In his seminal tell-all Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger claimed to reveal the festering truth beneath the dream factory of the American film industry. His was a bemused but cynical perspective on the business of show, reveling in the sordid juiciness of early Tinseltown controversies that usually concluded with tragedy, if not death. Representatives of the film idols referred to in the book lined...
In his seminal tell-all Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger claimed to reveal the festering truth beneath the dream factory of the American film industry. His was a bemused but cynical perspective on the business of show, reveling in the sordid juiciness of early Tinseltown controversies that usually concluded with tragedy, if not death. Representatives of the film idols referred to in the book lined...
Stanley Kubrick made just 13 feature films in his nearly 50-year career, and from the 60s through the 90sthe era in which a Stanley Kubrick picture had a meaningeach new project went through more or less the same press-cycle. During production, reports would leak out about the grueling shoot, and how the reclusive Kubrick was testing the boundaries of cinema and propriety. Then the film would come out, and the critical reaction would be mixed to muted, with some declaring the new work a masterpiece and others calling it a disappointmentor even a pretentious fraud. Years would pass, and with time to sink in, each movie would be extensively reevaluated, eventually landing on best of the decade or even best of all time lists. It was as though each picture had to re-teach the audience how to watch a Stanley Kubrick film.
Eyes Wide Shut is the best case-in-point. Shooting began in the November of 1996 in London, and ended in June of 1998. Throughout that year and a half, there was gossip galore about what Kubrick was up to. The press knew primarily that the film starred Tom Cruise and Nicole KidmanHollywoods most popular couple at the timeand that it was going to be sexually explicit. Once filming completed, Kubrick spent nine months working with editor Nigel Galt, fine-tuning. Less than a week after he completed a final cut and showed it to Warner Bros. and his stars, he died.
So when the movie came out that summer, for a good long while the conversation surrounding it was about everything but what Kubrick had actually made. Instead, the press was preoccupied by
the decision to digitally obscure the orgy scenes, to avoid an NC-17 rating.
whether Cruise and Kidman had wasted a year of their careers making stilted softcore porn.
how American audiences reacted to seeing two of the biggest movie stars in the world in a slow-paced art-film.
whether the Pinewood Studios version of Manhattan looked real enough.
whether Warner Bros. was going to make its money back.
if this was the proper capper to a prestigious career.
By the end of 1999 though, a film that had generally been tagged as a letdown was being rehabilitated. Roger Ebert taped a special edition of his syndicated TV series, wherein prominent Chicago critics extensively unpacked Eyes Wide Shutand thus subtly rebuked the large number of well-known New York critics whod initially shrugged the movie off. The film made a healthy handful of best-of-99 lists (including in New York), and in the decades since its generally become regarded as one of the 90s supreme cinematic achievements, and indisputably worthy of its maker.
Most of the shift in conventional wisdom was due to Kubrick himself. When artists produce outstanding work throughout their careers, its easier to trust that they knows what theyre doingand that if we dont get it right away, we should look again. Its also true that once a film is out of the multiplex marketplace, questions like, Did you like it? become less pressing. Opinion takes a backseat to analysis. And with Eyes Wide Shut, theres as much to pick through and puzzle over as in any of Kubricks filmseven though almost nothing that happens in the picture is left unexplained.
Based on Arthur Schnitzlers Traumnovelle, the movie has Tom Cruise playing Dr. Bill Harford, a successful New York general practitioner who lives in a lavish apartment with wife Alice (Kidman) and their young daughter. The story begins with the couple going to a lavish Christmas party thrown by Bills patient Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), where the pair flirts with other guests before the doctors called in by his host to attend to a nude, overdosing woman. The next night, Bill and Alice have a testy argument about sexual desire, during which Alice confesses that shes recently lusted after another man. Still fuming, he leaves the apartment to go on a house call, and begins a winding two-day odyssey that sees him sexually tempted multiple times. A combination of desperate arousal and burning envy nearly puts him in mortal danger, after he crashes a bizarre masquerade party at a country estate.
For a long time, Bills journey into the night feels like an erotic dream that keeps threatening to become a nightmare. (In fact, Traumnovelle is sometimes translated in English as A Dream Novel or Dream Story.) But at the end, Bill meets again with Victor, who offers a different interpretation of the previous 48 hours. Bills anxious because the morning after he was ejected from the masquerade, one of his friends went missing and a woman who helped him turned up dead. Victor insists that the friend just left town, the woman was a junkie prostitute, and the masked men at the party werent really threatening Bill, they were maintaining the theatrical illusion of an event meant to resemble a decadent, dangerous gathering of some ancient clandestine tribunal.
