More Like Eyes Wide Sh*t

Summary

Kermode on Film – "More Like Eyes Wide Sh*t" (April 7, 2026)

Overview

In this episode of “Kermode on Film,” Mark Kermode and regular guest Jack Howard dive into Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Sparked by Jack's suggestion, they candidly review the film’s legacy, their initial reactions, and the swirl of conspiracy theories that surround it. Mark reveals his infamous original review, and both share personal histories with Kubrick's work, all while dissecting the film’s narrative, themes, and enduring reputation for edginess (or lack thereof). The conversation is marked by brutal honesty, deadpan humor, and a deconstruction of cinema myth-making.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Initial Takes and Personal Histories

• Opening Banter/Reviews

  • Jack kicks off with his girlfriend’s (Ailey Fraser) concise take:

    “The ramblings of an old man who wants to open up his marriage six months before he dies.”
    (Jack Howard, 01:15)

  • Mark follows with his own actual 1999 review:

    “The inane ramblings of an old man who needed to get out more.”
    (Mark Kermode, 01:27)

  • Both agree: their initial impressions were dismissive and unimpressed.

• Kubrick in Their Lives

  • Mark shares his journey discovering Kubrick, starting with 2001: A Space Odyssey as a child:

    “I become completely obsessed with the idea of Stanley Kubrick.”
    (Mark Kermode, 05:08)

  • He describes seeing Kubrick’s films across the years, unable to see A Clockwork Orange in the UK due to Kubrick’s own ban.

Eyes Wide Shut in Context

• Kubrick’s Filmography & Mythology
  Mark explains Kubrick’s slow, perfectionist filmmaking process and aura, touching on infamous distribution idiosyncrasies (A Clockwork Orange ban, recuts, etc.) and how these contribute to the lore surrounding Eyes Wide Shut.

• First Encounter with Eyes Wide Shut

  • Mark saw it in New York on release, primed by a friend’s jibe:

    "Oh, eyes Wide shit."
    (Mark Kermode quoting a friend, 09:16)

  • He thought it was “an absolute car crash of a film.”
    (Mark Kermode, 09:45)

The Plot Recap (For the Uninitiated)

• Jack’s Synopsis (13:22–16:01)
  • Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman play a married couple. She confesses to fantasizing about another man, shattering Cruise’s character. He then embarks on a night wandering through New York, engaging in failed or half-hearted sexual dalliances, ultimately infiltrating a secret masked orgy—and is swiftly ejected. Most of the film, post-orgy, involves Cruise’s character wandering and talking to various people, slowly uncovering the supposed “mystery.”
  • Nicole Kidman’s climactic line sums up their whole ordeal (with Mark's paraphrase):

    “There’s one more thing that we should do.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Fuck.”
    (Mark Kermode & Jack Howard, 18:49)

The “Edgy” Reputation & Reception

• Is It Really That Shocking?
  • Jack: “You still think of Eyes Wide Shut as this weird edgy film. And then you get to the part... is Stanley Kubrick’s idea of edgy just people having quite normal sex, many of them with their pants on, with masks on?”
    (Jack Howard, 15:45)
  • Mark: “I thought this is an absolute car crash of a film.”
    (Mark Kermode, 09:45)
  • Both question the reality of the film’s notorious status, given the sexual content is very tame by today’s standards.

Conspiracy Theories & Film Mythology

• Jack introduces the idea of wild internet theories:

  • Some believe the movie hints at elite pedophile rings and that Kubrick was murdered for exposing this (and that “the missing 25 minutes” would reveal all).

    “People believe that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman have agreed to sell their daughter to this society...”
    (Jack Howard, 19:37)

  • Mark, with typical dry humor, quips:

    "Absolute nonsense. Anyone who believes that sort of thing needs to get help."
    (Mark Kermode, 20:47)

• Kubrick’s Mystique Feeds Conspiracies

  • Mark references Room 237 (about The Shining) where every symbol is interpreted as deep code, noting Kubrick's precise style invites over-reading:

    “It makes you look for patterns.”
    (Mark Kermode, 21:28)

  • Yet Kubrick's films are messy and often re-edited after release—undercutting the perfectionist myth that fuels these theories.

Completion, Authorship, and Artistic Constraints

• Was Eyes Wide Shut Finished?

