Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Kubrick: The Making of a Genius

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Nathan Abrams and Robert P. Kolker discuss their book 'Kubrick: An Odyssey' and the life and work of Stanley Kubrick. They delve into Kubrick's unique filmmaking style and the distinctiveness of his films. The authors highlight key films such as 'Barry Lyndon,' 'Dr. Strangelove,' and '2001: A Space Odyssey,' and discuss the visual wit and innovation present in Kubrick's work. They also touch on unfinished projects and the struggles faced by artists, reflecting on Kubrick's legacy and his lasting impact on the film industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. Today we're exploring the genius and the mystery of one of cinema's most iconic directors with Nathan Abrams and Robert Kolker, authors of Kubrick and Odyssey.

Their book takes a deep dive into Stanley Kubrick's career, from his groundbreaking films to his meticulous creative process. We'll discuss the themes that define Kubrick's work, the personal stories behind his perfectionism, and how his films continue to shape modern cinema. Whether you're a lifelong fan or new to Kubrick's world, this conversation will give you a whole new appreciation for his work. Well, joining me now on Open Book, a real treat for me is Nathan Abrams and Robert Kolker.

Both of these gentlemen are professors. Nathan Abrams, a professor in film at Bangor University, and Professor Robert Kolker, a professor emeritus at the University of, of Maryland, I think it's the Terrapins, right? Go Terrapids, right? And so, but the book is called Kubrick, an Odyssey, and this is one of the reasons why I tell all my viewers, unless you got to go to bookstores, because you got to see what's in the shelves. And there I saw the Kubrick and Odyssey. I said, oh, wow, okay, I got to buy this. My son and I are big friends of Stanley Kubrick. And the book is literally incredible. It's a great rendition of a lot of things that happened in the

film industry over the last 50 years. But in addition to that, you guys are great writers. So I enjoyed it a lot. Well, when we start with you, Bob, it's great to have you on, Nathan as well. What a book. Why? Why did you guys decide to write the book? Tell us a little bit about your friendship or business relationship. Relationship with Nathan goes back a few years. We had already collaborated on a making of eyes wide shut that was published, what, five years ago. something like that. And we were in constant contact. We were both fanatic Kubrick fans.

And more than fans deeply involved in trying to figure out what Kubrick is about and what his work is about. I had been interested in starting a biography in the early 90s. But there was no way to get into... the archives, not to mention to speak to Kubrick himself, he was busy and he was keeping everything close to the best. By the time Nathan and I really got going and thinking about the biography, the archives had opened to the public at the London School of the Arts. And Nathan had gone through them practically beginning to end. We also spoke to Jan Harlan, who was Kubrick's brother-in-law, is Kubrick's brother-in-law, and was his producer on all the films since The Shining.

And he was very helpful to us. And the things just began coming together, you know, this long quest on my part of 10, 20 years of wanting to do this and Nathan's great facility at research and putting things together. The book emerged and it emerged fairly quickly in about two years. We were lucky to get favor and favor as publishers in England and luckier still to get Pegasus to publish in the U.S. So there are two versions of the same book available depending upon where you are. So, Nathan, you did, obviously you both did, but you did a tremendous amount of research on this, but there was new information that you had access to that you referenced.

So tell us about the new information that enabled you to put this full life narrative together of Stanley Kubrick. Certainly. I mean, just one correction. Not to think that we've just been working on this for two years. Bob and I have been studying and teaching Kubrick for decades combined. The new information, well, there's this archive at the University of Arts London that Bob mentioned that's just jam-packed with boxes. Kubrick kept like everything pretty much. And that isn't just the

stuff related to the filmmaking and the films he made and the films he didn't make. There's all the sort of trivia, the miscellaneous of everyday life, you know, bills for alarms, receipts, that kind of thing. And this stretches back to the 40s, mid-40s. So, you know, I mean, some examples, he was a camp photographer for a Jewish summer camp in, what, 1944. And he kept the newspaper in which, he was the photographer. And it's just little things like that that gave us a window into his world and a bit more understanding of the person. And it's interesting that he decided that was worth keeping, either because he was a hoarder or because he valued that particular item. But as we went through, there's all kinds of stuff that we came across.

