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50 free Stanley Kubrick trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Stanley Kubrick trivia quiz begins with a Bronx doctor's son who skipped school to watch films, sold a photo to Look at 17, played chess for quarters in Washington Square, and made his first documentary about a boxer for $3,900. Then the films, one by one: the near-fatal gas on Fear and Desire, meeting his producer over a chessboard, six numbered cameras on Paths of Glory, Kirk Douglas and Spartacus, moving to England for Lolita and never leaving, Peter Sellers's three roles, the five years and the NASA lenses of 2001, the death threats that pulled A Clockwork Orange from British screens, candlelight in Barry Lyndon and the IRA, the Steadicam and 80 takes on The Shining, the jeep crash on Full Metal Jacket, and the preview of Eyes Wide Shut six days before he died. There are also questions on the films that never happened: the Napoleon epic with 40,000 infantry, the Beatles' Lord of the Rings, Aryan Papers and the A.I. that Spielberg finished. And on the man: three wives, Abbots Mead and Childwickbury, the recluse myth, the mountain on Charon and the Simpsons homages. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Jack Nicholson and 2001: A Space Odyssey quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which New York borough did the Kubrick family live when Stanley was born in 1928?
The Bronx
His father Jack was a homeopathic doctor, and by West Bronx standards the family was fairly wealthy.
Q 02What did Kubrick's father buy him at 13 that triggered his fascination with photography?
A Graflex camera
A year earlier Jack had taught him chess, which Kubrick said gave him 'patience and discipline'.
Q 03For which magazine did Kubrick work as a staff photographer from 1946?
Look
He had sold it a photo series at 17 and became known for storytelling in pictures, covering boxers, jazz musicians and a circus.
Q 04How did the young Kubrick supplement his income in Washington Square Park?
Playing chess for quarters
He later met his producer over a chessboard there.
Q 05Kubrick's first film, the documentary Day of the Fight, was about which boxer he had photographed for Look?
Walter Cartier
He spent $3,900 and sold it to RKO-Pathe for $4,000, the most they had ever paid for a short.
Q 06What was Kubrick's first feature film, a war allegory he later tried to disown?
Fear and Desire
His uncle put up $9,000 for an executive producer credit; during production Kubrick nearly gassed his cast to death.
Q 07Which producer did Kubrick meet playing chess and form a production company with in 1955?
James B. Harris
They parted amicably over Dr. Strangelove, which Harris thought should be played straight.
Q 08Which pulp novelist did Kubrick hire to write the dialogue for The Killing (1956)?
Jim Thompson
The racetrack-heist film was released as a second feature to a western; star Sterling Hayden called Kubrick 'cold and detached'.
Q 09For the battle scene in Paths of Glory, how did Kubrick organise the hundreds of extras' deaths?
Each was numbered for the zone in which he would die
Six cameras were lined up along no-man's land, each covering a numbered field.
Q 10Which star hired Kubrick for Spartacus after firing director Anthony Mann?
Kirk Douglas
With a $6 million budget and 10,000 extras it was the costliest American film yet, and Kubrick the youngest director of an epic.
Q 11Which Marlon Brando western did Kubrick work on for six months before distancing himself from it?
One-Eyed Jacks
Brando ended up directing it himself; the script had been begun by an unknown Sam Peckinpah.
Q 12Why did Kubrick make Lolita in England rather than Hollywood?
The Eady plan let producers write off costs if 80% of the crew were British
He never moved back; the film ran 88 days on a $2 million budget at Elstree.
Q 13On which novel was Dr. Strangelove based, before Kubrick decided the subject could only work as comedy?
Red Alert
Q 21The lenses that let Kubrick shoot Barry Lyndon by candlelight were originally developed for whom?
NASA, for satellite photography
The high-speed Zeiss lenses gave the interiors the look of 18th-century paintings.
Q 22Threats from which group made Kubrick flee Ireland during Barry Lyndon?
The IRA
The scenes of English soldiers had provoked them; he took the ferry from Dun Laoghaire and finished in England.
Q 23How many Oscars did Barry Lyndon win, more than any other Kubrick film?
Four
It made just $9.5 million in America against the $30 million Warners needed, but France loved it.
He read over 40 books on nuclear war and concluded 'nobody really knew anything and the whole situation was absurd'.
Q 14How many roles did Peter Sellers play in Dr. Strangelove?
Three
Kubrick had considered moving to Australia because he feared New York was a Soviet target.
Q 15Which satirist did Kubrick hire just before filming to give Dr. Strangelove its final black-comic form?
Terry Southern
Southern later gave him the novel A Clockwork Orange, which Kubrick initially rejected because of its slang.
Q 16Which Arthur C. Clarke short story did Kubrick suggest as the seed of 2001: A Space Odyssey?
The Sentinel
He had been impressed by Childhood's End; the pair met in New York in April 1964 and Clarke wrote the novel alongside the script.
Q 17Kubrick's only personal Oscar was for which category?
Best Visual Effects
2001 cost $10.5 million; NASA let him study the Ranger 9 spacecraft for accuracy.
Q 18Which critic enraged Kubrick by calling 2001 'the biggest amateur movie of them all'?
Pauline Kael
Spielberg later called the film 'the big bang' of his filmmaking generation.
Q 19Why did Kubrick first reject the novel A Clockwork Orange when a Strangelove collaborator gave it to him?
Its teenage slang, Nadsat, seemed too hard to understand
He returned to it in 1969 wanting something quick and cheap after 2001; it was shot for 2 million pounds.
Q 20Why did Kubrick personally withdraw A Clockwork Orange from UK release?
He received death threats after copycat crimes
It stayed legally unavailable in Britain until after his death and was re-released in 2000.
Q 24How many retakes of a scene would Kubrick often demand on The Shining?
70 or 80
Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown said it was the first picture to use his device's full potential.
Q 25Five days after The Shining's release, Kubrick ordered which scene deleted?
A hospital epilogue with the hotel manager and Wendy
He decided it was unnecessary after watching audiences react to the climax; Stephen King detested the film.
Q 26Which two horror films did Kubrick turn down directing?
The Exorcist and Exorcist II
He had told a friend in 1966 he wanted to 'make the world's scariest movie'.
Q 27Which cast member's near-fatal jeep accident shut down Full Metal Jacket for five months?
R. Lee Ermey
The film was based on Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers, which Kubrick found 'brutally honest'.
Q 28What stood in for the ruined city of Hue in Full Metal Jacket?
A derelict gasworks in London's Docklands
Beckton gasworks made the film look unlike any other Vietnam movie; Kubrick rarely left England.
Q 29Which review did Kubrick reportedly love, according to Matthew Modine?
'The first half of FMJ is brilliant. Then the film degenerates into a masterpiece.'
Ebert gave it 2.5 out of 4, calling it 'strangely shapeless'.
Q 30On which 1926 novella was Eyes Wide Shut based?
Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler
Kubrick worked 18 hours a day for 15 months to hit the July 1999 release date.