UK: FILM WORLD PRESENTS THE LATE STANLEY KUBRICK WITH THE PRESTIGIOUS DIRECTORS' GUILD LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Record ID: 546023

  • Title: UK: FILM WORLD PRESENTS THE LATE STANLEY KUBRICK WITH THE PRESTIGIOUS DIRECTORS' GUILD LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
  • Date: 20th September 1999
  • Summary: THE PARK LANE HOTEL , LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (SEPTEMBER 9, 1999) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) SIR PETER USTINOV SAYING "Oh really very agreeable because it was a very difficult film that, enormous hopes and Kirk Douglas producing it for Universal and lots of inevitable intrigues when you've got people like Laurence Olivier and Charles Lawton all in the same film, so he kept his head very well, and I thought he was probably preparing himself for the big time because he'd already proved his worth by doing 'Paths of Glory' which I think is still one of his best films"
  • Embargoed: 5th October 1999 13:00
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  • Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: People
  • Reuters ID: LVA3MY55196PCF197F4OVZIV0V57
  • Story Text: 'Shakespeare In Love' director John Madden and director of 'Evita' and 'The Commitments' Alan Parker joined a host of filmmaking stars at London's exclusive Park Lane Hotel to pay tribute to the late Stanley Kubrick.Kubrick's wife, Christiane, collected the prestigious Directors' Guild Lifetime Achievement award on behalf of her husband who died in March at the age of seventy, just days after completing his much-hyped film 'Eyes Wide Shut'.
    It was everything the legendary filmmaker would have hated, fame, glitz, social niceties, and other such rituals demanded by those who reach the heady heights of receiving massive awards.
    But ironically and tragically - Stanley Kubrick never lived to see the honour bestowed on his extraordinarily unique body of work, it was his wife of 42 years, Christiane, who collected the Directors' Guild Lifetime Achievement Award on her husband's behalf.
    The award comes just months after New York-born Kubrick died of a heart attack at the age of seventy, days after completing the recently-released 'Eyes Wide Shut', starring Hollywood couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.Famed for its 15-month shoot, endless takes and the need on the part of Kubrick to keep every detail strictly under wraps, according to his wife, Kubrick considered this the best film he had made.
    The night was a celebration of the films Kubrick gave to the world, and on a more personal note, an attempt by many to cleanse his name of the wild stories that have surrounded his persona in recent times.
    Some of the biggest names in the film industry came to pay their respects to a man whose work influenced so many.The author of a total of thirteen films, including groundbreaking and controversial masterpieces such as 'A Clockwork Orange', 'Dr.Strangelove' and '2001', according to the recipient of last year's award and the acclaimed director behind such blockbuster hits as 'Evita' and 'The Commitments', Alan Parker, Kubrick's strength lay in an extraordinarily unique vision, "a very, very strong, single vision of what a film should be, what a story should be.There's not a director working today who had such a single vision."
    So too was the impression 'Shakespeare In Love' director John Madden had of Kubrick."He was the logical extension, or illogical extension of a certain way of directing.Famously he needed to feel he was in control of absolutely every element of it - that's not the way I particularly like to direct, I kind of like the point at which control seems to vanish and other things start to happen, but a certain kind of purity can come out of that."
    While everyone seemed to agree on the extraordinarily unique authority Kubrick imprinted on his projects - and point to this ruthlessness as being at the heart of the filmmaker's success - in other areas of his life, all were at length to dispel the rumours of the eccentric freak who has kept the press happy for so long.Stories of shooting at people picnicking in his fields to wearing a helmet whilst driving, these wild rumours accompanied a more serious picture of a man clearly obsessed with his privacy.While the speculation would often provide a source of amusement for the filmmaker and certainly added to the suspense surrounding his work, towards the end of his life it obviously caused him much pain.
    "Lately, the rumours had become so grotesque" says his wife Christiane, "that he thought this is really awful and wondered what he could do.And then he died, and then my brother and I discussed - 'should we stay silent like we always have or will we engrave these stories into stone by staying quiet.So we decided to say that he was not any of the things the newspapers wrote about him and he himself said 'it's very difficult, how do I defend myself, do I write an article, you know, 'Dear public, I am charming' - it's impossible."
    Sir Peter Ustinov recalled the pleasure of working with Kubrick on 'Spartacus' and insisted that his desire for control in no way made him a tyrant: "No, he was very flexible actually - he was never opposed to people expressing their own ideas which may have differed from his.But if it made good sense he understood at once.He wasn't at all a dictator.He might have been to himself, but not to others."
    But whether it made him happy or not, Kubrick clearly was a dictator to himself - even the 20-minute trailer for 'Eyes Wide Shut' was personally edited by himself alone and such strength of direction and power of vision without doubt demanded the award of Lifetime Achievement by the Directors' Guild.
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