Well, as a fellow hoarder, I have appreciation and fondness for hoarding. So, you know, I mean, he grows up in the Bronx. He has a comfortable Jewish upbringing. His father's a local doctor. He's close to his mom. He buys a camera to a young. age, he's absolutely fascinated with the art of filmmaking, but he struggles in school. So he doesn't fit the mold, but one of the things that Kubrick says, you guys referenced it in the book, if you want to learn how to make a film, is make a film. So he goes right into filmmaking, right? It's pretty amazing, right? He was a terrible. And his parents even sent him off to California for a year with relatives to see if a change in scenery would

would help. It didn't. And he just made it out of high school. And most of the time he spent watching films and taking pictures in this early stage of his life. And even in a young age, kept repeating that he could make better films than what he saw at the local theater or at MoMA. But he, but I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but he was an auto-di-dact, basically. He was doing this on his own. It was, he was almost like a, he had a block of granite, and he was chiseling into the granite, his artistic creation, it being his filmmaking. And because of this, I think he has his own personal fingerprint of filmmaking. You know, you guys teach film. I'm more of an observer of film, but I don't think there's anything like a Kubrick film. So let's say I landed from Mars.

I like you each to answer this if you don't mind. I come off the spacecraft and I say, okay, why is Stanley Kubrick so different than these other directors? Why are his films so unique? And you could watch them five or six times and still see things in them that you may have missed the first time. Just to add to what you said before, Anthony, is that there was a lot of Hutzper involved in Kubrick's film. And just, you know what? He was watching these films the whole time. And then he was saying, you know, I can make a film as good or as bad as this.

so I might as well give it a go and that's exactly what he did. I mean, I've got two points that I think make Kubrick's films stand out and survive. One is most of them, at least the mature ones, have some kind of technical innovation where he pushes a technology, either invents it, like shooting in natural light using that NASA lens for Barry Lindum is one example. He might not have invented the Steadicam on the Shining, but the way he used it really developed how one might use a Steadicam on a film set. So each of his films has some kind of innovation.

But the other thing is Kubrick did this legendarily pre-production research. He really immersed himself into a topic and became an expert, whether it was nuclear warfare or Napoleon and the other topics. And because of that, his films contain ideas and the amount of text he read around. So when he made The Shining, he was reading Freud and Bruno Betelheim as well as Gothic literature, as well as Stephen King. And right, well, there might not be direct references to those authors, apart from King, obviously, in the movies. the ideas stay. And I think as you watch them and re-watch them over the years and as your life changes

and as we teach them to new generations of students, different ideas from our backgrounds emerge. And I think that's what distinguishes. Those two things are what distinguishes Kubrick film. There's also a tremendous passion in his films. They're always being blamed as being cold. But they're not cold. They're perfect.

And the perfection sort of encloses this deeply felt emotion, even if it's emotions of dread, like in the shining or of loss, as in the killing or ice white shot and full metal jacket. Still, they are, they reach out in ways that other films don't.

And in that reaching out, they take you, they take you by your mind and by your heart in ways that ordinary films don't do. You know, I mean, I was always fascinated by his work. If you had to identify one film, you'd say, okay, I'm going to, this is the number, not in the order chronologically, but the one film, you say, okay, this is quintessentially Kubrick. This has everything in it. What would that be, Robert? For me, it would be Barry Lyndon. Barry Lyndon, yeah.

Nathan. Dr. Strangelove. Interesting. Interesting. Okay, so, I mean, and again, for my viewers and listeners, Barry Lyndon is a contemporary. It's a piece that it's a, how do you say it in your world? But it takes place, I guess, in the mid-18th century, right? Is that correct?

