Various Quotes From Stanley Kubrick’s Interviews

The post I previously published, “ ( Quotes From Legendary Director Stanley Kubrick That Deserve To Stay With You >> ) ”, drew attention, so I thought I should write a more developed version of it. Kubrick’s interviews do not just illuminate the background of his films. They also reveal his understanding of art, his working discipline, his view of human nature, and the hard but lucid way he approached cinema. Below are the main themes that stand out across Stanley Kubrick’s interviews.

Art, Creativity, and Originality

• “I do not think that writers, painters, or filmmakers create works of art in order to say something. They feel something, and they love art itself; words, the smell of paint, celluloid, photographs, or working with actors. I do not think any real artist can create something he does not truly feel, even if he believes otherwise.”

• “I do not think any artist, even if he imagines otherwise, creates with a didactic attitude.”

• “I have not come across any new idea about style in films that would especially impress me. I think worrying too much about originality of style is more or less pointless. A truly original person with a creative mind cannot work in an old style; he will do something different. Others think of style more as established conventions and try to work within them.”

• “I think one of the great mistakes of twentieth-century art has been the effort to be original at all costs. Even great innovators like Beethoven did not completely sever themselves from what came before. Renewal should mean moving forward without abandoning the past.”

• “Charlie Chaplin’s shots were not cinematic in any strict sense, yet what he filmed was extraordinary; wonderful things were happening on the screen. Sergei Eisenstein was filming things that were artificial and contrived, but they were cinematically perfect. If you could combine the methods of those two directors, you would make the best film.”

Directing, Actors, and Working Discipline

• “Every step taken before editing in the making of a film is really taken in order to edit that film.”

• “First I talk with the actors about character in general, then about the scene we are about to shoot. The performance in that scene may differ from the general line of the character, after all. Then comes the difficult moment of the first rehearsal on the set. That is always a surprise. You may have to change dialogue, forget some ideas, or find new ones. But when it comes to shooting in the real sense, that is not the problem. The truly difficult part is getting the scene into the right condition through rehearsal.”

• “If I make people do many takes, it is no doubt because in those cases they do not know their lines well enough. An actor should be able to do something in one take; if he has only learned his lines well enough to say them, he will have trouble conveying the emotions of the scene. In a scene with strong emotional force, it is best not to divide the shot into too many parts. Shooting it in one piece allows the actor to preserve emotional continuity. Most actors can only deliver their best performance once or twice.”

• “It is usually best not to think about the camera while rehearsing a scene; otherwise the overall impact of the scene is weakened.”

• “If the material in your hands is valuable and exciting enough, how you shoot the film matters less; the real difficulty is deciding what should be filmed.”

• “I think of myself a little like detectives following a trail. For Barry Lyndon, for example, I created a catalogue system containing all the information we might need. I gathered every art book on the market so that paintings from the period would always be at hand. All of the costumes were copied from those paintings. Before we began shooting, it took us a full year of real preparation. Cinema, I think, has to make the story it tells believable.”

Cinema, Editing, and Visual Language

• “The visual side of filmmaking has always seemed the easiest part to me; that is precisely why I try to treat visuality as something that comes after story and movement.”

• “A film is, or should be, closer to music than to fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. What lies behind the emotion, the meaning, all of that comes later.”

• “The screen is a magical world. It has a power to bring forth emotion in a way that no other art form can even come close to.”

• “A filmmaker has as much freedom as a novelist holding a piece of paper in his hand.”

• “If something can be written or thought, it can be filmed.”

• “I do not think about arguments over interpretation. It is always best if the film speaks for itself.”

• “I do not like making statements. One feels obliged to produce a witty and brilliant summary of one’s intentions, or to speak about style or technique. There are critics who do that very well, even when what they say has little to do with what you were trying to do. Barry Lyndon puzzled critics because, unlike Dr. Strangelove with nuclear war, 2001: A Space Odyssey with extraterrestrial intelligence, or A Clockwork Orange with the social structure of the future and violence, it did not prompt discussion of some contemporary social issue surrounding the film.”

Life, Meaning, and Human Nature

• “Twentieth-century man is like a castaway adrift in a rudderless boat on an unknown sea. The meaninglessness of life forces him to create his own meaning. If this can be written and thought, then it can be filmed.”

