I listen to a podcast which I will not name because they give a long leash to flat earth theories.
It’s unfortunate because the host’s take on other issues, especially regarding Covid bullshite, is spot on. However, I do support POM’s policy so you’ll have to glean from names and topics which podcast I’m talking about.
The host does have a borderline fetish for Stanley Kubrick, citing him as the preeminent psy operator during the Cold War and beyond.
This post will narrow Kubrick’s alleged influence down to something more manageable and, yes, plausible- my favorite word.
This podcast host feels the apparent link between Kubrick and NASA indicates a link to the Nazis operating for the United States’ interests after the war.
However, once examined with a Fakeologist’s eye, Kubrick’s Nazi connection is more personal and pre-dates his association with NASA and its midwife, Werner von Braun.
But let’s start with the Jewish kid from the Bronx by the name of “Stanley”- ca-Ching!
By his own admission he was a lousy student. He did not qualify for college so he got a job at age 18 as a photo journalist with Look magazine. Sure, no sweat. No flippin’ burgers for this dimwit.
Kubrick’s official bio tells of a kid fascinated with photography- and he had a handy neighborhood chum who just happened to have a dark room where the two could work their shutterbug jones at age 13.
Okay, not impossible, but this nobody kid eventually had critics claim he was one of the great ‘artists’ of commercial cinema (oxymoronically speaking) and did for the moon landings what Leni Riefenstahl did for the Nazi mystique. He softened the collective brain to accept the NASA narrative fiction as real.
Hell, he did even more damage with Dr. Strangelove, selling nukes as real. (While also taking a pot shot at fluoride deniers.)
The guy was juiced. I’ll even put on the table that his parents may have been caretakers. No proof, but like most of the bastards of the bloodlines, there always seemed to be just enough operating funds to keep the Kubrick hustle going even as his family was portrayed as somewhat economically modest in their surroundings.
I would posit that his early talent for visual composition identified his potential to his handlers and they put him in that line of work as doors were opened.
He apprenticed first as a photojournalist and then as a documentary filmmaker and showed competence in organizational skills. However, his first feature length cinematic sins- ‘Fear and Desire’,1953, and ‘Killer’s Kiss’, 1955- were forgiven by critics in the press. If films with such a low profile were noticed at all, they would be dismissed with a shrug.
United Artists, which bought Killer’s Kiss, told Stanley that the door was always open to him for future projects, despite the aroma emitted by his first two fails.
(A contemporary filmmaker in New York, a woman named Shirley Clarke, complained that Kubrick, being a man, had those doors held open for him while she was marginalized. No, Shirley, it’s because Stanleys outrank Clarkes.)
Enter James B. Harris.
Spook school Columbia university ran a prep school which Harris attended. He then went into the army and trained as a combat photographer. That’s signal corps and that’s military intelligence. The guy was a potential spook in training.
Stateside, he’s introduced to Kubrick by a fellow signal corps photographer named Alexander Singer who knew Stanley growing up. Tight little circle of camera geeks.
More importantly, after meeting and forming a partnership with Harris, Stanley and James embark on a big league film career.
Note: In an interview from 1966, Kubrick was asked directly if he would describe Harris as a man of independent means. Kubrick said ‘yes’ without equivocation.
That independence showed itself when Harris was able to get $130,000 US to complete their first collaboration, The Killing (1957) whose budget was initially $200,000. That’s 60%(?- Mark?) of the budget raised outside of the studio investment- For a guy who had only directed two stinkers up to that point!
Along with finishing funds, Harris was also able to round up recognizable talent, starting with actor Sterling Hayden, veteran cinematographer Lucien Ballard, and screenwriter Jim Thompson, king of the paperback spinner racks.
The Killing is a polished gem- one of the best late period film noir’s and a testament to the successful collaboration of the principles involved. If anything, Stanley the D+ student was developing into a quick study.
Enter Kirk Douglas.
This should make the sale.
There wasn’t a bigger player in Hollywood in the late 50’s than Kirk Douglas. Star and producer, he had the clout to end the black list, albeit the anti-communist hysteria in Hollywood was already losing steam.
The question is, how did a modest production company like Kubrick-Harris get Douglas to buy into a decidedly unglamorous anti-war film, set in World War One no less? That would be ‘Paths of Glory’, 1959.
I can see why Germany would host the production because the film makes the French look like corrupt morons. I don’t know what Douglas saw in this ‘art house’ war picture. He took a fee, but from what I gathered, it was on the low end of his usual payout.
