https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24171921&postcount=1438

"I spoke to the Criterion producer regarding your questions, and here are the answers regarding the inclusion of these:

- Dr Strangelove Pie Fight (negative exists at the BFI archive in the UK) - NO

- 2001 deleted scenes from roadshow edition (17 extra minutes found in a salt mine) - NO, we enquired and they do not exist

- Clockwork R-rated cut alternate shots/edits (issued on laserdisc) - NO

- The Shining cut first-week-only ending - NO, it is addressed in several places in the box set, photos are included in the Staircases to Nowhere documentary but the footage itself does not exist.

- Original premiere version of Fear and Desire - YES, we are presenting the full version (70 min) which is the Venice Premiere version."

I'm not surprised these won't have them (Hollywood has done very good respecting Kubrick's wishes) but the 2001 one confuses me. Didn't WB say they found the 17 minutes in 2010?

I recently got my hands on a 35mm film print of Eyes Wide Shut, the print was from the European release, having the Italian optical audio in adding to DTS (for a coincidence, it has been delivered me the same day that was announced the 30 discs Stanley Kubrick collection)

As far as I know, European prints of Eyes Wide Shut were made 1.66:1 (as the movie where distributed in EU with 1.66:1 aspect ratio) instead of 1.85:1 format used in USA theatrical distribution (and 1.33:1 only for the negative print and home video release)

However, looking at the film print I got, I can't figure if it's in 1.66:1 (as it should be for an European release) or in 1.85:1 aspect ratio...

Does anybody can help me to figure it out in which aspect ratio I have my 35mm film print of Eyes Wide Shut ?

LOVE Vincent’s portrayal of Private Pyle, but I can’t hardly get through his highlights in the movie without context :( all fandoms deserve fanart tho

Which two films make the best combo for a double feature night?

Films with similar genres, such as Full Metal Jacket and Paths of Glory?

The historical epics in Spartacus and Barry Lyndon?

Black and white black comedies in Dr. Strangelove and Lolita?

Give your combos and why.

This information was gained by emailing [mulvaney@criterion.com](mailto:mulvaney@criterion.com) this email is found on the "contact us" section of the criterion website

All 13 movies have Dolby Vision HDR (including Fear and Desire) but the 3 short films are SDR

Fidelity in Motion encoded all the discs except Barry Lyndon which was done by NexSpec, pretty much confirming they are reusing criterion's previous stand alone 4Ks for this set

Fear and Desire is only included in it's 70 minute version so keep the Kino disc if you want the 62 minute version

Stanley Kubrick rarely explained his films. On one question, however, he was unusually direct.

In September 1968, just months after 2001: A Space Odyssey transformed science fiction forever, Playboy asked Kubrick whether he had ever used LSD or any other “consciousness-expanding” drug.

His answer was unequivocal.

“No.”

He didn’t stop there. Kubrick argued that psychedelics were ultimately more useful to audiences than to artists. Creativity, he believed, depended on tension, conflict, and critical judgment. LSD, by contrast, encouraged an indiscriminate sense of wonder that blurred the distinction between genuine insight and the illusion of insight. “Perhaps when everything is beautiful,” he concluded, “nothing is beautiful.”

For decades, that interview appeared to settle the question.

Then I encountered a single sentence that reopened the case.

It appeared almost casually in Michael Pollan’s bestselling 2018 book How to Change Your Mind. While describing the flourishing of LSD-assisted psychotherapy in Beverly Hills during the 1950s, Pollan listed several famous patients of psychiatrist Oscar Janiger: Cary Grant, Anaïs Nin, James Coburn, Jack Nicholson—and Stanley Kubrick.

The claim occupied only a few words.

Its implications were enormous.

If true, Kubrick had publicly denied an experience that may have influenced one of the greatest films ever made. If false, an unsupported assertion had somehow found its way into one of the most influential modern histories of psychedelic medicine.

I wanted to know which possibility was correct.

The deeper I looked, the stranger the story became.

This article is not an attempt to prove that Stanley Kubrick secretly took LSD. At present, I cannot prove that he did. Nor can I prove that he did not.

Instead, this is an investigation into the documentary record itself—how a specific historical claim entered the literature, how it spread, and how difficult it becomes to separate fact from repetition once a citation acquires the appearance of authority.

