Stanley Kubrick: A Biography

In 1962, an MGM trailer teased its audience by asking "How Did They Ever Make a Movie Out of Lolita?" Readers of this book, which recounts the life of Lolita's director, might ask, "How Did They Ever Write a Biography of Stanley Kubrick?" Kubrick is the most reclusive of celebrities, a man who seems mysterious even to those who have known and worked with him. Vincent Lobrutto's engrossing and beautifully researched biography succeeds in tracing this meticulous and brilliant visionary from his childhood and early career as a photographer for Look magazine to his creation of masterpieces such as Dr. Strangelove,2001: A Space Odyssey,A Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket. Lobrutto concludes his book by discussing projects that have not yet been realized: Eyes Wide Shut, a film about sexual obsession, the Holocaust drama Aryan Papers, and the most eagerly awaited of Kubrick's prospective movies, the science fiction film A. I.