1
00:00:20,135 --> 00:00:22,226
So I'm always
caught in that dichotomy,

2
00:00:22,603 --> 00:00:25,626
is the journey
the most thrilling part of it?

3
00:00:25,803 --> 00:00:30,792
Or is it, I say end result. I don't
think you ever get to an end result.

4
00:00:30,970 --> 00:00:35,959
You get to a result as close as you can
get in the time that you need to get it.

5
00:00:36,136 --> 00:00:38,795
And I think if you have
a lot of curiosity,

6
00:00:38,970 --> 00:00:42,767
you-you kind of never feel
like you've completed any journey,

7
00:00:42,936 --> 00:00:45,596
because you're always
changing trains.

8
00:00:45,770 --> 00:00:49,862
And you're always, without knowing it,
on some other destination.

9
00:00:50,037 --> 00:00:51,060
It's a conundrum.

10
00:01:19,072 --> 00:01:22,664
I thought about Leon as a
moth that was attracted to the flame

11
00:01:22,839 --> 00:01:25,532
that causes the moth
to burn its own wings off.

12
00:01:28,240 --> 00:01:32,638
Stanley Kubrick was
an incredibly bright light.

13
00:01:32,806 --> 00:01:38,000
His seductiveness was strong enough
for Leon to be burned by Stanley's light.

14
00:01:49,040 --> 00:01:52,767
I'd seen 2001
just after I left drama school.

15
00:01:52,940 --> 00:01:56,963
And I just thought it was the
greatest movie I'd ever seen.

16
00:02:02,074 --> 00:02:06,007
Then I went to see to A Clockwork
Orange, because it was Stanley Kubrick.

17
00:02:06,175 --> 00:02:07,141
Whoo-hoo!

18
00:02:11,141 --> 00:02:13,004
When I was watching
the performances,

19
00:02:13,175 --> 00:02:14,573
like Malcolm McDowell,

20
00:02:15,509 --> 00:02:18,236
it was so big, so bold.

21
00:02:18,609 --> 00:02:24,236
And I thought, this is as close as you get
to a theatrical kind of performance on film.

22
00:02:24,609 --> 00:02:26,007
And it makes sense.

23
00:02:26,176 --> 00:02:28,199
And how wonderful for an actor

24
00:02:28,575 --> 00:02:32,803
to be able to come on and give
that whole, broad feeling.

25
00:02:34,876 --> 00:02:36,967
-♪ I'm singin' in the rain ♪
-When the film finished,

26
00:02:37,142 --> 00:02:40,575
I turned to the person
I was actually watching it with,

27
00:02:40,743 --> 00:02:43,607
and I said,
"I want to work for that man".

28
00:02:43,776 --> 00:02:45,174
That's exactly what I said.

29
00:02:45,543 --> 00:02:46,873
"I want to work for that man".

30
00:03:00,911 --> 00:03:03,502
I was lucky,
because I never didn't work.

31
00:03:03,677 --> 00:03:08,110
I was doing theater, television,
prestige costume dramas, BBC.

32
00:03:08,278 --> 00:03:09,642
I shocked you,
didn't I?

33
00:03:09,811 --> 00:03:13,175
I was doing one-off plays,
a couple of movies.

34
00:03:13,545 --> 00:03:15,170
There were cop dramas.

35
00:03:15,545 --> 00:03:18,943
Why should they want to? I live on the
outskirts of town, middle of suburbia.

36
00:03:19,112 --> 00:03:23,635
I think I did every single one of them
that was being done at the time.

37
00:03:23,812 --> 00:03:27,040
Not gonna bring her back to life again
are you, you interfering bastards?

38
00:03:27,212 --> 00:03:29,508
Were you, on the night in question,
anywhere near that warehouse?

39
00:03:29,679 --> 00:03:30,474
No, no, no!

40
00:03:30,646 --> 00:03:32,669
I was doing sitcoms.

41
00:03:52,080 --> 00:03:54,740
I was in London
when everything was changing.

42
00:03:54,914 --> 00:03:59,142
I felt I could be, and do, and behave
the way I wanted to.

43
00:03:59,514 --> 00:04:01,878
It was a huge release for me.

44
00:04:24,649 --> 00:04:28,479
- Thy will be done, on Earth as it is...
-Amen

45
00:04:28,649 --> 00:04:30,239
May I come with you?

46
00:04:33,616 --> 00:04:38,776
One of my agents had actually heard that
Stanley Kubrick was doing a new production.

47
00:04:38,949 --> 00:04:41,541
And he organized
an audition for me,

48
00:04:41,716 --> 00:04:43,478
and it was a film called
Barry Lyndon.

49
00:04:47,149 --> 00:04:48,843
So Stanley had
the text sent to you.

50
00:04:49,017 --> 00:04:51,141
And on the front of mine,
when it came,

51
00:04:51,517 --> 00:04:55,540
it had a little note which had what I later
understood to be Stanley's handwriting.

52
00:04:55,717 --> 00:04:58,649
Which was, "Learn these lines".

53
00:04:58,817 --> 00:05:03,182
And when someone like Stanley Kubrick
tells you to learn your lines,

54
00:05:03,551 --> 00:05:05,676
you learn your lines.

55
00:05:07,985 --> 00:05:10,712
A phone call came through,
and my agent told me,

56
00:05:10,885 --> 00:05:14,079
"You've got the role
in Stanley Kubrick's picture".

57
00:05:14,252 --> 00:05:16,547
Well, my head
was somewhere out there.

58
00:05:16,718 --> 00:05:17,979
Thanks, oh great ones.

59
00:05:20,719 --> 00:05:26,845
I got a telephone call, who said "You
should be at the White Hart Hotel at 6:00,

60
00:05:27,019 --> 00:05:28,951
because Stanley
wants to meet you".

61
00:05:29,119 --> 00:05:32,108
And I was standing
in that hotel foyer,

62
00:05:32,286 --> 00:05:35,547
and suddenly, there was this
little tap on my shoulder.

63
00:05:35,719 --> 00:05:40,482
I turned round, and he said,
"Hi, Leon. I'm Stanley".

64
00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:42,508
And we shook hands.

65
00:05:42,686 --> 00:05:43,845
And I have to
tell you something.

66
00:05:45,119 --> 00:05:46,779
When you shook hands
with Stanley,

67
00:05:46,953 --> 00:05:50,078
it was warm and gentle.

68
00:05:52,220 --> 00:05:54,913
Just, like, a buzz
went through you.

69
00:06:01,654 --> 00:06:04,245
On the first shooting day,
I was a little surprised at myself

70
00:06:04,621 --> 00:06:08,213
at how nervous I actually felt about
what was going to happen.

71
00:06:08,587 --> 00:06:10,576
He was given a long tube.

72
00:06:10,754 --> 00:06:12,777
And he said, "Put an 18 on".

73
00:06:12,954 --> 00:06:14,886
Now I didn't know
what that meant.

74
00:06:15,054 --> 00:06:17,680
But then he put it up to his eye,
and said, "Okay, Leon, action.

75
00:06:17,854 --> 00:06:20,013
And do it the way you think
you're gonna do it.

76
00:06:20,188 --> 00:06:22,814
I don't want any of this kind of
saving it for the take".

77
00:06:22,989 --> 00:06:24,852
And so we kicked off.

78
00:06:25,022 --> 00:06:27,817
He was wandering around.
He was looking through this tube.

79
00:06:27,989 --> 00:06:30,217
He was getting up close.
He was standing far back,

80
00:06:30,588 --> 00:06:32,713
standing on a stepladder,
down on his knee.

81
00:06:32,889 --> 00:06:35,980
And then he'd change lenses and
go through the whole process again.

82
00:06:36,155 --> 00:06:38,519
And each time I'd have to start
from the beginning

83
00:06:38,689 --> 00:06:40,882
and keep saying it and keep saying it
and keep saying it.

84
00:06:41,055 --> 00:06:43,113
And then just about we were
going to start shooting it,

85
00:06:43,289 --> 00:06:45,222
he actually said,
"Let's do something else".

86
00:06:45,589 --> 00:06:46,816
Completely disorientated me.

87
00:06:46,990 --> 00:06:48,149
I thought, "Oh, my God".

88
00:06:48,523 --> 00:06:50,819
He was going to change the scene
he was going to shoot.

89
00:06:53,990 --> 00:06:57,979
When I walk in with Bryan,
my little stepbrother,

90
00:06:58,156 --> 00:07:01,987
and he's wearing my shoes, we did it
over and over and over again.

91
00:07:02,157 --> 00:07:07,817
And once we'd kind of found the pulse,
the emotional beat of the whole thing...

92
00:07:07,991 --> 00:07:10,014
-Madam!
-...he just let everything go.

93
00:07:10,191 --> 00:07:11,952
There was never a cut.

94
00:07:12,124 --> 00:07:14,885
I have borne as long
as mortal could endure

95
00:07:15,057 --> 00:07:19,251
the ill treatment of the insolent Irish
upstart whom you've taken into your bed.

96
00:07:20,892 --> 00:07:22,915
It is not only the lowness
of his birth

97
00:07:23,092 --> 00:07:26,024
and the general brutality
of his manners which disgusts me.

98
00:07:26,192 --> 00:07:30,124
We just kept doing complete
takes with the whole speech.

99
00:07:30,292 --> 00:07:33,690
His brutal
and ungentlemanlike behavior,

100
00:07:33,859 --> 00:07:36,757
his open infidelity,
his shameless robberies

101
00:07:36,926 --> 00:07:40,915
and swindling
of my property and yours.

102
00:07:41,093 --> 00:07:44,957
And as I cannot personally chastise
this low-bred ruffian,

103
00:07:45,126 --> 00:07:47,853
and as I cannot bear to witness
his treatment of you,

104
00:07:48,026 --> 00:07:50,924
and loathe his horrible society
as if it were the plague,

105
00:07:52,560 --> 00:07:55,583
I have decided to leave
my home and never return.

106
00:07:55,760 --> 00:07:58,658
And that's really
where I got the message.

107
00:07:58,827 --> 00:08:01,987
This is what filmmaking
is about.

108
00:08:02,160 --> 00:08:07,525
As opposed to just shooting a film,
this was filmmaking.

109
00:08:07,694 --> 00:08:09,523
And I leap up out of my chair,

110
00:08:09,694 --> 00:08:12,489
-and I hit him as hard as I can in the back.

111
00:08:12,661 --> 00:08:15,025
And knock him to the ground,
and try to-to throttle him.

112
00:08:15,194 --> 00:08:17,217
And I hit him and...

113
00:08:17,594 --> 00:08:19,651
And Stanley said, "You're not
hitting him hard enough".

114
00:08:19,828 --> 00:08:22,851
-I'm looking at Leon, you know

115
00:08:23,028 --> 00:08:23,994
"Oh, Leon".

116
00:08:26,794 --> 00:08:29,556
But we did it 30 times.

117
00:08:29,729 --> 00:08:32,718
And—And I know I hurt him.
I know I hurt him.

118
00:08:32,896 --> 00:08:33,862
I didn't want to.

119
00:08:34,029 --> 00:08:36,620
But this was Stanley.
"Again, again".

120
00:08:36,795 --> 00:08:38,056
We broke for lunch.

121
00:08:38,229 --> 00:08:40,626
He said, "Leon, don't go anywhere.
I want to talk to you".

122
00:08:40,795 --> 00:08:42,590
And I thought,
"Oh, my God. This is it".

123
00:08:42,762 --> 00:08:45,661
He's gonna say, "You tried hard, but
it's not quite what I'm looking for".

124
00:08:45,829 --> 00:08:47,920
Because we had
three George the Thirds.

125
00:08:48,096 --> 00:08:50,790
And the first two
were kind of fired.

126
00:08:50,963 --> 00:08:54,520
If you didn't know your lines, uh, suddenly
you weren't in the picture anymore.

127
00:08:54,696 --> 00:08:56,219
And a new one,
actor was brought in.

128
00:08:56,596 --> 00:08:58,153
This happened a couple of times.

129
00:08:58,530 --> 00:09:00,792
You didn't make friends. You didn't
know if they were gonna last.

130
00:09:00,963 --> 00:09:01,063
He said, "Leon,
let's sit down". We sat down.

131
00:09:01,064 --> 00:09:03,893
He said, "Leon,
let's sit down". We sat down.

132
00:09:04,063 --> 00:09:06,723
And then he said,
"I really like what you're doing.

133
00:09:06,897 --> 00:09:09,830
And I like the fact that when we
break to set up new lighting,

134
00:09:09,998 --> 00:09:13,021
that you're actually walking around,
going through your text.

135
00:09:13,198 --> 00:09:16,994
And so I decided I was going to write
a whole bunch of scenes for you

136
00:09:17,164 --> 00:09:18,629
and keep you here till
the end of the movie".

137
00:09:18,797 --> 00:09:20,127
I almost passed out.

138
00:09:21,898 --> 00:09:24,955
Can you imagine?
Ay, can you imagine?

139
00:09:31,632 --> 00:09:33,121
Although I'd worked on films,

140
00:09:33,298 --> 00:09:35,560
you were always just
there as an actor.

141
00:09:35,732 --> 00:09:40,790
So you never really understood anything
that was going on into the making of that film.

142
00:09:40,965 --> 00:09:44,591
I started to sort of look around
and just see all the resources.

143
00:09:44,766 --> 00:09:48,095
And you see people moving these banks
of brutes, like ten yards further in,

144
00:09:48,266 --> 00:09:49,630
ten yards further back.

145
00:09:49,799 --> 00:09:50,958
Angling them differently.

146
00:09:51,133 --> 00:09:53,530
The costumes were being made
and hand-sewn

147
00:09:53,699 --> 00:09:56,688
in the way that they would have
been made in the 18th century

148
00:09:56,866 --> 00:09:59,094
and people talking
about fine details.

149
00:09:59,267 --> 00:10:02,791
And you see Stanley and heard
Stanley talking to the art director.

150
00:10:02,966 --> 00:10:05,956
So many people walking around.
And everyone had something to do.

151
00:10:06,133 --> 00:10:09,032
And they were doing something
to get something on a strip of film

152
00:10:09,201 --> 00:10:11,723
to make that single moment work.

153
00:10:13,567 --> 00:10:15,557
I thought, it's so amazing

154
00:10:15,734 --> 00:10:19,928
that one man's idea
should spawn all this.

155
00:10:20,101 --> 00:10:22,932
This goes into making a movie.

156
00:10:23,101 --> 00:10:25,533
And that intrigued me so much.

157
00:10:28,035 --> 00:10:29,557
- The raw egg.

158
00:10:29,735 --> 00:10:32,167
But when you shoot with Stanley,
you better have a dozen raw eggs.

159
00:10:32,535 --> 00:10:34,865
But do you know what they gave me
for lunch before that?

160
00:10:35,035 --> 00:10:36,058
-No, stop it.
-It was...

161
00:10:36,235 --> 00:10:39,030
-Scrambled.
-It was semi-raw chicken.

162
00:10:39,202 --> 00:10:42,794
-And tomatoes or tomatoes.

163
00:10:42,969 --> 00:10:46,163
And it was all mashed together.
I was so vomitous.

164
00:10:47,569 --> 00:10:49,831
But the moment
I got on the set,

165
00:10:50,003 --> 00:10:52,128
-and it was like nothing.
-Yeah.

166
00:10:52,303 --> 00:10:55,894
And then, Stanley said, "Give him a
raw egg". A raw egg. Give him a--

167
00:10:56,069 --> 00:10:57,626
But you know
what he saw in you?

168
00:10:57,803 --> 00:10:59,735
He saw a way out
of the movie. He saw an ending.

169
00:10:59,904 --> 00:11:02,267
-Yeah, yeah.
-Some-Somebody has to get Barry Lyndon.

170
00:11:02,637 --> 00:11:04,660
Somebody has to get him.
Who can it be?

171
00:11:04,837 --> 00:11:08,133
It was in July
we shot the last scene.

172
00:11:08,304 --> 00:11:12,759
It was sad to know that these were going
to be the last couple of days of shooting.

173
00:11:12,937 --> 00:11:17,165
I kind of thought, "Oh, well, this is
going to be quite tough, actually".

174
00:11:17,538 --> 00:11:20,095
I said to Stanley that I'm beginning
to get quite interested

175
00:11:20,271 --> 00:11:22,760
in your whole sort of
technical side of it.

176
00:11:22,938 --> 00:11:25,904
And everything that has to go
into the making of the movie.

177
00:11:26,071 --> 00:11:28,798
And I'd be quite interested
to work in that area.

178
00:11:28,971 --> 00:11:31,631
And he said to me, "If you really
are serious about it, Leon,

179
00:11:31,804 --> 00:11:34,134
do something about it
and let me know"

180
00:11:34,305 --> 00:11:37,829
And he gave me a Christmas gift,
a beautiful art book.

181
00:11:38,005 --> 00:11:43,166
It says, "Dear Leon, thank you for your
great talent, energy and kindness.

182
00:11:43,539 --> 00:11:45,630
Sincerely, Stanley".

183
00:11:45,805 --> 00:11:47,566
It almost brought tears
to my eyes.

184
00:11:47,739 --> 00:11:50,035
It was so touching.
A Treasury of Master Drawings.

185
00:11:50,206 --> 00:11:52,638
- Barry Lyndon.
-And then Barry Lyndon came out.

186
00:11:52,805 --> 00:11:55,795
And I started getting invites
to a lot of parties.

187
00:11:55,972 --> 00:11:59,598
And there was somebody who contacted
me and wanted to be my press agent.

188
00:11:59,773 --> 00:12:02,171
And the more of these parties
I went to,

189
00:12:02,540 --> 00:12:06,166
the more people I met who just thought it
was the most fantastic film they'd ever seen.

190
00:12:06,540 --> 00:12:08,665
Wow! A Stanley Kubrick film?

191
00:12:08,840 --> 00:12:10,204
Bloody hell!

192
00:12:10,574 --> 00:12:13,802
This guy is going places,
you know I couldn't believe it.

193
00:12:13,973 --> 00:12:17,599
Things were kind of happening
in parallel in a positive way.

194
00:12:17,774 --> 00:12:20,968
And I was offered a season at
the Royal Shakespeare Company,

195
00:12:21,141 --> 00:12:25,869
which, when I had early thoughts of being an
actor, I would have given anything to be a part of.

196
00:12:26,041 --> 00:12:28,166
And I had offers
for the National Theatre too.

197
00:12:28,542 --> 00:12:32,565
But what I had understood
for myself was the first chance I got,

198
00:12:32,742 --> 00:12:34,708
the next movie that
I was going to get to work on,

199
00:12:34,875 --> 00:12:37,705
I would ask if I could work
in the cutting room.

200
00:12:37,875 --> 00:12:39,966
I'd make tea, anything.
I don't care. I didn't care.

201
00:12:40,142 --> 00:12:43,131
There was a Swedish-Irish
co-production of Frankenstein.

202
00:12:43,309 --> 00:12:46,002
I talked to the director.
And he'd seen Barry Lyndon.

203
00:12:46,175 --> 00:12:48,936
He said, "I think you'd work well
as Frankenstein".

204
00:12:49,109 --> 00:12:50,972
And so I said, "Great".

205
00:12:51,142 --> 00:12:54,597
I said, "I was wondering if, at the end
of it, I could work in the cutting room.

206
00:12:54,776 --> 00:12:58,674
Just get to know that process".And I said,
"You don't have to pay me or anything".

207
00:12:58,843 --> 00:13:01,673
And he said,
"Sure, if you really want to".

208
00:13:01,843 --> 00:13:03,139
Let me tell you about myself.

209
00:13:04,644 --> 00:13:05,939
I started a whole period

210
00:13:06,110 --> 00:13:08,099
where I worked
in the cutting room

211
00:13:08,277 --> 00:13:11,732
till the whole thing was assembled
and mixed and released.