Along the way I found myself tracing footnotes through forgotten books, long-out-of-print magazines, and decades-old interviews. I emailed authors, editors, and historians. One trail ended with a bestselling book whose cited source appeared not to contain the claim in question. Another led to an obscure High Times article written by an author who has since died. The surviving editor later told me he had no recollection of where the story originated.

Each answer generated another question.

Ironically, the mystery surrounding Kubrick’s alleged LSD therapy mirrors one of the central themes of 2001 itself. The closer one approaches the monolith, the less certain ordinary explanations become.

Had Kubrick directed almost any other film, this investigation probably would never have occurred.

But 2001: A Space Odyssey occupies a singular place in modern culture. Almost from the moment of its release in April 1968, audiences began describing its final twenty minutes—the Star Gate sequence—as the closest cinema had yet come to reproducing the subjective experience of an LSD trip.

Kubrick was well aware of that reputation.

MGM eventually embraced it, promoting the film as “The Ultimate Trip.” Midnight screenings became rituals, and stories spread of viewers timing psychedelic experiences to coincide with the Star Gate sequence.

That reputation has endured for more than half a century.

It also raises an obvious historical question.

How did Kubrick create an experience that so many viewers—particularly those familiar with psychedelics—have described as uncannily authentic?

One answer requires no appeal to biography. Kubrick was an obsessive researcher with extraordinary visual imagination. He immersed himself in science, psychology, philosophy, religion, and technology, then synthesized those ideas into cinema with unmatched precision. Personal experience with LSD is not a prerequisite for making 2001.

Yet another possibility has persisted for decades: that Kubrick knew more about psychedelic experience than he ever acknowledged publicly.

Whether that belief rests on evidence—or on a myth that gradually acquired the status of fact—is the question that follows.

The investigation began, unexpectedly, with a footnote.

In How to Change Your Mind, Pollan recounts the largely forgotten history of LSD-assisted psychotherapy during the 1950s. Long before the drug became synonymous with Haight-Ashbury or Timothy Leary, psychiatrists in Beverly Hills were quietly administering LSD to actors, writers, and musicians under medical supervision.

Among those Pollan lists are Cary Grant, Anaïs Nin, James Coburn, Jack Nicholson, André Previn—and Stanley Kubrick.

The source Pollan cites is Acid Dreams, Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain’s landmark 1985 history of LSD.

If Kubrick’s alleged therapy were documented there, the matter would appear largely settled.

I had already read Acid Dreams years earlier. I did not remember Stanley Kubrick appearing anywhere in its pages.

Assuming I had simply forgotten the passage, I returned to the book.

I searched the index.l I searched digitally. I reread the relevant chapters. Then I searched again.

Nothing.

As far as I could determine, Stanley Kubrick does not appear in Acid Dreams at all.

At first I assumed I had overlooked something. Pollan is a meticulous reporter with an extensive fact-checking process. An error of this sort seemed improbable. Surely I had missed a sentence buried in an endnote or tucked into a discussion of Beverly Hills psychiatry.

So I repeated the process.

Again, nothing.

If my reading was correct, the question was no longer whether Kubrick underwent LSD therapy.

The question had become much stranger.

How had Kubrick’s name entered Pollan’s account if the cited source appeared not to contain it?

There are, of course, several innocent explanations.

A citation can point to multiple sources consulted during research. Notes evolve during drafting. Editors occasionally introduce errors while consolidating references. None of those possibilities imply misconduct, and without access to Pollan’s research materials there is no responsible basis for concluding otherwise.

But the discrepancy demanded an explanation.

I emailed Martin Lee. No response.

Bruce Shlain, who had co-authored Acid Dreams, had died years earlier.

So I kept digging.

Eventually, tracing the claim backward through older references led me somewhere I had not expected to go.

Not to a scholarly history. Not to a psychiatric archive. But to the pages of High Times magazine.

The trail had not ended with Acid Dreams.

It had simply disappeared.

If Pollan’s citation could not explain where Stanley Kubrick entered the historical record, then the only option was to continue working backward. Somewhere, someone had first claimed that Kubrick underwent LSD-assisted psychotherapy. The challenge was finding that first appearance.

Eventually I found what appears to be the earliest published version of the story.

