2013-05-20T13:04:17-04:00 Mike Kaplan http://www.news.moviefone.com/author/index.php?author=mike-kaplan Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Mike Kaplan Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3103475 2013-04-18T09:00:27-04:00 2013-04-18T09:10:25-04:00

Mike Kaplan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-kaplan/
The two party system has degenerated into a repetitive ideological battle that defies compromise. Democrats are unable to hold their forces together on many key issues while Republicans have a death wish to exterminate any semblance of the reasonableness that produced Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, Everett Dirkson, Jacob Javits and even Ronald Reagan.

Yet through coincidence or synchronicity, President Obama may be able to prevent the extermination of Republican reasonableness by creating a bipartisan body to prevent the extermination of the symbol of the Republican party -- the elephant -- and in the process, could awaken legislators to the lessons of memory, intelligence and nobility that the elephant exemplifies.

The fate of the elephant reflects the gamut of political issues. It involves foreign relations on several continents (Africa and Asia), illegal business practices (ivory trafficking), hunger, poverty and population growth (traditional feeding grounds overrun by an expanding public). It reflects the arts (elephants can paint), and the strength of the family unit (a matriarchal society where generations live together for decades).

But horrifically, we are now seeing the decimation of the elephant as poachers slaughter these endangered creatures by machine gun and Kalashnikov assault rifles.

A few weeks ago, a machine gun attack in Chad butchered 86 elephants. Thirty three were pregnant; fifteen were juveniles. Their carcasses were left to rot after their tusks were removed.

Three times the number of victims than the Newtown massacre, where the use of a similar assault weapon annihilated the lives of 20 children and 6 teachers.

Theodore Roosevelt, one of our greatest presidents, was a Republican. He was a big game hunter and a committed sportsman but would have a name for these elephant killers, the shooters who murder defenseless children and innocent civilians, and the politicians who allow these weapons of mass destruction to remain available as they serve the business interests of the gun lobby.

Roosevelt would have called them cowards, lacking moral balls.

This is a multi-party problem. But Republicans are more to blame and have more to lose as they are out of touch with American sentiment. If they continue to conform to the extreme rigidity into which their party has evolved, they, like the threatened elephant, will disappear, and their remnants will have to find a new symbol.

Perhaps the ostrich, which habitually buries its head in the sand.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2934572 2013-03-25T09:16:18-04:00 2013-03-26T11:45:20-04:00

Mike Kaplan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-kaplan/ Part Two

It was the spring of 1975 and Robert Altman arrived in London with a print of Nashville. Word had already spread that this was an Altman milestone via Pauline Kael's glowing "preview" review in the New Yorker of his three hour-cut. The audience was filled with the major players of the British film community.

Bob was a recent colleague. We had our first encounter with Brewster McCloud at MGM. Bob was making McCabe & Mrs. Miller in Canada so we never met in person but he knew of my intense support for his film. When he came through London the previous year on his way to Cannes with Thieves Like Us, I went with Malcolm McDowell to a dinner party he and his wife, Kathryn, hosted, and we became fast friends.

After the Nashville screening, he invited me to a private reception in his suite at Claridges, which lasted into the wee hours. Through a smoke-filled haze, I remembered the next morning he had asked me to act in his next film, Buffalo Bill and the Indians. It was due to start shooting in Calgary in the fall. I was stunned and didn't know what to do.

Malcolm and I had plans for several features; Lagoon was essentially my one-man baby, operating with just one assistant, and The Terminal Man was looming. Both Malcolm and Mike Hodges said it was an opportunity and an experience I shouldn't miss and I'd be back in the beginning of the new year.

Long story short, making Buffalo Bill was the most exhilarating, exciting, fun time I'd ever had. Bob had a secondary plan as well, having me handle the film's publicity along with acting as the accountant for the wild west show. It was a classic Altman two-for-one budgetary benefit -- which then committed me to the film's release and began a long-term creative relationship.


Harvey Keitel, Robert Altman and the author, Mike Kaplan, on the set of Buffalo Bill and the Indians, 1975.

For the next five years, I managed to keep Lagoon going through long distance communication from Los Angeles and a few months each year in London. The Terminal Man was too daunting a challenge to undertake without a continuous, hands-on London stay. And then, the main ancillary possibility -- the U.K. television rights -- were sold. I couldn't undertake a theatrical release without television. It was prohibitive.

Altman had moved to Europe after the release of Popeye (1980); Hodges had made Flash Gordon and Black Rainbow; I had produced The Whales of August and kept my hand in marketing, and in 1992 The Terminal Man surfaced again -- unexpectedly or synchronously.

I had rejoined forces with Altman for the U.S. release of Vincent & Theo and began a two-year quest to find the financing for his mosaic of Raymond Carver's short stories, which would become Short Cuts.

We spoke multiple times daily as financing was proving difficult -- nothing new. Then Bob was given the chance to offer his satiric take on Hollywood in The Player. As I was around the set daily discussing each potential development for Short Cuts, I was recruited for a role in The Player, playing the studio marketing head.

I'd also become an avid collector of vintage movie posters so we'd consult on where to get specific posters he wanted for the film -- largely B movie titles that people wouldn't recognize -- Joseph Losey's remake of M; several Robert Cummings comedies -- and the occasional major title for a key placement in a scene, the stunning one-sheet forRed Headed Woman, Jean Harlow's breakthrough role.

And then he wanted a poster to represent an unreleased studio film for a scene set in a meeting with production head Tim Robbins. It had to be one that a studio would commission and had to look believable... The Terminal Man design.

I explained its history to Bob, which he fully appreciated. He thought the concept was timeless when I brought it from storage. He was an admirer of Hodges's films; had worked with George Segal in California Split and I'm convinced he had to subliminally recognize a similarity in the collage to the leggy peace sign logo used as the key art for M*A*S*H.

Bob looked at the "Harry" responses on the button controls and said, "We'll change the title and make up some credits. Call it What About Harry?"




The poster can be seen in The Player, centrally positioned in the scene.
I called Mike to tell him at least part of The Terminal Man had surfaced.

It would take another 10 years for the film to reappear as a result of the recognition Hodges received with the unexpected emergence of Croupier (1998), his hypnotic film noir character study that brought Clive Owen to move stardom.

Mike sent a copy shortly before it was to open in England in a one-week engagement at the National Film Theatre in London, a peripheral booking without benefit of a trailer, poster or marketing budget. Its fate was continuing the mishandling of Hodges' work; Croupier had been passed over by every distributor and film festival and was destined for video oblivion.

Like all of his movies, its central character is a complex loner, this time a novelist turning to the gambling world for survival and then becoming addicted "to watching people lose." It was a gripping thriller with Owen giving a mesmerizing performance. He was an intellectual James Bond.

I was astonished that this very accessible movie was being abandoned. Though it had made the rounds and been rejected, I was determined to make something happen. A deal was struck with Film Four for me to act as sales agent (my first) and for the next two years, I became Croupier's godfather, eventually securing U.S. distribution, collaborating on the marketing and watching it become the most successful independent film of its year. The U.S. critical and popular success even scored a solid re-release in England.

The first reaction came at Croupier's American unveiling at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles. Programming head Dennis Bartok planned a special showing along with a partial Hodges retrospective. The Terminal Man was an essential component but Warner Bros. did not have a decent print.

Kubrick was the only person who could solve the problem by asking the studio to strike a new one. He'd continue to admire Hodges' work and was responsible for Hodges' directing the English-language version of Fellini's And the Ship Sails On when the Italian maestro called Kubrick asking whom he would recommend.

In a few days, word arrived that a new print of The Terminal Man would be available for the Cinematheque showing.

Croupier's success was secured when Andrew Sarris wrote in his review that Hodges was "one of the most underappreciated and virtually unknown masters of the medium over the last 30 years." That quote keyed the campaign as the rave reviews came in and the public responded. Further, it paved the way for a reassessment of Hodges' work at retrospectives throughout the world, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the The National Film Theatre in London. The Terminal Man was always programmed, receiving new appreciation.

In 2003, Paramount Classics agreed to distribute and co-finance Hodges' next film, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, a drama that subverted film noir traditions. One thought after Croupier that a second Mike Hodges-Clive Owen movie would be easy to finance but it took two years. Even after a success, one always begins at square one.

Festivals now asked for Hodges' latest "autopsy of society." This produced further retrospective exposure for The Terminal Man, the first at the 2003 Edinburgh Film Festival, where I'll Sleep premiered. And after 29 years, The Terminal Man was presented without that first expository scene which studio notes had insisted would give the audience "someone to root for." That first showing of "the director's cut," which Hodges edited himself by removing the self-contained opening scene, also marked the film's first theatrical showing in Great Britain since the 1974 London Film Festival.



