The Big Picture

• Stanley Kubrick had a great sense of humor and envisioned a surrealist sex comedy adaptation of Eyes Wide Shut.
• Steve Martin was considered for the lead role in Eyes Wide Shut and Kubrick admired his comedic abilities.
• While they never collaborated on the film, the meeting between Martin and Kubrick showcased their potential artistic synergy.

It is hard to imagine a world where Stanley Kubrick and Steve Martin would ever cross paths professionally. The public perception of the two figures, that the former solely deals with cold drama and the latter is merely a comedian, is misguided. Kubrick had a great sense of humor and a genuine fondness for comedy, while Martin's artistic taste was unquestionable. During the interminable production of what would be his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick's casting of a fractured married couple was crucial. For the male lead, Martin was originally eyed by the prestigious director to carry out his swan song film.

Stanley Kubrick Had a Unique Vision for 'Eyes Wide Shut'

For Stanley Kubrick, directing a new project requires mulling over concepts and extensive research. This is seen in his work output in the back half of his career, such as when he went 7 years without a film in between The Shining and Full Metal Jacket, and 12 years in between that and Eyes Wide Shut. In certain instances, he will dive head-first into a project and then abruptly abandon it (one movie being Aryan Papers), as seen with his unrealized Napoleon film and Holocaust drama. Kubrick began developing Eyes Wide Shut, an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's novella, Dream Story, following the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Upon purchasing the book rights, the director envisioned an unlikely pivot in the film's adaptation: a surrealist sex comedy. When it comes to comedy, Kubrick understands its effectiveness, despite the mythmaking of him as a clinical and sterile filmmaker. Dr. Strangelove is one of the finest satires of our time, and Barry Lyndon, an austere epic costume drama, has been championed as a masterful "comedy-in-disguise." Kubrick's distinct narrative shift naturally called for an innate comedic presence.

By the late 1970s, Steve Martin was an established star as a stand-up comic. At his peak, he resembled a rock star more than the traditional lounge comedian. In 1979, Carl Reiner brought his fiery energy and alluring charisma to the big screen with The Jerk. Throughout the next five decades of his illustrious career, which remains potent thanks to his hit Hulu series, Only Murders in the Building, Martin's comedic presence was indelible.

Interestingly enough, Kubrick praised The Jerk, citing it as one of his favorites. This endorsement, along with White Men Can't Jump and Albert Brooks' rom-com about envy, Modern Romance, fueled the mystique surrounding an already enigmatic filmmaker. His admiration for comedy films seemed noteworthy. When casting the role of Bill Hartford (Tom Cruise), Kubrick, in the words of David Mikics, the author behind a 2020 biography of the director, "fantasized about casting an actor in Dream Story who would have a comedian’s resilience, imagining Steve Martin or Woody Allen in the leading role."

Steve Martin Was Considered for 'Eyes Wide Shut' by Stanley Kubrick

Around the late '70s/early '80s, Martin was pitched the synopsis of a new story by Kubrick that would eventually become Eyes Wide Shut, an off-kilter erotic thriller about a Manhattan doctor's perverse, nightmarish odyssey into an underground cult of sex parties. After receiving a phone call from the director, Martin was invited to his home in England, where Martin was performing stand-up at the time. While accepting his hospitality, the actor-comedian had dinner and played chess with Kubrick. Known as an aficionado of the game, Kubrick decisively defeated Martin. Something cinephiles would yearn for, Martin received a luxurious, behind-the-curtains look at Kubrick's expansive archive room that featured reviews of his films and prints of 2001. The Martin-Kubrick meeting took a bizarre turn inside the director's poolroom. As told in Nick de Semlyen's book, Wild and Crazy Guys, Martin got a whiff of a horrific odor. He discovered that one of Kubrick's dogs defecated in the nearby hallway. In perfect inscrutable Kubrick fashion, he never acknowledged the malodor.

Ultimately, this was the closest that Martin and Kubrick ever came to collaborating on a project together. Eyes Wide Shut would eventually be realized posthumously in 1999, starring the real-life couple, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. The shooting of Eyes Wide Shut encapsulated the Stanley Kubrick mystique that has mesmerized the film community for decades. Legend states that the film's production, which lasted roughly 400 days, was responsible for the eventual breakup of Cruise and Kidman. Months before the film was released in July 1999, Kubrick died of a heart attack just days after screening the final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to his family and its stars. Contributing to the ominous nature of his death and the legend-filled production, speculation ensued over whether the film the public viewed was Kubrick's completed vision.

Why a Stanley Kubrick & Steve Martin Team Up Would Work

If there was ever any doubt about Kubrick's sense of humor being intentional, his passion for comedy films and interest in casting a comic actor for Eyes Wide Shut proves his comedic sensibilities. Kubrick excelled at extracting humor in the most harrowing circumstances, such as nuclear destruction or the vicious berating of a drill instructor. The director's proposal for the Bill Hartford character to possess a "comedian's resilience" is a remarkable insight into the novella's text and the dynamic of a man disturbed by his wife's revelation of an adulterous encounter. The suppressed angst and malaise associated with comics could have matched the paranoid dread and nightmarish aura of Bill's odyssey. For a comedian like Martin, Kafkaesque situations, like the premise of Eyes Wide Shut, are prime for stand-up material. While not a comedian, Cruise, a figure who vowed to convey a pristine image in the face of his ties to Scientology, tapped into this phenomenon: a man who unraveled once his Utopian worldview was shattered.

Steve Martin's greatest attribute as a comedic actor is his ability to unravel. His performance as Neal Page, a mild-mannered ad executive who is sent on countless detours on his trip home for Thanksgiving, in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles serves as a trial run for his hypothetical performance in Eyes Wide Shut. The humor, as well as the relatable quality of the film, stems from Neal turning increasingly irritable because of a string of disastrous travel mishaps and the incessant boisterous behavior of his travel companion, Del Griffith (John Candy). Kubrick's direction would channel Martin's rage internally, which would allow for an engaging artistic tension between the two. The actor's dramatic experience, notably in David Mamet's neo-noir, The Spanish Prisoner, proves his chops. More pertinent to his hypothetical performance in Eyes Wide Shut is the rich expressiveness in his roles in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, The Jerk, and Roxanne. The characters he brings to the screen are layered and packed with carefully thought-out creative choices like his work in It's Complicated.

Stanley Kubrick had already worked with one Inspector Jacques Clouseau in Peter Sellers. Steve Martin, who would later carry the mantle of Sellers' iconic Pink Panther character in a remake in the 2000s, would have been equally riveting as Sellers was in Lolita and Dr. Strangelove. A filmography filled to the brim with fascinating and provocative performances, Martin in Eyes Wide Shut could have redefined how we view his screen persona. Instead, Tom Cruise gave a spellbinding performance that challenged our expectations of the beloved movie star. All we're left with is a chess match between two unlikely near-collaborators: Steve Martin and Stanley Kubrick.

Eyes Wide Shut is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

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