  • Mark: Multiple narratives exist about whether Kubrick completed the film before his death, but asserts what audiences saw was “close enough” to his vision. The myth that studio edits destroyed a masterpiece is “deluding yourself.”
    (Mark Kermode, 24:09)
  • On artistic freedom:

    “The best art is made when you are constrained. And the worst art happens when you say you can do whatever you want for as long as you want...”
    (Mark Kermode, 24:30)

• Production Anecdotes

  • Mark relays a story of a cinematographer declining to work without a script and later feeling he “dodged a bullet” given the film’s endless shoot.
  • Rumor of Kubrick putting the cinematographer on roller skates for the masked ball scene—evidence of possibly excessive experimentation (25:38).

Humor and Tone—or Lack Thereof

• No Sense of Humor?
  • Mark:

    “I think the worst thing about Eyes Wide Shut is that it’s silly and it has no sense of humor.”
    (Mark Kermode, 26:19)

  • Even in bleak Kubrick films like Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange, the humor is biting and present. Here, it’s absent to the film’s detriment.
  • Jack agrees, but admits a few awkward laughs at out-of-place moments, highlighting tonal inconsistency (27:23).

Final Assessment (This Episode)

• The hosts both maintain that despite the reverence surrounding it, Eyes Wide Shut is not a secret masterpiece. Its themes are unoriginal, its execution is ponderous, and its “edginess” is more reputation than reality.
  • Jack: “What else are you doing? Nowhere. Are we going with that? Are we going anywhere with this?” (28:59)
• The critical dissection is to be continued in their next episode, leaving listeners with a cliffhanger:

  “Having decided that Eyes Wide Shut is not the masterpiece... why isn’t it?”
  (Mark Kermode, 29:17)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Comparing Notes with Partners

  • “That is literally what my review of it said.” (Mark Kermode, 01:27)

• On Kubrick’s Mythic Aura

  • “I become completely obsessed with the idea of Stanley Kubrick.” (Mark Kermode, 05:08)

• On the “Mystery” of the Film

  • “Tom Cruise walks around... has inconsequential conversations with people, and that happens for ages.” (Jack Howard, 17:13)

• On Internet Conspiracies

  • “According to the Internet that brought us QAnon, the moon landings were faked, and there’s no such thing as Covid... tell us what else is going on in that scene.”
    (Mark Kermode, 19:23)
  • “Absolute nonsense. Anyone who believes that sort of thing needs to get help.” (Mark Kermode, 20:47)

• On Watching the Film Again

  • “This is two hours I’m not getting back.” (Mark Kermode, 25:57)
  • “2 hours and 40 minutes.” (Jack Howard, 26:18)

• On Humor in Kubrick

  • “One of the things about Barry Lyndon that I didn’t realize... is how funny it is. There are really funny jokes in Barry Lyndon, obviously. Dr. Strangelove is one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen.” (Mark Kermode, 26:55)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

| Time | Segment/Topic | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:32 | Mark & Jack intro; Ailey’s and Mark’s original reviews | | 02:30 | Mark’s background as a Kubrick fan; first seeing 2001 | | 06:55 | Clockwork Orange's UK ban and Kubrick's reputation | | 09:16 | Mark’s first viewing of Eyes Wide Shut and initial reaction | | 13:22 | Jack summarizes Eyes Wide Shut plot for new or forgetful listeners | | 15:21 | The “edginess” of Eyes Wide Shut — is it earned? | | 18:49 | Discussion of the film's ending and Kidman's final line | | 19:23 | Internet conspiracy theories (Kubrick, elites, “missing 25 minutes”) | | 21:28 | How Kubrick’s precision invites over-interpretation | | 24:30 | Kermode on films made without constraints vs. with them | | 25:38 | Production anecdotes (roller skates, endless experiment) | | 26:19 | “It’s silly and it has no sense of humor…”; Kubrick’s previous humor | | 28:59 | Jack: “Are we going anywhere with this?” (film’s lack of thematic payoff) | | 29:17 | Cliffhanger: Next episode promised on why the film fails as a masterpiece |

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Tone and Language

• The discussion is laced with dry British wit, skepticism, and self-deprecating humor. Both hosts are candid and irreverent, poking fun at Kubrick’s mythic status and internet conspiracies surrounding the film. Their affection for cinema history and critical rigor is clear, even as they gleefully debunk the film’s supposed brilliance.

---

Next Episode Preview:
The hosts promise to continue their deep dive, further unpicking why Eyes Wide Shut falls short of greatness, and investigating where it went wrong, both thematically and cinematically.

