Eyes Wide Shut

Opened 20 years ago today.

I will now observe the occasion by watching Swing Time.

Lol

Nick Nightingale sounds like an Astaire character

I will observe not knowing what date Swing Time opened by not watching Swing Time.

Thought this bump was going to be related to the Laura Branigan thread.

haha

so happy to have played a part in making that a thing.

From a 2002 profile of Jeffrey Epstein:

All the speculation and mystery has proved fertile ground for some alternative Jeffrey Epstein stories – the most bizarre of which has him playing the piano (he is classically trained) for high rollers in a Manhattan piano bar in the mid-eighties.

This is great:

https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/eyes-wide-shut-orgy-scene-oral-history.html

as posted on July 1

I wasn't trying to dis EWS, I rewatched it last year

Ah cool

What happened to Todd Field? He's made a whopping two films, both with tons of attention and award nominations, but Little Children was back in 2006 and nothing since then. Even his acting has been next to nothing.

There were too many Todds at the time--Haynes, Solondz, Holland--so one of them had to go.

I still think this is an extraordinary film

The most.

todd Holland?

Directed most of the Larry Sanders episodes.

What a weird oral history. These two things jumped out at me:

One of the problems was that they had to be totally natural. No Botox, no breast enhancements, anything like that. I made it very clear to everybody who came and their agents.

And that was because Stanley wanted this very particular body type, a sort of Barbie-doll type.

So everyone had to be "totally natural," but Kubrick wanted "Barbie-doll" types? OK. That whole scene is so dumb, and would have been better had it been more surreal or whatever word they kept throwing around. Like, I dunno, the sequence at the end of Gaspar Noe's "Love" or something. Because what hurts that whole scene in EWS is that, from memory, it is so cheesy Red Shoes Diaries or whatever. So ... mission accomplished? And failed?

My wife and I saw this movie on our honeymoon on a hot day in Hawaii. Actually, we saw a third of it before the projector broker. Then we kind of looked at each other, shrugged, and went out to dinner instead.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, June 25, 2012 12:23 AM (seven years ago)

perhaps it's a film about how marriage attracts the mutually tasteless
― Ward Fowler, Monday, June 25, 2012 3:12 AM (seven years ago)

It still plays beautifully.

Eh, you know what? Fuck all y'all.

I'll never marry, which makes sense because I don't understand the appeal of this movie even after three viewings.

It's tantamount to understanding the appeal of ILX after 16 years tbh.

borad 7 is where the bad silly and boring orgies take place

Tantamount Pictures Presents

ILX Wide Shut

By far his scariest movie

Thought this bump was going to be related to the Laura Branigan thread.

I saw this 4 times in the theater in 99. The last time (this was back when movies would play for a while) was probably in late summer in the Angelika in downtown Houston with just me and an elderly couple. I wonder what they made of it.

In Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Tom Cruise gives us a complete, devastatingly accurate catalog of the crumbling defensive postures that a nude or semi-nude man can take while trying to retain a tone of "level-headed" condescension during a boudoir argument with their partner or spouse. pic.twitter.com/VQ3DBvYorz

— ℑ 𝔇𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔪𝔢 𝔜𝔬𝔲 (@NickPinkerton) September 7, 2019

rethinking some of the plot elements now that we've revived the thread yet again

I'm not sure Dr. Bill's sexual jealousy is as much about the fear of his wife's infidelity as much as it is a realization he's incapable of imagining his own sexual fantasy scenarios. Alice's is both visceral and straightforward. He stumbles into this effete circle of elites who have concocted an elaborate ritual that has the trappings of eroticism but ends in what Morbs correctly described as mechanical, non-erotic sex

there's a sideline in the current HBO series Succession about people who are born moneyed being unable to participate in, or at least find joy in, a myriad of human experiences -- but they try to compensate by spending lots of money or going off script

if they could just buy an ice cream cone and have it mean something

buying an ice cream company and feeling a half second of ennui

I assume this movie is just on a loop at Morbz' house

Give up your inquiries which are completely useless, and consider
these words a second warning. We hope, for your own good, that
this will be sufficient.

the irritation in "which are completely useless" is palpable

orgies plausibly run by Trump

Shakey, it's at best my 6th-favorite Kubrick film, ya doof

*bangs staff*

this would make a great double feature with Three Days of the Condor

Interesting that it seems to have had some critical rehab in these last few years

https://filmschoolrejects.com/best-movies-1990s/9/

it's been several years since I've seen it, but does EWS ever get compared to Vanilla Sky (itself an adaptation of a 1997 film called open Your Eyes)?

I was going to rewatch that the other night, was one of my favorites as a kid. yeah, I never thought about it really but there's tons of stuff in common: the mask, male insecurity/impotence, an ordinary powerful man in extraordinary circumstances, marital/spousal anxiety, forces beyond our control/out of sight, mysterious organizations...

I was somewhat enthusiastic about that movie for a moment when it was released, but once you get past the surface it's Cameron Crowe doing the same shit about relationship dynamics, who gets to be trustworthy in what ways, with his record collection playing a little too loudly over the sountrack

it's been several years since I've seen it, but does EWS ever get compared to Vanilla Sky (itself an adaptation of a 1997 film called open Your Eyes)?

at the time quite a lot, iirc.

Shakey, it's at best my 6th-favorite Kubrick film, ya doof

Who's calling whom the doof here?

well i know you dont like Strangelove cuz it's funny, honeybunch

Given that and 2001 aren't allowed to NOT be in the top 5, that still leaves three whole slots and aside from Eyes Wide Shut, The Shining and Barry Lyndon, what else is there?

Nothing, that's what.

Paths of Glory and The Killing, wisenheimer

there's a reason Welles said Kubrick was "a giant" in the early '60s

I'm glad we all agree that this is Kubrick's shittiest movie