Stanley Kubrick, the relentless perfectionist who directed some of cinema’s greatest classics, was so sensitive to criticism that, in 1970, he threatened legal action to block publication of a book which dared to discuss flaws in his films.
The director of Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey, warned the book’s author and publisher that he would fight “tooth and nail” and “use every legal means at his disposal” to prevent its publication – and he did.
Now, 25 years after his death, the book Kubrick did not want anyone to read is being published, more than half a century late.
The Magic Eye: The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick by Neil Hornick now has three prefaces reflecting its subject’s ruthlessness in trying to block publication and control his image.
Hornick, now 84, from London, said Kubrick’s legal threats had come as a shock: “I regard it as a painful episode.”
A well regarded artistic mind being kind of a piece of shit? I am shocked! I’m just thankful personal favorites of mine like Orson Scott Card, J.K. Rowling, and H.P. Lovecraft are fine, upstanding individuals who’ve dodged controversy at every turn.
Wait hold on… He’s a massive homophobe? She said what? He named his cat that?
Oh… well… umm… lovely weather we’re having huh?
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I remember reading a biography (autobiography maybe; forget who actually wrote it) on HP Lovecraft where it mentioned his cats name and I thought “well he was from the 1800’s so product of the time…” and then find out the dude was so racist, the KKK kicked him out.
So glad someone is calling out card here.
Orson Scott card is a pile of shit.
And his work is shit. I have no idea why so many adults think that young adult level writing and storytelling is the work of a master.
Card’s short story collection, Unaccompanied Sonata, is great.
Tbf the first books of misunderstood child prodigy messiah in a sci fi setting were pretty good. The lack of much deviation for everything following sucked. Then there’s his politics…
Enders game is pretty simplistic outcast juvenile wish fulfillment. If you read it as a kid I am sure it seemed more than space Harry potter but meh. I don’t know how it could be more pandering without a committee of child psychologists helping write it.
Yeah I thought Enders Game was the best book ever when I read it in like 4th or 5th grade. I read through the whole series of books over the next few years and enjoyed them at the time. I went back to read Enders Game as an adult and realized I just really enjoyed the wish fulfillment in reading about a bullied kid smashing the bullies face in then running shit. You’re right, it’s a pretty basic book and I have no idea why any adult would hold it or Card up as anything but basic. The only good thing I have to say about it as an adult is that it helped ignite my love of science fiction.
i don’t particularly recall that it was intended for young adults at the time. it was just genre fiction.
Yeah, I don’t read them either. Plenty of good art that’s not written by assholes.
i figure, if you dig far enough into most any creator, you are more likely to find an asshole than not. the effect increases with increasing remove (ie they lived a long time ago).
i don’t say this to excuse what’s problematic, but i believe bad people can make good art, and also that most people aren’t angels.
Yeah I try not to judge. But when there’s patterns of behavior and abuse I’m done. Note the word patterns.
Everyone has isolated fuck ups on their past that’s just part of being human. But when people are consistently assholes and show no remorse, why would I give them my support?
Other people can appreciate their art if they want. I’m not making it an ethical argument for everybody else. It just feels icky to me. So I don’t enjoy it. So I don’t consume it.
i will confess, i find it harder to like Frank Lloyd Wright and Picasso than i used to. i suppose this is the meaning of “never meet your heroes.” they very often disappoint; sometimes you might never see their work the same way.
That’s the nice thing about being a Terry Pratchett fan. The more I learn about him, the more I love him.
And Tolkien. Fuck his estate though
And L Ron Hubbard! Wait…
To be fair, the name of Lovecraft’s cat was the tip of the iceberg when it came to him. I love the world building he did, but it’s kind of hard to read a lot of his stories filled with big-lipped, dark savages. On the other hand, with Lovecraft, it seemed less a case of “white people are superior” and more a case of “all of humanity deserves to be thrown into the hellbeast pit, but white people should be thrown in last,” which is… still racist, but I guess not supremacist exactly?
Apparently his Jewish wife occasionally had to remind him who he married when he would go off on an antisemitic tirade, which I find quite amusing.
