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RONSON: In 1996, I received
a telephone call out of the blue.

It was a man calling himself Tony.

He said his employer
would like a copy of a documentary...

...I'd made about the Holocaust.

I said, "Who's your employer?"

He said, "I can't tell you."
I said, "Oh, go on."

He said,
"Okay. It's Stanley Kubrick."

It was a huge surprise.

By 1996, Kubrick had become
in the public's eyes...

...a reclusive mythical figure...

...never appearing in public
and hardly ever releasing films...

...although
it hadn't always been that way.

In the 1950s and 60s, he produced
one brilliant film every few years.

It was an amazing track record.

These were masterpieces...

...classics that changed the way
we looked at cinema.

He was the most important
and mysterious director...

...in the world.

[SCREAMS]

RONSON:
But then the gaps between releases...

...of new films got longer and longer.

What was he doing?

I sent the tape and waited
for something amazing to happen.

For an invitation to the Kubrick house
or something.

But something else happened.

Just as he finished
editing Eyes Wide Shut...

...his first film in 12 years, he died.

It's a few years later.

Unexpectedly, Tony, Kubrick's assistant,
phones again...

...and suddenly I get the invitation
to the Kubrick house, near St Albans.

Tony had been reading
one of my books...

...and he remembered our phone call
from years before...

...and so he thought it might be nice
to invite me up for bit of a tour.

TONY:
We've got the builders in at the moment.

RONSON: How long have they been here?
- A couple of years, longer.

Uh....

Place needed a lot of work done to it.

Home improvements,
as you may imagine...

...were not high
on Stanley's list of priorities.

This is one of our, uh, Portakabins.

Full of stuff.

Let me, uh, put the lights on.

RONSON: Stanley Kubrick's house
is, amazingly, full of boxes.

There were boxes everywhere.

RONSON: How many boxes would you say
there are in total?

I really can't say.
I mean, clearly over a thousand.

Yeah. But I wouldn't know,
because they're all over the place.

RONSON:
Where are they?

Oh, everywhere in the house.
I mean, the--

Half the house was filled
with boxes and trunks.

RONSON: Tony and Jan
say that some of these boxes...

...haven't been opened for decades.

I adore Kubrick's films
and I find him so mysterious.

I would love to be the first person
to look through them.

I ask the family and they say yes.

It's relics, isn't it?

It's something very strange that's leftover.
This person has touched that.

So I can only imagine
that if you're a total film fan...

...that then the boxes
attain that level.

RONSON:
I do sense that there is some concern...

...about what I might do with what I find.

That's what worries me, that people...

...pick up a fact or a group of facts
and run away with them...

...and build this Frankenstein out of it.

Um, you know, which is tough for us.

Heh. And wrong, inaccurate.

RONSON: I start randomly in a Portakabin
with a box marked Islington...

...which is where I live.

This is my video shop.

This is my drycleaners.

These are doorways
in my neighborhood...

...and this is what someone's written
on them.

All of these archive boxes here...

...are mainly photographic
research for, um, Eyes Wide Shut.

Everything from doorways
to street scenes.

Cafes.

And apartment interiors.

RONSON:
It's like the whole of London...

- ...is in this Portakabin.
TONY: Yeah.

And there's a whole box full of gates,
you know, estate gates.

RONSON: For one scene in Eyes Wide Shut.
TONY: For one scene, yeah.

RONSON: Did you do this in all of the films?
TONY: Yeah, yeah.

RONSON: Who were the photographers?
TONY: I think most of the London stuff...

...was done by Manuel Harlan,
Jan's son.

And in fact, you can see there it says,
"Manuel, EWS", Eyes Wide Shut.

RONSON:
How many photographs did you take?

I don't know.
I can't remember. Thirty thousand?

Was I think--It was a number
I arrived at once.

RONSON: So how long were you
traipsing through London for?

- A year.
- Really. Every day?

Yeah. Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

RONSON:
Did you feel like it was a good year?

MANUEL:
I thought it was a great year actually.

Originally,
I was just gonna do stately homes...

...and then suddenly I found myself,
um, looking for coffee shops...

...and then, um,
doorways that could be...

...you know, the hooker's doorway
where Tom meets the prostitute.

You took some hooker doorway
photographs on my street...

...which I thought was both exciting,
but also a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Ha-ha-ha. Really?

Stanley was always keen on getting sort
of the detritus of people's lives.

So he loved me sort of getting,
sort of, bedside tables...

...with sort of, you know,
drying socks and a radio-alarm clock...

...and a Mickey Mouse light
or something like that.

He'd say, "No Art Department
would ever make this."

You know, it's so bizarre
that you'd never think of it.

RONSON:
You shot a lot of toy shops as well.

MANUEL:
Yeah, toy shops, mortuaries.

Oh, costume places.
That was a really long job actually.

I was in every costume shop
in the southeast of England.

RONSON: And did he look at them all?
- All with tremendous excitement.

There was a time when I would get,
you know, three or four phone calls a day...

...saying, you know,
"What are you doing?

Have you found anything good yet?"
And, you know, "What's this place like?"

And he had such a charisma
that you wanted to please him.

RONSON: Would he not be overwhelmed
by the amount of things he'd look through?

No.

I would say he was rarely overwhelmed.

- Yeah, he was--I mean, um...
- Ha, ha.

...it is true
that he was an impatient man...

- ...but immensely patient with his work.
- Mm.

CHRISTIANE: He had a particular gift,
I think, that was a real gift...

...in that most people
if they work very constant...

...the doors have to be closed,
everything has to be quiet and, unh.

He could be interrupted all the time,
he would immediately go back...

...to whatever it was.

