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The Stanley Kubrick film he thought was a “piece of sh*t”
Stanley Kubrick, famed for his unique provision to the world of cinema with classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket, died nearly a quarter of a century ago and left a gaping hole in Hollywood. When the filmmaker died, aged 70, he had just finished Eyes Wide Shut, his final film, based on the novel Dream Story, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
Kubrick initially obtained the filming rights to Dream Story in the 1960s, considering it the perfect launchpad for the creative exploration of sexual relationships in film. After putting the project off for three decades, he revived the project in the 1990s, bringing in writer Frederic Raphael to help him with the adaption.
The film became one of the most difficult of Kubrick’s career; at 400 days, it broke the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous film shoot. Kubrick’s characteristic perfectionism meant painstaking re-shoots, re-writes and eventually, low morale amongst crew members as the weeks dragged out into months and years.
It’s understandable that Kubrick would be particularly pernickety; given his wholly revered back catalogue, any slip-up would stand to mar his life’s work. Fortunately, Kubrick and his crew concluded production for Eyes Wide Shut by February 1999 and showed the film’s final cut to Warner Bros. just six days before his fatal heart attack.
“My immediate reaction was one of absolute shock,” Cruise said, reflecting on the director’s death. Cruise and his co-star Kidman were shocked and deeply saddened by the news and worried about the impact it might have on the post-production of Eyes Wide Shut. “Somewhere still inside, [Nicole] and I thought that it’s not true,” Cruise added.
Eyes Wide Shut premiered on July 16th, 1999, to generally positive reviews. As Kubrick knew it would be his final film and his lasting legacy, he wanted it to be his greatest contribution yet. Some critics and fans regard it so, but according to Kubrick’s friend and Full Metal Jacket actor R. Lee Ermey, Kubrick thought the film was an unmitigated disaster.
In an interview with Radar, Ermey was asked if he and Kubrick became close during the shooting of Full Metal Jacket. “Very close,” he responded. “Stanley called me up all the time. He’d call at three o’clock in the morning and say, ‘Oh, it’s 10 o’clock over here.’ [Laughs] ‘Yeah, well, it’s three o-fucking-clock in the morning here, Stanley. Oh well.’”
Ermey continued: “He called me about two weeks before he died, as a matter of fact. We had a long conversation about Eyes Wide Shut. He told me it was a piece of shit and that he was disgusted with it and that the critics were going to have him for lunch. He said Cruise and Kidman had their way with him—exactly the words he used.”
The interviewer then asked how Cruise and Kidman “had their way with him”. “He was kind of a shy little timid guy,” Ermey said. “He wasn’t real forceful. That’s why he didn’t appreciate working with big, high-powered actors. They would have their way with him, he would lose control, and his movie would turn to shit.”
Despite Ermey’s revelations, the film is generally respected at the level of Kubrick’s previous triumphs. Other sources claim that the filmmaker was happy with the film and believed it would be his defining achievement. Perhaps the perfectionist auteur was in the midst of a temporary moment of doubt when speaking to Ermey.
Watch the trailer for Eyes Wide Shut below.
