Stanley Kubrick’s secret contribution to the definitive feel-good movie of 1995: “Every night, we’d sit and talk”
Any director would have killed to receive advice and guidance from Stanley Kubrick when he was alive, and despite never once meeting in person, one filmmaker happily sat under his learning tree to absorb everything they could, much to the benefit of a highly unlikely movie.
As Steven Spielberg can attest, there was no rhyme or reason to how, when, and why Kubrick would reach out to his contemporaries. He’d often call them in the middle of the night to ask questions; those conversations would frequently last for hours, and then he’d go radio silent for months, if not years.
Ridley Scott knows that, too, with the 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange auteur picking up the phone almost as soon as the credits started rolling on Alien and demanding to know how on earth Scott had devised the sequence where a Xenomorph bursts out of a prone John Hurt’s chest.
For most of the 1990s, Kubrick wasn’t particularly active. Not in front of the camera, at least. Eyes Wide Shut didn’t begin shooting until November 1996, and before the arduous production occupied both the rest of his decade and the rest of his life, the influential icon toyed with several other potential projects.
One of them was AI Artificial Intelligence, which he eventually handed off to Spielberg, and another was an adaptation of Louis Begley’s semi-autobiographical novel, Wartime Lies, which had Uma Thurman attached to star. However, what managed to escape everyone’s attention was that Kubrick and George Miller were in constant conversation over cinema’s rapidly evolving use of visual effects.
Having pioneered several techniques in making 2001, Kubrick knew a thing or two about technological advancements. What does that have to do with the definitive feel-good movie of 1995? As it transpired, the Mad Max creator had a friend in a very high place when he was trying to figure out how to convincingly have the animal cast members look as if they were talking in Babe.
“Never met him,” Miller clarified. “But we had lots and lots of conversations on the phone.” When asked to define just how often they spoke, the director said, “Oh, endlessly; every night.” Since he was in pre-production on the ‘Best Picture’-nominated smash hit at the time, it led him to what must have been the strangest creative conversation he ever had, when he “explained we’re trying to make a pig talk” to Stanley Kubrick.
“He was particularly caught up with the technology of not cutting on videotape,” Miller elaborated. “Every night, we’d sit and talk for a long, long time, and talk about the process, and I knew he was very, very intrigued about what could be happening.” If you’re bouncing around ideas, regardless of whether it’s about a talking pig who wants to become a sheepdog or not, there are worse names to bounce them off.
Ultimately, Babe would win an Oscar for its visual effects and earn over a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office, delighting audiences in the process. We’re not suggesting that Kubrick was a key creative force by any means, but his discussions with Miller would have almost certainly impacted the film in one way or another, no matter how major or minor.