---

For further discussion or to share your own take, Mark and Jack encourage listener feedback (29:41).

Transcript

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[Mark Kermode]

Hi, this is Mark Kermode. Thanks for downloading this Kermode on Film podcast or if you're watching on YouTube. Thanks for watching us. I'm joined once again upstairs at the Sun Pub in London's glittering West End by a Jack Howard. And this episode, at Jack's suggestion, we're going to be discussing.

[Jack Howard]

Finally, we're talking about Eyes Wide Shot. Or as Mark likes to call it, Eyes Wide.

[Mark Kermode]

Shit.

[Jack Howard]

Does he still think this?

[Mark Kermode]

Let's find out together.

[Jack Howard]

Do you mind if I start with a quote?

[Mark Kermode]

You go ahead.

[Jack Howard]

It's a. It's a quote from. So me and my girlfriend watched Eyes Wide Shut last night.

[Mark Kermode]

This is Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut.

[Jack Howard]

And this is my girlfriend Ailey Fraser's take on the film. This is almost like her letterbox. One, one sentence review.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay.

[Jack Howard]

The ramblings of an old man who wants to open up his marriage six months before he dies.

[Mark Kermode]

Wow. Well, harsh.

[Jack Howard]

Just to set the tone, but do

[Mark Kermode]

you know what I said about it when I reviewed it?

[Jack Howard]

Not dissimilar.

[Mark Kermode]

The inane ramblings of an old man who needed to get out more. That is literally what my review of it said.

[Jack Howard]

That is. I don't think Ailey was reading your reviews in 1999.

[Mark Kermode]

That is literally what I said when Eyes Wide Shut first came out.

[Jack Howard]

When. Also, just to set the sort of tone of this as well, I was seven years old when Eyes Wide Shot came out.

[Mark Kermode]

I'm going to say when I saw Eyes Wide Shut, when it came out. Bad parenting.

[Jack Howard]

In 1999, I was. I was seven years old. So it was one of those films for me that always just sort of had this kind of air around it when you, you know, when you reach your teenage years, they start talking about, oh, there's movies with naked women in them. And, like, that's. That's how I was introduced to Eyes Wide Shot, basically. And then when I finally watched it, I was like, oh, my God, it's the freakiest thing. And that's what I can remember my teenage viewing of it was. This is the freakiest thing I've ever seen. And I haven't watched it since this weekend. Just gone. Okay, And. And now, please, like, what was your first experience? How old were you in 1999?

[Mark Kermode]

Very old. So let me. Let me set the scene for you. So when I was at a very impressionable age, I was taken to see Silent Running by a school. There is a point to this story. A school friend called Mark first, whose father was a conductor, I believe. And he took us uptown to see Silent Running at what was the Cinerama Cinema. She's now a theater. And before Silent Running played, which is the Dog Trumbull movie, there was a trailer for 2001. The reason for this was because Doug Trumbull did special effects on Silent Running. So when Silent Running came out, there was a kind of renewed interest in 2001. I was like, 10 years old, something like that. And so I didn't know that 2000, this was a re release. Mark first and I saw the trailer for 2001. And then we saw Silent Running, which is, as you know, one of my favorite films. I was overwhelmed by it. It was so sentimental and so moving. But what was this 2001 thing? Well, it was because they were bringing it back to play alongside Silent Running. So then Mark and I said, we must go and see this film, Silent Running. And mark's mom See 2001. Pardon me. Yes. Mark's mom said, oh, well, it's very symbolic. And we went, oh. No idea what that word meant.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, I'm into symbolism.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, Very into it. So we found out it was playing the Rex, which is now the Phoenix in East Finchley. And we went to see 2001 A Space Odyssey at the Rex. Okay. That was the first time I'd ever heard of Stanley Kubrick. First time I'd ever heard of Arthur C. Clarke. I was a kid, right? So we go and see 2001, and I have no idea what's going on at all.

[Jack Howard]

That's everyone's first experience of 2001.

[Mark Kermode]

So I think thought from my experience of it was that the apes were on Earth at the same time as the spaceships were in space. I didn't see the time. Cut. I had no Idea what was happening with the Stargate. I had no idea what was happening with the space baby at the. I had no idea.

