“Well, what about The Ritz in Philadelphia, Leo?” Stanley would say. “Midnight Cowboy ran for six months and ended its run at $10,000 in its last week? Nothing looks better than that.”
“And in Columbus, The Wild Bunch had a great engagement at The Paramount, which is perfect for our audience.”
The calls would go on for nearly an hour as Stanley, knowing Leo was dumbfounded at the other end of the speakerphone, moved around the office with a wry smile on his face, hitching up his pants and winking at me as Leo, already in awe of Stanley’s reputation for thoroughness, promised to get back quickly after he checked out the preferred cinemas and their availability. It was classic Kubrick, winning the chess match through perseverance and ingenuity.
I highly recommend reading this article about how Stanley Kubrick invented not only the modern box-office report, but also a system for choosing theaters based on prior box-office performance.
I think film geeks and scholars tend to forget that many of the past great film artists are also the great film business minds. It’s hard to get more “auteur” than Stanley Kubrick, and his obsession went beyond the art and into the business side of film. This doesn’t sound too different from the type of obsession you see from James Cameron, who certainly micromanaged the release of Avatar.
