It is kind of, yeah, it comes back to this futility that runs throughout, fatalism.

I think this is some wish fulfillment on Spielberg and Cushman as well.

Now, one of the themes, I find this, I've got this sort of set kind of theory that i apply to most of my day and i find it works especially with jewish directors is what i taught and i'll relate it to what you're saying so i i always see read these films in terms of a clash of values what we see in the film whether it's jurassic park or et or jaws and we you know and i'll relate this to munich is a clash of values so there's this jewish kind of notion called tikkun olam which means fixing or healing the world And that's related to something known as Menschlichkeit.

A Mensch, it's from German, but in Yiddish means a fine, upstanding, decent human being, right? So we should strive to be a Mensch.

Menschlichkeit is that sense of values around being a fine, upstanding, decent human who wants to fix the world and heal the world, right? But that's just one branch of sort of Judaism that the diaspora likes.

Mensch, obviously, comes from Yiddish.

It's a diaspora language.

Quint,

At what point did people, the system, the producer start taking him seriously as a filmmaker when he could actually draw finances towards him to tell the kind of stories that he wanted to tell?

Well, he never could, to be honest.

It was only with Warner Brothers and the contract he signed in the early 70s to make The Cartwork Orange that he had a backer, right? He had a guaranteed backer.

So if you look up to that point, right? And that's what we explored in detail in the book is he had to go to a different studio every time to finance a project.

And sometimes a deficit, sometimes using family money and it's, you know, Columbia and it's, um, you know, artists, then, uh, seven arts and MGM for 2001.

And only by, um, 71, you know, since 71 with the Colmock Oranges does he have a guaranteed backer in Warner Brothers.

But that doesn't mean they're going to back everything he wants to do.

If I had to just start with Stanley Kubrick as an enigmatic figure who had a journey, of course, like everybody else to become Kubrick, what would that journey be?

So Stanley Kubrick, the non-eni- enigmatic figure, was born in the Bronx and went in Manhattan and then grew up in the Bronx in 1928.

And, um, one of the things I argue in the fir- book I published in 2018, Stanley Kubrick, New York Jewish Intellectual, is that Kubrick grew up in a heavily Jewish milieu in the Bronx, and that's where he had his formative years, um, before moving to Greenwich Village after he graduated from high school in World War II.

And again, that was also another heavily Jewish area, but with lots of kind of, um, immigrants and ideas and people in, in the mix that really kind of helped to sort of shape this, uh, this, um, uh, personality of the early '20s.

And depends how much detail you want to go in, um, but he started out as a photographer, um, from 1945 through to 1950, and that's really where I think he learnt his filmmaking craft.

You know, how to compose a shot, how to frame it, how to light it, and also how to work with other people because he would do the, uh, photography, someone else would write the captions.

And that kind of is his working method for the rest of his career.

Mm

How did he develop his taste, Nathan, as a storyteller? Did he have any rigorous everyday practices?

Yeah, I should have said chess to your early question about childhood.

So he's also learned chess around the same time as he got his first camera.

Chess teaches you to strategize, to play the long game, but also psychological manipulation of your opponent.

All of those things employed.

A lot of people have compared Kubrick's filmmaking to a chess grandmaster.

I prefer a different analogy, which hasn't been much researched, and that is Kubrick as a musician or drummer.

And