This is my eighth straight year of writing an Eyes Wide Shut article around Christmas, and thanks to the new Criterion 4K release, it’s finally kind of relevant. Not that I need new material or anything. Watching it again, there were multiple things that stuck out to me that I could have devoted an entire article to, but I’ll save for future years. That’s part of the reason why I love this movie so much; it’s the gift that keeps on giving. But having the Criterion is nice, and I’ve enjoyed (most) of the renewed attention the film has received online (at least on the dorky ass pages I follow).
I’ll get into the special features below, but the main draw of this new release was the restoration by director of photography Larry Smith, restoring the film to the grainy glory Kubrick intended. Only Kubrick could make me buy a 4K blu-ray so I could watch his film with less definition.
Honestly, I am the wrong guy to comment in depth about transfers and restorations and whatnot. I’ve never minded the smoothed out version of the film. With Kubrick, I’ve always been more interested in the different aspect ratios the home video releases feature. I’m the kind of dickhead who watched that first Predator release with the smoothing that made Arnold and Carl Weathers look like wax figures come to life and thought, “Holy shit, the future is here, and it’s called ‘blu-ray!’”
Still, I’m all for seeing movies the way the director intended, so of course I was on board for this release. Watching it in 4K, the graininess was off-putting at first, but I grew to appreciate it. Coupled with the constant glowing holiday lights, the grain truly does add a dream-like quality to the film.
Beyond the transfer, the main effect of this release was the re-opening of conspiracy theories. Suddenly interviews were popping up with people claiming there was no way this is the version Kubrick would have released had he lived. But others close to him are adamant that this was his finished cut, but isn’t that exactly what they would make them say? I don’t put much stock into this stuff. First off, because this is the only version we’re ever going to get. Secondly, most of these people are full of shit and were not there or involved in any way.
There are plenty of aspects about the conspiracy theories about this film that annoy me that I’ll get into below, but I also want to acknowledge the main thing that bothers me about it. A lot of these theories come from people hating the movie. Instead of admitting they didn’t like a Kubrick movie, they have to rely on conspiracy theories to explain why it’s bad. I’ve seen comments along the lines of, “How could this master filmmaker make such a mess? Of course the studio re-cut it.” I don’t understand why people can’t just own their opinion. It’s okay to not like movies from great filmmakers; there’s no need to make up a story to explain it.
Now I’m just sounding like a disgruntled fanboy. So with that in mind, I’ll continue bitching about conspiracy theories below.
I’ve covered plenty of conspiracy shit regarding Eyes Wide Shut over the years, but I feel the need to rehash some of it since a new release, especially in the middle of the Epstein files shit, opened the floodgates for the old theories to pop back up online. I like that it gets more people talking about the film again, but it also opens up a lot of dismissive comments that infuriate me. I’m talking about the people that buy into the “missing 24 minutes” that got Kubrick killed. They will just dismiss the movie with something like, “Eyes Wide Shut was such a mess because it got butchered by the studio. Who knows how great it could have been if Kubrick could have finished it?”
First off, I don’t buy into the missing footage conspiracy. Of course there’s a ridiculous amount of footage not used in the final film (it holds the record for longest continual shoot, after all), but that doesn’t mean there’s some magical footage that would’ve brought down a global pedophile ring.
Before I get into it, let me make it clear that I don’t think EWS is exclusively about pedophiles aside from LeeLee Sobieski’s character (which is taken from the book, by the way). I don’t buy into Helena being sold into sex slavery in the toy shop at the end just because two dudes walk behind her in the final scene.
Eyes Wide Shut was always about sex and marriage. The orgy was just one of many examples of Bill attempting to get revenge on Alice for her admission of fantasizing about cheating on him. The orgy is in the book, too. People act like Kubrick was really shining a light on a hidden world with that orgy. Did it really take watching Eyes Wide Shut for people to realize that rich and powerful people sometimes do weird sex shit? Human nature has not changed over our history. Powerful humans have been doing fucked-up sex shit forever, Kubrick just used common knowledge along with source material for the sex in the film.
Some people even go so far as to claim Kubrick was trying to expose Epstein with this film. Even though friends and colleagues claim Kubrick was not a shut in, no one can argue that he was a world traveler. He never left England after 2001: A Space Odyssey. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t still be in the know about nefarious shit, but what, did someone fax him about Epstein? That’s why the sex cult in the film is so vague and general. Kubrick knew shit like that existed, but it’s not like he ever witnessed it or investigated it. People take that moon landing conspiracy shit and try to turn Kubrick into this mastermind attempting to alert the world to things through his films, but if that was the case, he did a piss-poor job about it.
I’ve seen arguments about how particular Kubrick is about even set decoration as an example of everything having meaning and whatnot. I can buy this, to a degree. For instance, I do think the paintings and use of decorations have meaning, but a lot of stuff doesn’t. In an interview in a special feature with set decorator Lisa Leone, she explains that she was sending Kubrick pictures of a friend’s apartment for reference for Domino’s apartment. She found out her friend was moving and just getting rid of most of the stuff in the apartment; she told Kubrick and he had her ship all of it to England. Yes, that’s crazy, but it’s not hand-picking every little thing. Kubrick still had people working in different departments on his films. He was not a one-man show.
