Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The Kubrick Archive

I feel a little like Shelley Duvall in The Shining, chancing upon her husband's novel and finding it is comprised entirely of the line "All Work And No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy" typed over and over again. John Baxter wrote, in his unauthorised biography of Kubrick, "Most people attributed the purchase of Childwick to Kubrick's passion for privacy, and drew parallels with Jack Torrance in The Shining."
I am a massive Kubrick fan. He was one of my heroes.

There are a lot of non-fans of his work. People who think of his fans as part of some mindless cult who just think it's cool to like Kubrick. These people get pretty tiresome.

The man created a body of work that I just find endlessly fascinating.

Even his final film, the vehemently derided Eyes Wide Shut, is just so surreal and interesting to me. I've got problems with it but there is some remarkable work in there.

Here's a great article called "Citizen Kubrick".

"Two years after his death, Jon Ronson was invited to the Kubrick estate and let loose among the fabled archive..."