What was his cats name?
See ‘origin.’
The cats name was Nagger Man it was a black cat, and lovecraft was terrified of black people.
Except not exactly that. There’s one different vowel.
Nope. Lovecraft was about as white supremacist as it gets - he literally excused lynchings of black folks and the KKK’s terrorism because, supposedly, white people had to resort to “extra-legal measures” to protect themselves from (supposed) “mongrelisation.”
Ie, just your bog-standard white supremacism on a stick.
That’s a lot of deflection of personal self hate.
What I really love about Lovecraft was how inclusionary the community around the Cthulhu mythos has become.
My primary complaint about Kubrick is that, despite all his accolades as an auteur… Virtually all of his films are adaptations of other works.
The closest he comes to an actual original work is 2001, but even that has a basis in a few short stories, and Clarke collaborated on the film, producing the novel at the same time.
The same is true about Shakespeare. Almost all of his plays are derivative.
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If his fanbase was satisfied with simply calling him a director, I wouldn’t be bothered. For me, it’s elevating him to auteur status that’s troublesome.
I mean, most of those “adaptations” are extremely loose, his movies differ wildly from their source material in most cases
I don’t know why that would be a complaint. A directors job isn’t to write a screenplay, let alone an original.
A director, yes, but the Kubrick fanbase elevates him above being a mere director which is why I used the word “auteur”.
I love his movies and he was definitely a genius director, but man, was he a gigantic asshole…
A total monster. The way he treated Shelly Duvall on the set of The Shining was inexcusable. I absolutely love his films, but he was a very bad man.
He also called Stephen King at 3 in the morning, asked him stupid questions about his book and then hung up on him without even saying goodbye.
I’d say that’s the least of his crimes when it came to The Shining. He gave Duvall a nervous breakdown and her hair started falling out.
And King was probably up on cocaine anyway.
Yep, I have to go watch Popeye so I can see her happy again
Stanley Kubrick is my favorite director of all time. I consider Barry Lyndon such high art that if you could frame it, it would belong in the Louvre. But he was entirely about managing everything about his films and his life to precise detail, so it doesn’t surprise me that he canceled a book that had criticisms he didn’t care for.
Really, most unvarnished truths about Kubrick were only ever going to come out after his death when his correspondence could be studied and people could be interviewed with proper hindsight.
I liked his stuff until I actually read the Shining and realized what a heartless shit he is. He turned a (believe it or not) heartfelt story into Hollywood murder porn and abused Shelly Duvall in the process. I get why Stephen King couldn’t stand the guy.
There are so many absolutely horrible movie directors that make amazing movies that you’d probably never see half the greatest films of all time if you avoided them all. Hitchcock was a rapist. Polanski raped a child. John Landis killed an adult and two children to get a good shot. We won’t even go into Woody Allen. Fucking John Lasseter was a sexual harasser. And that’s just a small sampling.
Yet I still quit listening to Lizzo because she turned out to be a piece of shit. Plenty of other great artists that don’t treat their staff like shit.
I feel the same about aerosmith. When I actually read the lyrics to most of Aerosmiths songs, it became a question of how the fuck is Steven Tyler not in prison. Half their songs are about how much they want to have sex with minors.
Blues Traveler answered your question with a whole song back in the 90s:
It doesn’t matter what I say
So long as I sing with inflection
That makes you feel I’ll convey
Some inner truth or vast reflection
But I’ve said nothing so far
And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
And it don’t matter who you are
If I’m doing my job, it’s your resolve that breaks
Because the hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely
There is something amiss
I am being insincere
In fact I don’t mean any of this
Still my confession draws you near
To confuse the issue I refer
To familiar heroes from long ago
No matter how much Peter loved her
What made the Pan refuse to grow
Was that hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely
Suck it in, suck it in, suck it in, if you’re Rin Tin Tin or Anne Boleyn
Make a desperate move or else you’ll win and then begin to see
What you’re doing to me, this MTV is not for free
It’s so PC it’s killing me, so desperately I sing to thee of love
Sure, but also of rage and hate and pain and fear of self
And I can’t keep these feelings on the shelf
I’ve tried, well, no, in fact I lied
Could be financial suicide, but I’ve got too much pride inside
To hide or slide, I’ll do as I’ll decide and let it ride until I’ve died
And only then shall I abide this tide
Of catchy little tunes of hip three minute diddys
I wanna bust all your balloons
I wanna burn all your cities to the ground
I’ve found I will not mess around unless I play then hey
I will go on all day, hear what I say
I have a prayer to pray that’s really all this was
And when I’m feeling stuck and need a buck
I don’t rely on luck because
The hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The hook
On that you can rely
TL:DR dude went on a 3.5 minute rant about how no one listens to the lyrics, hit the top 10 in the US with said song, and was totally correct that no one would know what the song was even about.