But here’s where things get intriguing, and I may be going off the rails, having cars pile onto each other in slow motion and detonating, sending a huge black and orange mushroom cloud into the atmosphere…
Ahem-
The Steven Spielberg of Nazi cinema, as I like to call him, was the actor and subsequent director, Viet Harlan. In 1958, when Paths of Glory was being shot in Bavaria, Harlan, accused of war crimes for his film Jud Suess, among others, was still helming films in West Germany.
The intrigue we are dealing with here involves Christiane Harlan, Viet’s niece, who appears in Kubrick’s film. She is the barmaid at the end who sings a song before the French troops head back out to the trenches.
She became Kubrick’s third and final wife, and mother of his two daughters.
How would the production land on this unknown? May I suggest it was because Viet Harlan was already on the set, as a consultant, and could have made the suggestion to employ his niece.
To that point, Kubrick had only directed a few actors, mostly in tight, claustrophobic interiors.
There is one huge battle scene in Paths of Glory that Harlan could have directed himself. Compare that scene- The Ant Hill- with battle scenes in Harlan’s Kolberg, if you can find it. Specifically the use of long tracking shots as the combatants move forward under fire. Harlan’s fingerprints appear to me to be on the Ant Hill scene.
Harris, in a later interview, mentions the layout of the Ant Hill scene and where do you suppose that kind of preparation could have come from?
Consider also the tight formation of troops marching in long shot towards the camera in Kolberg and then jump ahead to Kubrick’s second collaboration with Douglas, ‘Spartacus’, 1960, and look at the Roman legions marching towards the camera in similar formation.
I doubt Viet Harlan was on set in the San Fernando Valley while Kubrick rode herd over the legions, but the stamp of Harlan is still there for anyone with my confirmation bias to see.
Back to the Ant Hill- Those are German police racing through no man’s land as the charges detonate. I’m sure every cop loves overtime, but who gets that kind of manpower to dress as French soldiers and do barrel rolls around flash bombs? Douglas was an international star, but he wasn’t a director. Kubrick’s future uncle-in-law was and I’m certain Harlan and Kubrick talked this scene out in detail.
I don’t care for Paths of Glory. I think it is mis-cast with Ralph Meeker the most out of place. The quintessential Mike Hammer cannot play fearful. Most of the cast are American and can’t find anything even remotely old world in their line readings. The French generals are older, more world wise- George MaCready and Adolph Monjou are old school thespians and sell it much better as aristocrats who favor appearance over ability. Otherwise, it’s as if Kubrick cast a war picture with a noir cast.
Regardless, the critics fawned over it and it made money, so there!
Douglas had signed Kubrick-Harris to a three picture deal to create vehicles for the star. When one project fell off the table in development, Douglas was already underway with Spartacus. After ten days of shooting, Douglas fired director Anthony Mann and called in his marker on Kubrick to take over.
In the end, Kubrick disowned the picture because he wanted to rewrite the script by Daulton Trumbo, the most prominent of the Hollywood blacklisted, but whom Douglas got to write this script without worry, Trumbo’s name appearing in the credits for the first time in years.
For our purposes here, the key elements of Spartacus are the battle scenes, once again looking like ersatz Viet Harlan. I cannot see how the two directors weren’t in contact given these circumstances.
Jumping past Lolita, something of a desperation move by Kubrick, imo, after having projects dropped and being fired by Marlon Brando during prep for ‘One Eyed Jacks’, I will just say this about Dr. Strangelove: The story goes that the Air Force brass was wowed by the accurate detail of the bomber’s interior. Some suggested that this is what got Kubrick the NASA sales job, 2001.
I will suggest an alternative: It was Harris’ connections to military intel that gave Kubrick license to recreate the bomber, along with Harlan’s connections to the still thriving Nazi scientists working in Alabama under the direction of Werner von Braun. This is how a Jewish Stanley and a Nazi rocketeer could collaborate out in the open. von Braun, a friend of Walt Disney, was ‘rehabilitated’ and was working for the good guys, the anti-Soviets, you know.
(BTW, Harris directed a few films himself, starting with ‘The Bedford Incident’ 1965, which, like Strangelove, ends in nuclear annihilation, only without the laughs. Selling nukes is what a cinema spook with access to military hardware does. The details of the ship’s interior in Bedford is as exacting as Strangelove’s bomber.)
After 2001, Kubrick was cock blocked by the Soviets, who were collaborating on ‘Waterloo’ 1970, directed by the ranking Soviet filmmaker, Sergei Bonderchuck, thus forcing Kubrick to table his definitive epic on Napoleon. From that point on, none of his films had the cultural reach the previous two had, and his pictures became rather elaborate, and very oversold, puzzle pieces.