212
00:13:11,911 --> 00:13:15,809
And so I did that, and I let Stanley
know that's what I'd done.

213
00:13:15,977 --> 00:13:17,909
I kind of started off
very slowly.

214
00:13:18,077 --> 00:13:20,508
He sent me a book which was
called The Shining.

215
00:13:20,677 --> 00:13:22,200
And there was a little note
on the front.

216
00:13:22,578 --> 00:13:24,601
He wrote, "Read this book".

217
00:13:24,777 --> 00:13:28,141
And it was, again, it was like, "Well, if Stanley
says I gotta read it, I gotta read it".

218
00:13:28,311 --> 00:13:32,175
The phone rang, I picked it up, and the voice
on the other end said, "Did you read it?

219
00:13:32,545 --> 00:13:33,568
What do you think?"

220
00:13:33,745 --> 00:13:36,643
I said it could be
a really exciting project.

221
00:13:36,811 --> 00:13:41,141
He said to me, "How would you like to go to
America and find a little boy to play Danny?"

222
00:13:41,312 --> 00:13:45,903
Yeah, how would I like to go to
America to find a little boy to play Danny.

223
00:13:46,078 --> 00:13:51,875
And I actually just, you know, just said no to
every offer of a-a-an acting job, you know

224
00:13:52,046 --> 00:13:53,841
Mission accomplished,
is how I saw it.

225
00:13:55,679 --> 00:13:58,804
I think I was rather amazed
that he'd stopped acting.

226
00:13:58,979 --> 00:14:00,808
Because I thought
he was such a good actor.

227
00:14:00,979 --> 00:14:03,843
And wanted to be an actor,
and enjoyed it.

228
00:14:04,013 --> 00:14:05,536
It's a paradox, isn't it?

229
00:14:05,713 --> 00:14:07,906
He was at the height
of his career.

230
00:14:08,079 --> 00:14:10,012
And he decides
not to carry on acting.

231
00:14:10,179 --> 00:14:11,873
I was dumbfounded.

232
00:14:12,047 --> 00:14:14,036
And he suddenly goes to
the other side of the camera,

233
00:14:14,214 --> 00:14:16,271
something I could never
see myself doing.

234
00:14:16,647 --> 00:14:19,170
I had been there now 16 months.

235
00:14:19,548 --> 00:14:21,639
So as soon as they said I could
go home, I fled,

236
00:14:21,813 --> 00:14:24,780
thinking they'd probably
try to call me back, so I fled.

237
00:14:24,948 --> 00:14:29,607
But apparently they had
some kind of, um, connection.

238
00:14:29,781 --> 00:14:33,907
Why would someone
like Leon Vitali, who was an actor,

239
00:14:34,081 --> 00:14:36,047
he had his life,
he had his work,

240
00:14:36,215 --> 00:14:39,545
put all that on hold
for another individual?

241
00:14:39,715 --> 00:14:43,044
And I think because you
recognize in that individual

242
00:14:43,215 --> 00:14:47,148
something that you don't see
in 90 percent of the human race.

243
00:14:47,315 --> 00:14:50,111
He was, um, a master.

244
00:14:50,283 --> 00:14:52,805
You don't meet that many masters
in your lifetime.

245
00:14:52,982 --> 00:14:54,607
You're lucky if you meet one.

246
00:14:54,782 --> 00:14:57,681
Leon is one of the only actors
who has ever,

247
00:14:57,849 --> 00:15:02,839
you know, surrendered his, uh, career
to work closely with a filmmaker.

248
00:15:03,016 --> 00:15:04,277
Let's be honest.

249
00:15:04,650 --> 00:15:06,513
Uh, a filmmaker
of Stanley Kubrick's,

250
00:15:06,683 --> 00:15:09,241
not only his stature,
but his mystique.

251
00:15:09,616 --> 00:15:11,082
And I look at a box like this,

252
00:15:11,250 --> 00:15:16,876
and I just think, this is years
of dealing with all the detritus

253
00:15:17,050 --> 00:15:21,608
of what you have to do inside the film
industry to make something work.

254
00:15:21,784 --> 00:15:25,739
All the correspondences,
and all the bullshit.

255
00:15:25,918 --> 00:15:28,043
There's a lot of that.

256
00:15:28,218 --> 00:15:31,150
There's footage notes about
what's wrong with a print, you know

257
00:15:31,318 --> 00:15:36,114
So you had to look at everything
frame by frame and send him notes.

258
00:15:36,285 --> 00:15:41,946
One of Stanley's manias
was you had to write everything down.

259
00:15:42,118 --> 00:15:45,278
Write it down. Remember to look at
what you've written down.

260
00:15:45,652 --> 00:15:50,744
You could say I spent half my time
with Stanley writing down things.

261
00:15:50,919 --> 00:15:55,784
We were always working with all of
Stanley's titles all the time.

262
00:15:55,952 --> 00:16:00,510
There wasn't a single one of his
movies that somewhere in the world

263
00:16:00,686 --> 00:16:03,709
didn't want to get a print of,
and didn't want to screen.

264
00:16:03,886 --> 00:16:06,216
Whether it was
a special exhibition print.

265
00:16:06,586 --> 00:16:10,712
I mean Finland, France, Germany, Sweden
were doing Paths of Glory and The Killing.

266
00:16:10,886 --> 00:16:12,614
And Denmark.
And the thing is,

267
00:16:12,786 --> 00:16:15,275
we were working on
something completely different,

268
00:16:15,654 --> 00:16:18,085
i.e. Full Metal Jacket
at this time.

269
00:16:18,253 --> 00:16:23,084
Oh, this is Danny Lloyd's. This is his
record of times. I call it book of lies.

270
00:16:23,254 --> 00:16:26,277
By law in England, they were
very strict about child actors.

271
00:16:26,654 --> 00:16:30,087
You could only film
within 20 minutes inside any hour.

272
00:16:30,254 --> 00:16:33,652
Stanley started to get nervous. And Stanley
said, "I want you to keep the times".

273
00:16:33,821 --> 00:16:35,946
Well, of course, this is where it
becomes a book of lies.

274
00:16:36,121 --> 00:16:37,917
I think, oh, when was his last day
of shooting?

275
00:16:38,088 --> 00:16:40,713
March 27, 1979.

276
00:16:40,888 --> 00:16:43,877
- Good evening, Mr. Torrance.

277
00:16:44,055 --> 00:16:45,816
Good evening.

278
00:16:45,988 --> 00:16:47,249
Well, I went to Denver first.

279
00:16:47,622 --> 00:16:50,611
The idea was that
I would video every child.

280
00:16:50,789 --> 00:16:54,778
We would ask them an initial set of
questions that all of them would get.

281
00:16:54,956 --> 00:16:56,285
There were 4,000 kids.

282
00:16:56,656 --> 00:16:59,122
The biggest number
were in Chicago.

283
00:16:59,289 --> 00:17:02,653
The first thing I
remember, I'm four years old.

284
00:17:02,822 --> 00:17:04,981
And my parents talking
in the kitchen.

285
00:17:05,156 --> 00:17:07,951
Something about
sending my picture in.

286
00:17:08,123 --> 00:17:10,783
And now we had to go to Chicago
for an audition.

287
00:17:10,956 --> 00:17:12,047
We're underdressed.

288
00:17:12,223 --> 00:17:13,689
And there's so many kids there.

289
00:17:13,857 --> 00:17:15,846
And-And, you know,
we don't have a chance.

290
00:17:16,024 --> 00:17:19,013
And I said,
"Hi, are you Danny?"

291
00:17:19,190 --> 00:17:21,281
and he wouldn't answer.

292
00:17:21,657 --> 00:17:27,851
For some reason, I got down on my haunches,
you know, to get myself on the same level.

293
00:17:28,024 --> 00:17:29,990
And said, "I'm Leon.
It's all right.

294
00:17:30,157 --> 00:17:31,646
You know why you've come here?"

295
00:17:31,824 --> 00:17:33,653
He was sitting
in the chair like...

296
00:17:34,624 --> 00:17:35,521
that.

297
00:17:35,691 --> 00:17:36,952
And his mum was saying,

298
00:17:37,125 --> 00:17:39,784
"Come on, Danny. We've come all
this way," what have you.

299
00:17:39,958 --> 00:17:42,890
And suddenly he said, "Okay".

300
00:17:43,058 --> 00:17:46,786
And so he took my hand,
and we walked into this room.

301
00:17:46,958 --> 00:17:52,152
Then we sat on a chair about
a foot away from each other,

302
00:17:52,325 --> 00:17:54,848
and just stared
at each other like this.

303
00:17:56,293 --> 00:18:00,884
And then he said,
"Gee, I really like your suit".

304
00:18:02,293 --> 00:18:03,849
And that was it.

305
00:18:04,026 --> 00:18:06,083
From that moment,
we were talking.

306
00:18:06,259 --> 00:18:09,282
Boy, Leon was really so nice.

307
00:18:09,660 --> 00:18:11,649
From then on, you know,
we were like best friends.

308
00:18:11,826 --> 00:18:14,258
Hello, Danny.

309
00:18:14,626 --> 00:18:16,558
It wasn't even in the script
that they were twins.

310
00:18:16,726 --> 00:18:18,056
I was just looking
for someone good.

311
00:18:18,227 --> 00:18:20,988
And the problem with kids
who come to these things,

312
00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:23,819
they go to
these children's stage schools.

313
00:18:23,993 --> 00:18:29,017
But they were all infected with having
an inflection in the way they talk.

314
00:18:29,193 --> 00:18:31,716
Was like,
"I don't know why you would--"

315
00:18:31,894 --> 00:18:34,519
And you kind of thought,
you know..

316
00:18:34,694 --> 00:18:36,251
But I was getting really,
really desperate.

317
00:18:36,627 --> 00:18:38,150
And suddenly,
on the very last day,

318
00:18:38,328 --> 00:18:41,226
this woman brought
these two girls into the room.

319
00:18:41,595 --> 00:18:43,060
And they were twins.

320
00:18:43,228 --> 00:18:45,285
And the first thing that went
through my head was

321
00:18:45,662 --> 00:18:49,287
Diane Arbus' famous photograph
of these twins who look a bit weird.

322
00:18:49,662 --> 00:18:53,060
So I did about ten takes
of them doing this.

323
00:18:53,229 --> 00:18:55,751
And I went running onto stage.

324
00:18:55,929 --> 00:18:58,690
"I got it, I got it!
It's the Arbus twins!"

325
00:18:58,862 --> 00:19:01,885
He looked at it and said, "Well, there's
no question, is there? That's it".

326
00:19:02,062 --> 00:19:03,688
Come play with us, Danny.

327
00:19:03,863 --> 00:19:05,192
When something
like that happens...

328
00:19:06,829 --> 00:19:09,624
-Forever.
-...it kind of speaks for itself.

329
00:19:09,796 --> 00:19:13,956
-You don't have to say it.
-And ever, and ever.

330
00:19:16,729 --> 00:19:18,628
I remember Leon and I...

331
00:19:18,796 --> 00:19:20,729
He would say,
"Okay, color. Okay, now stop".

332
00:19:20,896 --> 00:19:22,260
Or.
"Okay, give me the scared look".

333
00:19:22,630 --> 00:19:25,028
So I was able
to tune into his voice.

334
00:19:25,196 --> 00:19:27,026
He was my acting coach.

335
00:19:27,197 --> 00:19:30,163
Stanley saw
that it worked in that way.

336
00:19:30,331 --> 00:19:33,263
If ever we'd, doing a running shot,
a traveling shot or something like that,

337
00:19:33,630 --> 00:19:36,119
I'd be the one closest to him
behind the camera.

338
00:19:36,298 --> 00:19:37,957
Danny, you gotta listen
to Stanley.

339
00:19:38,131 --> 00:19:41,154
So I could tell him to do things
like look around now, or hesitate.

340
00:19:41,331 --> 00:19:43,058
Keep going, come on, scared.

341
00:19:43,231 --> 00:19:44,925
"Look scared".
What about the gun, Danny?

342
00:19:45,098 --> 00:19:47,121
"Look back, look back.
Left, Danny. Turn right".

343
00:19:47,298 --> 00:19:49,288
Leon and I would be working
together and practicing that.

344
00:19:49,665 --> 00:19:51,631
Or maybe we were actually
shooting it.

345
00:19:51,798 --> 00:19:52,923
But Leon would play Jack.

346
00:19:53,098 --> 00:19:55,223
Danny!

347
00:19:55,599 --> 00:19:57,996
Yeah, this whole place is such an
enormous maze. I feel like...

348
00:19:58,165 --> 00:20:01,962
And then Stanley wanted me to
work with Shelley, just run dialogue.

349
00:20:02,132 --> 00:20:04,065
And the same with Scatman.

350
00:20:04,232 --> 00:20:06,698
It's big, but it still ain't
nothin' but a kitchen.

351
00:20:06,866 --> 00:20:09,957
Do you remember
the repetitive, the many takes?

352
00:20:10,133 --> 00:20:13,758
Uh, kind of. I think the reason I do is
because there was a bowl of ice cream.

353
00:20:13,933 --> 00:20:16,229
But it was like a few days later
somebody said,

354
00:20:16,600 --> 00:20:18,896
"Oh, we went through
five gallons of chocolate ice cream".

355
00:20:19,066 --> 00:20:21,056
The continuity would be
if you had to stop and start again,

356
00:20:21,233 --> 00:20:22,756
you got a new bowl
of ice cream.

357
00:20:22,934 --> 00:20:25,127
And not being able to eat it all,
somethin' to that effect.

358
00:20:25,301 --> 00:20:27,994
You know, a five-year-old's mind was,
"Hey, look at all this ice cream".

359
00:20:28,167 --> 00:20:30,962
That is such
a-an iconic character.

360
00:20:31,134 --> 00:20:33,793
So many people strive to
get to that level.

361
00:20:33,967 --> 00:20:37,058
The most important thing that I would
wanna say about that is that

362
00:20:37,234 --> 00:20:41,667
I think that's the tribute to the job
Leon did, and the kind of person he is.

363
00:20:41,834 --> 00:20:43,527
Stanley had said
from the very beginning,

364
00:20:43,701 --> 00:20:45,826
"Whenever you're not doing
anything specific, you know,

365
00:20:46,001 --> 00:20:49,263
just stick by me, and you can come
into meetings, and things like that,

366
00:20:49,634 --> 00:20:52,692
and just see how things are done and how
they're run and how they're organized".

367
00:20:52,868 --> 00:20:54,630
I worked with John Alcott.

368
00:20:54,802 --> 00:20:58,165
We worked a lot with black-and-white
Polaroids to get contrast and density.

369
00:20:59,069 --> 00:20:59,966
This is another thing.

370
00:21:00,136 --> 00:21:01,863
I was allowed
to bring my camera.

371
00:21:02,036 --> 00:21:05,832
And then Stanley keyed me into ASA
speeds, what you could do with them.

372
00:21:06,002 --> 00:21:08,230
Push them, underexpose,
overexpose,

373
00:21:08,603 --> 00:21:11,932
all those things that he learned
as a young man, as a photographer.

374
00:21:12,102 --> 00:21:15,535
Also, he'd given me the job of
doing all those location stills

375
00:21:15,703 --> 00:21:17,896
in Chicago and Denver,
and Kansas City, Missouri.

376
00:21:18,070 --> 00:21:21,264
So we went to every hotel
in whatever town we were in

377
00:21:21,636 --> 00:21:25,034
and just photographed every
kind of room that there was.

378
00:21:25,203 --> 00:21:27,998
I went back with about
a hundred rolls of film.

379
00:21:28,170 --> 00:21:31,034
And he said, "I just want you to know,
I think you've done a really great job".

380
00:21:31,203 --> 00:21:33,260
And he just makes you
feel so great,

381
00:21:33,637 --> 00:21:36,262
because he's making you feel
like you're a part of it.

382
00:21:36,637 --> 00:21:38,296
Get him in.
That you're part of his process.

383
00:21:38,671 --> 00:21:40,830
That you've been an important
part of his process.

384
00:21:41,004 --> 00:21:43,993
Just get him in!
Let him realize we're out of time!

385
00:21:44,171 --> 00:21:47,535
Every day was full
of a lot of different jobs.

386
00:21:47,705 --> 00:21:49,637
I was in absolute heaven.

387
00:21:51,772 --> 00:21:54,034
Mr. and Mrs. Kiget,
Mr. Kubrick.

388
00:21:54,204 --> 00:21:55,966
-How you doing?
- And Mr. Woodland.

389
00:21:56,139 --> 00:21:58,764
- If anybody met Stanley,

390
00:21:58,939 --> 00:22:01,962
maybe talked with him
for ten minutes or 20 minutes,

391
00:22:02,139 --> 00:22:05,299
or maybe worked for him for a year,
or as long as I did,

392
00:22:05,673 --> 00:22:11,537
they're always going to come away thinking,
"I know the real Stanley Kubrick".

393
00:22:11,706 --> 00:22:14,729
He could meet somebody,
shake their hands, and be...

394
00:22:14,906 --> 00:22:17,304
"Hello, I'm Stanley".

395
00:22:17,673 --> 00:22:19,730
And remember,
he was a chess player.

396
00:22:19,906 --> 00:22:24,635
I always remember the people who met him
for the first time would always come out saying,

397
00:22:24,806 --> 00:22:28,170
"Aw, gee, he's nothing like
what I've heard about.

398
00:22:28,340 --> 00:22:32,534
He's fantastic. He's so gentle.
He's so this, he's so that".

399
00:22:32,707 --> 00:22:35,730
I mean, he was the same with
me when I first met him.

400
00:22:35,907 --> 00:22:38,169
It was only when we got
into Full Metal Jacket

401
00:22:38,341 --> 00:22:41,603
and the responsibilities
were getting heavier and heavier,

402
00:22:41,774 --> 00:22:43,297
another Stanley came in.

403
00:22:43,675 --> 00:22:46,539
Because it was, like,
POW! POW! POW!-

404
00:22:46,748 --> 00:22:48,343
♪ Kiss, me good-bye ♪

405
00:22:48,675 --> 00:22:54,938
♪ And write me while I'm gone ♪

406
00:22:55,108 --> 00:22:59,200
♪ Good-bye, my sweetheart
Hello, Vietnam ♪

407
00:22:59,576 --> 00:23:01,939
Date, August 19, 1985.

408
00:23:02,108 --> 00:23:04,802
Location, production office.

409
00:23:04,975 --> 00:23:08,999
Stanley invites me to the production office
to show me what goes on behind the scenes.

410
00:23:09,175 --> 00:23:11,664
The first thing that strikes me
is the lack of people.

411
00:23:11,842 --> 00:23:13,967
This place is almost empty.

412
00:23:14,143 --> 00:23:16,540
There's a guy here named
Leon Vitali.

413
00:23:16,709 --> 00:23:18,834
I've met him a few times
at Stanley's house.

414
00:23:19,009 --> 00:23:20,998
I think
he's Stanley's assistant.

415
00:23:21,176 --> 00:23:23,540
Leon appears to be
a jack of all trades.

416
00:23:23,710 --> 00:23:25,198
He makes notes about everything.

417
00:23:25,577 --> 00:23:28,600
Sometimes he writes on his arms.
One thing about Leon--"

418
00:23:28,777 --> 00:23:29,970
When I was working
on Full Metal Jacket,

419
00:23:30,144 --> 00:23:32,905
I thought of Leon as kind
of an Igor character

420
00:23:33,077 --> 00:23:34,736
from, uh,
Frankenstein, you know?

421
00:23:34,910 --> 00:23:39,275
"Yes, Master". That he was-- That he
was just a slave to Stanley Kubrick.