I contend the only reason that song hit top 10 was because that Rin Tin Tin line. Everyone is a sucker for a good dog story.
I don’t know that Lizzo is comparable to Alfred Hitchcock.
They both turned out to be creeps. I don’t need to know much more about their art. Art comes from the heart so if your heart is creepy I don’t really give a shit about your art right
Polanski raped a child.
Multiple children. A number of other now adult women have later accused Polanski of raping them when they were teenagers. Right now he’s back in legal trouble right now for another, earlier victim that has now come forward. Not sure what it will accomplish as it’s a civil trial, he doesn’t have to come back for it, but at least this accuser will get her day in court, and if she wins she can garnish/levy any US assets he may hold or generate.
And Woody Allen . . . he was never that good anyway, and now I can’t stand to look at him. Setting aside any he-said/she-said for the sake of discussion (I believe Dylan) he married his step-daughter, the woman that he acted as father to throughout most of her childhood. If that’s not disgusting on the face of it, I don’t know what is. Yes, they are both adults now – but he was an adult for decades longer than she was, and one wonders if emotionally she’s ever even gotten the chance to get that far.
he was never that good anyway
I can’t agree there. He directed some masterpieces. But I can’t bring myself to watch them anymore. Maybe after he’s dead…
Out of curiosity, what would you consider his masterpieces? Sleeper was pretty cool, in its day (the whole “orgasmatron” idea was pretty cool for my young sensibilities) but I really couldn’t get into anything else. Maybe I just missed the good ones?
Annie Hall for one.
Hmm, okay. Not what I expected, but yeah, I can at least see it. Thanks for answering.
Also, I’m about to delete my comments in regard to this. Your wisdom in not going there was greater than my own, lol.
he married his step-daughter
“In 1978, Mia Farrow and her then husband, André Previn, adopted Soon-Yi and took her to the United States.”
“Previn has said that Allen “was never any kind of father figure [to her]” and that she “never had any dealings with him” during her childhood.[16] The findings of the judicial investigation carried out during the custody trial between Farrow and Allen determined that before 1990, Previn and Allen had rarely spoken to each other”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon-Yi_Previn
I get that many people think their relationship is icky but making stuff up isn’t helpful.
I don’t have to make anything up, and I note that you did not post a single word of what Mia Farrow or Ronan Farrow had to say about it either.
Posting one side of a very heated and ongoing family squabble does not an adequate rebuttal make.
I don’t have to make anything up
But you did. She wasn’t Woody Allen’s adoptive daughter.
“In 1992, Previn said that Farrow had physically abused her.[16] In 2018, Previn’s brother Moses Farrow has said that he too was physically abused by Farrow.”
I have no dog in this fight but I don’t buy the narrative that Mia Farrow is an angel and Woody Allen is the devil.
From https://lemmy.world/u/ChunkMcHorkle
EDITED TO ADD that I have deleted my original comment because I will not knowingly give pedophile apologists a springboard to launch their twisted defense of him.
I should note that all I did was quote from Soon-Yi’s wikipedia page. This asshole got caught spreading lies and is now acting out instead of taking responsibility.
John Ford …
Maybe it’s Johns…
What a snowflake
What a baby.
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Did you just get possessed by the ghost of Kubrick?
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