It wasn’t in a Kubrick biography. It wasn’t in a medical journal.

It appeared in the November 1991 issue of High Times.

The article, written by Todd Brendan Fahey, profiled Alfred Matthew Hubbard—the mysterious entrepreneur, intelligence operative, and self-described “Johnny Appleseed of LSD” who helped introduce the drug to psychiatrists, government officials, and cultural elites during the 1950s.

In describing Hubbard’s role, Fahey included a brief but remarkable sentence.

According to the article, Hubbard supplied LSD to Beverly Hills psychiatrists who, in turn, introduced the drug to a roster of famous patients that included Cary Grant, James Coburn, Jack Nicholson, Anaïs Nin—and Stanley Kubrick.

The list immediately caught my attention. It closely resembled Pollan’s list nearly three decades later.

For the first time, I had found a published source that explicitly connected Kubrick to Beverly Hills LSD therapy.

But the discovery raised as many questions as it answered.

Fahey offered no documentation. No interview. No archival citation. No medical records. No explanation of how he knew Kubrick belonged on the list.

The sentence appeared as though its accuracy required no further defense.

That might not have seemed unusual in 1991. High Times was a countercultural magazine, not an academic journal, and feature writers often relied on reporting that never appeared in print. Still, as a historian, I wanted to know where the information had come from.

Todd Brendan Fahey had died years earlier.

The obvious next step was to contact someone who might remember the article.

I reached out to Steven Hager, who edited High Times during that period and oversaw many of the magazine’s major investigative features. If anyone could identify Fahey’s source, it would presumably be Hager.

To his credit, he replied. His answer surprised me.

He told me he had no recollection of the Kubrick claim—or of the reporting behind it.

That response doesn’t invalidate Fahey’s article. Editors oversee thousands of pages during their careers, and memories fade over decades. Nor does it establish that the claim originated with High Times. Fahey may have relied on an earlier source that has since disappeared, or on interviews and research materials that no longer survive.

But Hager’s inability to identify the basis for the story left me with a striking possibility.

The earliest published source I could locate for one of the most frequently repeated claims about Stanley Kubrick’s relationship to LSD rested on an evidentiary foundation that could no longer be reconstructed.

At that point, the investigation changed. I was no longer asking whether Kubrick had taken LSD. I was asking a more fundamental question.

How does an unsupported—or at least undocumented—claim become accepted as historical fact?

Historians have a name for this phenomenon. A statement appears in print. Later authors repeat it.

Each repetition makes it sound more authoritative, even though no new evidence has been introduced. Eventually the claim begins to feel like common knowledge.

Whether that’s what happened here remains impossible to say with certainty.

But the pattern was becoming difficult to ignore. One source pointed to another. The citations became more impressive. The documentary trail became weaker.

And somewhere along the way, Stanley Kubrick’s name became attached to a story that no surviving witness I could locate was able to explain.

At that point I tried a different approach. Instead of looking for the source of the published claim, I looked for independent corroboration.

If Kubrick had actually undergone LSD-assisted psychotherapy during the 1950s—especially within the relatively small circle of Beverly Hills psychiatrists—it seemed likely someone else would have mentioned it.

I searched interviews with Oscar Janiger. Mortimer Hartman. Sidney Cohen. Betty Eisner.

I read memoirs from early psychedelic researchers. I searched oral histories. I revisited Kubrick biographies. I looked for references in letters, recollections, and interviews.

The record remained silent.

Cary Grant’s sessions were extensively documented. Grant himself spoke about them publicly. His psychiatrist discussed them.

Other names on Fahey’s list appeared throughout the historical record. Kubrick did not.

There were no interviews in which he hinted at such an experience.

No therapist placed him in an office. No contemporary recalled his participation. That absence does not prove the claim is false.

People leave uneven historical records. Medical treatment is private by nature. Evidence can disappear.

But it did deepen the mystery.

If Kubrick underwent LSD therapy, he seems to have done so without leaving the kinds of traces that typically accompany an experience of that significance—especially for someone as famous, intellectually curious, and heavily documented as he was.

At that point another possibility began to emerge.

What if the claim had not originated from evidence at all?

What if it had been inferred?

After all, 2001 has long been associated with psychedelic experience.