422
00:23:39,644 --> 00:23:42,542
You kind of had to be
everywhere at once.

423
00:23:42,711 --> 00:23:45,939
It was just one of those things
where Stanley kind of utilized me

424
00:23:46,110 --> 00:23:49,565
in any way that he thought
would be effective and would work.

425
00:23:49,744 --> 00:23:54,074
It was the first time that Stanley had
given me responsibility of casting.

426
00:23:54,245 --> 00:23:56,710
There were thousands
and thousands and thousands

427
00:23:56,878 --> 00:23:59,106
and thousands of tapes
that were sent over.

428
00:23:59,278 --> 00:24:01,870
And it was just so much to do,
you know?

429
00:24:02,045 --> 00:24:05,534
I agreed to be Stanley's
technical adviser

430
00:24:05,712 --> 00:24:11,043
simply so I could get my foot in the
damn door and audition for Stanley.

431
00:24:11,212 --> 00:24:14,303
I wanted to be Gunnery Sergeant
Hartman, no question about it.

432
00:24:14,679 --> 00:24:18,271
I couldn't imagine anybody that could
do it any better than I could.

433
00:24:18,646 --> 00:24:20,202
He looked me straight
in the eyes and said,

434
00:24:20,580 --> 00:24:23,637
"Not a chance. I already have
a contracted actor".

435
00:24:23,813 --> 00:24:27,211
Well, it's-- The Marine Corps never
did teach me to lose gracefully.

436
00:24:27,580 --> 00:24:30,103
Good afternoon, sir. My name's
Tim Colceri. I'm 32 years old--

437
00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:31,609
I get a phone call
from Warner Bros.

438
00:24:31,780 --> 00:24:32,746
"Uh, hello, Tim?"
"Yes, sir?".

439
00:24:32,913 --> 00:24:34,140
"Come on down
and sign your contract".

440
00:24:34,314 --> 00:24:36,576
I think you have
the finest role in the film.

441
00:24:36,747 --> 00:24:39,770
And he reached under his desk, and he
pulled out the Full Metal Jacket--

442
00:24:39,948 --> 00:24:42,073
He said, "You play the role
of the drill instructor".

443
00:24:42,247 --> 00:24:45,146
I was looking for extras
for the platoon.

444
00:24:45,314 --> 00:24:49,077
So I went to Army regiments and
just said, we're making a film.

445
00:24:49,248 --> 00:24:51,736
We'd like to know if anyone
would be interested,

446
00:24:51,914 --> 00:24:56,210
and it occurred to me, Lee Ermey, he
used to dress in his drill instructor gear.

447
00:24:56,582 --> 00:24:59,309
I thought, well, why don't we do it
sort of the way he used to do it?

448
00:24:59,682 --> 00:25:02,876
Just stand 'em up.
You give 'em their induction.

449
00:25:03,049 --> 00:25:05,810
So we did that.
And I was videotaping it.

450
00:25:05,982 --> 00:25:09,073
So, and I'm thinking
Stanley Kubrick's gotta see this.

451
00:25:09,249 --> 00:25:11,545
And then I had a little talk
with these people

452
00:25:11,715 --> 00:25:16,705
and let 'em know that I might say a few unsavory
things about their mothers and fathers,

453
00:25:16,883 --> 00:25:18,610
their immediate family.

454
00:25:18,783 --> 00:25:20,908
And that they should not
take a shot at me,

455
00:25:21,083 --> 00:25:24,072
because if they hit me,
I would for sure not hire them.

456
00:25:28,317 --> 00:25:30,283
Uh, what a dirtbag
they looked like.

457
00:25:30,650 --> 00:25:31,910
"What's your name, scumbag?"

458
00:25:32,083 --> 00:25:33,879
I had a couple of 'em
suckin' their thumbs.

459
00:25:34,050 --> 00:25:39,312
Then I noticed this, that,
uh, Leon was subtly...

460
00:25:39,684 --> 00:25:43,082
He would tape them.
Then he would come to me.

461
00:25:43,251 --> 00:25:45,910
So I says yep, it's workin'.

462
00:25:48,284 --> 00:25:52,216
I ended up having to rehearse
all this dialogue with Leon.

463
00:25:52,585 --> 00:25:55,244
And Lee Ermey is out with the troops,
marching them around.

464
00:25:55,618 --> 00:25:57,208
And I started doin'
that dialogue.

465
00:25:57,585 --> 00:26:00,551
"If you have a mole, a bump, a scar,
anything else protruding from your head,

466
00:26:00,718 --> 00:26:03,650
and by protruding, I mean anything
else sticking up outta your head,

467
00:26:03,818 --> 00:26:05,546
the minute you sit
in that chair, the--"

468
00:26:05,718 --> 00:26:08,685
He goes, "Stop". I go,
"What? It's goin' pretty good".

469
00:26:08,851 --> 00:26:12,306
"It's the minute you sit down in
that chair".And I went...

470
00:26:14,152 --> 00:26:17,243
I knew that Leon
would send the tape to Stanley.

471
00:26:17,619 --> 00:26:21,949
Stanley would see the tape that night,
and tomorrow I would have the job.

472
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:24,244
-Plain and simple.
- You knew that?

473
00:26:24,619 --> 00:26:27,609
In my mind,
I knew that, yes.

474
00:26:27,787 --> 00:26:30,753
I took the tapes to Stanley.
I said, "You gotta see this".

475
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:33,818
He couldn't help laughing. I mean,
he was falling about all over the place.

476
00:26:33,987 --> 00:26:38,317
I pretty much was-was counting on
being called to the production office

477
00:26:38,687 --> 00:26:40,846
first thing the next morning,
and I was.

478
00:26:41,020 --> 00:26:47,180
The hardest thing I think I actually had to
do on that film was go to this guy's house

479
00:26:47,354 --> 00:26:50,047
and give him a letter
that Stanley had written saying,

480
00:26:50,220 --> 00:26:52,618
"I'm really sorry
to tell you but--"

481
00:26:52,788 --> 00:26:56,312
"After painful deliberation, I've decided to
use Lee Ermey to play Sergeant Hartman.

482
00:26:56,688 --> 00:26:58,847
I'd like you to stay on and
play the helicopter door gunner,

483
00:26:59,021 --> 00:27:01,044
which is a very powerful role
in a very powerful scene.

484
00:27:01,221 --> 00:27:04,085
Sincerely, Stanley Kubrick".

485
00:27:04,255 --> 00:27:07,221
Well, it crushed me. And I didn't
want to be around people.

486
00:27:07,589 --> 00:27:09,214
So I could see that they...
they were...

487
00:27:09,589 --> 00:27:12,055
Everything became
like a blur to me.

488
00:27:12,221 --> 00:27:13,778
The TV was kinda blurry.

489
00:27:13,956 --> 00:27:17,081
And I was angry, because I had that
role for eight months,

490
00:27:17,256 --> 00:27:19,744
that he couldn't come to me as a man
and talk to me about it.

491
00:27:19,922 --> 00:27:21,582
He sent Leon with a letter.

492
00:27:21,755 --> 00:27:24,085
The caliber of actors who would
probably sell their own mothers

493
00:27:24,256 --> 00:27:26,722
just to have the chance
at working with Stanley.

494
00:27:26,890 --> 00:27:30,720
And you think you've got it,
and then it, suddenly it's gone.

495
00:27:30,890 --> 00:27:32,685
It was not an easy thing
to sit through.

496
00:27:32,856 --> 00:27:34,947
My heart bled for him.
It really did.

497
00:27:35,123 --> 00:27:38,146
"As Stanley's assistant,
Leon is prepared to go for

498
00:27:38,324 --> 00:27:40,119
and answer everything
that might come up.

499
00:27:40,290 --> 00:27:42,654
It's a huge undertaking.

500
00:27:42,823 --> 00:27:48,688
Leon's face is a testament to that undertaking,
a road map of sleeplessness and concern.

501
00:27:48,857 --> 00:27:51,085
I love Leon,
but he makes me sad.

502
00:27:51,258 --> 00:27:54,985
I want to help him, but I don't
know how He's chosen his path".

503
00:27:55,158 --> 00:27:57,124
I was suspicious of Leon

504
00:27:57,291 --> 00:28:00,086
when he would come to me and say that
he wanted to work on my lines.

505
00:28:00,258 --> 00:28:03,122
Because I knew that he was that guy
that was back there in the shadows

506
00:28:03,291 --> 00:28:04,314
who was speaking to Stanley.

507
00:28:04,692 --> 00:28:05,885
And I thought maybe--

508
00:28:06,059 --> 00:28:07,922
I think the other actors
working on the film

509
00:28:08,092 --> 00:28:11,580
thought that Leon might
have been some kind of spy

510
00:28:11,758 --> 00:28:16,123
that was going to see if somebody was smoking
pot or somebody was doing drugs.

511
00:28:16,292 --> 00:28:19,190
And so everybody was kind of
a little bit suspicious of Leon.

512
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:24,849
When, in fact, all Leon wanted to do was make
sure that people were truly, deeply prepared.

513
00:28:25,026 --> 00:28:26,889
Everybody was on edge.

514
00:28:27,060 --> 00:28:29,958
I realized was that each day
that went past,

515
00:28:30,126 --> 00:28:35,218
I could see and feel Stanley getting more
and more sort of tense and nervous.

516
00:28:35,594 --> 00:28:38,617
We had a-an art director
who had a-a nervous breakdown,

517
00:28:38,794 --> 00:28:40,919
simply because of the work
that had to be done.

518
00:28:41,093 --> 00:28:44,026
I mean, Beckton had to be demolished
and then kind of built again.

519
00:28:44,193 --> 00:28:46,785
Stanley assigned Leon to me.

520
00:28:46,961 --> 00:28:49,722
I was Leon's project.

521
00:28:49,894 --> 00:28:51,190
You think
you're Mickey Spillane?

522
00:28:51,361 --> 00:28:53,792
That's right.
You think you're Mickey Spillane.

523
00:28:53,961 --> 00:28:57,257
There's all the hours and hours and
hours of these auditions and these tapes.

524
00:28:57,628 --> 00:28:59,150
We had them transcribed.

525
00:28:59,328 --> 00:29:04,625
And we actually stitched together
Lee's role from about 800 pages.

526
00:29:04,795 --> 00:29:07,818
Fucking—
That's fucking God awful.

527
00:29:07,995 --> 00:29:09,824
I know how hard he
worked with Lee Ermey.

528
00:29:09,995 --> 00:29:13,052
Because Lee's dressing room was
next door to my dressing room.

529
00:29:13,228 --> 00:29:15,694
And I—And I heard them playing
catch with a ball.

530
00:29:15,861 --> 00:29:18,123
One day, I pissed off Leon.

531
00:29:18,295 --> 00:29:19,989
And there was a bowl of fruit.

532
00:29:20,162 --> 00:29:23,129
He reached over, he picked up an
orange, and he threw it at me.

533
00:29:23,295 --> 00:29:24,955
I caught it.

534
00:29:25,129 --> 00:29:26,924
And I threw it back.

535
00:29:27,096 --> 00:29:32,790
And as we were tossing that orange back
and forth, I started doing dialogue.

536
00:29:32,963 --> 00:29:35,895
It didn't matter to him
how often we went through stuff,

537
00:29:36,063 --> 00:29:37,791
how much we went through stuff.

538
00:29:37,964 --> 00:29:41,089
I'd have him lying on his back on
the floor with his eyes closed.

539
00:29:41,263 --> 00:29:42,854
Just say the dialogue.

540
00:29:43,030 --> 00:29:45,655
And then speed it up,
and speed it up, and speed it up.

541
00:29:45,830 --> 00:29:48,023
So he was just saying it fast,
fast, fast, fast, fast.

542
00:29:48,197 --> 00:29:50,322
Sir, no sir!
Are you a peter pumper?

543
00:29:50,697 --> 00:29:52,163
Sir, no, sir!

544
00:29:52,331 --> 00:29:54,797
I'll bet you're the kind of guy
that would fuck a person in the ass

545
00:29:54,964 --> 00:29:57,988
and not even have the goddamn common
courtesy to give him a reach around.

546
00:29:58,164 --> 00:30:01,154
Leon Vitali, I--

547
00:30:01,331 --> 00:30:06,230
He would drop me off in the evening, and
then he would pick me up in the morning.

548
00:30:06,598 --> 00:30:07,996
When I was there, he was there.

549
00:30:08,165 --> 00:30:12,325
And I spent, anywhere, 14 to 20
hours a day, seven days a week.

550
00:30:12,699 --> 00:30:15,824
It was amazing. He never slept.
Stanley drove him.

551
00:30:15,999 --> 00:30:18,794
If it wasn't for Leon Vitali,

552
00:30:18,966 --> 00:30:22,830
I doubt I would have done
half the job

553
00:30:22,999 --> 00:30:26,193
that I ended up doing
in Full Metal Jacket.

554
00:30:27,865 --> 00:30:30,229
Now, you listen to me,
Private Pyle,

555
00:30:31,733 --> 00:30:33,323
and you listen good.

556
00:30:34,967 --> 00:30:38,660
I want that weapon.
And I want it now!

557
00:30:40,366 --> 00:30:43,662
You will place that rifle
on the deck at your feet...

558
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:46,727
and step back
away from it.

559
00:30:53,300 --> 00:30:54,664
Ahh.

560
00:30:54,834 --> 00:30:58,732
What is your major
malfunction, numb nuts?

561
00:30:58,901 --> 00:31:00,799
Didn't Mommy and Daddy
show you enough attention?

562
00:31:00,968 --> 00:31:03,560
And that is the one
that opened all the doors.

563
00:31:03,734 --> 00:31:06,633
So... I haven't stopped workin'
ever since.

564
00:31:06,801 --> 00:31:08,926
It's been a great life.

565
00:31:09,101 --> 00:31:10,260
They're done with the movie.

566
00:31:10,635 --> 00:31:13,328
The movie's finished,
shot, done.

567
00:31:13,702 --> 00:31:16,032
And they decide to put
the door gunner role back in.

568
00:31:18,336 --> 00:31:22,132
- Action.
- Then as we went through it, what you
noticed was that,

569
00:31:22,302 --> 00:31:25,166
little by little, he was beginning
to find nuances.

570
00:31:25,336 --> 00:31:28,700
- Any women and children?
-Sometimes!

571
00:31:28,869 --> 00:31:31,835
It really was a wonderful
kind of process

572
00:31:32,003 --> 00:31:36,060
of watching somebody get an
understanding about something.

573
00:31:36,236 --> 00:31:40,168
And then we actually went to the place
to shoot it, we went up in a helicopter.

574
00:31:40,337 --> 00:31:42,030
And I took a video camera
with me.

575
00:31:42,203 --> 00:31:45,260
And we rehearsed it. Because Stanley,
of course, he wasn't going to fly.

576
00:31:45,637 --> 00:31:50,093
And then Stanley arrived about noon, and we'd
been doing this for about two or three hours.

577
00:31:50,270 --> 00:31:52,327
And then they set up the thing
in the outhouse.

578
00:31:52,704 --> 00:31:55,136
And he went, "This angle's still off.
Good, Tim".

579
00:31:55,304 --> 00:31:57,769
-Get some! Get some!
- "Do it 13 more times just like that".

580
00:31:57,937 --> 00:32:00,335
Get some, get some, come on!
Get it, come on!

581
00:32:00,704 --> 00:32:02,829
Get some, get some!
Yeah, yeah, yeah!

582
00:32:03,004 --> 00:32:04,334
I got you mother...

583
00:32:06,671 --> 00:32:10,001
And he just became a little
bit calmer, but more terrifying for it.

584
00:32:10,172 --> 00:32:13,865
Anyone who runs is a VC.

585
00:32:14,038 --> 00:32:16,629
Anyone who stands still

586
00:32:16,805 --> 00:32:20,568
is a well-disciplined VC.

587
00:32:20,739 --> 00:32:23,136
♪ Ho Chi Minh
Is a son of a bitch ♪

588
00:32:23,339 --> 00:32:25,134
Stanley came in to me
and he said,

589
00:32:25,305 --> 00:32:27,237
"You gotta do the foots
and Foley".

590
00:32:27,606 --> 00:32:29,868
"What do you mean?" He says,
"That's where you do all the footsteps,

591
00:32:30,039 --> 00:32:32,800
and you do all the sound effects,
and you do all this, and all that".

592
00:32:32,973 --> 00:32:36,235
And I said, "I don't know if I can do that".
And he said, "Sure, you can".

593
00:32:36,606 --> 00:32:40,198
And that's how he always
started me off on a new task.

594
00:32:40,373 --> 00:32:42,839
If I ever said, "I don't know
how to do layouts".

595
00:32:43,006 --> 00:32:43,995
"Sure, you do".

596
00:32:44,173 --> 00:32:46,799
- Okay.
4 am the Foley man.

597
00:32:46,974 --> 00:32:50,906
Eddie Tise, who was
our sound recordist, and I,

598
00:32:51,074 --> 00:32:54,870
just the two of us, we did all the
footsteps and clothes rustle,

599
00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:57,097
and gear rattle,
and everything.

600
00:32:57,274 --> 00:33:00,798
Every bit of sound,
including the hooker.

601
00:33:02,608 --> 00:33:05,199
♪ Somethin' you call love
But confess- ♪

602
00:33:05,374 --> 00:33:08,102
Could you, after
Full Metal Jacket, do what Leon did

603
00:33:08,275 --> 00:33:11,638
and actually switch gears, knowing
what you know about Stanley?

604
00:33:13,841 --> 00:33:16,932
Um... no.

605
00:33:17,108 --> 00:33:20,973
I think I could not have, uh, after
Full Metal Jacket said, "You know what?

606
00:33:21,141 --> 00:33:23,607
I'm gonna go to work for Stanley".
I'm too selfish.

607
00:33:23,775 --> 00:33:26,741
What Leon did
was a selfless act,

608
00:33:26,909 --> 00:33:29,341
a kind of
crucifixion of himself.

609
00:33:29,709 --> 00:33:33,267
I couldn't imagine doing it
myself. I guess I'm too selfish.

610
00:33:33,643 --> 00:33:38,632
Leon was compelled to dedicate his entire life,
30 years, he spent with Stanley Kubrick.

611
00:33:38,810 --> 00:33:40,605
Leon did for Stanley

612
00:33:40,776 --> 00:33:42,867
what half a dozen executive producers
and associate producers

613
00:33:43,043 --> 00:33:44,770
and production managers and...

614
00:33:44,943 --> 00:33:48,341
and drivers and tailors...

615
00:33:48,710 --> 00:33:51,199
do on other movies
for directors.

616
00:33:51,377 --> 00:33:55,776
It was a real roller-coaster
ride even through a single day.

617
00:33:55,943 --> 00:33:58,739
And of course,
the days were very, very long.

618
00:33:58,911 --> 00:34:01,877
And when you turned in
through the gates,

619
00:34:02,044 --> 00:34:05,340
these huge wrought-iron gates
which would never close normally.

620
00:34:05,711 --> 00:34:07,007
They wouldn't--
Just never closed.

621
00:34:07,178 --> 00:34:12,167
You'd kind of mentally hear this bang,
you know.

622
00:34:12,345 --> 00:34:15,970
They were closing behind you.
You hear--I mean, I did. I did.

623
00:34:16,144 --> 00:34:18,736
Fact of the matter was,
"This is it".

624
00:34:18,912 --> 00:34:21,878
There will be no "you"

625
00:34:22,045 --> 00:34:26,171
until you start driving
out of here at some point.

626
00:34:26,346 --> 00:34:29,937
The phone calls you had to make early
in the morning with the laboratory,

627
00:34:30,112 --> 00:34:31,839
or Warner's in London.

