The reality of the final moment, just before shooting [the scene], is so powerful that all previous analysis must yield before the impressions you receive under these circumstances, and unless you use this feedback to your positive advantage, unless you adjust to it, adapt to it and accept the sometimes terrifying weaknesses it can expose, you can never realize the most out of your film.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of embracing real-time experiences and adapting to them in filmmaking, despite challenges.
Stanley Kubrick's quote highlights the profound impact of the final moments of shooting a film, suggesting that directors and creative professionals must be open to the unexpected insights these moments provide. He argues that thorough analysis must give way to genuine emotional responses, and by accepting the vulnerabilities exposed during these intense times, filmmakers can truly enhance their work and achieve a deeper cinematic experience.
In practice
In a film class, while discussing the challenges of directing, you might use this quote to illustrate the need for adaptability.
Because I direct films, I have to live in a major English-speaking production center. That narrows it down to three places: Los Angeles, New York and London. I like New York, but it's inferior to London as a production center. Hollywood is best, but I don't like living there.
I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business.
A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.
The essence of dramatic form is to let an idea come over people without it being plainly stated. When you say something directly, it's simply not as potent as it is when you allow people to discover it for themselves.
Erotica is using a feather; pornograpy is using the whole chicken.
We live in capitalism, and capitalism is defined by the production line, and the production line is defined by specificity. If you see yourself as an artist, which I do, then you can't be limited by that. You can't let somebody tell you, 'Well, you can only draw this kind of picture or write that kind of book.'
The last time I saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places, it was burned. There were black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the redness.
When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.
When you make movies, it's such an important period of time, when you look back at each one of them. You want to be able to say that you did something that was a challenge and that changed you.
It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.
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