Edinburgh was also the first time I'd heard "dystopian" used to describe the film. The word had come into fashion but I needed a dictionary to learn that dystopian meant 'a culture where people lead dehumanized lives or are unhappy because they are not treated fairly.'

It was accurate to a point but dystopian doesn't account for Hodges's ironic humor or the emotional sophistication of Segal's performance, which audiences were unprepared for in 1974, when Segal was the leading romantic comedy actor of the time.

Dystopian, however, is now an accurate entry into the film which today's audiences understand. It also reflects the first frame of "the director's cut," which grabs you with an immediate feeling of unease as you are forced to focus on an eye looking through a peephole surrounded by a sea of black as voices of hospital orderlies comment on their patients... or us.

In his incisive essay on Hodges in The Guardian --"The Return of the Outsider" --Gavin Lambert, the noted critic, novelist, biographer and Oscar-nominated screenwriter (The Slide Area, Sons and Lovers, Inside Daisy Clover) called The Terminal Man the first of Hodges' masterworks, with "It's the most bitter of all Hodges' ironic endings, as Benson had always feared the potential of science to manipulate human life."

Lambert had also worked for a time with Kubrick as a reader and production advisor.
He called after viewing The Terminal Man and when we finished gong over some facts, he offered, confidently, "I bet Stanley loved this film."

On Friday, March 29, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Bing Theatre, Hodges's director's cut of The Terminal Man will be shown for the first time in America as part of LACMA'S "Sci-Fi After Kubrick" series.




It's a rare opportunity to discover a major movie, but I suggest you park a good distance from the theater to give yourself enough time for a decent walk afterwards. You'll need to unwind from a bracing experience.



All photos by Keith Hamshere, courtesy of Will & Co.

To read Part One, click here. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2932422 2013-03-22T14:25:22-04:00 2013-03-25T10:04:57-04:00

Mike Kaplan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-kaplan/ Part One

Thirty nine years ago, I walked out of Warner Bros.' London offices with a knot in my stomach.

It was late and chilly on Wardour Street, a good three miles to the flat I was renting in St. John's Wood, yet I desperately needed that walk to get a grasp on the emotions churned up by the film I had just screened. It was a response one hopes for in the movies, when something completely transports you to another world, and you need time to get yourself around the film before restoring your own reality.

The movie was The Terminal Man, British director Mike Hodges's third feature and his first as producer on a major studio project. He had freely adapted the best-selling Michael Crichton novel into a chilling warning of technology gone amok in the name of benefitting humanity. In the process, he presented a searing indictment of medical and scientific arrogance.



The plot concerns a computer expert (George Segal), whose involuntary homicidal tendencies can only be harnessed by an experimental implant that controls his manic urges. The film was unrelenting, gripping and filled with technical achievements, from the 28-minute operation, researched and orchestrated in detail, a pristine production design that looked like a black and white movie, augmented by grays and silvers, and a haunting use of Glenn Gould's forlorn piano playing of one of the Goldberg Variations.

Hodges had made a Frankenstein for the modern age that pierced your mind and kicked you in the gut. It was also a film in trouble. The Terminal Man had just opened in America to misunderstood reviews and disappointing business. A U.K. release was now questionable.

I was at Warner Bros. implementing an innovative distribution project, adapting U.S. marketing methods to the release of films that were deemed unsuitable for European audiences. It was a consuming job, proposed to Warner Bros. chairman Ted Ashley by Stanley Kubrick, with whom I had closely worked on 2001 and A Clockwork Orange.

Challenges were what intrigued me and this was no exception. The project was also a political hot potato, as it was funded by a corporate budget, independent of both the international marketing/distribution apparatus yet having to work with both in order to achieve anything. And I was already doing double duty as Malcolm McDowell had insisted I handle O Lucky Man!, his new film directed by Lindsay Anderson, another original, demanding work which created its own set of marketing problems.

Walking past Marylebone Road, I had a feeling of dread that The Terminal Man could quickly disappear after seeing the U.S. advertising campaign, which positioned it as a mediocre science fiction effort, with a running George Segal floating against a backdrop of electrical impulses and primitive computers.

This wouldn't be the first Hodges film to suffer from a U.S. marketing botch-up.

I was publicity director at MGM when his first film, Get Carter, was released in 1971. It was MGM's only exciting movi during the Jim Aubrey regime of Brotherly Love, Kansas City Bomber and Green Slime.

We argued for a class, platform release for this hard edged dissection of British criminal morality, set for the first time in Northern England -- not London -- but the studio saw it as a B movie and tested it on Hollywood Blvd rather than the college-centered cinemas in Westwood. Aubrey, known as "The Smiling Cobra," insisted that general audiences were incapable of understanding the Newcastle accent and Hodges had to revoice several scenes.

Though singled out by Pauline Kael as a new kind of study in violence, it quickly played out on the action/drive-in circuit. But it became an immediate hit in England with a classy character-driven campaign and is now recognized as not only one of Michael Caine's signature performances but one of the best British films ever made, the British equivalent to The Godfather.

Hodges second film, Pulp, was a black comedy also starring Caine and an eclectic supporting cast headed by Mickey Rooney, Lizabeth Scott and Lionel Stander. It was given a one-week filler run in Los Angeles by United Artists, who were waiting for the prints to dry for their Christmas release, Man of La Mancha. By the end of 1973, after a booking at a small NY cinema, Pulp was named one of the year's ten best films by Vincent Canby in the New York Times and Jay Cocks in Time Magazine.

The mishandled pattern was continuing with The Terminal Man, Hodges's most ambitious film. Warner Bros' European offices were not interested in releasing it after the U.S. results. But the film was now in my blood and it needed something positive. I submitted it to the London Film Festival. The British executives thought me crazy. "It's too cold and upsetting for audiences."

Hodges had already heard that criticism from Burbank, aside from Warner Bros. co-chairman Frank Wells, who was a lone supporter, and had reluctantly acquiesced to
to add an opening exposition scene so that audiences would have "Someone To Root For."

The London Festival's influential director, Ken Wlaschin, responded immediately and gave The Terminal Man a key Sunday slot at the festival's biggest venue, the Odeon Leicester Square. As the sell-out audience of 2000 walked into the bright afternoon sunlight, they looked hypnotized; there wasn't a sound.

Despite its festival acceptance, British distribution still refused to release it. I called Kubrick, who wielded enormous influence at Warner Bros. after the success of Clockwork and his astute analysis of distribution practices. He was also a Hodges' admirer -- "Any actor who sees Get Carter will want to work with him."

I explained the situation, said it needed a different campaign, but before I could continue, he interrupted with, "I've already seen it and it's terrific."




I thought his endorsement would be enough to change the U.K. decision but a few days later Stanley said he couldn't budge them. It was an internal matter and my international marketing brief did not include Great Britain. The Terminal Man scared them.

My double duty with O Lucky Man! and the marketing program required 24/7 attention. Several films had been selected for territories that had refused to release them. My mandate was to inventively turn around Blume in Love in Sweden and Enter the Dragon in Italy. But a Terminal Man campaign was already brewing in my head.

Internal politics eventually freed me to start my own distribution company in England, Lagoon Associates, modeled after Don Rugoff's Cinema 5 and pre-Miramax, films that could bridge art and commercial and where the campaigns had to be inspired to maximize their potential.

I've always held that a good film could be saved by an inventive campaign if the film wasn't performing. The advertising components (trailer, TV and radio spots) but especially the key art could make the difference in that era if ingeniously presented.

While The Terminal Man campaign was blossoming, the film I was launching the company with was Barbet Schroeder's La Valee, a mesmerizing, largely non-verbal journey to the unknown interior of Papua New Guinea, said to be paradise. Bulle Ogier starred as the bourgeois Parisian who becomes more committed to the search than the hippies she joins on the journey. I re-titled it in English to The Valley (Obscured by Clouds), the subtitle being the name of the Pink Floyd soundtrack album.

Then, A Bigger Splash, Jack Hazan's film about master artist David Hockney and his circle of trendsetters, became available and like The Valley, was unlike anything else that had been seen before. The Cannes entry centered on the creation of a major painting during the breakup of a love affair.

Both films reflected aspects of the zeitgeist, opened within a month of each other and scored with audiences. The Valley eventually set a record for the number of playdates in England for a sub-titled film. Splash was the first arthouse film to open day and date in three separate London cinemas, establishing house records in each and running for a year in one.

Lagoon was off to a solid start. I began negotiating with Warner Bros. to release The Terminal Man. Kubrick said I had to do it. The campaign began to take shape.