[Jack Howard]

All I know about the Stargate is that I think it's still going on now. Yeah. And I've just left the city.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. And of course, the Stargate was done by Doug Trumbull, who did Silent Running anyway. But because it was one of those films, it was just like. It was experientially astonishing. So then I. I become obsessed with it. Firstly, I buy the novel. Or correctly, the novelization because Arthur C. Clarke wrote the screenplay, was simultaneously, wasn't it? Yes. Except he finished the novel after the screenplay was finished. Therefore, there are differences in the novel and the screenplay. They go to different planets. The whole thing is kind of. So there are crucial differences. But the novel explains what's going on. Oh, I see. So the block appears and it sort of set. Moon Watcher gets him thinking. Then he does the thing with the bone. That's how mankind begins. And then it's a life. And it kind of explains everything. Right. So then you go back and you. I watch the movie again. Still doesn't make any sense. But it does with the book. And then I buy a book by Jerry Agel called the Lost Worlds of 2000. Was it? Or the Making of 2001. There's another book called the Lost Worlds of 2001, which is like some other stuff that Arthur C. Clark. Anyway, I read everything. I become completely obsessed with it. And I become completely obsessed with the idea of Stanley Kubrick. So the next thing that Stanley Kubrick does that comes to the cinema is Barry Lyndon.

[Jack Howard]

Right, Right. Okay.

[Mark Kermode]

So I go, this is right from the guy who made 2001. Let's go see Barry Lyndon. I have no idea what's going on. It's a bunch of people in wigs. It's like, what. What on earth is happening? Then sort of, you know, a little bit later on, there's. There's Full Metal Jacket, which.

[Jack Howard]

And then there's a big gap.

[Mark Kermode]

Well, there was. There was pretty substantial gaps between a lot of Kubrick's films. Yes. But Full Metal Jacket, which famously is the Vietnam War movie that shot in the Isle of Dogs. And then. And then there's a. There's. There's the very, very big gap. But anyway, during that time, I had gone back and I discovered Dr. Strangelove. I had heard about Clockwork Orange, but of course, you couldn't see Clockwork Orange because Clockwork Orange was banned by Kubrick himself in the uk. The only way you could see Clockwork Orange until the reissue, which happened in the wake of Stanley Kubrick's death when he was finishing Eyes Wide Shut, because he had. He had banned it from being played in the UK in his lifetime.

[Jack Howard]

Why?

[Mark Kermode]

Well, so there are many versions of the story. One of them is that people reacted strangely to Clockwork Orange. People sort of started, you know, connecting it to real life crimes. There's a lot of news stories about it.

[Jack Howard]

You're telling me that there was weird conspiracy theories around Stanley Kubrick film.

[Mark Kermode]

I know, I know, I know. I left the Shining out as well, didn't I? The Shining was in the middle.

[Jack Howard]

Sorry, wait until we get to Eyes Wide shots.

[Mark Kermode]

Precisely. So, yeah, so the story was that he. It attracted a fan base that he wasn't crazy about. And then the story that I had heard was that a parcel arrived at his home or his office, which was ticking, and. And he said to what? Okay, just once, it's just take it out. So it was. It was Kubrick and Warner Brothers who stopped it from being shown. James Fuhrman did say that had it come up under the Video Recordings act for video classification, he probably wouldn't have passed it. But it was banned from cinemas by Cabrin, as you know. The Scala Cinema famously got into a lawsuit because they showed it without permission to do it. They showed it as a secret film. And. And there was a. There was a huge big suit about it. Any. So the reason I say all this is that by the time we get to Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick has played quite a big part in my life. When I finally saw Clockwork Orange, like so many other people, it was on a pirated video that a friend of mine who was in Amsterdam had sent me. So it had Dutch subtitles, you know, as it was. That was how it was, you know. Anyway, sorry, it was stupid joke. There was. There was a cinema in Paris that was showing Clockwork Orange almost constantly. La Orange Mechanique, I think, as it was called. And people would go to Paris to see it. That's what a big deal it was. So Eyes Wide Shut, which is Kubrick's final film by the time we get to it. I've got quite a long history with Stanley Kubrick and I've loved some of his films. And, you know, obviously the whole thing with the Shining, there's a conversation to be had about that. But he's an important filmmaker and I see Eyes Wide Shut in America and a friend of mine who's a critic, just before I saw it said, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm landing in New York and I'm gonna go and see Eyes Wide Shut. So he said, oh, eyes Wide shit. And I went, no. He went, just tell me afterwards.

