Original subtitles

It was a Sunday morning, March 7th, 1 999,

and I had, um...

I was in--I think I was getting dressed,

and my husband and my eldest son had gone to the deli,

which was a Sunday tradition,

and my mother phoned me, and said, "Daddy's dead."

I don't remember the ins and outs of it.

A lot of it is a blur, to be honest.

A lot of it was spent trying to come to terms with what had just happened,

and then realizing that there was stuff to be getting on with,

and that's what we did.

♪♪ [spare, haunting music]

[Harlan] We bought the rights in 1970 already,

and it was the very first signed-and- sealed agreement

with Warner Brothers.

Ready to go.

And then he pulled out.

It's a film about jealousy

and about this poisonous seed in us all.

The difficulty with Eyes Wide Shut is that everybody in the audience is an expert

on sexual fantasy and jealousy.

He just wasn't quite sure how, how can he put this on the screen?

He spoke often about it.

And, you know, we often discussed it,

and then he'd put it on the back burner

and we'd go off and do something else.

You know, Full Metal Jacket.

And then when that was over, you know, it would come down from the shelf again.

You know, "We've got to do something."

He used to say, "It's easier to fall in love than find a good story."

Stanley, frankly, could have made almost anything for Warners.

And Stanley had the freedom to do pretty much as he wanted

in terms of what his next project was going to be, and to cancel things.

Of course, he shelved so many projects. He was fascinated by holidays.

He said, "What do people do?

They take two weeks and go away and do what?"

I said, "They sit on a beach or swim or play with their children."

He said, "That's what--all they do?"

He couldn't understand the time that people wasted,

because it was always-- with Stanley, it was his deadline thing.

There's only so much time you've got. Don't waste it.

"What do you do on holiday, Julian?"

[Katharina] He had to get to that stage in his life

before he could make that film.

I think he and my mother thought that they were both too young

to deal with that subject matter, so he delayed it.

He put it on hold.

The older you are, the more experience you've had,

the more relationships you've had, and the more you've witnessed people,

how people behave, the more you can inform the subtleties of your film.

And he wanted, you know,

the full experience of his filmmaking life to date, to bring into that film,

but he always wanted to make it.

It's a very, very difficult film to do.

It's the most difficult film he did in his life. No question about it.

It took also forever to do it. It took a long time.

He thought that it was his best film, and he was very, very proud of it.

I actually think that the relief of all of that preparation,

all of that shooting time, all of that editing time,

and then finally bringing it to the table and it being, you know,

loved by the people who were involved...

I think that, I don't know, that must have created some release

or something in his body, I don't know.

Because he, you know, had a massive heart attack.

News just in.

We've just heard that the film director Stanley Kubrick has died at the age of 70.

Stanley Kubrick was widely regarded as one of the greatest

and most controversial masters of cinema.

He'd just finished what was to be his last film, Eyes Wide Shut,

which took five years to make.

Our arts correspondent, Nick Higham, looks back at his career...

When you have a job to do that's terribly important,

you kind of have to push your emotions to one side to get on with the job at hand.

And anybody who had been working with Stanley on that movie

then did what was necessary to, you know, cross the t's and dot the i's.

My mother and I worked on the poster campaign.

I learned how to use Photoshop.

And so that's what we did. We did what we could.

But it was a disaster when he died. I was in Los Angeles on that day.

And, for me, it was just, I mean, the shock of my life.

But the film had been shown to Warner Brothers a week before.

They liked it very much. It was all fine. No problem.

And then came the censorship issue

because there was too much nudity in the film.

I really respected the management of Warner Brothers enormously.

They said, "We are not going to cut a Stanley Kubrick film."

So, to pass censorship, we had to digitally superimpose more voyeurs

in the so-called orgy scene to cover up the nudity of some of the girls.

Okay, it sounds awfully silly, but that's what had to be done.

[Katharina] They had to put the digital figures in,

because he had a contractual obligation to the studios

to produce an R-rated movie.

The rest of the world saw it without the figures.

And they were tearing their hair out.

And then they just thought, "Well, what are we going to do?"

If Stanley had still been alive,

he just would have reedited that slightly for the American market.

And a lot of people, you know, were very upset about the digital figures,

but we literally had no option.

The film came out in July.

So we only had from March till July. Not a long time.

[TV presenter] Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise,

the film world's most famous couple

and stars of one of the year's most eagerly awaited films.

[Frewin] You know, it got very mixed reviews.

People were expecting it to be something that it wasn't, you know.

It was going to be something just this side of a porno film...

which of course it wasn't.

He was such a self-critical person, constantly questioning himself.

Do I get across what I want to get across?

And in the Anglo-Saxon world, you have to say he failed.

It was a huge success in Japan and in the Mediterranean belt.

In America and in England and northern Europe,

the film didn't work at all.

But, you know, that's the way artists work.

[Katharina] They were filming at Luton Hoo,

and I thought, "Oh, I'll go and see how Dad's getting on."

And I arrived, and he was in his trailer,

and he was looking at the previous day's rushes,

and he saw me and he said,

"Come in, come in, have a look at this!"

And there were no film lights. It was all Christmas decoration lights.

That was the sole source of lighting.

And he had pushed the film in the camera, and he had pushed it at the lab,

and so he'd got this wonderful grainy glow.

And he--and he just ran it through the Steenbeck and he said,

"Look at that. Isn't that gorgeous? Isn't it beautiful?"

And he was just smiling all over

and, you know, he loved it. He loved doing it.

It was stressful, and there were always problems--

I don't know how else to just--

He loved his job. What can I tell you?

And that's what he was like.

♪♪ [spare, haunting music]