their last and most notable one, Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. 

I remember when news of this movie was announced. It was a big deal -- the biggest movie star couple in the world making a movie with one of the greatest directors of his time, the Bronx-born Stanley Kubrick. They were making a weird movie, in secret, in England, and no one knew anything about it. The entertainment media of the day was fascinating by what this movie would be -- and the secrecy of its making and content became its currency.

There was also a lot of other drama surrounding Eyes Wide Shut.

A noted perfectionist, Stanley Kubrick spent almost two full years shooting the movie -- keeping these two huge stars off screens and out of other movies, much to the industry's consternation. Various actors kept getting hired, then fired, or replaced because the open-ended schedule made their continued participation impossible. The movie was supposed to be released in late 1998 -- then was bumped to the summer of 1999 where it would compete with the big action movies.

Then, the biggest dramatic moment of all -- in the Spring of 1999, just a few months before the movie's release, Stanley Kubrick died. Suddenly. So this secret movie with the two biggest starts in the world would be the last movie from the directors of Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket. Wow! 

Then, in July 1999, after all the hype, after reams and reams, hours and hours of coverage, the movie comes out and ... no one cares. It dies quickly. And more than 25 years later it's forgotten -- except for being the last hurrah for Tom and Nic. There divorce two years later would be its coda. 

So what's Eye's Wide Shut about? I still don't know. 

It takes place in Manhattan during Christmas time. Cruise is a wealthy, successful doctor, with a gorgeous, very bored housewife played by Nic. One night they go to a party, flirt with other people, then go home where Nic confesses her fantasies about sleeping with other men. Tom is horrified -- so he goes out walking the strees of wintertime NYC. He meets a friend of his who works in a piano bar and he tells Tom about a masked orgy out of Long Island where the friend plays the piano during all the nooky. Tom decides to go out to Long Island, puts on a Venetian mask, and witnesses all the nooky -- before he's found out, humiliated, ejected from the orgy, and made to fear for his life.

And there's something about hookers in the meantime too.

I love, love, love Stanley Kubrick's films but this one was boring, and his weakest effort. There's really no story, and you're not made to care about any of the characters. It's visually amazingly and it's more like an early-sound European movie than a modern organic film. 

When this movie was being made, and stories about it kept appearing, I was in college, and remember being super excited to see it. Then I graduated, came home, saw the movie that summer ... and left totally underwhelmed. Looking at the movie decades later, it's still lifeless -- and even more depressing considering the horrors we've learned about sexual abuse by rich people in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein.

Still, Eyes Wide Shut is an interesting look at a filmmaker at the end of his life, making his oddest movie ever, in a make-believe NYC at night, with two huge movie stars whose marriage would soon end -- and would gone on to other great movies, as well as more divorces.  

"Hey, what about Major Kong?" -- James Earl Jones RIP

The brilliant actor James Earl Jones recently died at the age of 93.

Yes, I know, he's best known as the voice of Darth Vader and the Lion King, and he appeared in many classic films like Field of Dreams, Conan the Barbarian, Coming to America, The Hunt for Red October, Matewan and others.

But James Earl Jones was also a great Broadway actor, appearing in numerous plays between the 1950s and 2010s -- including The Iceman Cometh, Of Mice and Men, Fences (a legendary performance), Driving Ms. Daisy and finally You Can't Take It With You. Even if he hadn't made any movies, his theater resume would enshrine him in acting immortality.

Yet not only did he make the aforementioned movies but James Earl Jones' very first movie was the Stanley Kubrick 1964 classic Dr. Strangelove. Jones was cast as one of the bombers that's been sent to attack Russia, faithfully executing his orders and mission while unaware that they're about to destory humanity.

If you want to understand the greatness of James Earl Jones' acting talent, just watch and listen to him flip switches, turns nobs, and repeat tactical orders -- and make it mesmerizing. And how amazing was it that, in the early 1960s, when black Americans were being terrorized by southern police and fighting for civil rights, the Bronx-born genius director Kubrick cast a brilliant young black actor in such an important role?

