{"id":16746,"date":"2021-06-30T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=16746"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:14:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:14:24","slug":"inside-the-fraught-partnership-of-jim-thompson-and-stanley-kubrick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/inside-the-fraught-partnership-of-jim-thompson-and-stanley-kubrick\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Fraught Partnership of Jim Thompson and Stanley Kubrick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

No filmmaker conveyed the dreadful and hypnotic power of staring into the abyss like Stanley Kubrick. He was so adept at visualizing this discarnate notion that the very basic shot composition he favored has since been dubbed \u2018The Kubrick Stare\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No writer better captured this same sensation than Jim Thompson, the author of dozens of post-war pulp paperbacks who toiled in obscurity during his lifetime but is now regarded as the \u2018Dimestore Dostoevsky\u2019 of American literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rarely have two artists from separate mediums been better suited to one another, so it\u2019s hardly surprising their brief collaboration would result in two indisputable classics. Yet, for as revered as the films they worked on together are today, their partnership can hardly be viewed as an unambiguous success. Indeed, the experience led to great personal acrimony and professional disappointment for at least one of them, while also failing to rise to its full potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After cutting his teeth on two early, ultra-low budget features (1953\u2019s Fear and Desire<\/em> and 1955\u2019s Killer\u2019s Kiss<\/em>), Kubrick sought to break into the big time with his 1956 thriller The Killing<\/em>, an adaptation of Lionel White\u2019s novel Clean Break<\/em> and an unofficial update of John Huston\u2019s genre-defining heist classic The Asphalt Jungle<\/em>. Taking inspiration from one of his early filmmaking idols, Elia Kazan, Kubrick rejected the idea of writing the script alongside a professional screenwriter, preferring instead to work with someone who didn\u2019t hold to industry rules and could bring a fresh perspective to the story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a matter of small contention as to whether the idea to bring Thompson onboard came from Kubrick or his longtime producer James B. Harris, but either way, the decision was made based on Kubrick\u2019s admiration for a couple of Thompson\u2019s novels, in particular his 1952 roman noir<\/em>\u2014considered by many to be his greatest work\u2014The Killer Inside Me<\/em>. Kubrick described that book as \u201cprobably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered,\u201d a quote that adorns the cover of most copies from the last several decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As recounted<\/a> by Robert Polito in his book Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson<\/em>, the two men, despite their 22-year age difference and disparate personalities\u2014Thompson the heavy drinking but loyal family man from a hardscrabble South Central upbringing; Kubrick the Jewish Manhattanite and proto-beatnik who, having caught an early break as a professional photographer, only ever worked in the arts\u2014quickly hit it off, with Kubrick becoming a regular fixture at the Thompson household (they were living in Queens at the time) while the two worked on their script.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The material was a natural fit for Thompson, who did as much to shape post-war crime fiction as anyone (even if he wasn\u2019t recognized for it at the time). His milieu is one of desolation, environmental as well as psychological, emotional and spiritual, and he populated his stories with the most anti-social of outcasts\u2014smiling psychos and sociopaths, grubby grifters and whores, desperate losers and doomed suckers. Every character and cast member of The Killing<\/em> would feel right at home in a Thompson novel, from Sterling Hayden\u2019s morose bruiser to Timothy Carrey\u2019s seedy marksman to Vince Edwards\u2019 amoral playboy, and especially Elisha Cooke Jr.\u2019s sad sack cuckold and Marie Windsor as his unrelentingly avaricious wife. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thompson\u2019s bleak, fatalistic worldview, which holds that life is an inherently vicious and absurd farce for which the only logical response is to either check out by your own hand or laugh your way into the madhouse, finds expression through two of the most memorable lines in the film, first by way of Windsor\u2019s deathly lament\u2014\u201cJust a bad joke without a punchline\u2026\u201d\u2014and later in Hayden closing question, \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson\u2019s pessimism was well founded, and would be proved out by Kubrick\u2019s eventual betrayal of him. Although he had worked closely on every aspect of the script, Thompson was ultimately credited as only contributing dialog to the finished film. The discovery of this\u2014at a screening which Thompson attended with his family, no less\u2014was a serious blow to the writer, who\u2019d come to regard Kubrick as a true friend. He threatened to take the matter to the Writer\u2019s Guild for arbitration, although he never followed through on this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was but one in a series of career long disappointments for Thompson, who viewed himself as a writer of serious proletariat literature and never made peace with his lot as a paperback writer. Still, he was the ultimate writer-for-hire, so despite his justified anger towards Kubrick, he took the director and Harris up on their offer to rewrite the script for their film of the following year, Paths of Glory<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adapted from Humphrey Cobb\u2019s 1935 novel, about a real incident from World War I in which the French military railroaded, convicted, and executed four innocent soldiers (in the film the number is changed to three) for cowardice, Paths of Glory<\/em> at first seems a far cry from Thompson\u2019s other work. Although it centers around a triple murder, it\u2019s not a crime story in the traditional sense, nor does its stark black-and-white photography and fatalistic tone make it a noir. It is a serious war drama, one that carries all the prestige of its weighty subject matter, with almost none of the black humor or grotesque surrealism found in Thompson\u2019s (or for that matter, most of Kubrick\u2019s) other work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, when you look closer, you realize the film is entirely in line with the rest of Thompson\u2019s oeuvre, what with its furious dismissal of patriotism and religion, its distrust of