An American Original: Ben Franklin

or any other reBENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Benjamin Franklin (January 17 [O.S. January 6] 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the most important and influental Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and a musical instrument. He formed both the first public lending library and fire department in America. He was an early proponent of colonial unity and as a political writer and activist he, more than anyone, invented the idea of an American nation[1] and as a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence possible.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Franklin learned printing from his older brother and became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia, becoming very wealthy, writing and publishing Poor Richard's Almanack and the Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin was interested in science and technology, and gained international renown for his famous experiments. He played a major role in establishing the University of Pennsylvania and Franklin & Marshall College and was elected the first president of the American Philosophical Society. Franklin became a national hero in America when he spearheaded the effort to have Parliament repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. From 1775 to 1776, Franklin was Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from 1785 to 1788 was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. Toward the end of his life, he became one of the most prominent abolitionists.
Franklin's colorful life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and status as one of America's most influential Founding Fathers, has seen Franklin honored on coinage and money; warships; the names of many towns, counties, educational institutions, namesakes, and companies; and more than two centuries after his death, countless cultural references.

Ancestry
Franklin's father, Josiah Franklin, was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England on December 23, 1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith and farmer, and Jane White. His mother, Abiah Folger, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller and schoolteacher and his wife Mary Morrill, a former indentured servant. A descendant of the Folgers, J. A. Folger, founded Folgers Coffee in the 19th century.
Ben Franklin's great-great-grandmother was Alice Elmy from Diss on the Suffolk / Norfolk border in England.
Around 1677, Josiah married Anne Child at Ecton, and over the next few years had three children. These half-siblings of Benjamin Franklin included Elizabeth (March 2, 1678), Samuel (May 16, 1681), and Hannah (May 25, 1683).
Sometime during the second half of 1683, the Franklins left England for Boston, Massachusetts. They had several more children in Boston, including Josiah Jr. (August 23, 1685), Ann (January 5, 1687), Joseph (February 5, 1688), and Joseph (June 30, 1689) (the first Joseph died soon after birth).
Josiah's first wife, Anne, died in Boston on July 9, 1689. He was married to Abiah Folger on November 25, 1689 in the Old South Meeting House of Boston by Samuel Willard.
Josiah and Abiah had the following children: John (December 7, 1690), Peter (November 22, 1692), Mary (September 26, 1694), James (February 4, 1697), Sarah (July 9, 1699), Ebenezer (September 20, 1701), Thomas (December 7, 1703), Benjamin (January 17, 1706), Lydia (August 8, 1708), and Jane (March 27, 1712).


Benjamin Franklin was born on Milk Street in Boston on January 17, 1706[2] and baptized at Old South Meeting House. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler, a maker of candles and soap, whose second wife, Abiah Folger, was Benjamin's mother. Josiah's marriages produced 17 children; Benjamin was the fifteenth child and youngest son. Josiah wanted Ben to attend school with the clergy but only had enough money to send him to school for two years. He attended Boston Latin School but did not graduate; he continued his education through voracious reading. Although "his parents talked of the church as a career" for Franklin, his schooling ended when he was ten. He then worked for his father for a time and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer. When Ben was 15, James created the New England Courant, the first truly independent newspaper in the colonies. When denied the option to write to the paper, Franklin invented the pseudonym of Mrs. Silence Dogood, who was ostensibly a middle-aged widow. The letters were published in the paper and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor the Courant's readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Ben when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin left his apprenticeship without permission and in so doing became a fugitive.[3]
At age 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, seeking a new start in a new city. When he first arrived he worked in several printer shops around town. However, he was not satisfied by the immediate prospects. After a few months, while working in a printing house, Franklin was convinced by Pennsylvania Governor Sir William Keith to go to London, ostensibly to acquire the equipment necessary for establishing another newspaper in Philadelphia. Finding Keith's promises of backing a newspaper to be empty, Franklin worked as a compositor in a printer's shop in what is now the Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great in the Smithfield area of London. Following this, he returned to Philadelphia in 1726 with the help of a merchant named Thomas Denham, who gave Franklin a position as clerk, shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in Denham's merchant business.[3]
In 1727, Benjamin Franklin, 21, created the Junto, a group of "like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community." The Junto was a discussion group for issues of the day; it subsequently gave rise to many organizations in Philadelphia.
Reading was a great pastime of the Junto, but books were rare and expensive. The members created a library, and initially pooled their own books together. This did not work, however, and Franklin initiated the idea of a subscription library, where the members pooled their monetary resources to buy books. This idea was the birth of the Library Company, with the charter of the Library Company of Philadelphia created in 1731 by Franklin.
Originally, the books were kept in the homes of the first librarians, but in 1739 the collection was moved to the second floor of the State House of Pennsylvania, now known as Independence Hall. In 1791, a new building was built specifically for the library. The Library Company flourished with no competition and gained many priceless collections from bibliophiles such as James Logan and his physician brother William. The Library Company is now a great scholarly and research library with 500,000 rare books, pamphlets, and broadsides, more than 160,000 manuscripts, and 75,000 graphic items.
Upon Denham's death, Franklin returned to his former trade. By 1730, Franklin had set up a printing house of his own and had contrived to become the publisher of a newspaper called The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette gave Franklin a forum for agitation about a variety of local reforms and initiatives through printed essays and observations. Over time, his commentary, together with a great deal of savvy about cultivating a positive image of an industrious and intellectual young man, earned him a great deal of social respect; though even after Franklin had achieved fame as a scientist and statesman, he habitually signed his letters with the unpretentious 'B. Franklin, Printer.'[3]
In 1731, Franklin was initiated into the local Freemason lodge, becoming a grand master in 1734, indicating his rapid rise to prominence in Pennsylvania.[4][5] That same year, he edited and published the first Masonic book in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson's Constitutions of the Free-Masons. Franklin remained a Freemason throughout the rest of his life.[6][7]
Deborah Read
In 1724, while a boarder in the Read home, Franklin had courted Deborah Read before going to London at Governor Keith's request. At that time, Miss Read's mother was wary of allowing her daughter to wed a seventeen-year old who was on his way to London. Her own husband having recently died, Mrs. Read declined Franklin's offer of marriage.[3]
While Franklin was in London, Deborah married a man named John Rodgers. This proved to be a regrettable decision. Rodgers shortly avoided his debts and prosecution by fleeing to Barbados, leaving Deborah behind. With Rodgers' fate unknown, and bigamy illegal, Deborah was not free to formally remarry.
In 1730, Franklin acknowledged an illegitimate son named William, who would eventually become the last Loyalist governor of New Jersey. While the identity of William's mother remains unknown, perhaps the responsibility of an infant child gave Franklin a reason to take up residence with Deborah Read. William was raised in the Franklin household but eventually broke with his father over the treatment of the colonies at the hands of the crown. However, he was not above using his father's fame to enhance his own standing.
Franklin established a common-law marriage with Deborah Read on September 1, 1730. In addition to raising William, Benjamin and Deborah Franklin had two children together. The first, Francis Folger Franklin, born October 1732, died of smallpox in 1736. Sarah Franklin, nicknamed Sally, was born in 1743. She eventually married Richard Bache, had seven children, and cared for her father in his old age.
Deborah's fear of the sea meant that she never accompanied Franklin on any of his extended trips to Europe, despite his repeated requests.
Either by his son or his daughter, Benjamin Franklin is a direct ascendant of Jack Coleman.
Success as author
In 1733, Franklin began to publish the famous Poor Richard's Almanack (with content both original and borrowed) under the name Richard Saunders, on which much of his popular reputation is based. Everybody who cared to know, knew it was Benjamin Franklin but it was a different name. So when he published as Poor Richard he could say things that he didn't want to say as Benjamin Franklin. It was as if this "other side" of Benjamin Franklin was just dying to speak his mind. "Poor Richard's Proverbs," adages from this almanac, such as "A penny saved is twopence dear" (often misquoted as "A penny saved is a penny earned"), "Fish and visitors stink in three days" remain common quotations in the modern world. Wisdom in folk society meant the ability to provide an apt adage for any occasion, and Franklin's readers became well prepared. He sold about ten thousand copies per year (a circulation equal to nearly three million today).[3]
In 1758, the year in which he ceased writing for the Almanack, he printed Father Abraham's Sermon. Franklin's autobiography, published after his death, has become one of the classics of the genre.
Inventions and scientific inquiries
Franklin was a prodigious inventor. Among his many creations were the lightning rod, the glass harmonica, the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses, and the flexible urinary catheter. Franklin never patented his inventions; in his autobiography he wrote, "... as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."[8] His inventions also included social innovations, such as paying forward.
As deputy postmaster, Franklin became interested in the North Atlantic Ocean circulation patterns which carried mail ships. Franklin worked with Timothy Folger, his cousin and experienced Nantucket whaler captain, and other experienced ship captains, learning enough to chart the Gulf Stream, giving it the name by which it's still known today. It took many years for British sea captains to follow Franklin's advice on navigating the current, but once they did, they were able to gain two weeks in sailing time.[9][10]
In 1743, Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society to help scientific men discuss their discoveries and theories. He began the electrical research that, along with other scientific inquiries, would occupy him for the rest of his life, in between bouts of politics and moneymaking.[3
In 1748, he retired from printing and went into other businesses. He created a partnership with his foreman, David Hall, which provided Franklin with half of the shop's profits for 18 years. This lucrative business arrangement provided leisure time for study, and in a few years he had made discoveries that gave him a reputation with the educated throughout Europe and especially in France.
His discoveries included his investigations of electricity. Franklin proposed that "vitreous" and "resinous" electricity were not different types of "electrical fluid" (as electricity was called then), but the same electrical fluid under different pressures. He was the first to label them as positive and negative respectively,[11] and he was the first to discover the principle of conservation of charge.[12] In 1750, he published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment (using a 40-foot-tall iron rod instead of a kite) and extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. On June 15, Franklin may have possibly conducted his famous kite experiment in Philadelphia and also successfully extracted sparks from a cloud, although there are theories that suggest he never performed the experiment. Franklin's experiment was not written up until Joseph Priestley's 1767 History and Present Status of Electricity; the evidence shows that Franklin was insulated (not in a conducting path, since he would have been in danger of electrocution in the event of a lightning strike). (Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann of Saint Petersburg, Russia, were electrocuted during the months following Franklin's experiment.) In his writings, Franklin indicates that he was aware of the dangers and offered alternative ways to demonstrate that lightning was electrical, as shown by his use of the concept of electrical ground. If Franklin did perform this experiment, he did not do it in the way that is often described, flying the kite and waiting to be struck by lightning, as it would have been fatal.[13] Instead, he used the kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud, which implied that lightning was electrical.
On October 19 in a letter to England explaining directions for repeating the experiment, Franklin wrote:
"When rain has wet the kite twine so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it streams out plentifully from the key at the approach of your knuckle, and with this key a phial, or Leiden jar, maybe charged: and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all other electric experiments [may be] performed which are usually done by the help of a rubber glass globe or tube; and therefore the sameness of the electrical matter with that of lightening completely demonstrated."[14]
Franklin's electrical experiments led to his invention of the lightning rod. He noted that conductors with a sharp rather than a smooth point were capable of discharging silently, and at a far greater distance. He surmised that this knowledge could be of use in protecting buildings from lightning, by attaching "upright Rods of Iron, made sharp as a Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and from the Foot of those Rods a Wire down the outside of the Building into the Ground;...Would not these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire silently out of a Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible Mischief!" Following a series of experiments on Franklin's own house, lightning rods were installed on the Academy of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) and the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in 1752.[15]
In recognition of his work with electricity, Franklin received the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1753, and in 1756 he became one of the few eighteenth century Americans to be elected as a Fellow of the Society. The cgs unit of electric charge has been named after him: one franklin (Fr) is equal to one statcoulomb.
On October 21, 1743, according to popular myth, a storm moving from the southwest denied Franklin the opportunity of witnessing a lunar eclipse. Franklin was said to have noted that the prevailing winds were actually from the northeast, contrary to what he had expected. In correspondence with his brother, Franklin learned that the same storm had not reached Boston until after the eclipse, despite the fact that Boston is to the northeast of Philadelphia. He deduced that storms do not always travel in the direction of the prevailing wind, a concept which would have great influence in meteorology.[16]
Franklin noted a principle of refrigeration by observing that on a very hot day, he stayed cooler in a wet shirt in a breeze than he did in a dry one. To understand this phenomenon more clearly Franklin conducted experiments. On one warm day in Cambridge, England, in 1758, Franklin and fellow scientist John Hadley experimented by continually wetting the ball of a mercury thermometer with ether and using bellows to evaporate the ether. With each subsequent evaporation, the thermometer read a lower temperature, eventually reaching 7 °F (-14 °C). Another thermometer showed the room temperature to be constant at 65 °F (18 °C). In his letter "Cooling by Evaporation," Franklin noted that “one may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer’s day."
Musical endeavors
Franklin is known to have played the violin, the harp, and the guitar. He also composed music, notably a string quartet in early classical style, and invented a much-improved version of the glass harmonica, in which each glass was made to rotate on its own, with the player's fingers held steady, instead of the other way around; this version soon found its way to Europe.[17]
Public life
In 1736, Franklin created the Union Fire Company, the first volunteer fire fighting company in America. In the same year, he printed a new currency for New Jersey based on innovative anti-counterfeiting techniques which he had devised.
As he matured, Franklin began to concern himself more with public affairs. In 1743, he set forth a scheme for The Academy and College of Philadelphia. He was appointed president of the academy in November 13, 1749, and it opened on August 13, 1751. At its first commencement, on May 17, 1757, seven men graduated; six with a Bachelor of Arts and one as Master of Arts. It was later merged with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to become the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1753, both Harvard and Yale awarded him honorary degrees.[18]
In 1751, Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish a hospital. Pennsylvania Hospital was the first hospital in what was to become the United States of America.

