About: Stanley Kubrick, Part 2
(Excerpts from Playboy magazine, September 1968)

Undismayed, Kubrick again focused his attention on a military subject: the blood-soaked battlefields of the western front in World War I. The result was Paths of Glory, the tragic story of three innocent French soldiers who live through a futile engagement with the Germans only to be executed as cowards by their own high command. With Kirk Douglas in the leading role, the film movingly depicted the bleak horror and meaninglessness of war. Though it, too, fared only modestly at the box office, it was universally hailed as a major work of cinematic art, and it made Kubrick a name to be reckoned with. Douglas, impressed with Kubrick's talent, asked him to direct the forthcoming Spartacus, in which Douglas was to play the starring role. "It was the only film I didn't have full directorial control over," Kubrick recalls ruefully; but the critics viewed Spartacus as a cut above the standard cinemascope spectacular. It also made money. Never one to rest on his laurels, Kubrick had already selected his next film: an adaptation of Lolita, Vladimir Nabkov's sexy, scintillating best seller. Well before the returns on Lolita" were in; Kubrick was characteristically blocking out his next project. He had long been concerned with the prospect of accidental nuclear holocaust, and a novel, Red Alert, by Peter George, reinforced his fears. In collaboration with George—and with an indeterminate amount of assistance from black humorist Terry Southern—Kubrick produced Dr. Strangelove, an overwhelming critical and commercial success. The film's darkly satirical antiwar message offended some Cold Warriors and travelers on the ultraright.
Kubricks career launched into even higher orbit with his ambitious space odyssey 2001—this movie made him a near legend in Hollywood. The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey is about mankind and the cosmos and the place of man in the universe. Next page