From Jeffrey Epstein to Karl Marx: "Filmworker" and "Lolita" profile Hollywood's exploited
The 2017 documentary "Filmworker" tells the story of Leon Vitali, the right-hand man of director Stanley Kubrick, who also made the controversial 1962 movie "Lolita."
To understand how “Filmworker” and “Lolita” matter in the Trump-Epstein era, I wish to take you back in time to March 12, 2023, for the 2023 Academy Awards.
When my girlfriend and I watched the 2023 Academy Awards, we kept our eyes peeled for the In Memoriam segment. Honoring notable Hollywood figures who had passed away the previous year, we crossed our fingers for the name Leon Vitali.
Vitali’s name never came up. We were disappointed, but not surprised. As clearly established in “Filmworker,” the 2017 documentary about Vitali’s life, the onetime British movie/TV star sunk into obscurity when he gave up acting to become right-hand man to one of the greatest film directors of all time, Stanley Kubrick.
On the surface, this seems tragic, but as “Filmworker”’s director Tony Zierra and producer Elizabeth Yoffe made clear, Vitali was happy with his life choices. Even though actors are honored celebrities and director assistants are not, Vitali received more sustenance as an artist by facilitating a director’s genius than he did as a thespian. The tragedy of Vitali’s life isn’t that he switched vocations; it is that only his former vocation regularly receives the respect it deserves.
To illustrate that point, I include this segment of my conversation with Zierra.
ROZSA: The Oscars snubbed Leon Vitali in their In Memoriam section the year that he died. And to me, what makes that tragically fitting is one of the movie’s big themes is filmworkers, people like Vitali, the thousands and thousands of obscure men and women who toil as crew members as go-fers, as liaisons, as staffers. And they do it just for the love of making movies. And they are overwhelmingly unrecognized. I was hoping you could shed a little insight into the economic realities of being a film worker.
ZIERRA: It’s a great question. I mean, that’s what the whole movie is about that. And that’s why we made the movie, of course. Plus the fact that it’s a great story about Leon. But yeah, it’s assistance. Anybody below the line, it’s just not… They think they’re catering to the audience, and the audience want to see stars. And actually they did mention him, but that was not in the version that you saw on television, because they do all that, the science awards and stuff like that, earlier. They don’t do it in the show. They did mention Leon in that one, but because they think that people are just only interested in big stars and celebrities.
But that’s also a problem with our society in general. Worldwide, we are sadly dumb when it comes to that. We think it’s like the popular celebrities have the answer and we don’t really reward the people that are really doing the work, the filmworkers.
ROZSA: And at the end of the documentary, the re-release that you showed me, you mentioned that the term “filmworker,” which was coined by Vitali, has now entered mainstream nomenclature within the film industry.
ZIERRA: Yeah, yeah, including a lot of filmmakers, like famous directors now are also calling themselves “filmworkers.” I think the beauty of that story about Leon’s life is that he didn’t have to, he only did it because he wanted to.
At this point, I want to transition from my conversation with Zierra about “Filmworker” to my chat with Yoffe about “Lolita.” A 1962 black comedy adapted by Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 book of the same name, “Lolita” tells the story of middle-aged French literature professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) as he sexually abuses his 14-year-old stepdaughter Dolores “Lolita” Haze (Sue Lyon). I identified “Lolita” as my least-favorite Kubrick movie because the director — despite brilliantly capturing the zeitgeist of late ‘50s/early ‘60s America — does not sufficiently condemn Humbert’s behavior.
Nevertheless, “Lolita” is like “Filmworker” an effective exploration of exploitation, albeit sexual and involuntary (despite Nabokov/Kubrick’s blurring of the latter point) rather than economic and ambiguous (since it is unclear how much Kubrick intended to contribute to Vitali’s subsequent dire financial straits). I must emphasize that these two forms of exploitations are in many ways quite different, and I do not mean to in any way downplay the intense traumas that occur in certain sexual and economic exploitation cases (such as the fictional Lolita’s) with more mild examples (such as Vitali’s in real life).
Yet both “Lolita” and “Filmworker” are, at their hearts, stories of exploitation, from the most benign (Kubrick to Vitali) to outright malevolent (Humbert to Lolita). For this reason, I thought of my exchange with Yoffe as I wrote this review of “Filmworker.”
YOFFE: When you read the book, I mean, Nabokov is one of my favorite authors ever. The level of genius in that man is incredible. And when you read that book, it’s even more horrific, because Lolita was prepubescent. She wasn’t even 14, she was like 10 or 11. And in fact, once she started to develop, [Humbert] started to lose interest. So I don’t even want to get into any of the sus’ because we could end up being censored again [a reference to YouTube censorship guidelines]. But I simply want to say that at the time, this was an idea to like do something really transgressive and interesting that about a book that was hugely popular with amazing actors. I mean, really, James Mason, Shelly Winters, one of the greatest supporting performances ever…
ROZSA: Even though Kubrick did not like working with her.
YOFFE: I know, but he knew how to get her to do what she needed to do. And it was amazing. That dance scene? Please, it’s just too much!
So yeah, I would say, I don’t know if he would’ve picked it again because at the time that was still not — I mean, I hate to say it, but at that time, rock stars were going around with their 14-year-old girlfriends and there wasn’t a sense of, this is about actually exploiting and SA’ing young girls.
Both “Filmworker” and “Lolita” are masterpieces of cinema because each one, in its different way, profiles how American institutions empower and embolden exploiters of all kinds. If that doesn’t make each one deeply relevant to the Trump-Epstein era, I don’t know what could possibly speak to us in these dark times.
To quote film scholar Norman Kagan’s “Lolita” essay in “The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick,” “the greatest advance for Kubrick in ‘Lolita’ is his mastery of comedy beyond the humor of the gallows (or firing squad). ‘Lolita’ uses three main comic techniques: inappropriate (and often ironic) responses, light social satire, and the comedy of sexual obsession and confusion.”
After reviewing how Kubrick incorporates those elements, and how “Lolita” reinforces themes found in all his films, Kagan concludes, “The results of Kubrick’s satisfaction and success with ‘Lolita’ are apparent in many aspects of his later works — a return to the prominent use of madmen and insanity; a new confidence about the use of sexuality — not so much directly, but by double-entendre, visual metaphor, implication, and often a bizarre or perverse nature; the use of fleshed-out social, ethnic, and political types and caricatures; and finally, the use of an actor in multiple roles for comic or thematic effects.”
Adjust Kagan’s language about “Lolita” so it describes a documentary instead of an adaptation of Nabokov’s novel (based loosely on Nabokov’s own screenplay), and you get the essence of a great documentary.
A great documentary like “Lolita”’s spiritual twin, “Filmworker.”
Back Seat Socialism
Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.