[Jack Howard]

Oh, it is a shame, though, that he put that in your head before you watched it.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay, so this is rather like the Straight Story, which as the lights were going down on the Straight Story.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

My friend said, forrest Gump on a tractor. And that did it for me. But I watched Eyes Wide Shut and I thought, this is an absolute car crash of a film. And of course, there were all the stories then about this wasn't Kubrick's because Kubrick hadn't quite finished it at the point that he died. And the finish.

[Jack Howard]

It was the whole thing about 25 minutes being cut out of the film.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. Which is, you know, as. As with all the Kubrick stuff, there's a lot of bogus Moga stuff. So I hadn't watched it, I saw it, I didn't like it. And. And then years passed and my partner, Linda Ruth Williams, wrote a book called the Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema. And one of the things that she was writing about this was about how the erotic thriller had its kind of, you know, its great heyday and video in 1980s, but connecting it back to film noir and where we are now with the changing classification. And there was a section in it on auteur erotic thriller filmmakers. And the general feeling was,

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[Mark Kermode]

There's an awful lot of trickle up in this. There's an awful Lot of kind of name prestige filmmakers, you know, doing. The thing which always happens is that you take from the bottom and then you. Then you elevate it. And I really thought that that was the case with, with, with Eyes Wide Shut. That it was just in comparison with films like the, you know, the straight to video Greg Dark movies. Particularly since there have been such a lot of stuff about. It's so edgy. It's, you know, it's. It's as far as you can go in. In America, they had to cut it. They had to put up, you know, they did a splice on one of the bits in order to get it through with an R rating, which was. The R rating is nonsense anyway, so I didn't watch it again for a very long time. And then you said, let's do this, go back and watch it again. So I have now watched it again. That gets us up to speed. Now tell me your first experience of seeing it.

[Jack Howard]

Okay, so I can't remember specifically what my first experience of Eyes Wide Shut was when I was a teenager.

[Mark Kermode]

Would it have been video?

[Jack Howard]

It probably would have been on the telly or something, but. Or like a sleepover or something like that. But it's also so ingrained into pop culture that I don't know what's like a Simpsons reference and what's the movie that I said, you know what I mean? It's so kind of like wound up in all that that I can't distinguish where I saw these things, whether I know the reference first or the actual thing itself. But watching it this weekend felt to me like I was watching it for the first time. In a lot of ways. I'm a grown up. This feels like I'm actually sitting and watching the movie and I'm experiencing the story for the first time.

[Mark Kermode]

So let me ask you to do something because I'm. Obviously there'll be people. What. I imagine most people have seen it, have an idea of it, but some won't, having just seen it. Give us a thumbnail of the story of Eyes Wide Shut.

[Jack Howard]

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are a married couple that are. He's a doctor and they have a daughter. Together they go to a high society party where Nicole Kidman seems to be getting hit on quite a lot by this well to do gentleman who is clearly just looking for sex. She then confesses to him later that

[Mark Kermode]

night to Tom Cruise.

[Jack Howard]

To Tom Cruise. Yeah. Apologies not to. Not to that well to do, gentlemen. She confesses to Tom Cruise later that that was happening and they have a Bit of a joke about it. But then she says that she has fancy fantasized about a naval officer that she saw passingly in a hotel once.

[Mark Kermode]

She says very specifically, you men, you think it's only you. Yeah, who do this. And she says this crushing thing that there was a moment that if the naval officer with whom she didn't have a thing had asked her to run away with. With him, she would have given up everything.

[Jack Howard]

She would have given up her husband, her child, and given up her entire life just for one night with him. And this breaks Tom Cruise's character's spirit. You mean it drives insane. And he then goes on a. A night of looking for sex. Basically, like he goes to a prostitute. He then ends up at the very famous masked party and last ball, the masked ball, and is politely asked to leave. And then the consequences of that are, what. What is this going to do to his life now that he's entered into this space with these people that are apparently dangerous and don't want him there?

[Mark Kermode]

They're sort of masons and they're all masked, so their identities are hidden. And he gets the. If he finds out about this from the guy who's playing piano at the masked ball. What, they don't have CD players? Who has to. Who has to play the masked orgy with a blindfold on so that he doesn't see any of the hot stuff that's going on in this out of town mansion?

[Jack Howard]

And just to say when you were like, oh, it's. People were saying it's so edgy, they had to do this in order to even get it through. And you do. That kind of vibe has permeated through the years. Like you still sort of think of Eyes Wide Shut as like this weird edgy film. And then you get to the part and you go, oh, is Stanley Kubrick's idea of edgy just people having quite normal sex, many of them with their

[Mark Kermode]

pants on, with masks on?

