Quotes & Sayings About Kubrick

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. — Stanley Kubrick

A film needs more than you can give it in a lifetime. — Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick went with his gut feeling: he directed 'Dr. Strangelove' as a black comedy. The film is routinely described as a masterpiece. — Tim Cahill

I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists. Neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are. — Stanley Kubrick

You either care or you don't. — Stanley Kubrick

In the whole history of movies, there has been nothing like Kubrick's vision. It was a vision of hope and wonder, of grace and of mystery, of humour and contradictions. It was a gift to us, and now it's a legacy. — Steven Spielberg

God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours. — Stanley Kubrick

Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And, of course, Kevin Smith. I spent three months studying every John Hughes teen movie and memorizing all the key lines of dialogue. Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive. You could say I covered all the bases. I studied Monty Python. And not just Holy Grail, either. Every single one of their films, albums, and books, and every episode of the original BBC — Ernest Cline

All my life I've always spoiled the things that meant the most to me. — Stanley Kubrick

My reputation has grown slowly. — Stanley Kubrick

You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film - and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level - but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point. — Stanley Kubrick

Why does Kubrick always chill our blood, and make us huddled up scared stiff with eyes wide shut? Because even dead he's still "Shinnying" with his old hand and his eye-catching plots. — Ana Claudia Antunes

The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle. — Stanley Kubrick

I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir. — Stanley Kubrick

Don't do anything. Just tolerate me and let me suffer, knowing how you feel. — Stanley Kubrick

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all. — Stanley Kubrick

The first really important book I read about filmmaking was The Film Technique by Pudovkin. This was some time before I had ever touched a movie camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and montage. — Stanley Kubrick

[Stanley] Kubrick was a fascinating, larger than life guy who had been a friend for many years prior to our working together on that film. I found the best part of working with him to be the long conversations we had between set-ups. — Sydney Pollack

I like collaboration, I like to incorporate other people's ideas [and] that's what happens when you do a big movie. Unless you're called Stanley Kubrick and you do an independent movie for like $200 million. — Michel Gondry

It's almost inherent, but I'm a massive [Stanley] Kubrick fan. I'm a big admirer of what guys like Christopher Nolan have been able to do. For me, to be able to try to make big films that reach a lot of people, and that hopefully have something to say, is a lofty goal, but that's my goal. — David Brooks

Minister: As I was saying, Alex, you can be instrumental in changing the public verdict. Do you understand, Alex? Have I made myself clear?
Alex: As an unmuddied lake, Fred. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can rely on me, Fred. — Anthony Burgess

You know, I often thought that the gangster and the artist are the same in the eyes of the masses. They're admired and hero-worshipped but there is always present underlying desire to see them destroyed at the peak of their glory. — Stanley Kubrick

When I made my first film, I think the thing was probably helped me the most was that it was such an unusual thing to do in the early 50s for someone who actually go and make a film. People thought it was impossible. It really is terribly easy. All anybody needs is a camera, a tape recorder, and some imagination. — Stanley Kubrick

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper. — Stanley Kubrick

The director's job is to know what emotional statement he wants a character to convey in his scene or his line, and to exercise taste and judgment in helping the actor give his best possible performance. — Stanley Kubrick

There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories. — Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick ate it up. He loved it. He just let me go crazy. — R. Lee Ermey

I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001 but not any traditional, anthromorphic image of God. I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe. — Stanley Kubrick

Art consists of reshaping life but it does not create life, nor cause life. — Stanley Kubrick

When I was a kid and I was being introduced to science fiction by watching movies with my Dad, Kubrick is one of those guys that we used to watch, you know, I watched Clockwork Orange at an age that was incredibly inappropriate, but he sat there with me and he explained what was going on and you know, I came to appreciate it even if I was terrified at the time. — Duncan Jones

The hardest thing in making a movie is to keep in the front of your consciousness your original response to the material. Because that's going to be the thing that will make the movie. And the loss of that will break the movie. — Stanley Kubrick

'Interstellar' may never equal the blast of scientific speculation and cinematic revelation that was Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' but its un-Earthly vistas are spectral and spectacular. — Richard Corliss

[Kubrick] was unique in the sense that with each new film he redefined the medium and its possibilities. But he was more than just a technical innovator. Like all visionaries, he spoke the truth. And no matter how comfortable we think we are with the truth, it always comes as a profound shock when we're forced to meet it face-to-face. — Martin Scorsese

I'm happy - at times - making films. I'm certainly unhappy not making films. — Stanley Kubrick