Last comment: ‘The Shining’ is possibly 4 films in one. 1) The surface narrative: Jack is crazy/the place is haunted. 2) Inverted, Wendy is crazy, she’s hallucinating. 3) Danny is locked in a mental maze, trying to save himself. 4) The continuity errors, which are legion, is in fact a visualization of a writer editing and revising a second or third draft of a novel about a haunted hotel possessing the mind of a drunk writer in rehab. That is my favorite, as it parallels Steven King’s methods more closely than King would have liked, which may explain the root of his vitriol towards Kubrick.
Piece of Mindful 
Wow, Ty, quite the investigative piece. Seems as likely as the “real” story, moreso, even. I have some desert and mountain photographs, and even a college edumacation…maybe I should apply to Look magazine too. (Oh, it folded ages ago? Damn) So, one of the “top” magazines of the day was so desperate for photogs that they had to hire a fresh HS grad? THOSE WERE THE DAYS!
Seems cinema is NOT a meritocracy. Nor is cinema “safe”, but it is “effective.”
So, there were no casting couches for the French *chanteuse”, no dozens of aspirant actresses? Just call up the AD’s niece and sorted! THOSE WERE THE DAYS!
PoG is meh, and this is coming from a war films freak of over a half-century. Still wondering the logistics of those trenchlines running from the North Sea to Switzerland. Did both sides just stop the war of movement after a few weeks? “Hey, cease-fire lads! Cessez le feu! Feuer einstellen! Let’s take a few months to dig extensive fortifications, and then go at it again, wot say?” Read somewhere the digging was done by Chinese/Indochinese beforehand, but cannot find the source again. BTW, had to abandon the execrable new version of “All Quiet…” after the tank attack scene. In fact, had dropped it after the stairwell scene at the school, which was only some minutes into the film, but tried again a few weeks later, to my deeper disappointment. Dreadful and absurd, which explains how it won 4 Oscars, FFS.
“The Killing” remains his best, IMHO. “Barry Lyndon” worked on a visual level…O’Neal was a better choice than Bobby Redford, for sure.
BTW, “Kolberg” is on YT, with subtitles. How they managed to film this epic in the waning days of 1944 is a mystery. Weren’t the Allies closing in on all sides, dragooning boys and seniors from 16-60? Maybe they used it as training for the extras. After filming they even let them keep the same uniforms and muskets for use along the Siegfried Line perhaps?
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I highly doubt that there actually were any so-called “Nazis”. Talk about a psy-op!
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……and almost certainly there was no legitimate Hollywood blacklist whatsoever.
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“Bastards of the bloodlines”, my new favorite name for the “nobodies” propelled to fame.
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Interesting background, much new to me. Regarding the last two paras.. less cultural reach, oversold puzzles.. (are they really oversold? His later movies seem to have more depth and richness than just about anything out there. Nobody really matches him, that I can see.) So.. Was he resentful? Did he decide at that point, to try to make movies that were subversive in a way, even though he was a high level insider.. I don’t know how to phrase this, but what was this shift about, I guess I’m asking. His later films come across as containing some sort of authentic personal testimony, albeit veiled in “puzzles.” It’s like he wanted desperately to blow the whistle on the whole thing, at least in art, despite being a beneficiary of the system.. though perhaps not of the highest rank, and still subject to power plays from above his level. This is clumsy, but I don’t know how else to put it.
Regarding alternate readings of The Shining, you leave out the most interesting one to me, which is that it all seems to be allegory about the ruling families, American and world history, etc. All about master/ servant relationships.. again kind of hard to express, but that’s what I see when I watch it.
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This has plausibility, but also note that propaganda usually offers counter-explanations for doubters, a way of containing skepticism. The JFK assassination offers Oswald and Warren Commission, CIA, mobsters, Russians, Woody Harrelson’s dad, shooters in street holes … many ways to go, all misdirection. It has been my experience that professional liars do not so much lie as misdirect. If we ask the wrong question, the answer does not matter.
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Not sure if I’m clear.. you are saying Kubrick was part of that misdirection in his movies? Feeding into alternate explanations for events, but not really revealing any truths?
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Cannot know, of course, but offering several paths and leaving clues on each would be SOP for Intel.
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TimR, you took the words from my keyboard re: The Shining. That’s what I see when I watch it, too. Though I like the alternative interpretations Tyrone offers, particularly the one about the movie being a novelist’s rough draft, although I actually take Stephen King’s objections to the film at face value. Telegraphing Jack as being crazy from the get-go, and deliberately giving him zero chemistry with his wife and son, kills the melodramatic genre suspense that King achieved in the novel. But when I watch it as a veiled exposé on the dark underside of the ruling class and America’s hidden history, it is chilling.