And Dr. Strangelove is a parody a bit, right? I mean, it's a, it's about the nuclear holocaust, a potential annihilation. Peter Sellers is a star in that movie, and he's capturing what exactly? Let me ask you, Robert, what is he capturing in Barry Lyndon that you'd want your students or film buffs to understand? How you make a costume drama that is really about the moment and how you go about seeing the past cinematically and using all the technological possibilities to make that past immediate. Most famously in Barry Linden, lighting interiors by candlelight without any artificial intervention, any artificial light intervention.

Using the Zoom lens, which is a very modern invention, but using it in a very modern invention, but using it in a way to comment upon the characters in their environment. And also deeply feeling it's his most sentimental film. And it's a sentiment about loss and about the past and about not belonging and imminent disappearing. Barry just disappears from the film. The narrator says, we have nothing more to say about him.

Yeah, it's fascinating. And Dr. Strangelove? Well, Dr. Strangelove really spoke to the period in which it was made. You know, it's early 60s. The new left is revising the sort of orthodox views of the Cold War and the counterculture is rising and you've got novels like Catch 22. And Kubrick makes a film that speaks to the Times, not only is nuclear, potential nuclear holocaust on people's minds

after the Cuban Missile Crisis, he decides he can't make a serious film. He says the only way to treat this topic so serious is by treating it as a black comedy. And it's one of those films where, you know, you start to watch it. And even though you know all the lines that are coming, you just can't help but be absorbed in the zingers that keep coming at you. And you think of Peter Sellers' improvisations on the telephone. You actually forget that he's not talking to someone. You know, there's the look on Mark Dissarsky's face when Peter Sellers, as Dr. Strangelove, is choking himself, like a naughty schoolboy trying not to laugh.

And then like I said, behind the film, there's that he recreated a B-52 bomber's interior so accurately, especially the CRM-1-14, that the US Air Force was scared that the secrets had leaked. And there's just so much detail and there's so many ideas, the amount of reading he did around it that you can see in the film. So it brings together everything that I said in my last response about technical innovation and ideas, but with a fantastic sense of humor. Well, I'm going to... In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon... employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information

technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. I'm going to add one for you guys, which I'm sure is also another one of your favorites, is 2001 Space Odyssey, because you watch the movie, he's predicting the future. It's the story of our lives unfolding for us. The last 55 years since the film came out or 56 years. And of course, the very famous artificially intelligent computer, which is named Hal, which is a little bit of a joke there, right? Because it was IBM, but he took the I and he moved it to the H and he took the B and moved it to the A.

And he had all of these little things that he was doing from an artistic point of view to get film buffs like two, view and an amateur film buff like me excited to see what he was doing in the film and how to unpack it from his brain. But talk for a moment, both of you, if you don't mind about 2001 Space Odyssey, because, man, that he gets so many things right about where we are today even, and what we fear, what we fear today. Yeah, I think 2001 is sort of outside of competition, which is why I don't name it as my favorite. It is the great Kubrick film. Is it is Opus? Would you say that, Robert? I would say that none of the other films have as intense imagination and innovation and prophecy as 2001.

Nothing may disagree. But it's a film that keeps speaking to us. Strangelove does the same thing. I mean, it does it. In terms of history, it doesn't. get old. It's always the same world with different characters

playing the same deadly games. 2001 is the result of just intense work of many, many people. One of the things that we try to point out is that Kubrick

was the master of a huge army of doers and thinkers of scientists, and sculptors and sketch artists and model makers. And we can't forget Arthur C. Clark, the great science fiction writer, who was a tremendous influence, in fact, was the catalyst for the film. Nathan, what do you think?

