Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was a filmmaker notable for directing films such as Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange.
He was also an avid chess player, who in his twenties had supplemented his income by playing chess for money in New York City's Washington Square Park.[1]
Various aspects of Kubrick's personality remind me a lot of myself, my partner, and my friends, from his exhaustive research, methodical organisation juxtaposed with sprawling messes, and crippling perfectionism,[2] through to his love of photography and stationery...[3][4] not to mention being something of a shut-in. As with my partner, his perfectionism was something he demanded from both himself and, with much futility, others.
References
- "...Kubrick, then in his twenties... was also squeezing out a small living (he estimates about three dollars a day, 'which goes a long way if all you are buying with it is food') by playing chess for cash in Washington Square... In the course of making Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick had all but hypnotised George C. Scott by continually beating him at chess while simultaneously attending to the direction of the movie." Stanley Kubrick Interviews Gene Phillips, 2001, ISBN 1-57806-297-7, pp. 21—46
- "We did about two years preproduction. We built a massive great archive of Poland, the concentration camps, everything. And while we were doing this two years' worth of background research, of course Steven Spielberg came along, researched, shot, edited, and released Schindler's List, which Stanley said would have been a hard act to follow, so that was then abandoned." Stanley Kubrick's Boxes Jon Ronson, 2008
- "Kubrick likes to keep track of things in small notebooks, and he had just ordered a sample sheet of every type of notebook paper made by a prominent paper firm — about a hundred varieties — which were spread out on a large table." Stanley Kubrick Interviews Gene Phillips, 2001, ISBN 1-57806-297-7, pp. 21—46
- "Stanley worked out what he thought was the optimum size for a box that was easy to handle, easy to store... a lid that's both snug and yet will lift off easily... Stanley then specified what thickness or micron of card he wanted... He was just particularly fond of beautiful things that you buy in a stationery store, whether this is pads, notebooks, folders, inks, you had hundreds and hundreds of bottles of inks... Stanley often used to joke that he was going to open a stationery nostalgia museum." Stanley Kubrick's Boxes Jon Ronson, 2008
Chess players: Stanley Kubrick
Filmmakers: Stanley Kubrick
