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to learn more.

2:15

Welcome to another episode

2:18

of You Must Remember This, the

2:20

podcast dedicated to exploring

2:23

the secret and or forgotten

2:26

histories of Hollywood's

2:28

first century.

2:30

I'm your host, Karina Longworth.

2:33

And this is part 20

2:36

of our ongoing series,

2:38

erotic 90s. This

2:42

is part 20 of our ongoing

2:45

series, erotic 90s. I

3:11

have seen one

3:13

or two things in my life, but

3:15

never, never anything

3:18

like this. Our

3:23

story is almost over. So

3:25

for a brief moment, I'd like to go

3:27

back to the beginning. Here is a

3:29

clip from the very first episode

3:31

of erotic 80s.

3:34

Harry Southern,

3:37

who co-scripted Stanley Kubrick's 1964

3:40

film, Doctor Strangelove,

3:43

used to tell a story about a night from around

3:45

that time when the two were at a party

3:48

and somebody put

3:49

on a hardcore porn film.

3:53

Southern recalled that Kubrick was moved

3:55

by the film to muse aloud

3:58

on a near future.

3:59

in which explicit sex could be

4:02

integrated into mainstream conventional

4:04

Hollywood narratives.

4:06

Wouldn't it be interesting, Kubrick

4:09

said, if one day someone

4:11

who was an artist would do that, using

4:13

really beautiful actors and good

4:16

equipment.

4:17

Sometime in the next couple of years,

4:20

Southern tried to convince Kubrick that

4:23

the future was now, that

4:26

with the production code that regulated sexual

4:28

content in movies dying

4:30

a slow death, they could and

4:33

should make a movie with beautiful actors

4:35

and good equipment and

4:38

real sex. Kubrick

4:40

ultimately demured. Most accounts

4:43

have him putting the onus on his wife, Christianne,

4:46

who supposedly said she'd leave him

4:48

if he tried such a thing. And

4:51

Southern instead published a novel

4:53

in 1970 called Blue

4:55

Movie, which brought to life

4:57

the porno-fied future of Hollywood

5:00

that he and Kubrick had

5:01

imagined while skewering

5:03

the hypocrisy and peccadillos

5:06

of an industry run by men, who

5:08

know it's not in their best interest

5:10

to portray the depravity of their actual

5:12

sex lives

5:14

on screen. And

5:16

Kubrick instead made A Clockwork

5:19

Orange, which goes about as

5:21

far as a film could go in exploring

5:23

sexual depravity without

5:25

including actual hardcore sex. The

5:30

future Kubrick mused about in 1964 never

5:33

fully came to fruition. Though

5:36

some narrative films containing real

5:39

sex would make it to theaters,

5:41

these were largely European and

5:44

Hollywood never officially

5:47

went there. By 1999,

5:50

when Kubrick was forced to obscure

5:53

simulated orgy scenes in his last

5:55

movie, Eyes Wide Shut, the

5:58

extra wide semi-truck scene. of culture

6:00

had begun the slow process

6:04

of doing a 180. Eyes

6:06

Wide Shut was probably the last

6:08

mainstream Hollywood film about

6:11

sex of the millennium.

6:16

When I wrote those

6:18

words in January 2022, I knew I wanted to end this

6:20

project by talking about

6:23

Kubrick's last film. And

6:26

though much else has changed about how I've thought

6:28

about erotic 80s and erotic 90s

6:31

over the two years that I've been working on these seasons,

6:34

I still believe that Eyes Wide Shut marked

6:36

the end of something. And

6:39

that something was not, as many joked not

6:41

long after, Tom Cruise and

6:43

Nicole Kidman's marriage. It

6:45

was also not a thing that started in the

6:48

80s, although as I've now

6:50

made more than 30 podcast

6:52

episodes explaining, in terms

6:55

of Hollywood movies, it did

6:57

come to fruition

6:58

in the 80s and 90s.

7:00

What I think Eyes Wide Shut marks

7:02

the end of is the cultural

7:05

relevancy of the sexual revolution

7:08

as experienced by people who lived

7:11

through the 1960s and 70s. Robotic

7:15

80s began in the 60s and

7:18

70s because in my research, it

7:20

seemed clear to me that Hollywood's engagement

7:22

with sex on film during the 80s

7:25

took place in the shadow of the films

7:27

released after 1968,

7:28

when the rating system

7:31

was created to

7:32

respond to evidence that there were commercial

7:35

and artistic dividends to be reaped

7:37

by pushing the limits of sexual content

7:40

on screen. Films

7:42

like Ten, American Gigolo,

7:45

Body Heat and Body Double were

7:47

all made possible by the successes of

7:50

films like Last Tango in Paris

7:52

and Midnight Cowboy. They

7:55

were also influenced by the tastes and

7:57

experiences of their makers. men

8:00

who had lived through the sexual revolution

8:03

and were aware of the social and sexual

8:06

politics of that revolution and

8:08

its fallout and responses.

8:11

As we've worked through the 90s, we've

8:14

watched the ebb and flow of sexual

8:16

politics as they were reflected in selected

8:19

Hollywood movies, and we've

8:21

also watched the industry change

8:24

as more and more time passed

8:26

following the new Hollywood auteur

8:29

wave that coincided with

8:31

the sexual revolution.

8:33

The films mentioned above were all

8:35

extraordinarily personal and

8:38

artistically distinct compared

8:40

to many hits of the 90s, such

8:43

as Pretty Woman, Basic Instinct,

8:45

Indecent Proposal, and

8:47

Disclosure,

8:49

which were all more engaged

8:51

with the zeitgeist of their particular moment

8:53

in terms of how heterosexual men

8:56

and women relate to one another

8:58

than our most comparable

9:00

hits of today. Hollywood

9:03

is, obviously, always

9:05

looking backward. The industry

9:07

is constantly

9:08

mining its own past for

9:10

ideas as to how to make money in the future.

9:14

But because almost all talent has generally

9:16

been considered disposable, rarely

9:19

is a conceptual thread drawn

9:22

across more than 30 years of time

9:25

by a single filmmaker. But

9:31

Stanley Kubrick, of course, was an

9:33

exception to most

9:33

rules.

9:35

Part of Kubrick's desire to make a blue

9:37

movie in the 60s still

9:40

lingered into the 1990s when

9:42

he finally made Eyes Wide Shut.

9:45

But Kubrick was drawn to that film's source

9:47

material long before the pill

9:50

or the X-rating. That

9:52

source material, the 1926 novel

9:55

Tromneville by Alfred Schnitzler,

9:58

was sent in Vienna in the early 90s.

9:59

early 20th century and was

10:02

a product of the decadent movement.

10:04

Schnitzler's work explored the increased

10:07

sexual freedom of a time when

10:09

Austria, like Weimar Berlin,

10:12

was scarred by World War I and

10:14

shot through with a fear of end

10:17

times energy. Roberta

10:19

Smith, in a 2006 review

10:21

of a show of German photographs from the 1920s at

10:24

the Met, wrote

10:26

that it documented faces

10:28

that are watching the world as it slides from

10:30

one cataclysm to the next. But

10:34

Schnitzler was also friendly with Freud

10:36

and with Tramneville, he evoked

10:39

a portrait of sexuality that was deeply

10:41

tied to the subconscious. As

10:45

Kubrick explained it to critic Michel Simon

10:47

in 1972, it explores

10:50

the sexual ambivalence of a happy marriage,

10:52

and it tries to equate the importance of sexual

10:55

dreams and might have beens with reality.

11:01

1972 was right in the middle of the sexual revolution.

11:04

And though Kubrick had abandoned the idea

11:06

of making a blue movie with Terry

11:08

Southern by this point, and the

11:10

X-rated Midnight Cowboy had already

11:13

won Best Picture at the Oscars, the

11:16

race was on to produce the picture

11:18

that the creation of the X-rating seemed

11:20

to beg for, a film depicting

11:22

realistic sex involving

11:24

at least one major movie star.

11:28

In October of that year, Bernardo

11:30

Bertolucci would cross the finish line first

11:33

with the debut of Last Tango in

11:35

Paris. But Bertolucci

11:38

was 13 years younger than Kubrick,

11:40

and they related to the sexual revolution

11:43

differently.

11:59

felt like we were born too early

12:02

or too late for the orgy,

12:04

and Stanley was curious about that.

12:08

Eyes Wide Shut is literally

12:11

about a guy who arrives late

12:13

for an orgy, but

12:16

the sexual revolution of the mind and

12:18

of most media coverage is

12:21

different from how human

12:22

beings experience reality,

12:25

and Eyes Wide Shut is not just about

12:27

being too late for this revolution. It's

12:30

about the revolution's failure to

12:32

change some fundamental ways in

12:34

which men think about sex and

12:37

think about women. As

12:39

Raphael said in a different interview, we

12:42

all pretend we're very candid today

12:45

about sex when we're really not. Men

12:48

are still embarrassed at the independent

12:50

sexuality of women. They can't

12:53

believe that they have the same sexual thoughts

12:55

as us. It both excites

12:58

and alarms them. Eyes

13:00

Wide Shut dramatizes a man's attempt

13:03

to use sexual excitement

13:05

to cover up the alarm. But

13:08

like a bad dream, his horror

13:11

over his newfound knowledge of his wife's

13:13

inner sexual life

13:15

keeps returning.

