[…] A first time event taking place at the Festival this year is The Black List Live! A Staged Reading. The Festival is teaming up with The Black List to program a staged reading of an unproduced Black List script. Join us for this one night only reading of Stephany Folsom’s 1969: A Space Odyssey, …read more […]

This whole thing is so awesome. Everything about it. Wish I lived in L.A. so I could at least try to attend this. Scott, any idea where I could read this script? Thanks.

(cough) email (cough)

It wasn’t until many years deep into my love for the work of Stanley Kubrick that my research led me to the “multiple auteurship” conspiracy theory. Like an inverse Alan Smithee, “Stanley Kubrick” was an elite order of filmmakers who invoked the name when they sought to produce a cinematic work free from the confines of traditional studio and commercial expectations. Luminaries believed to be members of the secret Kubrickian Society include Billy Wilder (The Killing), David Lean (Paths of Glory), Steven Spielberg (The Shining), Martin Scorsese (Lolita), Mario Bava (Dr. Strangelove), George Lucas (2001: A Space Odyssey), Milos Forman (Barry Lyndon), Brian De Palma (A Clockwork Orange), Francis Ford Coppola (Full Metal Jacket), David Lynch (Eyes Wide Shut), and Sir Francis Bacon. This elaborate smokescreen was imbued with even more believability when the group hired character actor John Rhys-Davies to portray “Stanley” in publicity photos and a few rare public appearances. Several audio interviews with “Stanley” were performed by Scorsese’s uncle Fred from Staten Island. http://i.imgur.com/kfLNZXh.jpg

Nice one, Nick, and thanks for breaking the ice!

Stanley Kubrick, in cooperation with the Bank Tellers Union, has overseen the systematic sabotage of millions of ATM machines throughout the United States. If you've ever tried to deposit cash into a modern ATM machine, you know it's a nightmare. The machine spits your money back at you time after time until you just give up and go inside to the tellers. This is no accident. In the mid-80's, after using an ATM for the first time, Kubrick became enraged at the simplicity of it. There was no depth, no nuance. He hated it. Since he was also known for bedding hundreds of bank tellers throughout his life (he needed the extra 'takes,' he said, to make sure it was 'just right'), it was an easy decision to team with the Bank Tellers union to sabotage as many ATM's as possible in order to preserve teller jobs. He may be dead, but his work lives on today in the form of so many sabotaged ATM's. So the next time you can't just deposit your goddamn cash at 3am so the check you wrote your landlord doesn't bounce, thank Stanley Kubrick. And send his estate a bill for your NSF charges.

^^^My time stamp says 1:29, but it's only 10:30 here in LA.

Contrary to popular belief, Stanley Kubrick is not dead. He just lost his groove. His filmmaking mojo. His celluloid swagger. Feeling pigeonholed by his own genius and critical response to his early films, Stanley suffered a nervous breakdown and a bout of paralyzing anxiety on the set of Eyes Wide Shut. Fearing that he was no longer free to pursue the mainstream genre faire that attracted him to film as a youth, Stanley turned over his last project to fellow director Steven Spielberg in order to rediscover his original passion before it forever escaped his grasp. It was at this same time that writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, fresh off The Sixth Sense, was battling his own paralyzing fear at the thought of ever repeating this success. In the unlikeliest of circumstances, both directors met in a chance encounter at a special screening of Freaky Friday at the New Beverly and hatched a plan that would alter the course of history in a way the film community would see but never accept. Shyamalan agreed to allow Kubrick to be his "ghost-director" in order to allow him the chance to experiment and become a beginner again- in essence, he gifted him the luxury to fail until he got his groove back. And fail he did. Signs. The Village. Lady In The Water. The Last Airbender. All Films Kubrick used under his new pseudonym to stretch his legs and find his voice again, until Kubrick finally felt that he had regained a piece of what was once lost: monkey creatures attacking each other. Kubrick is now ready to return "from the dead" and begin filmmaking under his own name again. But how? Does a Kubrick audience even exist anymore? Enter the largest conspiracy of them all (a conspiracy within a conspiracy!): the live Blacklist reading. Is it all a ploy to gather the most die-hard Kubrick fans in one room and announce the truth to the world? It seems so. After all, it is a Kubrick event so Kubrick-y that even aspiring Kubricks would share their most insane conspiracy beliefs in order to gain access through those doors. It's like a Kubrick blue light, and we're all Kubrick-sucking skeeters. Then again, If we had looked closely, we'd have seen that it's been right in front of us this whole time. We've just had our eyes wide shut.