A record that will never be broken: what is the longest movie shoot of all time?
You would be forgiven for thinking that having the title of ‘record breaker’ added to your film might be an accolade that a director would covet. However, there is one such record within the world of cinema that it is hard to imagine any director striving to break: the record for the longest continuous movie shoot of all time. Sure, many directors spend months, even years, pouring over their work and making sure the tiniest details are all correct, but with deadlines and salaries to pay, there is only so long you can spend on one film, or so you might think.
Across the history of filmmaking, few directors command the same reputation as that of Stanley Kubrick. From his early days as his high school’s official photographer, the New York director went on to create some of the most iconic works of all time, including A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey. His films were often controversial, both in content and production. Kubrick had some strange methods of working, which would often result in him being accused of mistreating his actors, as was the case with Shelley Duvall in The Shining.
Above all else, though, Kubrick is best remembered for his endlessly intrinsic approach to filmmaking. The director would torture himself – and, by extension, his actors – over getting seemingly inconsequential details absolutely perfect. While this character trait is undoubtedly what makes the average Kubrick film so undeniably compelling and beautifully crafted, it also delayed the production of many of his movies. So, in a fact which will be unsurprising for many cinema obsessives, it is Stanley Kubrick who holds the uncontested title for the longest film shoot in history.
You might think that Kubrick’s 1960 epic Spartacus holds this record, given that it is his longest feature film, with a runtime of 197 minutes. In actual fact, it was Kubrick’s final project that took the title. Admittedly, Eyes Wide Shut is not a short film by any means, at nearly three hours long, and yet the fact that it took over a year to produce still seems excessive.
In total, the shooting of Eyes Wide Shut lasted for 400 days. For the mathematicians out there, that means that every individual minute of the movie took an average of around two-and-a-half days to film. Unsurprisingly, the production was plagued by conflict as a result of the process stretching far beyond its initial six-month commitment. For instance, Harvey Keitel found himself so at odds with the meticulous and time-consuming nature of Kubrick’s process that he left the project, eventually being cut from the film altogether.
Elsewhere, it was said that Kubrick made Tom Cruise perform a simple take of walking through a doorway a total of 95 times to get it spot-on. Kubrick also spent a lot of time on prop work, choosing each of the masks in the infamous orgy scene by hand, which cannot have been a speedy process. Eventually, over 13 months after shooting had begun, the film was finally finished. So, the biggest question is: was it worth it?
In the mind of Kubrick, yes. He called Eyes Wide Shut his “greatest contribution to the art of cinema”. Although he would sadly pass away before the release of his final project, it does seem as though many people would agree with him. Either way, 400 days of filming still seems pretty excessive, even for Kubrick.