13:17

Its territory was summed up by Kubrick's

13:20

friend and Full Metal Jacket

13:22

collaborator Michael Hare shortly

13:24

after Kubrick died.

13:25

That's

13:27

a not so pure product of the

13:29

60s.

13:30

I've often wondered whether over

13:32

the long run, the sexual freedom

13:35

of those years didn't numb more

13:37

genitals than it inflamed more

13:39

than all the prohibitions of all the decades I

13:41

went before. The actual

13:44

realization after so much collective

13:46

longing of a genuine liberation

13:48

of erotic impulse and expression pumped

13:51

a marvelous vitality into the culture.

13:54

Many modes and views that were allegedly

13:57

undreamed of a generation before or

13:59

even a year before.

14:00

We're out there frolicking in the open air, swimming

14:03

naked in the mainstream, visible, televised,

14:06

explicit, rampant. But

14:10

what if freedom isn't just another word for

14:12

nothing left to lose,

14:13

but something that's lost whenever

14:16

you mistake

14:16

a carnal matter for a spiritual

14:19

matter? If there was a liberation 30

14:22

years ago, why

14:23

now all this confusion?

14:29

Well,

14:30

maybe because as we keep

14:33

learning in Hollywood history,

14:35

everything is elliptical.

14:38

And so in 1999, at

14:41

the end of the century and the

14:43

end of his life,

14:44

Stanley Kubrick finally makes a movie

14:46

featuring explicit sex and

14:48

major movie stars. And

14:51

it essentially ends the dream

14:53

that there could be commercial viability for

14:55

Hollywood movies that take adults

14:58

and their sex lives seriously.

15:02

Today we are going to talk

15:04

about Eyes Wide Shut's long,

15:06

mysterious production, Kubrick's

15:09

death, and its impact on

15:11

how the film was perceived before

15:14

anyone had seen it.

15:16

There is so much to say about this film that

15:18

it can't all fit into one episode.

15:22

So we'll conclude the Eyes Wide Shut

15:24

story and Erotic

15:27

90s next week. Join

15:30

us, won't you, for

15:32

part 20 of Erotic 90s.

15:34

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Eyes Wide

17:25

Shot takes place in late 20th century New York, a time of cell phones the size of

17:27

a coke can and TVs the size of a hat box on

17:29

kitchen counters. The first image of the film is of Nicole

17:35

Kidman, shot from behind,

17:37

wriggling out of a black cocktail dress, under which she

17:39

is wearing nothing. This

17:43

shot is inserted into the

17:45

opening credits, in between Stanley

17:48

Kubrick's name and the title of the movie.

17:50

But when the story starts seconds later,

17:52

she is wearing a different dress.

17:59

The

18:02

first dress is sexier, backless,

18:05

sleeveless, more current to

18:08

late-90s fashion.

18:10

When we see her next, sitting on a toilet

18:12

while rushing to get ready for a party, the dress

18:15

she's wearing feels more old-fashioned. It's

18:18

long-sleeved, low-cut in the front

18:20

and back, but with a high empire waist.

18:23

When we first see her,

18:25

is she rejecting a possible

18:27

outfit for the night? And is the second

18:30

dress the more demure choice she decides

18:32

to go with?

18:34

Or is the first image from a different night

18:37

a memory, a

18:38

dream? Less

18:40

than two minutes of screen time has elapsed and

18:42

we're already questioning reality.

18:47

Kidman and Cruise play Alice and

18:49

Bill, a married couple in their

18:51

30s with a seven-year-old daughter. That

18:54

night, they go to a glamorous Christmas

18:56

party at the opulent mansion

18:59

of Victor Ziegler, played

19:01

by Sidney Pollock.

19:03

From the dance floor,

19:04

Bill realizes that the piano

19:06

player is an old friend from medical

19:09

school, Nick Nightingale,

19:11

played by Todd Field, best

19:13

known recently as the writer-director of

19:16

Tarr. Alice

19:18

goes to the restroom while Nick and Bill catch

19:20

up, and they get separated for the rest

19:22

of the party. Bill finds himself

19:25

the object of attention of two young models,

19:28

and Alice ends up dancing with a lusty,

19:31

elegant Hungarian

19:32

silver fox. Kubrick

19:35

intercuts the adventures of husband and wife,

19:37

as they are both propositioned for

19:40

sex by these strangers.

19:43

Alice's flirtation takes the form

19:45

of a debate about marriage.

19:47

Don't you think one of the

19:49

charms of marriage...

19:59

May I ask why a beautiful woman? Who

20:03

could have any man in this room, it looks to me. Why?

20:09

Why would she? It's

20:14

a good man, it's nice.

20:17

Oh, he's good at it.

20:20

Later, he tells her women used to

20:22

get married so they could lose their virginity

20:24

and then have true sexual freedom.

20:27

Kubrick then cuts to the models, flanking

20:30

Bill and leading him through

20:32

the party. Ladies,

20:34

where exactly are

20:37

we going?

20:43

Where the rainbow

20:44

ends?

20:46

Where the rainbow ends? Don't

20:49

you want to go where the rainbow ends?

20:51

Well, now that depends

20:54

where that is. Well, let's find

20:56

out. Excuse me, ladies. Sorry,

20:59

Dr. Hartford, sorry to interrupt. I wonder if you could come

21:01

with me for a moment. Something for Mr.

21:03

Ziegler? Oh. Fine.

21:07

To

21:10

be continued?

21:13

This is the first example of the explicitly

21:16

dreamlike structure to Bill's

21:18

story in which he keeps being

21:20

on the verge of sexual adventure,

21:23

but then he gets interrupted.

21:26

And usually is forced to face a cold

21:28

reality.

21:30

In this case, he is led upstairs

21:32

to an insanely large bathroom that

21:35

could only exist in a dream, with

21:37

a fireplace and tables and a desk

21:39

in it, as well as a velvet

21:41

couch opposite the toilet and bidet.

21:45

On that couch, a naked woman is

21:47

passed out. She's

21:49

Mandy, the consort of Ziegler, as

21:52

he pulls up his suspenders, tells

21:55

Bill that he believes she overdosed

21:57

on a speedball. Bill

22:00

revives Mandy, and when he

22:03

and Alice return home, we

22:05

see the scene that was used as the controversial

22:07

teaser for the movie. Cruz

22:10

and Kidman, naked, embracing

22:13

in front of the mirror as the

22:15

Chris Isaac single, Baby Did

22:17

a Bad Bad Thing, plays on

22:20

the soundtrack. Instead

22:22

of focusing on her husband,

22:25

Alice looks at her own reflection in

22:27

the mirror.

22:29

We've now seen some of the differences

22:31

between husband and wife in terms

22:34

of how they feel about sex inside

22:37

and outside of marriage. Alice

22:40

seems to see her marriage as a solid container,

22:43

inside of which she can safely enjoy

22:46

a flirtation

22:47

and then go home and have sex with her

22:49

husband, possibly with her

22:51

mind on something

22:52

or someone else.

22:54

We don't get an equivalent sense of

22:57

Bill's thoughts and feelings,

22:59

but he seems to be on the precipice

23:01

of accepting the invitation from the models

23:04

before he is interrupted. Nothing

23:08

of what Kubrick shows us of the marital sex scene

23:10

suggests that his attention

23:13

is elsewhere.

23:15

As often occurs in Eyes Wide Shut,

23:17

something happens and then

23:20

the characters talk about the thing that

23:22

happened in a way that reframes

23:24

it. So a few scenes later,

23:27

Alice and Bill smoke a joint

23:29

in bed and the wife asks

23:31

the husband if, when he disappeared

23:34

from the party, he had gone

23:36

to have sex with those two women. He

23:39

tells her no and then

23:41

says he saw Alice dancing with the

23:43

Hungarian.

23:44

Anyway, who's the guy you

23:46

were dancing with?

23:59

What did he want? What did

24:02

he want? Oh,

24:05

what did he want? Sex.

24:14

Upstairs.

24:17

And there.

24:18

Is

24:21

that all?

24:22

Yeah. Yeah,

24:24

that was all. He's

24:26

not the fuck my wife. Haha.

24:33

That's right. I

24:35

guess that's understandable. Understandable.

24:43

Because you are a very, very

24:47

beautiful woman. Whoa. Wait.

24:53

So...

24:56

Because I'm a beautiful woman,

24:59

the only reason any man ever

25:01

wants to talk to me.

25:02

And

25:05

because he wants to fuck me, is that what

25:07

you're saying?

25:12

Well, I don't

25:14

think it's quite that black and white,

25:16

but...

25:19

But I think we both know what men

25:21

are like.

25:24

Bill seems very confident in what men

25:26

are like. And later

25:28

in the conversation, when Alice

25:31

suggests his female patients might

25:33

be attracted to him when he's examining their

25:35

breasts, he is

25:38

equally confident in his knowledge of

25:40

what women are like.

25:42

Women don't.

25:46

They basically just don't think

25:48

like that. They're just not.

25:52

Millions of years of evolution. Right?

