Stanley Kubrick and Me

March 21, 2016
Stanley Kubrick, the renowned director of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many other films, is typically depicted as a cold, temperamental, and intensely private man. First-time author D’Alessandro complicates that portrayal with this informal and utterly charming account of what it was like to be employed by Kubrick for 30 years. D’Alessandro, a cabbie and aspiring race-car driver, was hired as Kubrick’s chauffeur during the making of A Clockwork Orange. Soon afterward, he became the director’s right-hand man. At first he was assigned to menial tasks such as shopping, cleaning, and feeding Kubrick’s many cats, but soon the unassuming Italian family man found himself transporting props to the set of Barry Lyndon, attending the shooting of The Shining, and even acting in the director’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut. The book includes a selection of D’Alessandro’s personal photos, including those of the numerous props he owns from Kubrick’s movies. This sweet and sentimental record of service to a creative genius may lack profundity, but the book’s invitingly conversational tone and descriptions paint an all-too-human portrait of a cloistered artist and ardent workaholic who expected everything and more from his employees and returned their devotion in kind.

April 1, 2016
A fly-on-the-wall view of the movie business as conducted by a highly eccentric director. Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) was not much interested in understanding the details of modern life; he didn't do his own shopping, sent others on errands, had artisans make him storage boxes and shirts, and knew nothing about how to fix such things as a printer without toner or a crashing computer. "It's true," writes D'Alessandro, Kubrick's former personal assistant. "Stanley knew absolutely nothing about these frustrations, but it wasn't a question of class. It's because all he had to do was call Emilio." An Italian expatriate in England at the turn of the 1970s, the author opens with the story of him turning down a job offer from John Wayne only to go to work for a rather helpless Kubrick in the uncertain business of moviemaking. His duties grew proportionally, and soon, by D'Alessandro's account, he was part of the director's daily routine. Indeed, the author is not shy of taking credit where Kubrick did not specifically give it to him for such things as suggesting the incidental music ("an orchestral piece featuring a French horn, an instrument that I had always liked a lot") for The Shining and chasing down camera equipment that figured in Kubrick's still and film photography. D'Alessandro is matter-of-fact and not boastful about these contributions. Just as much of his work involves negotiating a diplomatically delicate middle path between Kubrick and his wife, Christiane, in endless arguments over what to acquire and what to throw out, a case in point being "thousands of beeswax candles" specially made for Barry Lyndon. The book is funny and casual throughout. Of special interest are D'Alessandro's set notes, revealing, for example, that the cat lady room in Clockwork Orange figured two decades later in Eyes Wide Shut. As good an insider's view of middle- to late-period Kubrick as there is.

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May 1, 2016

Originally published in 2012 in Italian, D'Alessandro's memoir of his decades as director Stanley Kubrick's driver and assistant is not the flashy showbiz tell-all that Hollywood enthusiasts might enjoy, but it does illuminate the unglamorous but necessary work filmmaking requires behind the scenes. A Formula Ford racing driver in late 1960s England, D'Alessandro was desperate and unemployed when he began driving minicabs around London. This led to a job as a courier for Kubrick's production company just as 1971's A Clockwork Orange was released. The author's role soon morphed into an all-purpose laborer and office attendant available around the clock to the obsessive yet kind Kubrick. The director's subsequent productions of Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut kept D'Alessandro close to the action and seemingly nonstop busy, to the detriment of his own family. Failing at several attempts to quit his position, D'Alessandro remained Kubrick's loyal if borderline-codependent factotum until the director's sudden death in 1999. VERDICT Hard-core Kubrick devotees won't learn much, but this easygoing and likable memoir humanizes an eccentric titan of cinema.--Chad Comello, Morton Grove P.L., IL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2016
Prior to being hired by Kubrick as his driver, D'Allesandro had already proven himself by couriering an enormous, white phallus during the filming of A Clockwork Orange. Over the next 30 years, D'Allesandro became much more than a driver, serving as plumber, electrician, handyman, gardener, pet wrangler, and stand-in, becoming Kubrick's personal assistant, ambassador, and, ultimately, a much-loved member of the Kubrick household. D'Alessandro managed the Kubrick residences of Abbots Mead and later Childwickbury, which were not only home to the family but centers of production for the director's films. D'Alessandro's position allowed him unique access to Kubrick, and he, along with coauthor Ulivieri, portrays him as an eccentric, uncompromising genius, gentle, generous, and demanding, a father figure, but certainly not the ogre others have described. Kubrick spent years on realizing each of his pictures, and D'Allesandro's moving, intimate portrait of the artist takes us through Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut and includes entertaining cameos by Ryan O'Neal, Jack Nicholson, Brian Aldiss, Michael Herr, and Tom Cruise.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)