THE extensive archives of Stanley Kubrick, which promises to be a fascinating collection, will be housed at the University of the Arts in London from next summer.
It includes scripts, photographs, props and letters kept by Kubrick, who lived in England for the last 38 years of his life until he died of a heart attack in March 1999.
A passionate collector, Kubrick amassed more than 400 boxes of documents and memorabilia at his Hertfordshire mansion. There is a wealth of material from his research on the Napoleon film he never made, including several hundred books on the subject and some 25,000 library cards with information about Napoleon's life.
Among the correspondence in the archive are hundreds of fan letters, which Kubrick filed meticulously but rarely answered. One of the few surviving responses reads: "Dear Mr William, Thank you for writing. No comment about A Clockwork Orange. You will have to decide for yourself. Sincerely, Stanley Kubrick."
Death of a Pink Panther producer
Film producer Tony Adams, who died of a stroke in a New Jersey hospital last weekend at the age of 52, was from Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin. While still in his teens, he started out in the film industry as an assistant to John Boorman on Deliverance (1972). Burt Reynolds, one of the stars of that film, hired Adams to work on his ranch in Florida and introduced him to producer-director Blake Edwards, beginning a long, successful partnership.
Adams first worked with Edwards as associate producer on The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) and later became president of Blake Edwards Entertainment, producing or co-producing five more Inspector Clouseau movies and working on many films directed by Edwards and starring his wife Julie Andrews, among them 10, SOB, Victor/Victoria, The Man Who Loved Women and That's Life! Adams also co-produced the 1995 Broadway musical of Victor/ Victoria, which also starred Andrews and ran for more than 700 performances.
Boorman boards Roman bandwagon
John Boorman's next feature film, his 16th, will be Memoirs of Hadrian, dealing with the early political life of the eponymous Roman emperor in the second century AD. It is based on Marguerite Yourcenar's historical novel, which is written as a series of letters from Hadrian to his nephew, Marcus Aurelius. The screenplay is by Rospo Pallenberg, who collaborated with Boorman on Excalibur and The Emerald Forest, and Ron Base. Rome-based company Movieweb has signed a co-production deal with UCG in France on the film, which is expected to start shooting next spring in Serbia and Morocco.
Jeunet gets a piece of Pi
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is set to direct the movie based on Jann Martel's Life of Pi, which won the 2002 Man Booker Prize. Jeunet is working on the screenplay with Guillaume Laurant, his co-writer on Amélie and A Very Long Engagement. M Night Shyamalan originally planned to film Life of Pi, but when he decided to prioritise another project, Lady in the Water, the book was offered to Alfonso Curazón, who also had another project, and then it went to Jeunet.
The story follows a 16-year-old boy on an eventful journey from India to Canada, first aboard a freighter carrying zoo animals, and then, when that sinks, on a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra and a hungry tiger.
Mother's milk keeps Chloë safe
Worried about bird flu? Here's a reassuring report from the New York Daily News. Actress Chloë Sevigny is remaining calm and collected, the paper said this week, and refusing to succumb to the media hysteria about the virus. "Doesn't avian flu affect old people more?" she said. "I'm young and healthy. I have a strong constitution. My mother breastfed me for years."
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