Traumnovelle
I get into a lot of arguments about Eyes Wide Shut. I'm a Kubrick fan and I like the movie a lot. It stays with you as long as Full Metal Jacket: it's not as pure as that film, or 2001, and I wonder had he lived longer if he would have tightened the edit, as he often did at the last moment -- the closing glances run longer than usual. But it's a cracker of a story, infuriating and oblique and funny, and it has an undercurrent of real dread. It's the director doing what he loves: rationalising emotion.
Interview magazine has a golden interview with Terry Semel and Tom Cruise about working with Kubrick on the film:
CRUISE: In all matters of the film, he was economical. He needed time to make the film, yes, but he also needed time to think about the film... We had a $65-million budget for Eyes Wide Shut, and everyone thinks we ended up shooting for two years. But it wasn't quite two years. I got there in August and he gave us a month off for Christmas and left about a year and a half later. But we had a lot of vacations in between. Stanley would allow us to break, and that would give him time to evaluate the film and look at the sets... And he was very smart about money. He never went back to Terry and asked for more. He stuck by the budget and did everything it allowed him to do — with the time he needed — to make his film.Kubrick's method allowed him to add the little touches:
SEMEL: I don't think it can be overemphasized how hands-on he was on his projects. He never became the type of filmmaker to direct from a distance.
CRUISE: Earlier on in his career, he would do all the operating. When you look at The Shining, you see that he operated a lot. He did less so on Eyes Wide Shut, but even then, he didn't want many people on the set. He wanted to keep it very contained and very intimate and personal. It was the least amount of crew I've ever had on a movie.
CRUISE: There was an interesting moment during filming. We were shooting in the backlot of Pinewood Studios and he had built a set to resemble New York. We were working on a scene where I see that a guy is following me. He cast a very distinct-looking actor, a bald guy with a very particular wardrobe. In the shot, this guy walks across the street. We went back and looked at the video playback; we must have spent hours studying it, just to figure out what the behavior of this man should be like crossing the street. Finally, Stanley said, "Listen, when you're crossing the street, please don't stop staring at Tom." It looks like a very simple thing, but behaviorally, it had a tremendous effect.In a separate interview Nicole Kidman talked to Merle Ginsberg at The Hollywood Reporter about filming Eyes Wide Shut:
There's all the mythology -- but when you got to know [Kubrick], he was practical and logical. Very well-educated... I wasn't scared of him. He could get irritated by people. I was allowed to go in his office and read his books.
On his films, he did everything: fix the sound machine, operate the camera. He even sort of handled the wardrobe -- for all his dressing low-key, Stanley actually loved clothes.
The most important thing to Stanley was time. My approach to the two-year shoot was actually very Zen. Tom and I thought, "We're so lucky, we've gotten to spend two years with the master." Stanley said the film was finished -- but if he had more time, who knows how it would have morphed.