Why Stanley Kubrick didn’t pay his first film’s composer: “I did you a much better service”
Among the most revolutionary pioneers who defined the vision of American cinema for a long time, Stanley Kubrick knew exactly what he wanted to achieve whenever he set out on a project. His pursuit of perfection resulted in some of the greatest cinematic masterpieces ever created, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, but his rigidity also meant that he wasn’t exactly easy to work with.
There are countless stories about how Kubrick’s approach to filmmaking put a lot of strain on his cast and crew, from accounts about how he would go through take after take for the same scene to his mistreatment of Shelley Duvall during the production of The Shining. Although some fans might think that Kubrick grew into this side of his infamy as he established himself as a true auteur, these stories can actually be traced back to the beginning of his career.
When we talk about Kubrick’s first film, the one that immediately comes to mind is the disowned 1952 project, Fear and Desire, which bothered the director so much that he burned the negatives and didn’t want anybody to ever see it. However, prior to that, Kubrick was also involved with some shorts, including his actual directorial debut, Day of the Fight.
Based on a photography feature he did for Look magazine, Kubrick decided to turn it into a documentary about Walter Cartier with a camera that he had rented and some funds he had managed to accumulate. The music for the short was composed by the famous American composer Gerald Fried, who never actually received payment for his contribution to the project.
Talking to The Guardian about the incident, Fried said: “He thought the very fact that my doing the music to his early movies got me into the profession was enough payment. We had an agreement – not in writing – [that] we would work for nothing but, as soon as the movie got sold, he would pay us. Well, he didn’t. He gave us this rationale: ‘I did you a much better service than paying you, I got you into the movie business.’ Which is true.”
Fried went on to work with Kubrick on his first features, including the likes of The Killing and Paths of Glory. When asked about Kubrick’s understanding of scoring, Fried answered: “For Day of the Fight and the other ones, he didn’t know much about music, so he kept his mouth shut. By the time he got to Paths of Glory, I had to justify every note. It was quite a torturous process. But, then again, he was a great movie-maker, so maybe that’s one of the reasons why.”
There are conflicting reports about the money that Kubrick ended up making for Day of the Fight. Even though it was eventually distributed by RKO as a part of their This is America series, some claimed that the Spartacus director only made $100 from the short, while other accounts revealed that it ended up losing $100. Fried’s first experience with Kubrick might have been negatively influenced by the lack of payment, but that didn’t stop them from working on some of their most memorable projects together.