I don’t view Kubrik as someone who was trying to blow the whistle on his peers in the ruling class, though. Didn’t members of the Rothschild family let him film Eyes Wide Shut scenes on one of their estates? I don’t imagine individual members of the ruling class are all of the same mind about what they are, collectively, doing. As vicious, dehumanizing, cruel and psychopathic as the system is, the people at the top of it, and benefiting the most from it, can’t all be psychopaths. I would imagine many of them enjoy art that calls out their sins just as much as Hollywood liberals love to make movies in which they directly and gleefully mock their own hypocrisy and disingenuousness. Acknowledging it in an artful way is a release, a way to feel better about yourself as you accept that this is just how it is and we’re never going to change.
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Yeah, I disagree with myself about Kubrick “blowing the whistle” on anything.. hasty blog comment. But Tyrone has an interesting point about the shift in his ouvre after losing the Napoleon pic. I’m not really very familiar with his early movies, but it sort of sounds right from what I’ve gleaned. I wonder what that was all about, and if that experience of “losing” to the other (higher ranked?) director did change his outlook? Or maybe he was just maturing as an artist/ person, or his interests shifted.
I know what you mean about Hollywood liberals mocking their own liberalism – it sometimes seems they do that more than playing it straight lol – which makes me wonder how my liberal friends relate to that, as they hero worship many of those people. I take it as supporting MMs view they’re “cloaked fascists” or whatever.
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I read the novel fairly recently – didn’t occur to me that the movie gave him zero chemistry early on, compared to the book – so now I feel a bit blind and dense haha. Overall I was struck by how FAITHFUL the movie was, at least on a surface level. Given king’s dislike, I was expecting radical differences.
Here’s a hot movie tip for you or anyone else – just saw Steven Soderberghs underpublicized LET THEM ALL TALK. Fascinating! A Kubrickian puzzle box I would say. Plays sort of innocuous on a first viewing, but then you start puzzling it over and there seems to be a whole subterranean movie buried under the surface. Came out beginning of pandemic, so lots of subtext/ commentary/ foreshadowing toward that. Maybe they even expected it to have a larger audience later – ie now? So it’s really vaccine commentary, genuine or misdirect I cannot say…
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As far as comparing the movie to the book… I read the book in high school, but I do recall that the most important aspect of Jack’s job as hotel caretaker, in the novel, was checking on the boiler to make sure it didn’t overheat, because if it did, the hotel could blow up. And then he goes crazy and the hotel does blow up. When I began to see the movie as a veiled way for Kubrik to talk about hidden history and the ruling elite, it made perfect sense that he dispensed with the overheating boiler plot point. In his movie, the elite ruling class is dead, undying, and indestructible. (Perhaps a relevant side note: I saw King talk somewhere about how Kubrik called him in the wee hours once, while he was while working on the movie, to ask King if he thought the idea of ghosts was actually more comforting than scary. After all, if they exist, it means there’s no real death, right?)
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That makes a lot of sense, sounds right to me.
Re Soderberghs movie.. perhaps another hasty blog comment. I’ve rewatched it and puzzled over it, and I guess I was reading too much into it. Maybe. I still see some hints/ clues toward something layered into background elements, or under the surface of dialogue and editing, but now I would say they probably don’t veil a whole other movie – they’re likey just some veiled innuendo/ propaganda/ commentary about society and issues such as covid and vaccines. One character calls poisoning an “intimate” “cruel” form of murder for instance.
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“…connections to the still thriving Nazi scientists working in Alabama under the direction of Werner von Braun. This is how a Jewish Stanley and a Nazi rocketeer…”
No Nazis. So, try again…
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How about the regime formerly known as ‘Nazis’?
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But that sentence where von Braun was “‘rehabilitated’ and was working for the good guys” was very juicy in my mind. I can clearly see von Braun participating in NA (Nazis Anonymous) program after moving to the States. In some point he has gone through few steps in program and addresses an audience that “I was once a very bad nazi and among other things I used to show my middle finger for those poor jews when I was driving pass the concentration camps, but I have been sober now awhile and even have a jewish friend now. I also haven’t yelled “Heil Hitler” casually anymore when I stop speaking with someone for a long time.”
I think there were “Nazis” as actors acting their roles of military leaders in the Third Reich but they were leaded by the PTB like were other high level players in the WWII.
