Todd Field Says ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Would Be Different Had Kubrick Lived to Edit Further

Back in May 2020, I polled over 175 critics, asking them to name their personal best films of the 1990s. Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” wound up at #5.

I love how Kubrick’s final film, initially met with mixed reviews, is now seen by many as a masterpiece. Christopher Nolan called it “the ‘2001 of relationship movies.’” An apt description for a film that continues to reveal surprises some 25 years since its release.

That said, there’s been this never-ending debate about whether the film was actually the true version Kubrick intended for release. Warner Bros maintains that, despite minor tweaking, not a single frame was removed from Kubrick’s film — and that’s despite urban legends stating otherwise.

Yet here now is Kubrick protégé Todd Field (via IndieWire) who was on the set of “Eyes Wide Shut” and took part in some of the post-production work with Kubrick, amping up theories that, had the legendary filmmaker lived, we might have had a very different version of the film released in theaters:

What we have is Stanley’s first cut. He died six days after screening that cut for Tom, Nic, [and Warner Bros. chiefs] Bob [Daly] and Terry [Semel]. If Stanley’s post-production on past films is taken into even modest consideration, it’s clear that the film would be different. However, it would be foolish to try and speculate about what might have changed had Stanley lived to make it so.

Based on Kubrick’s track record, this actually checks out. The guy trimmed “2001” and “The Shining” after their premiere screenings, so the notion that he’d keep tinkering with “Eyes Wide Shut” right up to the finish line feels completely in character. It’s easy to imagine Kubrick still tightening and refining the cut until the very last possible moment.

Still, trying to guess what Kubrick might’ve changed if he’d lived long enough to keep tweaking is a fool’s game. No one really knows where he would’ve taken it.

Earlier this year, when asked about the cut that was released in theaters — and whether it was the one Kubrick intended to be seen — “Eyes Wide Shut” star Nicole Kidman didn’t even hesitate in stating that it was the legendary filmmaker’s final version:

Oh, yeah. He had been editing it for 18 months. It wasn’t like he didn’t have enough time. He was very happy with it. For him to show it to us, that is huge, if you know Stanley. And the Warners people were there. He wasn’t going back to the drawing board.

A few months ago, filmmaker Roger Avary told Joe Rogan’s podcast that his sources had told him that Warner Bros interfered with Kubrick’s original cut of the film, which only fueled the conspiracy theories:

Okay, so apparently he finished it. Well, that's the party line, but I think that [Warner Bros] changed the the notes, the closeups, the inserts of the notes, I think those are changed. It’s missing a narration, it's definitely missing a third person narration […] They couldn't say that Kubrick finished the movie because they hadn't done the recording of the narrator yet and so maybe they just kind of glued it together.

The official story goes that Kubrick completed a cut of “Eyes Wide Shut” and showed it to Warner Bros. executives and Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman on March 2, 1999. This is the “first cut” Field seems to be referring to. However, Warner Bros. claimed at the time that Kubrick considered this cut to have been delivered in its “final form.” Kubrick died just six days later.

For the U.S. release, Warner Bros. added digital figures in the orgy sequence to obscure explicit sexual activity so the film could obtain an R rating instead of NC-17. Those digital alterations were not created or approved by Kubrick.

At this stage, it’s impossible to know how Kubrick would have further edited the film. The cut we have is the first and only one he managed to deliver. Whether it was final or rough is anybody’s guess, but Field’s recent assertions definitely muddy the waters a bit. The frustration of it all lies in the fact that we’ll never really know.