The only star who gave Stanley Kubrick exactly what he was looking for: “An unactable quality”
Working with Stanley Kubrick was about as easy as painting the Humber Bridge with a toothbrush. Not that it put many actors off.
When Gary Oldman appeared on SiriusXM’s Opie & Anthony, he regaled those in the studio with the classic industry tale of how Harvey Keitel was originally cast as Victor Ziegler in Eyes Wide Shut before he quit, at the farthest end of his tether. It was Stanley Kubrick’s last film by which point his unique ways of operating had been firmly established, and for Keitel, this infuriating modus operandi evidently proved too much to handle.
“Originally, Harvey Keitel was in Eyes Wide Shut,” Oldman began, “He was playing Sydney [Pollack’s role]. He was doing the scene and they were just walking through a door and after the 68th take of this, just walking through a door, Harvey Keitel just said, ‘I’m out of here, you’re fucking crazy’. He just said, ‘you’re fucking out of your mind’, and left.”
While he wasn’t to know he was walking out on a Christmas classic, he knew that the stakes were high, and he knew things just wouldn’t work out. He left simply annoyed and bemused about what on earth Kubrick was looking for. And as for the director, well, it was a certain “unactable quality” that he had seen once before.
What was Stanley Kubrick’s directing style?
Kubrick’s style at this stage was to remain very reticent as a director and to wait for the right shot to land itself in the can. In order to achieve this, he ran his sets with an iron fist, famously working with smaller support crews than any other director so that every penny and effort went into what appeared on screen and not extraneous factors, like large catering crews or someone to hold his coffee. Such extreme focus and such little communication, however, evidently tested some actor’s patience.
“He would just say do it again,” Oldman continued. “I don’t know whether he was looking for something very specific and he wasn’t going to tell you? I mean, I love Kubrick’s films, but I don’t know how I would’ve worked with that.”
Well, even those who successfully navigated the choppy waters of Kubrick – and were met with the handsome rewards of his final products – often found themselves stressed by the cranky director’s stern particulars.
However, of all the actors he worked with, Jack Nicholson is the one who seemingly came out of it the most unscathed. And it seems apparent that Kubrick’s own appraisal of his Shining star is highly indicative of what the director was looking for all along. As he said in praise of Nicholson, “he brings to a role the one unactable quality – great intelligence.“
In essence, it wasn’t just ‘acting’ that Kubrick was angling for but rather an understanding of the role and story. Nicholson’s fastidious devotion to nailing just that meant that he garnered great respect from Kubrick. He knew that he wasn’t merely going into a scene hoping to land a piece of great acting in the can, but rather a notable development of a story that “moved people“.
This made him an almost uncanny star in Stanley’s bespectacled eyes. “His work is always interesting,” he said, “clearly conceived.” Whether that extended to how he walked through doors remains a mystery, but he evidently saw something different in the Shining star.
Adding, “Jack is particularly suited for roles of intelligence. He is an intelligent and literate man, and these are qualities almost impossible to act.”
As a result, Nicholson hoped that their collaboration could continue. He told the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Picture, “I always thought I’d work with Stanley again”. But it wasn’t to be.
With Nicholson adding: “We kept in touch over the years, and we talked about other projects…It’s a sad thing that I won’t have that great opportunity”.
It’s an odd dichotomy that even though the American director is regarded as a master of his craft, Shelley Duvall called him “an enemy to actors“. But Nicholson was focused on the final result and adds, “Everybody pretty much acknowledges he’s the man. And I still feel that underrates him”.
In the 2008 book Five Easy Decades by Dennis McDougal, Nicholson even reveals the project he would’ve loved to star in, stating, “I can’t imagine Stanley Kubrick making an uninteresting film, and if that’s the subject that he wants to tackle, I mean, I would love to let Napoleon move in on me for six months or so”.
Thank god for the sake of the denizens of Hollywood that that never happened.