He would refocus very quickly
within a second.

MANUEL: There was one time
when he wanted me to shoot...

...the whole of Commercial Road...

...from one end of the street to the other.
I mean, it's not a short street.

But he didn't want the buildings
to tilt forward or back.

So I had to take a big ladder...

...with my camera
and there's this huge ladder.

It was about, you know,
12-foot high, this ladder.

I had to climb
to the top of the ladder...

...shoot a shop front,
move the ladder on 12 feet...

...climb it again,
shoot another shop front.

And then eventually be able to, you know,
stick together with Sellotape...

...a long, long sort of--
Literally, 6 meter row of photographs.

And he was,
"So how soon can you get here?"

You know, "Come right away."

And, um, so I drove straight back.

Having spent an hour
in Snappy-Snaps just waiting.

RONSON: After Manuel
got his photos developed, he went home...

...and Sellotaped them all together...

...so they create a perfect panorama
of the whole of Commercial Road.

Then he took the roll back to the mansion
where Stanley Kubrick was waiting...

...with his art director, Roy Walker.

And he came in with Roy, and said:

"Roy, sure beats going there, doesn't it?"

And, uh, Roy said, "Oh, Stanley,
you're gonna have to go eventually."

Listen, no one will bother us.

It's okay. Come on.

Come on.

RONSON: This is the hooker-doorway scene
from Eyes Wide Shut.

It was eventually shot
on a set at Pinewood.

A random search of a thousand boxes
can drive someone crazy...

...so I try and be more chronological
about it.

Although there isn't much
from the early days when Kubrick...

...was making a film
every few years.

Just things like some old film cans
of screen tests from long ago.

Inevitably, the boxes are mainly filled
with things from the later years...

...from 2001: A Space Odyssey
onwards...

...when there were the ever-lengthening
gaps between films.

These boxes tell a lot of stories,
but mainly, they tell the stories of the gaps.

2001 was a watershed. Prior to that,
it was just the way films were made.

Go on location to Spain...

...you know, for Spartacus
or Paths of Glory.

Uh, make those films
without doing much more...

...than everybody else was doing
at that stage.

But it was post 2001 that Stanley
then began to get involved...

...in everything that went on.

TONY: Stanley had a tough time
keeping up with himself.

Sort of Catherine wheel of ideas
and projects and things to do and so on.

These memos date back to '68
when we were doing 2001.

"Please see that there is a supply of melons
kept in the house at all times.

Do not let number go below three without
buying some more. Thanks, Stanley."

By their memos you shall know them.

"Please check with the weather bureau
and find out what the barometric pressure...

...in London was last Friday 11th of October
between 6 p.m. and 4 a.m. in the morning.

Also, find out what the average barometric
pressure is on most days of the year...

...what is considered extremely high
and what is considered extremely low...

...and how they would describe
the pressure...

...on Friday the 11th of October
during the times I mentioned."

God knows what that was about.
I mean....

RONSON:
He doesn't say why he wants to know?

No. Ha, ha.

I mean, you know, things are done...

...on a strictly on a need-to-know basis,
you know?

He used to come in the morning. I mean,
was Stanley up all night writing memos?

I mean, where does he find the time,
you know?

RONSON:
And then there were the fan letters.

Even though Kubrick rarely wrote back
to his fans...

...the fan letters
are perfectly preserved.

The way they've been filed
is extraordinary.

Kubrick has written "F-P"
on the positive ones...

..."F-N"on the negative ones.

The ones from Albuquerque have been put
in the file marked Albuquerque and so on.

On the crazy letters,
Kubrick has written "Crank."

RONSON:
Why did he keep a crank file?

Um, just in case somebody,
uh, suddenly...

...sprung out of the woodwork
and did something, I mean...

...we'd have a record
of who they were.

RONSON: So if he was ever assassinated,
the police would have a list of suspects?

Well, they would certainly have the,
you know, the, uh, crank files.

We had, you know, general crank files
and we had crank letters...

...broken up by film as well.

RONSON: Why?
- It was more orderly.

- Orderly.
- More orderly.

Yeah, I mean, logical.

VINCENT:
"Dear Stanley Kubrick...

...I can no longer resist what I hope
is a brotherly urge to write to you.

It baffles and infuriates me...

...how anyone of your talent
can be so perverse or incompetent...

...or cowardly or blind or whatever
the hell it is.

But the fact of the....

RONSON:
I wondered what would drive someone...

...to write a crank letter
to Stanley Kubrick...

...which is why I've come to see
the author of one.

It turns out that Vincent
was no ordinary crank.

He was a successful TV scriptwriter
and a great Kubrick fan.

Everything was okay in Vincent's life
until the day London Weekend Television...

...commissioned him to write
a one-hour-fifty-minute drama...

...called The Death of Adolf Hitler.

VINCENT:
More and more came to me.

But I thought it will be so good
when they get it.

When they see that their one hour fifty
minutes is in fact around about six hours.

They will think
that this is just wonderful.

RONSON: This was 1973. Kubrick's films
were changing cinema...

...and the way people wrote films back then,
which is why Vincent felt so inspired...

...to deliver his six-hour
Death of Adolf Hitler.

But they brought it down
to one hour fifty minutes.

And all the bits they had cut out,
were the bits that I wrote with my heart.

It was like cardboard.

We wouldn't be in this mess now
if it wasn't for you!

You have betrayed the party!

You have betrayed Germany!
You have betrayed me!

Thank you, gentlemen.

RONSON:
The Death of Adolf Hitler is similar to...

...but definitely not as good
as Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.

When they go down into the mine,
everyone would be alive.

There would
be no shocking memories...

...and the prevailing emotion will be one
of nostalgia for those left behind...