[Jack Howard]

Is that it? And obviously like 1999. I have to take into account that probably hadn't been done quite so explicitly. It had had, but just not in this kind of high class kind of way, like Stanley Kubrick's doing it.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay, so just so. Just a minute. So. So he goes to the orgy, he's politely asked to leave, having failed. Having failed to have any happy ending, despite saying the magic word for Dalio to a man dressed as a chicken. And then what happens for the rest of the film?

[Jack Howard]

Tom Cruise walks around.

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[Jack Howard]

has inconsequential conversations with people, and that happens for ages. And they reveal the.

[Mark Kermode]

The.

[Jack Howard]

The mystery. And I'm using inverted commas for the people listening very slowly to the point where the film is behind us, like we're watching it, being like, yeah, I know, I get it, I get it. Is there something else coming? Oh, no, there isn't. And then at the end, and this really, really annoyed, especially Aili, my girlfriend.

[Mark Kermode]

I'm so pleased to hear all this.

[Jack Howard]

The. The conversation happens between Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise where they're like, well, I guess you going and doing that and me having some kind of kinky dream are basically the same thing. Let's agree to stay together anyway and we should fuck soon.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, no, hang on. Okay, so you're slightly paraphrasing the end, but so.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, I am paraphrasing it.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes. Crucial detail. At some point, he goes home and finds the mask from the ball has been placed on his bedside table.

[Jack Howard]

Pillow.

[Mark Kermode]

Pillow. Beg your pardon? His pillow. So they not only do they know where he lived, but they have access to his bedroom. And he went back to the mansion. I think it's the morning after, but the time frame is a little bit messed up.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah. And the whole thing's very obviously intentionally dreamy. Yes.

[Mark Kermode]

Traum novel, in fact, which of course is the Schnitzler original, which is the story that is based on Dream, Dream, Dream Story. And when he goes back, he is politely told, go away. Never, never darken our towels again. You know, you know nothing. You see, you know, we're a sinister Masonic

[Jack Howard]

all That's in a letter.

[Mark Kermode]

And then all that's in a letter. And then they end up walking through a shop at Christmas and. And it's jinga dinky, jinga, jinga jingy. And the very last line of the line of the movie is that Nicole Kidman says to Tom Cruise, I mean, I. The characters says, there's one more thing that we should do. And he says, what's that? And she says, fuck. And that's the end of the film. So it's so edgy. It ends on the word fuck.

[Jack Howard]

Okay, but there are. There is also another thing that's happening in that scene that again kind of leads us into these conspiracy.

[Mark Kermode]

You want to go so. So I will lead.

[Jack Howard]

Jack, please.

[Mark Kermode]

Jack, please tell us. According to the Internet that brought us QAnon, the moon landings were faked and there's no such thing as Covid. Tell us what else is going on in that scene.

[Jack Howard]

Okay, so this will lead us nicely into this. But in that scene, apparently people believe that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman have agreed to sell their daughter to this society because. Oh, no, I don't know the.

[Mark Kermode]

Because, no, because. How do we know that? Because.

[Jack Howard]

Oh, because. Because they're going off with their, with

[Mark Kermode]

the people in the shop.

[Jack Howard]

Yeah, right.

[Mark Kermode]

Are the people from the party.

[Jack Howard]

And this kind of leads into another thing which is the bigger conspiracy, which is that Kubrick was trying to make this film to bring to light that these things are real. And in a way they are. Because we now know about Epstein island

[Mark Kermode]

very specifically, I think. Yes, he was trying to. He was trying to blow the. Blow the lid on a conspiracy of high, high ranking society pedophiles by making this totally impenetrable waffle that however many years later somebody went, oh, I think he was trying to warn us of something.

[Jack Howard]

But then people think he was killed for it. That's. The larger conspiracy, is that he didn't die of a heart attack, he was killed for it. And that's the missing 25 minutes.

[Mark Kermode]

And that is. Well, firstly, just be absolutely clear about this absolute nonsense. Anyone who believes that sort of thing needs to get help. The second thing about it is that obviously in the case of Kubrick's filmography, the spiraling of conspiracy theories is huge. If you've ever seen room 237, which is, you know, which is a brilliant documentary about the Shining in which there's. The Shining is about everything. You know, it's. It. One of the things it's about is a confession by Stanley Kubrick of how he faked the Apollo moon landings because, you know, Danny's wearing. Wearing the jumper. You know, it's about everything.