25:55

Right? Men

25:58

have to stick it in every place they can, but for... women

26:00

women it is just about security

26:02

and commitment and whatever

26:05

the fuck you a little oversimplified

26:07

Alice but yes something like that if

26:11

you men only do

26:15

I'll tell you what I do knows you got a little stone

26:17

tonight you've been trying to pick a fight with me

26:19

and now you're trying to make

26:22

me jealous but you're not the jealous

26:24

type are you no I'm not

26:26

you've never been jealous about me have you

26:28

no I haven't and why haven't

26:31

you ever been jealous about me well

26:33

I don't know Alice maybe because

26:35

you're my wife maybe

26:37

because you're the mother of my child and

26:40

I know you would never be unfaithful to me

26:42

very very sure

26:45

of yourself aren't

26:47

you no

26:51

I'm sure of you

27:05

do you think it's funny

27:10

once Alice stops laughing at

27:12

this she explains why

27:14

she finds this so funny she

27:17

tells him about a naval officer

27:19

who she exchanged a glance with

27:21

at a hotel when they were on a family vacation

27:24

the previous summer she

27:26

didn't talk to this man and

27:28

yet she couldn't get him out

27:30

of her mind

27:32

that afternoon

27:37

Elena went to the movies with her

27:40

friend and you

27:45

and

27:45

I made love and

27:51

we made plans

27:53

about our future and we

27:58

talked about Elena And

28:02

yet, at

28:05

no time was he

28:10

ever out

28:13

of my mind.

28:21

And I thought if he wanted

28:25

me, even

28:29

if it was only for

28:33

one night,

28:39

I was ready to give out everything.

28:45

And I thought,

28:52

well, I'm going to give

28:55

out

28:58

everything.

29:04

For many viewers, this scene

29:06

was the most compelling in the movie

29:08

and constituted the best

29:11

screen acting Nicole Kidman had done

29:13

to that point. I saw

29:15

Eyes Wide Shut in the theater in 1999,

29:18

and I've seen it probably a dozen times

29:20

since, watching it recently

29:22

as a middle-aged married person

29:25

and as a fan of Tom Cruise

29:27

lamenting the fact that lately he seemed

29:29

more interested in doing stunts than

29:31

in playing characters who would challenge his image

29:33

of himself as an impenetrable

29:36

hero.

29:37

I was stunned by Cruise's performance

29:39

in this scene.

29:41

When Kubrick's camera moves in on him

29:43

as he listens to his wife demolish

29:46

his idea of who she is and who

29:49

he is and of the givens men

29:51

and women can trust about one another,

29:54

my heart starts to hurt.

29:58

Talk about Hollywood being elliptical.

30:00

Tom Cruise had been a movie star for about

30:02

a decade and a half in 1999, since Risky

30:05

Business in 1983.

30:09

Since that film, which was about America's

30:11

conflation of sexual power with fiscal

30:14

power,

30:15

Cruise had not exactly made

30:18

a living playing powerlessness.

30:21

In Born on the Fourth of July, Cruise showed

30:23

much vulnerability

30:24

playing disabled

30:26

Vietnam

30:26

vet Ron Kovik,

30:28

although that film was in large part

30:30

about Kovik overcoming hardship and

30:33

disillusionment to feel empowered

30:35

as an activist. But

30:37

what Cruise is doing in Eyes Wide Shut

30:40

was totally different, in part

30:42

because the stakes were so low and

30:45

so intimate. As

30:47

this scene is happening, Bill is

30:49

still financially comfortable,

30:51

physically practically perfect

30:53

and as we'll see throughout the rest of the film, desired

30:56

by both women and men. And

30:59

as a doctor, he's godlike

31:02

in his ability to bring someone like Mandy

31:04

back to life from

31:06

the brink of death.

31:08

But his sense of self is

31:10

absolutely destroyed by the idea

31:12

that his wife fantasizes about

31:15

having sex with other

31:17

men.

31:19

The dreamlike structure continues. This

31:22

nightmare is interrupted when the phone rings

31:25

and Bill learns that a patient has died.

31:28

He has to go console

31:29

the surviving daughter

31:31

and so he leaves home and embarks

31:34

on an all-night odyssey, seeking

31:36

some solve for the wounds inflicted

31:38

by Ellis' confession.

31:41

At the house of the dead patient, the

31:43

grief-stricken

31:44

daughter comes on to Bill and,

31:47

in an echo of what Ellis just told

31:49

him, claims she would

31:51

give up her fiancé for

31:53

a chance to sleep with the doctor. This

31:57

dream of desire is interrupted

31:59

by the arrival of Bill.

31:59

of the fiancé.

32:02

In a Kubrickian touch of dark comedy,

32:04

this all happens in the same room where

32:07

the corpse lies in bed. From

32:10

there, Bill wanders the streets

32:12

of Greenwich Village, festering

32:15

over his wife's unbeknownst to him

32:17

in her life.

32:18

He's already feeling humiliated,

32:21

and then he's pushed into a parked

32:23

car and gay-bashed by

32:26

a bunch of drunk frat boys.

32:28

Skip ahead about 35 seconds

32:32

if you don't want to hear homophobic

32:34

dialogue.

32:50

Go

32:58

on, talk to your man! Go on, talk to

33:00

your man! You want a pen that has a place

33:02

to exit all the money?

33:09

I played this clip because, aside

33:11

from the garden variety homophobia,

33:14

some of the language used seems

33:16

so specific to Tom Cruise

33:19

and so designed to humiliate

33:21

not just the character he's playing,

33:23

but the actor playing him.

33:26

Although this was

33:27

two years before Cruise would sue

33:30

a gay porn star for claiming

33:32

they had had an affair, Cruise's

33:33

sexuality had been the subject

33:36

of rumors at least since the homoerotic

33:39

top gun. The mob's specific

33:41

reference to Bill's height is

33:43

another personal dig that applies to the

33:46

actor, who was starring in this

33:48

film alongside his real-life wife

33:50

who towered over him in heels, and

33:53

he was also visibly shorter than the two

33:55

models from the party scene.

33:58

When they call him a switch hit her ass.

34:00

It seems to imply that Bill's actual

34:02

sexuality is dualistic,

34:05

and when they mockingly call him Macho

34:07

Man, they're not just saying he's

34:09

queer, but deficient

34:12

in masculinity.

34:13

Which is exactly how Bill feels

34:16

before he encounters these assholes.

34:18

He's been kicked in the balls

34:21

while he's down.

34:22

No wonder, when he turns a corner

34:25

and bumps into a pretty young sex worker

34:27

played by Vanessa Shaw, he

34:29

accepts her invitation for a date. But

34:33

Bill can't consummate that sure

34:35

thing. A call from Alice makes

34:37

him feel guilty enough to leave

34:39

the hooker's apartment, but not

34:42

remorseful enough to give up his search

34:45

for something that will make him feel better.

34:48

He ends up wandering into the jazz

34:50

club where Nick Nightingale, the

34:52

piano player from the opening party, is

34:54

doing a gig.

34:56

And he tells Bill he

34:58

has another gig later

35:00

that night.

35:02

A recurring gig,

35:03

but a mysterious one.

35:06

I play blindfolded.

35:10

I play blindfolded.

35:13

I play blindfolded. You're

35:18

putting me

35:20

on. It's true. And

35:25

the last time, the

35:27

blindfold was not so well.

35:32

Bill,

35:36

I have seen one or two things in

35:38

my life, but

35:40

never, never

35:42

anything like this.

35:45

And never such women.

35:51

After much cajoling from Bill,

35:54

Nick gives him the address to

35:56

a decadent ritual orgy.

35:58

But in order to... to fit

36:01

in, Bill needs to wear a mask, a tux

36:03

and a cloak, which leads to

36:05

what I think is Eyes Wide Shut's least

36:07

successful scene slash some plots

36:10

involving a costume shop where the proprietor's

36:13

teenage daughter, played by Lili

36:15

Sobieski, is apparently

36:17

pimped out by her father to two

36:20

Japanese men. Sobieski,

36:23

who was 14 when she filmed this part,

36:25

in which she wears a bra and panties in

36:27

both of her scenes, was 16 when

36:30

a highly airbrushed photo of her in

36:33

a tight camisole was put

36:35

on the cover of men's magazine details

36:37

to promote the movie.

36:40

When she retired from acting 17 years

36:42

later to focus on raising her two kids

36:45

and making visual art, she said, 90

36:47

percent of acting roles

36:49

involve so much sexual stuff with other people

36:52

and I don't want to do that. Anyway,

36:56

Bill finally gets to be orgy, which

36:58

is preceded by a ritual ceremony involving

37:00

women wearing masks, headdresses, and

37:03

thong panties kneeling in a

37:05

circle as a crowd of men and

37:07

cloaks and masks gather around. Some

37:10

of the women kiss each other with their

37:13

masks on, an absurd

37:15

image and a clue to the dry comedy

37:17

that underlies the portentous seriousness

37:20

of the scene. Bill's mask

37:23

is, as befits the character,

37:25

expressionless, but many

37:27

of the other masks are frozen in a laugh,

37:30

a yawn, or a scream. Bill

37:34

wanders through the rooms of this mega mansion,

37:37

watching other people fuck in various combinations.

37:41

A masked woman in a black feathered

37:43

headdress recognizes him

37:45

and warns him to leave. Then

37:48

she is pulled away. After

37:51

another woman is propositioning Bill, the

37:54

original woman comes back, pulls

37:56

him away, and tells him no,

37:59

seriously.