Franklin became involved in Philadelphia politics and rapidly progressed. In October 1748, he was selected as a councilman, in June 1749 he became a Justice of the Peace for Philadelphia, and in 1751 he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly. On August 10, 1753, Franklin was appointed joint deputy postmaster-general of North America. His most notable service in domestic politics was his reform of the postal system, but his fame as a statesman rests chiefly on his subsequent diplomatic services in connection with the relations of the colonies with Great Britain, and later with France.[3]
In 1754, he headed the Pennsylvania delegation to the Albany Congress. This meeting of several colonies had been requested by the Board of Trade in England to improve relations with the Indians and defense against the French. Franklin proposed a broad Plan of Union for the colonies. While the plan was not adopted, elements of it found their way into the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.
In 1757, he was sent to England by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a colonial agent to protest against the political influence of the Penn family, the proprietors of the colony. He remained there for five years, striving to end the proprietors' prerogative to overturn legislation from the elected Assembly, and their exemption from paying taxes on their land. His lack of influential allies in Whitehall led to the failure of this mission. In 1759, the University of St Andrews awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree. In 1762, Oxford University awarded Franklin an honorary doctorate for his scientific accomplishments and from then on he went by "Doctor Franklin." He also managed to secure a post for his illegitimate son, William Franklin, as Colonial Governor of New Jersey.[3]
During his stay in London, Franklin became involved in radical politics. He was a member of the Club of Honest Whigs, alongside thinkers such as Richard Price.
In 1756, Franklin became a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (now Royal Society of Arts or RSA, which had been founded in 1754), whose early meetings took place in coffee shops in London's Covent Garden district, close to Franklin's main residence in Craven Street (the only one of his residences to survive and which opened to the public as the Benjamin Franklin House museum on January 17, 2006). After his return to America, Franklin became the Society's Corresponding Member and remained closely connected with the Society. The RSA instituted a Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1956 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Franklin's birth and the 200th anniversary of his membership of the RSA.
During his stays at Craven Street in London between 1757 and 1775, Franklin developed a close friendship with his landlady, Margaret Stevenson and her circle of friends and relations, in particular her daughter Mary, who was more often known as Polly.
In 1759, he visited Edinburgh with his son, and recalled his conversations there as "the densest happiness of my life."[19]
He also joined the influential Birmingham based Lunar Society with whom he regularly corresponded and on occasion, visited in Birmingham in the West Midlands.
Coming of Revolution
In 1763, soon after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania, the western frontier was engulfed in a bitter war known as Pontiac's Rebellion. The Paxton Boys, a group of settlers convinced that the Pennsylvania government was not doing enough to protect them from American Indian raids, murdered a group of peaceful Susquehannock Indians and then marched on Philadelphia. Franklin helped to organize the local militia in order to defend the capital against the mob, and then met with the Paxton leaders and persuaded them to disperse. Franklin wrote a scathing attack against the racial prejudice of the Paxton Boys. "If an Indian injures me," he asked, "does it follow that I may revenge that Injury on all Indians?"[20]
Many of the Paxton Boys' supporters were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and German Reformed or Lutherans from rural western Pennsylvania, leading to claims that Franklin was biased in favor of the urban Quaker elite of the East. Because of these accusations, and other attacks on his character, Franklin lost his seat in the 1764 Assembly elections. This defeat, however, allowed him the opportunity to return to London, where he sealed his reputation as a pro-American radical.[21]
In 1764, Franklin was dispatched to England as an agent for the colony, this time to petition King George III to establish central British control of Pennsylvania, away from its hereditary "proprietors." During this visit he also became colonial agent for Georgia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. In London, he actively opposed the proposed Stamp Act, despite accusations by opponents in America that he had been complicit in its creation. His principled opposition to the Stamp Act, and later to the Townshend Acts of 1767, led to the end of his dream of a career in the British Government and his alliance with proponents of colonial independence. It also led to an irreconcilable break with his son William, who remained loyal to the British.[21]
In September 1767, Franklin visited Paris with his usual traveling partner, Sir John Pringle. News of his electrical discoveries was widespread in France. His reputation meant that he was introduced to many influential scientists and politicians, and also to King Louis XV.[21]
While living in London in 1768, he developed a phonetic alphabet in A Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling. This reformed alphabet discarded six letters Franklin regarded as redundant (c, j, q, w, x and y), and substituted six new letters for sounds he felt lacked letters of their own. His new alphabet, however, never caught on and he eventually lost interest.[22]
In 1771, Franklin traveled extensively around the British Isles staying with, among others, Joseph Priestley and David Hume. In Dublin, Franklin was invited to sit with the members of the Irish Parliament rather than in the gallery. He was the first American to be given this honor.[23] While touring Ireland, he was moved by the level of poverty he saw. Ireland's economy was affected by the same trade regulations and laws of England which governed America. Franklin feared that America could suffer the same affects should Britain’s colonial exploitation continue.[24]
In 1773, Franklin published two of his most celebrated pro-American satirical essays: Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One, and An Edict by the King of Prussia.[25] He also published an Abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer, anonymously with Francis Dashwood. Among the unusual features of this work is a funeral service reduced to six minutes in length, "to preserve the health and lives of the living."[21]
Hutchinson Letters
Franklin obtained private letters of Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson and lieutenant governor Andrew Oliver which proved they were encouraging London to crack down on the rights of the Bostonians. Franklin sent them to America where they escalated the tensions. Franklin now appeared to the British as the fomenter of serious trouble. Hopes for a peaceful solution ended as he was systematically ridiculed and humiliated by the Privy Council. He left London in March 1775.[21]
Declaration of Independence


By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, the American Revolution had begun with fighting at Lexington and Concord. The New England militia had trapped the main British army in Boston. The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to the Second Continental Congress. In 1776, he was a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence and made several small changes to Thomas Jefferson's draft.[21]
At the signing, he is quoted as having replied to a comment by Hancock that they must all hang together: "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,"[27]

Ambassador to France: 1776-1785
In December 1776, Franklin was dispatched to France as commissioner for the United States. He lived in a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy, donated by Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont who supported the United States. Franklin remained in France until 1785, and was such a favorite of French society that it became fashionable for wealthy French families to decorate their parlors with a painting of him. He was highly flirtatious in the French manner (but did not have any actual affairs). He conducted the affairs of his country towards the French nation with great success, which included securing a critical military alliance in 1778 and negotiating the Treaty of Paris (1783). During his stay in France, Benjamin Franklin as a freemason was Grand Master of the Lodge Les Neuf Sœurs from 1779 until 1781.
Constitutional Convention
When he finally returned home in 1785, Franklin occupied a position only second to that of George Washington as the champion of American independence. Le Ray honored him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Duplessis that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. After his return, Franklin became an abolitionist, freeing both of his slaves. He eventually became president of Pennsylvania Abolition Society.[28]
In 1787, Franklin served as a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention. He held an honorific position and seldom engaged in debate. He is the only Founding Father who is a signatory of all four of the major documents of the founding of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, the Treaty of Alliance with France, and the United States Constitution.
In 1787, a group of prominent ministers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, proposed the foundation of a new college to be named in Franklin's honor. Franklin donated £200 towards the development of Franklin College, which is now called Franklin & Marshall College.
Between 1771 and 1788, he finished his autobiography. While it was at first addressed to his son, it was later completed for the benefit of mankind at the request of a friend.
In his later years, as Congress was forced to deal with the issue of slavery, Franklin wrote several essays that attempted to convince his readers of the importance of the abolition of slavery and of the integration of Africans into American society. These writings included:
An Address to the Public, (1789)
A Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks (1789), and
Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade (1790).
In 1790, Quakers from New York and Pennsylvania presented their petition for abolition. Their argument against slavery was backed by the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society and its president, Benjamin Franklin.
President of Pennsylvania
Special balloting conducted 18 November 1785 unanimously elected Franklin the sixth President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, replacing John Dickinson. The office of President of Pennsylvania was analogous to the modern position of Governor. It is not clear why Dickinson needed to be replaced with less than two weeks remaining before the regular election. Franklin held that office for slightly over three years, longer than any other, and served the Constitutional limit of three full terms. Shortly after his initial election he was re-elected to a full term on 29 October 1785, and again in the fall of 1786 and on 31 October 1787. Officially, his term concluded on 5 November 1788, but there is some question regarding the de facto end of his term, suggesting that the aging Franklin may not have been actively involved in the day-to-day operation of the Council toward the end of his time in office.

Virtue, religion and personal beliefs


A bust of Franklin by Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Like the other advocates of republicanism, Franklin emphasized that the new republic could survive only if the people were virtuous in the sense of attention to civic duty and rejection of corruption. All his life he had been exploring the role of civic and personal virtue, as expressed in Poor Richard's aphorisms.
Although Franklin's parents had intended for him to have a career in the church, Franklin became disillusioned with organized religion after discovering Deism. "I soon became a thorough Deist."[29] He went on to attack Christian principles of free will and morality in a 1725 pamphlet, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.[30] He consistently attacked religious dogma, arguing that morality was more dependent upon virtue and benevolent actions than on strict obedience to religious orthodoxy: "I think opinions should be judged by their influences and effects; and if a man holds none that tend to make him less virtuous or more vicious, it may be concluded that he holds none that are dangerous, which I hope is the case with me."[31]
A few years later, Franklin repudiated his 1725 pamphlet as an embarrassing "erratum." In 1790, just about a month before he died, Franklin wrote the following in a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, who had asked him his views on religion...:

“ As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble....[3]
”
Like most Enlightenment intellectuals, Franklin separated virtue, morality, and faith from organized religion, although he felt that if religion in general grew weaker, morality, virtue, and society in general would also decline. Thus he wrote Thomas Paine, "If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it." According to David Morgan,[32] Franklin was a proponent of all religions. He prayed to "Powerful Goodness" and referred to God as the "INFINITE." John Adams noted that Franklin was a mirror in which people saw their own religion: "The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of England claimed him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought him half a Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet Quaker." Whatever else Benjamin Franklin was, concludes Morgan, "he was a true champion of generic religion." Ben Franklin was noted to be "the spirit of the Enlightenment."
Walter Isaacson argues that Franklin became uncomfortable with an unenhanced version of deism and came up with his own conception of the Creator.[31] Franklin outlined his concept of deity in 1728, in his Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion.[33] From this, Isaacson compares Franklin's conception of deity to that of strict deists and orthodox Christians. He concludes that unlike most pure deists, Franklin believed that a faith in God should inform our daily actions, but that, like other deists, his faith was devoid of sectarian dogma. Isaacson also discusses Franklin's conception that God had created beings who do interfere in wordly matters, a point that has led some commentators, most notably A. Owen Aldridge, to read Franklin as embracing some sort of polytheism, with a bevy of lesser gods overseeing various realms and planets.
On July 4, 1776, Congress appointed a committee that included Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to design the Great Seal of the United States.[34] Each member of the committee proposed a unique design: Franklin's proposal featured a design with the motto: "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." This design was to portray a scene from the Book of Exodus, complete with Moses, the Israelites, the pillar of fire, and George III depicted as Pharaoh.[35]
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when the convention seemed headed for disaster due to a vitoral debate, the elderly Franklin displayed his conviction that was intimately involved in human affairs by requesting that each day's session begin with prayers. Franklin recalled the days of the Revolutionary War, when the American leaders assembled in prayer daily, seeking "divine guidance" from the "Father of lights." He then rhetorically asked, "And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance?"[36]
Although Franklin may have financially supported one particular Presbyterian group in Philadelphia,[37] it nevertheless appears that he never formally joined any particular Christian denominationligion.
According to the epitaph Franklin wrote for himself at the age of 20, it is clear that he believed in a physical resurrection of the body some time after death. Whether this belief was held throughout his life is unclear.
Virtue
Franklin sought to cultivate his character by a plan of thirteen virtues, which he developed at age 20 (in 1726) and continued to practice in some form for the rest of his life. His autobiography (see references below) lists his thirteen virtues as:
1. "TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation."
2. "SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation."
3. "ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time."
4. "RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve."
5. "FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing."
6. "INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions."
7. "SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly."
8. "JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty."
9. "MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve."
10. "CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation."
11. "TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable."
12. "CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation."
13. "HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates."