...combined with a spirit of bold curiosity
for the adventure ahead. Ha!

They had reduced it, reduced it, reduced it
to a very mediocre little thing.

And it seemed incredibly unjust
to me.

I should be up in the ranks with Kubrick,
and I wasn't. And it wasn't my fault.

I got there and all that. Yeah.

I remember the night that I actually saw
The Death of Adolf Hitler on television.

I put a coat on,
got a bottle of scotch...

...went out in the garden
under the stars, freezing...

...and drank the bottle of scotch.

And I thought, "That's the end.
That's the end."

RONSON: It was when Vincent
got back inside from his garden...

...that he wrote the crank letter
to Stanley Kubrick.

"Dear Stanley Kubrick...

...I can no longer resist what I hope
is a brotherly urge to write to you."

RONSON:
Vincent's letter to Kubrick is very long.

He tells him that 2001
was a grave disappointment to him...

...and he explains
why in enormous detail.

And now here's this for patronizing.
"I rarely write to strangers.

If you find this letter offensive, consider
how very few people I find worth offending.

[LAUGHING]

I just want you to do better."

I must have been thinking to myself that
I should be in the Kubrick league anyway.

If they'd done my play properly,
I would be up in that league.

So I'm gonna get up in that league
by being up there...

...and talking to him down here.

That is desperation.

RONSON:
And he saw it as a crank letter?

Yes. Well, that's what he wrote at the top,
wasn't it? Crank.

Yeah.

RONSON: After The Death of Adolf Hitler,
Vincent had one more go.

He tried to write,
The Birth of Jesus Christ.

VINCENT:
And I spent the next two years.

I don't think I ever got past page three
or four, and it was drivel.

That was two and a half years output.
Was the three pages of drivel.

So you just wrote--?
You just wrote and rewrote...

- ...the first three pages of this script?
- Yeah. Yeah.

RONSON: You were like Jack Nicholson
in The Shining.

He's in a room
writing over and over again.

Then his wife reads
what he's written for all those months.

VINCENT: Yeah.
RONSON: And it's just the same line.

VINCENT: Yeah.
RONSON: All work and no play...

...makes Jack a dull boy,
over and over again.

Not far off that, it was, yeah.

- Golly.
- Yeah, golly. Ha, ha.

RONSON: I start coming
to the Kubrick house about once a month...

...to look through the boxes,
although it's hard...

...because they keep getting rearranged.

There might be no more films to make...

...but there are box sets
and retrospectives to oversee.

I think about Vincent, the crank writer,
as I look through the boxes.

He abandoned his artistic ambitions
to become a psychotherapist.

He felt that imperfect people
in an imperfect industry...

...had damaged his work.

The boxes show that Kubrick
was forever guarding...

...against the same thing happening
to him...

...even if that meant him going
to tremendous lengths...

...like measuring all the newspaper ads
to make sure...

...he was getting his money's worth.

JULIAN: There was one incident
where he thought an ad in Germany...

...had been smaller
than the ad we had reserved.

So we measured the ads.
It was a few millimeters short.

RONSON: How did he notice
the missing millimeters?

Because he measured them,
he looked at it, he was concerned about it.

So did he did notice it
with his naked eye or did he happen to--?

JULIAN:
No, he noticed it with his naked eye.

He-- Ha-ha-ha.

He noticed a lot of things
with his naked eye.

RONSON: So he's got like a pile of ads
and he's going through them...

...one, then the next, and then the next,
and the next.

And he thinks, "Did that one--?"

Attached to each ad is a schedule
of advertising, that says on this day...

...the Friday or the Saturday, we will have
a 450 millimeter ad in this newspaper.

Four hundred and fifty millimeter ad,
he measured it...

...it wasn't 450 millimeters,
it was 437 or 438 millimeters total.

That was enough to say,
"We must find out what's happening here."

So I flew to Frankfurt
with a piece of artwork...

...an ad was created,
the metal plate was made...

...and indeed there was shrinkage
three or four millimeters each side.

At which point Stanley said,
"Fine, I am now happy.

We should think about doing ads
some other way.

They should think about doing ads
photographically.

Not on metal plates."

Talk about prescient, which is the way
advertising is made right now.

RONSON:
When he said, "I'm happy now"...

...was he happy now
because he'd been proven right?

Or was he happy now
because the ad was the right millimeters.

He'd learned something new
that that does happen with ads.

RONSON: He wasn't a fan of holidays,
was he? Or sort of down time.

RICK: I don't think he ever understood
what holidays were about.

I remember once I was in France
on holiday...

...and desperate to go down
to the beach with my wife...

...and young daughter who
was walking around our apartment...

...with a bucket and spade
ready to go.

And, uh, the last thing I wanted to do
was to tell Stanley, who was on the phone:

"Um, yeah, I gotta go now,
because we gotta go to the beach."

Because he just wouldn't have got
that nor would he have appreciated...

...you know,
that I was telling him this.

And, um....

But eventually the conversation
went on for so long...

...that my wife and daughter
were making signs at me.

I said, "Stanley, I've gotta go.
Can I call you back later?"

And he says, "Where are you"?

I said, "I'm in France, Stanley."

"You're in France. Right.
And what are you doing there?"

I said, "I'm on holiday."
"You're on holiday."

I said, "Yeah." "Where?"

"I told you I was in Cannes."

"You're in Cannes, why?" Heh. "Why"

And the conversation just went on
and on and on and then he asked me:

"What are you gonna do there?"

I said, "We're gonna go down
to the beach, and--" "Yeah."

And I mean, I felt like
I was such an idiot.

I was going down to the beach
to build sand castles...