One of the film's most memorable scenes is Segal's post-operative examination where his senses are tested after the computer has been implanted in his brain.

Four medical buttons were shown at the top of the poster, each reflecting a different response and providing suggestive copy positioned within the key art, not the standard slogan placement.




"Harry wants to go the bathroom."

"Harry wants to have a cookie."

"Harry feels like a ham sandwich on rye."

"Harry is enjoying pleasure."

The central focus was a bandaged George Segal atop a collage of those images held together by scissor blades, another prominent image from the film. An impulse driven title treatment was designed by Philip Castle. Mike Hodges loved the concept.

While negotiations were continuing and Lagoon was enjoying trade attention from a tradition bound exhibition system, it became apparent that while The Terminal Man had unique production values and a major star, it was going to require more financial commitment than the Valley or Splash. Those films had innately provocative themes, with sexual sequences that grabbed the media and enticed the public. The Terminal Man was a dire admonition of scientific tinkering that left one numb. Exhibitors offered limited playdates and were wary. Editorial support was uncertain.

But then an unexpected validation appeared that confirmed everything I felt about The Terminal Man. Mike Hodges received a letter of overwhelming appreciation from Terrence Malick, who had recently been acclaimed as a major director for his debut film, Badlands. Malick wrote that seeing the film had restored his reason for making movies. He told Hodges, "Your images make me understand what an image is."




This was a rare testimonial from one important filmmaker to another. Anyone interested in serious filmmaking had to be compelled to see The Terminal Man after reading Malick's heartfelt assessment. It had to be a key component of the campaign. An ad was designed with the letter placed beneath a banner that read "Peer Talk."

Confident that the right campaign was now in place, I was hoping that negotiations with Wraner Bros. would be finalized.

( To be continued...with Robert Altman's arrival.)

Read Mike Kaplan's previous contributions to The Huffington Post.


All photos by Keith Hamshere, courtesy of Will & Co.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2337733 2012-12-20T10:39:06-05:00 2013-02-19T05:12:01-05:00

Mike Kaplan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-kaplan/


"Movies as interdimensional as Kubrick's don't happen upon us too much anymore." -- David Thomson, Sight & Sound

"What's immense and perpetually restless, shifting to the eye and absorbing to the mind? The ocean. The human spirit.... The Master." -- Stuart Klawans, The Nation

Forty five years ago next April, six weeks after this year's 85th Academy Awards, a major, expensive studio film opened to nearly unanimous pans from the mainstream media.

Premiere audiences were at best befuddled and frustrated and demonstrably hostile at the latest work from a great filmmaker, who, after walking the red carpet for the last time in his life, was holed up in the cinema's projection booth, pondering why the tony charity audience was leaving the theater in droves, confused and mystified at a 2 hour and 20 minute film with only 22 minutes of dialogue that began at mankind's dawn, ended in a strange dimension, and in between transported the audience with detailed accuracy to a place they had never seen before. They were never grounded -- deliberately -- by any familiar touchstones. They were unprepared and resistant.

The filmmaker frequently said, "Movies are in their baby steps." Now, he was pushing them forward.

Mystified at what it meant, audiences and the press wanted to know the filmmaker's intention. There was obvious technical brilliance but all were at sea trying to encapsulate a non-linear, contemplative journey with interpretations that could be equally justified as being about evolution, reincarnation, arrogance, determination or courage. Everyone craved information, needed guidance.

The critic for the New York Daily News scrambled for a lost program, an elaborate visual booklet, hoping there'd be clues and information for her impending review. The critic for the New York Post was stymied, thinking the moon crater was a planet called "Clavius." The critic for the New York Times would describe the monolith, the key signpost for the plot, as a giant Hershey Bar.

In that first week, in the basement of the MGM Building, Stanley Kubrick was cutting 19 minutes from his epic film, under severe pressure from the studio, which was under siege by a serious proxy fight and weak advance sales for their most costly film. At the same time, two important pieces emerged that laid the groundwork for the 2001 turnaround that would take two years to solidify.

The first was a full page analysis in The Christian Science Monitor, not by their film critic, but by critic-at-large John Allen, who succinctly presented the case that Kubrick had created a revolutionary work. The second was the reversal by an important critic -- Joseph Gelmis of Newsday who, after writing his pan, returned to the film a second time three days later. It was then unheard of for a critic to take a second look; he completely reassessed his appraisal and saw a masterpiece. Both reviews appeared within five days of the opening, before the 19 minutes had been excised for all subsequent showings.

Gelmis' reversal was crucial for it was only the second time in film history that an important film voice had reversed an opinion in print (the first being Joe Morgenstern on Bonnie and Clyde the previous year.) In a sense, Gelmis' return to 2001 set the stage for the repeat viewings that propelled 2001: A Space Odyssey into a cultural phenomenon.

The film's technical presentation also proved to be a vital factor. 2001: A Space Odyssey opened as a roadshow presentation in 70 mm. and Cinerama, a presentation that signified stature for the most important films. Key cities had designated "roadshow theaters," and following the rules of the stage, tickets were booked in advanced, at higher prices, with specific seating on a more limited performance schedule, usually 10-12 showings a week.

After studying 2001's box office performance, it was evident that the film's grosses in its general 35mm release were much weaker than traditional, linear roadshow films, i.e. The Sound of Music, Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago. The 2001 audience craved 2001 with its full technical bells and whistles, projected in 70mm, with stereophonic surround sound. It was essential for the transporting experience.

In March, 1970, at New York's Ziegfeld Theatre, 2001 was relaunched in its original glory as "The Ultimate Trip." With the opening chords of "Thus Spake Zarathustra," an ovation erupted. The exhilaration was palpable.

One wished Stanley was in the projection booth, feeling the goosebumps.

Kubrick this year has been accorded more honors and attention than any other filmmaker with the huge, all encompassing 646-piece Stanley Kubrick archive exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the satellite "Kubrick: The Ultimate Trip" exhibit at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Both are on view for seven months, with accompanying retrospectives.

The Academy's opening evening was hosted by Malcolm McDowell, who ironically pointed out that Kubrick's only Oscar was for 2001's special effects, not for directing or producing any of his numerous masterpieces. It was also reinforced by the stunning 70mm. clip of 2001 that closed the evening that seeing the film in 70 mm. is the only way to fully experience his odyssey in a new frontier.

Now we are in the midst of another awards season and confronted by another movie by another visionary director, filmed in 70mm., that wrestles with audiences in a similar way to 2001, with indelible sequences that exhilarate, spectacular imagery that stirs the imagination and spaces that either confound or illuminate, depending on one's openness to accept a film that isn't wrapped up in a tidy package, one that stretches conventional narrative boundaries.

Both are related this year by attention from Sight & Sound, the oldest and most prestigious English-language film magazine. Since 1952 and every decade since, the journal has conducted what is arguably the most significant poll among a wide range of international critics to determine the greatest films of all time. They subsequently expanded their polling to include separate lists from directors for their choices of films which have stood the test of time and a determination of the best film of the year.

It took 24 years for 2001: A Space Odyssey to enter the poll's top ten, when it placed 10th in 1992. In 2002, it climbed to #6, where it remained this year as the number of voting critics, academics, writers and programmers expanded to 846. In the directors' poll, where 358 filmmakers ranging from Woody Allen to Aki Kaurismaki, Martin Scorsese to the Dardenne Brothers, were asked for their assessment of the 10 greatest films, 2001 was number 2.

All the resistance and confusion that greeted the film has been replaced by enough analysis, dissection and dissertations over the 45 years since its release that it is now at the pinnacle of the Kubrick canon.

As for Sight & Sounds' polling of the best films of 2012, first place went to Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, a film that explores the interior frontier with a daring structure and a probing sensibility that compares to the challenges 2001 offered audiences.

While The Master, like 2001, also has meditative and metaphysical leanings, areas that tend to unnerve audiences, it was greeted, unlike 2001, by many rapturous reviews describing its wondrous surprises and the consummate craftsmanship that sweeps one into post World War II America, enhanced by Anderson's inspired decision to shoot in 70mm. That decision brings an immediacy to the plot, characters and visuals that makes one a participant in the period.

Watching the beautifully detailed department store sequence, with troubled Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix ) trying to conform to the middle class he photographs while a seductive model floats throughout, I could practically smell the store's perfume. Memories of my mother trying on various outfits were waiting around each corner as the model glided by.

And when Freddie runs along and then jumps aboard the double-decker yacht slowly moving towards San Francisco Bay, there is a visceral reaction as the combined movement of camera, ship and Phoenix's physicality turn the audience into stowaways about to meet the magnetic Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) on the distinctive vessel that was formerly FDR's. Per Richard Brody in The New Yorker, "Anderson has made the closest thing to a 3-D movie without glasses."