bureaucracy and the legal process, and its total abhorrence of authority and moral hypocrisy. Politically, Thompson was a staunch leftist (at one point he was a member of the Communist Party, although he never bought fully into the revolutionary ideology), and Paths of Glory<\/em> is as much an obvious indictment of the dehumanizing effects of Western Cold War policies as it is a period drama about the previous generation\u2019s historical atrocities. Like so much of Thompson\u2019s work, the film also presents life as a sham trial, the world at large as a savage no man\u2019s land where your best efforts don\u2019t count for shit and one wrong step sends you tumbling straight down to hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reception to Paths of Glory<\/em> managed to exceed that of The Killing<\/em> (a critical success in spite of its commercial disappointment), further advancing Kubrick\u2019s reputation and garnering numerous international awards and accolades, including a nomination for the Writers Guild of America\u2019s Award. But just as with The Killing<\/em>, Thompson was unable to take much pride in his work, as once again his contributions were challenged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(One could argue that in real life, Kubrick played the part of the film\u2019s coldly career-minded generals, while Thompson was discarded like poor, pitiable \u201csocial undesirable\u201d played by Timothy Carrey.)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This time, the controversy was brought about by the film\u2019s first writer, playwright Calder Willingham, as well as its star, Kirk Douglas. Douglas was infuriated by a later draft of the script co-written by Thompson which included an alternate \u2018happy\u2019 ending (which Kubrick would later claim was only added in order to fool the squeamish producers and put Douglas\u2019s massive ego in check). Douglas demanded that this version be scrapped and that they return to the original script, which Willingham claimed to have authored \u201c99 percent\u201d of. This led to Willingham petitioning the WGA for sole writing credit, although when the various versions of the script were compared to the finished film, it was shown that Thompson had written seven scenes, including two of the film\u2019s most memorable (a tense reconnaissance mission that goes horribly awry and a harrowing confession between the condemned soldiers and a priest that turns violent). In the end, he was credited alongside Kubrick and Willingham as a co-writer, although he received third billing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his best efforts, Thompson was unable to parlay his experience on either The Killing<\/em> or Paths of Glory<\/em> into further movie work, save for a couple more Kubrick projects, neither of which ever made it past the page. The first of these was a full-length treatment written towards the end of the \u201850s for a film to have been titled Lunatic at Large<\/em><\/a>, a noir-ish mystery that \u201ctells the tale of Johnnie Sheppard, an ex-carnival worker with serious anger-management issues, and Joyce, a nervous, attractive barfly he picks up in a Hopperesque tavern scene\u2026there\u2019s a newsboy who flashes a portentous headline, a car chase over a railroad crossing with a train bearing down, and a romantic interlude in a spooky, deserted mountain lodge.\u201d As enticing as that synopsis sounds, it wasn\u2019t enough to hold Kubrick\u2019s interest post-Spartacus<\/em>, and Thompson\u2019s script was abandoned and thought lost until its discovery among Kubrick\u2019s papers following his death in 1999. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Kubrick also approached Thompson about working on a script titled I Stole 16 Million Dollars<\/em>, about Prohibition-era safecracker Herbert Emerson Wilson, which was to be produced by Douglas as a potential star vehicle for Cary Grant, but there\u2019s scant information as to how much, if any, actual work he did on that scrapped project.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For as much of Thompson\u2019s DNA is evident in both The Killing<\/em> and Paths of Glory<\/em>, several of Kubrick\u2019s later films\u2014including A Clockwork Orange<\/em>, The Shining<\/em>, and Full Metal Jacket<\/em>\u2014more closely bear the psychological edge and obsession with transgressive violence and madness found throughout his corpus, despite coming from other literary sources. From just the basic synopsis, Lunatic at Large<\/em> seems like it may have been a purer distillation of Thompson\u2019s style and themes, and the perfect melding of his and Kubrick\u2019s separate but simpatico visions. Although there\u2019s no way to know how the film would have been received if it had actually been made, one can\u2019t help but imagine it setting Thompson\u2019s career on a separate course, one in which he achieved some measure of the recognition and success he deserved in his lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson would eventually be rediscovered and properly admired, thanks to a couple of brilliant French adaptations of his work in the late \u201870s \u2013 early \u201880s (S\u00e9rie Noire<\/em> and Coup de Torchon<\/em>) and the publishing efforts of Black Lizard Books<\/a> in the late \u201880s and early \u201890s, the latter kicking up enough interest to spawn six feature adaptations of his books over the following years, including the Oscar nominated The Grifters<\/em>. Over the last two decades, a second, more faithful version of The Killer Inside<\/em> was released, with a couple more adaptations announced, including a potential adaptation<\/a> of his novel Pop. 1280<\/em> from Yorgos Lanthimos and two attempts to bring Lunatic at Large<\/em> to the screen, the latest<\/a> of which has production slated to start in the fall of this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether or not that film\u00a0\u2013 or any others \u2013 come to fruition, Thompson\u2019s literary and cinematic legacy is secure. However, with this summer marking the 65th<\/sup> anniversary of The Killing\u2019s <\/em>original release, it\u2019s well past time he gets his full due as a screenwriter and Kubrick collaborator. \"\"\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The groundbreaking filmmaker and the genius of pulp fiction collaborated twice \u2013 but it was a tricky alliance, tripped up by stubbornness and ego. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":506,"featured_media":16749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399],"tags":[1422],"class_list":["post-16746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","tag-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/506"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22252,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16746\/revisions\/22252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}