Trivia

Had an extensive and rich friendship with Malcolm McDowell during the filming of A Clockwork Orange (1971). After filming ended, Kubrick never contacted him again.

People would come to his door looking for him, and as few people knew what he looked like, he would tell them that "Stanley Kubrick wasn't home."

He joined with directors Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack and George Lucas in forming the Film Foundation (promotes restoration and preservation of film - May 1990).

Was an avid feline lover, once having 16 of them at one point. He would often let his cats lay around his editing room after filming completed as his way of making up for time he lost with them while he was working.

He was considered to be a well-read man with an extreme attention to detail. For his aborted film project on Napoléon Bonaparte, he had one of his assistants go to various bookstores to acquire every book he could find on the French emperor, and he returned with well in excess of 100. Kubrick read them all and astonished his associates with his level of retention. When working on a battlefield scene, he even examined an historical painting of the battle so he could note exactly what the weather was in the painting and make sure to film the battle on a day with similar weather patterns.

At the age of 16, he snapped a photograph of a news vendor in New York the day after President Franklin D. Roosevelt died. He sold the photograph to Look magazine, which printed it. The magazine eventually hired him as an apprentice photographer while he was still in high school.

First grew his famous beard during the making of "2001:A Space Odyssey". He kept the beard for the rest of his life and kept his hair long.

Due to his poor grades in high school (67% average) he was not accepted to a university. Although he never enrolled, he would sit in during classes at Columbia University.

By the age of thirteen, he had become passionate about photography, chess and jazz drumming.

A heavy chain smoker in his youth, he mostly quit smoking in the 1970s (his forties), but would still smoke occasionally under the pressure of his shoots. On the other hand, he was said to rarely ever drink alcohol.

Among his eccentricities was calling people multiple times a day whenever he had an idea about something, even if it was in the middle of the night. Kubrick himself was a night owl who rarely slept more than a few hours.

Used to skip school to take in double-features at the cinema.

His next project after Eyes Wide Shut (1999) was to be A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), which was taken over by Steven Spielberg. It is dedicated to Kubrick's memory.

Refused to talk about his movies on set as he was directing them and never watched them when they were completed.

Legendary director Billy Wilder was a great admirer of Kubrick, and claimed that Kubrick "never made a bad picture." Wilder also once told Cameron Crowe that the first half of Full Metal Jacket (1987) was "the best picture I've ever seen.".

One of his favorite films was Eraserhead (1977) directed by David Lynch.

According to his close friend Michael Herr, he watched The Godfather (1972) over ten times and said it was probably the greatest film ever made.

Kubrick's favorite pastime was chess and he was said to be a master at it. Many crew members and actors found themselves on the losing end of chess matches with him.

According to his daughter, Vivian Kubrick, the family name is pronounced like "Que-brick," rather than like "koo-brick".

According to biographer Michael Herr, Kubrick was often noted for wanting to stick to each word of dialogue without changing it or an actor adding lines of his own. The two exceptions were Peter Sellers (with whom he worked on Lolita (1962) and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)) and R. Lee Ermey (from Full Metal Jacket (1987)).

He was a big fan of American sitcoms Seinfeld (1989), Roseanne (1988) and The Simpsons (1989). He was also a fan of American football and would have his friends in America tape games and send them to him. In addition to being a sports fan, he was fascinated by the craft of television commercials. He was particularly impressed by how they could effectively tell a story in 30 seconds.

The only author that Kubrick worked with personally was Arthur C. Clarke for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Wore a suit and tie every day while directing until the 1970s, when he began to dress in casual work clothes. His wife claimed he didn't like choosing what to wear, and had a wardrobe full of identical shirts and pants.

Was a close friend of Steven Spielberg.

His dislike of his early film Fear and Desire (1952) is well known. He went out of his way to buy all the prints of it so no one else could see it.

He had a well-known fear of flying, but he had to fly quite often early in his career. Because of his hysteria on planes, he simply tried to lessen the amount of times he flew. According to Malcolm McDowell, Kubrick listened to air traffic controllers at Heathrow Airport for long stretches of time, and he advised McDowell never to fly.

According to his wife Christiane Kubrick, he would screen every movie he could get ahold of. One of his favorites was The Jerk (1979). He considered making Eyes Wide Shut (1999) a dark sex comedy with Steve Martin in the lead. He even met with Martin to discuss the project.

He considered Elia Kazan the best American director of all time. His list of favorite directors included at various times Federico Fellini, David Lean, Ingmar Bergman, Vittorio De Sica, François Truffaut, and Max Ophüls.

Rarely gave interviews. He did, however, appear in a documentary made by his daughter Vivian Kubrick shot during the making of The Shining (1980). According to Vivian, he was planning on doing a few formal TV interviews once Eyes Wide Shut (1999) was released, but died before he could.

When Kubrick bought Simon Cowell's childhood home, he turned the entire ground floor into a private cinema.

Kubrick loved animals. When he died, he had a Highland Terrier. seven Golden Retrievers. one Scotch Terrier, eight cats, and four Fern Donkeys.

