ashthomas//blog

ashthomas//blog

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

"Just about every doorway in London has been captured and placed inside this cabin" The Guardian has a fascinating article by Jon Ronson about his chance to go through Stanley Kubrick's archives. There he finds the Causabon-like obsessive research that Kubrick did for all his movies. He writes about entering one of Kubrick's archive rooms:
Tony takes me into a large room painted blue and filled with books. "This used to be the cinema," he says.
"Is it the library now?" I ask.
"Look closer at the books," says Tony.
I do. "Bloody hell," I say. "Every book in this room is about Napoleon!"
"Look in the drawers," says Tony.
I do.
"It's all about Napoleon, too!" I say. "Everything in here is about Napoleon!"

Of course, Kubrick never got the chance to make his Napoleon movie, but his attention to detail in everything is shown even with something as seemingly trivial as a doorframe:
In one portable cabin, for example, there are hundreds and hundreds of boxes related to Eyes Wide Shut, marked EWS - Portman Square, EWS - Kensington & Chelsea, etc, etc. I choose the one marked EWS - Islington because that's where I live. Inside are hundreds of photographs of doorways. The doorway of my local video shop, Century Video, is here, as is the doorway of my dry cleaner's, Spots Suede Services on Upper Street. Then, as I continue to flick through the photographs, I find, to my astonishment, pictures of the doorways of the houses in my own street.

And this is for one scene in Eyes Wide Shut that lasts no more than a few seconds.

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