Quote 298 of 495

I take a break from the boxes to wander over to Tony's office. As I
walk in, I notice something pinned to his letterbox. "POSTMAN," it
reads. "Please put all mail in the white box under the colonnade
across the courtyard to your right."

It is not a remarkable note except for one thing. The typeface Tony
used to print it is exactly the same typeface Kubrick used for the
posters and title sequences of Eyes Wide Shut and 2001. "It's Futura
Extra Bold," explains Tony. "It was Stanley's favourite typeface. It's
sans serif. He liked Helvetica and Univers, too. Clean and elegant."

"Is this the kind of thing you and Kubrick used to discuss?" I ask.

"God, yes," says Tony. "Sometimes late into the night. I was always
trying to persuade him to turn away from them. But he was wedded to
his sans serifs."

Tony goes to his bookshelf and brings down a number of volumes full of
examples of typefaces, the kind of volumes he and Kubrick used to
study, and he shows them to me. "I did once get him to admit the
beauty of Bembo," he adds, "a serif."

"So is that note to the postman a sort of private tribute from you to
Kubrick?" I ask.

"Yeah," says Tony. He smiles to himself. "Yeah, yeah."
		-- "Citizen Kubrick," by Jon Ronson
		   The Guardian, March 27, 2004
		   http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1177734,00.html

Tags: god posters boxes citizen stanley guardian courtyard bookshelf typefaces typeface postman colonnade eyeswideshut mail bembo serifs sansserif titlesequences privatetribute jonronson