‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Star Todd Field on Stanley Kubrick and Tom Cruise

Welcome to IndieWire’s “Eyes Wide Shut” Week. The password is, of course, “fidelio,” but we’ve already taken care of admittance, inviting you into five days of stories celebrating Stanley Kubrick’s swan-song masterpiece from 1999. Criterion Collection has just unveiled its 4K restoration of the classic erotic mystery starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and it now looks better than ever, gloriously, at home. 

Though “Eyes Wide Shut” is very much one of IndieWire’s favorite Christmas movies, we’ll be unveiling over the Thanksgiving week interviews with director of photography Larry Smith, second unit cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed, editor Nigel Galt, set decorator Lisa Leone, and star and Kubrick mentee Todd Field, aka Nick Nightingale, blindfolded piano player to the sex-crazed elite. “Give up your inquiries, which are completely useless.”

Way before Todd Field became the acclaimed director of “In the Bedroom,” “Little Children,” and “TÁR” — one of the best runs ever for any filmmaker — the AFI Conservatory graduate starred as Nick Nightingale in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut.” He played Nick Nightingale, a pianist and former college friend of Dr. Bill Hartford’s (Tom Cruise), who is summoned to a mass orgy of the elite somewhere ominously outside New York City.

Field went back and forth to the United Kingdom from 1996 to 1998 to complete shooting on the film, which includes said orgy scene in which Nick Nightingale is masked at the piano as Dr. Bill is humiliated once again. “Eyes Wide Shut” is now in re-release on home video, thanks to a new Criterion Collection 4K edition of the film supervised by cinematographer Larry Smith. It’s an opportunity to revisit Field’s superb, relaxed performance, one that tested his own limited piano-playing skills (his character has a Greenwich Village residency at the fictional Sonata Café, where he reacquaints with Cruise’s character).

Field has spoken publicly before about how his co-star, Tom Cruise, helped him wrest a cut of his directing debut “In the Bedroom” from potential changes urged by Miramax head Harvey Weinstein. But as revealed in a conversation exclusive to IndieWire, Kubrick was instrumental in encouraging Field to make the marital breakdown drama “In the Bedroom,” nominated for five 2002 Oscars including Best Picture and adapted from the Andre Dubus story “Killings,” at all.

Below, Field talks his amusing first meeting with Kubrick on set, what it was like to work with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and the heightened atmosphere around the orgy masquerade leading up to filming.

This interview was conducted over email.

IndieWire: Stanley Kubrick died in March 1999, less than a week after reportedly showing a cut of the film to Warner Bros. executives. There are rumors that the theatrical version — censored orgy scenes aside — was not the film he intended. Do you have any reason to believe that?

Todd Field: 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.

What was your last conversation with Kubrick, or do you remember the last time you heard from him?

After we wrapped. He was upbeat and asked if I’d stop at Rank (Laboratory, where the negatives were processed) on my way back to London and deliver the dailies, and also that I send him the second draft of “In the Bedroom.” He’d been generous to read the first, so I agreed but never sent it. I had another shoot coming up outside London in March ’99, and was supposed to see Stanley when Tom called to tell me he had died.

You are often described as a mentee or protégé of Kubrick’s, but how would you define that, exactly? And beyond him casting and directing you as Nick Nightingale?  Did he take an interest in your directing work, as by then you’d made a number of shorts through AFI? A year and a half after “Eyes Wide Shut” opened, you were showing “In the Bedroom” at Sundance.

Stanley was, and forever will be, an influence on every filmmaker. He established a language we all use, whether you’ve worked with him or not. But yes, I’d just graduated from AFI, and my excitement in working with him was more than just as an actor. The first time we met, Jan Harlan drove me to Luton Hoo (a manor house in Bedfordshire where “Eyes Wide Shut” was partially shot), where Stanley was doing lighting tests and told me to just go inside, find the ballroom, and introduce myself. That house had a hundred rooms — I had a Leica with me and spent the better part of the day photographing all of them before finally working up the nerve to stand outside that ballroom and spy on him through a doorway. After a while, he turned, leveled me with that gaze of his, and said, “You’re here. Come inside and see what we’re doing.” I stumbled forward, held out my hand, and said, “I’m Todd Field.” Stanley laughed, “I know who the fuck you are, I hired you. Can I see that?”

He asked what an M-6 was going for these days, then showed me the Polaroid-backed Linhoff Technika he was using. He tacked prints side-by-side for comparison and explained he was exposing third-stop increments to determine how much he’d be able to push the film — in this case, EXR 5298, whose production Kodak was planning to discontinue. He wasn’t crazy about their new stock — the Vision 5279 — but said Kodak had assured him he’d have an uninterrupted supply of 98 for the shoot. 

That introduction to Stanley was consistent with everything I experienced afterward. If you showed an interest in his interests, he’d share in detail how he was trying to achieve them. He invited me to look at dailies and was open about his process. He sat me down and asked questions and shared thoughts about how I might want to go about making “In the Bedroom.” It’s impossible to describe how valuable his certainty was that I would make the film.