Victor could be lying. Or more likely hes acting as Kubricks surrogate, telling the audience not to think too hard about shadowy cabals and unsolved murders, because thats not really what Eyes Wide Shut is about.
Stanley Kubrick made just 13 feature films in his nearly 50-year career, and from the ‘60s through the ‘90s—the era in which “a Stanley Kubrick picture” had a meaning—each new project went through more or less the same press-cycle. During production, reports would leak out about the grueling shoot, and how the reclusive Kubrick was testing the boundaries of cinema and propriety. Then the film would come out, and the critical reaction would be mixed to muted, with some declaring the new work a masterpiece and others calling it a disappointment—or even a pretentious fraud. Years would pass, and with time to sink in, each movie would be extensively reevaluated, eventually landing on “best of the decade” or even “best of all time” lists. It was as though each picture had to re-teach the audience how to watch a Stanley Kubrick film.
Eyes Wide Shut is the best case-in-point. Shooting began in the November of 1996 in London, and ended in June of 1998. Throughout that year and a half, there was gossip galore about what Kubrick was up to. The press knew primarily that the film starred Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman—Hollywood’s most popular couple at the time—and that it was going to be sexually explicit. Once filming completed, Kubrick spent nine months working with editor Nigel Galt, fine-tuning. Less than a week after he completed a final cut and showed it to Warner Bros. and his stars, he died.
So when the movie came out that summer, for a good long while the conversation surrounding it was about everything but what Kubrick had actually made. Instead, the press was preoccupied by…
… the decision to digitally obscure the orgy scenes, to avoid an NC-17 rating.
… whether Cruise and Kidman had wasted a year of their careers making stilted softcore porn.
… how American audiences reacted to seeing two of the biggest movie stars in the world in a slow-paced art-film.
… whether the Pinewood Studios version of Manhattan looked real enough.
… whether Warner Bros. was going to make its money back.
… if this was the proper capper to a prestigious career.
By the end of 1999 though, a film that had generally been tagged as a “letdown” was being rehabilitated. Roger Ebert taped a special edition of his syndicated TV series, wherein prominent Chicago critics extensively unpacked Eyes Wide Shut—and thus subtly rebuked the large number of well-known New York critics who’d initially shrugged the movie off. The film made a healthy handful of best-of-‘99 lists (including in New York), and in the decades since it’s generally become regarded as one of the ‘90s supreme cinematic achievements, and indisputably worthy of its maker.
Most of the shift in conventional wisdom was due to Kubrick himself. When artists produce outstanding work throughout their careers, it’s easier to trust that they knows what they’re doing—and that if we don’t “get it” right away, we should look again. It’s also true that once a film is out of the multiplex marketplace, questions like, “Did you like it?” become less pressing. Opinion takes a backseat to analysis. And with Eyes Wide Shut, there’s as much to pick through and puzzle over as in any of Kubrick’s films—even though almost nothing that happens in the picture is left unexplained.
Based on Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle, the movie has Tom Cruise playing Dr. Bill Harford, a successful New York general practitioner who lives in a lavish apartment with wife Alice (Kidman) and their young daughter. The story begins with the couple going to a lavish Christmas party thrown by Bill’s patient Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), where the pair flirts with other guests before the doctor’s called in by his host to attend to a nude, overdosing woman. The next night, Bill and Alice have a testy argument about sexual desire, during which Alice confesses that she’s recently lusted after another man. Still fuming, he leaves the apartment to go on a house call, and begins a winding two-day odyssey that sees him sexually tempted multiple times. A combination of desperate arousal and burning envy nearly puts him in mortal danger, after he crashes a bizarre masquerade party at a country estate.
For a long time, Bill’s journey into the night feels like an erotic dream that keeps threatening to become a nightmare. (In fact, Traumnovelle is sometimes translated in English as A Dream Novel or Dream Story.) But at the end, Bill meets again with Victor, who offers a different interpretation of the previous 48 hours. Bill’s anxious because the morning after he was ejected from the masquerade, one of his friends went missing and a woman who helped him turned up dead. Victor insists that the friend just left town, the woman was a junkie prostitute, and the masked men at the party weren’t really threatening Bill, they were maintaining the theatrical illusion of an event meant to resemble a decadent, dangerous gathering of some ancient clandestine tribunal.
Victor could be lying. Or more likely he’s acting as Kubrick’s surrogate, telling the audience not to think too hard about shadowy cabals and unsolved murders, because that’s not really what Eyes Wide Shut is about.
