Steven Spielberg on the Genius of Stanley Kubrick

“Nobody could make a movie bet­ter than Stan­ley Kubrick–in his­to­ry,” says Steven Spiel­berg in this reveal­ing 1999 inter­view with British film­mak­er Paul Joyce. Spiel­berg sat down with Joyce just four months after Kubrick­’s sud­den death from a heart attack. He talks about the emo­tion­al effect Kubrick­’s films had on him when he was a young man, the friend­ship the two men shared after Spiel­berg became suc­cess­ful, and Kubrick­’s James Joyce-like abil­i­ty to rein­vent him­self with each new work. “He was a chameleon,” Spiel­berg says. “He nev­er made the same pic­ture twice. Every sin­gle pic­ture is a dif­fer­ent genre, a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, a dif­fer­ent risk. The only thing that bond­ed all of his films was the incred­i­ble vir­tu­oso that he was with craft.”

Note: Paul Joyce filmed sim­i­lar talks with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kid­man, the stars of Kubrick­’s final film Eyes Wide Shut. You can see those inter­views by fol­low­ing these links: Cruise; Kid­man.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash’

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)


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  • artist dave says:

    “Nobody could make a movie bet­ter than Stan­ley Kubrick–in his­to­ry,”

    actu­al­ly Spiel­berg said
    “nobody could SHOOT a movie bet­ter than Stan­ley Kubrick…”

    as Spiel­berg was com­ment­ing on Kubricks abil­i­ty to frame and light and com­pose his scenes.

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