Kubrick Quotes

Kubrick showed us something special. Every film was a challenge, and a direct assault on cinema’s conventions.

When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor.

Kubrick ate it up. He loved it. He just let me go crazy.

My first job after drama school was with Stanley Kubrick. It was only a few lines in ‘A Clockwork Orange’, but I was working with a master of cinema.

The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.

I was going to school thinking I was going to do something entirely different, thought acting was just a hobby at that point, met Stanley Kubrick and was like, ‘Whoa, this can be an art form, and you can really move people the way you do simply by acting.’

Stanley Kubrick knew we had good graphics around MIT and came to my lab to find out how to do it. We had some really good stuff. I was very impressed with Kubrick; he knew all the graphics work I had ever heard of, and probably more.

For me the most moving moment came when I first started working on 2001. I was already in awe of him, and he had very much already become Stanley Kubrick by the time the film started.

I actually like ‘The Shining’ more than I like Kubrick, I think. The tension he sustains through the whole film is so great.

I worked with Stanley Kubrick for almost a year back in 1990, trying to develop the screen story for his project ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ which is about a robot boy who wishes to become a real boy, a future scientific fairy tale inspired in the myth of Pinocchio.

I’ve always tried to create music the way Kubrick makes film, just kind of mimicking consciousness. He has a way of mimicking this greater power.

I’m Kubrick without the O.C.D.

Tragedies such as Nevil Shute’s ‘On the Beach’ and Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr Strangelove’ are so powerful because there’s an underlying assumption that this did not have to happen. It is empowering.

How would you compare Polanski or Kubrick? I try not to do any comparisons.

I always admired Stanley Kubrick for the fact that he managed to beat the system somehow. I think he kind of had it all figured out.

Really, what I’m doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore: Francis Coppola and Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and loved.

Stanley Kubrick was a big inspiration. People accuse me of never using my own material. But when did Kubrick? You look at his films and they are completely unique… completely separate entities.

‘Interstellar’ may never equal the blast of scientific speculation and cinematic revelation that was Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ but its un-Earthly vistas are spectral and spectacular.

I’d worked in Clockwork Orange with Stanley Kubrick and since Stanley was such a prestigious director this opened all sorts of doors for me – one of them being Star Wars.

In ‘Winter’s Bone,’ it’s literally the director and the camera operator. That’s it. Just a super-small Kubrick crew. You know what I mean? Like, 8 people.

Standing beneath the white light of an Apple store is like standing on a Stanley Kubrick movie set. His ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ predicted Jobs and a future where technology was our friend. Kubrick, of course, didn’t like what he saw. And occasionally, I have my doubts.

I like the absurd and the surreal: the Coen brothers, Bunuel, Kubrick.

I am nostalgic for those man-behind-the-curtain days when someone could get away with impersonating Kubrick because nobody had any idea what Kubrick looked like.

Does anyone remember who shot Kubrick’s movies? Do you remember who shot David Lean’s movies? No one remembers who shot ‘Dr. Strangelove’ or ‘Barry Lyndon.’

The Beatles once approached Stanley Kubrick to do ‘The Lord Of The Rings.’ This was before Tolkien sold the rights. They approached him, and he said, ‘No.’

I generally like very visually striking films. I love a lot of Stanley Kubrick’s films. I would have to say ‘Dr. Strangelove’, which of course has got resonance in ‘Watchmen’. It’s a favorite movie of mine.

I wanted to be Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Hitchcock. I’d wanted to be a director since 13, and horror and the suspense thriller were the most powerful genres to me.

With Kubrick and most film directors, they are in complete control, but one can influence them.

Kubrick and I were pretty good friends.

Stanley Kubrick made Shelly Duvall go crazy during ‘The Shining.’ It’s like one of the best performances ever. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone that far, but I love that movie.

I adore Stanley Kubrick, all of his films were different, not just in subject but tonally.

Stanley Kubrick, I had been told, hates interviews. It’s hard to know what to expect of the man if you’ve only seen his films. One senses in those films painstaking craftsmanship, a furious intellect at work, a single-minded devotion.

I think all of the directors I’ve worked with are mostly curious about the time I had on ‘Eyes Wide Shut.’ They really just want to know about it. They’re all fans of Kubrick.

In every Kubrick movie, there is so much great thought put into the surroundings. It’s almost like the sets are huge characters in the movie at all times.

I liked Stanley Kubrick from the start. He had a warm, benign nature and offered himself to you as a friend and ally. He seemed to possess no airs or attitudes, neuroses, or predilection towards tantrums.