628
00:34:32,012 --> 00:34:35,809
'Cause what you know is, you're gonna
be chasing for the rest of the day.

629
00:34:35,980 --> 00:34:42,572
The thing was, when I say I worked 14, 15,
16-hour days, that was at the place.

630
00:34:42,746 --> 00:34:45,735
That was at Stanley's place,
the place where we worked.

631
00:34:45,913 --> 00:34:49,243
But when I got home,
it was all telephone work.

632
00:34:49,614 --> 00:34:51,671
Was there a big staff
on the estate?

633
00:34:51,847 --> 00:34:55,802
No, there was me that worked,
dealt with all the film, video, TV...

634
00:34:56,947 --> 00:34:59,038
lab work and all that stuff.

635
00:34:59,214 --> 00:35:00,873
You know,
to do with his movies.

636
00:35:01,047 --> 00:35:03,979
And then there was Tony Frewin,
who looked after the estate,

637
00:35:04,147 --> 00:35:07,136
a go-between writers,
between them and Stanley.

638
00:35:07,314 --> 00:35:10,803
And then it was Jan who looked
after Stanley's interests

639
00:35:10,981 --> 00:35:14,106
and legal interests,
and that was it.

640
00:35:14,281 --> 00:35:16,338
But you handled Stanley creatively?

641
00:35:16,715 --> 00:35:19,307
-No, I never handled Stanley.
-Really? Okay.

642
00:35:19,681 --> 00:35:21,307
-Never "handled" Stanley.
-Well, reword it for me.

643
00:35:21,681 --> 00:35:23,704
I handled myself

644
00:35:23,881 --> 00:35:29,143
so I could exist
in Stanley's world.

645
00:35:29,315 --> 00:35:31,975
You know, you're there till
3:00 in the morning.

646
00:35:32,148 --> 00:35:33,944
You're just writing these notes.

647
00:35:34,116 --> 00:35:36,308
And that's how I learned so much
about color timing.

648
00:35:36,682 --> 00:35:39,876
Because I was with him doing it
for all those years.

649
00:35:40,049 --> 00:35:40,912
It was years.

650
00:35:41,083 --> 00:35:42,310
Most of his grading,

651
00:35:42,682 --> 00:35:45,581
he'd-he'd stop and start
on-on the Steenbeck.

652
00:35:45,750 --> 00:35:47,272
He'd come in about 11:00.

653
00:35:47,650 --> 00:35:50,013
And Leon would be there.

654
00:35:50,183 --> 00:35:52,911
So it was very much
a family thing.

655
00:35:53,084 --> 00:35:57,176
This is, uh, Stanley's notes,
the maestro's writing.

656
00:35:57,351 --> 00:36:00,783
All bloody night doing this. "Very
unnatural color. Ryan's hair is not orange".

657
00:36:00,950 --> 00:36:02,677
Fifteen pages of this stuff.

658
00:36:02,850 --> 00:36:04,839
I'm sure their hearts sank

659
00:36:05,017 --> 00:36:07,916
when they did come in in the morning
and find this waiting for them.

660
00:36:08,084 --> 00:36:11,915
Warner Bros. went through a time where
every fax they sent you had that.

661
00:36:13,185 --> 00:36:15,673
You actually started
to hate Bugs Bunny.

662
00:36:15,851 --> 00:36:17,340
You really did.

663
00:36:17,718 --> 00:36:21,912
You thought, "Oh, this is another
bad news fax coming through".

664
00:36:22,085 --> 00:36:26,677
This was, uh, 2001, the video, VHS,
with the notes that I gave them.

665
00:36:26,852 --> 00:36:29,750
They hadn't followed my layout.
I mean, not to the millimeter.

666
00:36:29,919 --> 00:36:31,646
So I had to give them
these notes.

667
00:36:31,819 --> 00:36:33,614
I did this one.
There it is.

668
00:36:33,785 --> 00:36:37,343
And then you open it up,
and then you had a little booklet.

669
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:40,117
Everything had to be
to the millimeter.

670
00:36:40,286 --> 00:36:41,979
We even got Stanley to sign.

671
00:36:42,152 --> 00:36:44,118
I was using
a color copier.

672
00:36:44,286 --> 00:36:47,719
Do you know how slow
those things were? It drove you nuts.

673
00:36:47,886 --> 00:36:51,909
It drove you nuts because
Stanley wanted everything now

674
00:36:52,087 --> 00:36:57,713
This was all pre-production on, um,
Wartime Lies, a.k.a. Aryan Papers.

675
00:36:57,886 --> 00:37:00,682
Hand weapons list,
small arms, artillery.

676
00:37:00,853 --> 00:37:02,012
Inventory.

677
00:37:02,187 --> 00:37:04,619
Do you know, for every one
of Stanley's films,

678
00:37:04,787 --> 00:37:07,810
there were, like,
25 protection tracks,

679
00:37:07,988 --> 00:37:10,613
for every single original
negative.

680
00:37:10,787 --> 00:37:13,310
There were dozens, and dozens,
and dozens, and dozens.

681
00:37:13,687 --> 00:37:17,620
The original negative of Dr. Strangelove
disappeared off planet Earth.

682
00:37:17,787 --> 00:37:20,117
-And the only bit of original negative you'll see

683
00:37:20,288 --> 00:37:24,345
is just one little short when Mandrake
has discovered a working radio

684
00:37:24,722 --> 00:37:28,120
that tells him that
there is not a nuclear alert.

685
00:37:28,288 --> 00:37:33,017
And so for ten years,
I was searching for that one.

686
00:37:33,189 --> 00:37:39,088
That's why we kept a track of every
reel of all of Stanley's movies.

687
00:37:39,255 --> 00:37:45,155
And if we could grab 'em and store them
and archive them ourselves, we did.

688
00:37:45,322 --> 00:37:46,720
That was a full-time job itself?

689
00:37:46,889 --> 00:37:48,718
Well, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

690
00:37:48,889 --> 00:37:51,355
Funnily enough, everything you ever
did was a full-time job.

691
00:37:55,190 --> 00:38:00,054
Leon put together, put together quite
literally different trailers

692
00:38:00,223 --> 00:38:01,712
for every country
in the world.

693
00:38:01,890 --> 00:38:03,015
They were printed here.

694
00:38:03,190 --> 00:38:06,157
Stanley Kubrick...

695
00:38:06,323 --> 00:38:07,949
They were checked by Leon.

696
00:38:08,124 --> 00:38:09,817
-Heil!

697
00:38:09,991 --> 00:38:11,014
And they were then
shipped out.

698
00:38:12,324 --> 00:38:13,654
He helped
small production houses.

699
00:38:13,824 --> 00:38:15,290
He delivered the ads
if we needed.

700
00:38:15,658 --> 00:38:20,886
All the minutiae that drove Leon
into, you know, catatonic foam,

701
00:38:21,058 --> 00:38:23,819
foaming at the mouth hysteria

702
00:38:23,992 --> 00:38:26,890
were the things that
other people in our company,

703
00:38:27,058 --> 00:38:29,853
and certainly in the other film
companies, hadn't thought about.

704
00:38:30,758 --> 00:38:32,156
Didn't think about.

705
00:38:32,325 --> 00:38:37,121
When it came to release
the Full Metal Jacket in the UK,

706
00:38:37,292 --> 00:38:40,747
Stanley intuitively

707
00:38:40,926 --> 00:38:46,086
came to distrust the managing director
of Warner Home Video in the UK,

708
00:38:46,259 --> 00:38:51,282
going as far as to send people
across England,

709
00:38:51,660 --> 00:38:56,718
take photographs of the in-store
displays and the store windows.

710
00:38:56,893 --> 00:39:00,586
I went up around all these
stores, and I took photographs.

711
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:02,783
When I told Stanley

712
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:08,722
"There's not a single bit of advertising
in Warner Home Video's own building,"

713
00:39:10,027 --> 00:39:12,585
you know,
he just went fucking berserk.

714
00:39:12,761 --> 00:39:17,750
I felt incredibly, um,
responsible for this.

715
00:39:17,928 --> 00:39:21,985
Ultimately,
we remedied the shortcomings.

716
00:39:22,161 --> 00:39:27,287
His attention to perfection
could periodically be maddening.

717
00:39:27,662 --> 00:39:30,628
Well, the reality,
these were his works,

718
00:39:30,795 --> 00:39:33,090
and he brought the passion

719
00:39:33,261 --> 00:39:37,853
of an artist who wanted
the audience to see the movies

720
00:39:38,029 --> 00:39:40,291
in the highest-quality form

721
00:39:40,662 --> 00:39:43,322
and to have them
marketed properly.

722
00:39:43,695 --> 00:39:47,025
What Leon provided was that link

723
00:39:47,196 --> 00:39:51,720
between Stanley and this great
behemoth that was Warner Bros.

724
00:39:51,896 --> 00:39:54,794
Huge, huge,
powerful corporation,

725
00:39:54,963 --> 00:39:56,724
rather like a dinosaur.

726
00:39:56,896 --> 00:40:01,261
Wonderful mass, power body,
and a tiny little brain pan.

727
00:40:01,630 --> 00:40:04,597
And what Stanley was doing,
and it went through Leon...

728
00:40:06,130 --> 00:40:08,619
was getting them to change things
ever so slightly.

729
00:40:08,797 --> 00:40:12,354
I-I never heard a word said other than,
"Leon needs it. Let's get it done".

730
00:40:12,731 --> 00:40:14,629
If anything ever
went wrong, he said,

731
00:40:14,797 --> 00:40:19,957
"It is your responsibility to make sure
they understand exactly what you want".

732
00:40:20,131 --> 00:40:25,189
And that could take two, three,
four, five, six tries to get it right.

733
00:40:25,365 --> 00:40:29,127
If I felt like I wasn't getting
any response,

734
00:40:29,298 --> 00:40:33,856
or people were kind of, uh,
for want of a better phrase,

735
00:40:34,032 --> 00:40:35,259
dicking me around,
you know,

736
00:40:35,632 --> 00:40:37,791
saying they're gonna
send something, it never gets sent.

737
00:40:37,965 --> 00:40:39,590
You gotta chase 'em up
and chase 'em up.

738
00:40:39,765 --> 00:40:44,164
He'd say, "Okay, Leon, tonight you get
on the phone and you say to them,

739
00:40:44,332 --> 00:40:48,321
if they're talking like that to you,
they're talking like that to me".

740
00:40:48,699 --> 00:40:51,131
It really felt like there was a
kind of a loyalty there.

741
00:40:52,666 --> 00:40:55,064
So sometimes,
I'd get into my office

742
00:40:55,233 --> 00:40:58,290
and there'd be a fax
on my desk from Stanley

743
00:40:58,666 --> 00:41:02,759
to somebody about some heinous crime
that they'd committed.

744
00:41:02,933 --> 00:41:08,628
Except it didn't come from Stanley.
He'd typed my name under it.

745
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:11,766
Where I never knew what it was
I was saying to anybody,

746
00:41:11,934 --> 00:41:14,332
because Stanley
was saying it for me,

747
00:41:14,700 --> 00:41:17,292
using me as a substitute
for him.

748
00:41:17,667 --> 00:41:23,066
I never met, with maybe two exceptions,
anybody from the offices here in LA,

749
00:41:23,234 --> 00:41:24,995
even when
he came over to England.

750
00:41:25,167 --> 00:41:27,190
Stanley would stick me
in a back room.

751
00:41:27,368 --> 00:41:30,062
I think what it was,
in a way, this, you know,

752
00:41:30,235 --> 00:41:32,267
Stanley didn't want them
to see what I looked like.

753
00:41:32,268 --> 00:41:32,631
Stanley didn't want them
to see what I looked like.

754
00:41:32,801 --> 00:41:35,165
Being his, for want of a better word,
spokesman, when I would say,

755
00:41:35,335 --> 00:41:36,891
"We need to do this.
You gotta do that.

756
00:41:37,068 --> 00:41:38,591
You gotta do this.
You gotta do that".

757
00:41:38,768 --> 00:41:40,598
They probably heard
my voice on the phone

758
00:41:40,769 --> 00:41:43,792
and thought I wore
a three-piece suit, six feet tall

759
00:41:43,969 --> 00:41:45,161
and I had
tremendous authority.

760
00:41:45,335 --> 00:41:46,824
The assumption
that people think,

761
00:41:47,003 --> 00:41:50,060
"Oh, somebody's an assistant for
someone, you're doing layouts".

762
00:41:50,236 --> 00:41:52,793
-Mm-hmm.
-"You're, you know, you're working with labs.

763
00:41:52,969 --> 00:41:54,696
-You're working with restoration".
-Mm-hmm.

764
00:41:54,869 --> 00:41:57,960
You're, uh, casting people.
You're working with the actors.

765
00:41:58,136 --> 00:41:59,999
And sometimes I'm acting.

766
00:42:00,169 --> 00:42:02,067
Was that the title
you were happy with?

767
00:42:02,236 --> 00:42:03,793
-Or was that-- You never—
-Didn't make any difference.

768
00:42:03,970 --> 00:42:05,765
You know something?
When I traveled abroad,

769
00:42:05,937 --> 00:42:08,630
and I used to have to
fill in these visas.

770
00:42:08,803 --> 00:42:10,099
They used to say,
"Occupation".

771
00:42:10,270 --> 00:42:12,168
And I always used
to write "filmworker".

772
00:42:12,337 --> 00:42:14,303
I mean, I'm a filmworker.

773
00:42:14,670 --> 00:42:16,829
I'm a worker.
That's what I do.

774
00:42:17,004 --> 00:42:23,733
So assistant, to me, is nothing other
than I am assisting somebody

775
00:42:23,904 --> 00:42:29,666
to fulfill what it is
they want to get up on a screen.

776
00:42:29,838 --> 00:42:31,997
I was dialogue coaching
and casting.

777
00:42:32,171 --> 00:42:34,603
I was also in charge of shipping.
Television. Sales.

778
00:42:34,771 --> 00:42:36,670
This was all about licensing.
Doing layout.

779
00:42:36,839 --> 00:42:39,327
Video transfers. DVDs.
Laser discs. Inventory.

780
00:42:39,705 --> 00:42:41,694
Timing sheets.
Checking of all these prints.

781
00:42:41,872 --> 00:42:44,861
The trailer. Translations.
All of that work on the timing.

782
00:42:45,039 --> 00:42:48,005
There wasn't a print or a
telecine I hadn't sat with Stanley,

783
00:42:48,172 --> 00:42:51,729
made the changes and then talked to the
lab about it afterward, for all his movies.

784
00:42:51,905 --> 00:42:54,701
At first, you're like, "Oh!

785
00:42:54,872 --> 00:42:56,202
My God, Stanley Kubrick".

786
00:42:56,373 --> 00:42:59,635
And then you're like,
"Fuckin' hell, man".

787
00:42:59,806 --> 00:43:01,931
'Cause you're pushed to a point
where you're like,

788
00:43:02,107 --> 00:43:03,663
"I have no more".

789
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:06,329
You have to understand
Stanley Kubrick

790
00:43:06,706 --> 00:43:08,036
before you could even
begin to understand...

791
00:43:09,340 --> 00:43:13,705
what Leon V-Vitali
did, does, went through,

792
00:43:13,873 --> 00:43:16,704
what's imprinted
on his soul and mind.

793
00:43:16,874 --> 00:43:21,068
It's only when you understand
that this remarkable man, a genius,

794
00:43:21,240 --> 00:43:25,969
a nightmare, warm, caring,
distant, cold,

795
00:43:26,141 --> 00:43:31,005
expansive, funny, hugely intelligent,
totally driven man

796
00:43:31,174 --> 00:43:33,333
would do to make his movies.

797
00:43:33,708 --> 00:43:38,073
Stanley's extraordinary
attention to the tiniest detail

798
00:43:38,241 --> 00:43:40,037
drove a lot of people
away from him.

799
00:43:40,209 --> 00:43:42,697
The production designer
on Barry Lyndon

800
00:43:42,875 --> 00:43:46,239
actually got taken off
by men in white coats

801
00:43:46,409 --> 00:43:48,341
because he couldn't
stand the pressure.

802
00:43:48,708 --> 00:43:51,607
He could be as charming
as charming to you.

803
00:43:51,776 --> 00:43:54,037
You know, where you think,
"Boy, I'm on top of the world".

804
00:43:54,209 --> 00:43:57,937
He's just patted me on the back and
been very pleased about something.

805
00:43:58,110 --> 00:44:01,598
And then the next thing, you can be
shit on from a great height.

806
00:44:01,776 --> 00:44:04,970
I was always scared of him,
to be honest. I really was, you know

807
00:44:05,143 --> 00:44:07,200
Because it was really cold.

808
00:44:07,377 --> 00:44:09,865
It was like talking to God,
pretty much.

809
00:44:10,043 --> 00:44:14,135
But living in that environment, and working in
that environment, you know, which was so intense.

810
00:44:14,310 --> 00:44:18,107
And the intensity of Stanley
is-is well-documented.

811
00:44:18,277 --> 00:44:22,141
So Leon was as close as anybody
was likely to get to that.

812
00:44:22,311 --> 00:44:27,005
If Leon would do one thing
that wasn't correct, or what--

813
00:44:27,177 --> 00:44:30,200
Nobody can do everything correctly.
I'm sorry.

814
00:44:30,378 --> 00:44:31,776
Especially when you're working
with Stanley,

815
00:44:31,945 --> 00:44:35,843
because there's-- it's so much detail
and so much stuff.

816
00:44:36,012 --> 00:44:40,206
It was his nature to always think that you
didn't care, or you were gonna mess up,

817
00:44:40,379 --> 00:44:42,901
that people weren't gonna be
as invested as he is.

818
00:44:43,078 --> 00:44:46,203
He was always waiting
for you to fuck up, in a way.

819
00:44:46,379 --> 00:44:51,243
So it was always like as much as you
gave, that it was like "Give more".

820
00:44:51,412 --> 00:44:54,344
And you had to give more,
and more, and more, and more.

821
00:44:54,712 --> 00:44:56,337
And that's
why Leon got eaten up.

822
00:44:56,712 --> 00:45:01,304
I think we have these ideas about what
it would be like to spend all of your time

823
00:45:01,679 --> 00:45:03,236
with one of the world's
greatest film directors.

824
00:45:03,413 --> 00:45:05,935
And then when you really stop to think
about it, you think,

825
00:45:06,113 --> 00:45:08,170
"God, that
would be hell, actually".

826
00:45:08,346 --> 00:45:11,040
Because you would never
have your own life anymore, you know

827
00:45:11,213 --> 00:45:14,976
Your entire existence would
revolve around this one individual.

828
00:45:15,147 --> 00:45:19,102
I'd say outside
of the film industry,

829
00:45:19,280 --> 00:45:23,974
Stanley's equivalent would be
Gordon Ramsay on one of his,

830
00:45:24,147 --> 00:45:26,306
you know, reality TV shows

831
00:45:26,681 --> 00:45:28,374
where he's saying,
"Oh, fuck me, fuck me.

832
00:45:28,748 --> 00:45:29,975
Yes, fucking stupid.
You know what you--"

833
00:45:30,148 --> 00:45:31,306
Fucking look at me!
Look at me in the eyes!

834
00:45:31,681 --> 00:45:33,738
You're not as pissed as I am!
You fucking ass!

835
00:45:33,914 --> 00:45:35,210
I'm not sending that shit!

836
00:45:35,382 --> 00:45:36,677
This is not personal.
This is professional!

837
00:45:36,848 --> 00:45:37,836
I'm sorry, Chef.

838
00:45:38,015 --> 00:45:39,140
That was a piece of shit.
Now put it back!

839
00:45:39,315 --> 00:45:40,974
Stanley could be like that.