I think that some of the lower ranking officers thoughts it was a real deal. Many people were brainwashed to believe it was all real too and that Adolf was their real Führer. Those ordinary German soldiers were rarely any kind of nazis but just pawns in the play. That picture that most of the films give us of German soldiers are pure propaganda and false information. My grandpa fought against the Russians in WWII with the German soldiers here in Finland and they were just like the Finnish soldiers. Ordinary men in extraordinary situation with one notable exception and that was that they have more strict discipline than Finnish groups. And that includes that they were not allowed to do nuisance to the enemy civilians or prisoners let alone kill them. Some veterans said that Finnish soldiers were generally crueller to the enemy than German soldiers, but I can’t proof it. The vets usually kept quiet about those things. My grandpa never saw any “Nazis” in battlefields and those German soldiers never speaks about jews or their camps when hanging out with them.
But as a summary Nazis or “Nazis” played their part as the bad guys pretty “well” IMO. How else they are presented us in such a bad guys role every evening in our television in those “documents”, where Hitler did this and Hitler did that, almost 80 Year after ending of the war? Every f*cking evening.
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That’s funny stuff about NA, Suominen! And interesting historical reflections.
Many of your comments, eg talking The Simpsons, make me think what a monoculture the world already is. But you get Nazi hate every night? You mean on some main outlet, not just a backwater cable channel somewhere?
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Thank You TIMR very much from Your comment.
Finland has been some kind of mini America for a decades. I am grown by the American TV-series in the 1980’s like Knight Rider, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, MCGyver etc. We have only two channels then, but most of the series were American (Dallas, Dynasty, Hill Street Blues etc.), some British and German too (Der Alte was the most watched European series I think). Later there were first three and then four channels and especially the latter channels which were commercial channels showed mostly American shows and movies. Later came for example Simpsons of course and we watched every episode of it and it still running in free channels with new episodes and reruns.
We have now sixteen free terrestial channels here in countryside and two of them are all American channels with Finnish texts, Star channel (former Fox) and National Geographic. Latter is the channel which send plenty of the Nazi hate. Now I watched that there are surprisingly few days without that propaganda, but there were just former this year a period when there were no days of from the Nazi programs.
Next Nazi program seems to be WWII from above or something like that this week and it tells how Hitler wanted to revenge the allies bombings of the German cities.
Our family bought the first VCR in the year 1984 and we watched almost all of the rent movies available and they were almost all American movies, maybe a dozen or two from them were Finnish or other European movies. I include in those American movies those that are made in the Great Britain or France by American companies. No one of the movies or TV-series were made in the Soviet Union. It’s kind of fanny how far away we were mentally from Soviet Union although we were neighbours. There were some period in the early 80’s when it was fashionable in the media mock the Americans, mostly when Ronald Reagan was selected for a president, but that was all just a show to get people to fear the nuclear war between the USA and the USSR. They frightened people how wacko Reagan is and first think he do when he is the president is pressing that red button which launches the missiles to the Soviet Union. There were some politicians that played to be in the left and against the USA then, but later they surreptitiously turned to the “right” side. At the latest when Soviet Union collapsed. I have just recently learned that our cultural history in the 60’s and 70’s were very much the copy of American culture of those times. There were all the protest against the Vietnam var and they listened all the same music from those fake music stars. And the “shooting of the JFK” was as big happening as in the U.S.A. So was that first “Moon Landing.”
Nowadays they even shows election ad plaques of the U.S. President elections in our nearby city. It was a kind of a crazy to see big pictures of the Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the streets when walking to the mall few years ago.
Writing this comment reminds me from the incident that happened to me once. And it shows too how monoculture the World really is and were even years ago.
In the year 2001 they showed the WTC-Pentagon show live in two channels here. I was visiting my grandmother then and she watched her every day The Bold and The Beautiful show when the picture suddenly changed to the live broadcast from the New York. I called my dad to open his TV and then we watched that happening for the rest of the day and the evening. I was telling my dad that those towers are coming down, but he didn’t believed that. I had a clear vision a few days earlier, when driving my car, that I was in one of the WTC-towers in the high floor and then it begins to shake really much like in the earthquake and I was in the panic. It was so strong experience that I have to stop driving for a while and calm down. I was coming from my friend’s home and he have the picture of the WTC-towers as a wallpaper in his computer and I was imagining when driving home how the towers would be seen from where I were then ergo about the 13 miles from the nearest City if they were there, and that’s when the vision hits. I don’t know what that was about, but few days later 9/11 happened.
Strange coincidence at least.
Now, because of that war/”war” near us and because we are almost joined the NATO, most people here adore the USA and even that old senile president more than ever.
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Suominen- What do you think about the films of Aki Kaurismäki? He was a big deal in art house circles here in the States but seems to have fallen off the map. Do you have any idea what he’s doing these days? He came off as a drinker in interviews and he crapped all over Hollywood in the last interview I read, maybe 15 years ago or more, so maybe he’s persona non grata. He is the only Finnish filmmaker to get any kind of audience here in the good old USA.
