years meticulously researching historical facts for the film and immersed himself and his team in a complete examinantion of the Napoleonic era. Kubrick built a scrupulous day-by-day description of court life, which included an index of approximately 15000 images of the period. Ever the perfectionist, the director sought after specialist lenses that would enable him to film exteriors in the evening and even discovered a cheap paper fabric to be used for the soldiers' uniforms. In another attempt to keep costs down, Kubrick also obtained an agreement from the Romanian army to supply multiple thousands of soldiers for use in the epic battle scenes he planned to film. However, by 1969 the sheer magnitude of Kubric's grand production caused MGM to refuse to provide the exorbitant costs that the director had tried to keep at a minimum. Despite the enormous financial success of his previous film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), MGM simply refused to foot the bill for Kubrick's particularly indulgent project. Therefore, the director approached Warner Brothers to provide the funding instead. However, he again failed to spark enough interest in a project of Napoleon's size, but went on to make A Clockwork Orange (1971) instead. Kubrick never gave up hope for finding funding for his hiostorical epic, but unfortunately it wasn't meant to be. For those interested in finding out more about the production, a book that is of equal epic proportions is available ( but will set you back about 45! ) and is an equally