Leon Vitali, right-hand man to Stanley Kubrick on his last three features, shares his memories of the fanatically perfectionist filmmaker, and other witnesses involved in the productions try to fathom the emotional toll of Vitali’s two-decade career doing the master’s bidding. A respected stage actor, Vitali played the proud Lord Bullingdon in Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975) and was so enamored of the director that he abandoned his acting career to work behind the camera; he proved invaluable to Kubrick as an acting coach for unschooled talents (Danny Lloyd, the little boy in The Shining; Lee Ermey, the marine drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket) but also handled the million-and-one details of color correction, print traffic, archiving, and video-retail packaging. There’s plenty of production detail for Kubrick nuts, though the two competing narratives (Kubrick the genius, Kubrick the tyrant) won’t surprise anyone. Tony Zierra directed; with Ryan O’Neal and Matthew Modine.
Filmworker
NR • 1 hour 34 min • 2018
