Stanley Kubrick 1999. He commenced a script with Frederic Raphael, and worked 18 hours a day, while maintaining complete confidentiality about the film. "Eyes Wide Shut", like "Lolita" and "A Clockwork Orange" before it, faced censorship before release. Kubrick sent an unfinished preview copy to the stars and producers a few months before release, but his sudden death on March 7, 1999, came a few days after he finished editing. He never saw the final version released to the public, but he did see the preview of the film with Warner Bros., Cruise, and Kidman, and had reportedly told Warner executive Julian
Stanley Kubrick discovery which later threatens his life. The story is based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 Freudian novella "Traumnovelle" ("Dream Story" in English), which Kubrick relocated from turn-of-the-century Vienna to New York City in the 1990s. Kubrick said of the novel: "A difficult book to describe—what good book isn't. It explores the sexual ambivalence of a happy marriage and tries to equate the importance of sexual dreams and might-have-beens with reality. All of Schnitzler's work is psychologically brilliant". Although Kubrick was almost 70, he worked relentlessly for 15 months to get the film out by its planned release date of July 16,