• “The meaninglessness of life compels man to create his own meanings.”

• “I am interested in the animal and savage side of human nature, because that is a realistic portrait of man.”

• “I have a strange weakness for criminals and artists. Neither accepts life exactly as it is. Every tragic story should stand in contradiction to the events of ordinary life.”

• “In a world where many people assume false poses simply to appear normal and accept a kind of gray nothingness, the criminal and the soldier at least show the virtue of being for something or against something. It is hard to say who is engaged in greater corruption: the criminal, the soldier, or us.”

• “The idea of God is utterly absurd.”

Education, Learning, and Advice To Young Directors

• “During all the time I was in school I learned nothing, and until I was nineteen I never read a book voluntarily.”

• “I think one of the greatest mistakes made in schools is trying to teach children by frightening them into learning. Fear of getting grades, fear of failing a class. The difference between learning something out of interest and learning it out of fear is the difference between a nuclear explosion and a spark.”

• “This may sound absurd, but the advice I would give young directors is to get a camera and some film and make a film about anything at all.”

• “What first made me think about making films was seeing so many terrible ones. I would sit in the cinema and think: I do not know very much about films, but I am sure I could make a better one than this.”

Accident, Discovery, and Method

• “James Joyce has a wonderfully beautiful line: accident is the road to discovery. If you know how to use something found by chance, it adds another dimension to what you are doing. Many films are like football matches. There is a general tactic, but where the ball lands and where the players happen to be at that moment may allow you to play even better if you know how to use it.”

• “I never had an extraordinary success with a single film. My reputation developed slowly. You can tell me I am a successful director and that many people have said good things about me. But the truth is that none of my films received entirely positive reviews, and they did not make enormous box-office returns.”

Notes On His Own Films

• About Barry Lyndon: “At first I thought of using only eighteenth-century music for the film. At home I have all of the music of that century on records. Unfortunately, among all that music I could not find anything that conveyed the warmth and passion of love. So I committed a small deception and used Schubert’s Trio for the love scenes. It was written around 1814. Without being fully romantic, it carried the effect of a tragic romanticism.”

• About The Shining: “When Jack arrives at the hotel, he is psychologically ready to fulfill the hotel’s murderous desire. His anger and frustration are on the verge of becoming completely uncontrollable. He is a failed writer. He is married to a woman he despises. Once he falls under the mercy of the hotel’s powerful evil, he takes up the dark role almost immediately.”  ( How Kubrick Used The Shining To Push Symbolism To Its Limit And Hint At The Native American Genocide >> )

• “Melodrama ultimately shows you all the troubles and disasters affecting the main characters in order to prove that the world is a just place. Tragedy, on the other hand, tries to present life in a way that is more honest and closer to reality, leaving behind a feeling of regret and sorrow.”

Drugs, Consciousness, and Cosmic Scale

• “I believe drugs actually benefit the viewer more than the artist. The dream of becoming one with the universe, giving meaning to surrounding objects, existing in an atmosphere of peace and comfort, is not an ideal condition for an artist. Drugs deaden the creative personality that is strengthened by struggle, opposition, and disagreement. The artist should try to transcend what he does and prevent anything from coming between himself and his subconscious. One of the things that made me anti-LSD was that the people I knew who used it seemed too helpless to distinguish between things that were genuinely interesting and stirring and the universal happiness induced by the drug. They seemed to have completely lost their talents and their connection with the things in life that make human beings happiest. Perhaps when everything is beautiful, nothing is beautiful.”

• “I would be surprised if the universe were not filled with an intelligence behind an order that seems divine to us. There are roughly one hundred billion stars in our own galaxy and roughly one hundred billion more galaxies in the visible universe. It therefore seems likely that there are billions of planets inhabited by intelligent beings thousands or even millions of years more advanced than we are. If you think about the enormous technological leaps human beings have made in just a few thousand years, can you imagine the evolutionary development of life forms that old? At best they may have ceased to be biological beings, those fragile shells for the mind, and become immortal machines, and then, over some unknowable span as long as eternity, emerged from their material cocoons as beings of pure energy and spirit. Their potential could be limitless, and their intelligence beyond anything human beings can even comprehend.”