Matthew Modine Celebrates Stanley Kubrick | Big Think

Matthew Modine Celebrates Stanley Kubrick

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Actor Matthew Modine reflects on working with Kubrick in ‘Full Metal Jacket.’

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Matthew Modine:

Matthew Modine is an actor who has starred in major films including Streamers, Full Metal Jacket, Married to the Mob, Pacific Heights, Any Given Sunday, and Notting Hill. His recent television work includes Showtime's hit, Weeds. And he recently wrote, directed and starred in the short film "I Think I Thought" about a man who cures himself of over-thinking. He lives in New York.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Modine: And I think that’s why the success of someone like Stanley Kubrick is really interesting, because he managed to keep it down to as few people as possible. when we worked together in “Full Metal Jacket” there might have just been the days when there was, you know, less than 2 dozen crew members on a film set, and there were days when there was a dozen crew members on the set, you know. You really had a cinematographer, you know. He let, for instance, the boot camp on the stage with just lights, you know. Lights were there, and in the morning somebody came in and turned the lights on, and the stage was set, it was lit. And, occasionally, maybe you bring in a reflecting board just to bounce a little bit of light in somebody’s eyes. But it was really about a director telling the story. Stanley Kubrick often operated the camera himself. A sound man, a boom man, you know, just the basic elements needed to tell the story, and that way you can keep control of your set, you know. If you’ve got trucks and trucks and trucks and drivers and drivers and drivers and craft service and, you know, all these things that can spiral out from a film, you know, a film set, it’s more people to manage, you know. That if you keep your, keep your team small and strategic, like a SWAT team, you can move faster and you can have focus, you know. But if you’re coming with a battalion of people, then you’ve got to [food] them, you have to have a place for them to go to the bathroom, you know. You can imagine all the things, that it start to spiral out. So, again, just going back to what we were talking about before of having, of a digital filmmaking, this really gives an opportunity for somebody to make a really small unit, you know, and strategically tell stories and make films, you know. Being able to go into locations that you may not be permitted for, and, you know, to film down in subways or in locations that if you had dozens of people with you, now you got to get permits. Now you got to get this and get that, you know. So, I like the art of stealing.