Postcards from Oz - AU Edition

I'm afraid, I have to keep this report rather short, because I so should be working on something different right now...

Yesterday evening, cavendish and I had the immense pleasure of participating in a panel/seminar/workshop-like Q&A  session with Jan Harlan, who does not only happen to be the brother of Kubrick's wife Christiane, but also the executive producer of all of Mr. Kubrick's later films, including such master pieces as Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.


The people responsible for organising the event had done everything they could to prevent the evening from becoming a success for both the audience and Mr. Harlan (failure to install a functioning microphone and video-projector *before* the talk and not during the first twenty-five minutes of it; the most heterogeneous of audiences, longtime Kubrick fans, most of them probably university-educated mixed with an entire class of 8th graders who had been dragged there their teacher and would have been served much better with half an hour of Q&A time on their own).

However, the experience itself was just amazing and probably one of the greatest film-related privileges I'll ever enjoy.

Despite the bad start, Mr. Harlan talked for over three hours. Charming, resourceful, enthusiastic, incredibly patient; sharing his passion for Stanley Kubrick's work as well as for film and art in general, willing to give as many insights into Kubrick's way of film making as he possibly could.

The people sitting in that ugly Duesseldorf educational centre's classroom heard intriguing anecdotes, such as Mr. Harlan having to fly to Venice four times to get the masks for Eyes Wide Shut 's famous "orgy" scene, because the entire production's single costume lady was simply indesepensable. Saw unused set designs for 2001. Excerpts from several brilliant non-Kubrick movies. Production sketches for A.I. .  Kubrick's still un-aired, touching but at the same time also remarkably witty acceptance speech for the D.W. Griffith award.

I guess  I could write for the next three hours or so. But time's running fast and I've  really got to go now.

If you ever have the chance to hear Mr. Harlan talk, somewhen, somewhere. Do it. It's so worth your time.