Worker

[ateolf]

Mary Beth and I went to see an Indie Memphis screening of Filmworker, new documentary about Leon Vitali who played Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon and subsequently quit acting to be Stanley Kubrick's personal assistant. It was really good. Though in the q&a afterwards the guy moderating it talked about how Eyes Wide Shut isn't a great movie and how out-of-touch Kubrick was 'cuz New York wasn't realistic. I was almost getting angry! Thankfully a lady spoke up about having read the novella and mentioned the dreamlike quality (and didn't say so explicitly, but I felt it at least alluded to this being the necessarily unrealistic quality of NYC in the film). Anyway, then there was work today. Things gearing up for the new team. The "old" team had a goodbye lunch for Joe and Matt who won't be coming over with us (Joe no longer being a product owner as the Communications stuff is no longer a focus and Matt moving to infrastructure, as I mentioned before). We ate at Flying Fish, which is pretty mediocre but it was fine. I made arnold palmers and drank a lot of the liquid. Stopped by the post office on the way home and was able to get someone to find the package they couldn't find yesterday! Then Mary Beth and I went and voted. So yay for that!

Comments

[ifjuly]

there's also the thing of how, at least to me, a major point to the existence of the documentary is to sort of expand the conversation and focus of that ouevre in general to something beyond the very, very ubiquitous kubrick-lone-obsessive-genius fanboy thing, but then the convo went textbook down that usual road. though i 100% get that we had literally all _just_ watched it, and to get up in front of everybody and react in real time is a bear, etc., etc. for sure. i did find it funny though.

i do love the point the movie made that leon was no less obsessive or driven or True Believer than kubrick in his own way, and given the selfless/invisible/at-times-scapegoat-or-left-behind, taken-for-granted nature of his work in some ways more so. and also the subtle thing of, kubrick cannot successfully _be_ that perfectionistic genius without people scrambling to meet those standards. his perfectionism depends on others. it's not a vacuum, discrete genius even as it appears to be, the way fans i think subconsciously sort of daydream it was/wish they could experience themselves.