Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes - A documentary by Jon Ronson
In 1996 I received what was - and probably remains - the most exciting telephone call I have ever had. It was from a man calling himself Tony. “I’m phoning on behalf of Stanley Kubrick,” he said.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“Stanley would like you to send him a radio documentary you made called Hotel Auschwitz,” said this man. This was a programme for Radio 4 about the marketing of the concentration camp.
“Stanley Kubrick?” I said.
“Let me give you the address,” said the man.
…
Two years after that, in 2001, I got another phone call out of the blue from the man called Tony. “Do you want to get some lunch?” he asked. “Why don’t you come up to Childwick?”
The journey to the Kubrick house starts normally. You drive through rural Hertfordshire, passing ordinary-sized postwar houses and opticians and vets. Then you turn right at an electric gate with a “Do Not Trespass” sign. Drive through that, and through some woods, and past a long, white fence with the paint peeling off, and then another electric gate, and then another electric gate, and then another electric gate, and you’re in the middle of an estate full of boxes.
There are boxes everywhere - shelves of boxes in the stable block, rooms full of boxes in the main house. In the fields, where racehorses once stood and grazed, are half a dozen portable cabins, each packed with boxes. These are the boxes that contain the legendary Kubrick archive.
- Jon Ronson, The Guardian, Citizen Kubrick
Thirty years ago, American film audiences pressed low in their seats as a massive white wedge of machine parts passed overhead. With the release of George Lucas’s Star Wars, the smooth, silvery flying saucers that had dominated postwar sci-fi became embarrassing reminders of an obsolete version of the future. Lucas envisioned a World of Tomorrow dominated by black, white, and gray; hard-edged, massive, and inorganic forms, covered with a salty acne of apparatus. The film’s visual program was a departure from the saucers and occasional capsules writ large that sci-fi audiences had grown accustomed to, but its colorless symmetrical ships should have been recognizable to at least a small portion of its audience - those familiar with contemporary art.