...and Stanley Kubrick is asking me
to explain this, which I could not do.

I just could not do.

RONSON:
Look at these photos I found.

Kubrick was looking
for the perfect sinister hat...

...for the droogs to wear
in A Clockwork Orange.

How did he know when he had found
the perfect sinister hat?

I wonder if a man who is this obsessed
with getting his work right...

...was difficult to live with.

ANYA: Who he was as a father
isn't the same person...

...as who he was
on a film set or with colleagues.

To me, he was my father.

I never felt I dare not disobey
him ever...

...uh, which I'm absolutely certain
if he was here he would laugh out loud...

...ha-ha-ha, that I feared disobeying him.

CHRISTIANE: Anya was a perfect match.
- Ha-ha-ha.

TONY: "Please call up some sort
of cat league or society...

...or something like that or a pet shop.

Find out if they make any kind of collars
that you can attach a little bell to...

...to keep the cat
from killing too many birds...

...but will break away if the cat
catches himself on a tree or branch...

...instead of hanging the cat."

Uh, Stanley was mightily preoccupied...

...with the health and safety
of his cats and dogs.

In the end, we sort of made
our own detachable collars.

We brought in some regular collars
and then sort of slit them...

...and then joined them up
with some easily breakable cotton.

RONSON: Could he laugh at himself,
at this aspect of his personality?

TONY:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, he would suddenly stop
in his tracks and go:

"Hold on a second. This is madness,"
or "This is so silly."

RONSON: And of course,
it's this attitude that makes every frame...

...of the films so special.

Well, exactly. I mean, if Stanley
wasn't producing these memos...

...he wouldn't have produced
the films that he produced.

CHRISTIANE: Stanley always
was very happy to have a new project.

He felt that it was like studying
a new subject entirely.

MAN 1: Three.
MAN 2: Agh!

CHRISTIANE: Being an eternal student,
he liked that, you know?

What fun that is,
getting all the material together.

You're like a child then.

And hence the huge archives
with so many things in them.

RONSON: But then, after Barry Lyndon,
after he'd made a total of nine films...

...years began to go by between movies.

What was he doing in there?

One thing he was doing was launching
a lengthy and unsuccessful legal bid...

...to stop the broadcast of the 1970's
TV series Space: 1999.

Stanley felt correctly, actually...

...that the use of the name,
Space: 1999...

...was in some ways ripping off
the title, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

RONSON: Kubrick wrote to his lawyer,
"The deliberate choice of a date...

...only two years away from 2001
is not accidental and it harms us.

There seems nothing left now,
but to seek the highest possible damages."

RICK: Very few film directors
will have taken...

...as strong an interest as this in a film
after it's been made as Stanley did.

RONSON: It was eight years later?
- Yeah.

Stanley regarded his films, I think,
like his children...

...and he took care of them
and I think probably...

...at least half of my time, um,
working on Stanley projects...

...were working on films that had
been made quite some time before.

RONSON: And then there were the scores
of boxes amassed...

...during the 70s and 80s and 90s
that are filled with Kubrick's search...

...for a story.

TONY: "Intelligent kangaroo-shaped reptiles
on another planet...

...intrigue and impress
a Catholic priest."

"After a holocaust has destroyed
the earth...

...some humans manage to escape
to another planet called Geta.

And there they found an entirely
different civilization...

...in which cannibalism is practiced."

"A young man creeps through a crack
on a quest for some golden worms...

...has many adventures and finally makes
it back to our own outside world...

...with a herd of white horses
and a girlfriend."

RONSON: Throughout the 70s and 80s, Tony
employed a team of readers in America.

They read thousands of novels
and sent daily reports back to England.

They were frantically searching
for the next Kubrick movie...

...but they didn't know it,
because they had no idea...

...who Tony's boss was.

TONY: I formed a company
called Empyrean Films...

...which Stanley thought sounded
like some sort of, you know...

...no-hope film production company...

...that never quite got off
the ground, you know?

He didn't want, um, the readers
to know who they were working for.

It was run rather
like a communist spy cell.

You know, nobody knew anybody else.

We didn't have
sort of social evenings...

...where all the readers got together.

And it was all run out of New York
by Judy Tobey.

RONSON: Did you ever think to yourself
in those 20 years:

"Well, what was he doing in there?"

I did. I did. I had--

I certainly had visual images...

...of this hermit sitting there,
pouring through things.

But you know, I had no--

I had no idea
why it would take somebody that long...

...because previously
he had been making movies, you know--

- About one a year.
- You know, a year apart.

And then it slowed down a bit,
but maybe it was me.

RONSON: I looked through hundreds
of these reader reports and I noticed...

...that when it comes to the evaluation,
it's almost always negative.

"This extraordinary feat of space fiction
is so densely packed...

...with outlandish ideas that it's almost
impossible to follow the plot.

Lysch seems obsessed by the role
of the devil in Catholic context...

...and wonders if he ever wrote
about anything else.

I don't see any future in it
as a dramatic entertainment of any kind."

RONSON: Deborah says that even though
she wasn't supposed to know...

...that she was reading for Kubrick,
word leaked out.

DEBORAH:
To know that you were writing...

...for that kind of a visionary
was so paralyzing.

You know, what's your first word?

And I think that a lot of the time
when the reader is aware....

...uh, where the report is going
and who is going to read it...

...um, they really turn up the wattage.

RONSON: Yeah, they're kind of showing off.
- It's showing off.

It's time to play.
It's time to be smart.

And sometimes it's even more important
to be smart than it is to be right.

Yeah. It's like the readers are saying,
"I'm better than this science fiction author."

I'm better than--I'm a better writer
than anything you will give me to read.