Well, for me, I mean, adding to everything that Bob said, and then all the technical innovation in the movie front projection and the fact that he filmed the dawn of man in Namibia, and then, but he shot the apes in a studio and you wouldn't know, like even when you've got on a big screen, you can't see the join, and this is in the mid-60s. But what I really like is you can see Cooper extensive humour in the film. So the monolith appears, looks like the two tablets of stone,

or at least one of them, but with no writing on them, like Ten Commandments, with no commandments. But where do we see the Ten Commandments? On the toilet door of the Zero Gravity bathroom. And then, and there's just so many moments like, like, like he invents this supercomputer, but he gives him a really banal name, howl. You know, you imagine these days, they wouldn't call any computer howl.

They would have some, you know, amazing sukkah computer 3,000, you know. And when they're on the moon ship and they just want a sandwich and they keep saying ham, ham, ham. It's like these banal moments, but also very funny moments in a movie that unlike Dr. Strangelove wasn't directly speaking to its times explicitly in the way that Dr. Strangelove was. But yet, you know, so clearly was speaking to what was happening in the United States and abroad in 1968. and during the Vietnam War and where are we going as a species and is violence what motivates evolution as one of the key questions in the film?

And I think the beauty of that film is we still debate what it means now as well as admire its craft. There's a wonderful disconnect in the film between the absolute banality of the human figures and the absolute wonder of their surroundings,

both in the universe and in the equipment that they use and Hal himself, who refers to himself as a conscious entity and who has the knowledge of what they're about to do before they do. So it's this sort of play of human passivity against technological progress. Listen, I mean, you know, to me, I love the fact that you guys have put this book out there because we don't make films like this anymore. We don't craft them this way.

I'm sure someone will come along that does this. Corsese has a certain style. De Palma has a certain style. But when you look at them, even Spike Lee, they all went to film school. And so they've got certain things that they're doing. I don't want to say it's box checking because they're all brilliant directors.

But it's different from Kubrick. Kubrick is coming at the filmmaking. it's almost as if the lack of influence from teaching. It's almost as if his lack of being a good student professors aided and abetted his filmmaking. Does that make sense to you? When I read your book, that's what comes across to me that he couldn't probably sit in your class.

So he had to do it himself. And it created all of this great innovation. What did I miss? They're homemade films. Homemade films, exactly right. The other thing is he didn't like theory. I mean, he read maybe one book of, film theory in his life, the book on editing by Podovkin, and that was about it. He didn't,

and he mocked the French theorists and people like us who come along and read meanings into his films. He, you know, he didn't care for that. So in a way, he wasn't scarred or ruined by academic film studies that made everything into a sort of, like you say, an Anthony, a tick-box exercise. And the other thing about him is a lot of it was trial and error. He didn't think it all through beforehand in the way that Hitchcock did. So he made mistakes and he learned and sometimes didn't learn from those mistakes, whereas, you know, the later directors can learn from the mistakes of others, whereas Kubrick had to make them along the way and learn the hard way, I think, the way other directors didn't.

So I'm a film buff. I've not really, you know, I've only been in one movie in my life. I was in Wall Street, too. Oliver Stone let me play myself. This is 2009 in Wall Street 2, and I got fairly close to Oliver. I still see him for dinner and so forth. And at one of the dinners, he said that the director, that had the best visual wit. The best visual wit was Stanley Kubrick. And I want you to describe

what visual wit is, if you don't mind. And then if you can, give us some examples of what it means to have visual wit and examples in his work. And by the way, do you agree with that, by the way, do you agree with Oliver Stone's? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I would take an example from the shining where the sequence in which Jack is staring at the model of the labyrinth and zoom down and you see the little figures moving around. And then he plays handball against the floor of the hotel. And on the soundtrack is a very particular piece of classical music. Bella Bartok's

Concerto for Strings, Concerto for Strings, Percussion, and Chaleste. And at exactly the point where there is a percussive sound on the music, Jack curls his ball down on the floor of the hotel. So there's this double bang, the bang of the music and the bang of the ball on the floor. and it's just a wonderful idea, a witty idea. And his films are full of those. Anything you want to add, anything? Yeah, I'll give you one tiny example.