We're on another kind of trip with Freddie as he navigates the twists and turns of his relationship with Dodd. We get clues about his past: taken by his ingenuity at tapping a torpedo for alcohol; distressed at his shyness when smitten by young Doris; uncomfortable when his sand-lady humping continues too long; scared when he rages against those questioning Dodd.

And Dodd plays him like a brilliant conductor: giving him a sense of family; pushing him to the limits of the tests he devises; basking in the wildness of a scoundrel while maintaining his own respectability.

Time shifts but not necessarily in flashback. We go back and forth between a psychological contest, a period adventure and a love story.

The emotional churnings are conscious and subconscious, paralleling the film's opening shot of the swirling ocean that sets the stage for what's to come, and repeated at two other transitions on Freddie's journey: shipping to Shaghai and thereby allowing Doris to visit her family in Norway; arriving in England after Dodd's mysterious phone call, while on the unseen movie screen, Casper the ghost is playing pirate, stating "the master never leaves the ship."
But who is The Master? Who's calling the shots?

Three is a magic number. The monolith also appears three times in 2001, each signaling another stage of development: when the ape touches it, leading to the iconic millennium cut of "ape-bone-ship;" when the monolith is discovered on the moon ("I think you've got something here, Ralph"); when it emerges before the aged Bowman (Keir Dullea) becomes the StarChild... or does he?

With both films, the rhythms and the logic are unexpected and unsettling to those expecting conformity to traditional storytelling. But if you're transported by the power of the filmmaking, repeated viewings bring new discoveries and enjoyment. Per Manohla Dargis in the New York Times re The Master last month: "Deciding is part of the film's pleasure and one reason I look forward to seeing it a third time."

'Getting it' matters to some degree.

Says A.O. Scott in the New York Times, "The divide seems to be not between people who 'get it' and those who don't but rather between those who are frustrated by not 'getting it' and those (like me) who enjoyed it even though we didn't 'get it.'"

When Stanley was about to cut 2001 that first week, my argument was "those who 'get' 2001" will like it more with the 19 minutes remaining. For those who don't 'get it,' the cuts won't matter."

I can't remember who raised the question, "What about 2001?", when we were brainstorming the possibility of restoring the pie-throwing sequence in Dr. Strangelove. A Clockwork Orange was in the throes of pre-opening stress. Thinking about a 2001 restoration was too daunting, so either he or I answered, "Now now."

One word reappearing in The Master's reviews and articles that discuss its "perplexity" is enigmatic.

Why are we repeatedly told "enigmatic" places a qualification on recommendation? We live in a world of mostly grays; definitive blacks and whites are the exceptions.

"I am sure that there's something in the human personality which resents things that are too clear, and oppositely something which is attractive in puzzles, enigmas and allegories," said Kubrick to his biographer, Alexander Wallker.

Appreciation takes time to build. What is certain is that original, groundbreaking works like The Master will generate significant ancillary revenues for generations to come. And with the amazing technological advancements we have since 2001 was released in 1968, I expect it will take less than 24 years for The Master to enter Sight & Sound's top ten.

We are dealing with unequal creative levels in awards competitions. Movies that take you to new places in new ways, that expand the medium, that turn baby steps into sprints, can't compete with the traditional in today's commercial time-frame. Unlike 2001, which was nurtured for two years before its successful relaunch, transforming movies must have an immediate strategy and substantial backing to guide audiences to new territory.

We are at another level, beyond category, as Duke Ellington aptly characterized Ella Fitzgerald.

This is the sixth in a series of reminiscences and commentary about Stanley Kubrick written by Mike Kaplan, a veteran film executive who was Kubrick's marketing man for his film 'A Clockwork Orange,' having also worked extensively on the release of 'Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.' Previous installments can be found here, here, here, here and here. Kaplan began his career as an associate editor and critic for The Independent Film Journal. He's also worked closely with Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Lindsay Anderson, Mike Hodges, Barbet Schroeder, Alan Rudolph and Abraham Polonsky. His producing credits include "The Whales of August" and "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead."]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1659217 2012-07-09T11:48:54-04:00 2012-09-08T05:12:09-04:00

Mike Kaplan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-kaplan/ New York Times, color them with paints or pastels and then compare the results with the printed versions when I visited New York with my parents. Though they were not then available for public purchase, movie posters were easily viewed as they were prominently displayed in lobby frames and exterior display cases at every cinema.

I loved movies and movie posters equally and studied both. Whenever a new Otto Preminger film was announced, I would await its opening but would be just as excited anticipating the first look at the film's poster, for Preminger employed graphic master Saul Bass and Bass' concepts were always bold, sophisticated and surprising (The Man With the Golden Arm, 1955; Anatomy of a Murder, 1959; Advise and Consent, 1962).

Becoming part of the film industry in 1965 allowed me to collect new film poster favorites. This was still a period when a poster's key art, along with the trailer, was the main advertising tools in attracting audiences. My mantra was: a film's campaign could determine its success and every good film could be a box-office winner if it had the right poster. But more posters began to look alike, with little imagination and a preponderance of photography, while paintings and illustration, which I believe elevate a film and entice the public, faded from view. The exciting poster work was now being done by the music industry, with ground-breaking imagery from new artists as rock dominated mainstream culture. Album covers became works of art. I wanted the same for movie posters.

When I discovered the availability of vintage movie posters through collectors and funky memorabilia shops, a new world of striking and provocative poster art was revealed, one that blossomed during "the golden age" of movie poster design (1925-1950). Design was what I responded to, regardless of nationality or whether I knew the film, and I relished fiinding and being inspired by these treasures from around the world.

In "GOTTA DANCE: The Art of the Dance Movie Poster," the current exhibit from my collection at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica, over 80 pieces are on view from eleven countries. All have unique qualities in using dance imagery from both musical and non-musical films. Several are great posters from great films -- a rare synthesis: the Italian Singing' in the Rain by Nano; the British Red Shoes; the Belgian 42nd Street and Vandor's Astaire-Rogers image for the French Carefree in "The Fred Astaire Room." It shows Fred and Ginger in full flight in formal evening attire, an iconic image one knows from all their films.

Other examples of poster perfection include three by Roger Soubie, France's most prolific movie poster artist, for Born to Dance (1936) with a vibrant Eleanor Powell and a young James Stewart; Gene Kelly's personal copy of An American in Paris (1951) and Jailhouse Rock (1957), arguably the best Elvis Presley poster with the King and his dancing cellmates. From Germany there is Greta Garbo as the contemplative ballerina in Grand Hotel (1932) by Meiss; fading vaudevillian Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer (1960) by Hubner and the only poster from West Side Story. (1961) to center on Oscar winners Rita Moreno and George Chakiris. From Argentina, Tomey created a lush fashion tableaux for Il Caliente (1935) with glamorous Dolores del Rio, and led by the exquisitely sensual image of George Raft and Carole Lombard in Bolero (1934) by Moje Aslund, every poster from Sweden, where their modern designs still feel advanced today.

Toulouse-Lautrec inspired Bernard Lancy for his colorful Kid From Brooklyn (1946) with Danny Kaye and a bevy of chorus girls; Astaire and Rita Hayworth pulsate in Boris Grinsson's design for You'll Never Get Rich (1941), and Rene Peron devised the ultimate Esther WIlliams aqua feast for Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), the centerpiece of the exhibit's "Water and Ice" section.

Superb American designs are exemplified by: the elegant Dance Team (1932); the pastel stone lithography of Rudy Vallee, Alice Faye and Jummy Durante in George White's Scandals (1934); the art deco Moulin Rouge (1934), with sophisticate diva Constance Bennett, then Hollywood's highest-salaried actress, and Astaire and Rogers on roller skates in Shall We Dance (1937). America's master caricaturist Al Hirschfeld is represented by a dynamic drawing of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland dancing on a drum for Strike Up the Band (1940). Hirschfeld is one of the few American artists whose poster art was eventually credited. In Europe, where both the poster and the movies were held in higher regard, poster artists were always allowed to sign their work.

When the opportunity arose to initiate or create unique poster art for new films, I gravitated to painters and illustrators who could interpret a movie's essence with inspired style and individuality -- David Hockney (A Bigger Splash, 1975), Don Bachardy (Short Cuts, 1994) Allen Jones (Maitresse, 1976), Philip Castle (A Clockwork Orange, 1971), John van Hammersveld (Welcome to LA, 1976), Andre Carillho (Never Apologize, 2008).

