INSDORF: I’m thinking of the subject matter he was drawn to. [Anthony] Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining—all of these are unsettling visions of human behavior. Remember that scene in A Clockwork Orange where Malcolm McDowell’s character has his eye clamped open, forced to watch horrors? His voice-over says, “It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.” Kubrick seems to be suggesting the relationship between film and the spectator is both sadistic and humanizing.

SEMEL: I think you’re right. He was the man who made Lolita. Did he have a smile on his face the entire time he did Eyes Wide Shut? Who knows?

INSDORF: Terry, was there any serious thought of releasing Eyes Wide Shut as an NC-17 film with no digital covering of nudity?

SEMEL: It was such a short period of time between Stanley’s death and the release of the film. I did not want our company to be responsible for changing Stanley’s view or adding things to Stanley’s view. I just decided in my own self that I was going to do everything I possibly could to make sure that the film got this rating. It’s Stanley’s movie. And I don’t want anyone else touching it or fooling with it. I don’t want to change history with it. I think the best parts of the film still shine. I just made sure that we got the rating so it could be in lots of theaters throughout the world.

CRUISE: Stanley wanted that. He wanted his movies to be huge successes. He did not want an NC-17 rating.

SEMEL: He would call me every other week to tell me to go back to the rating board. [laughs] To push them against the wall . . . Tom, do you want to talk about the final nights before he died?

CRUISE: What happened is, Stanley sent the final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to New York. And the four of us watched it—Terry and Jane and me and Nicole. We watched it twice in a row and went out to dinner after that. I had to leave after that for Australia to start filming Mission [Impossible 2, 2000]. You were on the phone talking with Stanley about the movie, going over everything—

SEMEL: That’s right. Stanley wouldn’t allow anyone else to see the cut. I think his nephew carried the print from England to a screening room in Manhattan. And he called that night—”What did you think? And how was this? And how was that scene?” He went through every bit of the film. And generally speaking, we were all very happy and excited. I said, “Stanley, I’m going to fly back to Los Angeles,” which is where I was living. “We’ll continue this tomorrow. We’ll talk about lots of details. You have notes, we have notes.” And then when tomorrow came, he was on the phone with me—which was not a rare occurrence—for many, many hours. And it was probably about three o’clock in the morning at that point, and he and I had been talking the entire time. And he went over every detail of how the movie would be released—of who would do it, of what it would look like, etcetera. It just went on and on and on. When it was about four o’clock in the morning, I said, “Stanley, I’m really tired. I’m going to go to sleep now. We can continue this conversation in the morning.” So I go to sleep, get up in the morning, and in those days we had an answering machine, and there were dozens and dozens of calls on the machine, starting with Stanley’s wife, who was insisting that they wake me up. He had died during that night. She said, “What was it like? What happened? Were you guys angry?” I said, “No, we were laughing for hours. We were going over everything on that film and we were in hysterics for hours—for many, many hours until sunlight was starting to come through.” We were all in a state of shock. I’m so happy to say that his life ended on a huge up-note of feeling success coming from his latest movie, Eyes Wide Shut. It was like a celebration on the phone for many, many hours and a lot of laughing. Later, we did an opening for Eyes Wide Shut for a charity in Los Angeles, and I got up to introduce the movie to the audience, and I said, “This is going to be my last movie at Warner Bros.” I think all of my colleagues and the whole company all stopped to say, “Terry, what did you just say?” I just felt there’s no way to top the experience with Stanley. And then didn’t we all fly back to his funeral in his backyard?