I always admired Stanley Kubrick for the fact that he managed to beat the system somehow. I think he kind of had it all figured out. — Joel Coen

[Stanley] Kubrick was a great artist and a perfectionist. He always wanted the exact right thing. He did a million takes. Everything had to be perfect. I'm an imperfectionist. I don't really care that much about the work. I write quickly. I'm careless. I shoot carelessly. — Woody Allen

Standing beneath the white light of an Apple store is like standing on a Stanley Kubrick movie set. His '2001: A Space Odyssey' predicted Jobs and a future where technology was our friend. Kubrick, of course, didn't like what he saw. And occasionally, I have my doubts. — Wesley Morris

You're constantly changing man. But the film's not changing. The film stays the same. That's the beautiful aspect of it. — Stanley Kubrick

At age 12 I had an obsession with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and then proceeded to watch all the other Kubrick films I could including a doc called Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures in which it was revealed to me that he started as a photographer ... I got a camera sometime shortly after, but spent many years just photographing flowers in my neighborhood. — Anton Yelchin

I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business. — Stanley Kubrick

I generally like very visually striking films. I love a lot of Stanley Kubrick's films. I would have to say 'Dr. Strangelove', which of course has got resonance in 'Watchmen'. It's a favorite movie of mine. — Dave Gibbons

'Love' has that Kubrick tonality to it, but this is not a Stanley Kubrick movie - there will never be another. At the same time, 'Love' has a modern feel. For example: In one scene, these astronauts go through a wormhole sequence, and you feel like you're being slapped around inside your head by a sonic boom. — Tom DeLonge

Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high? — Martin Scorsese

I'm not afraid of dying tomorrow, only of being killed. — Stanley Kubrick

I think one of the thing that makes a Kubrick film a great experience is the fact that he bends reality to his will and is so confident that he ends up creating something that is the island in the stream of pop culture and he takes a stand that's so firm and so confident and unyielding that it can't be ignored and I appreciate that. — Barry Ptolemy

Critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion. — Stanley Kubrick

I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit. — Stanley Kubrick

There were IBM logos designed for the film, and there were IBM design consultants working with Kubrick on the layout of the controls and computer screens. — Douglas Trumbull

A lot of cinematic influences on 'Descender' - Kubrick for sure. '2001: A Space Odyssey' is my favorite movie. It has been since I was 12. I just love that film. — Jeff Lemire

Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century. — Roberto Benigni

The lasting and ultimately most important reputation of a film is not based on reviews, but on what, if anything, people say about it over the years, and on how much affection for it they have. — Stanley Kubrick

I was going to school thinking I was going to do something entirely different, thought acting was just a hobby at that point, met Stanley Kubrick and was like, 'Whoa, this can be an art form, and you can really move people the way you do simply by acting.' — Vinessa Shaw

One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film. — Stanley Kubrick

With Kubrick and most film directors, they are in complete control, but one can influence them. — Ken Adam

I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. 'Alien', 'Blade Runner' just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan for similar reasons. — Christopher Nolan

When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor. — Terry Southern

Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man. — Stanley Kubrick

[When asked if he had ever learned anything about his work from film criticism]
No. To see a film once and write a review is an absurdity. Yet very few critics ever see a film twice or write about films from a leisurely, thoughtful perspective. The reviews that distinguish most critics, unfortunately, are those slambang pans which are easy to write and fun to write and absolutely useless. There's not much in a critic showing off how clever he is at writing silly, supercilious gags about something he hates. — Stanley Kubrick

Yeah, Kubrick's a big influence. In something like 'A Clockwork Orange,' he is trying to use the practical light - I mean, at least he says that in his interviews, like they're not using traditionally Hollywood lights. In 'Elephant' we basically used no lights; we never really adjusted. — Gus Van Sant

Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever. — Anthony Burgess

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale. — Stanley Kubrick

The best education in film is to make one — Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick's '2001' was the door that opened up the possibility of science fiction for me. Everything else up to then was fine, but didn't quite work for me. — Ridley Scott

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered. — Stanley Kubrick

Bad films gave me the courage to try making a movie — Stanley Kubrick

It's impossible to tell you what I'm going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made. — Stanley Kubrick

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes. — Stanley Kubrick

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. — Stanley Kubrick

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later. — Stanley Kubrick

You either connect or you don't connect. It's not the end of the world. It's a movie. — Stanley Kubrick

