In the midst of preparing his adaptation of Stephen King's novel "The Shining," and noting the success of the large-scale miniseries "Roots," Kubrick began investigating the possibility of turning his Napoleon project into a 20-hour television production, with Al Pacino in the lead role. He revealed his plans in an interview with French writer Michel Ciment. But Kubrick's friend Senior believes the suggestion was probably nothing more than a joke. "My God," Senior exclaimed in a recent interview, "can you imagine Stanley Kubrick actually doing a miniseries?"

After Kubrick's death last year, rumors abounded through movie media that Steven Spielberg, a friend of Kubrick's since the pair met at London's Elstree Studios in 1978, was going to film Kubrick's "Napoleon" screenplay, with Kubrick producing. But this rumor most likely arose in confusion with another Kubrick/Spielberg project, "AI" which Spielberg has recently started shooting from a script by Kubrick.

The terrible irony for Kubrick fans is that in the year of his death, the technology of computer-generated imagery exploded to the point where his vast Napoleonic battle scenes would finally have been within realistic budgetary reach. Recent films like "Gladiator" and "The Patriot" used CGI to turn a few hundred extras into thousands of soldiers pouring down hillsides and slamming into battle. Kubrick was very well aware that CGI would allow him to personally craft his beloved battle scenes via computer.

Now, after the massive worldwide box-office success of "Gladiator," Hollywood has evidence that audiences will sit through lengthy historical expositions on politics and the duality of man as long as a gritty, limb-hacking, blood-caked battle scene is just around the corner. And if Kubrick's "Napoleon" screenplay can be used as a marker, his film would have supplied plenty of both.

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A few months ago, Kubrick's September 1969 "Napoleon" screenplay appeared on a number of Internet sites. It originally turned up six years ago in a salt mine near Hutchinson, Kan., where the major film studios have long stored their archives. Earlier this year copies traded hands on eBay for hundreds of dollars each, before the full script made its illegal Internet debut. It is gone from the Web now, however, though tens of thousands of Kubrick fans managed to download it before the Kubrick estate requested the screenplay be removed.

In his lengthy screenplay, Kubrick desired to show Napoleon as more of a man, with all a man's failings, and less a crusading hero. He wanted the audience to find out what it was like to be Napoleon, on and off the battlefield. Like Mel Gibson's best-picture-winning epic "Braveheart," Kubrick's "Napoleon" screenplay showed its hero leading countless charges, but it also detailed the behind-the-scenes preparations for a battle. In Kubrick's film you would have seen the less than glamorous side of staging a war, the necessary paperwork behind the negotiating and signing of treaties and declarations, the exacting mathematics of troop configuration to determine just how far troops could march on how much food.

As with many of Kubrick's films -- notably "Spartacus," "Dr. StrangeLove" and "Full Metal Jacket" -- the screenplay makes much of the inherent responsibilities that come to the mighty and powerful and of how quick most are to abuse that power. It wallows in the corruption of the state by the war machine and man's insatiable desire for valor, victory and bloodshed.

Curiously, Kubrick's "Napoleon" screenplay shares many similarities -- even some duplicate scenes (!) -- with his final film, "Eyes Wide Shut." Like Tom Cruise's character, Napoleon, his heart hammered by Josephine's infidelity, meets a young prostitute on a cold night street. He also attends a party where couples copulate spiritedly in plain sight of the other guests.

The sexuality of Kubrick's "Napoleon," considering he intended to make it in 1971, is remarkable. Josephine and Napoleon make love surrounded by floor-to-ceiling mirrors (to evoke a feeling that Kubrick described as "maximum erotica"). She betrays him with another lover while Napoleon is heard in voice-over, away in battle, declaring his love and lust for her. Later, at a lavish dinner, Napoleon finds himself seated next to "the strikingly beautiful Madame Trillaud, a sexy brunette." He addresses her husband about the true source of corruption in society: "Society is corrupt because man is corrupt, because he is weak, selfish, hypocritical and greedy ... and he is born this way." Napoleon's servant then purposely spills wine down the dress of Madame Trillaud. Napoleon then takes her into a side room and tries to seduce her, ignoring her refusals. When she finally succumbs, they are interrupted by Josephine knocking on the door. Napoleon orders his wife away, yelling that he will "only be five minutes!"

These scenes in themselves make Kubrick's screenplay a unique biopic study. Most historical films barely even acknowledge that their subjects had any kind of sex life at all. It is obvious that Kubrick intended his scenes to have been more than just an embrace and a quick fade-out after a kiss.

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