Lemkin

"The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good."

— Stanley Kubrick

(Source: twitter.com)

"Think [Schindler’s List is] about the Holocaust? That was about success, wasn’t it? The Holocaust was about six million people who get killed. Schindler’s List is about 600 who don’t."

— Stanley Kubrick, who would have been 82 today.

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I would have demanded two things of my architect upon seeing this proposal:

1. It must be black. Intensely black.
2. It must conform precisely to a dimensional ratio of 1:4:9

"

Somebody asked [Stanley Kubrick] how he ever thought of the ending of 2001.

“I don’t know,” he said. “How does anybody ever think of anything?”

"

— Michael Herr
writing (soon after Kubrick’s death) a fantastic long piece for Vanity Fair.

True Lies Wide Shut

Every now and then a statement rolls in front of your eyes that you stop and re-read, then think about, and then read again. But it’s the same information every time. Rest assured, I am not making this up:

After he finished making “True Lies,” [director James] Cameron called [Stanley] Kubrick, by then a recluse, and invited himself over. They spent a day, in the basement of Kubrick’s house in the English countryside, watching “True Lies” at Kubrick’s flatbed editing station.

I imagine some of the conversations went like this:

“Yeah, Stan, that 2001 was okay, but, man, take. a look. at this. You are goddamned right I had Schwarzenegger and Jaimie Lee Curtis kiss in front of a mushroom cloud. You are goddamned right I did that. Nobody does that but Cameron! “

I admire the man for his brass balls (read all about them in the source article in the New Yorker). Coulda been a salesman. (Tough racket.) Also for this:

Cameron was born in Canada, and grew up in a small town not far from Niagara Falls. (He revoked his application for American citizenship after Bush won the election in 2004.)

It’s a great profile. Especially since the author, Dana Goodyear, saw fit to include this gem:

As an instance of feminist iconography it perhaps leaves something to be desired.

Get away from Aliens, you bitch!