10 Crazy Facts You Didn't Know About Stanley Kubrick 1. He was a very skilled chess player. 2. He was born in New York but moved permanently to England disenchanted with Hollywood and after 2 failed marriages. 3. He Turned down directing a sequel to The Exorcist. 4. He loved to work under unprecedented security and privacy conditions. 5. Kubrick, suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep on March 7th, 1999. At that time he was working on A.I. Artificial Inteligence. 6. After Kubrick's death, Spielberg revealed that the two of them were friends that frequently communicated discretely about the art of filmmaking; both had a large degree of mutual respect for each other's work. "AI" was frequently discussed; Kubrick even suggested that Spielberg should direct it as it was more his type of project. Based on this relationship, Spielberg took over as the film's director and completed the last Kubrick project. 7. His films often tell about the dark side of human nature, especially dehumanization. 8. He had a well-known fear of flying. 9. He was a big fan of American sitcoms "Seinfeld", "Roseanne" and "The Simpsons". 10. According to his daughter, Vivian Kubrick, the family name is pronounced like "Que-brick," rather than like "koo-brick".