Death and legacy


The grave of Benjamin Franklin in Christ Church Burial Ground, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Franklin died on April 17, 1790, at age 84. His funeral was attended by approximately 20,000 people. He was interred in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia. In 1728, as a young man, Franklin wrote what he hoped would be his own epitaph: "The Body of B. Franklin Printer; Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and Amended By the Author. He was born on January 17, 1706. Died 17."[38] In 1773, when Franklin's work had moved from printing to science and politics, he corresponded with a French scientist on the subject of preserving the dead for later revival by more advanced scientific methods, writing:
"I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection."[2] (Extended excerpt also online [3].)
Franklin's actual grave, however, as he specified in his final will, simply reads "Benjamin and Deborah Franklin."[39]
His death is described in the book The Life of Benjamin Franklin: "...when his pain and difficulty of breathing entirely left him, and his family were flattering themselves with the hopes of his recovery, when an imposthumations, which had formed itself in his lungs, suddenly burst, and discharged a great quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up while he had strength to do it; but, as that failed, the organ of inspiration became gradually oppressed; a calm lethargic state succeeded, and on the 17th of April, 1790, at eleven o'clock at night, he quietly expired, closing a long and useful life of eighty-four years and three months."
Franklin bequeathed £1,000 (about $4,400 at the time) each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, in trust to gather interest for 200 years. The trust began in 1785 when a French mathematician named Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour wrote a parody of Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack" called "Fortunate Richard." Mocking the unbearable spirit of American optimism represented by Franklin, the Frenchman wrote that Fortunate Richard left a small sum of money in his will to be used only after it had collected interest for 500 years. Franklin, who was 79 years old at the time, wrote to the Frenchman, thanking him for a great idea and telling him that he had decided to leave a bequest of 1,000 pounds each to his native Boston and his adopted Philadelphia. As of 1990, more than $2,000,000 had accumulated in Franklin's Philadelphia trust, which had loaned the money to local residents. From 1940 to 1990, the money was used mostly for mortgage loans. When the trust came due, Philadelphia decided to spend it on scholarships for local high school students. Franklin's Boston trust fund accumulated almost $5,000,000 during that same time, and was used to establish a trade school that became the Franklin Institute of Boston.[40]
Franklin's likeness is ubiquitous. Since 1928, it has adorned American $100 bills, which are sometimes referred to in slang as "Benjamins" or "Franklins." From 1948 to 1964, Franklin's portrait was on the half dollar. He has appeared on a $50 bill and on several varieties of the $100 bill from 1914 and 1918. Franklin appears on the $1,000 Series EE Savings bond. The city of Philadelphia contains around 5,000 likenesses of Benjamin Franklin, about half of which are located on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway (a major thoroughfare) and Benjamin Franklin Bridge (the first major bridge to connect Philadelphia with New Jersey) are named in his honor.
In 1976, as part of a bicentennial celebration, Congress dedicated a 20-foot (6 m) marble statue in Philadelphia's Franklin Institute as the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial. Many of Franklin's personal possessions are also on display at the Institute, one of the few national memorials located on private property.
In London, his house at 36 Craven Street was first marked with a blue plaque and has since been opened to the public as the Benjamin Franklin House.[41] In 1998, workmen restoring the building dug up the remains of six children and four adults hidden below the home. The Times reported on February 11, 1998:
Initial estimates are that the bones are about 200 years old and were buried at the time Franklin was living in the house, which was his home from 1757 to 1762 and from 1764 to 1775. Most of the bones show signs of having been dissected, sawn or cut. One skull has been drilled with several holes. Paul Knapman, the Westminster Coroner, said yesterday: "I cannot totally discount the possibility of a crime. There is still a possibility that I may have to hold an inquest."
The Friends of Benjamin Franklin House (the organization responsible for the restoration) note that the bones were likely placed there by William Hewson, who lived in the house for two years and who had built a small anatomy school at the back of the house. They note that while Franklin likely knew what Hewson was doing, he probably did not participate in any dissections because he was much more of a physicist than a medical man.

Tom Cruise Is A Complete Nut

Bill Hicks

It's October 1991, inside the brass-and-ferns Punch Line comedy club in San Francisco. The sound system is blasting Stevie Ray Vaughan at top volume. I'm here because a friend has pestered me for weeks about a comedian named Bill Hicks, whom I've never heard of. He's performed in the city several previous nights, and I've finally made it down to see a show. I'm busy editing a satirical magazine called the Nose, and writing a similar column for SF Weekly. There's funny all around me. I have plenty of friends who are cartoonists, writers, comedians. And the country is already full to bursting with comedy clubs and lame comics. So who the hell is Hicks?

He walks onstage wearing all black, thanks the crowd, and says it's really great to be here, wherever he is. Pulling out a cigarette, he asks a guy in the front row how much he smokes. A pack and a half a day, the man answers. Hicks snorts. "You little puss -- I go through two lighters a day." He lights his cigarette, the flame adjusted to a ridiculous height, flaring like a blowtorch, and delivers a message for all the uptight, whining, prissy little nonsmokers: "Nonsmokers die ... every day." He pauses and exhales up to the ceiling. "Sleep tight."

Bill Hicks died of cancer in 1994. But here in 2002, his career is doing quite well. A greatest hits CD, "Philosophy." A brand-new Harper Collins biography, "American Scream." Bill Hicks tributes at comedy festivals in Aspen and Montreal, another tribute in London, Hollywood screenplays in the works, all of it eight years after his death. The timing is weird, but not surprising. The specter of Andy Kaufman waited 15 years for his film treatment, and 17 years for the biographies. America often overlooks its own best resources, especially in the marginalized subculture of stand-up comedy.

Back at that club in 1991, as I watched the show, I had no idea that my life was going to become intertwined with Bill Hicks, however briefly, until his death. I was preoccupied with listening to the guy, because he was astonishing -- polished, uncompromising comic sermons about hot-button subjects like Christians, JFK conspiracies, drugs, abortion. I'd never seen a comic so committed to communicating with an audience, and yet he could really care less if the crowd liked him. One bit about overpopulation ended with him squatting down to stare at the front row, and miming the act of a trailer-trash mother squeezing out unnecessary babies: "There's Trucker, Junior. There's your brother, Pizza Delivery Boy, Junior. There's your other brother, Will Work For Food, Junior," each birth punctuated with a loud "thunk." This was rude humor taken to a new level. The antithesis of TV-friendly material. No wonder I'd never heard of him.

He was an acquired taste, and the San Francisco audience got it immediately. The city has always been a town hip to comedy, from Tom Lehrer to Lenny Bruce and Robin Williams. When tourists did walk out, he'd wave goodbye and thank them for coming.

This wasn't standup comedy. It was something else: a tent revival meeting for a congregation of paranoid chain smokers? The word scalding came to mind. You felt it in your chest. I kept hearing an image, the sound of bacon frying, and thought, I need to know this guy. I introduced myself to him after the show, and he gave me his number.

I returned to the magazine offices and described to the staff what I'd seen. A black-humored, satanic Texan, holding forth on the world, articulating the doubts of every American who was paying attention. I'm pretty sure it was the first time any of us had heard Dick Clark referred to as "the anti-Christ." In some ways Hicks was expressing in a live context what we were attempting to do in the world of magazines. Except, of course, he was actually making money.

In that pre-Internet time, the Lollapalooza generation developed a perverse fascination with the dark side, from autopsy photos to vintage porn, medical oddities, tattoos, piercings and government conspiracies. America's pop culture was swirling with hellish apocalyptic information. Our magazine eagerly squeezed humor from this new shock chic. We didn't really pay attention to comedy. To us, the world was already funny and disturbing enough. But Hicks seemed to fit into this groove. We had to interview him.

I contacted his management, and starting reading his press kit: suburbs of Houston, doing comedy since age 14, part of the hard-partying Texas Outlaw comedy collective along with Sam Kinison and Ron Shock. He'd recently gotten sober, had headlined six shows at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. He'd done Letterman, released a CD, "Dangerous," and was about to put out another. It seemed like he'd had at least two careers already, and he wasn't yet 30.

What impressed me most was that he was an autodidact redneck with a high school education, who turned around and used his background to his advantage. (In one of his bits a dimwitted waffle house waitress came up to his table, saw him reading a book, and asked, "What are you reading for?" Not "what are you reading?" as Hicks put it, but "what are you reading for?" His reply was brutally funny: "Well, I read for a lot of reasons, but one of them is so I don't end up a fucking waffle waitress.")

A few weeks later Hicks, who'd agreed to an interview, called my apartment from a hotel in Houston. As we talked about comedy and sacred cows, he tossed in things he'd read by Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut. I asked him if he ever saw himself on a network television show. He paused, and then brought up a quote from Paul Westerberg of the Replacements. The idea was essentially if you hate elevator music, by all means write elevator music.

"Like, go in there and change it," he said. "I thought that was very interesting. But I think there's so many people that hate elevator music, they're not all gonna be able to fit on the elevator. I don't know. It depends on the show. I'm totally confused about what I'm going to do with my life. That's why I'm going to an astrologer later today." He laughed.

When asked for a favorite review, he dug up a letter to a club owner from an irate woman who had attended a recent show, hoping to see some "real and refreshing humor," like Milton Berle or Sid Caesar. Instead, she listened to Hicks do bits about serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. He read the entire letter to me over the phone, shrieking with laughter at the woman's anger -- he had a great evil cackle -- and how she thought his act had no scruples or dignity. He loved such feedback; it didn't seem to bother him at all.

"You know, I don't think mass murder is funny at all," he said. "Probably the opposite. But I just have this weird theory. The best kind of comedy to me is when you make people laugh at things they've never laughed at, and also take a light into the darkened corners of people's minds, exposing them to the light. I thought the whole point of it was to make you feel un-alone. Many thoughts I do have are not my own thoughts. You know what I mean? They're not secret thoughts."

Another of his bits, he told me, was about the movie "Silence of the Lambs." The previous night, he had asked the audience if they found the film funny, a man cutting up women and wearing their skin as coats. Because he happened to think it was hysterical. The crowd oohed. Hicks described the movie's advertising, which boasted that the film was so scary, viewers will hold their seats until their knuckles are white.

"That's the way I feel after I see Chevy Chase movies," said Hicks. "I pace the floor, I can't sleep, I'm frightened. Are they makin' another 'Fletch'? How does this guy do it -- is it a pact with the devil? Every one of his movies sucks. And then I go, 'Maybe they should, you know, skin Chevy Chase and put his skin on a funny person.'"

We published the interview in early 1992, and ran cover type which announced: "Bill Hicks: Texas Outlaw Comic Says 'Skin Chevy Chase!'" Hicks returned to San Francisco, and after the show I handed him the issue, pointed to the cover type, and he busted up laughing.

Many comics will put together a solid set of jokes, and then trot out the same bits over and over again, changing words here and there. But Hicks constantly wrote more material. The quality progressed as well. No more images of kiddie-pop stars Tiffany and Debbie Gibson spanking each other's bottoms ("Now there's a video I'll watch"). His attention was shifting to the rest of the world -- the Rodney King beating, President Bush and the Gulf War, America's bully foreign policy and insights gleaned from his tours of Australia and the U.K. He asked for everyone in the audience who worked in marketing or advertising to kill themselves: "Suck a tailpipe. Hang yourself. Borrow a pistol from an NRA buddy. Rid the world of your evil fucking presence. OK, back to the show. You know what bugs me though, is that everyone here who's in marketing is thinking the same thing, 'Oh cool, Bill's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a huge market.'"

After the shows we'd chat a bit, but each visit he was attracting more and more people, crowding around him, that unmistakable momentum of someone on the rise. I called up my friend John Magnuson.

Magnuson was in his 60s, a film and advertising producer, and had worked with Lenny Bruce. Their 1965 collaboration, "The Lenny Bruce Performance Film," was shot in one take in a San Francisco nightclub, an unedited record of Bruce's act made expressly as a document, to be submitted as evidence in Bruce's ongoing obscenity trials. Magnuson had told me stories about the two of them planning the project, walking the North Beach streets until the sun rose, talking like maniacs. The final film ended up a legendary piece of history, serving as a record of Bruce's last-ever club gig and playing a pivotal role in clearing his name after his death.

Magnuson was always interested in the current state of comedy and satire. Hicks sounded right up his alley. If anyone could appreciate a scathing comedian who challenged the status quo, it had to be Magnuson. I suggested he check out a Hicks show, but he was skeptical. I guess I wasn't the first to recommend a new comedian to him over the years.

In the summer of 1993, Magnuson caught Hicks' show at Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco, and had a peculiar feeling. Afterwards he walked up and introduced himself, as he had done with Lenny Bruce 30 years earlier. Magnuson told him he'd never seen anybody that had reminded him so much of Bruce. Hicks was surprised, and very flattered. The two met up the next day, and drove around the city, shooting scenes for a ninja film spoof that Hicks had been working on.

Later that week, Cobb's was packed. After Austin and Chicago, San Francisco was Hicks' biggest market. Local radio appearances, and a positive review from the Chronicle newspaper were drawing in the curious. But there was something else in the room, a conscious efficiency, as if there wasn't time to waste. Microphones had been mounted in the ceiling of the club, recording the shows as audio sketches for a new album, "Rant in E Minor" (the final taping was eventually done in Austin).

The "Rant" album opens up with Hicks saying hello to the crowd, and immediately going off on the stunted intellectual behavior of Americans, about how the nation operates on an eighth grade mentality. A woman in the crowd shook her head no, and Hicks took the opportunity:

"Please don't debate me, it's my one true talent. I have 23 hours to develop this web of conspiracy theory, so please, just relax and enjoy your hair ... Your little cracker spawn are back at the hotel choking down the mini bar contents, probably fucking each other and producing more little crackers to come fuck with my life, you inbred redneck hillbilly fucking tourist, you. Good evening, how are you tonight? Welcome, welcome to 'No Sympathy Night.' Welcome to 'You're Wrong Night.'"

This new material was his darkest yet. He was furious over how the government handled the David Koresh/Branch Davidian episode, and kept repeating that Janet Reno and Bill Clinton were liars and murderers. "I fucking hate patriotism," he spat. "It's a round world last time I checked."

Hypocritical right-wing Christians were always prominent targets, but now the tone was even more poetically cruel. He envisioned the day when Sen. Jesse Helms finally snapped and committed suicide. Afterwards, authorities would find the skins of young children hanging in his attic, and we'd see his wife on CNN, saying, "I always wondered about Jesse's collection of little shoes."