And, um, it really is an interesting thing
because it's much easier...

...to give a smart no,
than it is to give a smart yes.

RONSON:
I've got a bad news though, Tony.

- What's that?
- I've just found one that you read.

And you said
that you didn't recommend it.

And it was subsequently a film that became
the biggest blockbuster in--

Yeah. Look.

The Killing Fields by Bruce Robinson.

My comments.

"The screenplay was boring to read.

I kept flicking the pages to see
how many more I had to read.

The screenplay is very over written...

...and contains lengthy,
descriptive passages."

He certainly was sad that he couldn't
find a story he wanted to do.

He was, uh, depressed.

You know, and he would start
and read around.

Start this and do research
on certain things and gave up...

...and he felt it was bad luck that
he couldn't find what he wanted to do next.

RONSON: What was he looking for
when he was reading a book or...?

The magic moment of falling
in love with a story.

RONSON: I suppose the downside
of immersing yourself in the details...

...comes when your thought process
takes you to a place...

...where the detail is impossible to take.

There are boxes and boxes from the '80s
filled with immense research...

...for an eventually abandoned
Holocaust film called Wartime Lies.

You almost lose your hold on life,
it's so depressing.

You don't want to do anything
if you read enough of that stuff.

RONSON: Yeah, not easy to even
look through just those photos.

No, you sit crumpled in a corner,
you start to cry and you-- Ugh.

You know, it's too awful.

So that's why he gave that up.

And I was very glad when he gave up.

I mean, I didn't wanna see
another one of those books.

RONSON: But there was a second reason
why Wartime Lies never got made.

TONY:
We did about two years pre-production.

We built a massive, great archive
of Poland...

...of the concentration camps,
everything.

And while we were doing this two years
worth of background research...

...recall Steven Spielberg,
came along, researched...

...shot, edited
and released Schindler's List.

Which Stanley said would've been a hard
act to follow, so that was then abandoned.

RONSON:
So he went from the very beginning...

...to the very end of Schindler's List...

...in the amount of time
it took you to amass--

Doing the research, yeah.

Isn't there a lesson there?

Uh, I don't think so. Um....

Because that was the way
that Stanley made films.

RONSON: I know one thing Kubrick
was doing during those years.

He was getting annoyed
with the boxes.

He thought the lids were too tight.

TONY: There was a company
called G. Ryder up in Milton Keynes.

We phoned them up and spoke to them...

...and, um, Stanley worked out
what he thought...

...was the optimum size for a box.

Um, it was easy to handle. Easy to store.

Stanley figured, "You know,
it can't be rocket science...

...making, um, a lid that's both snug,
yet will lift off easily."

RONSON: Did he actually, um,
sit down with a pen and paper and work--?

TONY: Yeah, yeah. And worked out
exactly what it was. Yeah.

It was the internal dimensions
that we gave them.

And then we--
Stanley, rather, then specified...

...what, um, thickness or micron
of card that he wanted.

Obviously we had specific instructions
and it actually says on here.

"Lid to be not too tight, not too loose."

And then in capital letters, "Just perfect."

RONSON: You wanna give it a try?
See if the dimensions worked.

As you can see,
that lid comes off perfectly.

These are boxes that will,
you know, see us all out.

RONSON:
It's a lovely box.

It's like the 2001: A Space Odyssey
of boxes.

I found an internal memo
in one of the boxes...

...um, that, you know, I don't know
the production chief...

...at Ryder and Co. had sent
to the floor manager on their letterhead...

...but written on it was, um,
let me get the words right:

"Fussy customer.
Make sure the lids slide off properly."

And, uh, Stanley found that
terribly amusing.

Yeah, I guess we were fussy customers
as opposed to the customers...

...who didn't mind spending all afternoon
struggling trying to get a lid off.

RONSON:
He started staying in a lot more.

So much so that the outside world
no longer knew what he looked like...

...although he did go out quite frequently
to the St Alban's branch of Rymans.

He was just particularly fond
of beautiful things...

...that you buy in a stationary store.

Whether this is pads,
notebooks, folders, inks.

He had hundreds and hundreds
of bottles of inks.

I mean, we could've opened
a stationary super store.

I think Stanley had some sort of fear
that one would run--

Eventually run out of stationery,
so we had more stationary...

...you would never imagine.

RONSON:
There are still boxes full of old stationary...

...from the ancient Rymans
of days gone by.

Stanley often used to joke
that he was gonna open...

...a stationary nostalgia museum.

RONSON: I suppose stationary collecting
is the obvious hobby for a perfectionist...

...because what could be more flawless
than stationary.

He would go to Rymans and see whether
they have something new. Ha, ha.

RONSON: Nobody knew what he looked like?
- No.

No, and he paid always cash.

And he didn't want to use a credit card...

...because he didn't want to disclose his
name and get into awkward conversations.

He found it uncomfortable to be asked,
"Oh, are you Stanley Kubrick?

Did you do 2001? What is the end mean?
I didn't understand that."

He liked the fact that he was not
recognized easily.

Not that he had given people
lots of chances...

...because he didn't really go out much.

RONSON: You wouldn't need to in a place--
- He loved it here.

You know, people always sort
of point the finger on him and say:

"Oh, well this is such a strange guy
sitting in his home."

He had a lovely time.
People came to him.

RONSON: I sometimes wonder what Kubrick
would've made of this documentary.

Jan says he thinks he would've
been intrigued.

He didn't throw anything away
and he would've liked the idea...

...of someone years later,
trying to make sense of it all.

In the end, three films were released
in 19 years including one in 1987.

This is a random notebook
he sort of carried around...

...and would jot down odd notes in
at odd times.