Movie posters have complex and competing elements -- text in the form of title treatment, credits and slogans that merge with visuals -- they are a pre-Ed Ruscha construct. With one exception, the Starchild/ Ultimate Trip poster that relaunched Stanley Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey in 1970, every poster took longer to produce than actually making the film. As an independent distributor in England, I delayed the release of Barbet Schroeder's The Valley (La Vallee) for a year until Philip Castle's airbrush artwork was finalized. Sometimes examples from the Golden Age inspired new designs -- Blonde Crazy (1931) and Suez (1938) for Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996); Tales of Manhattan (1942) for Alan Rudolph's Trouble in Mind (1985).

In curating exhibits at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles, the Roy Furham Gallery in Lincoln Center, The Gallery of Film Poster Art at Cal State, Northridge and now at The California Heritage Museum, my hope is that the art of the movie poster will be recognized as a genuine art form, not a sidebar of popular culture and that, perhaps, painting and illustration may once again become part of today's movie poster mix, contractual restrictions aside.

A few years ago, the Odeon Cinema Circuit in Great Britain conducted a poll among their patrons to select the All-Time Best Film Poster. I collaborated on the one that topped their list, Stanley Kubick's A Clockwork Orange. But picking "The Best" of anything is only an exercise. Altman often said, "My movies are like my children. I love them equally, regardless of their success."

Walking through GOTTA DANCE!, every gallery is filled with favorites. Each piece is equal as I remember the excitement of the hunt for the acquisition, the exhilaration in discovering a knockout design, the surprise in learning an unexpected aspect of movie history.

The movies have always been a prime source of escapism. The ideal movie poster is a microcosm of the movie itself, capturing with inventiveness the feeling one has after leaving the cinema. It should be both a work of art and a souvenir of one's movie experience.

POSTSCRIPT:

As the exhibit's last identifying caption was installed for Poor Little Rich Girl (1937), an extraordinary discovery emerged. When researching David Olere, the artist who created the charming French poster of a dancing Shirley Temple, we learned that he was a Holocaust survivor who spent his post World War II years depicting the tragic scenes he experienced at Auschwitz.

Knowing Olere's history, one can only marvel at the life force that created that jubilant confection of Shirley Temple, with joyful "Animal Crackers" lettering, and was then compelled to remember in his art, the fate of those that did not survive.




"GOTTA DANCE!: The Art of the Dance Movie Poster" runs through September 30, 2012, at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica.

All photos courtesy of Mike Kaplan.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1505065 2012-05-15T18:08:26-04:00 2012-07-15T05:12:09-04:00

Mike Kaplan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-kaplan/ Facts

Room 237, Rodney Ascher's documentary about the hidden puzzles and bizarre theories fomented by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, is one of only two American films selected for the Director's Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival this year (May 16-27). The prestigious berth signals keen attention will be paid to the film that caused a significant stir at Sundance and one that may revolutionize the standards for "fair use" -- the doctrine that allows footage from previous movies to be used for documentary purposes -- in this case multiple clips from The Shining illustrating Room 237's strange propositions.

On the one hand, Kubrick would be amused and supportive of The Shining being the means that challenges the status quo. On the other, he would raise fiduciary questions about its use but recognize the residual benefits that would accrue to The Shining's ancillary sales.

And once again, and unexpectedly, it brings him to the head of the international film forum, a place he found himself whenever he premiered his latest work, confirming the resonance of his vision and how he still speaks from beyond.

What we can be sure of is that it will also produce false or misleading Kubrick references, evidenced by Room 237's major piece from Sundance in the New York Times by Robert Ito. Like too much reporting that draws conclusions from questionable sources and is then regurgitated as fact, we are first told via film scholar Julian Rice that "the initial reception by journalists to most of Kubrick's films was negative."

The fact is that Dr. Strangelove, Paths of Glory, The Killing and Lolita all opened to wide critical acclaim. A Clockwork Orange swept the New York Film Critics Awards the week after its 1971 premiere.

The Shining, Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut arrived with a range of critical responses, including major raves. All were re-assessed and re-interpreted after repeated viewings (postmodernists included), as Kubrick's films require, if not demand. 2001: A Space Odyssey is the Kubrick film that caused the most controversy and confusion. It was also the first that was ushered in as an event, by which all Kubrick films thereafter were received, each creating an atmosphere that stimulated dissection and discussion.

And then if one critic's views are quoted, we can be certain to count on Pauline Kael's being dredged up as the authority on critical thinking during that time. In the case of The Shining, citing her "mystifying" review places absurd emphasis on her relevance, for her response was easily predicted: she hadn't liked Kubrick's work since Dr. Strangelove.

Although I enjoyed Kael's lively, visceral writing, especially when our tastes coincided, and she was inadvertently responsible for my working with Kubrick, her influence has been consistently overstated. Kael was not the oracle of film criticism, but one of a number of superstar critics whose names often replaced those of actors on New York marquees when movies were fundamental to the nation's cultural dialogue.

Today's filmmakers owe their 'film by' credit to Andrew Sarris, who popularized France's auteur theory of film criticism, which designated the director as a film's author and creative center. As the film critic for the Village Voice, the most widely read alternative newspaper, Sarris informed us about a director's themes and style when analyzing his latest effort. He educated us without ever sounding academic. Sarris and Kael were usually on opposing ends of the critical pole and their frequent clashes expanded the film conversation.

The New York Times fostered two prominent voices. Rex Reed attracted immediate attention as the provocative writer of their major film profiles in the Sunday Arts & Leisure section. He enjoyed major syndication and became the film critic for the New York Daily News, the city's largest circulation paper.

The most reasoned voice was Vincent Canby's, the chief film critic for the New York Times for nearly 25 years, whose balanced approach combined astute observations with keen insights that guided an audience into what to expect. A Canby endorsement solidified a film's prospects. Recently re-reading his "Spaced Out By Stanley" column for the re-launching of 2001 confirmed the ease, intelligence and wit of his opinions.

Arguably the most popular and important film critic was Judith Crist, now in her 54th year as an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University. For many years she held an unequaled trifecta of power as the first national television critic for The Today Show, the critic for TV Guide, America's largest circulation magazine, and the film critic for the New York Herald-Tribune. Later, the founding film critic of New York magazine. At the Tribune, her passionate advocacy challenged the long-standing authority of the Times' Bosley Crowther as the country's major film voice.

Crist sometimes filled in for Barry Gray, who originated the radio talk show format on his highly rated WMCA late night program. On one occasion she invited Pauline Kael to be on the show. They had never met.

When Kael arrived, her greeting was, "Judith Crist, the only critic with balls!"

Canby, Crist, Kael, Reed and Sarris were the critical magnets that grabbed the public's attention. Newsweek's Joe Morgenstern, Newsday's Joseph Gelmis, Time's Jay Cocks and Chicago's Roger Ebert, the first film critic to be honored with a Pulitzer Prize, also made movie headlines.

Ebert, Morgenstern and Reed still review regularly but the dominance of movies as the bold, entertainment medium has diminished with corporate requirements for the bottom line and competition from video games to extreme sports. The very personal risk-taking film that fueled popular discourse is now the exception.

Reflections

Whenever possible, I look forward to meeting with Todd McCarthy, the widely-respected critic, author and documentarian. We've known each other for years and enjoy catching up on mutual movie interests over pasta and risotto.

A year ago, while rushing to lunch in the Los Angeles heat, a sudden chill came over me as three young triplets, immaculately dressed in navy blue and white dresses, white socks and dark polished shoes, walked towards me in unison. People were window shopping, their father walked a few feet behind, but I felt isolated and briefly frightened. Such was the strength of Kubrick's imagery that the twins from The Shining had grown to triplets and materialized in Beverly Hills.

Startled, I let them pass and tried to take a photo from behind before they disappeared, but my hands were shaking.

When I joined Todd at the table, I was about to describe my experience when he asked, "What is your favorite Kubrick film?" I felt The Shining had followed me down the street and into the restaurant. Kubrick had never opened our lunch before.

In February, we met again at our favorite Italian. Todd had just flown in from Sundance, where he had seen Room 237 and had emailed the Times' feature. He found the film pretty wild and weird with accounts of its hidden meanings ranging from the Holocaust and the genocide of the American Indians to the myth of Kubrick staging the Apollo Moon landing.

I had always felt The Shining was about modern man unraveling , with its most terrifying shot, the continuous typewritten phrase, "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy," which made one realize Jack Nicholson's character was no longer in control. (All the more effective for its mordant humor.)