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I have watched most of his pictures once and some of them twice. I like his unique style, but in my opinion his movies are somehow quite boring and I don’t have enough strength to watc them often or many times. And the smell of the cigarettes comes too strongly to our livingroom from his movies.
He is famous here, but we don’t have real moviestars or star directors or anything like that here in the Finland. Just some quys and gills who are more familiar than others, but they walk among us and drink beer in bars with us like any other people. Aki lives most of his time in the Portugal anyway and only came here in the summer time. So everybody knows here who he is and some of his films at least, but thats it.
He have been quite quiet in film making many years, but started to make a new movie last year.
We have Renny Harlin too! (“Die Hard 2”, “cliffhanger”…) He was a quite big “star” some years ago in the Hollywood, but now he is making movies in Hong Kong or Somewhere in Asia anyway. Quite a coincidence by the way that he was watching the 9/11 event from the balcony of his apartment in the New York. What a show have that been for a action movie director? (Or maybe he was an assistant director for the Cameron? Hmm.. I didn’t write that!)
In another case regarding my other comment about the Adler typewriter in “The Shining” (It seems it’s not released jet for some reason) I found a picture where Kubrick writes with the different Adler typewriter during the filming of “The Shining”. (https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/q66iun/adler_tippa_s_from_1969_ive_been_on_the_lookout/ )
I was wondering why he chose that German made typewriter brand that means an eagle (Like the “first” LM in Apollo missions) in English, but maybe he just liked that brand. Jack wears a shirt with an eagle picture in it in one of the scenes nevertheless.
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Big posters of Trump and Biden? Weird!
And a premonition about 9/11, wow.. I guess you are either tapped into some unknown wavelength, or, the predictive programming was very very effective in your case, ha.
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And “our” town is more like a village than big town even in the Finland’s scale, only about 40 000 inhabitants. I maybe sometimes accidentally write it as a city, but a town is more suitable, I think. We don’t really don’t have any real big cities here at all. Our biggest town is Helsinki and there are just about 632 000 inhabitants.
The posters were in the centre of the town in the walking street between the town hall and old mall. I don’t know any American citizen here, but this is some kind of famous tourist town (Rauma, and it’s old centre town, which is one of the Unesco World heritage Sites) and here use to casually visit an American cruise ships before the Covid hysteria, but I don’t think there visited any American passenger ships during the last elections. So I don’t know any reasonable reasons for the posters.
And about that “premonition” of mine, How much I want to believe the first alternative to be the right one, I have to be reasonable and recognize the latter alternative to be more plausible. The towers were everywhere before the incident, in the television series, magazines, movies, cartoons, and even in my friend’s computer desktop, like I wrote before. We were aware of the previous attack against the towers, and I don’t like high places, and I have vivid imagination so it was not so miraculous thing to imagine the towers to be attacked sooner or later. The predictive programming was really working for me, yes. That was one of the main points I was trying to tell with my writing that it really doesn’t matter so much where You live to be effected about the same things and the same propaganda. In the western World anyway.
I used to spend too much time in the libraries in my youth, when other kids were hanging in the streets, were into the sport hobbies or just living the life. I was not so good at school, partly because I was asking too much questions and I knew sometimes more than the teacher and I gained some kind of a trouble student status. I was maybe too selective too with the interests. I read many kind of books in the library or in the home nonetheless, mostly stories from history or from the World War II or science Fiction and all the books from the WWII fighter planes, and I read all science, technology and car magazines available then. In one of the 90’s Finnish science magazine, which was short lived and I don’t remember it’s name anymore was writing where were described the structures of the WTC towers. In the article they told that the floor construction was such (Kinda like dangling or something like that. Predictive programming perhaps?) that the tower may fall down if the big enough airplane hits in it.
There were also the story from the WW II era bomber hitting the Empire State Building many years ago and that the tower were survived so well because of the different and much stronger structure than were in the WTC towers. I haven’t find that magazine afterwards, but I remember that I asked one time in my workplace’s coffee table from my coworkers that if they have read the magazine article where read that the WTC towers may crash down if the Jumbo Jet size plane hits them hard enough. (Yes, I was very popular in the company’s social evenings…or not.) They all just stared me a few seconds without saying anything and then keep on talking about how much they were drunk in the last weekend and whose car service bill was the biggest this month and other important businesses. They later talked to me less after the towers felled down and just stared me few days.