Finally, one of the main things actors bring up when discussing what it was like to work with Kubrick, they bring up how long he would take to film even simple scenes. Sometimes this was because he was waiting to get something he couldn’t explain to the performers. Other times it was because he was re-writing the scene. You can see this in the The Shining documentary his daughter filmed (he’s seen typing new pages of the script on set). Pollack has talked about the same thing happening for his billiard room scene. If Kubrick was this singularly focused genius who had every last detail meticulously planned out, then why the fuck was he re-writing scenes the day they were shooting them? People, especially the conspiracy theorists, don’t want to admit that Kubrick was collaborative and open to change . I just don’t know how someone who’s open to re-writing a scene on the day of shooting is also including secret messages exposing the world’s pedophiles: “Hold on, Sydney, I forgot to add that line about Jeffrey Epstein in your dialogue. Let me get that typed up, and we’ll finally finish this scene.”
The one thing I will concede would have been different had Kubrick lived is the R-rated cut of the film. No fucking way he would have been okay with those horrendous digitally inserted bodies blocking the more explicit moments. He would have either found a better way to do the scene with alternate footage, or perhaps his clout could have convinced the MPAA to change their rating. After all, the blocked out stuff is not that graphic.
The orgy edit is an example of what kind of meddling a studio would do without Kubrick around to stop them. Something to get an R-rating so the film could be shown in more theaters. I can’t imagine them seeing some extended cut with names and addresses of the world’s most powerful pedophiles and saying, “Okay, we need to give Kubrick a ‘heart attack’ so we can cut this stuff, and while we’re at it, let’s tone down that orgy.” Finally, if Kubrick is this once-in-a-generation genius, would he really be naïve enough to put something like that in a cut shown to executives who most likely take part in some weird sex shit, or are least good friends with people that do? He can’t be a mastermind and a dipshit at the same time. But maybe I’m just a fucking sheep. If so, I’ll keep being docile and just enjoy movies like this; I’ll leave the conspiracies to the lions and wolves in our society, fighting the online fight to combat the billions of pedophiles in the world by posting shit online. Godspeed, you keyboard warriors, but leave my Kubrick movies the fuck alone.
Special Features
There’s plenty of archival stuff available on older releases here, and a few things added that don’t really pertain to Eyes Wide Shut (like Lost Kubrick), and it’s fine. The new features are interviews with director of photography Larry Smith, set-decorator and second-unit director Lisa Leone, and archivist Georgina Orgill. Leone’s interview is the most interesting, as she details all the ways she helped Kubrick craft his fake, dream-like New York in England.
The other interesting addition to the special features is an interview with Sydney Pollack from 1999 included in the booklet. He doesn’t drop any bombshells, aside from confirming he was not on set for the orgy scene, so perhaps the pirate hat dude was Ziegler, but it definitely wasn’t Pollack. It’s just interesting to get Pollack’s perspective on Kubrick and his process.
The special features were always going to be secondary to the transfer since Kubrick fans are obsessive about seeing his films the way they were meant to be seen, but I was still a bit disappointed by them. I wasn’t expecting them to delve into conspiracy theories like Kubrick being killed by the studio or whatever, but there are some things I’ve come across over the years I would like more info about. There’s the boat picture with the Harfords that shows up from time to time reminding us of deleted scenes and endless alternate takes. Would it be so terrible to put together something for the fans? What’s the point of extensive archives if shit like this is never going to see the light of day?
And then there’s a supposed commentary track Sydney Pollack recorded for a 2007 release that was scrapped. I can’t find anything concrete about this, but man, if that’s out there, that would be amazing.
I guess I shouldn’t expect much from these releases as special features on most of Kubrick’s films consist of interviews with people years later or people not even directly involved. But a guy can dream. Here’s hoping the inevitable 8K release in a few years digs more deeply into the archives.
Random Thoughts
It’s always interesting to me how calm Bill is when he gets to Ziegler’s bathroom. They are at a Christmas party and suddenly he’s called into a bathroom with a shirtless Ziegler and a naked woman possibly ODing. I know doctors are trained to keep their cool, but this doesn’t even warrant a “what the fuck?” glance from Bill? But then again, that kind of cold demeanor in the face of rich guy fuckery is probably why Bill was invited to the party in the first place.
If it really was an OD, is Dr. Bill human Narcan? Can you just slowly talk someone out of an OD? I sincerely don’t know.
For years, because of this movie and True Lies, I thought it was very common when discussing art for someone to ask, “Do you like the period?” and for someone to respond, “I adore it.” That interaction happens at the beginning of True Lies, with a tuxedo-clad Austrian man saying this to a lady he’s flirting with at an ultra-rich guy’s party. Then in EWS, a tuxedo-clad Hungarian asks this and answers it with an “I adore it” as well. I couldn’t imagine there was any connection between the two movies, so I assumed fancy people said this shit all the time. Until…
I found this article, in which James Cameron claims he went to Kubrick’s house, and all Kubrick wanted to talk about was True Lies. So this had to be an intentional homage. Wild.
Not sure what the right move is when you’re a doctor, and you visit a dead patient, but I guess just putting your hand on their forehead for a second or two works.
“Marion, we barely know each other. I don’t think we’ve had a single conversation about anything except your father.”
“What do you recommend?” I hate it when people ask waitstaff what they recommend at restaurants. I couldn’t imagine posing the same question to a prostitute.
“I don’t keep track of the time.” Yeah, and you don’t keep track of whether or not the dude is using a condom, either, do you, Domino?
So some of the people treat the orgy like prom and take a fucking limo? What a bunch of horny losers.
I know Nick has a complex set-up there, but could they really not just go with a recording of his performance? Or is that part of the power trip? “Yeah, we’re so fucking rich we can afford to pay some dildo from across the country to play piano blindfolded while a handful of us fuck and the vast majority of us just stand around.”
“Sorry I woke you up from your gang bang dream in which I’m made the ultimate cuck. Anyhoo, good night, honey!”
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