Stanley Kubrick originally wanted Steve Martin to star in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’
For at least three generations, Steve Martin is fondly remembered as a defining fixture of childhood. For some, titles such as The Jerk, Three Amigos, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels remain highlights of their younger years. For others, the likes of Looney Tunes: Back in Action and the Cheaper by the Dozen movies are those that stick in the memory. Despite their preference, movie fans are united in one thought: Steve Martin is, before all else, a comedian.
Because Martin is most famous for his comical flourishes, it is widely overlooked that he also possesses a knack for the dramatic. At points, he’s left the world of comedy for more serious roles, including David Mamet’s 1997 commendable neo-noir The Spanish Prisoner and the 2016 war drama Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
Although the aforementioned flicks remain respected to this day, Martin once had the chance to add one of the most storied titles in popular culture to his filmography. When appearing on Charlie Rose in the late 1990s, Martin revealed that he met with legendary auteur Stanley Kubrick nearly two decades prior. Although he wasn’t sure of the date of the encounter, Martin maintained that it was either 1979 or 1980, as he believed that his breakout movie, The Jerk, was yet to be released. However, he did remember that he shared a game of chess and a meal with the legendary auteur, revealing that Kubrick resoundingly defeated him at the board game.
During the meeting, Kubrick pitched the idea for a film to Martin, who at the time was in London to perform a stand-up routine on TV. Based on the Arthur Schnitzler novel Dream Story, the movie would eventually become the psychological thriller Eyes Wide Shut. It wasn’t released until 1999, nearly 20 years later. Famously, it is the most infamous title in Kubrick’s catalogue due to various factors. These include his death before its release, the fact the studio heavily edited it, and the conspiracy it appears to suggest.
Notably, the role of the protagonist, Dr. Bill Harford, would go to Tom Cruise, with his real wife, Nicole Kidman, playing Bill’s wife, Alice. In one of the strangest parallels between real life and fiction in movie history, just as Bill and Alice struggle to save their marriage in Eyes Wide Shut, Cruise and Kidman grappled with interpersonal issues during production. They would be divorced in 2001.
In the 2020 book Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker, David Mikics takes a comprehensive look at the life and work of Kubrick, and at one point, he sheds light on why he once wanted Steve Martin as Bill Harford. This was because of what Kubrick deemed “a comedian’s resilience”.
“In the Seventies, [Kubrick] fantasised about casting an actor in Dream Story who would have a comedian’s resilience,” Mikics writes, before revealing that the filmmaker initially imagined, “Steve Martin or Woody Allen in the leading role”.
