Writing and rewriting Kubrick: or, how I learned to stop worrying about the Kubrickian memoirs and love Emilio D’Alessandro. (original) (raw)

After Stanley Kubrick’s death many people wrote about their experiences with the famously reclusive director, producing an unexpected plethora of recollections. At the strongly hyped eve of Eyes Wide Shut, co-scenarist Frederic Raphael published a somewhat bitter memoir, Eyes Wide Open, that caused such a sensation that it prompted Michael Herr to write an opposite account. The memoirs that were penned in the subsequent years by actors, writers and different collaborators produced a mosaic portrait of Kubrick as seen through their eyes. When I was asked to write Emilio D’Alessandro’s memoir, I found a unique story. Emilio, a former racing car driver, worked for Kubrick from 1971 to 1999, a time span unmatched by any of his collaborators. His duties during the films’ production gave him unrivalled access to the director, both in his private offices and on set. Being a complete alien to movie business, Emilio had the impartiality of an outside observer, without any preconceptions or expectations. The result of his experience, as written in Stanley Kubrick And Me: Thirty Years At His Side, is both a confirmation of the literature, and a complete revolution of Kubrick’s image: for the first time Kubrick is written about not as the filmmaking genius of the 20th century or a mysterious, bizarre character, but as a hard-working independent artisan.