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a blog with cultural bulimia.

Saturday, March 27, 2004

Citizen Kubrick


The journey to the Kubrick house starts normally. You drive through rural Hertfordshire, passing ordinary-sized postwar houses and opticians and vets. Then you turn right at an electric gate with a 'Do Not Trespass' sign. Drive through that, and through some woods, and past a long, white fence with the paint peeling off, and then another electric gate, and then another electric gate, and then another electric gate, and you're in the middle of an estate full of boxes.

There are boxes everywhere - shelves of boxes in the stable block, rooms full of boxes in the main house. In the fields, where racehorses once stood and grazed, are half a dozen portable cabins, each packed with boxes. These are the boxes that contain the legendary Kubrick archive .

Guardian Unlimited via MemeFirst

Another favorite passage:

"The fan letters are perfectly preserved. They are not in the least bit dusty or crushed. The system used to file them is, in fact, extraordinary. Each fan box contains perhaps 50 orange folders. Each folder has the name of a town or city typed on the front - Agincourt, Ontario; Alhambra, California; Cincinnati, Ohio; Daly City, California, and so on - and they are in alphabetical order inside the boxes. And inside each folder are all the fan letters that came from that particular place in any one year. Kubrick has handwritten 'F-P' on the positive ones and 'F-N' on the negative ones. The crazy ones have been marked 'F-C'."

The whole article is fascinating. Worth reading.