I'll sort of blink and you miss it moment in Eyes Wide Chat. So Tom Cruise, as Bill, is meeting the sex worker Domino, and as the camera tracks them around the corner, they stand in front of a bakery. And it's called Joseph Krebech's Bakery. And it's an exact replica of Yonah Shimmels on the Lower East Side, which for some reason we don't. of why I put in there, and this is right bang in the middle of Greenwich Village, so it's anachronistic.

But that side, it's a canisory. And we're like, well, why has Kubrick stuck this canishry in there? And obviously, I wrote a book called Stanley Kubrick, New York Jewish intellectual, where I really wanted to put him in that milieu. So I, I wax lyrical about the reasons for that. But for me, where the visual wit here is, is that what I learned doing that book was that canish is a euphemism, you know, a sex worker might say, you're looking for some canish. And, you know, that one little moment, if you have the knowledge, you get the joke. And if not, it's just a nice part of the scenery and you can move on.

But it must have been important to him because he had that set built and recreated, either from photographs, from some childhood memory, because his grandparents lived down the street. But yeah, it adds layers and textures. To me, it's the most fascinating part of them. You know, I don't know if you guys remember when the Beatles put all those little riddles in their albums, you know, there's an artistic expression that Kubrick has. You almost have to be a Kubrick detective to catch that.

You know, now I've got to go back and watch that movie and catch that. I missed it, obviously. And even the numbers of the room that you're entering into and the shining all have different meanings as an example. What would he have worked on? He had an untimely death, unfortunately. I guess if I remember correctly, he died in right around this time of the year, 1999. It was right after Eyes Wide Shut came out, I believe.

What would he have done next had he not had such a sudden end to his life? Well, he had two films that he had. he was working on in the 90s. One of them, wartime lies, from the novel, War Time Lies, which he called Aryan Papers,

his Holocaust film, was very, very close to production, extremely close to production. The locations were scouted, the players were chosen. Everything happened, except for two things. One of them was the appearance,

of Schindler's List, and Kubrick and Warner Brothers were afraid that the two would not be able to do well together. The other was Kubrick himself feeling depressed over what he had learned, and the amount of research, the amount of reading that he had done about the period simply got to him. So the film never got made. The other film that was not as close to production was AI, artificial intelligence. And that was because he couldn't find the perfect CGI computer graphics. He couldn't find the perfect boy who could stay as a sort of mixture of human and robot.

And he couldn't get a good script. I'm going to interrupt you there. The problem with the – it wasn't the actor. The problem was Kubrick knew he took so. long to make a film that if he was going to film a boy, he said by the time I've finished shooting, he'll have a beard already. One of the things we discovered from the archive is when he shot Danny in the Shining, he had two pairs of shoes or two pairs of outfits for when he grew because he was aware of how long he took. But he knew Stevens, that they were friends by that point,

Steven Spielberg. He said, look, Stephen can shoot a movie in six months. It won't be an issue. And he didn't want to use CGI because it wasn't good enough to recreate a human. But you know, if he used a human, he would obviously age during the film, which is why he would, he never made it. Interesting stuff. I mean, anybody out there right now? I'll ask both of you this question. Anybody out there right now? Obviously, there's no one quite like him. I think he has his own unique fingerprint. But is there anybody out there right now that you would look to and say, well, that, that man or woman has a unique perspective or a unique eye in filmmaking? I think there are pretenders to the throne, but I'm not sure that they're, that they count. Okay. What about you, Nathan? I have to do. I'm one, which is,

going up in my ranking. Darren Aronofsky, and it was a very unique vision across his movies. But the one I'm really pump-plumping for is Jonathan Glazer, who early in his career kind of steals. I mean, he says I picked his pocket. I don't so much pick his pocket as take his wallet, was the way that Glazer puts it.

