Kubrick and Frederic Raphael’s collaboration left behind pages, phone calls, and revisions—not a single session in which the screenplay was finalized. The written materials need to be placed in context before they are compared with the film.
The conversation continues after the pages are written
Frederic Raphael recalled a collaboration carried out mainly by phone and through pages sent by fax. That description differs from the familiar image of two writers working side by side at the same desk. A proposal could be drafted, sent, read, and discussed again. The interval between these steps was part of the process: it allowed a scene to be evaluated before deciding whether to keep, expand, or rewrite it.
The co-writer’s recollection is a source about his experience, not a complete transcript of every conversation. His retrospective assessments should be distinguished from dated documents. The archive preserves a series of correspondence and screenplay pages that includes comments, requests for revisions, and submissions. Taken together, these materials reveal an iterative collaboration without giving one person’s memory absolute control over the chronology or every final decision.
The catalog description mentions a June 1995 letter from Kubrick about various sequences and later submissions from Raphael. This is evidence of revision, but the catalog is no substitute for reading each page. Knowing that a scene was discussed does not show which version was accepted or whether it was filmed. The documentation should be traced through its stages: proposal, comment, new draft, and eventual relationship to the production materials.
The comparison between Schnitzler and the film examines two works that can be read or watched in their entirety. The screenplay process raises a different question: how were possible approaches explored in the course of adapting one into the other? An adaptation choice may have gone through several alternatives before taking its released form. An idea’s presence in a draft remains interesting even if it later disappears, but it should not be presented as a deleted scene from a finished cut.
Inventing a past for Ziegler does not create a real case file
Raphael said he wrote a fictional dossier styled as an FBI report to give Ziegler a backstory. The anecdote describes a creative tool: developing information about a character to help discuss his position and possible actions. The document was not a genuine file discovered by the crew, nor evidence of real people’s activities. Its form imitated a documentary genre to develop a work of fiction.
This kind of material can be useful without being incorporated into the screenplay word for word. A writer can explore relationships, motives, or backstory that will never be explained to the audience. Preparatory writing is not the same as canonical information in the released story. To know which parts of Ziegler’s past belong to the film, we must look at what it shows and at what its characters claim, while keeping those two things distinct.
The final conversation between Ziegler and Bill offers a self-interested explanation within the fiction. The fact that the screenwriter prepared backstory does not make that explanation omniscient narration. A scene can be written to make a character persuasive while still leaving room for doubt. Preparatory work helps create a coherent presence, but it does not require the audience to take everything the character says as truth.
There is also a difference between a proposed scene and its execution. Dialogue can change as it is revised, performed, and edited. Raphael’s recollection of alternatives shows that the exchange was not fixed from the outset. It does not justify assigning exact percentages of authorship or deciding which line would have remained unchanged across every version without consulting the relevant texts.
Adapting a narrative voice requires choices about form
The transformation of Traumnovelle’s narrator illustrates a problem the screenplay had to solve: how to make thoughts and doubts perceptible without simply turning the prose into a running commentary. One solution might take the form of dialogue, a reaction, or a situation. Writing a visible action does not mean mechanically replacing every sentence with a shot. It changes what the audience can verify and what it must infer from behavior.
The title was also part of this process of selection. Raphael recalled an alternative he proposed before Kubrick made his choice. The page on the title Eyes Wide Shut examines that recollection and the ways it can be interpreted. The existence of another title does not imply that another finished film existed. It is an example of how a work can still be searching for a way to present itself while its scenes and relationships are being discussed.
The cataloged materials make it possible to trace stages without pretending to have read documents that are missing. If a reference mentions attached pages that are not preserved in that file, their contents cannot be reconstructed from the subject of a letter. Likewise, a request for a rewrite documents a need expressed at a particular moment, not the solution ultimately adopted. Research into a screenplay requires preserving these gaps in the documentary record.
The writing of Eyes Wide Shut can therefore be described as a succession of considered decisions: starting from a source work, proposing changes, discussing them, and returning to the pages. The released screenplay does not automatically reveal all its alternatives; the archive does not turn every alternative into filmed images. Distinguishing between these materials makes it possible to study Raphael and Kubrick’s work without turning an anecdote about invention into a historical revelation or an ordinary revision into proof of a hidden film.
References: Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), original English-language version and film credits. Frederic Raphael, conversation with James Bell published in Sight and Sound, November 13, 2019. University of the Arts London, Stanley Kubrick Archive, SK/17/1/17, “FR SK Correspondence and Script Pages,” catalog description.