When a movie star stands on the red carpet at his latest premiere and tells an interviewer, We made this one for the fans, what does he mean? It sounds on the surface like a vaguely populist Give the people what they want! sort of statement, that the filmmakers had the hardcore supporters of the franchise in mindrather than the studio, or the critics, or the overseas marketswhen they made the movie.
The idea of fan servicewhether its putting in inside jokes and other Easter eggs that only the faithful will understand, or structuring entire films around beloved storylines and charactersis a powerful one in modern risk-averse Hollywood. Look at the Marvel movies, which have been wildly successful by putting the comic book company in charge of the franchise. Characters and storylines adhere to the mythology that the fans already know; the movies themselves are treated like comic book runs, the latest chapters in a sprawling, never-ending story arc.
There have been some fine Marvel movies. But how much creative freedom can a director have in making a movie thats always the middle chapter in a story written by the higher-ups, one that fans already buy rote? Each movie just pushes the engine forward a little more and no director can stray too far from the tracks without potentially derailing the entire franchise and ticking off fans.
But thats not the only way to run a franchise. Look at the Mission: Impossible series, which, beginning with Brian De Palmas first entry in 1996, stands as a bold rebuke to the idea that the fans of a franchise are its best caretakers. A popular series in its time, the original TV show from the late 60s and early 70s had not aged well over the years, revived once as a middling reboot with an aging Peter Graves in the late 1980s. Paramount Pictures had the film rights for years, but by the time Cruise got involved as the first project for his new production company, if people remembered it, they remembered it first for Lalo Schifrins iconic theme music.
Which meant it was ripe for Cruise to turn it into his own action-adventure star vehicle. And that it was also ripe for De Palma, never shy about putting his influences and obsessions into his films, to put his stamp on it as a director. That there wasnt much of an ardent fan base ended up working in the movies favor, because Mission: Impossible was a devalued franchise; the audience was too young to be fans of the show, so nobody would be upset if anyone tinkered with it.
And boy, did De Palma tinker. Signed on by Cruise before a screenplay was finishedDe Palma would bring in screenwriters Steve Zaillan, David Koepp, and Robert Towne to work on it, sometimes on competing versionsDe Palma likely had a freer hand to orchestrate the results than if he had worked from a finished screenplay. The result has his fingerprints all over it: Whip off the lifelike summer blockbuster mask, and theres a Brian De Palma film underneath.
When a movie star stands on the red carpet at his latest premiere and tells an interviewer, “We made this one for the fans,” what does he mean? It sounds on the surface like a vaguely populist “Give the people what they want!” sort of statement, that the filmmakers had the hardcore supporters of the franchise in mind—rather than the studio, or the critics, or the overseas markets—when they made the movie.
The idea of “fan service”—whether it’s putting in inside jokes and other Easter eggs that only the faithful will understand, or structuring entire films around beloved storylines and characters—is a powerful one in modern risk-averse Hollywood. Look at the Marvel movies, which have been wildly successful by putting the comic book company in charge of the franchise. Characters and storylines adhere to the mythology that the fans already know; the movies themselves are treated like comic book runs, the latest chapters in a sprawling, never-ending story arc.
There have been some fine Marvel movies. But how much creative freedom can a director have in making a movie that’s always the middle chapter in a story written by the higher-ups, one that fans already buy rote? Each movie just pushes the engine forward a little more and no director can stray too far from the tracks without potentially derailing the entire franchise and ticking off fans.
But that’s not the only way to run a franchise. Look at the Mission: Impossible series, which, beginning with Brian De Palma’s first entry in 1996, stands as a bold rebuke to the idea that the fans of a franchise are its best caretakers. A popular series in its time, the original TV show from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s had not aged well over the years, revived once as a middling reboot with an aging Peter Graves in the late 1980s. Paramount Pictures had the film rights for years, but by the time Cruise got involved as the first project for his new production company, if people remembered it, they remembered it first for Lalo Schifrin’s iconic theme music.
Which meant it was ripe for Cruise to turn it into his own action-adventure star vehicle. And that it was also ripe for De Palma, never shy about putting his influences and obsessions into his films, to put his stamp on it as a director. That there wasn’t much of an ardent fan base ended up working in the movie’s favor, because Mission: Impossible was a devalued franchise; the audience was too young to be fans of the show, so nobody would be upset if anyone tinkered with it.
And boy, did De Palma tinker. Signed on by Cruise before a screenplay was finished—De Palma would bring in screenwriters Steve Zaillan, David Koepp, and Robert Towne to work on it, sometimes on competing versions—De Palma likely had a freer hand to orchestrate the results than if he had worked from a finished screenplay. The result has his fingerprints all over it: Whip off the lifelike summer blockbuster mask, and there’s a Brian De Palma film underneath.