37:59

He needs to leave.

38:02

He tries to pull off her mask but

38:04

can't.

38:05

And then he is approached by a man

38:08

in a gold mask and pulled

38:10

into a kind of ritual tribunal, presided

38:13

over by a person in a gold mask

38:16

and red cloak.

38:17

You will kindly remove

38:20

your mask.

38:42

stedman ronic

38:44

seen death

38:52

Susan interest remove

38:57

your clothes yummy

39:13

please remove

39:18

your clothes or

39:20

would you like us to do it

39:23

for you let

39:33

him go take

39:38

me I

39:41

am ready to redeem him

39:47

that's the woman in the feathered headdress again

39:50

she offers herself up for

39:52

whatever punishment there might be

39:54

so that Bill will be allowed to

39:56

leave unscathed

39:58

he is still warned that if he tells

40:01

anyone about any of this, there will

40:03

be quote-unquote

40:05

dire consequences.

40:08

As we'll see later,

40:09

the orgy scene made some

40:11

critics roll their eyes.

40:14

In The New Yorker, David Denby called

40:16

it, the most pompous orgy

40:18

in the history of movies.

40:21

I thought there had been so many orgies

40:23

and mainstream movies to compare it to.

40:25

And I think the evocation of dire

40:28

consequences has a lot

40:30

to do with that. After all,

40:33

we've seen everything that Bill has seen, and

40:35

that is, frankly,

40:37

not much.

40:39

Some rituals that we don't understand, some

40:42

people wearing masks, fucking mechanically,

40:45

largely in long shots and choreographed

40:47

carefully so that we don't see any nether

40:49

regions.

40:51

We have not seen or been able to recognize

40:53

anyone's identity.

40:56

What would he even tell anyone?

40:59

Based on Eyes Wide Shut's marketing, critics

41:02

and audiences were expecting something unspeakable,

41:05

involving the most famous couple in the world

41:07

at that point. Instead, they

41:10

got a masked and unrecognizable

41:12

Tom Cruise, playing a character

41:15

whose masculinity has been reduced to

41:17

dregs, drifting at a sleepwalker's

41:20

pace through an orgy in which he does not

41:22

participate,

41:23

only to be warned that what has happened

41:25

here

41:26

is a matter of life and death.

41:29

Haha, right? But

41:32

that's the point. At the midpoint

41:34

of this movie,

41:35

it's crux.

41:36

Eyes Wide Shut becomes its most

41:39

dreamlike, with this sequence

41:41

that, to borrow the title of Kubrick's

41:43

first film, mixes

41:45

fear and desire in

41:48

a way that most of us only

41:49

experience in dreams.

41:51

The sex that might make him feel better

41:54

about himself given the humiliation

41:56

he walked in with, or, let's

41:58

be honest, might have ultimately

41:59

made him feel even worse,

42:02

remains out of reach. And

42:05

then, in a classic nightmare scenario,

42:07

he is forced to reveal his true self

42:10

and is on the verge of

42:11

having to reveal his body before

42:14

a last-minute reprieve.

42:17

Kubrick was a master of lighting and

42:19

cinematography. He knew exactly

42:21

what he wanted, would push technicians

42:23

to try things that they thought were impossible

42:26

or wouldn't work, and he was usually

42:28

right. The bookending images

42:30

of the orgy sequence, involving the

42:33

red cloaked figure at the center of the circle,

42:36

features the most direct, brightest

42:38

light in the whole movie. The

42:41

pot-smoking naval officer confession

42:43

scene takes place in a bedroom that's

42:46

all warm tones, from

42:48

the soft lamp lighting to the red curtains

42:50

and textiles on the bed, to

42:53

the rosy flesh of Kidman's exposed

42:55

skin. But in almost

42:57

every shot of the actress, you can

43:00

also see bright, blue,

43:02

cool light coming from the window.

43:06

With the exception of the Christmas lights and decorations

43:08

visible in most locations, the

43:11

color palette of Eyes Wide Shut is

43:13

predominantly

43:14

red and blue.

43:16

When Bill is plagued by visions

43:18

of his wife in bed with the naval officer,

43:21

as he often is throughout the film,

43:23

the images are in black and white,

43:25

tinted blue. Nearly

43:27

every

43:28

female in the film with a significant role

43:30

has red or reddish hair. This

43:33

may be part of the confusion Bill and the audience

43:36

experience between Mandy, the woman

43:38

who overdosed Ed Ziegler's party at

43:40

the beginning of the film, and

43:42

the woman in the headdress who warns

43:44

Bill to leave the

43:45

orgy,

43:46

even though they are played by two

43:48

different actresses. Three

43:51

if you count Cate Blanchett, whose

43:53

voice was dubbed in for Abigail

43:55

Goode, whose body we see

43:57

below the mask and headdress. The

44:00

blue outside world threatens to

44:02

encroach on the warm space of the marital bedroom,

44:05

but later in the film, Red

44:07

will switch connotations. At

44:10

the orgy, the frightening authority

44:13

figure who unmasks Bill, and

44:15

who is played by Leon Vitale,

44:17

Lord Bullington from Barry Lyndon, who

44:19

became Kubrick's long-time assistant, is

44:22

cloaked in red, and in fact

44:24

is named in the credits,

44:25

only as red cloak.

44:31

When Bill gets home from

44:32

the orgy, his bedroom is no

44:34

longer warm and red. It's

44:37

full of harsh blue light. Though

44:39

Bill carefully hides the bag containing

44:42

his costume before he comes to bed, he

44:45

and Alice can't keep the outside

44:47

world out. She is laughing

44:49

in her sleep when he comes in, and he

44:51

wakes her up, telling her, disingenuously,

44:55

that he was worried she was having a nightmare.

44:58

Half asleep and now on the verge of tears, she

45:01

explains that in her dream, the

45:04

two of them were naked and ashamed,

45:06

and she thought it was his fault. He

45:09

left to find them close,

45:11

and she felt better,

45:13

but then the naval officer showed up, saw

45:15

her naked body, and laughed at her.

45:18

After telling this part, she cries.

45:22

Bill eggs her on to tell him more.

45:24

She embraces him while tearfully

45:27

narrating the rest

45:28

of her dream. He...

45:33

He was kissing me.

45:38

And then...

45:42

Then we were making love. Then

45:50

there were all these other people around

45:52

us. Hundreds of

45:54

them everywhere. Everyone

45:57

was fucking.

46:02

And then

46:09

I was fucking other men. So

46:13

many. I

46:16

don't know how many I was with. I

46:22

knew

46:22

you could see me in the

46:24

arms of all these masses. You

46:30

fucking old-leaf man. And

46:36

I wanted to

46:38

make fun of you. To

46:42

laugh in your face. And

46:48

so I laughed as loud

46:51

as I could.

46:54

That must be

46:56

when you walk in.

47:12

Again, as good as Kidman

47:14

is at performing this monologue,

47:17

Cruise is equally good listening

47:19

to it and conveying the terror

47:21

that Bill feels, learning for the

47:23

first time what's going on inside

47:26

of his wife,

47:27

and communicating on his face his jealousy,

47:30

not just because she fantasizes about

47:32

having so much sex with so

47:34

many other men,

47:35

but because he can't seem to have a

47:38

secret life of his own.

47:40

He's like a hacky joke about the one

47:42

guy who can't get laid at the orgy,

47:44

except it's a joke played straight.

47:47

As the film continues on for

47:49

another full hour,

47:52

Bill retraces his steps from the night

47:54

before, as if trying

47:56

to rejoin a dream that was interrupted

47:58

in progress. Every

48:01

attempt to reengage a missed sexual

48:03

opportunity is cock-blocked. Every

48:06

search for answers results in

48:08

information he didn't want to know.

48:11

His impotence, in every sense of the

48:13

word,

48:15

only gets worse.

48:17

Another scene that slummoxed critics occurs

48:20

late in the film when Victor Ziegler

48:23

calls Bill to his house to confront

48:25

him over his presence at the orgy and

48:28

his persistence in asking questions about

48:30

that night and what happened

48:32

to the woman who stepped in to save him. Some

48:35

critics complain that this scene explained

48:37

too much, wrapping the film's mysteries

48:40

in a too tight bow.

48:42

But Ziegler walks a very fine

48:44

line in this scene. He needs

48:47

to tell Bill something so that he'll stop

48:49

asking questions.

48:51

But as a member of the debauched super-elite,

48:54

he clearly has a lot to

48:56

hide and protect. And the last

48:58

thing he's going to do is give this naive,

49:01

middle-class doctor the

49:03

real story.

49:06

First Ziegler tells Bill that the men

49:08

at the orgy were so powerful that he

49:10

doesn't want to know their names.

49:12

Then he says all of the intimidation was a charade,

49:15

meant to scare Bill from telling anyone

49:18

what he had seen. The day

49:20

after the orgy, Mandy, the

49:23

girl who overdosed in Ziegler's bathroom

49:25

at the beginning of the movie, was

49:27

found dead.

49:29

Bill has become convinced this

49:31

was the woman from the orgy,

49:33

and Ziegler lets him think that,

49:35

while at the same time downplaying

49:38

that there were any mortal consequences

49:40

of her actions that night.

49:41

I saw her body

49:44

in the morgue. Who was

49:46

she? Who

49:50

was she? Who

49:54

was she? The woman at

49:56

the party. Yes.

