Books on film

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Then again, I don't get the A.I. love either. To me it is like the Reader's Digest version -- no, it'd be more accurate to say the Cliffsnotes version -- of what Kubrick might have done with it.

From what I understand, Spielberg was mostly very faithful to Kubrick's treatment (?). Not condensing much more or dumbing it down, if that's what you're getting at. Harms can feel free to drop in here and correct me if he wants.

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I'm not sure that I would have loved the Kubrick version either ... but it would have had a level of visual interest strong enough to support a number of viewings.

Visual interest perhaps, if we're talking about neigh-painterly compositions, but what about a soul behind the lens, and a John Williams score evocative of human relationship and our desire to belong? Looking at Kubrick's later output (THE SHINING onwards), I'd strongly doubt we'd get any of that.

What I like in Kubrick is that behind the lens is not a soul, but a cold brain. At least that's how I'd put it.

Largo's Shark wrote:

From what I understand, Spielberg was mostly very faithful to Kubrick's treatment (?). Not condensing much more or dumbing it down, if that's what you're getting at. Harms can feel free to drop in here and correct me if he wants.

Yep. Did some dumbing down and slapped his name on it. Typical Spielberg.

Same thing happened with CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: ditched Schrader, kept many elements of his draft, mocked Schrader, and then slapped his name on it all.

Interesting, coming from a guy who had to sleep with celery in his pillow case when he was filming JAWS.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Quote :

Then again, I don't get the A.I. love either. To me it is like the Reader's Digest version -- no, it'd be more accurate to say the Cliffsnotes version -- of what Kubrick might have done with it.

From what I understand, Spielberg was mostly very faithful to Kubrick's treatment (?). Not condensing much more or dumbing it down, if that's what you're getting at. Harms can feel free to drop in here and correct me if he wants.

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I'm not sure that I would have loved the Kubrick version either ... but it would have had a level of visual interest strong enough to support a number of viewings.

Visual interest perhaps, if we're talking about neigh-painterly compositions, but what about a soul behind the lens, and a John Williams score evocative of human relationship and our desire to belong? Looking at Kubrick's later output (THE SHINING onwards), I'd strongly doubt we'd get any of that.

When the movie came out, I did a short article on AI's VFX with Dennis Muren and Scott Farrar. Muren had actually done a bit of consulting with Kubrick before the director put AI aside, so he did some legit insight. Upshot is that stuff like the Flesh Fair would have probably been about the size of the final chase in ROAD WARRIOR, and that the later cityscapes would have been like BLADE RUNNER times JUDGE DREDD in complexity for sustained traveling shots. Plus, even though he put it in nice words, Farrar basically said Spielberg was looking at the story in a very family-centric human way, as is his wont. Even when Kubrick seems at his most human (makes me think of WRATH OF KHAN when I type that), at the end of PATHS OF GLORY, I don't get a glimmer of the sentimentality of Spielberg.

Honestly, I think David Lynch should have done AI. That way if something was grossly unexplained, we'd all just roll with it.

On the other post further down: Schraeder wasn't the only writer on CE3K. There's a seriously overdetailed book on the making of that film from several years back in which there is an interview with one of them, a guy who was trying to get started while Spielberg was shooting JAWS.

I think the Schrader version could have made a helluva movie (just as I still think you could make a helluva good movie out of a FAITHFUL adaptation of DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, one that could stand on its own apart from BLADE RUNNER, maybe directed by Cronenberg, one movie not knocking the other, but coexisting as alternate versions of the same kind of story).

But it wouldn't have been what we got, and for all its faults, CE3K did deliver magic that I felt was lacking in STAR WARS and TMP, to name ones that worked that way for other people (yeah, I knew people who thought TMP was the greatest movie ever made when it came out, seriously ... and I was not one of them.) That I and others experience a kind of 'mystic transport' during that last 40minutes makes me cut it a lot of slack, but if a movie can make you feel like something special is happening, maybe it deserves that slack.

Still waiting to get that kind of theatrical viewing experience this century on a first-run movie. Not holding my breath in expectation though.

Harms posted a great link that detailed the production for AI back on old Mi6. I believe it discussed Kubrick's vision vs. Spielberg's final product, along with the production design for the film.

The White Tuxedo wrote:

What I like in Kubrick is that behind the lens is not a soul, but a cold brain. At least that's how I'd put it.

Yup. That's what I hate about him.

Kubrick as a "cold brain" is the usual picture of the filmmaker, but that portrait of Kubrick seems all wrong to me.

One of my favorite stories about Kubrick is that he once found a bee in his house and was desperate to release it outside, going to extraordinary measures to try to keep it alive because Kubrick was so horrified at the thought that it would die.

Harmsway wrote:

One of my favorite stories about Kubrick is that he once found a bee in his house and was desperate to release it outside, going to extraordinary measures to try to keep it alive because Kubrick was so horrified at the thought that it would die.

And that Austrian guy loved his German Shepherds.

trevanian wrote:

Even when Kubrick seems at his most human (makes me think of WRATH OF KHAN when I type that), at the end of PATHS OF GLORY, I don't get a glimmer of the sentimentality of Spielberg.

I only see real schmaltz in stuff like HOOK, when it comes off as false. There's an edge, pain and naturalism to A.I. and E.T. that prevents me from calling it sentimental. Over all, I'd say Spielberg's not much more "sentimental" than his hero John Ford. Both looked to see the best in the human condition.

trevanian wrote:

Honestly, I think David Lynch should have done AI. That way if something was grossly unexplained, we'd all just roll with it.

Lynch gets so much leeway from cinesnobs, it's not funny.

Harmsway wrote:

Kubrick as a "cold brain" is the usual picture of the filmmaker, but that portrait of Kubrick seems all wrong to me.

One of my favorite stories about Kubrick is that he once found a bee in his house and was desperate to release it outside, going to extraordinary measures to try to keep it alive because Kubrick was so horrified at the thought that it would die.

It's more about approach than content. How do I explain that? Not sure. 2001 remains one of the most emotionally affecting movies to me.

HJackson wrote:

The White Tuxedo wrote:

What I like in Kubrick is that behind the lens is not a soul, but a cold brain. At least that's how I'd put it.

Yup. That's what I hate about him.

I think there's more than one way to make a movie.

The White Tuxedo wrote:

HJackson wrote:

The White Tuxedo wrote:

What I like in Kubrick is that behind the lens is not a soul, but a cold brain. At least that's how I'd put it.

Yup. That's what I hate about him.

I think there's more than one way to make a movie.

But not all of them are intellectually honest. Dogme 95 anyone?

Right now I'm reading REBELS ON THE BACKLOT by Sharon Waxman.

Waxman charts the rise of Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, David O. Russell, and Spike Jonze as the maverick young auteurs of 90s Hollywood. It's a terrific read, loaded to the brim with juicy gossip.

Would any of you happen to have a PDF version of Eisenstein's Film Form: Essays in Film Theory?