Recast Eyes Wide Shut in 1999.

I loathe the film except for Kidman who is the only thing in it that works imo. But Thurman and Gazzara are great, inspired choices here. I just profiled Gazarra in the actors on Stage/TV/Film thread and he'd be perfect.

I'd drop Hawke as Bill I don't think you need the real life couple thing and cast someone like Johnny Depp who has that same pretty element as Cruise which is important to the role and back then at least had some dangerous qualities of his own.

Well here it goes......

Often I say about it it's like a cinematic Rorschach test where people see something different in it - every movie is theoretically supposed to be that but Eyes Wide Shut REALLY is - there's plenty of people I know in my personal life - close friends of mine who love the movies and this film at an all-time level and we talk about it all the time even now irl.

To me it's a hermetically sealed mistake - it doesn't look like NYC, or feel like NYC, it's not sexy at all - which is part of the point but not sexy in any way at all is a mistake - the acting is awful apart from Kidman, characters plop in and out with an almost maddening arbitrary quality - it feels like a book not a movie at all.

I think it's weak on a technical level even as shots end oddly abruptly or transition with no thought to internal logic - very off for Kubrick. I hate the one note musical score which is nerve-rattling awful to me. I found it pretentious, unintentionally funny even and by the end as simplistic. I think it gets way too much "all Kubrick movies are misunderstood!" credit - I understood it I just didn't care for any of it and I like everything else he made.

When I saw it - in a packed huge theater in 1999 it had the most walkouts I have ever seen - that's still the case - and when I left the theater (I didn't walk out) convinced it was a mess and it was only much later I knew it had been celebrated as a masterpiece by some.

I basically see it - and I've seen it severely times now - as a complete Kubrick failure - a film about sex and money from a guy who had no understanding of what it means to really want either or even human connection. In 1999 at least that's who he was - a guy who basically locked himself away from the world and tried to make the world meet him ........a movie about the world or a specific world he neither knew or had forgotten - it's an old man's picture not being ageist but it literally feels old. He was the wrong guy to make it imo and he made wrong choices from conception to the execution in setting, to casting, to the screenplay.

I guess Thurman (though being a great choice) is a little too old for this role. I'd cast Rachel McAdams or Morena Baccarin instead.

As for Bill, I suppose Tom Hiddleston would be a good choice and I'd definitely cast Willem Dafoe in the role of Ziegler. I think it's a role that fits him just about right.

Apparently Kubrick’s first choices were Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger… Could you guys see this casting?

pacinoyes - Do you think this casting would have made the film any better? 

I think when she's working with a strong director, she can be really quite effective... 9 1/2 Weeks, L.A. Confidential, The Door in the Floor... It's an Andie MacDowell situation. 

pacinoyes - LOVE your suggestion of Jack and Anjelica. And you know that I wish Polanski had been able to cast them in Death and the Maiden as he originally wanted (as opposed to Weaver and Kingsley). 

It's been a while but the entire use, insertion and cut away of Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing scene seemed really clunky to me - there's several scenes in the movie where see close-up shots of Cruise "inserted" so the audience can see what Cruise sees from his POV in a very simplistic and unnecessary TV-ish kind of way.......or where he's shot over the shoulder or on the side where the camera is static in a way where there's no real directorial POV - like in editing they were afraid to cut some of it out which would give the movie forward momentum.......but (maybe?) went against what Kubrick said - so the effect is stagnation.

There's something off in how this movies individual components / elements were put together - or how they don't mesh at least - and I know they were operating from Kubrick's notes - but scene to scene transitions - the use of that score popping up at the oddest (and frequent!) times (to a maddening degree - not just that the score itself is maddening though it is), the flow of scenes........ seem to go on just a beat or two too long or too short - which I guess could be called dreamlike yes ...........but to me rather seemed choppy and formless. 

It's very much a cinematic Rorschach Test - I have some close friends irl who love it and they have pretty great taste.....you can have great talks about it - love it or hate it -.......

What about Daniel Day Lewis and Isabelle Adjani

Denzel and Julia Roberts

In 1999...

Will and Jada Pinkett Smith as Bill and Alice

Bill Cosby as Ziegler