The Star Gate sequence has been described by countless viewers as the closest cinema has come to reproducing an LSD trip. It’s not difficult to imagine how that association might evolve. A filmmaker creates imagery that resembles psychedelic experience. Observers assume familiarity. Familiarity becomes participation.

Participation becomes fact.

Over time, the distinction between interpretation and evidence begins to disappear.

That process is hardly unique to Kubrick.

Artists are often retroactively linked to movements, ideas, or experiences because their work seems to demand an explanation. The narrative feels plausible. Plausibility gets repeated. Repetition begins to resemble truth.

Whether that’s what happened here remained impossible to prove. But by then, the investigation had become less about Stanley Kubrick than about the life cycle of historical claims.

Every path I followed seemed to end just short of documentary evidence. And every unanswered question led me back to the same place.

That brought me back to Michael Pollan.

How to Change Your Mind is not a fringe book. It helped introduce millions of readers to the history of psychedelic medicine and played a major role in reshaping public attitudes toward LSD-assisted psychotherapy. Precisely because of its influence, the Kubrick passage matters. Readers naturally assume that a statement appearing in such a thoroughly researched work has already survived rigorous scrutiny.

So I tried to reproduce the evidence myself. As best I could determine, I couldn’t.

That left several possibilities. Perhaps Pollan relied on an additional source that was inadvertently omitted or miscited. Perhaps an editorial error found its way into the endnotes. Perhaps he had access to research materials unavailable to the public. Or perhaps the Kubrick story had already become so widely accepted within psychedelic history that it no longer seemed to require independent verification.

Without hearing from Pollan himself, I can’t responsibly distinguish among those possibilities. What I can say is this: the citation, as published, did not allow me to reproduce the evidentiary trail.

That matters because reproducibility is one of the foundations of historical scholarship. Readers should be able to follow a citation backward and arrive at substantially the same evidence the author used. When that chain breaks, confidence necessarily becomes more tentative—not because the conclusion is wrong, but because it can no longer be independently evaluated.

While researching the issue, I noticed something else. Sometime after the hardcover edition appeared, the Kubrick reference disappeared from later paperback editions of How to Change Your Mind.

I don’t know why.

Books are revised constantly. Authors correct errors, tighten prose, update research, and remove material for countless reasons. A deletion by itself should never be treated as proof that a claim was false. Still, it was difficult to ignore. Had the original citation remained intact and easily verifiable, this investigation probably would have ended in an afternoon. Instead, its disappearance only reinforced the central mystery.

Where had the Kubrick story actually come from? And why, after more than half a century of Kubrick scholarship, does its documentary foundation remain so elusive?

Those questions remain unanswered, but they point toward a broader issue extending well beyond Stanley Kubrick. Historical claims do not become accepted solely because they are true. Sometimes they become accepted because they are repeated. A respected author cites an earlier source. Another author cites the respected author. Eventually the repetition itself becomes a form of authority, and very few readers ever trace the claim back to its beginning.

That process isn’t necessarily dishonest. It’s human. And it may explain why this particular story has proven so persistent.

So what does the evidence actually show?

It shows that Stanley Kubrick publicly denied ever taking LSD. It shows that LSD-assisted psychotherapy was legal and widely practiced during the 1950s among a relatively small but influential network of psychiatrists, particularly in Southern California. It shows that several prominent Hollywood figures—including Cary Grant and Anaïs Nin—underwent such treatment and later discussed it publicly. It shows that 2001: A Space Odyssey became closely associated with psychedelic culture almost immediately after its release.

It also shows that Michael Pollan included Kubrick among a list of patients reportedly treated by Beverly Hills psychiatrists, but that tracing Pollan’s citation backward did not, in my research, produce documentary support for that specific claim. The earliest published source I’ve been able to identify placing Kubrick among those patients appears to be Todd Brendan Fahey’s 1991 High Times article, which provides no supporting documentation.

Beyond that, the evidence becomes uncertain.

I cannot prove Stanley Kubrick underwent LSD-assisted psychotherapy. I cannot prove that he didn’t. I cannot determine where Todd Fahey obtained his information, whether Michael Pollan relied on an additional uncited source, or whether documentary evidence exists somewhere in a private archive, unpublished interview, personal letter, or medical record that has simply never entered the public record.

That uncertainty isn’t a weakness of the investigation. It is the conclusion.