50:10

She was. Victor,

50:25

the woman lying dead in the Moeburg.

50:27

Was

50:30

the woman at the park? Yes.

50:40

Well, Victor, maybe, um, missing

50:44

something here. You

50:46

called

50:46

it a fake charade.

50:51

Do you mind telling me what kind

50:53

of fucking charade ends

50:56

with somebody turning up dead?

51:00

Okay,

51:05

then let's, let's, let's, let's cut

51:07

the bullshit, all right? You've

51:10

been way out of your depth for the last 24 hours. You

51:12

want to know what kind of a charade? I'll tell you exactly

51:15

what kind.

51:17

That whole play act and take

51:19

me phony sacrifice that you've been

51:22

jerking yourself off with had absolutely

51:24

nothing to do with her real death. Nothing

51:26

happened to her after you left that party that hadn't

51:28

happened to her before. She got her brains fucked

51:31

out, period.

51:34

When they took her home, she

51:36

was, she was just fine. And

51:39

the rest of it is right there in the paper. She was

51:42

a junkie. She OD'd. There

51:44

was nothing suspicious. Her door was locked from the

51:46

inside. The police are happy. End of the story.

51:51

Come on. It was

51:53

always going to be just a matter of time with

51:55

her. Remember, you told

51:57

her so yourself. You remember the one with the great

51:59

tits.

51:59

I owe deed in my bathroom.

52:03

We don't know for sure if Kubrick meant

52:05

for the audience to believe that the woman who owed

52:08

deed at Ziegler's party and

52:10

the woman at the Orgy were the same

52:12

woman. But they are clearly

52:14

cited as two different actresses and

52:17

characters in the films and

52:19

credits. Likely, this

52:21

is more misdirection from Ziegler.

52:24

He's thinking, if Bill thinks this woman

52:26

is dead, he'll stop asking questions.

52:30

In any case,

52:31

the dehumanizing way

52:33

Ziegler talks about Mandy, like

52:35

she was a disposable sex object,

52:37

with no acknowledgment that her drug

52:39

addiction might have something to do with the way

52:42

she's been exploited sexually, doesn't

52:45

do anything to make Bill feel better. From

52:48

there, he goes home

52:49

and sees his mask from the

52:52

Orgy, which he thought he'd lost,

52:54

sitting on his pillow in

52:56

bed next to Alice.

52:59

Now it's his turn to collapse into tears

53:01

in bed and

53:02

to make a confession.

53:22

As wide shut's final scene consists

53:24

of a conversation between Bill and Alice

53:27

in a toy store,

53:28

where their daughter Helena is browsing for Christmas

53:30

gifts.

53:32

The irony of this setting as backdrop

53:35

for the resolution of this couple's sexual problems

53:37

is pure Kubrick,

53:39

as is the last line of the exchange,

53:42

the last word ever spoken

53:45

in a Kubrick movie.

53:47

The important thing is...

53:49

We're

53:51

awake now. And

53:55

hopefully...

53:59

For a long time to come.

54:02

Forever.

54:09

Forever. Forever.

54:16

Oh, this is not

54:18

a word. Yeah. It

54:22

frightens me.

54:31

And...

54:34

I do... love

54:36

you.

54:37

And

54:40

you know...

54:43

there is something very important

54:45

that we need to do as possible. Wish

54:50

them.

54:54

Fuck.

54:59

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58:20

To paraphrase an oft quoted and

58:22

misquoted line from sci-fi writer

58:25

Robert Heinlein, every generation

58:27

thinks they invented sex. Obviously

58:30

that's not the case, as Stanley

58:32

Kubrick knew well. After

58:35

all, his masterpiece amongst masterpieces,

58:37

Barry Lyndon, is predicated

58:40

on an act of mid 18th century

58:42

horniness. Kubrick recognized

58:45

something familiar in Trom Nivelle's stories

58:47

of sexual fantasy and masked orgies

58:50

when he first read it in the supposedly

58:52

sexually repressed 1950s. When

58:55

it was recommended to him by his second wife,

58:58

Ruth Sibotka. It

59:00

lingered with him over the years, through

59:02

his collaboration with Terry Southern and into

59:05

the 70s, when he optioned

59:07

the novel. And it was still

59:09

with him in 1994, when

59:11

he finally embarked on the adaptation.

59:15

Kubrick moved to London to shoot Lolita

59:17

and never left. After his

59:19

experience in the shoot of Spartacus, which

59:22

he was brought on to direct by star

59:24

slash producer Kirk

59:25

Douglas,

59:26

Kubrick was determined to never

59:29

again make a Hollywood movie in

59:31

which he would have to cede total

59:32

control.

59:34

He made Dr. Strangelove for Columbia

59:36

and 2001 for MGM. And

59:40

then beginning with A Clockwork Orange, he

59:43

began a long partnership with Warner

59:45

Brothers, where he was initially

59:47

supported by exec John Calley,

59:50

who would become one of his best friends.

59:54

Kubrick didn't fly and he never

59:57

returned to the US. He

59:59

and his wife. Christian lived on an estate

1:00:01

outside London, and that alone

1:00:04

was

1:00:04

mysterious to people in Hollywood.

1:00:06

He had a reputation as a hermit, but

1:00:09

some close to him said it was more complicated

1:00:11

than that.

1:00:12

The truth is, he lived in a paradise,

1:00:14

said Sidney Pollock. There

1:00:16

wasn't any reason for him

1:00:18

to go anywhere. It was a kind

1:00:20

of a heaven. At

1:00:22

his home, Kubrick had everything he needed,

1:00:24

including separate studios for himself

1:00:26

and his painter wife. He

1:00:29

would see people, usually entertaining

1:00:31

at home. When he wasn't an active

1:00:33

production, he spent his time

1:00:35

courageously reading. Every

1:00:37

film from Lolita on was based on a

1:00:39

book and talking on the phone

1:00:41

with friends all over the world. One

1:00:44

friend described 1980 through 1983 as

1:00:48

one extended phone conversation with Kubrick,

1:00:51

with interruptions. Kubrick

1:00:54

would sue over potential movie

1:00:55

ideas for decades.

1:00:57

He once told an actor, the

1:00:59

hardest thing in making a movie is to keep

1:01:02

in the front of your consciousness your original

1:01:04

response to the material, because

1:01:06

that's going to be the thing that will make the movie, and

1:01:09

the loss of that will break the movie.

1:01:12

Staying excited about his source material

1:01:14

was a foremost occupation of Kubrick's,

1:01:17

and one of the reasons he talked on the phone

1:01:19

so much, bouncing ideas off

1:01:21

of trusted friends

1:01:22

in order to keep a conversation in his

1:01:24

own mind fresh.

1:01:26

In the 80s, when he was trying

1:01:28

to figure out how to make Tromnovell on

1:01:30

the back burner, he was also

1:01:32

trying to figure out how to make a movie about the

1:01:34

Holocaust, which he felt was

1:01:37

too big a subject to fit into a conventional

1:01:39

feature film. When he first

1:01:41

met Michael Hare in 1980, he

1:01:44

had two books messengers over

1:01:46

to Hare, Tromnovell and

1:01:49

the Destruction of the European

1:01:51

Jews by Raoul Hilberg.

1:01:54

Hare's first impression of Tromnovell was that

1:01:56

it embodied,

1:01:57

quote, the full excruciating.

1:01:59

appreciating flowering of a voluptuous

1:02:02

and self-consciously decadent time

1:02:04

and place, a shocking and dangerous

1:02:07

story about sex and sexual obsession

1:02:09

and the suffering of sex.

1:02:12

In its pitiless view of love, marriage,

1:02:15

and desire, made all the more disturbing

1:02:17

by the suggestion that either all of it, or maybe

1:02:19

some of it, or possibly

1:02:21

none of it, is a dream.

1:02:23

It intrudes on the concealed

1:02:24

roots of Western erotic life like

1:02:27

a laser, suggesting discreetly,

1:02:30

from behind its dream cover,

1:02:32

things that are seldom even privately

1:02:34

acknowledged and never spoken

1:02:36

of in daylight.

1:02:40

Kubrick had, at some point, conceived

1:02:42

this as a starring vehicle for Woody

1:02:44

Allen.

1:02:46

By the early 80s, when he began talking

1:02:48

to Hare about it, he dreamed of casting

1:02:50

Steve Martin.

1:02:52

He'd loved the jerk, Michael

1:02:54

Hare explained. I know that his idea

1:02:56

for it in those days was always a sex comedy,

1:02:59

but with a wild and somber streak

1:03:01

running through it. Now I think we were

1:03:03

all too square to imagine what Stanley

1:03:05

saw in Steve Martin. According

1:03:08

to Todd Field, on set,

1:03:10

Kubrick would sometimes break out into impressions

1:03:13

of scenes from the jerk.

1:03:14

Quote,

1:03:15

He thought that part where Steve Martin doesn't

1:03:17

have any rhythm was just hysterical.

1:03:20

By the mid-90s,

1:03:23

Kubrick had decided that he wanted to cast

1:03:25

an actual married couple as the

1:03:27

couple in the film. Tom

1:03:29

Cruise and Nicole Kidman had met on the

1:03:31

set of their first film together, Days

1:03:34

of Thunder, and had married in 1990. At

1:03:38

the time, Kidman was just beginning

1:03:40

her Hollywood career after her

1:03:42

breakout success in Dead Calm, directed

1:03:45

by fellow Australian Philip Noyce.

