Kubrick's "habit," which Don mentions, had occurred to me too.  Indeed it
was after bad reviews following the New York premiere of 2001 that Kubrick
cut twenty minutes prior to the film's national release.  In the days of
platform release, Kubrick treated the New York opening as a kind of "out
of town" tryout.  With THE SHINING, which opened in NY, LA, and Toronto
three weeks before its general release, I saw the film on its opening day
in NY.  The next afternoon, when I returned for a second viewing, the
penultimate scene was gone and has been ever since.  With FULL METAL
JACKET, the first Kubrick film to open in immediate wide release mode,
Kubrick and Warners held a national sneak preview on a Saturday evening
three weeks before the film's opening (I remember seeing it then),
probably for the purpose of determining if cuts needed to be made,
although I'm fairly sure that none were.

While we argue about whether the EYES WIDE SHUT we're seeing is Kubrick's
"final" version, we should remember that Kubrick's death deprived him of
his "habit" of cutting based on audience response.  How he would have
handled this, given the combination of the immediate wide release date of
7/16/99 that Warners and Kubrick arrived at over a year ahead of time and
his mania over secrecy about the film's contents, no one can say (I'm now
sounding like the vague voiceover narrator in a Kubrick film, e.g., DR.
STRANGELOVE).

Dennis Bingham
Indiana University Indianapolis



On Thu, 29 Jul 1999, Donald Larsson wrote:

> Lang Thompson comments:
>
>
> >
> > According to several reports, Warners probably did touch a frame, quite a
> > few of them.  General press fluff has it that Kubrick had finished the film
> > but they're obviously recycling each other's copy while more substantive
> > coverage has offered evidence (some drawn from the film itself) that it
> > actually wasn't finished completely.  J. Hoberman even passes along rumors
> > that Pollack or Spielberg may have had a hand in tidying up the film.  And
> > much of the defense of the altered orgy scene--such as the laughably obtuse
> > Kubrick crony on NPR--tends to rely on the point that Kubrick did it
> > himself which takes a concept of artistic integrity too far; Kubrick's
> > authorization doesn't make it acceptable.  The fact that this was not done
> > for European prints shows that the villains are Warner Brothers AND the
> > MPAA.
>
> It was also Kubrick's habit to re-edit his films even after their
> "debut."  The most notable example is 2001, where he cut quite a bit
> after a rather ill-received advance screening.  Kubrick's habits even
> once prompted Andrew Sarris to ask in despair when we could regard a
> film as the "final" version.  Of course, Kubrick lived on into the age
> of video releases with "European" cuts, "director's cuts," etc., so he
> would probably relish the controversy.
>
>
> Don Larsson
> ----------------------
> Donald Larsson
> Minnesota State U, Mankato
> [log in to unmask]
>
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