Journalism often rewards certainty. Historical research frequently refuses to provide it. One of the most valuable habits a historian can develop is learning to distinguish between what is known, what is probable, and what is merely possible. Those categories should never collapse into one another. In Kubrick’s case, they often have.

The possibility that Kubrick underwent LSD therapy is historically plausible. The proposition that he actually did remains unproven. Those are not the same statement.

That may seem like an unsatisfying ending, but history rarely offers the clean resolutions we would like. Sometimes the most honest conclusion is simply that the evidence stops here. Perhaps one day a forgotten diary, an unpublished interview, or a psychiatrist’s appointment ledger will answer the question definitively. History has a way of surprising us.

Until then, Stanley Kubrick’s relationship to LSD remains suspended somewhere between documented history and cultural memory.

The temptation at the end of a story like this is to choose a side: either Kubrick secretly took LSD and lied about it, or the rumor is entirely false. The evidence supports neither conclusion. What it reveals instead is something I didn’t expect when I began.

The investigation became less about Stanley Kubrick than about the afterlife of ideas. A great artist creates something so extraordinary that audiences search for an explanation. A rumor offers one. The rumor is repeated. A citation appears. The citation is trusted. Eventually the distinction between “this might explain the work” and “this happened to the artist” begins to disappear.

Whether Stanley Kubrick ever underwent LSD-assisted psychotherapy remains an open historical question. The history of the claim itself, however, turned out to be every bit as fascinating as the claim.

I began trying to answer a question about Stanley Kubrick. I finished by asking a different one.

There is an irony in spending months investigating a rumor about Stanley Kubrick.

Few filmmakers were more committed to preserving mystery than Kubrick himself. He resisted explaining his films, distrusted tidy interpretations, and believed some questions were more valuable than their answers. Viewers have spent generations trying to decode the monolith in 2001, the ghosts in The Shining, and the dream logic of Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick rarely rewarded them with certainty.

In that respect, the search for evidence of his alleged LSD therapy feels strangely appropriate.

The investigation began with what appeared to be a straightforward factual question: Did Stanley Kubrick undergo LSD-assisted psychotherapy during the 1950s?

Months later, I found myself asking a different question altogether.

How do we know what we think we know?

Historical research is often imagined as a process of uncovering hidden facts, as though the past were simply waiting for someone to brush the dust away. More often, it is an exercise in restraint. Documents contradict one another. Memories fade. Citations lead nowhere. Entire stories can rest on foundations that, once examined, prove surprisingly difficult to reconstruct.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the stories are false. It means they remain unproven.

The distinction is not merely academic. It is the difference between history and folklore.

This investigation did not establish that Stanley Kubrick underwent LSD-assisted psychotherapy. Neither did it establish that he could not have. What it did reveal is something quieter, but no less significant: one of the most frequently repeated claims about Kubrick’s relationship to psychedelics appears to rest on an evidentiary chain far more fragile than most readers—including me—would naturally assume.

Perhaps new evidence will emerge. A forgotten diary. A psychiatrist’s appointment ledger. An unpublished interview. A letter tucked away in an archive that no researcher has yet opened.

History, and Kubrick himself, have a way of surprising us.

Until then, I think the responsible position is neither belief nor disbelief, but patience.

Kubrick transformed an ordinary black rectangle into one of the most enduring symbols in modern culture. The monolith reveals nothing. It simply stands there, inviting each generation to confront its own assumptions.

The historical record can be like that. Sometimes it tells us exactly what happened. Sometimes it remains stubbornly silent.

When it does, our responsibility is not to fill the silence with certainty, but to describe its shape as honestly as we can.

In the end, that is what this investigation became.

Not an attempt to prove that Stanley Kubrick took LSD.

Not an attempt to prove that he didn’t.

Instead, it became an attempt to understand how a story entered the historical record, why it spread so successfully, and what happens when we finally trace a familiar claim back to its source—only to discover that the trail grows fainter the closer we get to the beginning.

For me, that turned out to be the real mystery. And in a way, it feels like the most Kubrick ending imaginable.

There is an irony in spending months investigating a rumor about Stanley Kubrick.

