In 1950, after creating and publishing a photo essay for Look magazine on boxing, he used the proceeds from the sale to the magazine to make his first film, a 16-minute documentary on the same subject entitled Day of the Fight (1951).
In 1963 he was asked by the US publication Cinema to compile a list of his favorite films. They were: I Vitelloni (1953) (Federico Fellini, 1953), Wild Strawberries (1957) ("Wild Strawberries" USA title, Ingmar Bergman, 1958), Citizen Kane (1941) (Orson Welles, 1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) (John Huston, 1948), City Lights (1931) (Charles Chaplin, 1931), Henry V (1944) ("Henry V" USA title, Laurence Olivier, 1945), La Notte (1961) (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961), The Bank Dick (1940) (W.C. Fields, 1940), Roxie Hart (1942) (William Wellman, 1942), Hell's Angels (1930) (Howard Hughes, 1930).
In 1969, after the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Kubrick turned to one of his life-long obsessions into a motion picture screenplay - Napoleon. The script would have required an extremely large budget to be made into a film, and it was all on its way well into pre-production, when the studio suddenly decided to pull the plug after another big-budget biopic on the life of Napoleon, Waterloo (1970/I), failed financially. Kubrick, angry and depressed that his film was canceled, would later in his career (and even in the production of other films) attempt to get the project back on its feet with different companies over the years. The requirements needed would have been to write a completely new screenplay, and Kubrick, feeling he couldn't match the masterpiece that was his original draft, dropped the project.
In addition to The Seafarers (1953) (shot for the Seafarers International Union), he may have directed another commissioned project in the early fifties, "World Assembly of Youth," for the United Nations, documenting a UN-sponsored gathering in New York City of young people from throughout the world. No copy of the film has been found and it has never been conclusively proven that it even existed in the first place (as with "The Seafarers," Kubrick never publicly acknowledged it).
In his 1974 memoir "Bud: The Brando I Knew," 'Carlo Fiore' (I)-- writing of his experience developing and working on the movie One-Eyed Jacks (1961) with his friend Marlon Brando - said that Kubrick had wanted to hire Spencer Tracy to play the character of Dad Longworth in the film. The part had already been cast with Karl Malden, and Brando countered that Malden was a fine actor. Kubrick agreed, but said that Malden played "losers" and the part needed a heavyweight to balance Brando's character of Rio. Brando immediately vetoed the idea of Tracy and forbade any more discussion on the topic.
In interviews upon with the release of his highly controversial A Clockwork Orange (1971), Kubrick cited The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) as the kind of movie he did NOT want to make when defending the use of an "evil" protagonist (Alex). Kubrick reasoned that The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) was bad art, as it took the stand that lynching was evil because innocent people might be lynched, not the stand that lynching (i.e, extra-judicial murder) was itself evil. He wanted Alex explicitly evil (thus, the jettisoning of the last chapter of the original novel, in which Alex is reformed; this chapter was not in the American edition that Terry Southern had given to Kubrick). Kubrick felt that an explicitly evil Alex underscores the point that the state's invasion of the prisoner's soul (turning him into a mechanical man, a "clockwork orange") was evil whatever the guilt or innocent, and the level thereof, of the prisoner.
In the 5th edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (edited by Steven Jay Schneider), 9 of Kubrick's films are listed. He is the director with the greatest percentage of films listed, since Kubrick made only 13 feature films. His listed films are Paths of Glory (1957), Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980) and Full Metal Jacket (1987).
Is portrayed by Stanley Tucci in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)
Kubrick and his partner James B. Harris, during the development of Lolita (1962), hired Marlon Brando's friend Carlo Fiore -- whom Kubrick had worked with on the development of One-Eyed Jacks (1961) -- to write a screenplay of Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Kamera obskura," which Fiore had optioned himself. Written in Russian in 1932, "Kamera obskura" was first translated into English around 1938 as "Camera Obscura" and again circa 1960 as "Laughter in the Dark.") The book had elements in common with "Lolita," and Kubrick -- who was worried he was being hustled when Fiore approached him with the rights to the novel -- tied up the production of a potential rival film by hiring Fiore. Nothing came of Fiore's foray into film development, although Tony Richardson later made a movie of the novel with Nicol Williamson starring.
Kubrick had started pre-production on Full Metal Jacket (1987) in 1980, a full seven years before it was theatrically released. The success of similar films during that time (particularly Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) and John Irvin's Hamburger Hill (1987)) left him a bit jaded, feeling like he had been beaten at his own game. This sentiment stayed with him in the early 1990s when he decided to shelve Aryan Papers, his adaptation of the Louis Begley novel Wartime Lies. Kubrick had completed the script and had done a large amount of pre-production work on Aryan Papers; Johanna ter Steege and Joseph Mazzello had been cast in the lead roles and locations had been scouted in Denmark, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Warners officially announced the project as Kubrick's next film in April 1993 and it was scheduled for a December 1994 release. Around the same time Steven Spielberg was shooting Schindler's List
Kubrick's favorite pastime was chess and he was said to be a master at it. Many crew members and actors found themselves on the losing end of chess matches with him.
Legendary director Billy Wilder was a great admirer of Kubrick, and claimed that Kubrick "never made a bad picture." Wilder also once told Cameron Crowe that the first half of Full Metal Jacket was "the best picture I've ever seen.".
Loved the work of Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Carlos Saura, Max Ophüls, Woody Allen and Edgar Reitz (esp. "Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany" (1984)), among many others.
Often read about psychology, and knew how to manipulate his cast quite well. A fine example of this is with Shelley Duvall in The Shining (1980).
One of the founders of the Directors Guild of Great Britain.
Out of all of his feature films, Spartacus (1960) is the only one to which he hasn't contributed in writing the screenplay.
People would come to his door looking for him, and as few people knew what he looked like, he would tell them that "Stanley Kubrick wasn't home."
Planned to direct a film called "I Stole 16 Million Dollars" based on notorious 1930s bank robber Willie Sutton. It was to be made by Kirk Douglas' Bryna production company, but Douglas thought the script was poorly written. Kubrick tried to get Cary Grant interested, which must have proved to be a failure as well, since the film was never made.
Profiled in "Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick and Wong Kar-Wei" by Thurston Botz-Borsnstein. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008.
Ranked #4 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Greatest directors ever!" [2005]