I don't want to direct a movie as good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski, or whoever. I want it to be my own. I think I've got the seed of it and, what's more, that I can make movies that are different and informed by my taste. — Jack Nicholson

Suppose by chance you do get picked up. What have you done? You shot a horse; that isn't first degree murder; in fact, it isn't even murder; in fact, I don't know what it is. — Stanley Kubrick

I've never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, 'don't try to fly too high,' or whether it might also be thought of as 'forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings. — Stanley Kubrick

I like the absurd and the surreal: the Coen brothers, Bunuel, Kubrick. — Kevin McCloud

You have not yet learned that in this life you have to be like everyone else: the perfect mediocrity
no better, no worse. Individuality is a monster and it must be strangled in its cradle to make our friends feel comfortable. — Stanley Kubrick

For me the most moving moment came when I first started working on 2001. I was already in awe of him, and he had very much already become Stanley Kubrick by the time the film started. — Keir Dullea

Anybody who runs is a VC. Anybody who stands still is a well-disciplined VC. — Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick was brilliant at getting under the audience's skin. He was very interested in the idea of, 'How can I tell this with just a camera?' — Tom Cruise

My period as a young teenager when you really listen to music so you can get understand a little bit more about what the music is was, say, 1965 to 1968. I was just lucky to be in those times. — Stanley Kubrick

Regret isn't going to get me anywhere. It's like being obsessed with something. It doesn't bring you anywhere. — Stanley Kubrick

I don't think that writers or painters or filmmakers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form; they like words, or the smell of paint, or celluloid and photographic images and working with actors. I don't think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was. — Stanley Kubrick

I remember hearing a good story about Jack Nicholson working with Stanley Kubrick on The Shining [1980]. Nicholson was saying that, as an actor, you always want to try to make things real. And believable. When he was working with Kubrick, he finished a take and said, "I feel like that was real." And Kubrick said, "Yes, it's real, but it's not interesting". — Owen Wilson

I haven't come across any recent new ideas in film that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less a fruitless thing. A truly original person with a truly original mind will not be able to function in the old form and will simply do something different. Others had much better think of the form as being some sort of classical tradition and try to work within it. — Stanley Kubrick

I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don't want. — Stanley Kubrick

One does not have to make Frank Capra movies to like people. — Stanley Kubrick

In 'Winter's Bone,' it's literally the director and the camera operator. That's it. Just a super-small Kubrick crew. You know what I mean? Like, 8 people. — Bill Hader

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. — Stanley Kubrick

It's so hard to do anything that doesn't owe some kind of debt to what Stanley Kubrick did with music in movies. Inevitably, you're going to end up doing something that he's probably already done before. It always seem like we're falling behind whatever he came up with. 'Singin' in the Rain' in Clockwork Orange - that was the first time I became so aware of music in movies. So no matter how hard you try to do something new, you're always following behind. — Paul Thomas Anderson

I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old. — Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick is a machine, a mutant, a Martian. He has no human feeling whatsoever. But it's great when the machine films other machines, as in 2001. — Jacques Rivette

Kubrick showed us something special. Every film was a challenge, and a direct assault on cinema's conventions. — Bryan Singer

It is amazing that 2001: A Space Odyssey has not aged at all, except for a few minor technical gadgets. The main reason is, of course, the philosophical or spiritual element in this story. We know as little today about the secrets of Creation and evolution as we knew before, and it is not likely that we'll ever know much more. We'll have to be satisfied, as Kubrick was, respectfully admiring the potential for evolution within the mystery of the universe's creation. — Jan Harlan

Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved-that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure. — Stanley Kubrick

[The way Stanley Kubrick] tells a story is antithetical to the way we are accustomed to receiving stories. — Steven Spielberg

The whole idea of god is absurd. If anything, '2001' shows that what some people call 'god' is simply an acceptable term for their ignorance. What they don't understand, they call 'god' -Stanley Kubrick, interview, 1963 — Stanley Kubrick

You need to face, you need to confront, and really properly look at what's happening, and not try and explain it away or give it justifications or anything, because at this juncture, we still, by our finger nails, have the chance to make a difference, and turn this around. And to not take part and to just watch ... ... .., but if you don't push back, if you don't face it and confront it for what it is, it'll just takeover, and then no one will be free. — Vivian Kubrick

Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines things. — Stanley Kubrick

If Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda had a baby, it would be Matthew Modine. — Stanley Kubrick

The screen is a magic medium ... — Stanley Kubrick

Observation is a dying art. — Stanley Kubrick