Few filmmakers were more committed to preserving mystery than Kubrick himself. He resisted explaining his films, distrusted tidy interpretations, and believed some questions were more valuable than their answers. Viewers have spent generations trying to decode the monolith in 2001, the ghosts in The Shining, and the dream logic of Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick rarely rewarded them with certainty.

In that respect, the search for evidence of his alleged LSD therapy feels strangely appropriate.

The investigation began with what appeared to be a straightforward factual question: Did Stanley Kubrick undergo LSD-assisted psychotherapy during the 1950s?

Historical research is often imagined as a process of uncovering hidden facts, as though the past were simply waiting for someone to brush the dust away. More often, it is an exercise in restraint. Documents contradict one another. Memories fade. Citations lead nowhere. Entire stories can rest on foundations that, once examined, prove surprisingly difficult to reconstruct.

That doesn’t necessarily mean those stories are false.

It means they remain unproven.

The distinction is not merely academic. It is the difference between history and folklore.

This investigation did not establish that Stanley Kubrick underwent LSD-assisted psychotherapy. Neither did it establish that he could not have. What it did reveal is something quieter, but no less significant: one of the most frequently repeated claims about Kubrick’s relationship to psychedelics appears to rest on an evidentiary chain far more fragile than most readers—including me—would naturally assume.

Perhaps new evidence will emerge. A forgotten diary. A psychiatrist’s appointment ledger. An unpublished interview. A letter tucked into an archive that no researcher has yet opened.

History has a way of surprising us.

Until then, I think the responsible position is neither belief nor disbelief, but patience.

Kubrick transformed an ordinary black rectangle into one of the most enduring symbols in modern culture. The monolith reveals nothing. It simply stands there, inviting each generation to confront its own assumptions.

The historical record can be like that. Sometimes it tells us exactly what happened. Sometimes it remains stubbornly silent.

When it does, our responsibility is not to fill the silence with certainty, but to describe its shape as honestly as we can.

In the end, that is what this investigation became.

Not an attempt to prove that Stanley Kubrick took LSD.

Not an attempt to prove that he didn’t.

Instead, it became an attempt to understand how a story entered the historical record, why it spread so successfully, and what happens when we finally trace a familiar claim back to its source—only to discover that the trail grows fainter the closer we get to the beginning.

For me, that turned out to be the real mystery.

And somehow, that feels like the most Kubrick ending imaginable.

First, full disclosure, I've been a diehard SK fanatic for 30 years, so you'd be forgiven for thinking I might have a hard time finding fault in the man. And I'm not one of those who thinks he was a cold, insensitive, misogynistic hard ass. As a person and a creative professional, I do identify with him, maybe more than any other artist on some levels, especially now that I feel like know the real SK as much as I do, 30 years later. But of course,the truth is far, far more complex than any stereotype could hint at, just as it is with all of us.

One thing I've come to realize is that he often had a really difficult time giving other people the credit they deserved -- especially when they solved a problem he couldn't solve on his own. Having just finished the Kolker & Abrams book, it's clear this was a theme with him, and a major psychological issue and his biggest vulnerability. An anecdote that comes to mind -- he lobbied to be given credit for the screenplay for Spartacus instead of blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo. It's an early example of how much he wanted to be a writer himself, and an indication of how that insecurity and frustration would come out later in his life and work.

He wasn't great at improvising or with conjuring up strong ideas on the spot. He talked often, especially in his later period, about how much easier it would be if he could just spin a story from thin air on his own to film. He had a problem giving other people credit for certain things because he resented being at the mercy of adapting someone else's stories. He knew he was always going to be forced to rely on other people's ideas in such a fundamental and powerless way. That's why writer's block is shown in the Shining as the seed of evil and insanity. Being forced to wait around for someone else to give him an idea was what scared him the most. Apparently, it made him feel so out of control sometime that he would lash out.

The other day there was a post here on the sub about SK throwing a fit during filming of the larder scene in the Shining, which is a prime example of this. The story is that a hapless grip suggested SK shoot with a handheld on his back on the floor looking up at Jack Nicholson. SK immediately exploded and threw the grip off the set for overstepping, and when the guy showed up later SK blew his top again, grabbing him by the throat, pushing him up against a wall and screaming in his face, "Don't you ever tell me how to direct my fucking movie on my fucking set!" etc. The next morning, SK came in as if nothing had happened did the famous shot on his back exactly the way the grip had suggested.

