Alexander Walker: A tribute

Alexander Walker was one of the only people to get close to Stanley Kubrick
10 April 2012

Legendary film critic Alexander Walker passed away earlier this week. Today we pay tribute to a man who who often courted controversy with his reviews but remained one of the most influential movie journalists, even becoming a close friend of famous recluse Stanley Kubrick.

Here we see how Alexander recalled his friendship with the maverick director and their abortive collaboration.

As friends, Stanley Kubrick and I went back nearly 40 years. I had seen his second feature film, Killer's Kiss, then The Killing, and written to the films' British distributors, United Artists, asking why such hugely original action-thrillers had been relegated to tawdry little London screens instead of first-run cinemas. The UA publicity director - a Kubrick fan, too, he professed - promised that the new film he was making, Paths of Glory, would open big. "It has stars," he added. (Oh dear.)

I used this letter as my "calling card" when next in New York. Kubrick was living on the Upper East Side. The area at that time - early 1960s - was a German-American enclave. We ate dinner in a local restaurant with a bierkeller menu - Wiener schnitzels - to escape Kubrick's apartment, which was being cannibalised into the one next door: a sign of his expanding activities and need for space.

At 12.30am, we went up to his apartment to collect my topcoat. Bright tin cans of film were being delivered into his lobby elevator. I squinted at their titles. They were in Japanese, but a few words in English provided a clue. "Are you going to make a film about outer space?" Even then Stanley gave me that swift, wary glance of his I was to come to know. "Please, be careful what you write."

I was careful, for 10 years or until 2001: A Space Odyssey was under way. Later, I surmised that he had ordered up the Japanese SF films to study stateofthe-art special effects.

But secrecy - or, as Stanley would prefer it, security - even then was tight.

Control was becoming the ruling passion. Even before the formidable powers that his contracts ceded him, including ownership of virtually all his films after the 15 years or so of commercial exploitation by their distributors, Stanley had innate ways of exercising control.

At times, on the set with him or on location, even a visitor such as myself felt a concentration of will-power, as did the artists and crew.

Nothing malign. But a kind of cerebral intensity expressed through his voice, which was low but curt, and his eyes, which were large and dark. When he wanted it to, the voice could be enticing. But the eyes were the commanding feature. They locked one into their owner's system like a radar beam tracking a UFO.

I worked for Stanley only once, unpaid and briefly. He sought my journalist's know-how to help compose "period" news items for The Shining. He wanted me to invent 50 years of ill-omened events at the Overlook Hotel, sudden deaths, murders, arson, suicides, financial swindles, and so on, all suggesting the fateful ambience of the place.

The reports had to look as if they had been culled from Colorado newspapers during the first half of the 20th century. "But what do I know of newspapers in Colorado over one week, never mind 50 years!" I exploded. The reply was: You supply the items, I'll supply the papers.

A few weeks later, I got home to find cans containing 35mm microfiche of the front pages of The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, along with a fridge-sized reading machine.

It took me six weeks, working on my knees in the hall since the "reader" was too big to fit into my work-room, scanning newspaper reports of events in Colorado between 1900 and 1955, then inventing my own mini-dramas, fabricating headlines in a variety of period styles as the newspaper's make-up changed over the half-century.

I like to think I created a sense of hellish doom for the Overlook Hotel of which Dante - well, Stephen King at least - would have been proud. Stanley thought it ... OK. None of it was ever used: the sequence showing Nicholson discovering the scrapbook was abandoned as overly obvious - though the book can still be glimpsed at Jack's elbow while the "blocked" writer is labouring at his typewriter. Disappointed? Well, a little.

But an individual's feelings counted for little, or nothing, when Stanley set out to achieve what he wanted, or didn't want, or perhaps may want. All options were covered, most rejected. Sometimes people took it hard. Hence the occasional intimations of " ingratitude" that seep through otherwise ostrich recollections of some who were closest during filming.

The theme of " containment" or "entrapment" also exercised a persistent fascination for Stanley, even outside his films. I glimpsed this at first hand. He was with me when I took possession of the first home I owned in London, a newly built, modern apartment with wall-size windows. These afforded me a pleasant view, but were arousing fears of the less than pleasant things that might come through.

Stanley's remedy was simple: put up steel grilles. "You mean live behind bars!" I said.

"Oh, it's not so bad: you'll soon get used to it." Well, I did. With Venetian blinds, they soon ceased to radiate a feeling of voluntary incarceration.

Stanley, I imagine, could have thrived in a cell, given reasonable comforts and, crucially, communications with the outside world.

Adapted from Alexander Walker's book, Stanley Kubrick, Director (Weidenfeld & Nicolson).

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in