Customer Reviews

Stanley Kubrick: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Considering the fact that Stanley Kubrick rarely gave interviews, this book is a godsend. Compiling articles and interviews over a span of several decades, "Stanley Kubrick: Interviews" offers a fascinating insight into one of the cinema's greatest directors. Many of these have been widely reprinted already, but it's great to see them all in one collection. Once you've bought this book ...get the Stanley Kubrick Collection DVD box set!

In Stanley Kubrick: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi), we have more of the voice of Kubrick than anywhere else. The interviews go chronologically and run the gamut from short three-page profile throwaways to massive, 30-page question-and-answer marathons. Many are worth noting: Jeremy Bernstein's profile dates from 1966 but is still fresh and amazingly well-written and candid, and Eric Nordern's interview with Kubrick for Playboy is insightful and worth reading for the Master's (mostly incorrect) predictions of immortality and space travel by the year 2001. Another excellent interview comes from Joseph Glemis, who talks to Kubrick about all of his films up to Clockwork Orange, and there are two interviews with Gene Siskel that are worth reading, too.

Simply put, this is a fine volume that should belong to every Kubrick fan. Most of these interviews, if not all of them, are long out of print and the book is 98% worthwhile. Moreover, reading the words of Kubrick is like reading poetry-he did retain the right to extrapolate and modify his answers before any interview was published-with each sentence and word well chosen. Only complaint: there are no interviews with Kubrick regarding The Shining; why this film was left out is curious. Gorgeously printed with a spartan design, sturdily bound, set in Stone serif, rag right, this is a very reader-friendly book.

There is a huge amount of Kubrick in this one. Parhaps the most complete collection of things he has uttered to the press throughout his career. It covers all his fascinations, all obsessions and great visions for the modern mankind - and it unveils the gradual loss of hope, dienchantement with how the modern world develops.
But, being a collection of interviews, it is also slightly repetitive and many topics are discussed several times, so for non-scholars this can be increasingly boring while they advance.

This book contains interviews/ portions of interviews with Kubrick between the late 50's and 1987. You're privy to innuberable details about his working methods- how he decided on each subject, how he collaborated with his actors, etc. You get a picture that is clear as day of the unsurpassed care with which he made each of his films. If you're interested in finding out about his working methods and his 'philosophy,' I would urge that this is likely the best place, in print, to check. The format, mainly, is unadulterated- colloquial question and answer with Kubrick. The interviews cover a wide scope (particularly the 1968 playboy interview). The book contains no interviews from the period of "The Shining" and none from "Eyes Wide Shut" since he hadn't time to give any. Some of the interviews in this book can be found on the internet- but here you have a wide sampling all in one place.

You've heard many times that "Seinfeld" was "a show about nothing." That's pretty much what you get here...

Kubrick loathed publicity and hated doing interviews even more. Since he himself had been a photojournalist, of sorts, before starting his career making movies, this is a little paradoxical, but understandable.

I don't doubt that just about every documented Kubrick interview ever done is, in some way, represented in this book - but it still ends up a mighty slim volume. Students of Kubrick will not learn much here that has not already been cited, in secondary source, in the great number of other Kubrick "biographies" and critical treatises.

And you cannot help believing that this is exactly what Kubrick wanted. Over and over again, in this book itself, he insists that the movies he made were to stand on their own merits. Talking about movies meant nothing to him - making them was everything.

Now that this legendary filmmaker is (alas) no longer with us, this book serves a valuable purpose, reminding us of the towering intellect and fertile mind of Stanley Kubrick. The last interview, in 1987 with Rolling Stone, is the most fun and laid-back; he scoffs at trying to explain what his films mean and lets the viewer decide. His lengthy interview with Playboy in 1968, after "2001" was released, is nothing short of jaw-dropping. Kubrick discusses a wide range of issues, from science to God to the possibility of intelligent life in the universe, in remarkable depth. A New Yorker piece about the making of "2001" is great fun; his defense of "A Clockwork Orange" is eloquent and worth remembering given the debate that still rages today around violence and the media. My only complaint: Where are his three great interviews with Michel Ciment? The absense is unfortunate, because the book jumps from "Barry Lyndon" to "Full Metal Jacket," creating a glaring hole in an otherwise superb collection of articles and interviews.

I enjoyed this not for the explanation of his films but for his philosophical musings which there is considerably more of.

Stanley Kubrick is a person that the world over should miss. This book captures a part of his mystique, of why he was such a beautiful and intriguing person.

This is an awesome book about Kubrick's movies. Just like all the "Interviews" series, it has a lot of information that are really useful.

For fans of Kubrick's work, this book is essential. The man only did a few interviews in his existence and semed to despise every minute of them but this book provides some essential information and opinion from one of the greatest filmmakers ever. Hearing his philosophies alone completely blew me away! By the end of the book I was wishing there were more interviews. Get it.