INTERVIEW: New documentary focuses on Stanley Kubrick’s trusted friend

S Is for Stanley, the new documentary from director Alex Infascelli, examines the work and legacy of one of cinema’s most important voices, Stanley Kubrick. However, the film shines light on the Kubrick tale by focusing not on the director himself but on his trusted friend and all-around taskmaster who was at the maestro’s side for three decades. That man, Emilio D’Alessandro, has such an interesting story to tell that after a while the documentary focuses as much as on the employee as the employer.

How Infascelli found D’Alessandro is a story unto itself and involves the classic Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange.

“As I say at the beginning of the documentary, I did bump into Emilio’s story while I was interviewing Christiane Kubrick at their house in St. Albans in 2008,” Infascelli said recently in a phone interview. “I was there because in a weird moment of my filmmaking career I was hosting a show for MTV, and the same group that owned MTV at the time … they owned another network in Italy. And they were airing A Clockwork Orange for the first time in Italy in Italian TV history, and they wanted to make a little featurette before the film. And because my show on MTV was so good, they asked me to host the Kubrick thing, which I did.”

When putting together the featurette, Infascelli asked whether anyone had contacted Kubrick’s family for a quote. Of course, it was legendary that the family would not speak about the late director’s work, but somehow — call it karma or charm — Infascelli landed an interview with Christiane and headed toward the Kubrick estate near St. Albans, England.

“Can you imagine I ended up walking into Stanley’s house, a house I didn’t know, which is not the case now because after all this work with the video, obviously now it’s like a place that I can almost picture in my head room by room,” he said. “Christiane invites me in, and she talks about the family. It’s a long interview that I did, a beautiful interview in which we talked about A Clockwork Orange, and after a while, of course, because … me being Italian, she mentioned this Italian man. And she said, ‘Oh, we had an Italian man working here for many years, beautiful, nice man, Emilio.'”

Christiane opened up about D’Alessandro and his undying work for her husband. It was quite a partnership for 30 years. Kubrick had hired the aspiring Formula One driver after a cab ride. What began as a stint as Kubrick’s personal driver became a professional dedication that included everything from scouting out filming locations to taking care of the myriad variety of pets on the Kubrick estate, known as Childwickbury Manor. Kubrick would issue a request — often with a “Please” and written longhand on notes left around the estate — and D’Alessandro dutifully took care of the director.

“I looked on the Internet, and there was nothing on the man at the time,” Infascelli said. “This was 2008. He had not mentioned his story to anybody outside his close circle in Cassino, [Italy,] the place where he lives.”

Infascelli had to wait another four years for D’Alessandro to publish his memoir, Stanley Kubrick and Me, and then he realized the author of the book was the same person Christiane had mentioned. The book was tough to put down, Infascelli said, and he was determined to talk with Kubrick’s righthand man.

“I went to meet Emilio after contacting the [co-]writer of the book, which is also one of the two screenwriters with me for the documentary,” Infascelli said of Filippo Ulivieri. “And at that point, something strange happened while I was having lunch with Emilio, which I contacted not because I wanted to make a film or a documentary about the book but really because after reading the book his personality and charisma was so strong, had such a strong impact that I just wanted to meet the man. And while we were having lunch, somebody said to him, ‘You know, you should make a film about your story,’ and he turned to me. And he said, ‘You’re a filmmaker, right? Why don’t you make it?’ … At that point, I really had no idea that I was going to make the film and also because I am a feature filmmaker, and I had no idea that I would come to make a documentary. And that was it. I realized that was a call coming from faraway.”

Infascelli threw himself into telling D’Alessandro’s story and learning more about Kubrick, especially the years from A Clockwork Orange to the famed director’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut.

“If as a filmmaker I am a priest, then Stanley is the pope,” he said. “So as a filmmaker, obviously, Kubrick is like the magical box, the Pandora box, something that you continue to study and try to decrypt for an entire life, but I wouldn’t have started to make the film if I didn’t find Emilio’s story was a story worth telling on its own. And, in fact, one of the biggest obstacles that I found at the beginning while I was trying to finance the project, before I decided to make it independently, was that everybody was really not believing in the fact that Emilio’s story would make it an interesting story, and I tried to convey to people how much it was his story that made it worth listening to Stanley’s stuff.”

Infascelli also made a risky choice when building his narrative for S Is for Stanley, which is currently playing New York City’s IFC Center alongside a retrospective of Kubrick films. The director decided not to begin with any climatic scenes between D’Alessandro and Kubrick — like Kubrick’s death or D’Alessandro’s decision to leave his job. Instead, he begins the film talking about D’Alessandro’s life and how moved from Italy to England and had his sights set on Formula One.

“The very first 10 minutes of the film, I made a very risky choice because everybody gets there, and they want to know about Kubrick,” he said. “They want to know about Stanley. They want to know about Emilio leaving Stanley, and I kind of decided to go against what usually a filmmaker should do, which is to have a very, very strong first act, but I knew that … I would have burned that build that is the film because when you get to Kubrick you are with Emilio. You have traveled with Emilio. You have known his story. You kind of get there with him, knowing where he comes from, and that kind of little build that are those 10 minutes at the beginning, it’s like a wave that you surf on until the end of the film.”

In telling the story of these two men — one legendary director, one man by his side — Infascelli found many similarities between their lives. They were both immigrants in England. Kubrick, an American, had moved to the English countryside to both live and work, while D’Alessandro is Italian and chased opportunities in England. Both of them married women from another country. Christiane is German, and D’Alessandro’s wife, Janette, is from England.

“Emilio is not so far away from how Stanley was,” he said. “That’s why they made a perfect microcosm. … I really needed this to come across in the film, to be a film about two men, to be a film about two lives merging and two huge personalities, you know, clashing in a way or bumping into each other and making this amazing explosion of things.”

Infascelli would classify Kubrick and D’Alessandro as friends, although their friendship was unique. It was dictated by an employer-employee relationship, one in which Kubrick would leave numerous notes for D’Alessandro to follow. Kubrick had an obvious influence on D’Alessandro, but in many ways, the partnership was symbiotic. “In a way, their relationship was even more clear and made more room for the friendship because … the grid where it was born was a very simple grid,” Infascelli said. “It was like employer and employee, which sometimes could even go to master and servant, guru and apprentice, whatever nuance we want to give it.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

S Is for Stanley is currently playing at the IFC Center in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.