1:03:48

Cruise, in 1990, was a huge

1:03:50

movie star, known for balancing

1:03:53

accessible blockbusters like Top Gun

1:03:55

and Cocktail, with films that

1:03:57

put his all-American looks and his willingness to be a part of the world.

1:04:00

to challenge himself in the hands of auteurs

1:04:02

like Martin Scorsese and

1:04:04

Oliver Stone. Cruz

1:04:07

recalled that he received a

1:04:09

fax from Kubrick

1:04:11

asking if he would be interested in working

1:04:14

together. And then a few months

1:04:16

later, another fax came in from

1:04:18

Kubrick asking if Kidman

1:04:20

would want to be involved too. He

1:04:23

didn't even tell me what the movie was about, Cruz

1:04:26

recalled, and I didn't ask. I

1:04:28

was just hoping

1:04:29

it wouldn't go away.

1:04:32

The next step was a trip to the Kubrick

1:04:34

house for dinner.

1:04:35

As Cruz recalled,

1:04:37

we spent six hours there, relaxing,

1:04:40

drinking wine. When we finally

1:04:42

left at 1.30 in the morning, I remember

1:04:45

saying to Nick, gee, I hope

1:04:47

we didn't overstay our welcome. After

1:04:50

decades of chewing

1:04:51

over the source material, Kubrick

1:04:53

ultimately

1:04:54

enlisted Frederick Raphael to co-write

1:04:56

the screenplay with him. Raphael

1:04:58

wrote a whole book titled Eyes

1:05:01

Wide Open about this collaboration,

1:05:03

a

1:05:04

book that was widely discredited

1:05:05

by Kubrick's friends and family.

1:05:09

As Cruz fumed to Roger Ebert,

1:05:12

he wouldn't have written it if Stanley had been

1:05:14

alive, opportunistic, self-serving,

1:05:18

inaccurate. I don't know

1:05:20

that man at all, and I've never

1:05:22

met him. It's been

1:05:24

interesting seeing how people have behaved

1:05:27

afterward. In

1:05:29

Raphael's book, the only mystery greater

1:05:31

than why Kubrick thought Raphael was the

1:05:34

right person for this adaptation is why

1:05:36

Raphael said yes. The

1:05:39

collaboration seems to have been unsatisfactory

1:05:41

for both parties. Kubrick

1:05:43

apparently wasn't fully confident in the script going

1:05:46

into shooting. In 1996,

1:05:48

he called Michael Hare. Hare was

1:05:50

most famous as a war correspondent in Vietnam.

1:05:53

He had brought him the source material that became Full

1:05:55

Metal Jacket and written the script with Kubrick.

1:05:58

But he had started as a... film critic, replacing

1:06:01

the great Manny Farber at the magazine,

1:06:04

The New Leader. Now Kubrick

1:06:06

asked, what do you charge these days

1:06:08

for a wash and rinse?

1:06:10

He told Hare that the script needed

1:06:12

a little colloquializing.

1:06:15

Hare couldn't drop everything for an

1:06:18

open-ended engagement with Kubrick. I

1:06:20

pictured myself chained to a table

1:06:23

in his house. Hare later wrote, he

1:06:25

had learned from experience. The

1:06:28

more highly paid you were, or the

1:06:30

closer to the actual shooting, the

1:06:32

more enslaved you were likely to be. Cruz

1:06:37

and Kidman would never use a word

1:06:39

like enslaved to describe

1:06:41

the years they spent with Kubrick working on Eyes Wide

1:06:44

Shut. But the media would,

1:06:47

because they were the most famous married actors in

1:06:49

the world and because Kubrick was the most mysterious

1:06:52

filmmaker. There was enormous

1:06:54

media interest in this film from the point

1:06:57

the trades announced the casting of the stars

1:06:59

in 1995.

1:07:01

For most of the next four years,

1:07:04

most of the press had no solid

1:07:06

information about what was happening on the set of

1:07:08

the movie.

1:07:10

No one who was not on set

1:07:11

had read the script, and screenwriter

1:07:14

Raphael claimed that he wasn't allowed on the

1:07:16

set.

1:07:18

According to one source, Kubrick

1:07:20

was so afraid there would be leaks from

1:07:22

the set that he sometimes acted as the director of

1:07:25

photography and lighting man so that he could

1:07:27

be alone with the actors.

1:07:30

That vacuum of fact was the

1:07:32

perfect breeding ground for fiction.

1:07:35

As Peter Bronstein put it in The Village

1:07:37

Voice shortly before the movie opened,

1:07:40

in the absence of any real information

1:07:43

about the film's plot, production, or completion

1:07:45

date, Eyes Wide Shut became the decade's

1:07:47

most guessed-about film, generating

1:07:50

enough theory, conjecture, and apocrypha

1:07:53

to rival alien abduction literature.

1:07:59

to justify the lack of information

1:08:02

available about the movie.

1:08:04

Kubrick, 67, has a unique

1:08:07

deal with a major studio that guarantees

1:08:09

absolutely

1:08:09

no interference in any facet of his

1:08:11

filmmaking,

1:08:13

reported David Gritton in The LA Times

1:08:15

in April 1996.

1:08:17

Gritton added,

1:08:18

this makes him an anomaly in an era when budgetary

1:08:21

considerations and the perceived greater importance

1:08:23

of marketing and advertising movies have

1:08:25

encouraged studios to adopt a more hands-on

1:08:27

approach to the work of even the

1:08:29

most distinguished directors.

1:08:32

He then quoted Julian Sr., a Warner

1:08:34

Brothers executive based in London.

1:08:37

He'll do his thing and when the film's

1:08:39

ready, when

1:08:40

it's shot, edited, the music's put on,

1:08:42

and there's about

1:08:42

a week to go before release,

1:08:45

then we'll probably get to see it.

1:08:48

But not everyone was comfortable

1:08:50

waiting for Kubrick to do his own thing

1:08:53

at his own pace. In November 1996,

1:08:56

Britton's The Observer ran a

1:08:58

whole article about how no one from

1:09:00

Warner Brothers or either of the major studios

1:09:02

in London, Elstree and Pinewood,

1:09:05

had any information about the shoot.

1:09:08

Reporter Richard Brooks was left to quote

1:09:10

John Baxter, who was promoting

1:09:12

a book about Kubrick and who claimed,

1:09:14

there are already rumors

1:09:17

that Cruz is having problems rehearsing

1:09:19

the sex scenes.

1:09:21

He needs to loosen up

1:09:22

more and Kubrick is getting him in the right

1:09:24

mood with some specially commissioned

1:09:27

erotic art.

1:09:30

Here is a catalog of some other

1:09:31

rumors about Eyes Wide Shut that were published

1:09:34

by reputable publications over the next

1:09:36

three years. Liz Smith

1:09:38

in the LA Times quote, they

1:09:41

say that Tom Cruise, the world's biggest

1:09:43

movie star,

1:09:44

was required to do the same scene

1:09:46

over and over again.

1:09:47

And Kubrick, famously

1:09:49

persnickety,

1:09:50

wasn't satisfied until the 93rd take.

1:09:52

People magazine, January 1997,

1:09:56

although everyone on the set had to swear

1:09:59

an oath of secrecy. Rumor

1:10:01

has it that Cruise and Kidman play

1:10:03

married shrinks, and in one scene,

1:10:06

Tom wears a dress. In

1:10:09

April of that year, New York Magazine reported

1:10:11

that Harvey Keitel, originally

1:10:14

cast as Ziegler, had been fired

1:10:16

because he and Kubrick did not

1:10:19

get along. Because

1:10:21

Keitel had also been fired by Francis

1:10:23

Ford Coppola

1:10:23

from his Vietnam film,

1:10:26

this was described as shades

1:10:28

of apocalypse now.

1:10:31

As the shoot stretched closer to the

1:10:33

one-year mark, London Paper,

1:10:36

the Independent, published some wild speculation

1:10:38

about the content of the film.

1:10:39

Quote, "...Warner

1:10:41

will not comment on the roles that

1:10:44

Cruise and Kidman are playing in the movie, though

1:10:46

it is widely believed their characters

1:10:49

are a married

1:10:50

couple, both psychiatrists,

1:10:52

who have affairs with two of their clients,

1:10:56

played by Jennifer Jason Lee and, until

1:10:58

he quit, Harvey Keitel. Kidman's

1:11:01

character is also said to be a heroin

1:11:03

addict." The studio has yet

1:11:05

to comment

1:11:05

on other reports that Kubrick

1:11:08

also hired two British six

1:11:10

therapists, Wendy and Tony

1:11:13

Duffield, to inject some

1:11:15

zing into the love scenes between Cruise

1:11:18

and Kidman.

1:11:21

Six months later, the story

1:11:23

about the Duffields was picked up by the U.S.

1:11:25

tabloids, Star and

1:11:27

National Inquirer. According

1:11:31

to Star, Kubrick hired the sex

1:11:33

therapists at a rate of $3,000 a day because he was so,

1:11:36

quote,

1:11:39

"...exasperated that the married

1:11:41

couple failed to produce any sparks

1:11:44

in bed."