One day when one of my work mate said that he was going to the Thailand in the Christmas holidays I warned him to be aware that if the water in the beach disappears suddenly to the see he must run very fast to the highest place or in to the high and strong building because there are tidal wave coming. He looked me like I was lunatic and said nothing to me, but that was the Year 2004 when the big tsunami really hits in the Christmas time in the Thailand and the other Asian countries and over 200 000 people died. My co-worker survived, because he was not in the beach when the wave hits, but three from his travelling group died including the doctor of our company.
When I went back to the work after the holidays everybody just stood still and stared me without saying anything and were like “We make years fun of that guy and thought that he was just some weirdo trying to show off with his useless trivial information” or something like that.
That’s my life. (Too) much information, premonitions, predictive programming, happenstances or what? I really don’t know. Maybe I found it out some day.
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Incredible story.. in an earlier time they might’ve accused you of witchcraft. But that time I guess you didn’t have a vision, you just had information that happened to come up on a roll of the dice. Good for your rep, not so good for those unfortunate tsunami victims.. yikes. That’s got to be one of the most terrifying of natural disasters.
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Yes, that was too horrible event to really comprehend.
And that was really the World wide tragedy and there were victims from almost all of the countries. Our current president was there in the middle of the happening and hardly survived from it. Happening like that changes a person for sure for a way or the other. Many are still suffering from it almost 2o years after the happening.
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That was a very refreshing late night reading for me. Thank You, Tyrone.
I was wondering how do You know if Viet Harlan actually did direct those battle scenes by himself? Maybe he was just helped with the same people than Kubrick was and neither did the directions of those scenes. It’s not unusual in the movie productions that there are several assistant directors directing some of the footage. I think that’s the reason why there are so many similar car chasing scenes happening in Paris in so many different movies. Same camera movements and same kind of crashes with even same model of old Peugeot cars and everything. Maybe the main director just give the guidelines how the scene should look like.
How much real power for example Kubrick really have after all in his first movies or “real” movies anyway. Maybe the first two was really he directing, but later he could have more help from authority and real experts. How much the stories about Stanley being really straight-laced and over demanding with the actors and the filming scenes were just stories to prop up his image as a bizarre but very talented artist? Maybe it was just his made-up character when he was playing his role? I believe that they let him really direct some of his later movies by himself however in return of his kind work with the propaganda. Was he trying to blow the whistle while doing those later movies is maybe worth of another comment in another time.
I once read that in Soviet Union they selected the talented individuals in the very young ages and trained them in the fitted profession from the kindergarten. Maybe that is the case with the juiced bastards in the west too. Little Stanley liked cameras so much when he was a kid and the rest is history. Maybe they have some kind of methods to perceive the talents in the young age. Or maybe they have the method to seed the though of the talent in the child’s mind. Like that DeCaprio character used to do in… Or maybe it’s time for me to go to sleep.
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My old man was in the show biz rackets, doing everything at one point or another: from stunt man to actor to script doctor- his main focus was art direction as that was the union he started in. He told me stories where a good director will deploy his troops to get the vision he wants and a bad director will listen to suggestions and then go on a power trip and reject them all, even though he has no clue what he really wants. The director has great power on the set, but he often loses power in post production. Kubrick held sway over his entire production all the way to the advertising campaign. Not all directors want to do that, but SK seemed a tad obsessive. Where the director gets his way starts with the budget and who wants to back him. SK got all the financing he wanted which tells me he was juiced and then some. As for telling a story where battle scenes need to be huge, that is a collaboration between finance, producers, camera crew, stunt men, assistant directors, writers and ultimately the director. I imagine in Germany Veit Harlan was involved in creating the battle scene because SK had never attempted such a thing. He certainly learned the lesson as Spartacus proves. Kirk Douglas was probably deeply involved in organizing that connection. It was his clout that got the picture made in the first place and he backed Kubrick. James Harris took care of the financing particulars. Everyone had an assignment. (If only the casting director knew what he was doing.)
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Thank You for Your answer. I think too that Kubrick may really have an higher than average skills in directing, was it because he was natural talent or good learner or if he was surrounded by the very talented and influential people, or maybe because all of those. That Kirk Douglas connection is a big clue of course, I think. There seems to be much real power with the famous actors indeed. In these two movie cases the Douglas was maybe in command over the Kubrick, or he was too doing what he was told to do, or maybe he rally trusted Stanley to be as talented as they think he was. I don’t know how those thinks goes, but I think there are at least two kind of the movies, caricaturing speaking, those made for the money and those made for the propaganda. Of course it’s not so black and white, but the movies like Dr. Strangelove or 2001 are made for pure propaganda purposes I think and that’s why the people who were making it were not just an ordinary movie making people, but were mostly selected because of their connections with the higher power. Right? I think the first movies of Kubrick were just practice runs and because of gaining the fame for the future projects that have bigger meanings.