[Jack Howard]

You play it backwards over the top of itself, like all that kind of stuff, how things line up and. Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

So all of this stuff is nonsense. One of the interesting things about Kubrick as a filmmaker is that he was so brilliantly precise in the way that he orchestrated shots and sequences, the way in which he choreographed it. It makes you look for patterns.

[Jack Howard]

And it also then means that when that stuff doesn't. Isn't there or when that. When that precision doesn't line up. Yeah, you go, he must have done that intentionally. Why did he do that? And then you forget that he's also a human being and an artist who's just doing things on instincts.

[Mark Kermode]

The other thing that you realize is that the Shining was re edited after its original American opening. So it opened in America, as you know, because the recent IMAX version was the. The original American release version. Kubrick did this all the time. His films would open in cinemas and then he would re edit them. He would fiddle around with them, and then the version that would then be the standard version wasn't. So all this stuff about.

[Jack Howard]

Isn't the thing about 2001 that just before the premiere, he took all the voiceover off?

[Mark Kermode]

The story that has been confirmed for me by. Somebody actually does know about this stuff, is that the original score, the composer did not know that his original score wasn't in it until he went to the first.

[Jack Howard]

But not this, not the voiceover.

[Mark Kermode]

I mean, there was a voiceover at some points in the script. I don't know. I don't know whether that was taken off at the last minute, but. But I do know the thing with it, with the north score, that. That did definitely happen.

[Jack Howard]

But anyway, he messes with films.

[Mark Kermode]

But crucially, if you're saying, well, if you play the film this way and then you play the film that way, these shots match up. You go, yeah. Not if there's two versions of it, they don't. They only match up if there's one version of it. There's two versions of. Doesn't work anymore. And of course, that happened with all his films. And in the case of Eyes Wide Shut, of course, famously, there's the whole debate about how complete was it at the point that Stanley Kubrick passed away. And there are different versions of this story, you know, that it was nearly complete. It was complete. It was almost complete. It was finished. Now, the thing that we do know is that Kubrick had a. An amazing degree of latitude in terms of making that film that the studio essentially said to him, take as long as you want. Edit for as long as you want, and if at the end of it you don't like the film, we won't release it. This is one of the things that gave rise to the whole. Oh, well, you know, he wasn't. He wasn't finished with it. Therefore, the version that we have is not. I think that anybody who knows anything about filmmaking knows two things. The first one is the version of Eyes Wide Shut that opened in theaters is close enough to what Stanley Kubrick had locked and shown to the idea that if you have problems with it, but it's because it was all messed up after his passing, you're deluding yourself. And the second thing is, it is, to me, absolute proof that the best art is made when you are constrained. And the worst art happens when you say you can do whatever you want for as long as you want. And it's absolutely up to you what happens with it in the end.

[Jack Howard]

Do you know how long it was that he was making it for? Because I don't know. I think I know the shoot was long.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, I know. I'll tell you one story about it, which is a cinematographer friend of mine who is no longer with us, who I won't name because it doesn't. It doesn't matter. He's a very, very storied cinematographer. This story may have been told elsewhere, but the Kubrick's offices got in touch with him and said, Mr. Kubrick is interested in you working on his new film. And the cinematographer said, oh, well, send me a script. And they said, Mr. Kubrick doesn't send scripts. And he said, I don't shoot films I haven't read. And the reason this came up was because I then had a conversation with him sometime later in which he said, did I dodge a bullet or what? Because that. That the shoot just ran and ran and ran. And there is a. There is a story. This may be apocryphal, but I was told this by a fairly well known director, that one point when they were doing the Masked Ball, Stanley Kubrick decided to see what it would look like if they put the cinematographer on roller skates. Now, of course, actually, weirdly enough, there are precedents for this. I think the first time it happened was back in the 1940s. Somebody was experimenting and said, let's see what happens. But the point was, if you give somebody the leeway to just keep experimenting, they lose sight of what they're doing. And I think that we'll talk about this at some length. I think we should go into detail. But I think that the worst thing. And I watched Eyes Wide Shut again on your request, so I blame you. This is two hours I'm not getting back. But the one thing that really did.