840
00:45:41,148 --> 00:45:43,307
I mean,
if he was mad about something,

841
00:45:43,682 --> 00:45:45,910
you could bet that
if there was a fault--

842
00:45:48,281 --> 00:45:49,338
...you were done.

843
00:45:49,715 --> 00:45:51,806
The worst part
of any of those jobs,

844
00:45:51,982 --> 00:45:55,005
was actually the time you
left the lab

845
00:45:55,182 --> 00:46:00,774
or whatever facility it was
with what you thought you'd got.

846
00:46:02,216 --> 00:46:04,705
And you had to have
lots of alternatives.

847
00:46:04,883 --> 00:46:08,145
And the whole journey back was,
you know, really, uh,

848
00:46:08,316 --> 00:46:10,748
"Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God.
He may not like this.

849
00:46:10,916 --> 00:46:12,779
He might not like this".

850
00:46:12,950 --> 00:46:13,711
-I mean--
-Stress?

851
00:46:13,883 --> 00:46:15,042
It-- Oh, yeah.

852
00:46:15,217 --> 00:46:19,206
They made a 70 mil print
of 2001.

853
00:46:19,384 --> 00:46:23,874
And they sent us this copy
which was about ten points too green.

854
00:46:24,050 --> 00:46:26,209
I had to go through
every single frame.

855
00:46:26,384 --> 00:46:29,782
The smaller frame here
is Stanley's 35mm print,

856
00:46:29,951 --> 00:46:32,383
color-timed
to his specifications.

857
00:46:32,751 --> 00:46:35,115
But you can see,
they're so different.

858
00:46:35,284 --> 00:46:39,080
And when Stanley saw it,
he was just... apeshit.

859
00:46:39,251 --> 00:46:41,342
I think that's the word
to describe it.

860
00:46:41,718 --> 00:46:46,048
Oh, I saw it, and I just said, "There's no
way he's gonna approve this thing".

861
00:46:46,219 --> 00:46:48,776
What a huge difference
there is.

862
00:46:48,952 --> 00:46:52,282
And how couldn't
someone see that?

863
00:46:52,652 --> 00:46:56,050
That was where I had a lot of
empathy for Stanley.

864
00:46:56,219 --> 00:47:00,618
But then, I also think he kind of
pulled that a little bit on himself,

865
00:47:00,786 --> 00:47:05,946
because his temper was so vitriolic
and so sarcastic, and so hard.

866
00:47:06,120 --> 00:47:11,018
It took a little bit of courage to actually
say the truth about any situation.

867
00:47:11,186 --> 00:47:13,152
If when
we were watching the rushes,

868
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:18,218
I couldn't not say, "I don't think
that looks quite right".

869
00:47:19,687 --> 00:47:22,847
Because if I didn't say it,

870
00:47:23,021 --> 00:47:25,214
he would say afterwards,

871
00:47:25,387 --> 00:47:28,354
"Why didn't you say something?"

872
00:47:28,720 --> 00:47:33,846
♪ Happy Birthday
Dear Jesus ♪

873
00:47:34,021 --> 00:47:36,010
♪ Happy Birthday... ♪

874
00:47:36,187 --> 00:47:40,279
It was Christmas Eve, and suddenly, I was
the only person left in the cutting room,

875
00:47:40,655 --> 00:47:42,712
and everyone had
pissed off by noon.

876
00:47:42,888 --> 00:47:44,717
And I had to show Stanley
these rushes.

877
00:47:44,888 --> 00:47:48,252
And he came down
in the foulest fucking temper.

878
00:47:48,422 --> 00:47:50,717
And whenever I said to Stanley,

879
00:47:50,888 --> 00:47:53,377
"There's flare in this shot or
that shot," he said, "I like flare".

880
00:47:53,756 --> 00:47:56,017
So I never bothered
to mention it.

881
00:47:56,188 --> 00:47:59,382
So we were watching the rushes,
and he saw this flare.

882
00:48:01,856 --> 00:48:04,345
And I said, "Well, yeah, but you've
always said you like flare".

883
00:48:04,722 --> 00:48:07,688
And he gave me such a bollocking.
It was unbelievable.

884
00:48:07,856 --> 00:48:09,822
I mean,
he was just screaming at me.

885
00:48:09,989 --> 00:48:12,717
And as soon as he finished, he said,
"I guess you wanna go home now

886
00:48:12,890 --> 00:48:14,185
I got some gifts for you. Come".

887
00:48:14,356 --> 00:48:16,914
And so he walked
down the hallway.

888
00:48:17,090 --> 00:48:20,920
And outside his office was this
box with lots of gifts in them.

889
00:48:21,090 --> 00:48:23,352
He said, uh, "So, take it, and,
uh, Happy Christmas".

890
00:48:23,723 --> 00:48:25,349
You kinda think,
"I can't believe this.

891
00:48:25,723 --> 00:48:28,281
Well, this will be the end.
He'll leave me alone now"

892
00:48:28,658 --> 00:48:31,180
Until 1:00 on Christmas Day.

893
00:48:31,357 --> 00:48:33,983
And that's when I started getting
bombarded with phone calls.

894
00:48:34,157 --> 00:48:37,022
Uh, "What's happening with this? What's
happening with that? Where are we now?"

895
00:48:37,191 --> 00:48:39,884
And thought you'd finished the
conversation. You put the phone down.

896
00:48:40,058 --> 00:48:42,149
And nine, ten minutes later,
you know, it would ring.

897
00:48:42,325 --> 00:48:44,348
"What's happening with that?
And what's happening with this?

898
00:48:44,724 --> 00:48:46,815
And have you looked at that?
And have you done this?"

899
00:48:46,991 --> 00:48:48,218
It just went on and on.

900
00:48:48,392 --> 00:48:49,948
Oh, what am I doing?

901
00:48:50,125 --> 00:48:52,284
When you work as
Stanley Kubrick's assistant,

902
00:48:52,659 --> 00:48:56,682
general factotum, it's not terribly
difficult to lose your temper.

903
00:48:56,859 --> 00:48:58,291
It's-It's easy.

904
00:48:58,659 --> 00:49:01,682
You have to have patience
of a tribe full of Jobs

905
00:49:01,859 --> 00:49:04,791
to listen to that kind
of thing every day and take it

906
00:49:04,959 --> 00:49:06,925
and understand
from whence it came.

907
00:49:07,092 --> 00:49:09,786
I guess he didn't feel
he needed anymore

908
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:15,256
to be kid-glove handling me
and my sensitivities.

909
00:49:15,426 --> 00:49:17,892
It became, right,
you're here to do this

910
00:49:18,060 --> 00:49:19,616
and you have to get it done.

911
00:49:19,793 --> 00:49:23,624
Any kind of error or mistake
could be just jumped on

912
00:49:23,793 --> 00:49:27,123
and absolutely, you could feel
crucified at the end of it.

913
00:49:27,293 --> 00:49:27,494
There were times when
I was a total dickhead.

914
00:49:27,495 --> 00:49:30,017
There were times when
I was a total dickhead.

915
00:49:30,193 --> 00:49:32,216
And I didn't get it,

916
00:49:32,394 --> 00:49:37,259
or I made a gross error
of judgment or something.

917
00:49:37,428 --> 00:49:39,257
As much as Stanley
would yell at him

918
00:49:39,428 --> 00:49:41,723
and be like,
"Leon, what are you doing?"

919
00:49:41,894 --> 00:49:45,657
"Oh, God, yes, Stanley. Yes, Stanley.
Okay, Stanley, but listen".

920
00:49:45,828 --> 00:49:47,953
Always kind of, like,
keeping it low tone.

921
00:49:48,128 --> 00:49:51,253
It was-- How many years
were they together?

922
00:49:51,428 --> 00:49:54,986
I think that the only reason that
that could have continued for so long

923
00:49:55,162 --> 00:49:57,253
was because of a deep loyalty.

924
00:49:57,429 --> 00:50:02,259
That Stanley understood that Leon was somebody
who had his back, that would protect him.

925
00:50:02,429 --> 00:50:06,122
The few things that Leon has shared
with me that he holds most dear to him,

926
00:50:06,295 --> 00:50:10,387
standing on the porch of his house smoking
cigarettes and peeing off the porch.

927
00:50:10,763 --> 00:50:13,991
I don't think Jack Nicholson ever peed
off the porch with Stanley Kubrick.

928
00:50:14,163 --> 00:50:18,959
I think they had a unique
relationship, uh, rarely found.

929
00:50:19,130 --> 00:50:21,925
And they had this level
of trust between each other.

930
00:50:22,096 --> 00:50:23,926
Leon was like a part of Stanley.

931
00:50:24,096 --> 00:50:27,358
There was an understanding between
them, an unspoken understanding.

932
00:50:27,730 --> 00:50:29,923
These are depositions I wrote

933
00:50:30,097 --> 00:50:35,291
about aspect ratios that Stanley
had wanted his films to be.

934
00:50:35,664 --> 00:50:37,221
And I had them notarized.

935
00:50:37,398 --> 00:50:40,989
Barry Lyndon, that's been a bone
of contention all the time.

936
00:50:41,164 --> 00:50:43,926
And I went through a day of hell

937
00:50:44,097 --> 00:50:46,222
where I had
all these people saying,

938
00:50:46,398 --> 00:50:50,024
"It never was 1.77.
It never was".

939
00:50:50,198 --> 00:50:53,721
I mean, it's really funny, isn't it, that I
worked for all those years with Stanley,

940
00:50:53,898 --> 00:50:55,194
working on prints.

941
00:50:55,365 --> 00:50:58,888
We had a special aperture plate
that we put in the projector,

942
00:50:59,065 --> 00:51:00,326
and it was 1.77.

943
00:51:00,699 --> 00:51:02,756
You know, I mean, pshh.

944
00:51:02,932 --> 00:51:04,955
Bit like Room 237, you know,

945
00:51:05,133 --> 00:51:09,293
where people had their own ideas of what
the film was about and blah, blah, blah.

946
00:51:09,666 --> 00:51:13,689
And, you know, a picture of a downhill skier
was not a picture of a downhill skier.

947
00:51:13,866 --> 00:51:17,321
It was a picture of Satan,
and you could see his tail behind him.

948
00:51:17,700 --> 00:51:21,359
You know, when I look at the full moon,
I don't see a man in the moon.

949
00:51:21,733 --> 00:51:26,257
If you look on one side of it,
I can see a French poodle sitting.

950
00:51:26,433 --> 00:51:29,797
I don't think there is a French poodle
sitting on the moon.

951
00:51:29,967 --> 00:51:31,796
I'm gonna have to turn
to Leon, and I'm gonna have to say,

952
00:51:31,967 --> 00:51:35,024
"Leon, uh, was-was Stanley involved
in the Apollo landings?"

953
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:38,064
No.

954
00:51:39,868 --> 00:51:41,299
Task lists.

955
00:51:41,668 --> 00:51:45,192
"Finish cleaning up projection room".
About half a day.

956
00:51:45,367 --> 00:51:51,164
"Go through my filing cabinets
and reorganize". About one day.

957
00:51:51,335 --> 00:51:53,892
"Clear up old library.

958
00:51:54,068 --> 00:51:56,398
Finish inventory long garage.

959
00:51:56,769 --> 00:52:00,132
Finish inventory in long stalls".
About half a day.

960
00:52:00,301 --> 00:52:05,291
And the stable block was a line
of buildings 50 yards long

961
00:52:05,669 --> 00:52:08,999
where everything
was shoved into,

962
00:52:09,169 --> 00:52:10,930
and I had to sort it out.

963
00:52:11,102 --> 00:52:15,000
"Dear Stanley, this is now complete
regarding stable block".

964
00:52:15,169 --> 00:52:16,100
Was he happy?

965
00:52:16,269 --> 00:52:17,997
He didn't even come
and look at it.

966
00:52:18,169 --> 00:52:22,034
"Leon, how could you
get the couch so filthy?"

967
00:52:22,203 --> 00:52:26,135
Well, it was the dog hairs
of the dogs

968
00:52:26,303 --> 00:52:29,098
who he allowed
to lie on the sofa

969
00:52:29,270 --> 00:52:32,703
on the Sunday evening
he was watching the movies.

970
00:52:32,870 --> 00:52:36,963
My appreciation for genius
would probably end

971
00:52:37,137 --> 00:52:39,865
when the genius told me
to clean a room for him.

972
00:52:40,038 --> 00:52:42,401
He would do anything
for the guy,

973
00:52:42,771 --> 00:52:44,169
and I would not.

974
00:52:44,338 --> 00:52:47,099
I would, when it got
physically difficult,

975
00:52:47,271 --> 00:52:49,760
I'm here to tell you
I would probably say,

976
00:52:49,937 --> 00:52:53,199
"Thank you very much. You're quite
a genius. Leave me alone now"

977
00:52:53,371 --> 00:52:56,997
Amongst my other
duties is the cat compound.

978
00:52:57,171 --> 00:52:59,195
How we kept the cats safe.

979
00:52:59,371 --> 00:53:04,736
Stanley, oh, my God. He never
thought animals had any guile.

980
00:53:04,905 --> 00:53:10,338
And so when one of them was dying,
it became a major, major problem.

981
00:53:10,706 --> 00:53:14,934
There was this, oh, lovely cat, you know,
16 years old, named Jessica.

982
00:53:15,106 --> 00:53:17,663
She had a fit, couldn't move.

983
00:53:17,839 --> 00:53:21,135
I set up a whole video system
in the house

984
00:53:21,306 --> 00:53:24,897
so that in every room
there was a monitor

985
00:53:25,073 --> 00:53:30,768
where you could see Jessica lying
there anytime of the day or night.

986
00:53:30,940 --> 00:53:34,337
It just became obsessive.
Just didn't wanna let her go.

987
00:53:34,707 --> 00:53:36,673
And in the end,
we called the vet.

988
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:40,863
And they gave her the shot
she should have had weeks before.

989
00:53:41,041 --> 00:53:44,132
-Put her to sleep.
-Everything was a tragedy for him.

990
00:53:44,307 --> 00:53:49,365
If a dog was dying, there was nothing
else except this dying dog.

991
00:53:49,741 --> 00:53:52,935
And I understand it.
Nothing got done.

992
00:53:53,108 --> 00:53:56,870
I had to keep with the work
so that when he came back to it,

993
00:53:57,042 --> 00:53:59,304
I could say,
"This is where we are".

994
00:53:59,675 --> 00:54:04,233
Leon is fascinated,
and he's curious, and he's there.

995
00:54:04,409 --> 00:54:07,000
Someone who's
a Shakespearean-trained actor.

996
00:54:07,175 --> 00:54:09,005
Someone that you can explain
three-point lighting to,

997
00:54:09,175 --> 00:54:10,835
and they get it.

998
00:54:11,009 --> 00:54:14,305
Then you find someone that
you can tell them about baths in labs,

999
00:54:14,676 --> 00:54:15,642
and they remember.

1000
00:54:15,809 --> 00:54:17,139
And you've struck gold.

1001
00:54:17,309 --> 00:54:19,002
And that person is
so enamored with you,

1002
00:54:19,176 --> 00:54:20,971
and they don't want to
leave your existence.

1003
00:54:21,143 --> 00:54:23,109
That sort of thing
is irreplaceable.

1004
00:54:23,276 --> 00:54:26,674
And if Leon had really ever
seriously tried to make a break,

1005
00:54:26,843 --> 00:54:30,105
you know, for the hills, I think he would
have been prevented from doing it.

1006
00:54:30,276 --> 00:54:33,072
He came in
to my office and he said,

1007
00:54:33,244 --> 00:54:37,642
"Leon, I've just had a thought. You're not gonna
go and work for Warner Bros., are you?"

1008
00:54:37,810 --> 00:54:40,776
I was wearing a Marine jacket.

1009
00:54:40,943 --> 00:54:44,876
My hair hadn't looked as if
it had been combed in a week.

1010
00:54:45,044 --> 00:54:47,806
I just said,
"Stanley, do I look corporate?"

1011
00:54:47,978 --> 00:54:51,341
He kind of smiled, and then laughed,
and then he kind of walked out.

1012
00:54:51,711 --> 00:54:57,008
And then there was never any discussion about
me leaving or him gettin' rid of me again.

1013
00:54:57,178 --> 00:54:59,406
When somebody would say
to Stanley, and they would,

1014
00:54:59,778 --> 00:55:01,642
"I'd give my right arm
to work for you,"

1015
00:55:01,812 --> 00:55:03,778
he would kind of smile.

1016
00:55:03,945 --> 00:55:07,206
Because I actually think,
you know, he thought,

1017
00:55:07,378 --> 00:55:09,310
"Well, why are you
low-balling me?

1018
00:55:09,679 --> 00:55:13,634
What, just a right arm? How about the
left one and the legs?

1019
00:55:13,812 --> 00:55:17,267
And the body and the heart,
and everything?"

1020
00:55:17,446 --> 00:55:20,674
If you said to him,
"I commit myself,"

1021
00:55:20,846 --> 00:55:23,243
you just better
make sure you mean it.

1022
00:55:23,413 --> 00:55:26,641
Otherwise,
why would you bother?

1023
00:55:26,813 --> 00:55:29,973
'Cause you'll betray yourself
anyway, in the end,

1024
00:55:30,147 --> 00:55:32,977
if you're not going to give
everything you've got...

1025
00:55:34,313 --> 00:55:37,302
to what it is you're doing,
because he did.

1026
00:55:37,681 --> 00:55:40,704
He gave everything he got
to what he was doing.

1027
00:55:40,881 --> 00:55:42,642
And that's the most
important thing.

1028
00:55:42,814 --> 00:55:45,302
And that's what I saw,
that's what I understood,

1029
00:55:45,681 --> 00:55:47,909
and that's
what I reacted to.

1030
00:55:49,981 --> 00:55:53,379
Friends, family, et
cetera, everybody understood that?

1031
00:55:53,747 --> 00:55:55,373
I don't think so.

1032
00:55:55,748 --> 00:55:57,213
And why is that?

1033
00:55:57,381 --> 00:56:01,211
Because Stanley kind of ate you up.

1034
00:56:01,381 --> 00:56:03,404
You're in this strange world.

1035
00:56:03,782 --> 00:56:06,976
And-And probably Stanley Kubrick's
world was stranger than most.

1036
00:56:07,149 --> 00:56:10,411
He was obviously someone
who was so steeped

1037
00:56:10,782 --> 00:56:13,715
in the day-to-day minutiae
of his own films.

1038
00:56:13,882 --> 00:56:17,781
He wanted to do everything. And a lot
of that work got deferred to Leon.

1039
00:56:17,949 --> 00:56:20,380
And Leon really became
his arms and legs.

1040
00:56:20,749 --> 00:56:23,045
And I think it probably
took quite a serious toll.

1041
00:56:23,216 --> 00:56:25,374
He would not admit it.

1042
00:56:25,749 --> 00:56:29,273
He probably wouldn't say it out loud.
I-I will, though.

1043
00:56:29,450 --> 00:56:35,280
Leon surrendered a great deal of his family
life to the cause. Did he need the job?

1044
00:56:35,450 --> 00:56:39,076
No, he could have worked on, continued
working, as I said, as a very good actor.

1045
00:56:39,250 --> 00:56:43,081
Stanley said, "You either care
or you don't care.

1046
00:56:43,251 --> 00:56:46,046
There's no gray area
in between".

1047
00:56:46,217 --> 00:56:49,842
So caring meant giving as much
of your time as you had,

1048
00:56:50,017 --> 00:56:52,415
until you quite literally
were too tired to go on.

1049
00:56:52,785 --> 00:56:54,341
How was Stanley with you guys?

1050
00:56:54,718 --> 00:56:55,809
Stanley?
Yeah.

1051
00:56:55,985 --> 00:56:57,143
Uh, he was...