1:11:45

Meanwhile, the Inquirer claimed

1:11:47

that in the interest of authenticity,

1:11:50

Cruise and Kidman immersed themselves

1:11:53

into

1:11:53

a real world of sex and drugs.

1:11:56

When Warner Brothers announced

1:11:57

that the Stars

1:11:58

planned to file a law In Choir Editor David

1:12:01

Perrell said, we

1:12:03

vigorously defend our right to run stories that

1:12:06

have not been filtered through their press

1:12:09

machine. While Star

1:12:11

Editor in Chief

1:12:12

Phil Bunton said, he had a copy of the sex

1:12:14

therapist contract

1:12:15

to work on the production,

1:12:17

adding,

1:12:17

I'll be amazed

1:12:20

if it comes to trial. It didn't.

1:12:23

Cruz and Kidman, who had already won a lawsuit against

1:12:26

the Express for writing that their marriage was

1:12:29

a sham, couldn't stop other

1:12:32

publications from speculating about the content

1:12:34

of the

1:12:34

movie.

1:12:36

In January 1998, Entertainment Weekly mused

1:12:39

about one rumor they had heard. Quote,

1:12:43

does Cruz actually appear

1:12:46

as a transvestite?

1:12:48

Obviously, in 1999, that would have

1:12:50

been controversial enough. But

1:12:52

to E.W., the real scandal

1:12:55

was that Eyes Wide Shut had shocked for so long

1:12:58

that it had kept Tom Cruise off

1:13:00

the treadmill of Hollywood production. Quote,

1:13:04

Cruise alone could have made three films

1:13:06

at 20 million a pop in the time it's taken

1:13:08

him to do this once.

1:13:12

And it wasn't over yet.

1:13:15

In April 1998, The

1:13:16

New York Times reported that after 15

1:13:19

months of production, Cruise

1:13:21

was being called in for reshoots, which

1:13:23

would be significant given that Jennifer Jason

1:13:26

Lee, cast as the daughter

1:13:28

of the dead man who propositions Bill, could

1:13:30

not come back for reshoots because she was

1:13:32

committed to David Cronenberg's existence.

1:13:36

Beyond the shooting schedule, reporter

1:13:39

Bernard Weinrob knew nothing

1:13:41

about the content of the movie.

1:13:43

Quote, by some accounts, the

1:13:46

movie written by Mr. Kubrick and Frederick

1:13:48

Raphael is a psychosexual

1:13:50

thriller about two psychiatrists, played

1:13:53

by Mr. Cruise and his real life wife, Nicole

1:13:55

Kidman.

1:13:56

One studio executive said he believed

1:13:59

the film involved...

1:13:59

a menage a trois.

1:14:02

But the executives were obviously out of the loop

1:14:04

because Weinrob also wrote that they had

1:14:07

assumed the film had finally wrapped

1:14:09

and were tentatively planning to

1:14:11

release it in December.

1:14:14

Privately, according to the reporter,

1:14:17

one Warner Brothers executive called the agonizingly

1:14:20

long production, a nightmare.

1:14:21

Speculation

1:14:25

over what Ice Wide Shut even was

1:14:28

hit such a fevered pitch that

1:14:30

in December 1998, Howard

1:14:32

Stern did a segment about a daily news

1:14:34

item claiming that Harvey Keitel

1:14:36

had been fired because, to quote

1:14:39

a Village Voice summary, Keitel

1:14:42

was filming a masturbation scene

1:14:44

with Nicole Kidman and ended

1:14:46

up ejaculating in her hair,

1:14:49

prompting an enraged Nicole

1:14:52

to demand Keitel's dismissal. The

1:14:55

voices Peter Bronstein went on to explain

1:14:57

that this gossip, which he acknowledged

1:14:59

was denied roundly by all parties,

1:15:03

fit perfectly into, quote, a 1998 news environment

1:15:05

in which a

1:15:09

jaculate featured

1:15:10

prominently.

1:15:13

He may be referring to the use

1:15:15

of errant semen in that summer's

1:15:17

comedy blockbuster there, something about

1:15:19

Mary.

1:15:21

But he is definitely

1:15:22

also referring to the unlikely importance

1:15:25

to national politics and world

1:15:27

history of Monica

1:15:29

Lewinsky's gap dress stained

1:15:32

in an encounter with President Bill

1:15:34

Clinton. And though the

1:15:36

Keitel story was laughable and

1:15:38

had no relationship to anything

1:15:40

we see in the completed film, Bronstein's

1:15:43

contextualization of it was

1:15:46

itself a mirror of Ice Wide Shut

1:15:48

in that it enshrined a definitive

1:15:51

moment in the killing off of what remained

1:15:53

of the sixties sexual revolution.

1:15:56

For Democrats and supporters of Clinton,

1:15:58

this

1:15:59

was

1:15:59

At best, a face-palm moment,

1:16:02

demanding a pivot towards the resolutely

1:16:04

sexless Al Gore.

1:16:07

For Republicans, it was, to

1:16:09

use a bad pun, a wet

1:16:11

dream, proof of the decadence

1:16:14

and mendacity of the president of the opposite

1:16:16

party, who had gotten elected

1:16:18

by harnessing the spirit of 60s liberalism,

1:16:21

and an opportunity for them

1:16:23

to offer up

1:16:24

Christian conservatism as

1:16:26

a redemptive solution.

1:16:30

A year later, when Movieline released

1:16:33

its 1999 sex issue, the

1:16:35

film was still a mystery

1:16:37

to industry reporters. That

1:16:40

issue included two pieces dealing

1:16:42

with the film. One was a profile

1:16:44

of Thomas Gibson, the Greg

1:16:47

from the sitcom Dharma and Greg,

1:16:50

who appears in two scenes of Eyes

1:16:52

Wide Shut, which Joshua Mooney

1:16:54

confidently but erroneously described

1:16:57

as a film in which Cruz and Kidman

1:16:58

play married psychiatrists who

1:17:01

sleep with their patients and delve

1:17:03

into New York's sexual underworld.

1:17:07

Elsewhere in the magazine, in a preview

1:17:09

of the coming year of Sex on Screen,

1:17:11

Movieline made a more accurate prediction

1:17:14

about Eyes Wide Shut. Quote,

1:17:16

"...nobody really knows what we're gonna see when

1:17:19

Kubrick is finished. We'll just say

1:17:21

this. It is about sex.

1:17:24

It has lots of sex in it. And

1:17:27

it is directed by Stanley Kubrick, which

1:17:29

means that the sex will probably be

1:17:32

interesting, but it will not

1:17:34

be romantic and may well not

1:17:36

be erotic

1:17:37

either."

1:17:44

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1:18:17

In June 1997, Michael

1:18:19

Fleming at Variety estimated that

1:18:21

the Eyes Wide Shut shoot would

1:18:24

wrap September 1st, 300 days after it

1:18:26

began. But

1:18:29

when September rolled around, the

1:18:31

trade reported that the shoot would stretch over

1:18:34

a full calendar year. Although

1:18:36

the cast did get five weeks off

1:18:38

at Christmas, three at Easter, two weeks

1:18:40

over the summer, and a day so that Tom

1:18:43

and Nicole could attend Princess

1:18:45

Diana's funeral. Then

1:18:48

in December 1997, another

1:18:50

Variety story went like this. Though

1:18:53

the duration of Kubrick's movie was first

1:18:56

reported in this column as a curiosity,

1:18:59

it has become arguably the longest

1:19:01

shoot ever involving a major star

1:19:03

and studio. Cruise and Kidman

1:19:06

will be spending their second Christmas on

1:19:08

the shoot. In February 1998,

1:19:11

a pair of film restorers wrote to Fleming

1:19:13

to insist that, in fact, Lawrence

1:19:16

of Arabia still held the record

1:19:18

for the longest film shoot ever at 17

1:19:21

months with a six week break.

1:19:25

Eyes Wide Shut was 15 months

1:19:27

with an eight

1:19:27

week break,

1:19:29

but then Kubrick called for the post

1:19:31

Jennifer Jason Leigh reshoots. In

1:19:33

the summer of 1998,

1:19:34

people tallied

1:19:35

that the shoot had stretched

1:19:37

over 19 months and counting.

1:19:40

Although in fact, the counting was over.

1:19:43

Photography did wrap for good

1:19:45

that June. When Eyes Wide

1:19:47

Shut was certified as the longest shoot

1:19:50

ever by the Guinness Book of Records, the

1:19:52

record was cited at 15 months with

1:19:55

an unbroken 46

1:19:56

week shoot.

1:19:57

This record seems to only.

1:19:59

account for principal photography.

1:20:02

Originally slated for

1:20:04

release in December 1998, that month

1:20:07

Warner Brothers moved the release date

1:20:09

to July 16th, 1999, where it would stay. None

1:20:15

of this was particularly new for

1:20:17

Kubrick. As the LA Times

1:20:20

reported in September 1998, quote,

1:20:23

in 1967, an MGM executive

1:20:25

reportedly asked whether 2001, four years in the making,

1:20:30

referred to the title of his movie or

1:20:32

when the film would be completed.

1:20:35

Given the protracted shoot time, Kubrick

1:20:38

finished post-production relatively

1:20:40

quickly.

