Stanley Kubrick - Three Letters

I waited too long to see the London Design Museum's incredibly popular Stanley Kubrick exhibition, and so it's probably my fault that I found it frustrating.  Leaving it until the very last day to take in this comprehensive encyclopedia - an understatement, no doubt about it - of props, objects of inspiration, photographs, behind-the-scenes footage, set designs, and curios, was a mistake.  Too many people, shuffling at snail-pace, often four or five bodies deep, through the Design Museum's rather claustrophobic space made for an unsatisfying and clammy experience. 

Stanley Kubrick - not a 'stick-in-the-mud' type

Amid the bustling throngs, though, were delightful asides and what stayed with me, other than Jack Torrance's typewriter from The Shining which gave me a visceral thrill, was some of the exhibition's correspondence.  In particular, three typed letters captured something of the essence of Stanley Kubrick: the director's forensic attention to detail, his relentless energy and research, and also, unexpectedly, his dark sense of mischief.

Jack Torrance's typewriter

There's probably a tendency to think that modern film-making has a greater degree of complexity than that of the last century.  But new technology solves immense logistical problems.  Full Metal Jacket famously turned an East London gasworks, marked for demolition, into the war-torn Vietnamese city of Hué.  Working alongside those tasked with the razing of this area, Kubrick merged his story into the real-time demolition of the site.  A request - the first of those three letters - to hold off on removing rubble was sent to Derek Hutton, the Head of Public Relations at British Gas.  CGI would have solved this problem swiftly, negating the temporal problems of not being able to revisit scenes that weren't quite right come the final cut.  It sounds obvious, but it needs saying: twentieth century cinema is a foreign country, they made films differently there. 

Smokestack lightning, shining just like gold

Interesting, too, to see Kubrick slipping the glorious Americanism 'smokestack' into this letter.  Did his time filming the Parris Island boot camp scenes permeate his vocabulary?  I like to think so.  

And then there's Kubrick's search for a 'mad computer scientist' to help advise on 'jargon' in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  What I love about this letter to Roger Caras, the Vice President of Kubrick's production company who is liaising with IBM, is the proviso that the scientist can't be a 'stick-in-the-mud-type'.  Thinking of HAL, the computer that goes rogue in the film, tells you much about that adjective 'mad' and how Kubrick wanted to avoid stuffy geekery.  HAL's dialogue required a sinister tone, an unsettling, barely perceptible edge.  With the help of Arthur C Clarke's novel, it certainly pulled this off.  Incidentally, and I wouldn't have spotted this if I hadn't read it, look at the one letter shift to the right between HAL and IBM.  Although it's been dismissed by Kubrick as coincidence, there's almost certainly some disingenuous mischief going on here.   

"Look, Dave, I can see you are really upset about this."

Indeed, attention to detail allied to incredible craft.  You sometimes need to remind yourself that 2001: A Space Odyssey was made in 1968, almost a decade before Star Wars.  This gorgeous dystopian ballet in space still looks stunning.  Maybe that's one of the things about Kubrick; his films are almost ageless. Never do you find yourself thinking that they look clunky or unreal. The first time I ever saw the film, I had to double check that the ape creatures at the film's beginning were indeed actors in costumes.

Finally, there's my favourite piece in the exhibition.  This time it's a letter to Stanley Kubrick. Tad Michel, the General Manager of the Timberline Lodge, the hotel featured in The Shining is expressing reservations about using a real number for the haunted hotel room. Rather than using the extant number 217 he suggests alternatives, and we end up with Room 237 

"You're scared of Room 237, ain't ya?"

What's odd about the letter is Tad's remark that people are already hankering to see the room, yet the anticipation is that future guests might have been put off.  Nonsense!  Like the front seat of a roller coaster, no Kubrick fan worth his salt is going to turn that room down.  And anyway, if you've got qualms about the room, I'm not sure the hotel as a whole is going to be your choice destination for a mini-break. I certainly would love to visit.  The Shining is my favourite of Kubrick's films, and - I'm rather obvious - Danny's go-kart journey around the garishly carpeted corridors of the Overlook Hotel is my favourite scene.  

Part of the reason that I enjoyed these letters was their accessibility: moments of calm egress between the crowds.  Whilst around thirty people gathered around those gloriously obscene props from A Clockwork Orange - I did take a wicked pleasure in listening into a mother try and explain one of the tables from the Korova Milk Bar to her two young children - I could read at my pleasure.  

"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka!"

Indeed, a quieter visit would have probably submerged me into 'Kubrick World' for a good three hours or so. And even with the hour that I spent in there, I did come out with the urge to fire up the films again: to have my hair shaved and get yelled at by Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, to head out on a perilous body-recovering spacewalk with Dr. Bowman, or, to follow the yellow Beetle sedan on that dizzying ride up to the Overlook.