RONSON: Will you read some of them out?
- Um, let's see what we've got here.

"Include utter banalities."

HARTMAN:
Get on your feet.

You had best unfuck yourself
or I will unscrew your head...

- ...and shit down your neck.
- Sir, yes, sir.

Private Joker, why did you join
my beloved Corps?

- Sir, to kill, sir.
- So you're a killer?

- Sir, yes, sir.
- Let me see your war face.

- Sir.
- You got a war face? Aah!

That's a war face.
Now let me see your war face.

[YELLS]

Bullshit, you didn't convince me.
Let me see your real war face.

[SCREAMS]

- You don't scare me. Work on it.
- Sir, yes, sir.

Kubrick wanted the whole cast
of the boot camp...

...to be realistic and true to the facts.
That meant 18 year olds.

And we had 2,500 casting tapes
which Leon Vitali organized...

...in the United States in various cities.

I saw well over 4,000 kids...

...who had auditioned on tape
from America.

Stanley Kubrick at Warner Bros. Studios
in London, England.

My name is Vinnie Fiorentino.

I'm an American actor and I'm sending
this to you from New York City.

I had five different machines,
all wired up...

...because there were different formats
of tape coming in.

So I rolled out of bed literally at,
like, 8:00 in the morning...

...and just wander into this room
and just start them off.

And I'd be there till 10, 11,
sometimes midnight.

RONSON: How long?
- Every day. Uh--

Four months, four and a half months.

[IN ENGLISH]

The thought of missing something
is terrifying.

And that was another thing
about Stanley, you know?

I mean, he's sort of--

He's condemned me
to this kind of way of being.

He always used to say, "Leon,
do you realize 2001, that was a paragraph...

...inside a short story."

RONSON: I saw a guy
come out of his house and climb a tree.

- Right.
- And then his friend-- Does this ring a bell?

Yeah, it does ring a bell.

RONSON: His friend is walking
playing the harmonica.

LEON: Right, yeah.
RONSON: And then his friend looks up.

- Arg!
- You're mad! Now get down out of that tree.

RONSON: And then grabs a stick, and the
guy in the tree starts hissing like a panther.

And then jumps off the tree and wrestles
him to the ground...

- ...and they start beating each other up.
LEON: Ha-ha-ha.

RONSON:
These videos are like time capsules.

You can see the moment that Leon
and Kubrick pressed the stop button...

...and the tapes got recycled
and used to record Hill Street Blues...

...or EastEnders
or a football game instead.

She moves above and beyond us.

A ghost haunting the past.

And here we sit pretending to forget...

...yet straining our ears.

We kept recycling, ha, ha,
whatever we could.

RONSON: And then there was
the audition tape that came in of the man...

...who Sellotaped a photograph
of Kubrick to a melon...

...and then shot the melon to pieces.

LEON:
And you know:

[MIMICS EXPLOSION]

...like....

And, um, so I, you know,
I told Stanley about this straight away...

...because I just though
it was just too nasty to ignore.

And before you knew it,
I mean, he actually turned up in England...

...and got into a cab in St Alban's.
He didn't know where Stanley lived.

All he had to say to the cab driver was
take me to Kubrick's house, and he did.

[LAUGHING]

And there he was on the doorstep.
It was scary. It's very freaky.

RONSON: You saw him.
You looked out the window.

No, no, I didn't see him
when he turned up.

Because I was back down at the end
to the estate in that house...

...looking at more wackos like him,
but, um, when he turned up...

...I mean, it was terrifying. It really was.

Because you realize how vulnerable
Stanley was.

I mean, someone just get into a cab
and saying take me to Kubrick's house...

...and he actually delivered him there.

And, um, yeah,
so I know in the end, um....

I think Stanley got in contact with
the Home Office and actually reported him.

You know, there were those wackos
around inside of the U.S. Forces.

I mean, there were.

So if only you could harness that kind of,
you know, madness...

...that would be something, you know,
you'd love to capture onscreen.

I mean, you know, it's what's in the eyes.

What do I think
about America's involvement in the war?

Well, I think we should win.

You motherfucker. Agh!

[SHOUTING]

RONSON:
Did any of them end up in the movie?

LEON: Oh, yeah.
RONSON: Oh, really?

LEON: Adam Baldwin,
who played Animal Mother...

...came from one of those tapes.

Arliss Howard, who played Cowboy.

Where the hell are you from, private?

- Sir, Texas, sir.
- Holy dogshit. Texas?

Only steers and queers
come from Texas, Private Cowboy.

And you don't much look like a steer to me,
so that kind of narrows it down.

- Do you suck dicks?
- Sir, no, sir.

- Are you a peter puffer?
- Sir, no, sir.

I'll bet you would fuck
a person in the ass...

...and not even have the goddamn common
courtesy to give him a reach around.

The whole platoon, main platoon, actually,
mostly came from those audition tapes.

It was really worthwhile.

RONSON: For months, I've noticed some
old film cans on a shelf in the stable block.

Nobody knows what's on them.

They're just sitting there
and have been for decades.

They can't be outtakes because
Kubrick had all his outtakes incinerated.

They turn out to be 18 hours of footage...

...that one of Kubrick's daughter's, Vivian,
shot on the set of Full Metal Jacket.

Uh, Robert. Yeah, let's see your position.

RONSON: I never meet Vivian.
She lives in Los Angeles now.

We fucked around
for an hour and 20 minutes.

MAN 1:
No, they're the ones--

MAN 2: Then we had to--
I know it seems like a lot of tea breaks.

But we had the tea break that was up at--
Over there.

We had that when he hurt his knee.