1:20:41

After about eight months holed

1:20:43

up at home working on the edit, he

1:20:46

told Warner Brothers he was ready for an extremely

1:20:48

exclusive screening

1:20:50

to be attended only by Tom,

1:20:52

Nicole, and

1:20:54

WB execs Terry Semmel and

1:20:56

Bob Daly. Kubrick

1:20:58

was so nervous about keeping the content of the

1:21:00

film under wraps that he had

1:21:03

an assistant hand deliver

1:21:04

the print to New York

1:21:06

and ask the productionist to

1:21:08

turn his back to the screen. The

1:21:12

foursome loved the film and

1:21:14

felt it was ready for release. As

1:21:16

Semmel later said, most

1:21:18

filmmakers show their early cut, the

1:21:20

director's cut, to the studio. The

1:21:23

studio gives input and then the director makes

1:21:25

changes. That

1:21:27

wasn't the case with Stanley. When

1:21:29

Stanley showed you the movie, his cut,

1:21:32

that was the finished movie.

1:21:33

There are just a handful of

1:21:35

directors who can do that. Steven

1:21:37

Spielberg is one, Clint Eastwood

1:21:40

is another. It's because they've

1:21:42

proven over the years that one

1:21:44

cut is all that's necessary.

1:21:48

When Kubrick heard the good news from

1:21:50

the screening, he called John

1:21:52

Calley, his old executive on

1:21:54

Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and The

1:21:57

Shining, who now ran Sony

1:21:59

Pictures.

1:22:00

As Callie remembered, I

1:22:02

said, good for you, this is a victory

1:22:04

for the old guys, to which Kubrick

1:22:07

responded,

1:22:08

old guys, I've never felt

1:22:10

better. I don't feel like an old guy

1:22:12

and you better not either.

1:22:15

Five days after that screening, Stanley

1:22:17

Kubrick died at home of

1:22:20

a heart attack. Semmel professed

1:22:22

to be shocked because he had just talked to Kubrick

1:22:25

on the phone a few hours earlier. We

1:22:28

were laughing, having a great time,

1:22:30

he said. We were all on cloud

1:22:33

nine. The

1:22:35

LA Times obituary of Kubrick quoted

1:22:37

Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Cruz

1:22:40

and Kidman, who said he was like family

1:22:42

to us. And Semmel of Warner Brothers,

1:22:45

who said, needless to say, Stanley

1:22:47

was not a fitness guy. And

1:22:50

British critic Alexander Walker,

1:22:52

who said, his films were

1:22:54

metaphors for the times and

1:22:57

fears and feelings we live in and

1:22:59

among. Walker

1:23:01

was quoted as an objective expert on

1:23:03

Kubrick's films, but he was also

1:23:06

a friend of the Kubrick family. It

1:23:08

was in the latter capacity that he had been

1:23:10

shown Eyes Wide Shut after Kubrick's

1:23:13

death.

1:23:14

So when Walker published a review

1:23:16

of Eyes Wide Shut,

1:23:17

three months after the director died,

1:23:20

three weeks before its release in the US,

1:23:23

and two weeks before most American

1:23:25

journalists were allowed to see it.

1:23:28

Stanley's wife, Christiane Kubrick, was

1:23:30

said to be devastated by

1:23:32

the betrayal.

1:23:34

It didn't matter that the review

1:23:35

was a rave, with Walker

1:23:38

praising its ability to conjure a

1:23:40

strange atmosphere from this feeling

1:23:42

of contemporary America overlaid

1:23:45

by Fanducier Clodecdence.

1:23:49

The problem was that he went on to describe

1:23:51

many scenes of the film in

1:23:54

microscopic detail. He

1:23:57

also somewhat misleadingly suggested

1:24:00

than Nicole Kidman's Naked Body

1:24:02

was a major feature of the film, writing,

1:24:06

Exposure and Denial, Invitation

1:24:08

and Retreat, this extraordinary

1:24:11

movie's recovering motif is

1:24:13

encapsulated

1:24:13

in the nudity

1:24:16

of its female star.

1:24:19

Walker's review was published in an English

1:24:21

newspaper, but the Kubrick camp's

1:24:23

reaction to it was widely reported

1:24:25

in the U.S. After this,

1:24:28

the Eyes Wide Shut team tried

1:24:30

to exert even more control over

1:24:32

the messages communicated about the movie. Cruise

1:24:36

publicity firm PMK

1:24:38

asked broadcast journalists at

1:24:40

the movie's press junket to sign a waiver,

1:24:43

agreeing to show the publicists

1:24:46

rough cuts of any interviews they plan

1:24:48

to air and to destroy any

1:24:50

unused footage of Cruise, and

1:24:53

to guarantee, quote,

1:24:55

the interview and the program will

1:24:57

not

1:24:57

show the artist in a negative or derogatory

1:25:00

manner. Some outlets

1:25:02

were willing to play along, according to The

1:25:04

LA Times,

1:25:06

because celebrities such as Cruise attract

1:25:08

TV audiences and sell magazines.

1:25:12

No kidding. Multiple

1:25:14

publications put Cruise and or Kidman

1:25:17

on the cover of their magazines, with

1:25:19

headlines such as The Sexiest

1:25:21

Movie Ever, which appeared

1:25:23

on the cover of Us. Much of

1:25:25

this coverage was written and published

1:25:28

before any journalists actually saw

1:25:30

the movie. Before filing

1:25:32

his Kidman cover story for Vogue, John

1:25:35

Powers at least got a chance to see the 90-second

1:25:38

teaser trailer unveiled at

1:25:40

the exhibitor's convention show West in

1:25:42

March, which consisted of the

1:25:44

scene from the film in which Kidman and Cruise

1:25:47

nakedly

1:25:47

embraced to the Chris

1:25:48

Isaac song. Based

1:25:51

on this clip, Powers suggested

1:25:53

that the film would give viewers a near-pornographic

1:25:56

insight into this real celebrity

1:25:59

marriage.

1:26:00

Because it's them,

1:26:02

Tom and Nicole, up on the

1:26:04

screen, the clip gives you a nice

1:26:06

voyeuristic fission, which is

1:26:09

doubtless what its creator intended,"

1:26:11

Powers wrote,

1:26:12

adding that the total press lockdown

1:26:15

insisted on by Kubrick during production

1:26:18

resulted in the couple becoming quote,

1:26:20

comfortable enough to throw themselves

1:26:22

into the film's dangerous, psychosexual

1:26:25

subject matter, a process that

1:26:27

Kidman hits had reverberations

1:26:30

in the couple's off-screen life. Time

1:26:33

magazine called it a haunting masterpiece

1:26:37

on a cover that included images of

1:26:39

Tom and Nicole embracing

1:26:41

topless. Though Richard

1:26:44

Schickel, who wrote the cover story, seems

1:26:46

to have been allowed to see the movie before

1:26:49

publishing, a sidebar

1:26:51

column devoted to debunking

1:26:53

false reports about the movie, still

1:26:55

played its coy about rumors that the real-life

1:26:58

couple get intimate

1:27:00

on

1:27:00

screen. Quote,

1:27:02

Our mouths are wide shut

1:27:04

on this one. You'll have to go

1:27:07

see it for yourself.

1:27:09

What are people expecting from this film? Mused

1:27:13

Liz Smith in a column published a month before

1:27:15

Eyes Wide Shut was released. Graphic?

1:27:18

Truly graphic sex scenes between

1:27:20

Cruise and Kidman? The now

1:27:22

infamous teaser for the movie notwithstanding,

1:27:25

I doubt it. Neither

1:27:27

star has seemed particularly

1:27:28

inclined to push the sex-in-nudity envelope.

1:27:31

My gut feeling is that there will be a lot

1:27:34

less sex in Eyes Wide Shut than anticipated.

1:27:38

Ultimately, there was less

1:27:40

visible sex in the version of the film

1:27:42

released in the U.S. than Kubrick had intended.

1:27:46

Last week, in part two of our

1:27:48

story,

1:27:49

we will talk about what happened when critics

1:27:52

actually saw Eyes Wide Shut and

1:27:55

learned that CGI had been employed

1:27:57

after Kubrick's

1:27:58

death to turn

1:27:59

an NC-17 rating into an R. We'll

1:28:04

talk about how audiences responded

1:28:06

to the movie, its impact

1:28:09

on the marriage of Tom Cruise and Nicole

1:28:11

Kidman, and where Hollywood

1:28:13

eroticism went from there.

1:28:16

We'll wrap up the story of erotic 90s by

1:28:19

looking back at a star who featured prominently

1:28:22

in both erotic 80s and erotic 90s

1:28:25

as a gateway to discussing how, to

1:28:28

paraphrase Chinatown, even

1:28:31

whores

1:28:31

get respectable if

1:28:33

they

1:28:33

last long enough.

1:28:35

Join us then, won't you?

1:28:46

Thanks for listening to You Must Remember This.

1:28:49

The show is written, produced, and

1:28:51

narrated by Karina

1:28:54

Longworth.

1:28:55

That's me.

1:28:57

This season is edited and mixed

1:29:00

by Evan Viola. Our

1:29:02

research and production assistant

1:29:04

is Lindsay D. Schonholz.

1:29:07

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1:29:10

Whalen, and our logo was

1:29:12

designed by Teddy Blanks. If

1:29:15

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