Now sitting in a restaurant, the most haunting memory of visiting The Shining's set came to mind... walking through what I thought was the studio's vast pantry-storeroom, adjacent to the commissary. Stocked from floor to ceiling were food supplies in a perfectly organized massive kitchen. I had never seen such a variety of canned food and groceries. Everything was available. It was waiting to move.

Commenting then on the abundance, I asked Andros Epaminondas, Stanley's right hand and my guide, if he knew how often the studio had to restock supplies?

"Mike, we're on a soundstage. This is the kitchen set. Stanley's shooting the maze next door."

I couldn't believe the depth of the authenticity.

However questionable or believable the hypotheses in Room 237, it has to add to the penetrating legacy of Stanley's films, which encourage thinking and hopefully, multi-level filmmaking. Whether Kubrick left signs for these speculations or clues for the future remains part of his timelessness and keeps us wondering. He always said, "Movies are in the baby-steps of their evolution."

Now, when I meet Todd for lunch, I know the image of The Shining twins and the eeriness of the kitchen soundstage will be in the air.

In the two years I worked on 2001, I saw the film 28 times. Five times during its premiere week , when it ran an additional 19 minutes, and another 23 in various venues around the country. The 28th was on an IMAX screen in Toronto, which dwarfed the 70mm. projection.

Seeing it again in 2006, I was struck by a sequence that seemed uncannily prescient. William Sylvester, as NASA official Heywood Floyd, calls his young daughter from the space station to wish her a happy birthday. His daughter is played by Vivian Kubrick, Stanley's youngest.

He asks her what she wants for her birthday.

Vivian answers, "a Bush-Baby.'"

2001: A Space Odyssey began filming in 1963.

It was released in 1968.

George W. Bush took office in January, 2001.

Prescience, coincidence or ???

Kubrick keeps communicating.

This is the fifth in a series of reminiscences about Stanley Kubrick written by Mike Kaplan, a veteran film executive who was Kubrick's marketing man for his film 'A Clockwork Orange,' having also worked extensively on the release of 'Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.' Previous installments can be found here, here, here and here. 'A Clockwork Orange' opened nationally 40 years ago.

Kaplan's latest major poster exhibit, GOTTA DANCE: THE ART OF THE DANCE MOVIE POSTER, opens May 23 at the California Heritage Musem in Santa Monica, CA. and runs through September 30, 2012. Over 80 rare vintage posters from throughout the world showcase key dance images from both musical and non-musical films.

This post has been updated since its original publication.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1287552 2012-02-19T10:58:26-05:00 2012-04-20T05:12:01-04:00

Mike Kaplan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-kaplan/
Before he arrived in New York for the opening of 2001, stories of his obsessive genius preceded him. He had a pilot's license, but wouldn't fly after monitoring the control towers at various airports, finding their safety inadequate. He knew the best dental procedures and rumors spread that he had an open telephone to the dentist's office when a family member underwent treatment.



My first encounter with his financial concerns came shortly after Stanley, his wife, Christiane, and their daughters, Anya, Vivian and Katherina moved into a large suite at the Pierre Hotel upon their arrival in New York. It was his first visit to the United States in many years, after moving to England following Spartacus. His stay would be charged to the film, of which he had a large percentage.

When he saw that a glass of fresh orange juice cost $1.50 from room service -- he was shocked. He asked for menus from twenty first-class hotels to compare orange juice prices. The publicity staff scurried to comply.

Seeing there was little price difference among first class Manhattan hotels, he moved the family to a rented estate in Great Neck for their two-month stay. (The house had a landing with a light facing Long Island Sound; such was the interest in anything Kubrick that rumors quickly spread it was the actual setting of Jay Gatsby's mansion in The Great Gatsby.)

I was his point man for 2001 immediately following its problematic opening. Devoting much of the following year to redirecting the marketing approach, it was evident that audiences only wanted to see 2001 in its original format, in Cinerama, with full technical bells and whistles. I was in constant touch with Stanley, who fully supported its 70 mm relaunch at The Ziegfeld in March 1970.

Shortly before the opening, MGM finally decided to create a new marketing campaign. My boss, Mort Segal, gave me the news which I had long awaited, convinced the initial "hardware campaign" of space vehicles and helmeted astronauts dehumanized the film and limited the audience. Mort asked, 'What should it be?"

Instinctively I saw the StarChild, the mysterious, inviting embryo with eyes wide open that stimulated much of the film's controversy. Stanley had placed an embargo on using any stills or footage of the film's final sequence, where the StarChild evolved, as well as the Dawn of Man sequence, which opened the film. He felt those images outside of the context of the full film would confuse the audience.

Now, two years after the film's opening, when the ending had been intensely dissected, centering the campaign on the embargoed StarChild would be inherently striking and illuminate 2001's human dimensions.

However, I didn't want to chance his disapproval until the artwork was completed. I'd been riding the campaign turns like riding waves and knew it would work. Three or four frames were taken from the film and soon a comp came back with the StarChild filling the entire poster -- with THE ULTIMATE TRIP as its slogan.



Cornel Wilde, who was leaving for England to begin his environmental thriller, No Blade of Grass, was given a proof for Stanley.

Stanley didn't like it.

I reasoned why it would work: the campaign was aimed at 2001's young, core audience, who went to repeated viewings; it was intriguing in its own right to a wider audience; MGM was now fully behind the approach.

It was a rough call: Stanley could have blocked the campaign and it could have ruined our relationship. Finally, he agreed. "OK. Go with it. "

Then the caveat: "But my credit has to be above title. That's legal."

The ad agency had placed "MGM presents The Stanley Kubrick Production" below 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

The printing plates were already made when I called the agency. The credit could be repositioned for $5,000.00. I called England.

"Stanley, we can make the change but it will cost five thousand dollars." ($35,000 today.)

A long pause.

"Oh forget it."

He didn't want to add any more expense to the picture's cost. His ego needed no credit validation.

Of course, my favorite "budget" encounter came three weeks before the premiere of A Clockwork Orange. During production of Clockwork, Kubrick sent a letter saying I was the only one who knew how to handle a Kubrick film and would I leave MGM and work directly for him in England.

It was flattering and unexpected. But it didn't take long to make the decision. It was an opportunity for a new experience; I was 28 and confident in my abilities.

Everything was controlled and completed from a suburb outside of London. Today, teams of studio executives have to sign off on everything and then lawyers go through it again. With A Clockwork Orange, everything emanated from Abbots Mead via Stanley's control.

We strategized twice a day -- at lunch and at the end of working hours. Memos were to be concise, no longer than two succinct paragraphs, following the procedure developed by the Navy SEALs.

To make sure everything was properly covered, he quickly pointed out the virtues of the Daytimer, the diary designed to organize one's work schedule and appointments. He had investigated similar products and decided the Daytimer was the most efficient.

Being young and certain my memory never faltered, I felt I could remember everything we discussed. Stanley, however, was never without his Daytimer, and after several weeks of insisting on how much easier it would be to work together if I used one, I was driven to London to select the personal components of my own, fine leather, two-page a day system.

He was right. Each day we'd take out our dueling Daytimers and go though our checklist. (Years later, working with Robert Altman, I had a leather pouch made for it which Bob called "the holster.")

Three weeks before opening, it was high-alert time. Consumed with: finalizing logistics, coordinating Stanley's quote approvals, confirming Pablo Ferro's inventive trailer was on screen, checking the labs' black and white still conversions, designating screening seats of the high powered critics, proposing advertising buys, organizing Stanley's final configurations of Philip Castle's key art, and beginning Orange Times, the comprehensive editorial handout that would become both the production notes and the solution to the advertising ban in markets where X-rated films had limited media access.

Stanley, meanwhile, was overseeing the final color corrections at the lab. Weeks earlier, the negative had been accidentally scratched at Humphries, where all the processing had been effectively handled for over a year. The technicians were devastated as Stanley removed the negative to Rank via a convoy of vehicles, followed by Humphries' managing director on foot, trying to rescue the transfer. There was no sanctioning an error of this magnitude.

Stanley was also feeling pressure with the final dub at Elstree Studios.

And then came the human element to level the stress.

We're in his office for our mid-day meeting with my open Daytimer, waiting for his to appear. Nothing emerges.

"I have a present for you," came the surprise.

I looked at him, flummoxed

"A present?"

Stanley turned around to a table in back of his desk and hands me a flat, unwrapped box.

I opened it. It was another, larger Daytimer.

"It's a Desk Daytimer " he explained. "You use it to write everything down at your desk."

I looked at him, incredulous, then put "the present" down.

"Thanks, Stanley, but no thanks. I can't use it."

"Why not?"

In the past, I would have taken it and moved on, but years of being exposed to his acute Socratic logic about all things had permeated by brain.