[Jack Howard]

2 hours and 40 minutes.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. The one thing it did encourage me about was I didn't call it wrong the first time. It wasn't that I went in with ludicrous expectations. I think the worst thing about Eyes Wide Shut is that it's silly and it has no sense of humor. And it's really interesting that Kubrick has a sense of humor. One of the things about Barry Lyndon that I didn't realize until I saw Barry Lyndon again when the BFI reissued it a few years ago is how funny it is. There are really funny jokes in Barry Lyndon, obviously. Dr. Strangelove is one of the funniest

[Jack Howard]

films I've ever seen.

[Mark Kermode]

Precisely.

[Jack Howard]

You can clearly tell how much the Simpsons writers like Dr. Strangelove.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. And there is. I shouldn't be laughing at this humor in Clockwork Orange. I mean, all that stuff about. It wasn't me, sir. I was led astray by the treachery of others. Society is to blame. That stuff is. It's funny. It's satirical. It's horrible, but it's satirical. I don't think Eyes Wide Shut has any sense of humor at all.

[Jack Howard]

There are a few moments. I can't pinpoint them in this moment where I did find myself chuckling a

[Mark Kermode]

little bit at or with it.

[Jack Howard]

I can't really distinguish. But, like, there was a bit where I was uncomfortable kind of laughing at the. The guy who has taken over the costume shop where he's, like, having a go at the. The two men that are with his daughter, who. Who knows if they are. If she is his daughter. I was kind of laughing, but not sure why.

[Mark Kermode]

Whole sequence, I think, is woefully misjudged.

[Jack Howard]

I mean, it's, like, completely different to the rest. Like, his character is completely different. And, like, Alan Cummings is like, his. His scene's a bit odd as well. Like, in terms of. Here's the thing, right? If I'm gonna be somewhat positive about what I was enjoying about the. Especially the first acts.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Jack Howard]

When I was, like. When it was offering me. Here's the story we want to tell, I was kind of like, okay, so what the hypothesis of this film is is that under every interaction that any men and women have with Each other. It's. Are we gonna have sex? Is sex on the table between two people? Sex is underlying everything. Now, I don't, you know, I reject that as a. As a concept. I don't think that is the case because it isn't. But that's what the film is offering. And I'm like, okay, I'll go with that story. But as it was going on, I was like, but what else are you doing? Like, what else? Like, and what answers are you kind of coming to? And what are you. And it just wasn't doing anything else with that. It was just kind of going, yeah, and look like Alan Cummings wants to Tom Cruise. Okay, all right. And I think that it offered that at the beginning. And I was like, okay, where are we going with that? Nowhere. Are we going with that? Are we going anywhere with this? Like, that's. That's how I felt about the movie.

[Mark Kermode]

Jack, I'm gonna make a suggestion because we have much more to say. I'm making a suggestion that we. We break this episode now. We pick this up in the next episode because we've kind of laid out the stall. And I'm relieved because I was kind of coming into this thinking that you were going to make a great claim for it being a masterpiece I've had before. So what do you say?

[Jack Howard]

It's not been balanced.

[Mark Kermode]

So. So we. We break here. We pick up in the next episode, having decided that Eyes Wide Shut is not the masterpiece that some people think it is. Why isn't it? Well, there we go. We're going to leave you on a cliffhanger from this episode of Kermode on Film. Join us for the next episode to discover exactly what's wrong with Eyes Wide Shut. And remember, subscribe. You can do that wherever you get your podcast or if you watch on

[Jack Howard]

YouTube, you can smash the like button.

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Subscribe.

[Jack Howard]

Subscribe here. Leave a comment. Tell us what you think. If you disagree with us or agree with us, let us know. And if you want more Mark Kermode film review stuff, you can go where?

[Mark Kermode]

Kermode. Mayor's take. Wherever you get your podcast. See you in a week.

[Jack Howard]

See you in a week.

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[Jack Howard]

hello,

[Mark Kermode]

this is Simon Mayo and this is Mark kermode. He's the UK's best and most trusted film critic. He's a best selling writer, broadcaster and national treasure.

[Jack Howard]

Far too kind.

[Mark Kermode]

Kermod and Mayo's Take has all the

[Jack Howard]

reviews you need and star guests such

[Mark Kermode]

as Sir Ian McKellen.

[Jack Howard]

Nice to be with you, Emma Stone.

[Mark Kermode]

That sounds like something I would love to be a part of. Ewan McGregor. I'm very good. How are you doing? Kate Planchette. What was that word you used?

[Jack Howard]

Cattywampus.

[Mark Kermode]

Comedimes. Take all the film you need, available wherever you get your podcasts.