āSpartacusā: behind the scenes of a Kubrick classic.
As always, thanks to Larry Wright for curating these gems. For more, just use this link(s): the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.
āTo have been a professional photographer was obviously a great advantage for me, though not everyone I subsequently worked with thought so. When I was directing āSpartacus,ā Russel Metty, the cameraman, found it very amusing that I picked the camera set-ups myself and told him what I wanted in the way of lighting. When he was in particularly high-spirits, he would crouch behind me as I looked through my viewfinder, holding his Zippo cigarette lighter up to his eye, as if it were a viewfinder. He also volunteered that the top directors just pointed in the direction of the shot, said something like, āRuss, a tight 3-shot,ā and went back to their trailer.ā āStanley Kubrick, Interviews 1948-1960
Above: Kubrick, his poncho, and his Sekonic Studio Deluxe Light Meter on the 1959 set of āSpartacus.ā Below: filming the huge rolling fire logs during the epic battle scene on the 1959 set of Kubrickās āSpartacus.ā
Hereās the screenplay of āSpartacusā by one of the all-time great screenwriters Dalton Trumbo. (NOTE: For educational purposes only.) Thanks to Allansfirebird and the great folks at Write to Reel.
āThe Americans have always depicted the West in extremely romantic terms ā with the horse that runs to his masterās whistle. They have never treated the West seriously, just as we have never treated ancient Rome seriously. Perhaps the most serious debate on the subject was made by Kubrick in the film āSpartacusā: the other films have always been cardboard fables. It was this superficiality that struck and interested me.ā āSergio Leone
In his āReport on Spartacus,ā Trumbo complained bitterly about the rewriting of many of his slave story scenes by persons unknown without his knowledge or consent. He felt these rewrites were responsible for the slow turn in the script from his concept of the Large Spartacus to the opposing concept of the Small Spartacus. Still blacklisted and working on the film in secret, he was unable to be present on the set or on location during the shooting of his scenes. Trumbo speculated that most of these rewrites had been done on the set at the last minute as part of a covert campaign by Stanley Kubrick to radically alter the nature of the script. āDalton Trumbo vs. Stanley Kubrick: Their Debate Over The Political Meaning of Spartacus
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