Such is the stuff as legend. Watch this great sequence from Dr. Strangelove below and an interview that James Earl Jones gave decades later about how he ended up in one of the greatest movie's ever made. 

The Legacy of Chess in NYC

I don't play chess.

To paraphrase Dr. Strangelove, I have neither the time nor the inclination for the strategic thought the game requires. Much like driving a truck, I have great admiration but not the skills to do it. Barring a late in life conversion to the game, I'll never get into the game of chess.

And yet, oddly enough, yours truly has written two blog posts about the game -- one in 2008 and another in 2021 -- and both are two of my favorite posts ever.

The 2008 post was about a bunch of NYC kids who won several national championships down in Florida. I was flattered enough to get a thankful comment from one of the championship chess coachs.

The 2021 post was an admittedly snarky look back at the musical Chess that had a short, infamous life on Broadway. 

But the legeacy of chess in NYC runs much deeper.

Never mind that Bobby Fischer, probably the greatest American chess player in history, grew up in Brooklyn (he wasn't born in NYC but moved to the city at age six) and trained here. All over the city you can walk in public parks and see people playing it on cement tables built for the game. There are chess clubs in public schools all over the city, with students winning (as previously indicated) at championships all over the country and world.

And then there's the Marshall Chess Club in Greenwich Village.

It's over 100 years old and is as New York an institution as has ever existed. The club has members who have been playing there since there were children and are now quite elderly. It has had some famous members over the decades too, including Dada/Cubist French artist Marcel Duchamp, a young boy named Stanley Kubrick who would gone on to direct classic films (including the aforementioned Dr. Strangelove), and, more recently, radio legend Howard Stern. 

More amazingly, it has survived COVID and keeps going. This has been in part because of the popularity of last year's The Queen's Gambit on Netflix but chess is one of those games who popularity is perennial, whose practioners are devoted, no matter if the game has moments of fadishness.

The players at the Marshall Chess Club are the hardcore devotees who keep the game going no matter what -- and keep its proud legacy in NYC alive. 

Wild Times at The Chelsea Hotel

Currently I'm reading the Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel by Sherill Tippins.

Published in 2013, the book is an absorbing saga about how this one building, this distinctive residential hotel on West 23rd Street, became a mecca for some of the most brilliant and important artists (American and otherwise) who ever lived. Founded in 1884, and for more than a century afterwards, it has provided a communal haven for those who pursue a life of the mind, a life in the arts and culture, a life at odds with mainstream society. Inspired by the 19th-century socialist Fourierism movement that emphaized self-sufficient communinal living, the Chelsea Hotel was a place that embraced and accepted anyone -- all for a very cheap rent. 

The list of people who lived and worked at the Chelsea over the generations is mind-boggling. To name just a very few: Mark Twain, O. Henry, Dylan Thomas, Tennessee Williams, Alan Ginsburg, Arthur C. Clarke (who wrote 2001 there) as well as his collaborator Stanley Kubrick, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Sid Vicious (who infamously killed his girlfriend Nancy there in 1978), Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin (who hooked up there), Willem de Kooning, the notorious Robert Mapplethorpe, Diego Rivera, even the Divine Miss M (Bette Midler for you ignoramouses). And that's barely scratching the surface of the great talents that resided there many different times in the last 130+ year. 

The Chelsea Hotel has also been the subject of art itself: the groundbreaking Portrait of Jason was shot there in 1966 as well as part of the first-ever reality show, An American Family. Andy Warhol probably made it famous for the rest of the world with the movie he made there, Chelsea Girls. 

The cultural impact and legacy of the Chelsea Hotel cannot be overstated.

But, at the end of the day, it's a piece of NYC real estate, which means its had lots of different owners and been subject to various legal battles over the decades. And there still are to this day with the current owners and developers fighting the tenants who wish to maintain its Bohemian glory. It's a classic case of money vs. culture, the future vs. the past, crass taste vs. good taste, people who want to live in the past vs. people who could care less. Reading about it, you don't know whether to laugh or cry. 