But if you watch the zone of interest, the zone of interest, I think if Kubrick had had the opportunity to make it, that would have been the film about the Holocaust he would have wanted to make, because you don't need to show anything. It's interesting. It's an incredibly powerful movie. You know, you mentioned Aronovsky. I spent the week scouting conference sites for our new conference for my business Skybridge. And I was at the sphere and I watched the Aronovsky film related to the environment on that 16K. I mean, I thought IMAX theater had something until you go to the sphere. You see this movie is very, very powerful, very beautiful movie, but also a sad movie. Before I get to the last piece of this podcast, I want to ask you about that. The struggles for an artist, because I have the theory. I want to test it on you.

The artist has a tendency to be very empathic, and so they can see the good and the bad of human beings. And sometimes it makes them depressed, you know, Van Gogh, Picasso, I could list them. Cooper had a little bit of that, yes? he had a certain amount of OCD, maybe more than a certain amount. Okay. Was he depressive? I don't think so. Nathan? Okay. Nathan, what do you think? Well, I think he was drawn towards war. He loved military history.

Military history turned, one of the reasons he wanted to make Napoleon. Military history turned into German history of the 20th century. German history, the 20th century, inevitably led into the Holocaust. And in part, that was the reason why he didn't finish making that picture. he got too depressed, he saw the worst side of humanity, and he would have done extensive research. I'm talking more about situational depression with him, not clinical depression, but I guess my point is that if you're that good as an artist, you can see things probably more clearly where you're more empathic than some of us, myself included, I might add.

You agree with that? He was an ironist. He always saw the world from multiple points. of view. He saw the serious and he saw the absurd and he saw how the two always bounced off of one another. I think that may have kept him from depression. And also his deep involvement in reading, as Nathan says, he read and read and read. So my son, he's 24. He's a aspiring film director. This is his favorite film director by far. He studied him very carefully. He's read your book at my suggestion. And he reminds me that Dr. Kruberick was the first financier of Stanley Kruberk.

Isn't that correct? I guess he helped him make his first movie. The family. And he got the money. The family did. Yeah. Yeah. And so he's like, Dad, you got a pony up here. Okay. See, so you guys put that in your book and hurt me. Two of you guys hurt me by accident. But, uh, I'm kidding. I'm very proud of him. When he makes a blockbuster that you finance, you can back us. Exactly, exactly. I'll look back on the two of you and say, see that?

You help the kid get his film career started. But he said, dad in the book, you know, just so you know, the father, the parent, you know, the family helped him get the film career started. All right. So I end these podcasts with five words. My producer and I come up with these words. And then I ask our authors, you can give me a sentence, a word. Something comes to mind when I say the word. And obviously, these questions or these five words are for both of you.

Let's start with you, Nathan. I'm going to say the word photography. And you say what? Kubrick learned his craft through being a photographer. Shaked everything he did. It's interesting, right? Expiring photographer, converting into film. What about you, Robert?

I say photographer. You say what? The perfect image. Yeah. Yeah. And he was a perfectionist for sure. I say the word film. A way to tell a story so that.

the images and the sound convert the meaning express the meaning Nathan Nothing was sealed down for Kubrick until he saw it on the monitor on film didn't matter what his ideas were

he had to see that look right on the film interesting you know say yeah right when I hear Kubrick in film I think canvas I feel like he's painting he's almost painting on it

you know it's like a weird thing with this man in terms of his artistic capability all right I'm going to say the word Nathan I'm going to say the word Odyssey you're going to say what? Kubrick's life journey.

He begins in New York and he ends in New York, although he dies in London. He ends in New York with Ozwe-Shart, which is his birth town recreated in the home that he adopted. Robert, you want to add anything? The name of our book. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's what it is. All right, I'm going to say the words moon landing. What do you say to that, Robert?

Moon landing. People can't give it up. Yeah. that silly notion that somehow Kubrick faked it. Kubrick did not fake the moon landing. Right. Of course. Well, I'm glad you said that, you know, because I'm close to some of these astronauts.

