Cruise, Kidman, Kubrick, and the making ofEyes Wide Shut.
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By 1999, there was only one long-running movie property bigger thanStar Wars: Tom Cruise.
But he also loved movies and the people who made them.
As a kid, hed frequently switched hometowns.
In good times and poor times, he said, movies were my lifesaver.
Cruise had first seen2001in 1968, perched on his fathers shoulders in a packed-to-capacity theater in Ottawa, Canada.
I couldnt stop thinking about it, he said.
He was six years old.
Kubrick had been thinking of adapting it into a movie as far back as 1968.
For claritys sake, he added that he sometimes hit eighty miles an hour while cruising in his Porsche.
When it came to making films, however, Kubrick kept a slow speed.
For decades, hed toy with revisiting Schnitzlers novella.
The two would soon get to work adaptingTraumnovelle, relocating the story in modern-day New York City.
Kubrick would later revise the script during filming, sometimes faxing pages to his cast at 4:00 a.m.
It wasnt the kind of movie youd want to watch with a six-year-old sitting on your shoulders.
Kubrick, though, had soured on name performers after makingThe Shiningwith Jack Nicholson.
Movie stars, he told Semel, have too many opinions.
Semel called Cruise and asked if hed want to meet with Kubrick.
Tom said something like, Ill be there in the morning, Semel remembered.
He was just waiting, alone in a garden, Cruise said.
Kubrick likely didnt need much convincing.
She didnt need to read the script so you can be persuaded.
I didnt care what the story was, Kidman said.
I wanted to work with Stanley.
Kubrick seemed equally eager to get rolling.
The actor wasnt so sure.
Hed studied Kubricks filmmaking style.
MakingEyes Wide Shut, he figured, would takeat leasta year.
The set was heavily secured yet sparsely populated.
(Cruise, one of hisMagnoliastars, had ushered him past security.)
I asked him, Do you always work with so few people?
He gave me a look and said, Why?
How many people doyouneed?
I felt like such a Hollywood asshole.
Kubrick would work late into the evening, with filming occasionally stretching past midnight.
Sometimes he got what he needed after just two takes; other times he might require eighty.
We just gave ourselves over to it.
By the end, we felt as if we lived on that set, she said.
We even slept in the bed.
The only person more deeply immersed inEyes Wide Shutwas Kubrick himself.
I was so startled, says Field, I ran into another car.
Come inside and see what were doing.
When Field introduced himself, Kubrick laughed and replied, I know who the fuck you are.
The guy worshipped Kubrick wealldid, says Buckley.
So Stanley got his boxes.
When edited together, the various shots would add up to something alien and unsettling.
Bill learns the password for entryfidelioand decides to check out the party for himself.
KUBRICKS EYES WIDE SHUT STILL OPEN, noted theNew York Timesin April 1998.
The planets best-known star couple had been out of commission for nearly two years.
Other big-budget films that Cruise had been developing were paused.
People were waiting, and writers were waiting, Cruise said.
Hollywood would just have to be patient; there was, after all, only one Tom Cruise.
Work onEyes Wide Shuthad gone until day four hundred of filming, in June 1998.
It was a day that I had both looked forward to, and dreaded, said Cruise.
The director turned to Cruise and replied, You know.
I love you too.
Kubrick would keep going for nearly another year, editing the movie in relative peace away from the studio.
Hed spent decades preparingEyes Wide Shut.
He wasnt going to rush.
The most important thing to Stanley, Cruise said, was time.
The location was a private screening room in Warner Bros. Manhattan headquarters.
Kubrick didnt want any stray eyes in the house.
Others believed that Kidmans character was a heroin addict or that Cruise would appear in a dress.
The screening ended shortly after midnight, after which the actors watched it again.
The first time, we were in shock, Kidman said.
The second time, I thought, Wow!
Its going to be controversial.
Instead it was one of Kubricks associates, telling Cruise that the director was dead.
Trying to define it, without Stanley here, is … Kidman later said, her voice trailing off.
Its tainted theexperience a bit for Tom and me.
It explained, in part, why it had taken so long to mount his final vision.
Kubricks own mythos had only become larger and all the more inscrutable after his death.
And with the director gone, the task of sellingEyes Wide Shutwould fall on the films star couple.
It was hard to blame moviegoers for thinking they were going to get something at leastslightlypervy.
They had expectations of it being about something else which I think Stanley engendered by that trailer.
The orgy sequence, meanwhile, was adorned with humps and thrusts.
But the excess sex in Kubricks film posed a challenge for Warner Bros. His sense of possessiveness struck me as odd.
In hindsight, I suppose I understand it.
Stanley belonged to everyone.
At a press screening in New York City, lines formed around the block.
BILL:Whats that?
Were Dr. Bills nighttime adventures real or part of a dream?
Was New York Citysupposedto look so fake?
Also: Who gets worked up into that much of a rage while high onpot?
Cruises response to anyone seeking answers proved how much hed studied Kubrick: You have to decide for yourself.
Its a movie you cant just see once, he said.
To make a run at review it after one sitting?
My hat is off to you.
I do not know how an individual can do that.
Somehow the critics found a way.
The initial responses included a few unadulterated raves but largely expressed polite disappointment.
Notes Christopher Nolan, I was so excited to see it and I was very, very disappointed.
Theres a very real sense in which it is the2001of relationship movies.
If Kubrick hadnt died that winter, what version ofEyes Wide Shutwould audiences have been given?
What we have is Stanleys first cut, says Field.
Then again, moviegoers were lucky to have gotten their eyes on Kubricks final film inanyform.
Copyright 2019 by Brian Raftery.
From the forthcoming book BEST.
