Spring 2013

In the Trenches with Stanley Kubrick

James B. Harris produced three films with his friend Stanley Kubrick. In this interview, he offers a rare glimpse of life on the set with Kubrick-- not as a legend but a working director.

By F.X. Feeney



HORSE SENSE: The racetrack heist movie The Killing was the first film Kubrick (right) and Harris made together. “Stanley pretty much knew in his guts what he wanted to do, and then did it.”

You'll never know complete satisfaction until you’ve tried your hand at directing,” Stanley Kubrick told his close friend and producer James B. Harris one day, late in 1962. The pair had been creative partners for nearly a decade--working together on a string of critically successful pictures: The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957) and Lolita (1962).

After Lolita gave them both a welcome financial independence, they collaborated on a nuclear war-themed thriller called Edge of Doom, only to find they were at an amiable deadlock over the tone of the picture. Harris was committed to straightforward suspense; Kubrick wanted to turn it into an absurdist comedy. (It was later made as Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.) “I’m about to become the worst kind of producer,” Harris warned him, “I’m about to try and tell you how to direct your picture.” Kubrick replied: “You should direct.” On that note they dissolved their partnership but remained friends for life, until Kubrick’s death in 1999. And Harris went on to direct five features including The Bedford Incident (1965) and Some Call It Loving (1973).

In a sense, Harris taught Kubrick how to produce, and Kubrick taught Harris how to direct. Artifacts, letters, scripts, photographs from their partnership, are currently on view as part of the Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In a conversation with the Quarterly, Harris shares a rare view of Kubrick’s working method.

Q: Kubrick showed you his second film, Killer’s Kiss (1955), early on in your friendship. What appealed to you as a prospective producer?

A: What impressed me was that he’d completed it. In those days, you’d hear somebody was making a film, and making a film, but never see the film. What happened? They got halfway through and ran out of money, or it didn’t work. Stanley completed his film. He shot the picture with a wild track; he had to lip-sync everything in postproduction. That was intensive, precision work back then. I was very impressed. I had access to funding, and so proposed a partnership.

I came across Clean Break, by Lionel White; a fast-paced novel about a racetrack robbery shown from many points of view. It was a terrific story. Stanley read it the day after I did and agreed that it was great for us. Stanley wrote the screenplay and Jim Thompson contributed some dialogue; we called it The Killing. We were determined to keep the offbeat time-structure from White’s book.

Q: How did that play for a 1950s audience?

A: There were walkouts at the preview. People didn’t know what they were going to see, and were confused. Sterling Hayden’s agent told us we’d wrecked the picture. Even friends advised us to make it more conventional. Stanley and I asked ourselves, ‘Have we blown it?’ We rented an editing room and built a linear cut of the picture. Halfway through screening it for ourselves, we looked at each other and said, ‘This stinks. Let’s put it back the way we had it.’

You’ve got to believe in your own instincts. If you listen to hostile voices, even those of friends, you shouldn’t make movies. If you’re going to fail, fail with your own contributions, not somebody else’s. Lesson learned!

Q: Can you describe a typical day--if there was such a thing as a typical day--shooting Paths of Glory?

A: The battlefield scenes were the last things on the schedule. That farmland we hired had to be dressed and built into a battlefield, with the trenches and barbwires and all of the shell holes. Stanley loved moving shots.

The main thing was taking Kirk [Douglas] through this obstacle course, this barrage. The idea was that Kirk was going to be followed, in a moving shot, through as much action as we could muster before a cut had to be made, after which we would set up to continue. It was cold; it was uncomfortable; it was wet. Everything was tough on Kirk. After he did it the first time, he told Stanley, ‘I’ll give you one more, maybe two, but that’s it. I’m not going to do this forever.’ I remember Stanley asked me to go up on one of the big parallels, to check out an angle.

Q: A parallel meaning a crane?

A: No. A parallel being a platform we built. Stanley didn’t like heights. I climbed up to look through the camera, and saw the image we were going to get. We had multiple cameras, even a handheld in the middle of the field, to cover the explosions, while Stanley covered Kirk with the moving shots.

I don’t remember Stanley ever coming in with homework, saying, ‘This is the first shot we’re going to do.’ He pretty much knew in his guts, and then did it. Then again, there’s no room in a scene like that for added ideas. It’s a done deal: show Kirk going through the battle. Make it look as uncomfortable and dangerous as it can possibly look, with explosions all around him. Kirk had to crawl through the cold water and muddy shell holes.

Q: You worked side by side every day with Kubrick for close to ten years. What was that like day-to-day?

A: I was required by Stanley to be there, not just as a producer, but because he liked input. There was no insecurity about him. Some people who are insecure don’t want other people hanging around, because they don’t want them to see, or witness any indecision on their part, or anything that could indicate they’re not sure of what they’re doing. Openness to suggestion was one of Stanley’s great attributes. He genuinely thought any idea that was better than his was going to make the picture better.

Q: How did Kubrick deal with conflicts on the set? Did he raise his voice?

A: No. Stanley would never--not ever in the three pictures we did together--lose his temper. I don’t know if that changed after we went our separate ways. When we were together he was always able to outlast the other side of the argument, whether with actors, or in the case of Lucien Ballard on The Killing, the DP. On the first day of principal photography, Ballard, by then very established and sought after, decided to lay a set of tracks and choose a lens contrary to what had been asked for. When Stanley discovered this, he repeated his first order. Ballard objected, ‘It’ll be fine like this. Nobody will notice.’ Stanley looked him in the eye and said quietly, ‘You will either do as I direct or you can leave right now.’ Ballard nodded, rebuilt the tracks and they never had another bad moment.

Stanley would say to me, ‘You need to write things down.’ He always had a notebook with him. He’d talk to somebody on the crew, ask them about the progress of this or that, and then jot a note. Later we’d be walking down the hall, and if this person were coming at us the other way, Stanley would already be patting his pocket, ready to follow-up. That was a moment of panic for a few people. You could see it in their eyes when they had no answer.

We shot The Killing in 24 days; Paths of Glory in 66 days. We were getting up there, but disciplined. If I had to say to him, ‘We’re two days behind schedule,’ he’d smile and say: ‘Oh yeah? Watch this,’ and wham! We’d be back on.

Q: How would he do that?

A: He was fast on his feet, and would think through a way to cover whatever was next--either simply, or in a single complex master.

DOWN AND DIRTY: (above) The success of Lolita, starring Sue Lyon, gave Kubrick and Harris financial independence. (below) Kubrick (seated center) loved tracking shots in the trenches for Paths of Glory.