The controversy around A Clockwork Orange (1971)'s UK release was so strong that Kubrick was flooded with angry letters and protesters were showing up at his home, demanding that the film never be shown in England again. He personally petitioned the studio to pull it from theaters, despite his legal inability to control a film after production. The studio, out of respect for Kubrick, eventually decided to pull the film out of theaters prematurely.

Following J.R.R. Tolkien's sale of the film rights for The Lord of the Rings to United Artists in 1969, The Beatles considered a corresponding film project and approached Kubrick as a potential director; however, Kubrick turned down the offer, explaining to John Lennon that he thought the novel could not be adapted into a film due to its immensity. The eventual director of the film adaptation Peter Jackson further explained that a major hindrance to the project's progression was Tolkien's opposition to the involvement of the Beatles.

Resisted conceptual analysis of his films, stating that he didn't want to have to explain what his films meant, and that he wanted each film to be judged on its own and not in his body of work. He further claimed that his method consisted simply of finding stories that interested him and trying to not repeat himself.

In the 5th edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (edited by Steven Jay Schneider), 9 of Kubrick's films are listed. He is the director with the greatest percentage of films listed, since Kubrick made only 13 feature films. His listed films are Paths of Glory (1957), Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980) and Full Metal Jacket (1987).

A few days before his abrupt death, he revealed his least and most favorite personal films. He labeled Fear and Desire (1952) as his least favorite personal film, and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) as his most favorite personal film.

Often read about psychology, and knew how to manipulate his cast quite well. A fine example of this is with Shelley Duvall in The Shining (1980).

In 1963 he was asked by the US publication Cinema to compile a list of his favorite films. They were: I Vitelloni (1953) (Federico Fellini, 1953), Wild Strawberries (1957) ("Wild Strawberries" USA title, Ingmar Bergman, 1958), Citizen Kane (1941) (Orson Welles, 1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) (John Huston, 1948), City Lights (1931) (Charles Chaplin, 1931), Henry V (1944) ("Henry V" USA title, Laurence Olivier, 1945), La Notte (1961) (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961), The Bank Dick (1940) (W.C. Fields, 1940), Roxie Hart (1942) (William Wellman, 1942), Hell's Angels (1930) (Howard Hughes, 1930).

He was known for being a perfectionist, although he denied this. He'd kept doing takes because he felt that his actors, even though they got the right idea, he thought they weren't happy. When the Shining came out, there was a scene in the ending with Wendy and Danny in the hospital but Kubrick hated it and asked it to be removed just after a week after its release. Dorian Harewood, who played Eightball From Full Metal Jacket, said in an interview that Kubrick was a perfectionist. Kubrick called Harewood a few days later denying that he was a perfectionist.

He was so reclusive that the press would make up wild stories about him. One such story was that he shot a fan on his property, and then shot him again for bleeding on the grass.

While working for, One-Eyed Jacks (1961), in Brando's home, Brando asked visitors to remove their shoes so as not to scratch the wooden floor. Kubrick often removed his pants as well, choosing to work in nothing but his shirt and underwear.

Was a lackadaisical student with grades near the bottom of his class.

Never recorded an audio commentary for any of his films for their home releases, as he didn't want to explain the lore and mystery of his films and spoiling them for viewers. He wanted his films to speak for themselves.

"I want you to be big -- Lon Chaney big," Kubrick instructed Vincent D'Onofrio during the filming of Full Metal Jacket (1987).

Has directed two actors in Oscar-nominated roles: Peter Sellers (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)) and Peter Ustinov (Spartacus (1960)). Ustinov won his Oscar.

Claimed that his IQ was below average. It was rumored, however, that his IQ was around 200.

Starting with Lolita (1962), he independently produced all his films from his adopted home of England, UK.

Shared a love of photography and home movie making with Peter Sellers and they would often photograph each other at work.

He once called Ken Russell in the early 1970s but ended the conversation abruptly because, according to Russell, he had been frightened by a bee. He then called several days later to ask Russell where he had found the lovely English locations for his period films. Russell told him and Kubrick used the locations in his next film, Barry Lyndon (1975). Russell said, "I felt quite chuffed.".

In interviews upon with the release of his highly controversial A Clockwork Orange (1971), Kubrick cited The Ox-Bow Incident (1942) as the kind of movie he did NOT want to make when defending the use of an "evil" protagonist (Alex). Kubrick reasoned that The Ox-Bow Incident (1942) was bad art, as it took the stand that lynching was evil because innocent people might be lynched, not the stand that lynching (i.e, extra-judicial murder) was itself evil. He wanted Alex explicitly evil (thus, the jettisoning of the last chapter of the original novel, in which Alex is reformed; this chapter was not in the American edition that Terry Southern had given to Kubrick). Kubrick felt that an explicitly evil Alex underscores the point that the state's invasion of the prisoner's soul (turning him into a mechanical man, a "clockwork orange") was evil whatever the guilt or innocent, and the level thereof, of the prisoner.