I mean, you had a tea break at 4:00?
And you have a tea break at 6:00 and--

MAN 1:
No, this is a fresh tea break.

- It came up to me--
- No, no.

But if you had a tea break at 4,
you don't have to break for this tea break.

This must just be, you know,
a complimentary tea break.

If you broke for tea at 4,
you don't have to break for tea at 6.

That's a quarter to 7
and then break for a meal at 7:30.

So figure it out.

I could do away with them all. Because
it gives me more fucking headaches...

...poxy tea breaks, than anything else.

Fucking sling them right down
that fucking fish hole.

- All right, Terry.
- All right.

- Sort of men we need, though, Stanley.
- That's right.

Now, these two men are a little far apart.

I think this last man
should move up a bit.

[MEN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]

KUBRICK: Terry.
TERRY: Yeah.

KUBRICK: In fact, there is quite
a solid mass of people on the left now.

Let's stay there now.
We're ready. Getting ready to shoot.

[APPLAUSE]

[PEOPLE CHEERING]

MAN: All right.
- Well done, beautiful.

- Ha, ha.
MAN: You okay?

He died.

Cole.

[ALL LAUGHING]

KUBRICK:
Action.

You little scumbag.
I've got your name. I've got your ass.

You will not laugh. You will not cry.

You will learn by the numbers.
I will teach you.

Now get up. Get on your feet.

[SINGING]
This is my rifle, this is my gun

This is for fighting, this is for fun

They should only do it when they say,
"This is my gun."

And then let go again.

This is for fighting, this is for fun.

This is my rifle, this is my gun

This is for fighting, this is for fun

Okay, one other thing.
There's three beats on when you do it.

It should be three shakes.
This is my gun.

No, in time to the thing.
This is my rifle, this is my gun...

...this is for fighting, this is for fun.

So give it three because a lot of people
just still touch and go what they're doing.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Okay.

This is my rifle, this is my gun

This is for fighting, this is for fun

RONSON: It was around the time
at the release of Full Metal Jacket...

...that rumors of Kubrick's apparent,
eccentric, reclusive behavior...

...began appearing in the papers.

Quote, "We're hearing stories...

...that suggest Kubrick is even more insane
than psychiatrists had led us to believe.

There's a thin line
between being an artistic perfectionist...

...and being a barking loon.

Stanley has clearly crossed that line
and then some."

A little to your left and stay there
after you move.

Okay, aim your gun.

MAN: Be careful when it goes off.
WOMAN: Okay.

MAN:
Sometimes you get a shock.

ERMEY: That was a charge in there.
- That was a real blast.

ERMEY:
I said, "You gotta be shitting me, Joker."

You think you're Mickey Spillane?

KUBRICK: That's right.
You think you're Mickey Spillane.

You think you're some kind
of fucking writer.

You gotta be shitting me, Joker.

You think you're Mickey Spillane?

- You think you're some kind of writer?
KUBRICK: "Fucking writer."

ERMEY: Was that "fucking" always--?
- You put it in.

ERMEY: You're some kind of fucking writer.
KUBRICK: Okay.

"He insists on eating all three courses
of his dinner simultaneously...

...in the manner of Napoleon.

Hates being driven faster
than 35 miles per hour...

...and refuses to fly
despite having a pilot's license."

Okay, so all y'all fire
when he hops over that concrete.

Stanley was not clinically
insane as Punch suggests.

He was not insane.

He was one of the smartest men
who ever lived.

He felt it's gone wrong...

...that I've stayed, uh, secretive.

ANYA: Or private.
- Private.

- It's different.
- I'm using the press's term.

You know, he's secretive.
I'm not secretive.

I just don't want, you know....

What had been very understandable...

...and in fact envied by many people...

...who are in public life,
uh, turned sour.

RONSON:
The truth is Kubrick didn't need to go out...

...because the whole world came to him
and the whole world was right here...

...in a thousand boxes on this estate.

Well, well, well, well, well.
How do you do, Mr. Kubrick?

Feeling all right?

No pain in the gulliver or anything?

Good.

If there's only one suggestion
I would have...

...it would be to viddy well, little brother.

Viddy well.

RONSON:
There's a videotape in the crank box...

...the box that Kubrick kept in case
he was ever assassinated...

...and the police would have
a list of suspects.

It was sent to Kubrick in the mid 80s.

The video seems to have been made
just for Kubrick.

It's threatening in a complicated way.

In it, someone pretending to be Kubrick
is beaten up...

...like the tramp in
A Clockwork Orange...

...and he ends up in a wheelchair.

This newest effort will test
the artist in all of us.

RONSON: I found your video in a box
in Stanley Kubrick's house.

VAN:
That's amazing. Yeah.

It has been 25 years since
I even thought about that video.

And when you guys called me,
I was like, "Is this some kind of joke?

Somebody pulling a prank on me?"

We were, I mean, fans of his movies...

...and he comes out with The Shining...

...and which at the time
we thought was rather muddy.

So we made this parody
and I played Kubrick.

Mr. Kubrick, most people who want
to appreciate art...

...go to the museum, not the cinema.

These are mere subtleties, padre.

I don't remember the dialogue,
but it was like:

"I am a genius.
How dare you question?"

Wouldn't we all like to play God
in some way or another?

To walk on the set, know just exactly,
precisely what you want.

To have the money to do it.

Think about it.

To work with me, the exalted one.

RONSON: It turns out that Kubrick and I
had misunderstood the tape.

They weren't trying to be threatening.
They thought they were being playful.

So you thought you were coming here
to meet a Kubrick killer?

RONSON: Because it's got knives and
it's got somebody who looks like Kubrick...

...being beaten up and then you see him
in a wheelchair and the guy...

