Kubrick just can't say `cut'

At Some point in the not- too-distant future, Stanley Kubrick's latest film, Eyes Wide Shut, which is filming in undisclosed locations in and around London, will celebrate a full year of principal photography - making it, if not the longest shoot ever, certainly a hot contender for the title.

The anniversary will almost certainly not be celebrated at Warner Brothers, the film's producers, if only because the company - in keeping with the tradition of obsessive secrecy that surrounds every Kubrick picture - would be loath to confirm the movie's start date. A company spokesman did say, however, that he believed the film began shooting "in November last year".

A source at Warner, who requested anonymity, said Eyes Wide Shut had "the longest production schedule anyone at Warner Brothers can remember".

The movie, "a modern-day story of jealousy and sexual obsession," as Warner describes it, stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. The couple have been on the production so long that they are rumoured to have bought a house here. The third star, Harvey Keitel, quietly quit the production in June, five months into filming, citing scheduling conflicts.

Warner will not comment on the roles that Cruise and Kidman are playing in the movie, though it is widely believed their characters are a married couple, both psychiatrists, who have affairs with two of their clients - played by Jennifer Jason Leigh and, until he quit, Harvey Keitel. Kidman's character is also said to be a heroin addict.

Reports that a British psychiatrist was hired by Kubrick, whose perfectionism and attention to detail is legendary, to advise Kidman on how to behave like a real-life addict while shooting up were dismissed by Warner as "pure speculation". The studio has yet to comment on other reports that Kubrick also hired two British sex therapists, Wendy and Tony Duffield, to inject some zing into love scenes between Cruise and Kidman.

A spokesman for Warner said: "The man [Kubrick] is a genius. He should be allowed to go away and make his film. We can all judge the results when we see the completed movie." Whenever that might be.