A Photo Gallery of Stanley Kubrick With Famous People
I will not pretend to be a Stanley Kubrick expert. All I am is a huge fan of a man who genuinely treated filmmaking as an art form. I recently went to Stanley Kubrick Exhibit at the LACMA (if you haven’t gone, you really should) and I realized something: film is dead. You just realized that? No, fellow reader, I didn’t just realize that, I just refused to believe it. Every time that statement showed up on my Twitter feed, I rejected it because I wanted to believe in today’s filmmakers.
There are a lot of talented directors working today, obviously. But when I was standing in the 2001: A Space Odyssey room, looking at the amount of detail that went into a piece of silverware (silverware!), I just couldn’t kid myself anymore. Filmmaking is not suppose to be easy. It’s not getting a digital camera, shooting two people goofing off and then uploading it unto YouTube. Filmmaking is so much more than that. It’s suppose to be more than that. And I’m not saying this to be a film snob. This breaks my heart because I realize that I will never, ever, be able to call myself a filmmaker. By Kubrick’s standards, it’s just way too hard.
Anyway, now that I’ve refreshed your memory about how amaze Kubrick was, how about a look at a gallery of Kubrick hanging with famous people. That was a harsh transition, I know, but these pictures are very cool. Take a look.
Kubrick and James Mason just playing some ping pong.
Hang loose Cruise!
Kubrick all dressed up.
This is what the cool kids table looks like.
All I have to say is thank you. I’ve studied Kubrick in college for several projects now, and he is one of my favorite directors, and I thank you for the gallery, and thank you for saying the truth that no one wants to hear. We can tout a lot of modern filmmakers, but damn . . . when you watch a movie in, say, the 70s, and you see how each shot is painstakingly set up to use reflections, colors, and movement to capture not only what is supposed to real, but what these people think, feel, and what they are going to do – without saying a word – it becomes very obvious that type of filmmaking is dead. There are some filmmakers from time to time that use some of these old standards (Paul Thomas Anderson is one). We can’t settle for calling every big movie a classic anymore, our standards are too low. But yeah, makes me sad. 2001 has so much detail in it it’s rediculous. Man, I miss those kinds of movies.