"If I have to write things down at the desk and also write them down in the portable Daytimer, it's repeating the same function and I don't have the time."

Stanley looked at me with the innocent half-smile he would have when trying something out -- the cat-spilling-the-milk look.

"Yeah, I know. I figured that out too."

Checkmate.

I didn't skip a beat talking through the day's demands but walking across the Chantry lawn to my office, I couldn't help laughing.

Stanley had bought the desk Daytimer as an adjunct to his current organizing scheme, determined it was useless, and tried to pawn it off on me. He figured if I took it and found a way to use it, the cost would be justified.

Kubrick, the creative genius, whom Anthony Burgess confirmed had found "the cinematic equivalents" to his novel immediately after seeing Clockwork; whom Arthur C. Clarke stated knew more about the potential of space after making 2001 than any rocket scientist; Kubrick, the master satirist, had found time to plan the offer of my "present" in the heat of bringing A Clockwork Orange into the world.

His plan didn't justify the cost of the Daytimer; it justified the reason we were there.

For besides the high of being a part of the cinema envelope he was pushing, one never knew what Kubrick surprise would rear itself at the most unexpected time, make you shake your head in wonder -- and smile.

This is the fourth in a series of reminiscences about Stanley Kubrick written by Mike Kaplan, a veteran film executive who was Kubrick's marketing man for his film 'A Clockwork Orange,' having also worked extensively on the release of 'Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.' Previous installments can be found here, here and here. 'A Clockwork Orange' opened nationally 40 years ago this month.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1263300 2012-02-08T14:37:26-05:00 2012-04-09T05:12:01-04:00

Mike Kaplan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-kaplan/


Stanley didn't travel. His work and life were intertwined and based entirely in England, so the world came to him. This was both a benefit and a complicating factor as I set about strategizing publicity for A Clockwork Orange, which was set to have its world premiere in New York on December 19,1971.

There was a limit to how much Stanley would do to publicize a film -- by preference and design. He wanted his words to have meaning, which meant that interviews had to be consequential. Further, he insisted on having the right to edit his direct quotes until he felt they accurately represented what he wanted to say. They would be a permanent record that had to stand the test of time. Immediate answers, without subsequent consideration, could be interpreted in ways that would diminish their substance. He could spend days "cleaning them up" before he was satisfied. As a result, they have a rare lucidity.

Broadcast was out of the question. With radio and television interviews, it was impossible to exercise the control he required. And there was little chance to weigh in with meaty responses or have an extended, meaningful dialogue. In most cases, doing broadcast interviews also meant traveling to someone else's studio -- a waste of time.

A key part of our strategy was to secure the cover of one of America's two major mainstream news magazines, Time and Newsweek. Unfortunately, Time had instituted a policy of not running cover stories on film directors, as their last one, on Ingmar Bergman, hadn't sold well. Instead, Time critic Jay Cocks would write an inside story and extended review for the film's opening week.

That left Newsweek, whose editors jumped at the chance to publish the first piece on the new Kubrick film. Paul Zimmerman, Newsweek's film critic, flew to London three weeks before the opening and viewed A Clockwork Orange several times. Stanley was a great conversationalist and loved to be stimulated and prodded about his work. They were locked together for hours at a stretch, and when Paul, who later wrote the screenplay for The King of Comedy (1983), left at the end of the week, exuberant from the encounter, the cover seemed a certainty.

Then, ten days before publication, I received a message from a new name at Newsweek. Problems? Cultural stories could always be bumped for breaking news, and I thought of how morose my colleague Dick Winters had looked back in 1965, when, after he'd spent a year nurturing a Dr. Zhivago cover at Time, the magazine bumped his baby to report the news of NASA's first manned space rendezvous. The unpublished Zhivago cover remained forever framed in his office.

Thankfully, we were not in danger of being displaced. Newsweek's art director was calling to coordinate Stanley's photo shoot. There was a two-day window. Great. No problem.

I was overloaded with last-minute deadlines and was preparing for an imminent trip to New York. But before running through our evening checklist, I wanted to confirm a time for the Newsweek shoot. Stanley didn't look up from his desk, "Tell them I'll take the picture. And I'll need their specs." I was stunned. "Stanley, this is the cover," I said. "They have their photographer; you have photo approval."

There would be no budging. "I'll take the photograph," he said. "Find out when they need the negatives in New York."

Stanley was an ace photographer. He intended to set a precedent by shooting his own cover portrait, controlling the image he wanted to project.

The next conversation with Newsweek's art director had me reiterating how Stanley knew more about photography than anyone; how he developed his reputation as a photographer for Look; how there would be a selection of choices. Not to worry, I assured him. You know he's a technical genius.

He replied with an ultimatum: "This is unheard of. We take our own cover photographs. If he won't be photographed by Newsweek, he won't be on the cover."

Was this actually happening? Losing our major break over the cover shot?

We were five hours ahead of New York, which gave me a time advantage. I called Paul Zimmermann at home. He offered some comfort. "They're not going to lose the story. I'll see how things stand in the morning."

Stanley was playing the odds. Without a war starting, they were locked into the story; Newsweek had the exclusive and too much time and effort had been invested.

The phone rang. It was Stanley with an afterthought. "Give him these specs. He'll know what I'm doing. You'll get through it."

In the morning came the reluctant call from the art director, curtly asking for directions to Abbot's Mead for their courier.

"These better be good." He hung up.

At 10 o'clock that evening, Stanley began setting up the shot in the painting studio of his wife, Christiane. Executive producer Jan Harlan was there to assist. Stanley held out until the last possible minute to ensure there would be no alternative to using his shot. I wouldn't leave until the film was given to the waiting courier.

Stanley moved the lights and placed Jan on a stool in various positions as he looked thought the lens for the angle he wanted. Jan pointed his finger as Stanley directed. Then Stanley gave him the camera he'd chosen for a prop.

After an hour of adjustments, Stanley changed places with Jan after showing him where to press the button for the shot. Nothing moved. Jan pressed continually as the roll of film progressed. Stanley looked toward the camera, pointing out, just as he'd instructed Jan.

The credit for the January 3, 1972, issue of Newsweek reads:

Cover Photograph: Stanley Kubrick.

This is the third in a series of reminiscences about Stanley Kubrick written by Mike Kaplan, a veteran film executive who was Kubrick's marketing man for his film 'A Clockwork Orange,' having also worked extensively on the release of 'Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.' Previous installments can be found here and here. 'A Clockwork Orange' opened nationally 40 years ago this month.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1241336 2012-01-30T09:45:32-05:00 2012-03-31T05:12:01-04:00

Mike Kaplan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-kaplan/ skillful film," Stanley Kubrick stated in his calm, equanimous voice, the day after screening the first assembly of A Clockwork Orange.

We were standing on either side of Stanley's desk in his functionally chaotic home office at Abbots Mead in Elstree, England, going over the agenda for our imminent meeting with Dick Lederer, senior vice president of advertising-publicity at Warner Bros.

Stanley always spoke precisely, especially on matters of great importance, and he had to have contemplated all available adjectives before deciding on "skillful" to contextualize Clockwork within his body of work. It was a word I'd never heard him use before.

The highest echelon of Warner executives, headed by chairman Ted Ashley, had flown in from Burbank for the event, their first look at any frame of Kubrick's latest film. Overwhelmed at what they saw, they conveyed their enthusiasm in a euphoric meeting immediately following the screening.

After they left, Stanley kept Jan Harlan, his brother-in-law and executive producer, and myself, his head of marketing (though "marketing" was a word yet to be adapted into industry parlance) in the wood-paneled conference room at Pinewood Studios (where Clockwork had been screened) and grilled us for two and a half hours, extracting our response and opinion about every scene and detail in the film. It was both exhausting and exhilarating -- an unscheduled and unexpected display of his trust in our honesty... and loyalty.

I had offered Kubrick my uncensored opinion of one of his films on a previous occasion, in 1968, when I was an executive at MGM charged with spearheading an alternative marketing campaign for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film's premiere was panned by critics, so under enormous corporate pressure -- and having not seen 2001 with an audience prior to its opening -- Stanley cut 19 minutes from its length in five days. I told him then, with certainty, that "for those who got 2001, the 19 minutes were a bonus; for those who didn't, the cuts wouldn't matter." (The 19 minutes were recently "rediscovered" in a Midwest storage vault). The cuts didn't affect the critical response.

But this was different. I was being formally interrogated about a film that was still unfinished. Stanley, however, insisted on immediate feedback, and my hesitation evaporated -- for we never hedged. With Stanley, hedging was a waste of valuable time.

