The Stanley Kubrick movie Steven Spielberg couldn’t stand at first: “I didn’t love it”
There aren’t many bigger Stanley Kubrick fanboys in Hollywood than Steven Spielberg, but he still needed to be won over by one of his idol’s movies after failing to be impressed the first time he saw it.
The two eventually became friends, or as close to friends as you could be with Kubrick, since most of their conversations seemed to revolve around the legendary filmmaker calling Spielberg on the phone and talking at him for hours on end before hanging up without letting him get much of a word in.
Still, being that close to someone he’d always worshipped from afar was a pinch-me moment for the Jurassic Park and Jaws mastermind, with Spielberg happily taking the reins on AI Artificial Intelligence and steering it across the finish line after Kubrick’s passing, and he’s adamant that he didn’t ruin it.
That made it pretty awkward during their first lengthy conversation, when the razor-sharp mind of the inimitable auteur cut right through the bullshit to call his would-be protégé out on the reasons why The Shining left him feeling so cold, sending Spielberg onto the back foot to save himself from embarrassment.
They met for the first time when Kubrick was finishing up his atmospheric horror classic, with Spielberg waiting patiently for Jack Nicholson’s descent into madness to vacate its sets at Elstree Studios so that he could move in to start constructing backdrops for Raiders of the Lost Ark, culminating in a dinner invite.
“I’d only seen it once, and I didn’t love The Shining the first time I saw it,” the three-time Academy Award winner confessed, something that Kubrick could readily infer. “I was telling him all the things I liked about it, and he saw right through me. He said, ‘Well, Steven, you obviously didn’t like my picture very much.'”
Trying his best to dig out a backhanded compliment, Spielberg damned Nicholson with faint praise for what he thought was a “great kabuki performance.” Again, that didn’t sit too well with Kubrick, who was fully aware that kabuki theatre is famed for its heightened, stylised, and over-dramatic style, which is why it was such a big influence on renowned scenery chewer, Nicolas Cage.
“He said, ‘You mean, you think Jack went over the top?'” Spielberg recalled, which placed him in exactly the same boat as Stephen King, who thought the actor was grossly miscast as Jack Torrance. “And I said, ‘Yeah, I kind of did.'” It was temporary, though, with The Shining only falling short on its first viewing.
Since then, Spielberg estimates that he’s seen it around 25 times, and it’s now one of his favourites. Regardless, he didn’t feel that way the first time, placing him in the uniquely uncomfortable situation of trying to dance around the fact that he thought The Shining was rubbish, which wasn’t ideal for a dinner with none other than Kubrick himself.