Sounds like a drama that could have written at the Chelsea Hotel back in its hayday!

You can read the previous posts about the Chelsea Hotel here. 

Interview: The Dateable Dork

Dating in NYC is like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car in an amusement park -- your strives towards perfection is continually interrupted by the realities around you (Stanley Kubrick said this about making movies but I think it's an apt comparison). And talking about movies, movies like When Harry Met Sally ... and TV shows like Friends and Sex and the City make dating in NYC look really glamorous -- everybody's rich and beautiful, with great jobs and apartments and oceans of free time, and the weather is always perfect.

These movies and TV shows might be fun to watch but they sure ain't reality. The realities of dating in New York is both funnier, scarier, and a lot more complicated than any fictional rendering could ever be. And no one talks about the realities of dating in NYC better than the Dateable Dork. Her blog has to be the most honest and most hilarious forum about love and lovin' in NYC that I've ever read. With great wittiness and energy, she takes you into her life and makes you laugh and think about the craziness of love in NYC. The Dateable Dork reminds you that not all New Yorkers are characters straight out of a Candace Bushnell novel but are people who can be more interesting, more intriguing and, yes, more dorky, than anyone could imagine.

She agreed to answer my questions about what makes her a dork and why dating in NYC is a such a crazy adventure.

I have a hard time believing that any woman can really be a dork. Convince us that you're one of my breed.

You've never met a female dork? Wow, you don't know what you're missing! I really am a total dork, in all the typical ways you would imagine for a male. I'm uncoordinated, too tall, I snort when I laugh, my fashion sense is always two (or ten) seasons behind, I talk about science at cocktail parties (which never fails to get groans from the crowd), etc. The only thing I'm missing is the pair of glasses with the Band-Aid in the middle. Believe it: I'm a dork.

According to Jerry Seinfeld, 95% of all people are "un-dateable." What makes you part of the other 5%?

First of all, I love Seinfeld. Just had to get that out of the way. Despite my dorky persona, I really do think I'm totally dateable. The caveat is that I'm dateable to other dorks. I'll never get the super slick guy who dates supermodels, but for the average, normal, somewhat nerdy guy, I think I'm a great catch! I'm smart, interesting, educated, fun to be around, and I look great in heels and a miniskirt. I'm the girl you can bring home to your parents and then have all sorts of kinky sex with afterwards. I've got my shit together, I have a dorky but respectable job, and I'm not afraid to laugh at how ridiculous I am. What's not to love, really?

So tell us how your blog the Dateable Dork came to be – and why it went away and then came back (that is, if you want to tell us about that).

I started the Dateable Dork because I realized that I need an outlet for all the crazy dating drama that had completely taken over my life. I had been emailing my dating stories to my friends on a daily basis, and I think they were getting really, really sick of it. At first they were interested, but eventually I could tell that they were about to disown me or something. So I started putting all my drama out into cyberspace, and it made me and my friends much happier people.

Now... do we really want to get into "the incident?" I'll make this short and sweet: when a guy I had been dating found my blog, read all the dirty details about my dating/sex life, and dumped my ass in a raging ball of flames, I kind of went into a state of shock. It was as if my whole world had imploded. I lost a guy that had real potential, my secret identity had been discovered, and I was pretty much a total mess. I didn't know what to do... so I just deleted the whole thing. It was the only thing I could think of that made any sense.

I always knew that I'd be back ... eventually. I just needed some time to get over the shock, which (to be perfectly honest) took a lot longer than I thought it would. I spent a lot of time being sad and depressed until I finally decided that I was overreacting and needed to get over it already. And I did. I started writing again, and it made me feel so much better.

Books, TV shows, movies, and now blogs like yours have made dating in NYC a cottage industry, and it seems like finding love in this town is a frustrating, time consuming, expensive, hopelessly complex adventure in Social Darwinism. Do you agree? What are your thoughts?