This phase was some of his best writing, crafted for the hair-raising joy of live performance. His impersonation of a sell-out Jay Leno was devastating. But it bugged me that he kept insulting the audience. If we didn't react properly to something he said, he'd call us a bunch of sleepy cows, following each other blindly, and do a quick impression of a lazy cow chewing its cud. I remember sitting in the audience and thinking, Who are you calling a cow? I came here to see you because I'm not a cow.

When the show ended, I asked the manager if I could speak to Bill. He burst out of the backstage room and came over to where I was sitting, very focused, intense but friendly. We talked about his change in management, and his newest album-in-progress, "Arizona Bay." He thanked me for introducing him to Magnuson, and said he was looking forward to working with him. Over his shoulder I spied the tape recorder.

Hicks had always been obsessed with recording his work. Leaving a legacy was very important to him. But there was another reason for taping all the shows. A month earlier, doctors had diagnosed him with pancreatic cancer. It had already spread to his liver. In most cases, it was quick and fatal. At this point he hadn't told even close friends. That was the last time I saw him.

In the coming weeks, Magnuson talked to Hicks frequently, and kept me updated. Publishers offered book deals. The Nation invited him to contribute. He envisioned a live performance film of his "Rant in E Minor" material, shot in San Francisco, filmed in black and white. Hicks called Magnuson and asked him to do the film. Magnuson was amazed. First he got to work with Lenny Bruce, and now Hicks. As the two discussed the project, Hicks didn't seem at all to Magnuson like the kind of guy who had been told he was going to die.

In October, Hicks was scheduled to be a guest on Letterman, his 12th appearance. I was feeling out of the loop, juggling a magazine and a column, and made it a point to stay home to watch. This was Letterman's new CBS persona, tassle-loafered and double-breasted, no more sweaters and Adidas sneakers. He introduced Hicks at the top of the show, guests came on, I saw another comedian I'd never heard of, and then the program ended. I thought, was I drunk? What happened? Hicks' entire segment had been cut at the last minute.

The censorship made national news, and ended up the centerpiece of a New Yorker profile by John Lahr. In the article, Lahr referred to a letter Hicks had written to him, a 40-page explanation of the Letterman circumstances and a script of the jokes in question. Hicks also sent a copy to Magnuson, who passed a version to me. It's an impressive and heartfelt document, a first draft written longhand. The Letterman staff, especially producer Robert Morton, come off as complete hypocrites, first approving Hicks' material, then deciding at the last minute to scrap the entire segment, and blaming it on the network. Hicks admitted to Lahr that because of the Letterman incident, his awareness of the industry had changed: "I began working quite young, writing, growing, maturing, always striving to top myself -- to make people laugh hard at things they know and believe deep in their hearts to be true," he wrote. "It has been a long road, let me tell you, but after sixteen years of constant performing up until this little incident on October 1, 1993, the cold realization finally struck me. A sobering answer to the wish of that young boy I once was back in Houston, Texas, all excited with the idea that 'if they like these guys, then they're going to love me.' The realization was -- they don't want me, nor my kind. Just look at 90 percent of television programming. Banal, puerile, trite scat. And this is what they want, for they hold the masses -- the herd -- in such contempt."

With the ensuing media coverage, people were finally talking about Hicks. Because I'd written about him, I answered my share of "so what's he like?" questions. One day Magnuson invited me over to his apartment, and we watched the "Revelations" TV special Hicks had shot in London the year before, taped at the 2,000-seat Dominion Theatre. Hicks was introduced with loud Jimi Hendrix music, and walked onstage through a circle of flames, wearing a black, floor-length duster coat and cowboy hat. I thought the opening was cheesy, the cliché Wild West theme, with coyotes howling in the background, but Hicks immediately took off the hat and coat, and did his material. The Brits ate it up, the naughty American making jokes about the "United States of Advertising." Bits that had gotten a cool reception in a U.S. comedy club were understood in the nation that invented wit. Maybe this was Hicks' destiny, the direction he was heading -- a rock and roll theater act, with a smart audience instead of drunk tourists at a club.

Toward the end of the year, Hicks' management sent me another package of materials. A press release described projects in the works. Besides the book and magazine offers, he was nominated for an American Comedy Award. HBO was planning to air the "Revelations" show. Channel 4 in the U.K. had signed him to do a new program. The package also included a home videotape of Hicks performing at Igby's, a Los Angeles club, in November 1993.

This would be one of his last-ever performances, and it was a memorable one -- onstage for over an hour, a cavalcade of what he called the "comedy of hate." The audience was with him all the way, cheering even through a perverse scenario of Rush Limbaugh lying in a bathtub, with Reagan and Bush peeing on him, and Barbara Bush defecating into his mouth. At the end of the show, Hicks played Rage Against the Machine, singing along with the chorus, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!"

I've screened this video to friends over the years, and the reaction is chilling. Comedians in particular stare at the screen like they've seen a ghost. It isn't the Bill Hicks they remembered, performed with, opened up for, introduced to the stage. No trademark black shirt and jeans. He was frighteningly skinny, wore a patchy beard, tweed sport coat and saggy khakis. Three months away from dying, and he was going for it, still in the saddle, riding the horse all the way down. The performance was sharp as a tack.

Magnuson and Hicks had agreed to shoot their film Jan. 23 during a performance at San Francisco's Punch Line. The date crept closer. Magnuson still hadn't heard from Hicks. The upcoming week of shows was suddenly canceled due to Hicks' stomach flu. Hicks called up Magnuson and told him they'd have to wait. I was faxed a press release alerting everyone that Hicks was "seriously ill."

January morphed into February. Hicks put all commitments on hold and moved back home to stay with his parents in Little Rock, Ark. Magnuson befriended Hicks' parents, and passed me their address. In a daze, I wrote Hick a final letter while sitting on a train, one of those dopey letters you write to someone who has inspired you. I thanked him for furthering the cause of enlightened rednecks everywhere, and slipped a photo of JFK's head autopsy into the envelope. He died a few days later, on Feb. 26. His manager Colleen McGarr and I ended up on the phone, and she started sobbing. A great one was taken from us much too early. A memorial service in Little Rock attracted comedians from around the country.

Bill Hicks passed away with a TV deal in the works, a finished film script and two albums waiting to be released. It would take his estate another three years to put out the material that was already recorded and compiled. Magnuson told me he made Mary Hicks, Bill's mother, promise not to edit any of the original recordings. And so in 1997, when Ryko released its 4-CD set, "Dangerous, Relentless, Arizona Bay, and Rant in E Minor," he noted that Mrs. Hicks had kept her word.

Joining these original CDs as part of the Hicks legacy is a greatest-hits compilation, "Philosophy," released late last year, and the new biography, "American Scream," by Cynthia True. For someone who never saw or met Hicks, True has done a thorough job of examining his life and career. She wisely stays out of the way, and lets the chronology unfold through quotes and dates, without analysis. Hicks fans will appreciate the attention to personal details, and since another biography doesn't seem imminent, this book is, for the moment, the sole full-length version.

What strikes me about her book is the differences in how it was marketed to the U.S. and the U.K. Hicks was perceived quite differently by the two nations -- in the U.K. he was stopped on the streets for his autograph, and yet in his home country he was censored off television. The American cover is a photo of Hicks sitting in a chair, in front of an American flag. On the U.K. cover, Hicks is lighting his cigarette from a burning American flag. The U.S. back cover runs a quote from Dennis Miller. The U.K. back cover prints an excerpt of the pro-life/Christians routine that was cut from Letterman's show. The U.S. version features a forward by Janeane Garofalo, a recognized Hollywood name, but it doesn't really introduce readers to the text. The U.K. edition carries a forward by Irish comedian/writer Sean Hughes, who describes the first time he saw Hicks take the stage at an Australian comedy festival. Hicks himself would have pointed out the differences, that the U.K. readers understand the wit and irony, and good old literal America, his home and birthplace, still needs to have everything explained very simply. And safely.

The United States thrives on "protecting" its citizens, and despite the Land of the Free hokum, if you dare to speak your mind and have more than 10 people ever hear it, you'll encounter offers of compromise. You'll hear unqualified taste-makers in every industry say the same things: Where can we fit you into what we're doing? No, no, no, we don't care what you think or how you feel. Can you do what this other guy did, only slightly different? How about a combination of x and y? Can you tone this down, beef this up? Can you be edgy? (A magazine editor once told me to make an article sound "undergroundy.")

And if we pretend to embrace our job so we'll always have a job, it's fairly easy to pretend to embrace the rest of the nation, right? Even if it's ironic. Once you place yourself in that proper frame of mind, it's a snap to live in America and get excited, even if it's cheap irony, over the daily distractions of unnecessary celebrities, unnecessary TV shows, unnecessary "news you can use," unnecessary electronic gizmos, unnecessarily large vehicles and the rest of the shit culture we gleefully produce, consume and export around the world. You tell me where Hicks would fit into this picture. I'd like to go there. I'd like to live there.

Among Hicks' favorite targets was the empty-headed celebrity, whether it was George Michael, Debbie Gibson, Michael Bolton or country singer Billy Ray Cyrus. One of the bits censored by Letterman was a new television show Hicks would host, called "Let's Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus":

"I think it's fairly self-explanatory," Hicks said. "Each week we let the Hounds of Hell loose and chase that jarhead, no-talent, cracker idiot all over the globe 'till I finally catch that fruity little ponytail of his, pull him to his Chippendale's knees, put a shotgun in his mouth -- POW!"

To help them run the estate, Bill Hicks' mother and father have hired an attorney from Nashville, who counts among his clients ... Billy Ray Cyrus.

Visions of Kubrick

2001

Probably one of his greatest films:

An American Original: Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an influential and acclaimed Academy Award winning American film director and producer considered among the greatest of the 20th Century. He directed a number of highly acclaimed and sometimes controversial films. Kubrick was noted for the scrupulous care with which he chose his subjects, his slow method of working, and his reclusive personality about his films and personal life.

Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26, 1928 at the Lying-In Hospital in Manhattan, the first of two children born to Jacques Leonard Kubrick (1901–1985) and his wife Gertrude (née Perveler; 1903–1985); his sister, Barbara, was born in 1934. Jacques Kubrick, whose parents were of Jewish Austrian origin, was a doctor. At Stanley's birth, the Kubricks lived in an apartment at 2160 Clinton Avenue in The Bronx.

Kubrick's father taught him chess at age twelve; the game remained a life-long obsession. When Stanley was thirteen years old, Jacques Kubrick bought him a Graflex camera, triggering Kubrick's fascination with still photography. He was also interested in jazz, attempting a brief career as a drummer.

Kubrick attended William Howard Taft High School 1941–1945. He was a poor student with a meager 67 grade average. On graduation from high school in 1945, when soldiers returning from the Second World War crowded colleges, his poor grades eliminated hopes of higher education. Later in life, Kubrick spoke disdainfully of his education and of education in general, maintaining that nothing about school interested him.

In high school, he was chosen official school photographer for a year. Eventually, he sought jobs on his own, and by graduation time had sold a photographic series to Look magazine in NYC. Kubrick supplemented his income playing "chess for quarters" in Washington Square Park and in various Manhattan chess clubs. He registered for night school at the City College to improve his grade-point average. He worked as a freelance photographer for Look, becoming an apprentice photographer in 1946, and later a full-time staff photographer.

During his Look magazine years, on May 29, 1948, Kubrick married Toba Metz (b. 1930) and they lived in Greenwich Village, divorcing in 1951. It was then that Kubrick began frequenting film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art and in the cinemas of New York City. He was particularly inspired by the complex, fluid camera movement of Max Ophüls, whose films influenced Kubrick's later visual style.

Many early-period (1945–1950) photographs by Kubrick were published in the book "Drama and Shadows" (2005, Phaidon Press).

[edit] Film career and later life

[edit] Early films

In 1951, Kubrick's friend, Alex Singer, persuaded him to start making short documentaries for the March of Time, a provider of newsreels to movie theatres. Kubrick agreed, and independently financed Day of the Fight (1951). Although the distributor went out of business that year, Kubrick sold Day of the Fight to RKO Pictures for a profit of one hundred dollars. Kubrick quit his job at Look magazine and began working on his second short documentary, Flying Padre (1951), funded by RKO. A third film, The SeafarersSeafarers' International Union. These three films constitute Kubrick's only surviving work in the documentaryWorld Assembly of Youth). He also was second unit director on an episode about the life of Abraham Lincoln for the Omnibus television programme. The Seafarers was announced to be released on an official DVD, but never was; none of these shorts has ever been officially released, though they are widely bootlegged, and clips are used in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures. (1953), Kubrick's first color film, was a 30-minute promotional short film for the genre (he was involved in other similar shorts which have been lost, most notably

Kubrick's focus on narrative feature films began with Fear and Desire (1953). Fear and Desire is about a team of soldiers behind enemy lines in a fictional war. In the finale, the men see that the faces of their enemy are identical to their own (the same cast play all the characters). Kubrick and wife Toba Metz were the only crew on the film, which was written by Kubrick's friend Howard Sackler, later a successful playwright. Fear and Desire garnered respectable reviews, but failed commercially. In later life, Kubrick was embarrassed by the film, dismissing it as amateur, refusing Fear and Desire's projection in retrospectives and public screenings on establishing himself as a major filmmaker. Although the film's copyright lapsed into the public domain, it is often said that Kubrick bought every print of the film which he could, to keep people from seeing it. At least one copy remained in the hands of a private collector, and the film was subsequently bootlegged on VHS and, later on DVD.

Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba ended during the making of Fear and Desire. He met his second wife, Austrian-born dancer and theatrical designer, Ruth Sobotka, in 1952. They lived together in the East Village from 1952–1955 until their marriage on January 15, 1955; the couple later moved to Hollywood during the summer of 1955. Sobotka, who made a cameo appearance in Kubrick's next film, Killer's Kiss (1954), also served as art director on The Killing (1956). Like Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss is a short feature film, with a running time of slightly more than an hour, of limited commercial and critical success. The film is about a young, heavyweight boxer at the end of his career who is involved with organized crime. Both Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss were privately funded by Kubrick's family and friends.

Alex Singer introduced Kubrick to a producer named James B. Harris, and the two became lifelong friends. Their business partnership, Harris-Kubrick Productions, financed Kubrick's next three films. They bought the rights to the Lionel White novel Clean Break, which Kubrick and co-screenwriter Jim Thompson turned into a story about a race track robbery gone wrong. Starring Sterling Hayden, The Killing was Kubrick's first film with a professional cast and crew. The film made impressive use of non-linear time, unusual in 1950s cinema, and, though financially unsuccessful, was Kubrick's first critically successful film. The widespread admiration for The Killing brought Harris-Kubrick Productions to the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio offered them its massive collection of copyrighted stories from which to choose their next project. Eventually, they chose The Burning Secret by Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. Kubrick wrote a screenplay with Calder Willingham, but the deal collapsed before the film got properly underway.

[edit] Paths of Glory

Main article: Paths of Glory

The World War I story, based on Humphrey Cobb's anti-war novel Paths of Glory (1935), is about three innocent French soldiers charged with cowardice by their superior officers as an example to the other soldiers. Kirk Douglas was cast as Colonel Dax, a humanitarian officer trying to prevent the soldiers' execution. Paths of Glory (1957) was Stanley Kubrick's first significant commercial and critical success, establishing him as an up-and-coming cineaste. Critics praised the unvarnished combat scenes, and Kubrick's cinematography: Colonel Dax's march through his soldiers' trench in a single, unbroken reverse-tracking shot has become a classic cinematic trope cited in film classes. Steven Spielberg named this his favorite Kubrick film.

Paths of Glory was filmed in Munich. During its production, Kubrick met and romanced the young German actress Christiane Harlan (credited by her stage name "Susanne Christian"), who played the only woman speaking part in the film. Kubrick divorced his second wife Ruth Sobotka in 1957. Christiane Susanne Harlan (b. 1932 in Germany) belonged to a theatrical family, and had trained as an actress. She and Kubrick married in 1958 and remained together until his death in 1999. During her marriage to Kubrick, Christiane concentrated on a career as a painter. In addition to raising Christiane's young daughter Katharina (b. 1953) from her first marriage to the late German actor, Werner Bruhns (d. 1977), the couple had two daughters: Anya (b. 1958) and Vivian (b. 1960). Christiane's brother Jan Harlan was Kubrick's executive producer from 1975 onwards

On returning to the United States, Kubrick worked for six months on the Marlon Brando vehicle One-Eyed Jacks (1961). Later, Kubrick claimed Brando forced him from the film, because Brando wanted to direct it himself. Kubrick languished working on unproduced screenplays (including, notably, Jim Thompson's treatment, Lunatic at Large) until Kirk Douglas asked him to assume direction of Spartacus (1960) from Anthony Mann who, two weeks into shooting, was fired by the studio because he lacked leadership (or, more likely, for disagreeing with producer-star Kirk Douglas).

Based upon the true story of a doomed uprising of Roman slaves, Spartacus established Stanley Kubrick as a major director. The production, however, was difficult; creative differences arose between Kubrick and Douglas, the star and producer of the film. Frustrated by lack of creative control, Kubrick later largely disowned its authorship. The Douglas-Kubrick creative control battles destroyed their work relationship from Paths of Glory. Years later, Kirk Douglas referred to Stanley Kubrick as "a talented shit". Spartacus was a major critical and commercial success, but its embattled production convinced Kubrick to find ways of working with Hollywood financing while remaining independent of its production system. Kubrick referred to Hollywood production as "film by fiat, film by frenzy", and this reasoning was behind Kubrick's moving to England in 1962.

In 1962, Kubrick moved to England to film Lolita, and resided there for the rest of his life. Unsurprisingly, Lolita was Kubrick's first major controversy. The book by Vladimir Nabokov, dealing with an affair between a middle-aged pedophile and his twelve-year-old stepdaughter, already was notorious when Kubrick embarked on the project. However, it was also steadily achieving popularity in the United States; eventually, the difficult subject matter was mocked in the film's tagline, perhaps to gain attention: "How did they ever make a film of Lolita?" Nabokov wrote a three-hundred page screenplay for Kubrick, which the director abandoned; a second draft by Nabokov, roughly half the length of its first, was revamped by Kubrick into the final screenplay. (Nabokov estimated that 20% of his material made it into the film.)

Despite changing Lolita's age from twelve years to fourteen years, which was a more acceptable age for commercial appeal at the time, several scenes in the final film had to be re-edited to allow the film's release. The resulting film toned down what were considered the novel's more perverse aspects, leaving much to the viewer's imagination, some viewers have even wondered whether Humbert and Lolita actually embarked on a sexual affair, as most of their relationship, sexually, is implied and suggested. Later, Kubrick commented that, had he known the severity of the censorship, he probably would not have made the film. However, Kubrick always spoke highly of James Mason, who portrayed Humbert Humbert in the film, identifying him as one of the actors with whom he most enjoyed working. Lolita also was the first time Kubrick worked with British comic Peter Sellers, a collaboration which proved one of the most successful of his early career, most notable for Dr. Strangelove (1964). Oswald Morris was the director of photography.

Lolita's release in 1962 was surrounded by immense hype, which was responsible for the box office success at the time; it was also given an "Adults Only" rating, since ratings for film and literature were not applicable at the time of Lolita's release, limiting all screenings of the film to those over the age of 18. Critical reception for the film was mixed, many praising it for its tackling of an extremely daring and high-risk subject, others surprised by the lack of intimacy between Lolita and Humbert. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing of an Adapted Screenplay, and Sue Lyon, who played the title role, won a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer Actress.

Kubrick's next film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), became a cult film. The screenplay—based upon the novel Red Alert, by ex-RAF flight lieutenant Peter George (writing as Peter Bryant)—was co-written by Kubrick and George, with contributions by American satirist Terry Southern.

Dr. Strangelove is often considered a masterpiece of black humor. While Red Alert is a serious, cautionary tale of accidental atomic war for Cold War-era readers, Dr. Strangelove accidentally evolved into what Kubrick called a "nightmare comedy." Originally intended as a thriller, Kubrick found the conditions leading to nuclear war so absurd that the story became dark and funny rather than thrilling; Kubrick reconceived it as comedy, recruiting Terry Southern for the required anarchic irony.

Peter Sellers, memorable as 'Clare Quilty' in Lolita, was hired to simultaneously play four roles in Dr. Strangelove. Eventually, Sellers played three, due to an injured leg and difficulty in mastering the Texan accent of bomber pilot Major "King" Kong. Later, Kubrick called Sellers "amazing," but lamented that his energy rarely lasted beyond two or three takes. To capture the actor's limited energy, Kubrick set up two cameras to film Sellers's improvisation. Strangelove often is cited as one of Sellers's best films, and proof of his comic genius.

Kubrick's decision to film a Cold War thriller as a black comedyColumbia Pictures. Coincidentally, that same year, Columbia Studios released the dramatic nuclear war thriller Fail-Safe. Its close similarity with Dr Strangelove prompted Kubrick to consider suing the makers of that film, but he decided against it. However, Fail-Safe was based on a novel published in 1962. was a daring artistic risk that paid off for him and

Dr. Strangelove portrays a deliberate American nuclear attack launched against the Soviet Union, by renegade U.S.A.F. General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden). In real time, the film's duration, the story intercuts among three locales: (i) Burpleson Air Force Base, where RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Sellers) tries stopping the mad Gen. Ripper; (ii) the Pentagon War Room, where the U.S. President (Sellers), U.S.A.F. General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), and (officially ex-) Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove (Sellers) try stopping (or not) General Ripper's B-52Slim Pickens) B-52 bomber where he and his crew of ordinary airmen, never knowing it is false, doggedly try to complete their mission. Production designer Ken Adam's sets for the film—especially the War Room in the Pentagon—are considered classic film production design. bombers enroute to dropping nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union; and (iii) Major Kong's (

In belittling the sacrosanct norms of the political culture of mutually assured destruction (MAD) as the squabbling of intellectual children, Dr. Strangelove foreshadowed the cultural upheavals of the late 1960s and was enormously successful with the nascent American counter-culture. Dr. Strangelove earned four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director) and the New York Film Critics' Best Director award. Kubrick's successful Dr. Strangelove persuaded the studios that he was an auteur who could be trusted to deliver popular films despite his unusual ideas. Director of Photography was Gilbert Taylor, a noted cinematographer who shot Star Wars and A Hard Day's Night.

Kubrick spent five years developing his next film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which was photographed in Super Panavision 70. Kubrick co-wrote the screenplay with science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke, expanding on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel". The screenplay and the novel were written simultaneously. The screenplay is credited to Kubrick and Clarke, while the novel, published in tandem with the film's release, is credited only to Clarke. The novel and the film deviate substantially from each other, with the novel explaining a great deal of what the film leaves deliberately ambiguous. Clarke and Kubrick later spoke highly of one another. Incidentally, Clarke's follow up, 2010: Odyssey Two, follows the events of the movie version of 2001, as opposed to the novel version. This is likely due to the cultural impact of Kubrick's film.

The film's special effects, overseen by Kubrick and engineered by special effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull (Silent Running, Blade Runner), proved ground-breaking and inspired many of the special effects-driven films which were to follow the success of 2001. Manufacturing companies were consulted as to what the design of both special-purpose and everyday objects would look like in the future. At the time of the movie's release, Arthur C. Clarke predicted that a generation of engineers would design real spacecraft based upon 2001 "even if it isn't the best way to do it". Despite nominations in the directing, writing, and producing categories, the only Academy Award Kubrick ever received was for supervising the special effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The film is notable for its use of existing works of classical music in place of an original score, and as a result Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra and Johann Strauss's The Blue Danube waltz have become indelibly associated with the film. Kubrick also used music by contemporary, avant-garde Hungarian composer György Ligeti, although this was done without Ligeti's consent. The appearance of Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna, and Requiem on the 2001 soundtrack was the first wide commercial exposure of Ligeti's work. This use of 'program' music was not originally planned -- Kubrick had commissioned composer Alex North to write a full-length score for the film, and he originally only used the pre-recorded pieces as guides during editing, but Kubrick became so attached to them that he eventually decided to dispense with North's music in favour of the temporary tracks he had used during editing. About three-quarters of the way through production, Kubrick asked North to stop work on the score, and North assumed that this meant Kubrick had as much music as he needed; Kubrick never told North that he had decided not to use his score, and North reportedly only discovered this when he attended the film's premiere.^[1]

Artistically, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a radical departure from Kubrick's previous films. It contains only 45 minutes of dialogue, over a running time of over two and a half hours (150 minutes). The dialogue is largely superfluous to the images and music. Nevertheless it outlines the 'story' while presenting mankind as dissociated from itself and its surroundings. Clarke's characters function either as extensions of the story or else as anthropological archetypes. The story and plot are obscure for most of the film's duration and its ambiguous, perplexing ending continues to fascinate contemporary audiences and critics. After this film, Kubrick would never experiment so radically with special effects or narrative form, but the calculated ambiguity of his films remained a trademark for the rest of his career.

Despite being an unorthodox science fiction film, 2001 was an enormous commercial success and became a pop culture phenomenon. However, the film was not an immediate smash. Were it not for a six-week exhibition contract, the film might not have had enough time in cinemas to have benefited from building word-of-mouth popularity. The film's ticket sales were low during the first two weeks of its release, and it was nearly withdrawn from theaters. Actor Jack Nicholson claims that Kubrick told him that 241 people walked out of the exhibitor's screening, including the studio head. Arthur C. Clarke has said that an MGM executive commented on the screening by saying: "Well, that's the end of Stanley Kubrick."

Initial critical reaction was also extremely hostile, with critics attacking the film's lack of dialogue, its slow pacing, and seemingly impenetrable storyline. The film's only initial defender was Penelope Gilliat, who called it "some kind of a great film". Following the film's success, however, many critics later revised their opinions.

Audiences slowly embraced the film, especially the 1960scounterculture audience, who loved the movie's "Star Gate" sequence, a seemingly psychedelic journey to the infinite reaches of the cosmos. Younger moviegoers often saw the film many times over, resulting in a cult following of repeat viewers. Supposedly, if one were to ingest LSD at the beginning of the movie, the "Star Gate" sequence would start at roughly the same time that the drug was in full effect. This phenomenon prompted the film's distributors to add an LSD-allusive tagline ("The Ultimate Trip") to the movie's advertising poster. Paradoxically, Kubrick won total creative control from Hollywood by succeeding with one of the most thematically "difficult" films ever to win wide commercial release.

Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey are as widespread as its popularity. Despite having been made in 1968, it still prompts debate today. When critic Joseph Gelmis asked Kubrick about the meaning of the film, Kubrick replied:^[2]

“

They are the areas I prefer not to discuss, because they are highly subjective and will differ from viewer to viewer. In this sense, the film becomes anything the viewer sees in it. If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it stimulates, however inchoately, his mythological and religious yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded.

