This intimate portrait by his former personal assistant and confidante reveals the man behind the legendary filmmaker--for the first time.
Stanley Kubrick, the director of a string of timeless movies from
Lolita and
Dr. Strangelove to
A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket, and others, has always been depicted by the media as the Howard Hughes of filmmakers, a weird artist obsessed with his work and privacy to the point of madness. But who was he really? Emilio D'Alessandro lets us see. A former Formula Ford driver who was a minicab chauffeur in London during the Swinging Sixties, he took a job driving a giant phallus through the city that became his introduction to the director. Honest, reliable, and ready to take on any task, Emilio found his way into Kubrick's neurotic, obsessive heart. He became his personal assistant, his right-hand man and confidant, working for him from
A Clockwork Orange until Kubrick's death in 1999.
Emilio was the silent guy in the room when the script for
The Shining was discussed. He still has the coat Jack Nicholson used in the movie. He was an extra on the set of
Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick's last movie. He knew all the actors and producers Kubrick worked with; he observed firsthand Kubrick's working methods down to the smallest detail. Making no claim of expertise in cinematography but with plenty of anecdotes, he offers a completely fresh perspective on the artist and a warm, affecting portrait of a generous, kind, caring man who was a perfectionist in work and life. The paperback edition has a new foreword by Matthew Modine, who is featured in the book and starred as Private Joker in Kubrick's
Full Metal Jacket.
Emilio D'Alessandro left Italy at eighteen to become a racecar driver but turned to driving a minicab after the economic crisis in the late sixties ended his career. He worked closely with Stanley Kubrick for thirty years while raising a family with his wife, Janette. After Kubrick's death, he returned to his native land. He lives in Cassino, Italy.
Filippo Ulivieri was born 1977 and is Italy's leading expert on Stanley Kubrick. Since 1999, he has run the website archiviokubrick.it, a database of factual information about the life and work of Stanley Kubrick. His research on
2001: A Space Odyssey,
A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick's unrealized films, and the myths surrounding his public image have been presented in several international conferences and published in Italian and English. He has adapted
Stanley Kubrick and Me for the screen as
S Is for Stanley (Alex Infascelli, 2015), winner of the David di Donatello award for Best Documentary Feature. His most recent book is
2001 between Kubrick and Clarke: The Genesis, Making, and Authorship of a Masterpiece.
Matthew Modine is an award-winning actor who has worked with many of the film industry's most acclaimed directors. He has starred in movies from Alan Parker's
Birdy, Robert Altman's
Shortcuts (for which he won a Golden Globe Award), and Stanley
Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (in the iconic role of Private Joker) to the
Sicario sequel
Soldado and the shark thriller
47 Meters Down. He is currently starring in the Netflix original series
Stranger Things, for which he won the 2017 SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble. He also directed the award-winning short film
Super Sex, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and has recently mounted three features:
The Rocking Horseman,
The Horror, and
Beyond the Horizon.