Yes, I completely agree - dating in New York is very much akin to survival of the fittest. It's so hard just to come out of it in one piece! Despite all my adventures in dating, I never seem to come out of it with anything to show for myself (clearly I am not at the top of the evolutionary scale) except for credit card bills filled with cute outfits and my half of expensive dinners. But here's the thing: I have a theory about dating in New York. It's so simple, but so true. There are millions of people in this city, which you would think would make it easy to find someone. However, in reality, the abundance of available dates makes every one's standards impossibly high. I'm guilty of this myself. If you don't like someone, throw him back! There are millions of others. Too short, too tall, too much of a mama's boy? Next! Realistic standards go out the window when there are just so many people to choose from. The perfect one has got to be out there, somewhere... right?

The (sad but true) joke is that "nice guys" finish last, and it does seem like a lot of women prefer to date "bad boys" who end up making them miserable. As a woman, why do you think that is? Are most nice guys just too boring?

I don't know how much stock I take in the whole "nice guys finish last" adage. A nice guy is exactly what I'm looking for, and I think most of my single female friends would say the same. Yes, most women have that irresistible desire to hook up with a "bad boy" -- we love the taboo and the drama of it all. But we don't want to date bad boys, we just want to use them and then throw them away (sorry, boys). If I'm looking for an actual relationship, I want a nice, normal, stable, professional guy who will actually enjoy my dorky science jokes and who my mom will be crazy about. Nice guys may be more "boring" than bad boys, but "boring" is not necessarily a bad thing.

What do you, the Dateable Dork, look for in a guy – or are your standards too high?

Oh my god, my standards are way too high. I'm just as guilty of this as everyone else! Earlier this year, I wrote a post about exactly what I look for in a guy, and everyone seemed to think that it read more like a job interview than anything else. My standards are focused on narrowing down the pool of available men to those that meet my basic dating requirements. From there, I just cross my fingers and hope that the chemistry is right! "Requirements" include things like never being married before, no kids, a college degree, non-virgin, non-smoker, lives close to my apartment, and the ultimate deal breaker: does not live with parents. What's hilarious is that I actually manage to find these date-worthy men, and I still always wind up striking out! Clearly I have no idea what I'm doing and am just as hopeless as everyone else.

Your blog is very funny and has generated quite the fan base. Is being funny a help or a hindrance for you and other funny women when it comes to dating?

Hahaha, it's so strange to hear people say that I'm funny because I am so NOT funny in person! I guess it comes out in my writing but not so much in my real life. I have a weird sense of humor in person, and no one really seems to get it. Oh well. In fact, I think that if I were funnier in person, it would probably help me out in the dating world. Guys like funny chicks, right?

As for my blog generating quite the fan base ... I'm flattered, really. : ) It's amazing to me that anyone is actually interested in reading about my dating drama, but whatever, I can roll with it. I love my readers -- everyone I have encountered in the blogosphere has been totally awesome. Thanks, guys!

Tell us something about the Dateable Dork we don't know.

Hmm ... this is a tough one because I usually spill everything on my blog! Here's something that I know I've never written about - I didn't lose my virginity until age 20. I just had absolutely no interest in sex! I was so busy studying (I'm a big dork, remember?) and concentrating and being productive that sex was just not even on the radar. Sure, I dated, but I probably frustrated the hell out of all my boyfriends because I would never sleep with them. Aww, poor guys. If I only knew what I was missing.

Finally, what do you love about NYC.

Although there are endless things to love about New York, the thing I love most is that it's home. Cheesy, I know, but it's true. I love that every time I cross Houston street I think of my grandmother who grew up downtown. I love that office buildings in midtown remind me of my mom working as a secretary in the 80s -- it's all very "Working Girl." I love that some people think of Bryant Park as the home of fashion week, but I think of it as "that park where I had a great second date." It's not surprising that, after all these years, I'm still here in New York - it's home, I love it, and I'm here to stay. (Oh, and I love that New Yorkers are angry. There's nothing like some good old-fashioned angst to wake you up in the morning. Hahaha. Move aside, bitches! I'm late for work!).

Thanks Dork!