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?
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.
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.
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…
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.
That’s the nice thing about being a Terry Pratchett fan. The more I learn about him, the more I love him.
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.
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.
The cats name was Nagger Man it was a black cat, and lovecraft was terrified of black people.
See ‘origin.’
What a snowflake
What a baby.
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.
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.
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”.