1052
00:56:58,317 --> 00:57:00,181
um, he was lovely.

1053
00:57:00,351 --> 00:57:04,079
He was always very sweet
to me and Max.

1054
00:57:04,252 --> 00:57:06,979
But I always found him
really rather charming.

1055
00:57:07,152 --> 00:57:08,845
Probably because
I didn't work for him.

1056
00:57:09,018 --> 00:57:11,882
If they had a good day, then
it became a good day for me.

1057
00:57:12,052 --> 00:57:15,143
If it was a bad day for Stanley,
it became a bad day for Leon,

1058
00:57:15,318 --> 00:57:17,307
and that would be
a bad day for me.

1059
00:57:19,419 --> 00:57:21,385
Very good. Well done.

1060
00:57:21,752 --> 00:57:26,014
Of course, I see a person
who demanded a lot from Leon

1061
00:57:26,186 --> 00:57:29,118
and made life tricky for Leon
to maybe balance.

1062
00:57:29,286 --> 00:57:31,252
And he'd be working, working,
working, working, working.

1063
00:57:31,420 --> 00:57:33,852
And constantly working.
Not a break.

1064
00:57:34,020 --> 00:57:36,043
And that would take
all his time.

1065
00:57:36,219 --> 00:57:38,651
So me and Vera
would do other things.

1066
00:57:38,820 --> 00:57:40,184
He would just be on the phone,

1067
00:57:40,354 --> 00:57:44,218
or by the copy machine, nonstop,
nonstop, nonstop. And smoking.

1068
00:57:44,387 --> 00:57:49,410
And a cigarette and a cup of tea
and just being totally in the work.

1069
00:57:49,788 --> 00:57:52,754
- It was kind of Kafkaesque, I guess.

1070
00:57:52,921 --> 00:57:55,682
Always piles of stuff to do
that would never go away.

1071
00:57:55,854 --> 00:57:58,286
Piles of film reels to check.

1072
00:57:58,454 --> 00:58:02,910
All the stands for the video stores, and all
the dubbings, translations and subtitles.

1073
00:58:03,088 --> 00:58:05,418
Piles of posters to check
the color temperature of,

1074
00:58:05,788 --> 00:58:09,414
or piles of VHS's
to check Hungarian dubbing.

1075
00:58:09,789 --> 00:58:12,254
Or whatever. Oof.

1076
00:58:12,422 --> 00:58:15,718
I get exhausted just thinking
about those things, actually.

1077
00:58:15,889 --> 00:58:19,844
In a professional way,
Leon never relaxed.

1078
00:58:20,022 --> 00:58:24,352
I know there were periods where he would
stay dressed and sleep on the doormat

1079
00:58:24,723 --> 00:58:27,018
so he could wake up two hours later
and go back to work.

1080
00:58:27,189 --> 00:58:29,781
Never being comfortable,
'cause then you might oversleep.

1081
00:58:29,956 --> 00:58:32,183
When you're working for
somebody who's such a perfectionist,

1082
00:58:32,356 --> 00:58:35,084
you just keep going
and going and going and going,

1083
00:58:35,257 --> 00:58:37,280
I think,
until you literally fall over.

1084
00:58:37,456 --> 00:58:41,048
And I think there's been times when it's got to
a point where Leon has literally fallen over.

1085
00:58:41,223 --> 00:58:42,779
Because he feels
it's bigger than him.

1086
00:58:42,956 --> 00:58:45,320
So he'll keep going
until he achieves

1087
00:58:45,691 --> 00:58:48,282
something close to
impossibly beautiful or perfect.

1088
00:58:48,457 --> 00:58:50,117
It's something that
just keeps driving you on.

1089
00:58:50,290 --> 00:58:52,256
That you need to have it again.
It's almost like a drug.

1090
00:58:52,424 --> 00:58:56,118
Nothing mattered to him as much
as the work he's been doing.

1091
00:58:56,291 --> 00:58:58,382
Because that
overshadowed everything.

1092
00:58:58,757 --> 00:59:01,121
It'd be hard to have
a single discussion, let's say.

1093
00:59:01,291 --> 00:59:05,724
Try to communicate,
but someone is still...

1094
00:59:07,091 --> 00:59:09,058
somewhere else in his mind.

1095
00:59:09,224 --> 00:59:13,680
I remember feeling jealous that he
always had the energy for other people.

1096
00:59:13,858 --> 00:59:17,347
Being a kid and seeing that
I don't-- I-I don't get that.

1097
00:59:17,725 --> 00:59:19,351
No one works
24 hours a day,

1098
00:59:19,725 --> 00:59:24,886
but if anybody could or would, Leon's
job pretty much encompassed that.

1099
00:59:25,059 --> 00:59:27,787
And he was certainly on tap
seven days a week.

1100
00:59:27,959 --> 00:59:29,788
There was one day, I remember,

1101
00:59:29,959 --> 00:59:33,891
when Stanley decided we were gonna
change the Full Metal Jacket campaign,

1102
00:59:34,060 --> 00:59:38,890
and Leon had to go through
frame by frame of 35 millimeter film

1103
00:59:39,060 --> 00:59:44,083
to pull the right frame that just reflected
the nuance that Stanley was looking for.

1104
00:59:44,260 --> 00:59:47,249
And on that day,
Leon was in absolute pain.

1105
00:59:47,427 --> 00:59:49,359
He had an abscess in his tooth.

1106
00:59:49,727 --> 00:59:54,217
And he was taking a swig out
of a bottle of, uh, whiskey to--

1107
00:59:54,394 --> 00:59:58,156
hoping that the whiskey was
going to sort of kill the pain.

1108
00:59:58,327 --> 01:00:00,088
Leon had a lot of knowledge,

1109
01:00:00,261 --> 01:00:03,352
not only about filmmaking, but also
about literature and everything.

1110
01:00:03,728 --> 01:00:06,092
And at the same time,
he was a workhorse.

1111
01:00:06,261 --> 01:00:07,727
Uh, he'd do anything.

1112
01:00:07,895 --> 01:00:09,918
I mean,
he'll carry logs for you.

1113
01:00:10,095 --> 01:00:14,255
When you're working
with these kind of directors,

1114
01:00:14,429 --> 01:00:18,088
it's like you-you're sharing
your blood with them,

1115
01:00:18,262 --> 01:00:19,853
if you're in the inside.

1116
01:00:20,028 --> 01:00:22,085
I think it could be like a drug.

1117
01:00:22,262 --> 01:00:24,728
Filmworkers are slightly
different than other people.

1118
01:00:24,896 --> 01:00:26,418
And that goes
for theater workers too.

1119
01:00:26,796 --> 01:00:28,853
They're usually there
for the love.

1120
01:00:29,029 --> 01:00:31,325
They-They work worse hours.
They're usually not at home.

1121
01:00:31,696 --> 01:00:33,219
And they do all this

1122
01:00:33,396 --> 01:00:37,987
with a fantastic capacity of creating
a functioning social unit

1123
01:00:38,163 --> 01:00:41,220
that is extremely intimate
within hours.

1124
01:00:41,396 --> 01:00:45,261
I remember coming in at night and
meeting the negative developing crew

1125
01:00:45,430 --> 01:00:48,828
Precious negative.
There's no light in the room.

1126
01:00:48,997 --> 01:00:51,020
Everything you do
is by feel and by touch.

1127
01:00:51,197 --> 01:00:53,390
Once, there was a break
on a developer,

1128
01:00:53,764 --> 01:00:56,889
and a guy basically
wrapped himself in film

1129
01:00:57,064 --> 01:01:01,190
so that he could pull it over and quickly get
it back into solution to save the film.

1130
01:01:01,364 --> 01:01:04,297
I mean, this industry has been
built on people like that.

1131
01:01:04,464 --> 01:01:08,022
And you're not just doing it at this
level. You're doing it at this level.

1132
01:01:08,198 --> 01:01:10,664
You're doing—
You are at the tip of the spear.

1133
01:01:10,831 --> 01:01:16,662
That is an absolutely intoxicating
and addictive environment.

1134
01:01:16,832 --> 01:01:19,229
I don't have an obsession
for creativity.

1135
01:01:19,398 --> 01:01:22,024
It just is a necessary
requirement.

1136
01:01:22,199 --> 01:01:25,165
You either love it so much
you can't help it,

1137
01:01:25,332 --> 01:01:29,128
or you're a fucking idiot,
or you're a mixture of both.

1138
01:01:29,299 --> 01:01:31,765
Are you obsessive
about creativity also?

1139
01:01:31,932 --> 01:01:34,057
I don't know I don't think about it.
I-I am creative.

1140
01:01:34,232 --> 01:01:36,425
I, uh-- I-I work a lot.

1141
01:01:36,800 --> 01:01:38,412
And when I'm not working,
I'm cooking.

1142
01:01:38,413 --> 01:01:42,955
And when I'm not cooking,
I'm fucking. It's all creative work.

1143
01:01:43,133 --> 01:01:47,293
I worked as an assistant for a very,
very good Swedish director

1144
01:01:47,467 --> 01:01:49,330
in the Royal Dramatic Theatre
for several years.

1145
01:01:49,701 --> 01:01:51,724
I did small roles in his plays.

1146
01:01:51,900 --> 01:01:55,993
And I assisted and did-- and did a lot
of assistant work. And I loved it.

1147
01:01:56,167 --> 01:01:59,100
And after a while,
you feel how he feels.

1148
01:01:59,268 --> 01:02:01,756
You think how he thinks.

1149
01:02:01,934 --> 01:02:06,424
And-And you learn to see
what's going on with his eyes.

1150
01:02:06,801 --> 01:02:10,199
And that's a fantastic
revelation as an assistant.

1151
01:02:14,069 --> 01:02:17,865
This was a vicarious experience.

1152
01:02:18,035 --> 01:02:23,161
I'm experiencing something through
somebody else's genius or whatever it is.

1153
01:02:23,335 --> 01:02:25,926
You go with it,
and you work with it.

1154
01:02:26,102 --> 01:02:29,694
And then you learn from it.
And you get the hang of it.

1155
01:02:29,869 --> 01:02:34,733
And then Stanley would suddenly say,
"Changed my mind. You're starting all over again".

1156
01:02:34,903 --> 01:02:36,664
What difference
does it make to me?

1157
01:02:36,836 --> 01:02:40,893
I'm at the service of him, because
he's at the service of his movie.

1158
01:02:42,136 --> 01:02:46,000
And the thing was
that I wanted--

1159
01:02:46,170 --> 01:02:52,001
I wanted to be with Stanley,
work with Stanley.

1160
01:02:52,170 --> 01:02:55,295
Do all that stuff.
I just wanted to.

1161
01:02:55,470 --> 01:03:00,096
He was the most brilliant, fantastic
filmmaker of the 20th century.

1162
01:03:00,271 --> 01:03:03,294
And how honored was I

1163
01:03:03,471 --> 01:03:08,062
to be able to work for him,
hmm, for all those years?

1164
01:03:08,237 --> 01:03:11,000
I have noticed for a very long time,
since I was very young,

1165
01:03:12,172 --> 01:03:14,933
that how--what kind of impact
Stanley had on him.

1166
01:03:15,105 --> 01:03:18,299
How important that was, even
though I didn't always like it.

1167
01:03:18,472 --> 01:03:23,200
But kind of always known that that was his,
you know, that's what he needed as well.

1168
01:03:25,038 --> 01:03:26,800
My dad, who I loved--

1169
01:03:27,972 --> 01:03:29,938
I loved him--

1170
01:03:30,106 --> 01:03:33,731
he'd sit down at the piano
and he used to sing "La Mer" to me.

1171
01:03:33,906 --> 01:03:36,429
It was just wonderful
to stand there, and he'd be playing,

1172
01:03:36,806 --> 01:03:38,432
and he'd be looking at me
while he was singing it.

1173
01:03:38,806 --> 01:03:40,999
You felt like,
"Oh, this is just for me".

1174
01:03:41,173 --> 01:03:42,833
And whether
he understood or not,

1175
01:03:43,006 --> 01:03:48,166
that song permeated me
over many years so deeply

1176
01:03:48,339 --> 01:03:52,669
that it really became,
and still is,

1177
01:03:52,840 --> 01:03:57,296
one of those beautiful songs I can
hear over and over and over again.

1178
01:04:00,240 --> 01:04:04,263
During the first World War, when my
father was a child and living in Belgium,

1179
01:04:04,441 --> 01:04:07,771
the Germans
had come to his house.

1180
01:04:07,941 --> 01:04:10,338
There was just him
and his mother there.

1181
01:04:10,708 --> 01:04:14,868
And his father was part of the
Resistance to the German invasion,

1182
01:04:15,041 --> 01:04:16,870
and they'd come looking for him.

1183
01:04:17,041 --> 01:04:21,440
And his mother either couldn't or wouldn't
say what she knew about where he was.

1184
01:04:21,809 --> 01:04:24,900
They took her out into
the backyard and they shot her

1185
01:04:25,076 --> 01:04:28,337
and made my father watch
the incident.

1186
01:04:28,709 --> 01:04:33,165
He was a very, very volatile person
for the rest of his life.

1187
01:04:33,342 --> 01:04:34,932
What was the household like?

1188
01:04:35,109 --> 01:04:37,836
It could be
explosive at times.

1189
01:04:38,009 --> 01:04:39,908
-Fraught, I think is--
-Yes.

1190
01:04:40,076 --> 01:04:42,736
-...is how I remember it.
-Yes. I'm, uh--

1191
01:04:42,910 --> 01:04:44,307
-What, when Father was alive?
-Mm.

1192
01:04:44,476 --> 01:04:45,373
- Yes.
- Oh, yes.

1193
01:04:45,743 --> 01:04:47,834
You had to do just
the slightest thing

1194
01:04:48,010 --> 01:04:50,238
to get him
to flip his type.

1195
01:04:50,410 --> 01:04:56,309
I think we just tried not to put ourselves into
a position which would engender any criticism.

1196
01:04:56,477 --> 01:04:59,443
I think that-that's really
what we tried to do.

1197
01:04:59,811 --> 01:05:04,334
Uh, keep your heads down
and keep out of the way?

1198
01:05:04,711 --> 01:05:06,143
He died when I was eight.

1199
01:05:06,311 --> 01:05:09,765
I remember it was
a beautiful summer morning.

1200
01:05:09,944 --> 01:05:15,309
And what was funny for me, my mother and
my older brother were painting the hallway.

1201
01:05:18,144 --> 01:05:20,804
And before I could say anything else,
she just hushed me up.

1202
01:05:20,978 --> 01:05:22,705
And I looked at her face,

1203
01:05:22,878 --> 01:05:28,674
and I'd never seen such
a peaceful face in my life.

1204
01:05:28,845 --> 01:05:32,777
And she said, "Go into your bedroom
and just sit there quietly and think".

1205
01:05:32,945 --> 01:05:36,742
Of course I was thinking, "Well, we'll never
go to the cinema with him again.

1206
01:05:36,913 --> 01:05:41,005
We'll never walk down to the sweet shop
on a Sunday morning with him again".

1207
01:05:41,180 --> 01:05:45,703
And then you also thought, "Well, I
won't ever get slapped by him again.

1208
01:05:45,879 --> 01:05:49,675
And I won't have to watch him trying
to kill my eldest brother again".

1209
01:05:49,846 --> 01:05:53,335
And while I was thinking all these things,
all I could hear was these paintbrushes going...

1210
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:01,838
Bit by bit,
we kind of rebuilt our lives.

1211
01:06:02,014 --> 01:06:05,003
But, of course, we were
caretakers of the school,

1212
01:06:05,181 --> 01:06:08,806
so it meant that
we had a job to do every night.

1213
01:06:08,980 --> 01:06:13,072
When it came to Stanley,
you see, I kind of got it in a way.

1214
01:06:13,247 --> 01:06:17,078
I just understood
from my experience of my dad,

1215
01:06:17,247 --> 01:06:19,237
you take a step back

1216
01:06:19,414 --> 01:06:23,813
so you weren't being abused.

1217
01:06:23,981 --> 01:06:28,004
You just stood back, and you didn't
confront, you didn't challenge.

1218
01:06:28,182 --> 01:06:33,114
You just let them blast their way out
of whatever it was

1219
01:06:33,282 --> 01:06:35,010
they had a problem with.

1220
01:06:35,182 --> 01:06:38,444
I think that's what I bless Stanley
for more than anything else

1221
01:06:38,816 --> 01:06:42,805
is he kind of helped me
to understand who I am.

1222
01:06:42,982 --> 01:06:46,437
The thing with Stanley was,
you worked for him,

1223
01:06:46,816 --> 01:06:50,715
but you also worked with him,
and he gave you that latitude.

1224
01:06:50,883 --> 01:06:53,008
It's not about what
I want to be anymore.

1225
01:06:53,183 --> 01:06:56,308
It's about how I am.

1226
01:06:56,483 --> 01:06:59,211
You know, the head of Warner Bros.
once said to me on a visit to London,

1227
01:06:59,384 --> 01:07:01,213
shortly before Stanley died,
you know, he said,

1228
01:07:01,384 --> 01:07:05,441
"It's remarkable how low
his production costs are".

1229
01:07:05,817 --> 01:07:07,976
And I said, "Well, it's because,
quite frankly, he does everything.

1230
01:07:08,150 --> 01:07:10,446
He's Stanley Kubrick, and he—

1231
01:07:10,818 --> 01:07:13,147
The only thing
he doesn't do is act".

1232
01:07:13,317 --> 01:07:15,045
He acted once, actually.

1233
01:07:15,218 --> 01:07:19,082
He did do a performance
once for Leon.

1234
01:07:19,251 --> 01:07:23,115
Good evening. I'm sorry not to be able
to be with you tonight

1235
01:07:23,285 --> 01:07:25,717
to receive this great honor.

1236
01:07:25,884 --> 01:07:29,146
People came, and they set up
the cue card. I had the camera.

1237
01:07:29,318 --> 01:07:34,876
So, as usual, the guys who set up the cue
cards were going to be there operating.

1238
01:07:35,052 --> 01:07:39,882
And Stanley said, "Uh, no, no, no. And,
um, uh, could you-- could you go?"

1239
01:07:40,052 --> 01:07:42,280
So in the end,
I was operating the camera

1240
01:07:42,453 --> 01:07:45,817
and having to operate
the cue card at the same time.

1241
01:07:45,985 --> 01:07:50,043
And we did it again, and it would be, "Leon,
you're moving it too fast, the cue card".

1242
01:07:50,219 --> 01:07:52,811
Or, "Leon,
you're moving it too slow"

1243
01:07:52,986 --> 01:07:57,078
When he finished,
he started walking backwards.

1244
01:07:59,220 --> 01:08:02,913
And I said,
"Why are you doing that?"

1245
01:08:03,087 --> 01:08:06,815
And he said, "Well, you know, kind of
finishing it off, you know"

1246
01:08:06,987 --> 01:08:08,919
And I said, "I think
it would be better, really,

1247
01:08:09,088 --> 01:08:13,452
if I just kind of put
a big fade on the camera

1248
01:08:13,821 --> 01:08:16,185
so that you weren't
there anymore.

1249
01:08:16,354 --> 01:08:17,944
We just went to black,
you know?"

1250
01:08:18,121 --> 01:08:20,679
It was quite tortuous for him.

1251
01:08:20,854 --> 01:08:24,981
I had a feeling that everything
around Leon and Stanley

1252
01:08:25,154 --> 01:08:30,416
was a studio for, um,
filmmaking.

1253
01:08:30,788 --> 01:08:35,118
High and low,
small details, big things.

1254
01:08:35,289 --> 01:08:40,688
It was like coming to a creative
workshop, very creative atmosphere.

1255
01:08:42,889 --> 01:08:45,753
- So, Leon, yeah?
- Mm-hmm?