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About the Shining I think the main scheme is really simple and it tells about the writer who works as a winter caretaker in the hotel and loses his mind while trying to write his book. The director of the hotel plants the seed of the axemurders in the Jack’s mind in the beginning of the movie. I can’t see all the alternative schemes in this movie, but maybe they are there too. The possible historical angle told here is interesting too. I keep it in my mind when I watch it next time.
What do You think about the alleged hidden Moon Mission connections in the Shining? I think that the Jack’s typewriter which brand is the Adler is almost white when first seen, but it’s getting darker during the movie. I think it pose as the LM in the Apollo missions. The “first” LM was named as an Eagle which is Adler in Germany. And because the LM was actually the same with all the missions they just painted and repaired that same prop over and over again between the photo-ops. That’s what is the real meaning of the repeatedly painted typewriter in the Shining IMO. The Adler brand is not an typical choice for an American author and the model of that Adler is too big and heavy to be a travel typewriter. More preferable typewriter for Jack would be the travel versions of the for example Corona, Remington, Royal or even Italian Olivetti I think, but why German made big Adler instead? It’s more suitable for office works anyway.
Last minute addition: I found from the net a picture where Stanley is writing with another and different Adler typewriter and maybe he just liked that brand. But that brand and model is still rather unusual choice for an American author IMO.
The lamp in the table beside of the typewriter has no visible electric cable in it so I think It resembles the Sun. The movie has much Apollo stuff in it anyway, like Danny’s Apollo 11 sweater or the Indian culture style wall ornaments which remind a lot of the Saturn rockets. I can’t believe that so pedantic Kubrick just happened to randomly pick some kind of a typewriter in the so high level movie. If those little details and those many continuity errors don’t mean anything then maybe he wasn’t so good director after all. I think he was not so bad that all the anomalies in the movie were just mistakes or coincidences.
Some say that Kubrick was really filming the Moon Trek scenes when they officially said he was supposed to do post-productions of the 2001. We can’t know how much he really did oneself with his movie productions and how much he spent that alleged time with the secret works, can we?
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About the Shining I think the main scheme is really simple and it tells about the writer who works as a winter caretaker in the hotel and loses his mind while trying to write his book. The director of the hotel plants the seed of the using the axe for killing in the Jacks mind in the beginning of the movie. I can’t see the alternative schemes, but maybe they are there too. The possible historical angle told here is interesting too. I keep it in my mind when I watch it next time.
What do You think about the alleged hidden Moon Mission connections in the Shining? I think that the Jack’s typewriter which brand is the Adler is almost white when first seen, but it’s getting darker during the movie. I think it pose as the LM in the Apollo missions. The “first” LM was named as an Eagle which is Adler in Germany. And because the LM was actually the same with all the missions they just painted and repaired that same prop over and over again between the photo-ops. That’s what is the real meaning of the repeatedly painted typewriter in the Shining IMO. The Adler brand is not an typical choice for an American author and the model of that Adler is too big and heavy to be a travel typewriter. More preferable typewriter for Jack would be the travel versions of the for example Corona, Remington, Royal or even Italian Olivetti I think, but why German made big Adler instead? It’s more suitable for office works anyway.
Last minute addition: I found from the net a picture where Stanley is writing with another and different Adler typewriter and maybe he just liked that brand. But that brand and model is still rather unusual choice for an American author IMO.
The lamp in the table beside of the typewriter has no visible electric cable in it so I think It resembles the Sun. The movie has much Apollo stuff in it anyway, like Danny’s Apollo 11 sweater or the Indian culture style wall ornaments which remind a lot of the Saturn rockets. I can’t believe that so pedantic Kubrick just happened to randomly pick some kind of a typewriter in the so high level movie. If those little details and those many continuity errors don’t mean anything then maybe he wasn’t so good director after all. I think he was not so bad that all the anomalies in the movie were just mistakes or coincidences.
Some say that Kubrick was really filming the Moon Trek scenes when they officially said he was supposed to do post-productions of the 2001. We can’t know how much he really did oneself with his movie productions and how much he spent that alleged time with the secret works, can we?
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First there shows no comment at all and then there were two copies of the same comment. I chanced the few lines in the second attempt, because I thought they were the reasons for the cencoring the comment, but the delay was because of something else I wrote.
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S- The simple answer to the typewriter question is Jack probably purloined the Adler from one of the hotel offices. Use a big machine to write a big novel. But the question of travel typewriters got me to thinking just how much of anything could the Torrance family bring to the hotel in that little VW beetle? If they could take, what, one suitcase each, Wendy would be doing the laundry ever other day.
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