Vivan Kubrick is the daughter of the legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and has come forward to support actress Shelley Duvall, who starred in her father’s horror film The Shining. Kubrick started a GoFundMe fund that has already raised over $15,000 for Duvall and she called for a boycott of the controversial November 18 episode of Dr. Phil that featured Duvall.
In that episode, Duvall came forward with her battle with mental illness, making her a rare public appearance over a decade after making her last film. “Your exploitive [sic] use of Shelley Duvall is a form of LURID ENTERTAINMENT and is shameful,” Kubrick tweeted. She then called on others to boycott the episode “because it has nothing to do with compassionate healing.”
However, Kubrick is a Scientologist and Scientology doesn’t believe in psychiatry. Therefore, some have questioned Kubrick’s true intentions behind her fund, which Kubrick has defended.
Kubrick is the daughter of Stanley and his widow, Christiane Kubrick. She had one sister, the late Anya Kubrick, and a step-sister, Katharina.
Here’s a look at Kubrick’s life and how she’s raising funds for Duvall.
Since starting her campaign to raise funds for Duvall on November 18, Kubrick has raised $15,800 of her $100,000 goal. Kubrick has since posted two notes clarifying that every penny raised on the page will go directly to Duvall. In the latest message, she apologized for the “sad group of haters that follow me around on social media.”
“My apologies everyone for the messages left by my sad group of haters that follow me around on social media. This fund is for Shelley & only for Shelley, the money is hers,” the message reads.
In a previous post, she revealed that she only learned about Duvall’s appearance on Dr. Phil when director Lee Unkirch (Toy Story 3) sent her a text message about it. Unirch has been in touch with Kubrick because he’s writing a book about The Shining and was hoping to interview Duvall.
“Neither Lee nor myself, had any idea how severe Shelley’s state of health was until Lee texted me a link to the Dr. Phil trailer 2 nights ago. We were both horrified. That’s when I fired off my 2 Tweets to Dr. Phil,” Kubrick wrote.
“I just think she deserves a great deal more respect,” Kubrick told The Hollywood Reporter. “I am just trying to collect as much money as I can.”
The location Kubrick listed on the fund, Clearwater, Florida, has caused questions about her motive. Duvall lives in Texas. Clearwater is where Scientology’s Flag Service Organization is based.
The other concern is that Scientology does not believe in psychiatry. In 1969, the religion created the Citizens Commission on Human Rights with the goal to “expose and help abolish any and all physically damaging practices in the field of mental health, and thereby bring about an atmosphere of safety and security to mental healing.”
Kubrick and her father worked closely on two of his last three films, The Shining (1980) and Full Metal Jacket (1987). For The Shining, she made a film about the production which has appeared on home video releases of the movie. For Full Metal Jacket, she composed the score under the name Abigail Mead.
During the making of Eyes Wide Shut (1999), which stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Kubrick was set to score the movie. But for some reason, she refused to do it. She flew off to San Francisco and Los Angeles while the film was made in England.
“They had a huge fight,” Christiane told the Guardian in 2010. “He was very unhappy. He wrote her a 40-page letter trying to win her back. He begged her endlessly to come home from California. I’m glad he didn’t live to see what happened.”
Eyes Wide Shut was Stanley Kubrick’s final film. Jocelyn Pook ended up doing the original music for the movie, which was released a few months after Stanley Kubrick’s death.
In that same 2010 interview with The Guarian, Christiane revealed that Vivan became a Scientologist. She showed up at her father’s funeral with a mysterious person who “spooked” the family. Christiane insisted that her daughter’s decision was not influenced by Cruise, a Scientologist as well. She suggested that it might have had something to do with her father’s death.
“I think she must have been very upset but, again, I wouldn’t know. I know nothing. That is the truth. I can’t reach her at all,” Kubrick’s mother said.
At the time of that interview, Christiane said that she only spoke with her mother twice after Stanley Kubrick’s death. One time, she asked Vivian to see her sister Anya, who was dying of cancer, but she would not come. Anya died in 2009 at age 50.
“She became a Scientologist and didn’t want to talk to us any more and didn’t see her dying sister, didn’t come to her funeral. And these were children that had been joined at the hip,” Christiane said.
Katharina Kubrick, Vivian’s step-sister, also confirmed to the Daily Beast in 2010 that Vivian came to her father’s funeral with a “handler.” Katharina said that was the last time she saw Vivian.
“The whole situation was so impossibly weird,” Kathrina recalled in the Daily Beast interview. “We didn’t know, at first, anything about it really, so we were like, ‘Who is this person? Why won’t they talk to us?’”
In November 2013, Kubrick surprised many by attending an anti-government protest hosted by radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Even Jones was surprised that Kubrick was there.
On Twitter, Kubrick also actively shares her thoughts on politics and government. On November 9, she also expressed her support for Jones.
In October, she tweeted that all the banks and corporations “call the shots” and that, “This reality is constantly obfuscated by elections.”
In July 2016, Kubrick marked the anniversary of the first moon landing by insisting that her father did not really film the moon landing during the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. This is a conspiracy theory that has survived decades, and Kubrick sought to debunk it once and for all.
Kubrick thought that her father would be the “very last person EVER” to be asked to work for the government and called the theory a “grotesque lie.”
“There are many, very real conspiracies that have happened throughout our history, are happening presently, I’m only too aware of the dreadful manipulations perpetrated by governments, secret services, banksters [SIC], the military-industrial-complex etc. But, claims that the moon landings were faked and filmed by my father? I just can’t understand it!!?” Kubrick wrote. “How can anyone believe that one of the greatest defenders of mankind would commit such an act of betrayal?”