1256
01:08:45,923 --> 01:08:47,718
Uh, we, have we--
you been recording this?

1257
01:08:47,889 --> 01:08:49,219
You've been talking, yeah.

1258
01:08:49,389 --> 01:08:51,719
Have you more wigs?
Yes.

1259
01:08:51,889 --> 01:08:54,082
- Let's try something.
- All right, okay.

1260
01:08:54,256 --> 01:08:56,813
You look like you've
lost weight anyway.

1261
01:08:56,989 --> 01:08:58,921
They asked me to come to London.

1262
01:08:59,090 --> 01:09:02,022
It was just me and Stanley
and Leon in the room.

1263
01:09:02,190 --> 01:09:05,315
-A little bit too down maybe.
- Look at me.

1264
01:09:05,490 --> 01:09:08,923
Ah. Just stand with your legs
a bit straighter, yeah.

1265
01:09:09,091 --> 01:09:10,216
With, uh--

1266
01:09:10,391 --> 01:09:12,323
Any way you want.
But not the way you were, no.

1267
01:09:12,491 --> 01:09:14,081
Just, uh, moving—
Anything.

1268
01:09:14,257 --> 01:09:15,348
Whatever you feel
comfortable.

1269
01:09:15,725 --> 01:09:17,748
Oh, I feel very uncomfortable.

1270
01:09:20,024 --> 01:09:22,320
You haven't been a model
I see, huh?

1271
01:09:22,491 --> 01:09:25,423
-No. No.

1272
01:09:25,791 --> 01:09:27,757
Oh, these are
from Eyes Wide Shut.

1273
01:09:27,925 --> 01:09:33,381
You know, when I was playing Red
Cloak for a bit of makeup touch-up.

1274
01:09:33,758 --> 01:09:38,157
Although I never understood it, seeing as I was
wearing a mask all the time. I never—

1275
01:09:38,325 --> 01:09:41,087
What was the feeling
when he called you to be MC or--

1276
01:09:41,258 --> 01:09:43,088
Oh, well, embarrassed.

1277
01:09:43,258 --> 01:09:47,089
Because I was actually doing
a screen test for the MC.

1278
01:09:47,259 --> 01:09:50,191
And I'd seen about 30,
35 actors.

1279
01:09:50,359 --> 01:09:53,382
And I'm auditioning, he was
a really well-known actor,

1280
01:09:53,760 --> 01:09:56,817
and suddenly this phone call came
through, so I picked up the phone.

1281
01:09:56,992 --> 01:10:00,356
And he said, "Leon, I just decided.
You're gonna play it".

1282
01:10:00,727 --> 01:10:02,091
And put the phone down.
That was it.

1283
01:10:02,259 --> 01:10:05,317
May I have the password,
please?

1284
01:10:05,493 --> 01:10:08,755
I just felt that I could
build on it for every take.

1285
01:10:08,927 --> 01:10:12,916
And you weren't afraid of going
too far or going over the top.

1286
01:10:13,094 --> 01:10:15,856
You could just keep going
and keep going,

1287
01:10:16,027 --> 01:10:19,119
just like when I was
working on Barry Lyndon.

1288
01:10:19,294 --> 01:10:22,920
This is what we had to do every day.
They were the lighting plans.

1289
01:10:23,095 --> 01:10:26,891
So we went around together
every night at like 1:00 am.

1290
01:10:27,061 --> 01:10:30,357
And we would take the readings
from the lights.

1291
01:10:30,729 --> 01:10:34,752
And then I had to send
a fax to the DOP

1292
01:10:34,929 --> 01:10:37,986
with a laid-out plan
of every light.

1293
01:10:38,161 --> 01:10:41,151
But isn't that what the
cinematographer is supposed to do himself?

1294
01:10:41,328 --> 01:10:45,818
Yes. But you know, Stanley
never trusted anybody.

1295
01:10:45,995 --> 01:10:47,893
He just didn't.

1296
01:10:48,062 --> 01:10:53,757
It must have been very difficult for people,
you know, who are serious professionals

1297
01:10:53,930 --> 01:10:58,022
to sort of go through
that kind of,

1298
01:10:58,197 --> 01:11:02,289
I don't know, examination,
for want of a better word.

1299
01:11:02,463 --> 01:11:04,293
But he had a specific
look that he wanted?

1300
01:11:04,464 --> 01:11:07,827
Yeah, he did. And he wanted to
keep it once he found it.

1301
01:11:07,996 --> 01:11:10,394
On one of the days, Leon
pulled me aside and he said,

1302
01:11:10,764 --> 01:11:13,229
"You know, Stanley really
only saw your tape".

1303
01:11:13,397 --> 01:11:15,920
And I was like, "Oh, thanks, Leon.
That's really cool".

1304
01:11:16,098 --> 01:11:18,825
He said, "No, really,
yours is the only tape I put in.

1305
01:11:18,997 --> 01:11:22,225
So, you know, Stanley looked at it and
went, ‘Great, yeah. Let's-Let's have him.'

1306
01:11:22,398 --> 01:11:25,795
So just let you know, you know, you were, uh,
great on the day, and that's why I booked you

1307
01:11:25,964 --> 01:11:27,862
and really glad that
you're part of this".

1308
01:11:28,031 --> 01:11:30,122
And I was like, "Oh, Leon,
thank you, man. This really--

1309
01:11:30,298 --> 01:11:33,787
Wow, that's a lot of, um,
high praise coming from you and—"

1310
01:11:33,965 --> 01:11:36,726
Leon, he was always working,
never sleeping.

1311
01:11:36,898 --> 01:11:39,023
I don't know
when he slept at all.

1312
01:11:39,199 --> 01:11:43,461
In the Masked Ball scene, I'm playing
eight different people, including the Red Cloak.

1313
01:11:43,832 --> 01:11:46,731
You know, we'd finish a take
and Stanley'd say,

1314
01:11:46,898 --> 01:11:51,888
"Leon, go down and find the shot that
we took, like, two weeks ago".

1315
01:11:52,066 --> 01:11:57,930
I was on these six-inch-high platforms
in this full-dress costume.

1316
01:11:58,100 --> 01:12:00,225
I'd have to run down
this corridor,

1317
01:12:00,400 --> 01:12:02,457
'cause it had to be "Now, now"

1318
01:12:02,833 --> 01:12:06,993
And then I'd have to search through all
these slates and put it up on a Steenbeck.

1319
01:12:07,166 --> 01:12:08,894
And he'd come down
and we'd look at it.

1320
01:12:09,066 --> 01:12:10,930
And he'd say,
"Great. Now, get back up there".

1321
01:12:11,101 --> 01:12:13,033
So I'd be running
back up to the set.

1322
01:12:13,201 --> 01:12:15,064
And then we were up
and running again.

1323
01:12:16,000 --> 01:12:19,795
You know, that's what Stanley
grew to look like.

1324
01:12:19,967 --> 01:12:22,399
And you could see
he was kind of tired.

1325
01:12:22,768 --> 01:12:26,461
I mean, some people have said,
unkindly, that they thought he'd lost it,

1326
01:12:26,835 --> 01:12:29,767
but I can tell you, you were there with
him every day, that was the last thing.

1327
01:12:29,935 --> 01:12:34,867
He and I and Margaret Adams,
who was his coordinator,

1328
01:12:35,035 --> 01:12:36,898
we were the last people
out of the studio.

1329
01:12:37,068 --> 01:12:38,931
And it would be
3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.

1330
01:12:39,102 --> 01:12:41,000
But it was a ritual
which we always had.

1331
01:12:41,168 --> 01:12:44,191
When it was a wrap, and
when everyone left the studio,

1332
01:12:44,368 --> 01:12:47,357
he would come in to my office
and say, "Let's have a talk".

1333
01:12:47,736 --> 01:12:52,691
And then we'd talk about everything
that had gone well that day.

1334
01:12:52,869 --> 01:12:54,698
Who tried hard, who didn't.

1335
01:12:54,869 --> 01:12:57,892
We were always looking at
material that was shot yesterday

1336
01:12:58,069 --> 01:13:00,058
or the day before
or what have you.

1337
01:13:00,236 --> 01:13:02,293
We were shooting,
and at the same time,

1338
01:13:02,470 --> 01:13:05,028
the Venice Film Festival
had announced

1339
01:13:05,203 --> 01:13:10,465
that they were going to celebrate the
filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.

1340
01:13:10,837 --> 01:13:13,303
But they needed copies
of all his films.

1341
01:13:13,471 --> 01:13:17,130
So I was having to crank
those out of the lab.

1342
01:13:17,304 --> 01:13:19,963
And at the same time--

1343
01:13:20,137 --> 01:13:23,934
we were making a new internegative
of A Clockwork Orange.

1344
01:13:24,104 --> 01:13:28,162
And at the same time, I was dialogue
coaching, casting and God knows what.

1345
01:13:28,337 --> 01:13:30,462
And I just thought
I was going to explode.

1346
01:13:30,838 --> 01:13:35,827
He was getting tireder
and tireder and tireder.

1347
01:13:36,004 --> 01:13:40,993
You know, there were some days when we were
driving home from this location in Norfolk.

1348
01:13:41,171 --> 01:13:43,467
And when he got out of the car,
you kind of thought,

1349
01:13:43,839 --> 01:13:47,101
he's not even going to find
a way to the front door.

1350
01:13:47,272 --> 01:13:49,135
But we're parked
right in front of it.

1351
01:13:49,306 --> 01:13:52,431
If he bent down on the floor
to pick something up,

1352
01:13:52,805 --> 01:13:55,930
then I had to bend down
and pick Stanley up.

1353
01:13:56,106 --> 01:14:01,266
I think that last week
was totally exhausting for him.

1354
01:14:01,439 --> 01:14:01,606
On a Saturday afternoon,
I went down to the supermarket.

1355
01:14:01,607 --> 01:14:05,004
On a Saturday afternoon,
I went down to the supermarket.

1356
01:14:05,173 --> 01:14:09,867
My phone rang,
and I answered it.

1357
01:14:10,040 --> 01:14:13,131
And it was Stanley.
And there we--

1358
01:14:15,040 --> 01:14:18,131
I was standing,
leaning up against my car,

1359
01:14:18,307 --> 01:14:20,865
and we were talking
for two and a half hours.

1360
01:14:21,041 --> 01:14:25,769
It was eerie simply because it
was that same kind of gentleness

1361
01:14:25,941 --> 01:14:31,067
since the very first day I met him
when he said, "Hello, Leon. I'm Stanley".

1362
01:14:31,241 --> 01:14:35,298
Everything was rational
and measured and gentle.

1363
01:14:35,475 --> 01:14:38,964
More relaxed than it had been for a--
for-for quite a while,

1364
01:14:39,141 --> 01:14:42,108
because you're in the middle
of this mayhem.

1365
01:14:42,274 --> 01:14:46,264
Um, but it was.
It was.

1366
01:14:46,442 --> 01:14:49,374
That was the last contact
I had with him.

1367
01:14:49,742 --> 01:14:52,038
And then, of course,

1368
01:14:52,209 --> 01:14:56,198
early hours of Sunday morning,
that's when he died, you know?

1369
01:14:58,110 --> 01:15:02,804
I was told that it
looked as if he had been

1370
01:15:02,976 --> 01:15:06,806
trying to reach
for an oxygen bottle...

1371
01:15:08,043 --> 01:15:10,100
that he had in his bedroom.

1372
01:15:10,276 --> 01:15:12,765
Stanley Kubrick
has died at the age of 70,

1373
01:15:12,943 --> 01:15:15,171
one of the greatest and most
controversial masters of cinema.

1374
01:15:15,343 --> 01:15:16,900
The director Stanley Kubrick,

1375
01:15:17,077 --> 01:15:20,440
one of film's greatest yet most
controversial figures, died today.

1376
01:15:20,810 --> 01:15:26,141
Kubrick was revered by his peers for movies like
2001:A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange.

1377
01:15:26,311 --> 01:15:30,368
He'd just finished what
was to be his last film, Eyes Wide Shut.

1378
01:15:34,411 --> 01:15:37,309
The studio was--
was in shock for a while.

1379
01:15:37,478 --> 01:15:40,104
And because Stanley,

1380
01:15:40,278 --> 01:15:44,370
when he was making the film and getting it
ready for delivery as a finished piece of work,

1381
01:15:44,745 --> 01:15:46,870
as a finished film
to the studio,

1382
01:15:47,045 --> 01:15:50,739
that part of it was now missing.

1383
01:15:50,912 --> 01:15:56,140
So there was Leon Vitali,
who was the key factor in all of this.

1384
01:15:56,312 --> 01:15:58,369
He'd been through the process
of making the film.

1385
01:15:58,746 --> 01:16:02,735
Leon Vitali was probably
the most important person

1386
01:16:02,912 --> 01:16:05,901
from what I call
the Kubrick stable.

1387
01:16:06,079 --> 01:16:09,204
I have to tell you. It was a very
touching scene at the Dorset Hotel.

1388
01:16:09,379 --> 01:16:13,142
There was Leon,
eyes red-rimmed with tears,

1389
01:16:13,313 --> 01:16:16,871
but determined, in the face of
chairman of the board of the company,

1390
01:16:17,047 --> 01:16:18,377
the head of
Warner Bros. technical,

1391
01:16:18,747 --> 01:16:20,236
Stanley Kubrick's
brother-in-law,

1392
01:16:20,414 --> 01:16:23,244
determined that he was
going to do whatever he could

1393
01:16:23,414 --> 01:16:27,039
to finish Eyes Wide Shut
as Stanley would have wanted it.

1394
01:16:27,214 --> 01:16:28,874
And that's the greatest
compliment I can pay.

1395
01:16:29,047 --> 01:16:34,844
Because that speaks not of personal
kudos but of a commitment to.

1396
01:16:35,014 --> 01:16:38,878
The person that, you know, you had
this relationship with for 30 years,

1397
01:16:39,048 --> 01:16:41,446
every single day,
sacrificed your life.

1398
01:16:41,814 --> 01:16:46,440
they're gone, and now you're left
to do this last piece of their work.

1399
01:16:46,815 --> 01:16:50,111
And then you're having a bunch of
other people, like, not respecting you

1400
01:16:50,281 --> 01:16:52,804
and treating you
like shit about it.

1401
01:16:52,982 --> 01:16:55,005
It was bad.
It was a bad time.

1402
01:16:55,182 --> 01:17:00,842
It was easier to work and live by
those standards and that code.

1403
01:17:01,015 --> 01:17:06,038
I think it was harder
as an assistant to demand the same.

1404
01:17:06,216 --> 01:17:08,080
- Was it easy?
- No.

1405
01:17:08,249 --> 01:17:10,909
While he was alive,
we fought the battles.

1406
01:17:11,083 --> 01:17:13,106
Of course we did,
but he was there.

1407
01:17:13,283 --> 01:17:16,340
And everything was about him.

1408
01:17:18,417 --> 01:17:23,076
Now it was about
what everybody thought...

1409
01:17:24,317 --> 01:17:26,249
he was about.

1410
01:17:26,417 --> 01:17:29,747
I mean, there were people just crawling out
of the woodwork, being as obstructive,

1411
01:17:29,917 --> 01:17:32,349
like they all wanted
to be the ones

1412
01:17:32,517 --> 01:17:36,314
who were gonna now tell us
how things were gonna be done.

1413
01:17:36,485 --> 01:17:40,417
And so sticking that picture up there in
my office, I could just look at that picture.

1414
01:17:40,785 --> 01:17:43,148
And I just thought, well, no,
this is why you're doing it.

1415
01:17:43,318 --> 01:17:48,013
Everything in this picture doesn't
really even describe the rest of it.

1416
01:17:48,185 --> 01:17:50,344
Because at that time,

1417
01:17:50,518 --> 01:17:56,247
I was also checking every single transfer
from every country in the world.

1418
01:17:56,419 --> 01:18:00,476
One in five prints that were
shown in theaters in America

1419
01:18:00,853 --> 01:18:03,284
was checked from
the first to the last reel.

1420
01:18:03,452 --> 01:18:07,407
I think there was something like
2,500 prints came to America.

1421
01:18:07,786 --> 01:18:08,979
So how did you collapse?

1422
01:18:09,153 --> 01:18:10,880
I'm gonna tell you this.

1423
01:18:11,053 --> 01:18:16,350
And it's not to make myself
a hero or anything like that.

1424
01:18:16,520 --> 01:18:20,782
I did two 36-hour sessions

1425
01:18:20,954 --> 01:18:23,385
in a screening room at the lab.

1426
01:18:23,754 --> 01:18:27,846
And I had to make a call
every now and then to say,

1427
01:18:28,020 --> 01:18:31,453
"Could somebody come down here
and keep their eye on the print?"

1428
01:18:31,820 --> 01:18:37,378
Because I had to run off
and throw up, I was so sick.

1429
01:18:37,755 --> 01:18:39,084
I was so sick.

1430
01:18:39,254 --> 01:18:42,220
Our working days
were anything, 15, 18 hours.

1431
01:18:42,387 --> 01:18:45,149
Leon was doing 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.

1432
01:18:45,322 --> 01:18:46,947
I don't think I want
to talk about this.

1433
01:18:47,122 --> 01:18:49,315
I don't know when he ever slept.

1434
01:18:49,489 --> 01:18:52,114
They had released a DVD set,

1435
01:18:52,288 --> 01:18:56,846
because they'd done so much heavy advertising
timed with the release of Eyes Wide Shut.

1436
01:18:57,021 --> 01:18:58,351
It was a bit of a disaster.

1437
01:18:58,522 --> 01:19:01,386
There was so much
angry reaction to it,

1438
01:19:01,756 --> 01:19:05,984
like, how could you just do
this to the master's oeuvre?

1439
01:19:06,156 --> 01:19:09,054
When you do that, it's not a case of
just sticking a piece of film into a machine,

1440
01:19:09,223 --> 01:19:10,450
and it comes out
in a new format.

1441
01:19:10,822 --> 01:19:12,220
You have to do everything again.

1442
01:19:12,389 --> 01:19:15,253
And you have to have people like Leon
who knew the films backwards.

1443
01:19:15,423 --> 01:19:19,822
I authorized
incurring the cost

1444
01:19:19,990 --> 01:19:22,820
for perfect mastering
and digitalization.

1445
01:19:22,990 --> 01:19:25,785
Remastered again

1446
01:19:25,957 --> 01:19:31,720
and in yet a higher quality format
than had been available in VHS.

1447
01:19:31,890 --> 01:19:35,482
Without a doubt, there was only one man that
could have, uh, headed that restoration effort

1448
01:19:35,858 --> 01:19:37,414
and that was Leon.

1449
01:19:37,791 --> 01:19:42,247
Someone like Leon, who had that wonderful
grasp of the production process

1450
01:19:42,424 --> 01:19:46,754
and the distribution process,
which is quite a rare animal.

1451
01:19:46,924 --> 01:19:50,448
You learn the film by working
with it and printing it, you know?

1452
01:19:50,825 --> 01:19:55,223
And if you've printed it for 15 years,
you know-- You know the negative.

1453
01:19:55,391 --> 01:19:57,085
And I didn't.

1454
01:19:57,258 --> 01:19:58,884
It was that daunting.

1455
01:19:59,059 --> 01:20:02,184
He was trained in the way to
know how it was supposed to sound,

1456
01:20:02,359 --> 01:20:04,154
know what to do with the tracks,

1457
01:20:04,326 --> 01:20:06,757
know how it was supposed to look and
know how to handle the negatives.

1458
01:20:06,925 --> 01:20:09,016
And he was the only person
who knew that.

1459
01:20:09,192 --> 01:20:14,318
His final part of his job was
basically preserving everything.

