Director Stanley Kubrick Dies
Filed at 4:27 p.m. EST
By The Associated Press
LONDON (AP) -- Stanley Kubrick, the director of ``2001: A Space Odyssey'' and ``A
Clockwork Orange,'' whose films often puzzled and shocked audiences only to end up as
classics, died Sunday at his home in England, his family said. He was 70.
Police were summoned to Kubrick's rural home north of London on Sunday afternoon, said
authorities in Hertfordshire, where he was certified dead. ``There are no suspicious
circumstances,'' police said.
Kubrick's family announced his death, and said there would be no further comment.
Kubrick's films included ``Spartacus'' in 1960, ``Lolita'' in 1962, ``Dr.
Strangelove,'' in 1964, ``2001'' in 1968 and ``A Clockwork Orange'' in 1971.
He also made ``Barry Lyndon,'' released in 1975, ``The Shining'' in 1980 and ``Full
Metal Jacket'' in 1987.
Malcolm McDowell, who starred in ``A Clockwork Orange,'' issued a statement through
his publicist calling Kubrick ``a heavyweight of my life.''
``He was the last great director of that era. He was the big daddy,'' said McDowell.
Kubrick's latest film, ``Eyes Wide Shut,'' is still slated for release on July 16,
Warner Bros. said Sunday. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman star in the story of jealousy
and obsession, which Kubrick made in great secrecy.
``He was like family to us and we are in shock and devastated,'' Cruise and Kidman
said in a statement released by their publicist.
Director Steven Spielberg issued a statement describing Kubrick as a ``grand master of
filmmaking.''
``He created more than just movies. He gave us complete environmental experiences,''
Spielberg said.
Kubrick was born July 26, 1928, in New York.
At 17, he was hired as a staff photographer by Look magazine, which had been impressed
by a picture Kubrick had snapped on the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt died.
While working at Look, he studied film by attending screenings at the Museum of Modern
Art.
``I was aware that I didn't know anything about making films, but I believed I
couldn't make them any worse than the majority of films I was seeing. Bad films gave
me the courage to try making a movie,'' Kubrick once said.
In 1951, he sold a 16-minute documentary about a boxer, ``Day of the Fight,'' to the
RKO film studio.
Kubrick was drafted by actor Kirk Douglas into the film ``Spartacus'' when the
production -- then the most expensive ever mounted in the United States -- ran into
trouble. The film, about a slave revolt in ancient Rome, included some footage shot by
the original director, Anthony Mann, and Kubrick did not regard the finished product
as a great success.
``I tried with only limited success to make the film as real as possible but I was up
against a pretty dumb script which was rarely faithful to what is known about
Spartacus,'' Kubrick told an interviewer.
``Lolita,'' starring James Mason and Shelley Winters, was based on Vladimir Nabokov's
controversial novel about a professor who is sexually obsessed with a 12-year-old
girl. The work was filmed in Britain, in part because of censorship problems, and
thereafter Kubrick was based in Britain.
``Dr. Strangelove,'' starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott, was a black comedy
about nuclear war released in the early 1960s during a period of great fears over the
bomb and Cold War tensions.
``2001,'' a science fiction film about the evolution of man and humanity's place in
the universe, combined dazzling visual imagery and an inspired use of music. It proved
to be a great success for Kubrick.
In an interview with Playboy magazine, Kubrick said he had ``tried to create a visual
experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the
subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content ... just as music does. ...
You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical
meaning.''
``A Clockwork Orange,'' set in a violent future, is a graphic film about a young thug
who carries out rapes and beatings before being sent to prison where he is
brainwashed.
The film was one of Kubrick's most controversial -- it was even disparaged by Anthony
Burgess, whose novel was the basis of the film, and Kubrick eventually removed it from
screens in Britain. One of Kubrick's memorable touches was to have his hero sing
``Singin' in the Rain'' while dishing out a brutal beating.
``The Shining,'' a thriller based on a Stephen King novel, starred Jack Nicholson as a
writer who went mad and attacked his family while at a deserted, snowbound resort
hotel.
Kubrick was married three times, first in 1948 to Toba Metz, then after divorcing he
married Ruth Sobotka in 1954. Their marriage ended three years later, and in 1958, he
wedded Suzanne Harlan, with whom he had three daughters.
Details about funeral arrangements were not immediately available.
