Word: projects
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Literature in 1954--and all the fame that any author could desire. But his body had been battered by injuries and his brain by alcohol, and the "one true sentence" that he said would get his writing humming became harder and harder to find. Still, he persisted on a project he must have known, at some point, had become hopeless...
That something is Cruise and Kidman. Kubrick was usually star shy, preferring ensemble casts of solid players to huge names. But when Terry Semel, who runs Warner Bros. in tandem with Robert Daly, gave the project its green light, he said, "What I would really love you to consider is a movie star in the lead role; you haven't done that since Jack Nicholson [in The Shining]." Kubrick was concerned that a movie star wouldn't share his tireless work ethic. Nevertheless, the Cruises were approached...
When Warner Bros. (which is owned by Time Warner, the parent company of this magazine) announced the project in 1995, it merely stated that Kubrick was making "a story of sexual jealousy and obsession starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman." Officially, no one has added anything substantive to that press release in the years since--which is, of course, why the rumor that Cruise and Kidman play psychiatrists drawn into a web of sexual intrigue with their patients got started. And the one about the mad genius Kubrick making an NC-17-rated blue movie. And the one that...
...couple gave themselves over entirely to the project. It was, as both Cruise and Kidman agree, never a question of filling in the preordained blanks as efficiently as possible. Nor was it a matter of dithering over lining up or lighting a shot. All the technical side of moviemaking Kubrick had long since absorbed into his bones. It was always a question of getting the emotions right, bit by painful, exhilarating bit. Kubrick insisted on working as no one else in movies does, but as artists in the other forms--painting, music, literature--do: finding the piece as it goes...
...pace of work on the $64 million project was leisurely. "Stanley didn't work under the gun," says Kidman. "Time was the most important thing to him. He was willing to give up location to save money, but he wasn't willing to give up time." Obsessed with getting it just right, Kubrick wrote and rewrote the script while they were shooting it, sometimes faxing changes to his stars, often as late...