1460
01:20:14,493 --> 01:20:18,755
Making sure it was in good order, making
sure it was all vaulted securely on the shelves.

1461
01:20:18,926 --> 01:20:22,154
So he packed up,
and he came to the US.

1462
01:20:22,327 --> 01:20:25,384
Somebody has to the standard-bearer
for that thought process.

1463
01:20:25,760 --> 01:20:27,317
And this is where Leon comes in.

1464
01:20:27,494 --> 01:20:32,791
Leon was tasked with this kind of
Herculean effort to move the ball ahead,

1465
01:20:32,961 --> 01:20:36,484
and then take all the flack from the people who
thought that this shouldn't be done at all.

1466
01:20:36,861 --> 01:20:41,226
And Leon was the person who was left
standing there when all the knives came out.

1467
01:20:41,394 --> 01:20:44,019
And I know that he took
a huge amount of shit

1468
01:20:44,194 --> 01:20:47,422
for what Stanley had done
to people for many, many years.

1469
01:20:47,795 --> 01:20:49,260
Because Stanley
wasn't around anymore.

1470
01:20:49,428 --> 01:20:53,054
And it was the Kubrick gang, Chris Young
and Jan, the Warner Bros. people.

1471
01:20:53,228 --> 01:20:57,389
They were known for being tough
and not taking any bullshit from anybody

1472
01:20:57,762 --> 01:21:00,456
and doing what they wanted to do because
they had this guy who had proven it.

1473
01:21:00,828 --> 01:21:03,851
He was unique. So Warners
wasn't going to say no.

1474
01:21:04,028 --> 01:21:05,722
The critics weren't
going to say yes.

1475
01:21:05,895 --> 01:21:07,919
And Leon was caught
in this position in between

1476
01:21:08,095 --> 01:21:10,960
of having to be the guy
that had to address all parties.

1477
01:21:11,130 --> 01:21:12,493
When I'm working on a film,

1478
01:21:12,863 --> 01:21:16,421
I need to learn the production
history of the film, the archaeology.

1479
01:21:16,796 --> 01:21:18,353
And you have to know
how it was made.

1480
01:21:18,530 --> 01:21:21,394
And when you got it, it's
that the film speaks to you.

1481
01:21:21,763 --> 01:21:25,196
Just to recreate what
Stanley had done originally

1482
01:21:25,363 --> 01:21:29,159
took two to three years of
research and finding masters

1483
01:21:29,330 --> 01:21:31,387
and going and proving
that that was exactly what it was.

1484
01:21:31,764 --> 01:21:33,230
And then you could start
to do your work.

1485
01:21:33,396 --> 01:21:36,488
Barry Lyndon, it's a lot
of long, long, long shots.

1486
01:21:36,864 --> 01:21:39,728
And often it's outside.
Often they're landscape exteriors.

1487
01:21:39,897 --> 01:21:43,295
Leon always knew how bright
it was supposed to be,

1488
01:21:43,464 --> 01:21:46,022
how contrasty it was supposed to be,
how rich or how dense.

1489
01:21:46,197 --> 01:21:49,823
And you realize as you work
with him that his skills are enormous.

1490
01:21:49,998 --> 01:21:53,862
And then you finish it, and you realize
that it's not really finished at all,

1491
01:21:54,031 --> 01:21:56,997
because Leon then had
the task of moving into Warner Bros.,

1492
01:21:57,165 --> 01:21:59,222
where he was the only
person who was left,

1493
01:21:59,398 --> 01:22:01,989
and fighting for another
transfer to be done,

1494
01:22:02,165 --> 01:22:04,461
or something to be kept up
in a certain way.

1495
01:22:04,832 --> 01:22:06,457
All of a sudden,
it's Leon against the world.

1496
01:22:06,832 --> 01:22:08,354
And they were just
grinding him down,

1497
01:22:08,532 --> 01:22:12,021
because Warners had exuded goodwill way
beyond what anybody would have done

1498
01:22:12,199 --> 01:22:13,495
in going through the process.

1499
01:22:13,866 --> 01:22:17,992
I got, you know,
people calling me saying,

1500
01:22:18,166 --> 01:22:22,292
"You know what they're saying about you right
now is that you're looking for problems".

1501
01:22:22,466 --> 01:22:25,024
No, we're not looking
for problems.

1502
01:22:25,199 --> 01:22:27,256
We were never looking
for problems.

1503
01:22:27,433 --> 01:22:31,389
But if there were problems,
you have to point them out.

1504
01:22:31,767 --> 01:22:33,290
You have to.

1505
01:22:33,467 --> 01:22:38,990
You know, I mean, in all honor,
you have to say, "This isn't right".

1506
01:22:39,167 --> 01:22:42,793
So he started getting thinner
and thinner and sicker and sicker.

1507
01:22:42,968 --> 01:22:45,433
He looked very gaunt,
a bit scared.

1508
01:22:45,801 --> 01:22:49,029
I weighed in
at one point, 65 pounds.

1509
01:22:49,201 --> 01:22:53,099
This is when I wasn't very well,
and it was my affirmation.

1510
01:22:53,268 --> 01:22:56,859
"I am Leon Vitali.
I'm healing myself".

1511
01:22:57,034 --> 01:22:59,500
He was always present for the work,
a hundred percent, more.

1512
01:22:59,869 --> 01:23:02,733
But he's, you know, everybody
says, like a cockroach.

1513
01:23:02,902 --> 01:23:06,834
Not a great term, but there's nothing
that'll stop him. Just keeps going.

1514
01:23:07,002 --> 01:23:11,025
Eventually, they gave his office away and they
gave him a desk in the hallway at Warner Bros.

1515
01:23:11,202 --> 01:23:13,031
And he was sitting there alone,

1516
01:23:13,202 --> 01:23:16,168
still going through all the files,
making sure all the things were done.

1517
01:23:16,336 --> 01:23:19,302
And if somebody wanted to screen
2001, he had to be there for that.

1518
01:23:19,469 --> 01:23:23,333
No one else was gonna followthrough
with the level of maniacal detail

1519
01:23:23,503 --> 01:23:25,935
that only Stanley
or only Leon could have done.

1520
01:23:26,103 --> 01:23:27,898
And it shows in the work.

1521
01:23:28,070 --> 01:23:31,264
It's this body of work that exists today
that never would have existed.

1522
01:23:31,437 --> 01:23:35,392
Because Leon took the sweat equity
of all those years with Stanley.

1523
01:23:35,771 --> 01:23:39,033
Leon righted every
single wrong that was done.

1524
01:23:39,203 --> 01:23:41,999
He basically
preserved the process

1525
01:23:42,171 --> 01:23:45,433
so that for future generations
that will get to see Stanley's work,

1526
01:23:45,804 --> 01:23:48,168
they will see it
the way the master made them.

1527
01:23:48,338 --> 01:23:52,828
That will always be Leon's
imprint on Stanley Kubrick's legacy.

1528
01:24:00,872 --> 01:24:03,463
Well, right now in
Los Angeles, California, there is an exhibit.

1529
01:24:03,838 --> 01:24:05,963
Director Stanley Kubrick
arguably made--

1530
01:24:06,139 --> 01:24:08,367
And then the exhibit
comes about.

1531
01:24:08,539 --> 01:24:10,767
And there's this big opening
and a world tour.

1532
01:24:10,938 --> 01:24:13,234
And Leon, kinda not really
a part of it.

1533
01:24:13,405 --> 01:24:15,200
It felt like Leon
was really dismissed.

1534
01:24:15,372 --> 01:24:19,998
All these, like, experts on Stanley talking
about Stanley and what he was like.

1535
01:24:20,173 --> 01:24:23,866
Here is this person still standing in
the corner, how he always would be,

1536
01:24:24,039 --> 01:24:27,335
who's worked with him from acting,
from cinematography, everything.

1537
01:24:27,507 --> 01:24:29,803
And meanwhile,
it was like Leon didn't exist.

1538
01:24:29,973 --> 01:24:31,803
I guess the opening,
I guess, or the presentation,

1539
01:24:31,973 --> 01:24:33,735
were you part of that?

1540
01:24:33,907 --> 01:24:37,498
You mean in a kind
of official capacity?

1541
01:24:37,874 --> 01:24:39,170
No, not at all.
Yeah.

1542
01:24:39,341 --> 01:24:42,205
The actual big gala thing--
Gala, mm.

1543
01:24:42,374 --> 01:24:44,272
...where people came
and spoke about Stanley.

1544
01:24:44,441 --> 01:24:46,906
Oh, no, no.
Um, no, I didn't go to that.

1545
01:24:47,074 --> 01:24:49,302
-You didn't go to that?
-No, I didn't go to that.

1546
01:24:49,474 --> 01:24:52,338
Now was that, like, choice by you or
they just didn't invite you, or...

1547
01:24:52,508 --> 01:24:55,031
Um, no, just didn't
invite me, so...

1548
01:24:55,207 --> 01:24:58,038
Leon had every right
to say, "That exhibit stinks,

1549
01:24:58,208 --> 01:25:00,901
and I want nothing
to do with it".

1550
01:25:01,075 --> 01:25:04,371
Just the opposite. He said,
"You want to go? I'm gonna take you".

1551
01:25:04,542 --> 01:25:09,099
When another friend of mine wanted to go,
Leon said, "I'll gladly take you guys again".

1552
01:25:14,842 --> 01:25:19,138
to walk through these worlds with a guy
who knows them intimately, is just incredible.

1553
01:25:19,309 --> 01:25:21,138
And he's so generous about it.

1554
01:25:21,309 --> 01:25:26,139
When I asked Leon to take a bunch of
high school film and visual arts students,

1555
01:25:26,309 --> 01:25:27,968
he said yes like this.

1556
01:25:28,143 --> 01:25:31,405
I was shocked.
It was so amazing.

1557
01:25:31,777 --> 01:25:34,800
It lifted his spirit
to be able to share.

1558
01:25:34,977 --> 01:25:37,499
I remember at
a recent Academy meeting.

1559
01:25:37,877 --> 01:25:42,503
And they were talking about people that
they needed to have an oral history with.

1560
01:25:42,877 --> 01:25:46,833
I said, "I don't understand why you guys
haven't done an oral history on Leon Vitali".

1561
01:25:47,010 --> 01:25:49,875
And I said, "You should
have done it a long time ago

1562
01:25:50,044 --> 01:25:53,306
when you were preparing
the Stanley Kubrick exhibit".

1563
01:25:53,477 --> 01:25:57,001
I found out that he went
25 or 30 times with people

1564
01:25:57,178 --> 01:26:00,303
as favors to people, just
to give them that same gift.

1565
01:26:00,478 --> 01:26:04,035
There was such a kind of emotional
attachment to so much of that material.

1566
01:26:04,211 --> 01:26:08,110
I could actually say, "Well, remember when
I was doing that, working on that".

1567
01:26:08,278 --> 01:26:10,471
There was a story about
just about every bit of it.

1568
01:26:10,845 --> 01:26:13,936
I spent hours just
looking at the lenses.

1569
01:26:14,112 --> 01:26:18,340
It felt more like I was saying good-bye
to him this time than when he died.

1570
01:26:21,412 --> 01:26:23,503
You know, some places are like people.

1571
01:26:25,013 --> 01:26:27,808
Some shine and some don't.

1572
01:26:29,113 --> 01:26:30,942
Is there something bad here?

1573
01:26:31,113 --> 01:26:36,341
And for Leon, not only did he
have to face life without his mentor,

1574
01:26:36,514 --> 01:26:41,969
he also moved to Los Angeles, initially
to work for the estate on the restoration.

1575
01:26:42,147 --> 01:26:44,409
Then he made the decision
to stay in Los Angeles.

1576
01:26:44,781 --> 01:26:48,372
And suddenly found that doors
are not easily opened.

1577
01:26:48,547 --> 01:26:51,275
- You understand? Stay out.

1578
01:26:51,447 --> 01:26:54,107
I had to help him
for a while financially.

1579
01:26:54,281 --> 01:26:58,737
Um, I guess that's kind of sad,

1580
01:26:58,914 --> 01:27:00,881
because he's worked so much.

1581
01:27:01,047 --> 01:27:03,377
You would hope that...

1582
01:27:03,548 --> 01:27:09,243
that you'd have enough to survive the
pretty simple lifestyle he lives, you know

1583
01:27:09,414 --> 01:27:11,347
Good. Finally, the last three.
We're going good.

1584
01:27:11,516 --> 01:27:13,072
I think the last two
were better than previous--

1585
01:27:13,249 --> 01:27:15,374
Stanley had
an amazing vital energy.

1586
01:27:15,549 --> 01:27:19,379
I had the license to go into
any area on the operations side.

1587
01:27:19,549 --> 01:27:23,811
But, of course, you can't do that here
because it's quite heavily demarcated.

1588
01:27:26,449 --> 01:27:28,813
Are you still
working for Stanley?

1589
01:27:28,983 --> 01:27:30,472
Of course.

1590
01:27:30,849 --> 01:27:32,838
So this is all
voluntarily at that point?

1591
01:27:33,016 --> 01:27:34,914
This is because
I love Stanley.

1592
01:27:35,083 --> 01:27:38,072
That's why I do it.
Because I love him.

1593
01:27:38,250 --> 01:27:39,773
You're not even getting paid?

1594
01:27:39,950 --> 01:27:41,472
No. So?

1595
01:27:41,850 --> 01:27:46,078
Leon is one person of many
that are like him in the business.

1596
01:27:46,251 --> 01:27:48,183
I think he's an extraordinary
example of it.

1597
01:27:48,351 --> 01:27:51,340
And I think he represents
the best of that group of people

1598
01:27:51,518 --> 01:27:54,416
who are unrecognized
for doing what they're doing.

1599
01:27:54,785 --> 01:27:58,013
You give your assistant a gift at
Christmastime, and that's their recognition.

1600
01:27:58,184 --> 01:28:01,344
But that person was crushing it
for you for 25 years.

1601
01:28:01,518 --> 01:28:05,212
How do you acknowledge them in a way
that celebrates what they've done?

1602
01:28:05,385 --> 01:28:07,748
Film is just such
a fascinating thing.

1603
01:28:07,918 --> 01:28:09,781
Requires tireless effort.

1604
01:28:09,951 --> 01:28:13,940
It is a moving train of people
getting on and off at a process,

1605
01:28:14,118 --> 01:28:18,244
but having the train with enough fuel to
continue to make it to the destination.

1606
01:28:18,418 --> 01:28:21,316
It's a very special world.
It's like the circus.

1607
01:28:21,485 --> 01:28:25,747
Whatever those worlds are, they have
an attraction that goes beyond

1608
01:28:25,919 --> 01:28:28,885
how creative your own work is,
that you're a part of it.

1609
01:28:29,052 --> 01:28:32,143
What skin color you had,
what sexual preferences you had,

1610
01:28:32,319 --> 01:28:37,115
it has always been a place to go to as
long as you function socially.

1611
01:28:37,286 --> 01:28:38,377
All right,
clear back, boys.

1612
01:28:38,553 --> 01:28:41,417
Anybody who's sort of
self-obsessed or grumpy

1613
01:28:41,787 --> 01:28:45,049
won't survive in the business,
unless he's an actor.

1614
01:28:45,220 --> 01:28:47,379
And stay there now. We're ready--
getting ready to shoot.

1615
01:28:47,554 --> 01:28:49,815
-Are you okay?

1616
01:28:51,154 --> 01:28:54,348
Leon spent years of his life,

1617
01:28:54,521 --> 01:28:57,976
almost drove himself
into an early grave

1618
01:28:58,155 --> 01:29:02,247
because the prints needed to be
as good as they possibly could.

1619
01:29:02,421 --> 01:29:06,080
All those other people,
if you took out one person,

1620
01:29:06,255 --> 01:29:08,244
there'd be something
missing in that film.

1621
01:29:08,421 --> 01:29:11,387
This is like all
a bunch of Leons.

1622
01:29:11,555 --> 01:29:14,419
All these people
below the line

1623
01:29:14,789 --> 01:29:17,880
are the ones that elevate
the people above the line.

1624
01:29:19,922 --> 01:29:23,286
It was amazing that Leon got to,
uh, to stick around

1625
01:29:23,456 --> 01:29:26,217
and stay with the--with the-- with the
maestro, as we called him.

1626
01:29:26,389 --> 01:29:31,083
And they were inseparable for--
for the longest time.

1627
01:29:31,256 --> 01:29:34,188
I've been dreaming about him
more and more and more.

1628
01:29:34,356 --> 01:29:37,516
It's always in a house
that I have.

1629
01:29:37,890 --> 01:29:43,084
And it's always full of people,
most of which I do not know

1630
01:29:43,257 --> 01:29:46,155
And we're starting
a film production.

1631
01:29:46,323 --> 01:29:52,813
And it's like, there's no kind of feeling
that we need to communicate at all.

1632
01:29:52,991 --> 01:29:57,889
It's just looking at each other and nodding
our heads and saying, "That's it".

1633
01:30:02,525 --> 01:30:05,286
If you look back on your life
when you were a child,

1634
01:30:05,458 --> 01:30:09,050
and you had aspirations,
and you had ambitions,

1635
01:30:09,224 --> 01:30:12,384
but they never really worked out
the way you thought they would.

1636
01:30:12,558 --> 01:30:17,355
So there's a lot that can make you
extremely frustrated and extremely mad.

1637
01:30:17,525 --> 01:30:21,322
But at the same time,
it's kind of exhilarating.

1638
01:30:21,492 --> 01:30:24,014
In many ways,
it doesn't really matter

1639
01:30:24,192 --> 01:30:28,318
if things work out exactly the
way you wanted them to or they didn't.

1640
01:30:28,492 --> 01:30:31,458
The most important thing
is the journey.

1641
01:30:31,826 --> 01:30:37,020
Because the experiences can be
so rich and so valuable to you.

1642
01:30:37,193 --> 01:30:38,954
Leon was a spirit.

1643
01:30:39,126 --> 01:30:41,251
You could see, you know, the doors
open before he got to a door.

1644
01:30:41,426 --> 01:30:45,358
He has this aura
of "Kubrickism" around him.

1645
01:30:45,527 --> 01:30:48,823
The apprentice that
all of a sudden one day

1646
01:30:48,994 --> 01:30:50,425
became the master
with all the answers.

1647
01:30:52,327 --> 01:30:54,918
You're proud and
you're happy of your journey.

1648
01:30:55,094 --> 01:30:57,821
Yeah. Yeah, of course.

1649
01:30:57,994 --> 01:31:02,017
Of course, I am.
It's been amazing so far.

1650
01:31:02,194 --> 01:31:05,786
The best way I could think of,
you know, leaving this world,

1651
01:31:05,961 --> 01:31:10,018
and it would be either,
you know, go to sleep and not wake up

1652
01:31:10,195 --> 01:31:14,889
or be in the middle of,
you know, I don't know

1653
01:31:15,061 --> 01:31:20,050
I guess dying on a flatbed Steenbeck, I mean
if you could find one nowadays.

1654
01:31:20,228 --> 01:31:26,184
I mean, maybe in a telecine suite
doing a new transfer.

1655
01:31:26,362 --> 01:31:31,761
Like a-- a 4K or an 8K
transfer of 2001.

1656
01:31:31,929 --> 01:31:36,191
Just as the music plays out,
I'd say, "I'm coming".

1657
01:31:36,363 --> 01:31:39,022
"I'm with ya, Zarathustra".

1658
01:31:39,196 --> 01:31:42,162
You know, maybe something like that,
romantic, you know.

1659
01:31:43,496 --> 01:31:45,462
It's okay. Mm.

1660
01:31:45,830 --> 01:31:47,262
So it's a happy ending?

1661
01:31:47,429 --> 01:31:50,328
Sure. Yeah.
Of course, it is.