”

2001: A Space Odyssey is likely Kubrick's most famous and influential film. Steven Spielberg called it his generation's big bang, focusing its attention upon the Soviet-American space race. The special effects techniques Kubrick pioneered were later developed by Ridley Scott and George Lucas for films such as AlienStar Wars. 2001 is particularly notable as one of the few films realistically presenting travel in outer space: the scenes in outer space are silent; weightlessness is constant, with characters strapped in place; when characters wear pressure suits, only their breathing is audible. and

The film's primary themes include: the origins of evolution; sentient computers; extra-terrestrial beings; the search for one's place in the universe; and rebirth. All these themes are seen within a cold, foreboding light. Books have been written about interpretations of the film. Even Arthur C. Clarke is on record as being ignorant of what Stanley Kubrick really had in mind when making the film, going so far as to say that 2001: A Space OdysseyCabaret and Superman. is ninety per cent Stanley Kubrick's vision. The film's striking cinematography was the work of legendary British director of photography Geoffrey Unsworth who would later photograph classic films such as

After 2001, Kubrick sought a project which he could quickly film with a small budget. He found it in A Clockwork Orange (1971). His film version is a dark, shocking exploration of violence in human society. It was released with an 'X' rating in the United States, though in 1973 it was edited in order that it could be re-classified with an 'R' rating and was re-released. Some of the early 1980s VHS releases carry this R-rated version, although all other releases past that, including the Stanley Kubrick Collection editions, have the original X-rated version.

Based upon the famous novel by Anthony Burgess, the film is the story of a teenage hooligan, Alex, (Malcolm McDowell), who gleefully torments, beats, robs, and rapes without conscience or remorse. Finally imprisoned, Alex undergoes psychiatric aversion treatment to be cured of his instinctively reflexive violence. This conditions him physically unable to act violently, yet also renders him helpless and incapable of moral choice, resulting in a consequently brutal come-uppance at the hands of his victims.

Kubrick photographed A Clockwork Orange quickly and almost entirely on location in and around London. Despite the low-tech nature of the film, when compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick was highly innovative, e.g. throwing a camera from a rooftop to achieve the desired viewer disorientation. For the score, Kubrick had electronic music composer Wendy Carlos, at the time known as Walter Carlos, (Switched-On Bach), adapt famous classical works such as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for the Moog synthesizer.

The film was extremely controversial because of its explicitly depicted teenage gang-rape and violence. Released the same year as Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs and Don Siegel's Dirty Harry, the three films sparked ferocious debate in the media about the social effects of cinematic violence. The controversy was exacerbated when copycat violence was committed in England, by criminals wearing the same costumes as characters in A Clockwork Orange. The story is narrated in Nadsat, a slang language comprising many anglicized Soviet words: the gang refer to each other as "droogie", from the Russian word for "friend."

When Kubrick and family were threatened with death, resulting from the social controversy, he took the unusual step of removing the film from circulation in Britain. The film was not released again in the United Kingdom until its re-release in 2000, a year after Stanley Kubrick's death. In banning his film in Britain, he showed the unprecedented power he held over his distributor, Warner Brothers. For the remainder of his career he held total control of every aspect of his films, including the marketing and the advertising; such was Warner Brothers' faith in his projects.

Kubrick's next film, released in 1975, was an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon, also known as Barry Lyndon, a picaresque novel about an 18th century gambler and social climber who slowly insinuates himself to English high society. It would be Kubrick's least-appreciated post-Strangelove film, despite strong acting (by Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, and Irish actress Marie Kean) and Kubrick's innovative cinematography and attention to period detail.

Some critics, especially Pauline Kael, one of Kubrick's greatest detractors, found Barry Lyndon a cold, slow-moving, and lifeless film. Its measured pace and length—more than three hours—put off many American critics and audiences, however, the film was well-reviewed in the U.S. by noted critics Rex Reed and Richard Schickel. Time Magazine published a cover story about the film, and Kubrick was nominated for three Academy Awards. As with most of his films, Barry Lyndon's reputation has grown through the years, particularly among other filmmakers. Director Martin Scorsese cited it as his favorite Kubrick film. Steven Spielberg has praised its "impeccable technique," though, when younger, he famously described it "like going through the Prado without lunch".

As in his other films, Kubrick's cinematography and lighting techniques are innovative. Most famously, interior scenes were photographed with a specially-adapted, high-speed still camera lens (originally invented for NASA) allowing many scenes to be lit only with candlelight, creating two-dimensional, diffused light images reminiscent of 18th century painting. Kubrick's blending of music, mise en scene, costume and action set standards for period drama that few other films have matched. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, more than any other Kubrick film. Despite this, Barry Lyndon was not a box office success in the US, however, the film found a great audience in Europe, particularly in France.

Like almost all other Kubrick films, "Barry Lyndon" has a remarkable score, comprised of English and Irish traditional songs (performed by The Chieftains), Antonio Vivaldi's Cello Concerto in B, a Johann Sebastian Bach Double Concerto, George Frideric Handel's Sarabande, and Franz Schubert's German Dance No. 1 in C Major and Piano Trio in Eb.

Kubrick's work pace slowed considerably after Barry Lyndon; he did not make another film until The Shining. Released in 1980, it is an adaptation of Stephen King's popular horror novel. It stars Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall in the story of a failed writer who takes a job as an off-season caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, a high-class resort deep in the Colorado mountains. The job demands spending the winter in the isolated hotel. His son, Danny, is gifted with telepathy, called "shining", and has visions of the past and the future.

To Danny, the hotel displays increasingly horrible, phantasmagoricapparition of two girls murdered years before by their father, the hotel's caretaker. Jack is slowly driven mad by the haunted Overlook Hotel until collapsing into homicidal psychosis, then trying to kill his family with an axe. images, notably the

It was originally thought that the film was shot at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, however, it was at the Elstree and the Pinewood studios, near London, where the film sets were built. The Overlook Hotel exterior is that of the Timberline Lodge ski resort on Mount Hood, Oregon, U.S.A. Kubrick extensively used the newly-invented Steadicam (a spring-mounted camera support) for smooth movement in enclosed spaces, to convey the haunted hotel's claustrophobic oppression of the family.

More than any other of his films, The Shining gave rise to the legend of Kubrick-as-megalomanic-perfectionist. Reportedly, he demanded hundreds of takes of certain scenes (ca. 1.3 million film ft. were exposed), particularly plaguing actress Shelley Duvall. His daughter, Vivian Kubrick, shot a short documentary film of the production. It is available in the DVD release of the film, it is one of few documents of Kubrick in action in the latter half of his career.

The film opened to mostly negative reviews, but did very well, commercially, with audiences and made Warner Brothers a profit. As with most Kubrick films, subsequent critical reaction reviews the film more favorably. Stephen King was dissatisfied with the movie, calling Kubrick "a man who thinks too much and feels too little". Later, in 1997, King collaborated with Mick Garris to create a television mini-series version of the novel. Since then, King has spoken with less hostility toward Kubrick and his film (it was said at the time of the mini-series initial release that King agreed to not speak publicly about Kubrick's version if he were given the rights to do the miniseries). However, in a later interview on the Bravo channel King admitted that the first time he watched Kubrick's adaptation he found it to be "dreadfully upsetting."

Among horror movie fans, The Shining is a classic cult film, often appearing with Psycho (1960), The Exorcist (1973) and HalloweenThe Shining renewed Warner Brothers faith in Kubrick's ability to make artistically satisfying and profitable films after the commercial failure that was Barry Lyndon in the United States. As a pop culture phenomenon, the film has been the object of countless parodies, from The Simpsons and MAD Magazine to recent films such as Seed Of Chucky. (1978) at the top of best horror film lists. Some of its images, such as an antique elevator disgorging a tidal wave of blood, are among the most recognizable, widely-known images from any Stanley Kubrick film.

t was seven years until Kubrick's next film, Full Metal Jacket (1987), an adaptation of Gustav Hasford's Vietnam War novel, The Short-Timers, starring Matthew Modine as Joker, Adam Baldwin as Animal Mother, R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and Vincent D'Onofrio as Private Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence.

The film begins at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, U.S.A., where Senior Drill Sergeant Hartman relentlessly pushes his new men through basic training to transform them from worthless "maggots" to Marine killers. Private Pyle, a fat, slow-witted recruit, is unable to cope with the program and slowly cracks under the strain, resulting, on the eve of graduation, in Private Pyle's shooting Sergeant Hartman before killing himself as he repeats the by-then-familiar Marine mantra: "This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine…" The scene ends the boot-camp portion of the story.

The second half of the film follows Joker, since promoted to sergeant, as he tries to stay sane in Vietnam. As a reporter for the United States Military's newspaper the Stars and Stripes, Joker occupies war's middle ground, using wit and sarcasm to detach himself from the war. Though an American and a member of the United States Marine Corps, he also is a reporter and so is compelled to abide the ethics of the profession. The film then follows an infantry platoon's advance on and through Hue City, decimated by the street fighting of the Tet Offensive. The film climaxes in a battle between Joker's platoon and a sniper hiding in the rubble; she almost kills Joker until his reporter partner shoots and severely injures her. Joker then kills her to put her out of her misery.

Filming a Vietnam War film in England was a considerable challenge for Stanley Kubrick and team. Much filming was in the DocklandsLondon, with the ruined-city set created by production designer Anton Furst. This helped make the film visually very different from the other, contemporary Vietnam War films PlatoonHamburger Hill. Instead of being set in the tropical, Southeast-Asian jungle, the second half of the story unfolds in a city, illuminating the urban warfare aspect of a war otherwise perceived as fought exclusively in a jungle. Kubrick said to film critic Gene Siskel that his attraction to Gustav Hasford's book was because it was "neither anti-war or pro-war", held "no moral or political position", and was primarily concerned with "the way things are." area of and

Full Metal Jacket received mixed critical review, but found a reasonably large audience, despite being over-shadowed by Oliver Stone's Platoon. This was one reason for Kubrick not making Aryan Papers, in fear that its publicity would be stolen by Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List.

Stanley Kubrick was a mute presence in Hollywood in the ten-odd years after the release of Full Metal Jacket (1987); many believed that he had retired from film-making. Occasionally, rumours surfaced about possible, new Kubrick projects, including Aryan Papers and A.I. (eventually produced after Kubrick's death, directed by Steven Spielberg). Stanley Kubrick's final film would be Eyes Wide Shut, starring then-married actors Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as an upper middle class Manhattan couple on a sexual odyssey.

The story of Eyes Wide Shut is based on Arthur Schnitzler's novella Traumnovelle (in English a.k.a. Dream Story), and follows Dr. William Harford's journey to the sexual underworld of New York City, after his wife, Alice, shatters his faith in her fidelity when she confesses to nearly giving him, and their daughter, up for one night with another man.

After trespassing upon the rituals of a sinister, mysterious sexual cult, Dr. Harford thinks twice before seeking sexual revenge against his wife, and learns he and his family might be in danger.

The film was in production for more than two years, and two of the main members of the cast, Harvey Keitel and Jennifer Jason Leigh, were replaced in the course of the filming. Although set in New York City, the film was mostly shot in London soundstages, with little location shooting. Shots of Manhattan itself were pick-up shots filmed in New York City by a second-unit crew. Because of Kubrick's secrecy about the film, mostly inaccurate rumors abounded about its plot and content. Most especially, the story's sexual content provoked much exaggerated speculation; some journalists writing that it would be "the sexiest film ever made." The casting of the celebrity-actor couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman increased the magnitude of pre-release journalistic hyperbole.

Death

In 1999, four days after screening a final cut of Eyes Wide Shutheart attack in his sleep. He was buried next to his favorite tree in Childwickbury Manor, Hertfordshire, England, U.K.^[3] for his family, the lead actor and actress, and Warner Brothers executives, the seventy-year-old director Stanley Kubrick died of a

According to his friends and family, Eyes Wide Shut was Kubrick's personal favorite of his own films^{[citation needed]}. Contrary to that, however, in 2006, actor R. Lee Ermey went on record as saying Kubrick told him in a telephone talk, shortly before his death, that Eyes Wide Shut was "a piece of shit" and that the critics would "have him for lunch". ^[4] Yet, Todd Field (director, In the Bedroom, Little Children) who acted in Eyes Wide Shut refutes Ermey's statements, "Stanley was absolutely thrilled with the film. He was still working on the film when he died, and he probably died because he finally relaxed. It was one of the happiest weekends of his life, he had just shown the first cut to Terry, Tom, and Nicole. He would have kept working on it, like he did on all of his films, but I know he was over the moon about the film, as I was told this from people who were with him daily throughout post-production. My production partner was Stanley’s assistant for thirty years." Field stated that Kubrick advised him to stay away from Ermey: " I’d originally thought about R. Lee Ermey for In the Bedroom, and I talked to Stanley a lot about that film, and, all I can say, is Stanley was adamant that I not work with Ermey, for all kinds of reasons that I won't get into, because there is no reason to do that to anyone, even if that person is saying slanderous things about Stanley, that I know, for a fact, are completely untrue.^[5]

Eyes Wide Shut, like Lolita and A Clockwork Orange before it, faced censorship before release. In the United States and Canada, digitally manufactured silhouette figures were strategically placed to mask explicit copulation scenes. It was done to secure an "R" rating from the MPAA. To Europe, and the rest of the world, the film has been released uncut, in its original form. The October 2007 DVD reissue contains the uncut version, making it available to North American audiences for the first time.

Unrealised projects

An exacting perfectionist who often worked for years on pre-production planning and research, Kubrick had a number of unrealised projects during his career. All but one were never completed as films, but are of some interest to fans of the director.

