Farewell, Stanley

It is with shock and sadness that I add this page. Stanley Kubrick, one of the great filmmakers, died in his bed of a heart attack on Sunday morning, March 7th 1999. When I first heard the report, I blinked twice in disbelief. It just seemed WAY too soon to bid good-bye to Stanley. Somehow, he was one of those people you get to think will always be there. And it's appealing to have known all these years that up there in Hertsfordshire, he was working away on some new project or other. SOMEone had been doing something new and special. After all, creative perfectionists have become nearly an anathema as the centuries increment. So much of what we are asked to read, to hear, to look at, even to eat, seems the result of expedience, a matter of pure commerce. Intelligence, even touches of genius (as he had ample times,) have become quaint relics of an earlier age. Our loss, more than you may think.
 
I was one of the few artists to have worked more than once with him. The experience and memories are indelibly etched on my brain. The face-to-face meetings for spotting music to compose for "A Clockwork Orange" and "The Shining" couldn't have lasted very much more than a week or two each for me and my then partner and producer, Rachel (it would be unfair to Rachel to characterize her impressions here, and so these are only my observations, although she was present and worked with me throughout the details that follow.) Since my none-too-portable studio was located in New York, and Kubrick didn't travel, the rest of the collaboration took place via long phone calls and messages, express packages of cassettes, tapes, film and video footage, and written memos and notes. If faxing had been more available, and the Web had existed back then, it's certain we'd have used these media to communicate in great detail, too!
 
Stanley Kubrick was not an easy man to work for. He was vastly interesting, completely open about all his "secrets", and had a dry sense of humor. You were always stimulated working with him. But it was seldom painless. I would truly have preferred to be another director or friend. Read Arthur C. Clarke's "The Lost Worlds of 2001" for another parallax on this observation -- even if it's essentially a congruent conclusion. (Once Stanley told me that aside from A.C.C. I was the most outspoken, candid person he had worked with. This merely means in my case that I had a big mouth, and sometimes still say too much, perhaps even here.) One works (damn, I keep using the present tense...) worked  with him for other good reasons.
 
All of this is completely in keeping with a demanding, even obsessive person of great depth who is trying to find the optimum answer for the smallest decision, however much time and effort it takes. I'm rather "tarred by the same brush" in many ways, close (= brave) friends inform me ;-), and understand, even empathize with such an attitude, including the times when it bites back. It's just that my new media music medium is more tractable to watch-making "godzinthuh" details, than the large-scale collaborative and social interactivities of making feature films. Who's to complain if I go for a fifty-seventh retake except my lazy side alter-ego (or possibly Heinz...?) Whereas Stanley got tagged early on as "overly demanding" or "inhumane".