Todd Field Reflects On Meeting Mentor Stanley Kubrick For ‘Eyes Wide Shut’: “I Know Who The F*** You Are, I Hired You”

A newly restored 4K version of Stanley Kubrick‘s final film, “Eyes Wide Shut,” has been released by the fine folks over at The Criterion Collection, and has led to an interview at IndieWire surfacing from one of the film’s key cast members, filmmaker Todd Field (“Tár,” “Little Children”), who shared some insights on their experience.

In the NYC-set thriller (infamously shot in England over a record-setting 400 days, wowzers), Field was cast as Nick Nightingale, an old friend and pianist friend of Tom Cruise‘s Dr. Bill Harford and becomes his entry into a mysterious world of masked orgies (seemingly overseen by an extremely powerful and dangerous secreative collective) as most of the movie has this looming dark aura surrounding it.

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One of the more interesting aspects of Kubrick and Field was a mentorship angle to their relationship, as the late filmmaker helped him with his 2001 feature “In The Bedroom” and details how his first meeting with him went.

“Stanley was, and forever will be, an influence on every filmmaker. He established a language we all use, whether you’ve worked with him or not. But yes, I’d just graduated from AFI, and my excitement in working with him was more than just as an actor. The first time we met, Jan Harlan drove me to Luton Hoo [a manor house in Bedfordshire where ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ was partially shot], where Stanley was doing lighting tests and told me to just go inside, find the ballroom, and introduce myself. That house had a hundred rooms — I had a Leica with me and spent the better part of the day photographing all of them before finally working up the nerve to stand outside that ballroom and spy on him through a doorway. After a while, he turned, leveled me with that gaze of his, and said, ‘You’re here. Come inside and see what we’re doing.’ I stumbled forward, held out my hand, and said, ‘I’m Todd Field.’ Stanley laughed, ‘I know who the f*** you are, I hired you. Can I see that?'” Field said of their first interactions and adding they would end up taking shop about film stock and cameras.

“That introduction to Stanley was consistent with everything I experienced afterward. If you showed an interest in his interests, he’d share in detail how he was trying to achieve them. He invited me to look at dailies and was open about his process. He sat me down and asked questions, and shared thoughts about how I might want to go about making ‘In the Bedroom.’ It’s impossible to describe how valuable his certainty was that I would make the film…After we wrapped. He was upbeat and asked if I’d stop at Rank [Laboratory, where the negatives were processed] on my way back to London and deliver the dailies, and also that I send him the second draft of “In the Bedroom.” He’d been generous to read the first, so I agreed, but never sent it. I had another shoot coming up outside London in March ’99, and was supposed to see Stanley when Tom called to tell me he had died.

Like with many Kubrick films, there are plenty of theories about the “original vision” for the film and some movie fans believe they have collected clues littered throughout the film of elements that maybe weren’t entirely realized (adding to the speculation of footage being left out or changing of narratives by the studio/producers), but Field is clarifying that the released version was the filmmaker’s “first cut” before his death. While agreeing that had Kubrick been able to keep editing cuts or shooting even more scenes, it would have been different than the version ultimately unleashed in theaters, but isn’t going to speculate on that.

“What we have is Stanley’s first cut. He died six days after screening that cut for Tom, Nic, [and Warner Bros. chiefs] Bob [Daly] and Terry [Semel]. If Stanley’s post-production on past films is taken into even modest consideration, it’s clear that the film would be different. However, it would be foolish to try and speculate about what might have changed had Stanley lived to make it so,” Field said of the myths of multiple alternate cuts.

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He also wasn’t shocked about the film’s poor critical and audience reception at release (has since developed an appreciation), “Oh, I think we all expected it to be negative. From [‘2001: A Space Odyssey‘] on, his films were poorly received and only later reassessed in an appreciative light.”

“Eyes Wide Shut” would end up being the last on-screen collaboration between Cruise and ex-wife Nicole Kidman, before their ultimate divorce in 2001. That new 4K release from Criterion is now available to buy.