Most famously, he never filmed his much-researched biopic of Napoleon (Bonaparte) I of France, which was originally to star Jack Nicholson as Napoleon after Kubrick saw him in Easy Rider. Kubrick and Nicholson eventually worked together on The Shining. After years of preproduction, the movie was set aside indefinitely in favor of more economically feasible projects. As late as 1987, Kubrick stated that he had not given up on the project, mentioning that he had read almost 500 books on the historical figure. He was convinced that a film worthy of the subject had not yet appeared.

[edit] Napoleon

After the success of 2001 Kubrick planned a large-scale biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte. He did much research, read books about the French Emperor, and wrote a preliminary screenplay. With assistants, he meticulously created a card-catalogue of the places and deeds of Napoleon's inner circle during its operative years. Kubrick scouted locations, planning to film large portions of the story in the historical places where Napoleon's life occurred.

In notes to his financial backers, preserved in The Kubrick Archives, Kubrick told them he was unsure how his Napoleon film would turn out, but that he expected to create 'the best movie ever made.' Ultimately, the project was cancelled for three reasons: (i) the prohibitive costliness of location filming; (ii) the release, in the West, of Sergei Bondarchuk's epic film version of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace (1968), and (iii) the commercial failure of Bondarchuk's Napoleon-themed film Waterloo (1970). Stanley Kubrick's screenplay for this film has been published on the Internet. Much of his historical research would influence Barry Lyndon (1975), set in the late eighteenth century, just before Napoleon's wars.

[edit] Aryan Papers

In the early 1990s, Kubrick almost went into production on a film of Louis Begley's Wartime Lies, the story of a boy and his mother in hiding during the Holocaust. The first draft screenplay, titled "Aryan Papers", had been penned by Kubrick himself. Kubrick chose not to make the film due to the release of Steven Spielberg's Holocaust-themed Schindler's List in 1993. In addition, according to Kubrick's wife, Christiane, the subject itself had become too depressing and difficult for the director. Kubrick eventually concluded that an accurate film about the Holocaust was beyond the capacity of cinema.

One Kubrick project was eventually completed by another director, Steven Spielberg. Throughout the 1980s and early 90s, Kubrick collaborated with various writers (including Brian Aldiss, Sara Maitland and Ian Watson) on a project called by various names, including "Pinocchio" and "Artificial Intelligence."

The film was developed expanding on Aldiss' short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long," which Kubrick and his writers turned into a feature-length film in three acts. It was a futuristic fairy tale about a robot which resembles and behaves as a child, who is sold as a temporary surrogate to a family whose only son is in a coma. The robot, however, learns of this, and out of sympathy is left abandoned in the woods by his owners instead of being returned to the factory for destruction. The rest of the story concerns the robot's attempts in becoming a real boy by seeking “Blue Fairy” (a reference to Pinocchio), in order to regain his mother's love and acceptance once more, as his love was hard-wired into him, and hence everlasting. The journey would take the boy-robot (referred to as a "Mecha" ) thousands of years.

Kubrick reportedly held long telephone discussions with Steven Spielberg regarding the film, and, according to Spielberg, at one point stated that the subject matter was closer to Spielberg's sensibilities than his. In 2001, following Kubrick's death, Spielberg took the various drafts and notes left by Kubrick and his writers, and composed a new screenplay, and in association with what remained of Kubrick's production unit, made the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, starring Haley Joel Osment, Frances O'Connor, and William Hurt.

The film contains a posthumous producing credit for Stanley Kubrick at the beginning, and the brief dedication "For Stanley" at the end. The film contains many recurrent Kubrick motifs, such as an omniscient narrator, an extreme form of the three act structure, the themes of humanity and inhumanity, and a sardonic view of Freudian psychology.

[edit] Lunatic at Large

On November 1, 2006, Philip Hobbs, Kubrick's son-in-law, announced that he will be shepherding a film treatment of Lunatic at Large, which was commissioned by Kubrick for treatment from noir pulp novelist Jim Thompson in the 1950s, but had become lost until Kubrick's death in 1999.^[6]

[edit] James Bond Involvement

In 1976 Kubrick agreed to visit the recently completed 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios to provide advice on how to light the enormous soundstage, which had been built for and was being prepped for the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. Kubrick agreed to consult when it was promised that nobody would ever know of his involvement. This was honored until 2000, when the fact was mentioned in the documentary on the making of "The Spy Who Loved Me" on the special edition DVD of the 007 movie.

[edit] Legacy

Kubrick made only 12 major films in his life, mostly due to his methodical slowness in completing just one film, but nearly all of his films are recognised as classics of both their respective genres and cinema in general by many sources. Notable modern-day directors such as Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott have cited Stanley Kubrick as a great source of inspiration for them. Kubrick's famously stylish usage of camerawork, which was near-unique at the time, has often been repeated by other directors in other films. In June 2005, the Empire Magazine voted Kubrick into fourth place in a list of the twenty greatest film directors, following (in order of precedence) Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese. Kubrick also has the more elusive honour of the fact that no less than eight of his films are featured in the "Top 250" of the Internet Movie Database, a number held by very few other directors.

Kubrick was often unwilling to discuss personal matters publicly, or to speak publicly at all. Over time, his image in the media has ranged anywhere from being a reclusive genius to a megalomaniacal lunatic shut off from the world. Since his death, Kubrick's friends and family have denied this. Kubrick clearly left behind a strong family and many close friends. Many of those who worked for him speak highly in his favor. The rumour regarding his reclusiveness is largely a myth, and may have resulted from his aversion to travel once installed at St. Albans. Kubrick was afraid of flying and refused to take airplane trips, so he rarely left England over the last forty years of his life.

Kubrick once told a friend that he went to London (about 40 minutes by car) four to five times a year solely for appointments with his dentist. Kubrick also shunned the Hollywood system and its publicity machine. His appearance was not well known in his later years, and a British man by the name of Alan Conway successfully pretended he was Kubrick to meet several well-known actors and get into fancy clubs. Conway is the subject of the film Colour Me Kubrick (2005), written by Kubrick's assistant Anthony Frewin and directed by Brian Cook, Kubrick's First Assistant Director for 25 years.

Kubrick was constantly in contact with family members and business associates, often by telephone, and contacted collaborators at all hours for conversations lasting from under a minute to several hours. Many of Kubrick's admirers and friends spoke of these telephone conversations with great affection and nostalgia after his death, most especially Michael Herr and Steven Spielberg. In his memoir of Kubrick, Herr said that dozens of people claim to have spoken to Kubrick on the day of his death and remarked "I believe all of them." Kubrick also frequently invited various people to his house, ranging from actors to close friends, admired film directors, writers, and intellectuals.

Kubrick was also an animal lover. He owned many dogs and cats throughout his life and showed an extraordinary affection for them. Christiane, Kubrick's widow, said in her book version of Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures that Kubrick brought his cats to the editing room to spend time with them that was lost while he was shooting his films. Matthew Modine remembers Kubrick being deeply upset when a family of rabbits was accidentally killed during the making of Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick was so upset that he canceled shooting for the rest of the day. Philip Kaplan, one of Kubrick's lawyers and friends, reports that Stanley once cancelled a meeting with him and another lawyer who had flown to London from the United States for the meeting, at the last moment, because he sat up all night with a dying cat and was in no shape to participate. Kaplan also reports that the huge kitchen table at St. Albans was supported by an undulating base and that within each curved space was a dog, most of no recognizable breed and some not notably friendly to strangers.

Kubrick had a reputation of being tactless and rude to many people he worked with. Some of Kubrick's collaborators have complained of a coldness or lack of sympathy for the feelings of others on his part. Although Kubrick became close friends with Clockwork OrangeThe Shining than he did. Science-fiction writer Brian Aldiss was fired from Kubrick's never completed project AI for vacationing with his family in violation of his contract, even though Kubrick had put the project on hold at the time. Kubrick brought in other writers to help write the AI2001 possible). However, Douglas has acknowledged that a large part of his dislike for Kubrick was caused by Kubrick's consistently negative statements about Spartacus. James Earl Jones, despite his admiration for Kubrick on an artistic level, spoke negatively of his experience on Dr. Strangelove, saying that Kubrick was disrespectful to actors, using them as instruments in a grand design rather than allowing them to be creative artists in their own right. George C. Scott, who admired Kubrick in retrospect for reportedly being one of the few people who could routinely beat him in chess, famously resented Kubrick using his most over-the-top performances for the final cut of Dr. Strangelove, after promising they would not be seen by audiences. Kubrick's crew has stated that he was notorious for not complimenting anyone and rarely showed admiration for his co-workers for fear it would make them complacent. Kubrick complimented them on their work only after the movie was finished, unless he felt their work was "genius." The only actors that Kubrick called "genius" were Peter Sellers, James Mason and Malcolm McDowell. star Malcolm McDowell during filming, Kubrick abruptly terminated the friendship soon after the film was complete. McDowell was deeply hurt by this and the schism between the two men lasted until Kubrick's death. Michael Herr, in his otherwise positive memoir to Kubrick, complains that Kubrick was extremely cheap and very greedy about money. He states that Kubrick was a "terrible" man to do business with and that the director was upset until the day he died that Jack Nicholson made more money from script, but fired them because they were useless. Kirk Douglas often commented on Kubrick's unwillingness to compromise, his out of control ego and ruthless pursuit to make a film his own distinct work of art instead of a group effort (it must be noted, however, that in interviews Kubrick often acknowledged and admired the effort of his team, especially those who made the special effects for

Upon purchasing the Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire, England, Kubrick set up his life so that family and business were one. He purchased top-of-the-line film editing equipment and owned all of his own cameras. Children and animals would frequently come in and out of the room as he worked on a script or met with an actor.

Although Kubrick was greatly disliked by many of the people he worked with, many speak kindly of him, including co-workers and friends Jack Nicholson, Diane Johnson, Tom Cruise, Joe Turkel, Con Pederson, Sterling Hayden, Scatman Crothers, Carl Solomon, Ryan O'Neal, Anthony Frewin, Ian Watson, John Milius, Jocelyn Pook, Sydney Pollack, R. Lee Ermey, and others. Michael Herr's memoir to Kubrick and Matthew Modine's book Full Metal Jacket Diary show a different, much more kind, sane and warm version of Kubrick than the conventional view of him as cold, demanding and impersonal. In a series of interviews found on the DVD of Eyes Wide Shut, a teary eyed Tom Cruise remembers Kubrick with great affection. Nicole Kidman also shares his sentiments. Shelley Winters, when asked what she thought of him, answered, "A gift." Shelley Duvall, who played Wendy in The Shining did not always get along with Kubrick, as seen in The Making of the Shining, but has said that in retrospect it was a great experience that made her smarter—though she'd never want to do it again. Also, Malcolm McDowell in retrospect said that he felt some of his statements about Kubrick were "unfair" and were a "cry out" to Kubrick to call him. He has mused that it was because Kubrick saw some of Alex (the main character in A Clockwork Orange) in McDowell, and McDowell has commented on how much this termination of friendship personally hurt him. McDowell said that he was very sad when Kubrick died.

[edit] Politics

In his memoir of Kubrick, Michael Herr, his personal friend and co-writer of the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket, wrote:

“

Stanley had views on everything, but I would not exactly call them political... His views on democracy were those of most people I know, neither left or right, not exactly brimming with belief, a noble failed experiment along our evolutionary way, brought low by base instincts, money and self-interest and stupidity... He thought the best system might be under a benign despot, though he had little belief that such a man could be found. He wasn't a cynic, but he could have easily passed for one. He was certainly a capitalist. He believed himself to be a realist.

”

Herr also wrote that Kubrick owned guns and that he did not think war is entirely a bad thing. In the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Herr says "… he also accepted to acknowledge that, of all the things war is, it is also very beautiful." Kubrick, according to Ian Watson, reportedly said of the pre-1997 socialist Labour Party “If the Labourites ever get in, I’ll leave the country.” Watson explains that Kubrick was extremely opposed to laws on taxing the rich and welfare in general.^[7] Michael Herr said of initial reactions to Full Metal Jacket "The political left will call Kubrick a fascist."^[8] Despite that Full Metal Jacket is often cited as an anti-war film, in his 1987 interview with Gene Siskel called Candidly Kubrick, Kubrick has said, "Full Metal Jacketpro-football, Seinfeld, The Simpsons and other television shows which he could not get in the United Kingdom.^{[citation needed]} Kubrick also told Siskel he was not anti-American and that he thought that America was a good country, though he did not think that Ronald Reagan was a good President. He also said he thought that people in the world did not take the nuclear threat of the time as seriously as they should and he was extremely suspicious of centralized banking systems. Some claim this evidence suggests Kubrick's views lean Right while others still say he leans Left. It is unknown, however, if Kubrick belonged to any political group. suggests there is more to say about war than it is just bad." In the same interview he said that everything serious the drill instructor says, such as "A rifle is only a tool, it is a hard heart that kills" is completely true. Though some have said Kubrick disliked America, Michael Herr says, on the other hand, that America was all he talked about and that he often thought of moving back. It was said that Kubrick was sent VHS tapes from American friends of

Kubrick's works depict his own view of human nature and are critical of moral/political stances based on other views of human nature. For example, in A Clockwork Orange, the police are as violent and vulgar as the droogs, and Kubrick depicts both the subversive writer Mr. Alexander (a figure of the Left) and the authoritarian Minister of the Interior (a figure of the Right), as manipulative, hypocritical and sinister. In regard to A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick said to the New York Times,

“

Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved—that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.

