Thus Spake Stanley Kubrick

By THOMAS DOHERTY

In 1997, Stanley Kubrick made a rare public appearance to accept the D.W. Griffith Award from the Directors Guild of America — not in the flesh, but in his preferred format, on screen. Speaking from London on videotape, he graciously thanked his colleagues and dutifully delivered the nostrums demanded of the occasion. Although directing a film, he said, "can be like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car at an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many