Stanley Kubrick : a biography (John Baxter)

John Baxter's Stanley Kubrick : a biography made for absorbing reading. The book covers his life, films and relationships with members of the filmmaking community -- stars, producers, other directors, technical crews and, with varying degrees of success, the authors and screenwriters whose work he transformed into images on the big screen. As a group these writers tend to be Mr. Baxter's most revealing sources.

There haven't been too many people to whom the dictum Less is More applies better than to Kubrick and not simply in terms of the number of films he made over the course of his career. By the end of his life as this biography tells it, S. K. comes across as a cross between Howard Hughes and Greta Garbo with a penchant for secrecy, obsession with security and the limited number of associates allowed through the gates. In shunning the celebrity culture of Hollywood for the relative isolation which he needed to remain creative, Kubrick may have created more fascination with his life and work than he would have if he'd chosen to reside in Malibu.

Needless to say, Kubrick wasn't an active participant in the making of this biography and the people who were interviewed by John Baxter were former associates, not people working with him during the researching and writing of this biography.

Published in 1997 by Carroll & Graf Publishers and distributed by Publishers Group West, this 399-page work includes some terrific illustrations and a section of notes for each chapter. Alas the specific reference aren't noted by page or phrase so any reader (or future Kubrick biographer) wishing to fact-check using this book will have a job to untangle the background information.

On a personal note I was amazed to learn that one of the addresses for the Kubrick family during Stanley's high school years and also the address of his future wife, Toba Metz, was 1414 Shakespeare Avenue in the Highbridge section of the Bronx. In the 1940's my maternal and paternal grandparents lived a few blocks south of the Kubricks. My parents were only 2 and 4 years older than Stanley but both attended Catholic high schools in Manhattan, not William Howard Taft H.S., the "neighborhood" public h.s. for this area where Stanley and Toba went to school.

Researchers interested in delving into the Stanley Kubrick story more deeply should visit http://www.arts.ac.uk/kubrick.htm, the website of the archive of the acclaimed film maker's personal papers. The Archive contains more than 1000 boxes of material, including scripts, props, costumes, photography, correspondence, equipment and research.