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44 DGA QUARTERLY > Snap question: What's the first image in 2001: A Space Odyssey that tells the viewer that they're about to see something completely differ- ent? (Hint: It has nothing to do with the opaque monolith in the 1968 film's opening "Dawn of Man" sequence.) Answer: The highly stylized MGM logo, designed expressly for the movie, and dispensing with the studio's iconic wreath surrounding a grouchy, growl- American Cinematheque in Los Angeles sometimes resemble per- manent Stanley Kubrick retrospective centers. The continuing, definitive museum tour of Kubrickiana, launched in 2004 by Frankfurt's Deutsches Filmmuseum and traveling to doz- ens of stops around the world, was so massive that even the generous display at LACMA in 2013 couldn't accommodate the sheer amount of the Frankfurt show's objects, artwork, posters and memorabilia. (And it's not over: It just finished a run at Mexico City's Cineteca Nacional, and opens in late September at Copenhagen's GLStrand.) But perhaps the most telling effect of Kubrick's influence is on di- rectors as disparate as Vince Gilligan, Nicolas Winding Refn, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. It's a testament to Kubrick's broad capture of the popular imagination that each of these filmmakers can cite different, yet complementary, aspects of his cinematic prowess. "I'm happy to see that his inspiration has shown in noticeable ways in our work in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul," says Gilligan. "For a Vanity Fair feature, author Michael Hare asked Kubrick how he did certain scenes in Strangelove or 2001, and he'd simply answer, 'Showmanship, Michael.' He was a showman, which means showing audiences things they'd never seen before." Part of this for Gilligan means following a key Kubrick rule, which is to make sure that a movie's first shot had better be the most inter- esting thing that an audience has seen that day. "That's a rule we live by," says Gilligan, "so once we know what a scene is about, we'll ask, 'What's the first thing we see?' That leads to asking what can make it unique and striking. [Kubrick] thought of a movie as needing a handful of what he called 'nonsubmersible moments,' ones that last forever•think of the Singin' in the Rain sequence in Clockwork Orange or the 'Blue Danube' space dance in 2001. I learned that from Kubrick." It goes even further. Those plentiful and devilish uses of ironic mu- sic cues, especially in Saul? "Our needle drops," as Gilligan calls them, "come straight from Kubrick. And then we'll go for these one-point perspective shots as specific Kubrick tributes, or deliberate slow zoom-outs that we take from Barry Lyndon." The Copenhagen-born Refn (Drive, The Neon Demon), on the other hand, sees in Kubrick a fellow Continental European spirit. It's telling, since a running attitude in all of Kubrick's movies•analyzed in the best available critical text on Kubrick by critic James Naremore•is a dark, European-based taste for extreme black com- edy, the grotesque, the blur between violence and psychology, and a fascination with systems of control in inevitable collapse. "I loved that he was an obsessive-compulsive with a huge ego," says Refn. "You absolutely must have these things in order to be a strong creative artist. Without them, you're lost, or just mediocre. He pro- vides such a great example to the younger generation and to my gen- eration as a model for fighting mediocrity at every step. "But what was most remarkable about him is that he was able to make exactly the movie he wanted to make but inside a corporate stu- dio system ruled by numbers and money. He knew how to navigate that system, get out of it what he needed and yet also protect his creative work. One way was to keep expenses really low•the best way he could maintain control yet also minimize risk. That provides an example that any commercial filmmaker can learn from. I certainly did." OR S CORSESE, the key to Kubrick is his exac- titude in knowing where to place the camera. "I first watched his movies," Scorsese told Charlie Rose in 2001, "and they affected me. And then as I learned more about filmmaking, I'd go back and watch his movies and wonder, 'Why is that so powerful?' I'd go and try to trace back the shots and figure out how one thing led to another•this was before video, so I had to go theater to theater, trying to write down notes! Why do some of his shots stay with you for so many years, why do those track- ing shots in the trenches in Paths of Glory stay with you? It's a case of a person with a very strong storytelling ability, talent, genius, who creates a rock-solid image that has conviction. What's in the frame is there for a reason, and everything outside is out. It had this extraor- dinary authority that says, 'Look, I'm going to tell you the story this way. And you're going to see it this way.' " In All That Jazz, Bob Fosse's tortured director Joe Gideon is KUBRICK'S INNOVATIONS F ing Leo the Lion. Leo is still there, but transformed into a fluid design of gold and blue. It's symbolic of Kubrick's career-long determination to innovate—even innovating the very studio funding his projects. > Kubrick's personal con- struction of a huge front- projection projector, using 8" x 10" transparencies and involving the most power- ful water-cooled arc light source ever used, was "the most significant single tech- nique utilized in the movie… in terms of its potential value to the film industry," according to Herb A. Lightman in "The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey." This system was used to front-project origi- nally shot images of south- west African landscapes on a London set created for the "Dawn of Man" sequence. The optical trick saved untold expense filming in precarious locations, and the image size, scale and resolution (far supe- rior to standard rear projec- tion) produced a completely believable world on screen.