...you know, looking like Alex,
is like screaming...

...and with his wild eyes, going,
"Viddy well, Mr. Kubrick."

Ha-ha-ha. Wow, yeah. Eh....

Nowhere near the intent.
Not even a thought of anything like that.

RONSON: That wasn't the end of the story.
Van's co-video maker, Lyle...

...decided to try and find out
what Kubrick thought of their video.

He managed to get hold
of his telephone number.

VAN:
May I speak to Stanley Kubrick, please?

[WHISPERS]
Long silence.

[IN NORMAL VOICE]
Yes, is he...?

Lyle's just going:

[BABBLING]

I wasn't planning
on actually getting through.

He goes, "Uh, Mr. Kubrick, how are you?"

Fine.

Uh, Mr. Kubrick, we sent you a tape,
Shining Clockwork.

It was a little parody we did
and wanted to know if you received it.

Yes.

And he goes,
"Well, what did you think of it?"

It was interesting.

It was--
It was just like one-word answers.

He said, "Well,
what are you working on next?"

He goes, "I have some things."

And at that point,
Lyle kind of got the idea.

Okay, we're stalkers, obviously.
We better hang up.

"Well, very nice talking to you.
Uh, take care." You know?

And it was just that.
That was the conversation.

Considering the context
of where he was at the time.

When you say death threats
and everything...

...I can see where he may
have missed the humor...

...and just caught the menacing...

...so no wonder he was a little,
uh, short with us...

...and figured we were stalking him,
you know?

RONSON: I've been coming to the
Kubrick house for five years on and off...

...because that's how long it takes
to look through a thousand boxes.

I suppose the closer you get to an enigma,
the more explicable it becomes.

Even the crazy seeming stuff,
like the filing of the fan letters...

...by the town from which they came,
makes sense after a while.

He thought, uh, "I may need a spy.
I may need an agent in Albuquerque."

- And so he had a name and number.
RONSON: Well, we're thinking about--

You know,
they might be showing The Shining...

...at the Albuquerque Odeon.

Yeah, he'd want you to go down
and check out the sound...

...or check out the print or whatever.

Or it could be something
entirely different.

- Okay.
- Um....

But he saw those as potential
kind of agents in the field.

You know, Stanley's irregulars.

- It's very thoughtful.
- Yeah.

RONSON:
It's been nine years since Kubrick died.

The estate is a very quiet place...

...but then one day in 2007,
the silence is broken.

The boxes are leaving.

RONSON: How are you feeling, Bernd?
- Well, it's today, isn't it?

- Pretty good.
- Four-three-five.

RONSON:
This is Bernd Eichhorn.

He's a German archivist who's been
living up at the Kubrick house...

...for the past four years,
archiving the boxes for the family.

MAN:
Five-four-two.

RONSON:
He's the only person other than me...

...and the family to have lived
with these boxes for that long.

RONSON: Do you feel like your children
are going off to university?

Not really university.
They're leaving home forever.

[MEN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]

I mean, when they go to university, they
come back to clean their dirty clothes...

...but they won't come back.

I kept an eye on these boxes
for four years nearly.

- Yes, four years now, so....
- Two-oh-two.

RONSON: For Bernd and me, the stuff
in these boxes are puzzles and curiosities...

...but for Christiane,
they're something else.

I get very upset at seeing some of his
old things because it's now old.

RONSON:
Do you know what you're moving?

- He's keeping his old gloves.
- Boxes. Ha, ha.

CHRISTIANE:
Also, I find old notebooks...

...because the paper's old
and dusty and yellow.

They begin to look so sad, you know?

The person is so very dead...

...once the paper is yellow.

So going through somebody's stuff...

...is a very melancholy business.

RONSON: Christiane says it's time
to let go and move on...

...so they've donated the archive
to the University of the Arts, London.

To just throw the stuff away would have
been like burying Stanley again.

It would have been terrifying to just say,
"Okay, I don't need this anymore."

RONSON: The boxes will be housed
in a special climate-controlled facility...

...in the Elephant & Castle
where film students and other students...

...can come and look through them
and learn...

...how Kubrick's incredible attention
to detail created images like these.

One of the very last boxes I opened...

...back at the Kubrick house
contained a videotape.

On the tape, Kubrick was addressing
the camera and looking a bit nervous.

The video was filmed by Leon Vitali,
who was one of Kubrick's assistants.

It's an acceptance speech,
made a few months before he died.

He had been awarded
the D.W. Griffith Award...

...by the Directors Guild of America.

He really was a shy man.
He was a shy man, you know?

And to stand up in front of a camera...

...he'd put on a little blue blazer...

...and he also had a little bag
where he had a comb and, you know...

...a little mirror and what have you
and called it his little actor's kit.

It was all so sweet.
I mean, you just wanted to hug him.

It was so charming.

Good evening.

I'm sorry not to be able
to be with you tonight...

...to receive this great honor
of the D.W. Griffith Award.

But I'm in London, making Eyes Wide Shut
with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

At just about this time, I'm probably
in the car on the way to the studio.

RONSON: All this time, I suppose I've been
searching for some kind of Rosebud...

...some individual item in a box
that contains the essence of Kubrick...

...and I think I found it in a few lines
from this acceptance speech.

Anyone who has ever been privileged
to direct a film also knows...

...that although it can be like trying to write
War and Peace in a bumper car...

...in an amusement park...

...when you finally get it right...

...there are not many joys in life
that can equal the feeling.

RONSON: I think Kubrick knew he had
the ability to make films of genius...

...and to do that,
when most films are so bad...

...there has to be a method and the method
for him was precision and detail.

I think these boxes
contain the rhythm of genius.