SXSW 2009: “Bruno” and Kubrick

Introducing the "greatest Austrian celeb since Hitler."

Speaking of franchises, “Twilight” fans hoping to get a similar scoop out of the “From Script to Screen” panel on screenwriting on Sunday afternoon that was headlined by director Catherine Hardwicke were left hanging, though many of them seemed to rush the stage for a picture or autograph after the panel ended. In fact, there was more dish on Hardwicke’s first film, “Thirteen” than her experience on Stephenie Meyer’s vampire novel and her abrupt departure from the franchise, though when the subject of the Cullen clan came up when writer/producer Suzanne Weinert was illustrating the ease of adapting a novel that already had a lot of action in it, Hardwicke corrected her, saying “we added all that in,” in particular the film’s romantic tree-climbing sequence. However, Hardwicke’s advice to aspiring scribes was to create as much of a presentation as possible to sell one’s script and “practice being able to cry at a moment’s notice.” (As for the former, Hardwicke mentioned on “Thirteen” that she was able to attach Holly Hunter to the film by making a videotape of co-writer and actress Nikki Reed and her mother showing off their home and explaining the reality of the screenplay, with Reed’s mother making the additional sell, “Plus, [Holly], you’ve got bigger tits than me.”) Not to be outdone, Weinert shared the story behind her SXSW film, the Heather Graham comedy “EX-terminators” where a run-in with a particularly unpleasant man at a bar led to her picking up a candle before her boyfriend advised her, “You can’t set every asshole on fire.” She wrote a script instead.

Stanley Kubrick collaborator and producer Jan Harlan spent most of his hour-long panel with critic Elvis Mitchell talking about scripts that the famous director didn’t make, including the potential David Hemmings-starring biopic of Napoleon and the Holocaust-themed “The Aryan Papers” (the latter of which Harlan said was shelved when Steven Spielberg filmed “Schindler’s List at the same time, but he admitted an earlier Holocaust effort, “Wartime Lives,” was discouraged when the producer met with Isaac Bashevis Singer, who told him “the one big problem” with adapting such material was not having experienced personally.) Of the films Kubrick did finish, Harlan seemed to devote the most time to “Eyes Wide Shut,” revealing that while Kubrick immediately had Tom Cruise in mind for the lead, it wasn’t until he saw “To Die For” that he realized Nicole Kidman could hold a long closeup, which was enough for the director to go against his own inclination not to cast a real-life married couple. Harlan said Kubrick insisted “Eyes” was his “greatest contribution to the art of filmmaking,” and also defended the notorious orgy sequence, for which Harlan had to buy 40 masks in Venice for the topless models who didn’t want to be recognized and considered the sequence as a peephole into hell, earning a big laugh when he said, “who would want to go to that club?!?” (Harlan also surprised many, Mitchell included, when he told the audience that he felt Kubrick “was almost prudish,” discussing how the director’s original idea for “A.I.” would’ve confronted pornography.)

While Harlan waxed nostalgic on “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Full Metal Jacket,” it was largely the personal details about Kubrick that stood out. For instance, Harlan recalled how Kubrick was an average ping pong player, but great at chess, and while watching a Boris Becker tennis match in the ‘80s, he exclaimed, “No film could be more exciting.” Harlan also told of how he comforted Kubrick with a story about his grade school art teacher after MGM had written the director off after “the Cadillac and Blue Rinse Brigade,” as Kubrick derisively dubbed the elderly attendees who walked out of “2001”’s New York premiere en masse. It may have been Harlan’s main priority to protect and defend his collaborator’s legacy, but many of the stories also showed the lengths to which Harlan went to help his brother-in-law, including how he obtained U.S. tanks for “Full Metal Jacket” from the Belgian army when the U.S. wouldn’t provide them – the memory of “Dr. Strangelove” apparently still lingered. Though Harlan received a healthy chuckle from the crowd when he said, “the executive producer title means nothing,” it was clear the Austin Convention Center had a legend in their midst.

[Additional photo: "Drag Me to Hell," Universal Pictures, 2009; Jan Harlan and Elvis Mitchell at SXSW, 2009]

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