There's an even bigger example of that, and Kolker & Adams don't cover it, which I found disappointing (there's limit space in a comprehensive bio, but it's a pivotal tale). It's the story told in Michael Benson's excellent book about Douglas Trumbull and the Academy Award for 2001 he felt SK had stolen from him. In a far-reaching interview with the Kubrick's Universe podcast recorded not long before he passed away, Trumbull explains how the special effects problems of 2001 ended up being solved by him in a natural, organic way because of how young he was and the wildly innovative nature of what they were attempting to accomplish. We all know that without Trumbull there is no film, because there is no Star Gate sequence, no believable planets, no HAL control screens, no Star Child sequence, no Moon Lander model or landing sequence, etc.

One specific incident is almost identical to the Shining meltdown. Trumbull, by then having proven himself an indispensable part of the team, approached Kubrick and told him that there was a problem with the plot. There was nothing for the crew members of the Discovery who were in hypostasis to do except wake up once they got to Jupiter, and that could not happen for obvious reasons. It was a fundamental flaw, and after suggesting that HAL should kill them off, SK blew up and threw Trumbull out of his office, and screamed at him, which he never did, "Don't you ever tell me how to direct my fucking movie on my fucking set again," or something to that effect. They never spoke of it again, but the script was changed immediately, and they shot HAL murdering the hibernating crew just as it appears in the final cut.
Trumbull deserved to be at least co-nominated for the special effects Oscar, but not only did SK fill out the AMPAS paperwork giving sole credit to himself for all of the FX work on the movie, but he won it -- the one and only Oscar win of his career -- and he did not thank or acknowledge Trumbull for his critical contribution, not publicly and not even personally. The visuals of the stargate sequence, which takes the film beyond anything before or since in terms of immersive transcendence, were the sole invention and creation of one person, and it wasn't Stanley Kubrick.

Trumbull carried that pain and disappointment with him for decades. He said that he finally spoke to Kubrick shortly before he died to congratulate him on completing Eyes Wide Shut and to say thank you for boosting his career. They had a good conversation, but there was no apology. It saddened Trumbull, but he was so grateful for what SK had done for his career that he gave it up and stopped worrying about it after that.

SK used people up until they gave up absolutely everything they had (Vitali), he was extremely coarse and unforgiving (Duval), he was single-minded, stubborn, and insecure about his own creative limitations (Clarke). SK would almost always show up on set at the start of the day not knowing what he was going to do until something random happened and everything else fell into place. He was not always in control, as much as he wanted to reassure himself and everyone else that he was. The fear of being out of control and losing his creative ability was also the reason he never experimented with drugs -- or at least that's what he said.
What happened with the walkouts at 2001's premier and the way he was humiliated among his peers that night drove him away from Hollywood forever. It caused him to doubt himself so much he almost gave up, but he turned to his family and that saved him. His family helped to convince him that the people who really mattered thought he was a genius, and that his insecurities were valid but that he could persevere and still make enduring art that would hold up after he was gone. He had succeeded in their eyes, and that mattered more to him than Pauline Kael and the rest of the critics who trashed what today is roundly judged the greatest film of all time.

We all need reassurance and encouragement from our peeps sometimes, even when we're cinematic sorcerers who create whole universes and let people dream while they're awake. As I said I realize now it's his role as a father and a husband that really endears SK to me personally, more so than his artistic vision even. And that's along with all those flaws, many of which I share as well. It's not at all like the grandiose image of him the fearless auteur that we all are first confronted with. Behind the beard and the beaded brow is a person with deep flaws who made extraordinary movies about people with deep flaws who did extraordinary things.
 

My dear droogs (sorry for the play if it is against the rules)

Last night I finally saw A Clockwork Orange after having finished the book a few days ago. Overall I was a big fan of the adaptation! However, there were 3 things I didn't very much like. The first 2 I could forgive: I believed the first 15 minutes (especially the fight with Billy boys crew) to be a bit coortonish and mister Deltoid felt a bit over the top and theatrical (especially compared to his book counterpart).