”

He also said in the same interview:

“

The idea that social restraints are all bad is based on a utopian and unrealistic vision of man. But in this movie you have an example of social institutions gone a bit berserk. Obviously social institutions faced with the law-and-order problem might choose to become grotesquely oppressive. The movie poses two extremes: it shows Alex in his pre-civilized state, and society committing a worse evil in attempting to cure him."

”

Kubrick's earlier work can be seen as more liberal than his later work. Colonel Dax in Paths of Glory and Spartacus in Spartacus are comparable to liberals, and the satire of government and military in Dr. Strangelove seems to point to a liberal political perspective. Kubrick's more mature works are more pessimistic and suspicious of the so-called innate goodness of mankind. In a letter to the New York Times in response to Fred M. Hechinger declaring A Clockwork Orange "fascist", Kubrick wrote:

“

It is quite true that my film's view of man is less flattering than the one Rousseau entertained in a similarly allegorical narrative—but, in order to avoid fascism, does one have to view man as a noble savage, rather than an ignoble one? Being a pessimist is not yet enough to qualify one to be regarded as a tyrant (I hope)...The age of the alibi, in which we find ourselves, began with the opening sentence of Rousseau's Emile: 'Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society's fault.' It is based on two misconceptions: that man in his natural state was happy and good, and that primal man had no society...Rousseau's romantic fallacy that it is society which corrupts man, not man who corrupts society, places a flattering gauze between ourselves and reality. This view, to use Mr. Hechinger's frame of reference, is solid box office but, in the end, such a self-inflating illusion leads to despair.

”

Kubrick shares much of this view with Robert Ardrey, author of African Genesis and The Social Contract (not to be confused with Rousseau's) and author Arthur Koestler who is famous for writing The Ghost In The Machine, both of whom Kubrick quotes in his defense against Hechinger. Both authors (Koestler through psychology and Ardrey through anthropology) search for the cause of humanity's capacity for death and destruction and both, like Kubrick, are suspicious of the liberal belief in innate goodness of mankind (which Ardrey and Kubrick attribute to Rousseau, who, in Ardrey's words: "Fathered the romantic fallacy") and Behaviourism, especially what they consider "radical Behaviourism", whom they blame primarily on B.F. Skinner. (Mainstream anthropology contests Ardrey's view of man having an ancestor that was unremorsefully murderous and destructive, and mainstream psychologists' belief in innate empathy contradicts Koestler's or Kubrick's view of man as innately evil, or sadistic and unempathetic).

Reading Ardrey's African Genesis reveals he shared Kubrick's bleak view of man, and the growing concern of the juvenile delinquent, as Ardrey writes:

“

"Society flatters itself in thinking that it has rejected the juvenile delinquent; the delinquent has rejected society. And in the shadowed byways of his world so consummately free, this ingenious, normal adolescent human creature has created a way of life in perfect image of his animal needs."

”

Such a description brings to mind Alex, the delinquent thug in A Clockwork Orange. Ardrey also says society might eventually domesticate man through slavery and cure his innate urge to kill and destroy:

“

"We and our greater philosophers must grant, I believe, that the masters of a universal society with the aid of a captive science might just possibly succeed in producing, over a long period, a lasting answer to the problem of our animal nature: a universal human slave inherently obedient to other people's reason."

”

This brings to mind the Minister of the Interior and his proposal for the answer to street violence in Kubrick's film. However Ardrey also believes:

“

"Whether through sentimental attachment or rational choice, I find myself moved to prefer the wild creatures among who I was born to the more literal Homo sapiens that science and tyranny might produce."

”

The clergyman in A Clockwork Orange, whom Kubrick has called "the moral voice of the story" says, "Goodness must come from within. Goodness must be chosen. If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." In fact, Kubrick said in an interview with The New York Times that his view of man was closer to the Christian view than humanistic or Jewish views, as he said, "I mean, it's essentially Christian theology anyway, that view of man."

Kubrick said in an interview with Gene Siskel:

“

To restrain man is not to redeem him...I think the danger is not that authority will collapse, but that, finally, in order to preserve itself, it will become very repressive...Law and order is not a phoney issue, not just an excuse for the Right to go further right.

”

[edit] Religion

Stanley Kubrick was born Jewish, but never much practiced this religion, as his parents were not very religious either. When asked by Michel Ciment in an interview if he had a religious upbringing, Kubrick replied: "No, not at all."^[9]

Kubrick is often said to have been an atheist, but this may not be quite true. In Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Jack Nicholson recalls that Kubrick said The Shining is an overall optimistic story because "anything that says there's anything after death is ultimately an optimistic story."

In Kubrick's interview with Craig McGregor, he said:^[10]

“

2001 would give a little insight into my metaphysical interests," he explains. "I'd be very surprised if the universe wasn't full of an intelligence of an order that to us would seem God-like. I find it very exciting to have a semi-logical belief that there's a great deal to the universe we don't understand, and that there is an intelligence of an incredible magnitude outside the Earth. It's something I've become more and more interested in. I find it a very exciting and satisfying hope.

”

When asked by Eric Nordern in Kubrick's interview with Playboy if 2001: A Space Odyssey was a religious film, Kubrick elaborated:^[11]

“

I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001anthropomorphic image of God. I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe. Given a planet in a stable orbit, not too hot and not too cold, and given a few billion years of chance chemical reactions created by the interaction of a sun's energy on the planet's chemicals, it's fairly certain that life in one form or another will eventually emerge. It's reasonable to assume that there must be, in fact, countless billions of such planets where biological life has arisen, and the odds of some proportion of such life developing intelligence are high. Now, the sun is by no means an old star, and its planets are mere children in cosmic age, so it seems likely that there are billions of planets in the universe not only where intelligent life is on a lower scale than man but other billions where it is approximately equal and others still where it is hundreds of thousands of millions of years in advance of us. When you think of the giant technological strides that man has made in a few millennia—less than a microsecond in the chronology of the universe—can you imagine the evolutionary development that much older life forms have taken? They may have progressed from biological species, which are fragile shells for the mind at best, into immortal machine entities—and then, over innumerable eons, they could emerge from the chrysalis of matter transformed into beings of pure energy and spirit. Their potentialities would be limitless and their intelligence ungraspable by humans. but not any traditional,

”

In the same interview, he also blames the poor critical reaction to 2001 as follows:^[11]

“

Perhaps there is a certain element of the lumpen literati that is so dogmatically atheist and materialist and Earth-bound that it finds the grandeur of space and the myriad mysteries of cosmic intelligence anathema.

”

In an interview with William Kloman of The New York Times, when asked why there is hardly any dialogue in 2001, Kubrick explained:

“

I don't have the slightest doubt that to tell a story like this, you couldn't do it with words. There are only 46 minutes of dialogue scenes in the film, and 113 of non-dialogue. There are certain areas of feeling and reality—or unreality or innermost yearning, whatever you want to call it—which are notably inaccessible to words. Music can get into these areas. Painting can get into them. Non-verbal forms of expression can. But words are a terrible straitjacket. It's interesting how many prisoners of that straitjacket resent its being loosened or taken off. There's a side to the human personality that somehow senses that wherever the cosmic truth may lie, it doesn't lie in A, B, C, D. It lies somewhere in the mysterious, unknowable aspects of thought and life and experience. Man has always responded to it. Religion, mythology, allegories—it's always been one of the most responsive chords in man. With rationalism, modern man has tried to eliminate it, and successfully dealt some pretty jarring blows to religion. In a sense, what's happening now in films and in popular music is a reaction to the stifling limitations of rationalism. One wants to break out of the clearly arguable, demonstrable things which really are not very meaningful, or very useful or inspiring, nor does one even sense any enormous truth in them.

”

Stephen King recalled Kubrick calling him late at night while he was filming The Shining and Kubrick asked him, "Do you believe in God?" King said that he had answered, "Yes," but has had three different versions of what happened next. One time, he said that Kubrick simply hung up on him. On other occasions, he claimed Kubrick said, "I knew it," and then hung up on him. On yet another occasion, King claimed that Kubrick said, before hanging up, "No, I don't think there is a God." In more recent interviews, King has had yet another version of the "God" story, in which Kubrick calls King and asks him if he thinks ghost stories are optimistic because they all suggest there is life after death. King replies, "What about hell?" There is a pause and Kubrick says, "I do not believe in hell." Stephen King said that the primary reason why he didn't like Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining was as follows:

“

I think there are two basic problems with the movie. First, Kubrick is a very cold man—pragmatic and rational—and he had great difficulty conceiving even academically, of a supernatural world … Not that religion has to be involved in horror, but a visceral skeptic such as Kubrick just couldn't grasp the sheer inhuman evil of the Overlook Hotel. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones. That was the basic flaw: because he couldn't believe, he couldn't make the film believable to others.

”

Curiously and ironically, King's choice for directing the 1997 miniseries version of The Shining was Mick Garris, who, according to the interview with his wife found on the DVD of the Masters of Horror series episode of "Chocolate", was a "confirmed atheist", who does not believe in the supernatural at all, while Kubrick was actually more open to the possibility. Also, King said that he believed H. P. Lovecraft was the greatest master of the classic horror tale (something he shared in common with Kubrick), but Lovecraft famously scoffed at the notion of a literal belief in the supernatural and was a very rational and pragmatic man himself.

Finally, Katharina Kubrick Hobbs was asked by alt.movies.kubrick if Stanley Kubrick believed in God. Here is her response:^[12]

“

Hmm, tricky. I think he believed in something, if you understand my meaning. He was a bit of a fatalist actually, but he was also very superstitious. Truly a mixture of nature and nurture. I don't know exactly what he believed, he probably would have said that no-one can really ever know for sure, and that it would be rather arrogant to assume that one could know. I asked him once after The Shining, if he believed in ghosts. He said that it would be nice if there "were" ghosts, as that would imply that there is something after death. In fact, I think he said, "Gee I hope so."...He did not have a religious funeral service. He's not buried in consecrated ground. We always celebrated Christmas and had huge Christmas trees.

There has been a longstanding debate regarding the DVD releases of Kubrick's films; specifically, the aspect ratio of many of the films. The primary point of contention relates to his final five films, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut. All five films were projected theatrically with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The DVD for A Clockwork Orange has an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 as does Barry Lyndon; the remaining three films are 1.33:1 ("fullscreen").

Kubrick was very upset about television screenings of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Because the film was shot for Cinerama, it was one of the few times Kubrick used a widescreen ratio (originally 2.2:1 [70mm], modified to 2.35:1 [35mm]); for television, the distributor created a pan-and-scan transfer at 1.33:1, compromising many of the images Kubrick had meticulously created. Following this, he decided to shoot all of his films open-matte (the full 1.33:1 frame is exposed on the actual film, but, when projected, this image is matted to 1.85:1). Kubrick never approved a 1.85:1 video transfer of any of his films; when he died in 1999, DVD was only beginning to catch on strongly in the U.S., and most people were still used to seeing movies fill their television screen. Warner Home Video chose to release these films with the transfers which Kubrick had explicitly approved. Subsequent to that, some evidence has been brought out which suggests that Kubrick (along with his directors of photography) did, in fact, compose shots for 1.85:1 (though the evidence is strongest for The Shining, people extrapolate and apply it to all of them). The most recent special edition versions (released on October 23, 2007) of The Shining, Full Metal JacketEyes Wide Shut are in the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and A Clockwork Orange has a new, digitally remastered anamorphic transfer with a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The previous HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of Full Metal Jacket are presented in 1.78:1. and

There is a secondary concern related to aspect ratio. During the days of laserdisc, The Criterion Collection released six Kubrick films. Spartacus and 2001 were both widescreen (2.35:1 and 2.2:1, respectively) at the same ratio as their subsequent DVD releases, and The Killing and Paths of Glory were both fullscreen (1.33:1), as these films were released when projectors could still show 1.33:1 (although they were also projected in 1.66:1). Dr. Strangelove and Lolita, though, were given very atypical aspect ratios, in transfers personally overseen by Kubrick. For unspecified reasons, Kubrick chose to give both films an alternating aspect ratio; at times, the image is 1.33:1, while at other times, the image is 1.66:1. This is sometimes falsely attributed to the use of stock footage in Strangelove (another, similar claim is that the transfer was done at 1.33:1, but some shots had already been "hard-matted" to 1.66:1 -- that is, shot in a 1.33:1 ratio with a matte covering a portion of the lens, permanently matting the film to that ratio). The initial DVD releases of Strangelove maintained this approved transfer, but for the most recent two-disc special edition, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment replaced it with a new, digitally remastered anamorphic transfer with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. All DVD releases of Lolita to date have been at a uniform 1.66:1 aspect ratio, and the expectation is that future releases will retain this aspect ratio.

Also of note, laserdisc releases of 2001 were in a slightly flawed aspect ratio. The film was shot for 70mm, with an approximate ratio of 2.2:1, but many theaters could only show it in 35mm, which is 2.35:1. Thus, the picture was slightly modified for the 35mm prints. The laserdisc releases maintained the 2.2:1 ratio, but applied it to a 35mm print; thus, the edges were slightly cropped, and the top and bottom of the image slightly opened up. This seems to have finally been corrected with the most recent DVD release, which was newly remastered from a 70mm print.

In debates over Kubrick's original intent, he is frequently quoted as saying that he likes/prefers height to width. However, without context, it is unclear whether he made this statement regarding 1.85:1 vs. 1.33:1 or 2.35:1 vs. 1.85:1. The latter would certainly be possible, given that many filmmakers contemporary to Kubrick used 2.35:1 as a default aspect ratio, whereas Kubrick only used it once, at the studio's insistence on Spartacus (though coming very close on 2001).