“Eyes Wide Shut” is often described as the longest film shoot of all time, though a lot of that time involved starts and stops to accommodate holidays and time home and away from Pinewood Studios for actors to be with family. You are in a handful of key scenes in the film; what was your experience like with his supposedly exacting preference for multiple takes?

Stanley did many takes. But this was for a practical reason. He wasn’t interested in realism. He wanted things to have the kind of intensity he grew up with watching classic studio movies. Stanley pointed out that, back then, a studio actor would rehearse their dialogue with real hand props weeks before arriving on set. And because of this, there was a kind of sophistication in the way they picked up a glass of water, or smoked a cigarette, or delivered a line while doing those things. There was nothing real about it — but it cast a spell on you and was magical to watch.

It’s typical for directors to shoot as many as six set-ups with takes in the 30-to-60 range. Whereas Stanley shot just one or two set-ups and rarely more than 25 takes, and rarer still 60. He wanted a process that involved uninterrupted repetition, enabling an actor to get out of their head and as far as possible from what he considered to be postmodern screen acting.

Was there a particular scene that was most challenging (or even easiest) in that regard? 

The first scene, where Bill reunites with Nick at Ziegler’s (Sydney Pollack) party. We did 18 takes, which for Stanley wasn’t a lot, and afterward he said, “Wow, that was great, really great, but the first 17 you were lousy. I mean, the difference between take 18 and all the rest is remarkable.” I said, “Look, Stanley, I was nervous. I’m here with the biggest star in the world and my favorite filmmaker, and you’re lucky I didn’t piss my pants.” He laughed, and after that it was easy. He read wild lines with me himself. And, like Marty Scorsese, he was a terrific actor. And that was a beautiful thing — the way he played.

Are you featured in the masked orgy scene in any way beyond being at the piano?

Nick Nightengale is blindfolded at the keyboard in the ritual hall, then escorted past nude dancers — he’s not directly involved with the sex acts that Bill moves through.

What was the atmosphere and anticipation like for that scene for everyone on set, even for those who weren’t necessarily going to be in it? It still must have hung over the movie like this fascinating inevitability.

Yes, as the orgy was saved til almost the end of the shoot. When I returned to finish up in January ’98, Stanley had Leon Vitali show me those dailies, and I remember thinking how that sequence had been lurking since ’96, and now here it was — just playing on his Steenbeck.

How immersive was this approximation of New York City that Kubrick created? To me, it’s like an ethereal, dreamy otherworld version of New York, though critics at the time said it was unrealistic.

Stanley had every inch of the West Village meticulously photographed as it was at that time. In fact, our eldest daughter and her husband once lived above the reference he used for Rainbow Fashions. However, the reality was simply a baseline from which to depart. If you look at the street names in the film, they’re of birds, not MacDougal and 8th. For Stanley, those roads weren’t in Manhattan; they were inside the Schnitzler novella and Jung’s “Individuation in Fairytales.”

Was your interpretation of the film’s reception at the time that it was positive? The film had its champions, and while many reviews were negative, it just seemed the response was so all over the map.

Oh, I think we all expected it to be negative. From “2001” on, his films were poorly received and only later reassessed in an appreciative light.

What was Tom Cruise like on-set and between takes, seeing as he spends most of your screen time with you? Did you have any interaction with Nicole Kidman, or were you mostly siloed and on site for your scenes only?

It was an intimate set, and except for one or two scenes, a night shoot. We started in October ’96 at Ziegler’s party. That’s when I first met Tom and Nic. They showed up as actors, not movie stars, and were warm and welcoming. After that sequence, the rest of my work was with Tom in December ’96, October/November ’97, and finally January ’98. I’ve told this story before, but I wouldn’t have made “In the Bedroom” without Tom’s encouragement, and that lasted through post.

Also, what were your piano skills like then… and now? 

My piano skills were those of a trombone player. I knew the keyboard, could pluck out the chart and learn it by rote. To prepare, I worked with the great jazz pianist Eric Reed, who I met through my friend Ben Wolfe. In fact, it was Ben’s idea for the player intro at the end at the Sonata Café.  I worked my ass off for that scene, but Stanley never really showed my hands.

That was frustrating, considering we shot this after Ziegler’s, where one day Stanley sat down on the piano bench next to me and said, “I wonder why it’s so hard for you? I mean, Cornel Wilde wasn’t a pianist, and he did it so well in ‘A Song to Remember.’” To which I replied, “Yes, Stanley, but Cornel Wilde didn’t have to play a four-handed piano part.” He loved to needle me. All the extras were friends, and Stanley would drag them up to the bandstand and say things like, “Jimmy here is a professional pianist and doesn’t think your feet look right on the pedals.”

But we have a piano at home that I play. And in a way, I’m guilty of the same crime in “TÁR,” as I never once showed Cate’s hands on that Steinway in the Juilliard scene.

The Criterion Collection 4K release of “Eyes Wide Shut” is now available.