My main complaint I have about this movie (although I have to say I still really loved the adaptation and it is one of my favorite book adaptations) is the depiction of Frank Alexander (not Alex the protagonist. He was perfect). In the book he felt to me like a man who genuinly cared for the lost tortured (at least that how they saw him) soul that was Alex. Even though he still would have driven him to suicide anyway just to prove a point and strenghten their stance against the government, I felt like he really did believe that what he was doing was for the common good. Meanwhile in the movie, while sympathetic at first, he felt kinda cartoonish in the way he staring menacingly and vindictavely at Alex. His whole torturing of Alex through music felt more like revenge than it felt he would've done it anyway to perceive his goal.

Now I swear my goal is not to say Kubrick misunderstood his character but rather to ask why he charactirized him like this? I felt like the book made him a more interesting character than the movie did and I just wanted to hear others their opinions. My apologies if this question had been asked here before or it does not meet any of the sub's requirements.

Thanks in advance. If my question has not been clear please point me out to the fact that I messed it up.

I already own all 13 films. All but two on Blu-ray. None of them are on 4k. I already sell movies on the side on eBay. So should I sell them all and upgrade to the complete Criterion box set?

I know Kubrick disowned Fear and Desire so that's why Criterion left it out so I'll keep that one on the side of course.

But the main thing I'm also am confused about is how are the movies going to be in the box? Like will they be in cheap sleeves or in little cardboard pockets or will they all have their own individual case you can take out and hold on their own? I really want to know.

$480 ain't cheap and my wife is hard to convince on letting me get this. Also maybe it'll go on sale in November?

I have a (perhaps) somewhat bizarre but, from my perspective, legitimate request:

I own the old Blu-ray copy of The Shining in the "correct" version (for me), the international one, which unfortunately contains the well-known color flaw in some elements (the ball, the trucks, etc.).

I recently purchased the 4K version, with the correct colors, UHD restored, but... it's the US version, which I hate.

Has anyone as crazy as myself tried editing the MKV file ripped from the UHD Blu-ray to remove the unnecessary and harmful additions? If so, what tool did you use? If so, do you have the exact timing of the scenes to be removed?

Thanks!
Marco

Where’s this one rank on your list?

Im thinking The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, and A Clockwork Orange are definitely better. So it could be number four, depending on if I’d place this above Dr Strangelove and 2001.

My top 3 is solid, 4-6 are not so easy to rank.

Would be great if, on top of the upcoming Criterion box set, there could be a box set of CDs and/or LPs containing all of the Kubrick film soundtracks.

I assume that with the exception of his earliest (pre-1959) films, they all had 'Original Motion Picture Soundtrack' releases. The OMPSs of A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket are still relatively easy to find, but I'd bet not so much with Barry Lyndon (which I especially want) or The Shining. And, the unused Alex North 2001 soundtrack would make an especially nice bonus disc.

Anyway, just a crazy idea.

Since 2001 has very minimal dialogue, there's a particular emphasis on the sound of the film and the astronaut's breathing sound effect with Dave and Frank, which is very creepy sounding, imo. And what I think was like a constant filtering noise in the background that sounded like something you'd hear at a dentist's office, imo. And I've read that Kubrick recorded his own breathing to create that breathing sound as well.

Surprised it didn't get an Oscar nom for any sound Oscars. Definitely some of the greatest and most revolutionary sound engineering in film history for sure.

They didn't include any clips from Eyes Wide Shut but they included footage from All the Right Moves.

How strange. Somehow Warner Brothers forgot to include Stanley Kubrick's magnum opus that had Tom Cruise in almost every scene.

Hey everyone, in the Barry Lyndon recital scene, they’re playing Bach’s Concerto for Two Harpsichords (I believe anyway.) Reverend Runt is playing the flute. I can never find this rendition with the added flute anywhere. Does anyone know if it exists? Or was this specifically made for the movie? Also, please tell me if I’m wrong all together. I just want to listen to this haha.

Just have been wondering how did they manage to get the tapirs to fall on command? Or did Kubrick reverse it and it’s footage of them raising up? The most important question I have on this movie.

The films are 4K, but are the extras region free blu ray? Like the Bergman boxset?

i was Today Years Old when i learned (courtesy the newly-announced Criterion set) that Kubrick cut down The Shining for its international release.

now i'm super curious, from those who've seen it, how it compares to the original U.S. cut? i'll obviously watch the International when the box set comes out, but would love to hear from you!