Introduction Stanley Kubrick wanted control. Control and information. These were the twin pillars on which he built his career and forged a power base for himself as an independent film producer, director and writer in Hollywood across a fifty-year period. He''d always wanted control and information, even when working as a photographer throughout his late teens and early twenties at Look magazine. To relinquish control meant that Kubrick would have to do things other people''s way, and that just wasn''t his way. The narrative of Kubrick''s life is all about control and was from the very beginning. And while far from suggesting that Kubrick did not collaborate (he certainly did, particularly on set with other artists, often facilitating extreme experimentation), he remained in control, particularly in his role as a producer, over every aspect of his productions, from development through to distribution. By the 1970s onwards, most of Kubrick''s time was spent overseeing distribution and regional marketing campaigns, dubbing, cover designs for VHS releases, and more besides.

In fact, Kubrick was far more often working as a producer than as a director, searching for stories, or looking to ensure that his films achieved their full commercial potential. This book attempts to understand the narrative of control by looking specifically at the production contexts in which Kubrick operated, largely through his role as a producer. It aims to detail how Kubrick first emerged as a producer, how he obtained control over his productions (both business and creative), and the impact that control ultimately had on his career. What emerges is a portrait of a filmmaker overwhelmed by control to the point that he could no longer move his projects out of development and into production. The aim of the book is not to provide a film-by-film production account or to detail the minutiae of how films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) were made, but rather to understand the industrial conditions that allowed Kubrick to accrue the power that he did and the ways in which he wielded that power. If someone expects to read this book as an account of the productions, they will be disappointed, and I would refer them to other books that have already done that.[1] The book also privileges Kubrick''s early years - the decades of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s - over his later career due to the relative lack of scholarship in this regard. What is largely missing from studies of Kubrick is how he came to be the powerful producer that he did by the end of the 1960s, the industrial and production conditions that facilitated his rise to power, and the ways in which the desire for and use of the control he obtained shaped and even, I would argue, contributed to his decline as a filmmaker.

By this, I must clarify, I do not mean Kubrick''s quality as an artist declined, but rather his ability to successfully produce a film from development through to distribution. After all, in the final twenty-five years of his career he produced only four films, in contrast to the first twenty-five years of his career, in which he produced or directed nine. But in examining the narrative of control, we can also begin to understand how, in many ways, it was also a myth partially constructed by Kubrick himself. To obtain the control he needed to make films - in fact, to even be able to enter the Hollywood mainstream - Kubrick had to construct the illusion of a powerful, maverick auteur. It was an image I would suggest that he purposely cultivated (evidence of which Filippo Ulivieri has developed through exhaustive empirical research).[2] From the earliest days of his career, producing and directing Fear and Desire (1953), Kubrick would be in close contact with journalists at newspapers like the New York Times , providing copy and undergoing interviews that positioned him as a controlling producer. It''s an image that Kubrick developed as a means of furthering his status within the industry and of cementing his powerbase. But it''s also a pernicious myth within Kubrick Studies, one that has obstructed a holistic view of Kubrick''s career and how he evolved as a producer in mainstream Hollywood.

Therefore, by analyzing the industrial and production contexts in which he worked, we can begin to scratch away at his carefully crafted image to understand the wider structural forces in the American (and, to some extent, British) film industry, including industrial and economic logic, to understand just how Kubrick operated as a producer. The success of the controlling image of Kubrick was clear in the outpouring of analysis by critics, scholars and fans as to his impact, importance and legacy on cinema and Hollywood following his death on 7 March 1999. In the obituaries and newspaper columns that ensued, a theme emerged that The Guardian ''s Derek Malcolm perhaps best encapsulated. Malcolm described how Kubrick had spent half of his career fighting, and beating Hollywood, ''getting its money to make his expensive films but only on condition that no one interfered with him or them in any way. His power thus became greater than any of his contemporaries and most of the great filmmakers of the past.''[3] The critics were largely effusive in their praise of Kubrick''s artistic prowess and stressed, as Malcolm did, Kubrick''s producing authority and control over every facet of his productions. But there was, and continues to be, little contextual understanding as to where this control came from, instead confusing it with Kubrick''s image as the ultimate auteur. Take Jonathan Romney''s assessment of Kubrick''s filmmaking power, comparing it to the supernatural forces that gripped the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (1980): ''It''s hard not to see Jack''s struggle with the Overlook as an image of Kubrick''s own peculiar relationship with Warner Brothers.

With any director, no matter how powerful, it''s always the House, the Studio, that''s ultimately in control but perhaps Kubrick, like Jack, really did have the run of the House. With his unique, still mysterious command of Warner''s goodwill, he must have had either a power verging on the satanic (biographies often wax eerie about his eyes), or perhaps he just knew where the bodies are buried.''[4] Romney equates Kubrick''s power as a filmmaker to forces beyond comprehension, removing him and his work from the industrial realities of Hollywood and elevating Kubrick to the mythical status of the ''auteur as superstar'', to borrow a phrase from Joseph Gelmis''s 1970 work The Director as Superstar in which Kubrick featured. What was lacking from the obituaries of Kubrick was any attempt to understand his work and role as a producer and how he obtained control. Nor was there any real attempt to truly understand Kubrick''s impact on Hollywood, beyond his artistic influences. When it came to the issue of his control, Kubrick''s myth once more came to dominate. Ronald Bergan asserted that Kubrick''s autonomy and power was never ''absorbed into the system on which he was financially dependent'',[5] while Janet Maslin argued that Kubrick''s filmmaking and his ''landmark films'' were always delivered ''at a safe distance from Hollywood whims''.[6] Taking it to the extreme, Jonathan Romney once more highlighted Kubrick''s supposed god like supremacy in Hollywood, saying that no other filmmaker could equal his power: ''Even [Martin] Scorsese is held back by the fact of being human, with human neuroses.

''[7] What many of the obituaries and summaries of Kubrick''s life and legacy appeared to be doing was to perpetuate the myth of the auteur and, in the process, failing and neglecting to understand the industrial, production, and economic contexts in which he worked. Kubrick was very much a part of the Hollywood system upon which he relied, as this book will demonstrate, and as testified to by his business partner and producer at Harris-Kubrick Pictures Corporation, James B. Harris. In an interview in the wake of Kubrick''s death, Harris asserted that ''[Kubrick] always knew what was going on in Los Angeles, he would always read the trade press.''[8] While Harris''s comments alone may not be proof of Kubrick''s intimate connection and knowledge of Hollywood and the British and American film industries, it does reveal a voice trying to break through the Kubrick myth that had formed in both the critical and public mind. What is perhaps necessary in order to move away from this auteur myth is the decentering of Kubrick.[9] By which I mean, scholars and critics need to look beyond Kubrick as an insular case study to those contexts I have already mentioned. These were concerns that were raised by, among others, Peter Krämer and myself at the workshop Life and Legacy, Studying the Work of Stanley Kubrick held at the University of Leiden in July 2019.

In a position paper that I delivered at that workshop, titled ''Kubrick''s Legacy'', I argued that Kubrick was not as important as scholars and critics believed, by which I was suggesting we need to move beyond the auteur myth and begin to understand why Kubrick has come to be viewed as uniquely influential and powerful and to what extent it is a valid claim. For example, if Kubrick was an all-powerful producer by the 1970s, then just how unique was he? Were there other similarly powerful producers? Or, for example, if we continue to claim that Kubrick is somehow influential, just what does this mean? Citing quotes or refere.