ALH

Billy Wilder on Stanley Kubrick and his films: Wilder: "I was at his house once, nice man. But a very strange man, he will not fly. The Shining [1980]—very smooth . . . and then there's that labyrinth. I love all his movies. Kubrick, he was a wonderful director, but sometimes . . . for instance I could never understand—and I cannot discuss it with anybody, because people have not seen that picture, that costume picture, Barry Lyndon [1975] . . ." Cameron Crowe: "What about it?" Wilder: "He worked like six months trying to find a way to photograph somebody by candlelight, not artificial light. And nobody really gives a shit whether it is by candlelight or not. What are the jokes? What is the story? I did not like it. That's the only Kubrick picture that I did not like, but look, what's the last one that he made?" Cameron Crowe: "Full Metal Jacket [1987]." Wilder: "The first half of Full Metal Jacket was the best picture I ever saw. Where the guy sits on the toilet and blows his head off? Terrific. Then he lost himself with the girl guerrilla. The second half, down a little. It's still a wonderful picture. You know, if he does a thing, he really does it. But this is . . . this is a career to discuss. Every picture, he trumps the trump. These are all pictures any director would be proud to be associated with, much less make. At a picture like The Bicycle Thief [1947], you forget that this is your profession. You just get lost in the picture." Cameron Crowe: "What did you think of Dr. Strangelove [1964]?" Wilder: "Oh, I love that. That's one of my favorite pictures, Dr. Strangelove. I was bewildered, but then I put some order in it, as I thought about it, and as I saw it again. It was a wonderful picture, but so was Lolita [1962]. She was a little too old. He had to make a little sacrifice there. I hear they've remade it again, getting the characters’ ages closer to the book. [Pause.] I'm ninety-one—I'm the right age. [Laughs.] But I don't know, except for Spartacus [1960], he did very good." — Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999)

Michael Haneke on Funny Games (1997) as a counter-program to Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994): "My goal there was a kind of counter-program to Natural Born Killers. In my view, Oliver Stone's film, and I use it only as example, is the attempt to use a fascist aesthetic to achieve an anti-fascist goal, and this doesn't work. What is accomplished is something the opposite, since what is produced is something like a cult film where the montage style complements the violence represented and presents it largely in a positive light. It might be argued that Natural Born Killers makes the violent image alluring while allowing no space for the viewer. I feel this would be very difficult to argue about Funny Games. Benny's Video and Funny Games are different kinds of obscenity, in the sense that I intended a slap in the face and a provocation." — The World That is Known: An Interview with Michael Haneke by Christopher Sharrett, Cineaste, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer 2003)