I Am Spartacus! by Kirk Douglas

Author:Kirk Douglas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781453239377
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2012-12-18T21:00:00+00:00

Woody Strode as Draba moving in for the kill. Why is Stanley Kubrick sitting between us?

CHAPTER SEVEN

“You may not be an animal, Spartacus . . . but this sorry show gives me very little hope that you’ll ever be a man.”

—Charles McGraw as Marcellus

“ARE YOU IN, STANLEY?”

Marty Ritt glared at the big pile of cash in the pot. With a $500 buy-in and seven players, there was $3,500 on the green velvet poker table. After putting in his ante, Kubrick left the room to take a phone call—a long call. Now he was holding up the Friday night game.

“Stanley! Get your ass back here. I’m down three grand,” said Ritt.

The men sitting around the poker table looked up as the boyish director walked slowly back from the kitchen. He had a strange expression on his normally impassive face.

“Who was it, Stan?” asked Jimmy Harris, Kubrick’s producing partner.

“Kirk Douglas.”

Ritt scowled. “What do you want with that sonofabitch? He cost me my last picture.”

“He just fired Tony Mann,” said Kubrick, ignoring Ritt’s comment. “He wants me for Spartacus. Tomorrow.”

“Jesus,” said Jimmy Harris, folding his cards. The poker game came to an abrupt end. “Are you sure you want to work with him again?”

“Well, he’s better than Marlon. At least he makes up his mind,” replied Kubrick. After six months of trying to get a western called One-Eyed Jacks off the ground, the mercurial Brando let Kubrick go and decided to direct it himself. That meant Stanley was available to take over Spartacus.

“What did you tell him?” asked Harris.

“For a hundred and fifty grand? I said, ‘Get me the script.’ It’s being messengered over to my house right now.”

“That sonofabitch,” said Ritt, putting away the poker chips. “First he costs me my picture and now I’m out another three grand. Good luck to you, Stanley. You’ll need it.”

Later, one of the other players in the game relayed that whole exchange to me. I laughed because I’d had virtually the same conversation with Eddie Lewis after I told him I offered the job to Stanley. He thought I was crazy to work with him again.

The truth was that I was handing this cocky kid from the Bronx control of a picture whose budget far exceeded the combined total of all the movies he’d done before. Was Eddie right? Was I nuts?

Still, there were two things I knew about Stanley. First, even though he was only thirty, he had the talent and self-confidence to step in and take over a picture of this size. Second, his self-confidence often bordered on arrogance, a quality that could be a help or a hindrance when dealing with highly respected, but sometimes hard-to-rein-in, actors such as Olivier, Laughton, and Ustinov.

I’d soon find out how Kubrick would handle himself. After a series of intense meetings to bring him up to speed (“No, Stanley, we’re not going to reshoot in Death Valley; Tony’s scenes are fine. They stay in the picture”), we realized that we had reached a major disagreement over Varinia—Sabina Bethman.

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