For two months after my arrival in England, in May 1971, I had been carrying on an unusual relationship with the footage that would come to constitute A Clockwork Orange. Between our daily pattern of lunch and evening work sessions, Stanley wanted me to choose the stills that would be necessary for publicity. Movie promotional images were always produced by unit or special photographers on the set who photographed what they saw. Stanley held, correctly, that these traditional film stills weren't an accurate representation of what was on screen and he prevailed with the studio in the unprecedented process of taking the images directly from the film. (Stanley, who had begun his career as a photographer for Look magazine, always had strong opinions about the medium.)

Later, these frame stills served another purpose in the screenplay edition of Clockwork, as Stanley used them to depict every editing cut.

So each day, for three to five hours, I would sit in front of a Moviola -- the hand-fed editing machine through which all the printed film passed -- watching every scene from every angle as assistant editor Gary Shepherd loaded the takes, removing the frames I marked with a chalk pencil and placing them in slide holders to be culled later. The work was complicated and time-consuming. Later, the color frames had to be converted to Stanley's high standards for black-and-white stills, for newspaper reproduction.










But though I had seen every take of the film, I was largely in the dark, for Stanley insisted I watch without sound, responding purely to the visuals.

The only time I violated his directive was after a week of hearing a buoyant Malcolm McDowell singing slices of "Singin' in the Rain" from the editing room below my office. It finally became too frustrating -- I had to know how the song was used (it wasn't in the script, which I wasn't allowed to read anyway) and forced the editors to show me the sequence with picture and sound. The scene -- McDowell's prancing rape of Adrienne Corri before an apoplectic Patrick Magee -- was startling in its daring and ingenious in its conception. It confirmed everything I knew from Kubrick's prior movies and from the Anthony Burgess novel upon which the film was adapted - A Clockwork Orange would be another Kubrick revelation.

Settling into the rhythm of Stanley's questioning, Jan and I responded quickly -- which wasn't easy, as the film had twisted our emotions, seducing us into sympathizing with McDowell's uniquely amoral yet dangerously appealing protagonist. Halfway through the conversation, we came to his seduction of "two young devotchicks" in a sped-up ménage a trois timed to the William Tell Overture. The sequence was sexy, funny and inventive -- and the coupling was repeated twice.

I said that it was dazzling but that repeating the bedwork felt like milking the audience, though I didn't know what effect he wanted. Stanley held that the second threesome would still get laughs.

The scene remained intact until six months after the film's X-rated U.S. release, when he removed 11 seconds to secure an "R" rating. Three seconds from the second shagging were eliminated.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1195323 2012-01-10T08:09:01-05:00 2012-04-03T19:35:00-04:00

Mike Kaplan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-kaplan/

Stanley Kubrick believed that "filmmaking is an exercise in problem solving." He meant that to include the distribution and marketing of his films as well as their production, and he devoted more time and effort to managing the release of his films than any other director. In my view, it's one of the reasons he made only 13 films in 46 years. He relished the problem-solving.

I spent two years overseeing the marketing of Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, devising its successful 70-mm. relaunch strategy, before joining him in England to handle the release of A Clockwork Orange. Our collaboration began shortly after Clockwork wrapped and lasted through its December 1971 premiere, its official U.S. release date of February 2, 1972, and throughout its extended rollout. With Stanley's rare combination of meticulousness and creativity, we achieved what we set out to accomplish -- but the most influential result of our collaboration was unexpected.

The distribution of A Clockwork Orange was profoundly influenced by the unique marketing history of its predecessor. 2001 was MGM's most expensive film to date. The fate of the company, which was in the midst of a proxy battle, depended on its success. It was greeted with derisive, negative reviews by the mainstream press and public -- unprepared for its radical, non-linear style -- until alternative audiences embraced it as a cinematic breakthrough.

Three and a half years later, the "X"-rated A Clockwork Orange opened to rave reviews in the United States, in a perfectly choreographed advertising-publicity-exhibition campaign that broke house records in every major city. Unlike the first, misconceived 2001 campaign, nothing was left to chance, including the crucial selection of cinemas, which were usually decided by a studio's sales executives.

2001 was a special roadshow film, meaning it was presented with higher prices, reserved seating, and usually 10 performances a week. Only one to three roadshow cinemas existed per city and were easily identified.

Clockwork would be shown in standard cinemas as a quality platform release, which meant there were many options per city. I knew that Don Rugoff's Cinema 1, the most prestigious cinema in New York, had to be the New York theater, but how to be sure that the film would be booked into the best cinema in Indianapolis or Cleveland or Atlanta? To choose the right theater in each city, we needed to know which cinema sold the most tickets to the most interesting pictures. But while a studio would know what its own films grossed, detailed box-office figures of competitive films were closely held secrets. There was no comparative information, and that is exactly what Stanley wanted.

Brainstorming the problem with Stanley at his home office in the countryside town of Borehamwood, England, I pointed out that Variety published a weekly breakdown of cinema grosses for first-run releases in most major markets. These differed from the cumulative box office chart in several important ways: they specified the weekly gross per theatre and previous week's figure from whatever film had played, plus seating capacity and ticket prices. Lightning struck as Stanley examined the trade magazine more closely. We could chart the gross of every cinema in every city over time by building a spread sheet -- if only we could find a substantial number of back issues.












Variety's London headquarters held copies for 18 months, which were soon in my office, in the guest house of The Chantry, the estate next to Abbott's Mead, where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton reportedly stayed while making The V.I.Ps at MGM Elstree down the road.

And so, for the next six weeks, Maureen, a sweet lady from St. Albans, entered the figures from The Music Box in Chicago and The Orson Welles in Boston and the Bijou in St. Louis and a thousand additional American cinemas onto individual pages of accounting paper, which were then compiled into looseleaf notebooks, alphabetically listed by city and subdivided by cinema. This hand-crafted data base would be our bible, guiding our directives to Warner Bros. concerning which cinemas should show A Clockwork Orange.

Leo Greenfield was Warners' vice-president of distribution, with a Borscht Belt delivery reminiscent of Henny Youngman. When he called to discuss the theater selection, we'd have the notebooks at our fingertips. As Leo would go through his choices, I'd be next to Stanley, pointing out a better alternative if necessary.

"Well, what about The Ritz in Philadelphia, Leo?" Stanley would say. "Midnight Cowboy ran for six months and ended its run at $10,000 in its last week? Nothing looks better than that."

"And in Columbus, The Wild Bunch had a great engagement at The Paramount, which is perfect for our audience."

The calls would go on for nearly an hour as Stanley, knowing Leo was dumbfounded at the other end of the speakerphone, moved around the office with a wry smile on his face, hitching up his pants and winking at me as Leo, already in awe of Stanley's reputation for thoroughness, promised to get back quickly after he checked out the preferred cinemas and their availability. It was classic Kubrick, winning the chess match through perseverance and ingenuity.

Word quickly spread that Stanley had a computerized system to track theaters and grosses based on technical information he had acquired while developing HAL 9000, the all-knowing computer in 2001. For months these stories persisted in the trades as the roster of Clockwork cinemas was refined. They were neither confirmed nor denied.

In March 1972, after the first 25 Clockwork engagements had established new house records, I was in my Burbank office at Warner Bros. when Stanley called, sounding serious.

"Mike, I just got a call from Abel Green."

Abel Green was the legendary editor of Variety and the most respected and important figure in the trade press.

"What did he want?," I asked, nervously.

"He asked about the computer system because he wants to adapt it for Variety." Trade stories of Stanley hoodwinking the studio raced through my mind.

"What did you say?," I replied, already planning damage control.

His tone changed; there was a twinkle in his voice. "I told him how we had done it, how necessary the information was for the business and what computers could do the job. He was very appreciative."

Stanley was in top form.

Over the years, Variety instituted various changes in the configuration of its weekly box office list. The listing of roadshow screens was eliminated as the industry discovered via Jaws, the fiscal advantage of wide release booking with saturation TV buys. Subsequently, both weekend and full week totals were shown, along with the important weekly percentage change, which we had originally charted in our hand-crafted theater by theater data base.

As these general statistics became easy to digest and the release patterns generated higher dollars, the consumer press began citing box office winners as part of their general reporting. Today, the business of the movie business is common knowledge with weekend
openings given like Dow Jones numbers.

I trace it back to Stanley's need to know and think of sweet Maureen, sitting at that long table in my office, carefully going through Variety, transcribing those grosses into ledgers, and wonder if she ever realized what her efforts -- at $65 a week -- have wrought.

This post has been modified from its original publication.

An earlier version of this post contained three inaccuracies: 2001 was released in 1968, not 1969, and the all-knowing computer was named HAL 9000, not HAL 2000. ]]>