I find it reprehensible. I find it, it's a weird compliment to Stanley Kubrick, by the way. I will say that when it is brought up because, you know, it's just a weird compliment. What do you say about the moon landing, Nathan? Well, it's the old joke that you've probably heard, but I'll say it anyway. Kubrick was asked to fake them and that means being a perfectionist

he shot it on location. That is a great one. All right, this is the last word for both of you. When you hear the word Kubrick, what does it connotate to you? Let's go with you first, Robert.

I say the word Kubrick. You say what? Films that I want to see again and again. Nathan? An intellectual. He used film to write his ideas. They weren't just visual, visually like a wrestling,

but what intellectuals put in books and articles he put into his films. And it's just fascinating. It's almost as if he was able to capture all of that that you would read. You know, sometimes they say, oh, the movie is worse than the book or the movie doesn't quite capture the book.

But then when you watch a Kubrick film, you're like, okay, he's more than done that. If anything, he's created his own masterpiece inside the masterpiece. And so this is the reason why I wanted to bring you both on. And I'm very grateful for your time this morning. So the title of the book is Kubrick and Odyssey. It's written by Nathan Abrams and Robert Kolker.

It's a brilliant exposition of this man's life, but also his filmmaking style. And it was a real honor to have you on Open Book today, guys. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you for having us. It's a pleasure. So Stanley Kubrick, for me, I've watched all of his films and thought he was a brilliant film director, but never really thought much of him. Having said that, my son, I am raising a film director, my 25-year-old son, Anthony, who's steeped in the film industry,

finds Kubrick to be the most brilliant of the brilliant of the modern film directors. And of course, that drew me to this biography, which is just so phenomenal. We're seeing his influence in modern cinema today in so many different ways. Shot takes, movable cameras, forcing people outside of their comfort zones, pushing actors, pushing producers in certain ways, but sticking to the perfectionism of his creative process. As an example, the great Virgo perfectionist Oliver Stone said without Stanley Kubrick, he doesn't think his opus film JFK would have gotten done in the way it did. It copied a lot of the techniques that Kubrick developed. So a phenomenal guy, two great authors discussing this brilliant film career

and grew up in the Bronx. Dad was a doctor, gave him $50,000 for his first film. and away we go to greatness, cinema greatness. Please pick up the book. I think you'll really enjoy it. All right, you ready to come on the podcast? Or as you say, the cash pod? Come on, are you ready?

I'm here. My next guest are authors that wrote a book about Stanley Kubrick, the film director. But I don't know if you've watched any of his films. Do you remember 2001 Space Odyssey? Did you watch that? No, no. Do you remember Dr. Strange Love about the nuclear bomb?

I mean, about the bomb, you're saying, right? The bomb, yeah. And I thought he was in Gondland and brilliant. And he was. But thank God he came to the United States. Right. Well, thank God he came to the United States. Why these people are so nuts, you know?

Right. You know, let the immigrants in, especially the smart immigrants. You know, let's cut it out. What's your favorite movie, Mom? My favorite movie. Oh, the love story, huh? You like that one? Yeah.

And she had dementia at the end. And it's shown I thought that was a beautiful movie. Okay. So the Nicholas Sparks. novel that got turned into a movie, right? And that's your favorite? What about one of the older movies? Any of the older movies you like?

I'm not too much. You like things about the mind, right? You spent a lot of time reading about the mind, right? Excuse me? No, I said you like reading about the human mind, right? Yes, I find the human mind very interested. I read the whole cover of Van Gogh from cut off his ear and how he made the wild horses and the beautiful, I thought he was brilliant.

And he didn't have a matter. state. All right, Ma. I appreciate it. What did you say? You like to what? Okay. Thank you, I didn't get Bitcoin yet. I didn't get Bitcoin yet. All right. I'm going to bring it over, Ma. I'll drop it off for you, okay? All right. All right. Love you, Ma. Love you very much. Yeah. All right. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us. a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's

at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CGs national series on the Canadian Standard of Living. and innovation. Learn what's driving Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it.