I would never say anything negative about Stanley Kubrick -- "2001" and "Dr. Strangelove" are possibly the two greatest films of the '60s -- but he definitely did not invent the Steadicam. That is credited to cinematographer Garrett Brown, who was the Steadicam operator on "The Shining" and most of the other early features that used it, and his collaborator, Ed Digiulio of Cinema Products Corporation, which manufactured the device. The first use of a Steadicam in a popular Hollywood feature that got much attention was in "Rocky" (1976), which came out 3-1/2 years before "The Shining." (Remember the scene on the Philadelphia Public Library steps?) It had been used even a year or so before that on "Bound for Glory" and "Marathon Man."
- GDS (who was there, sorta, when all this was happening)
Kubrick and Steadicam
I would never say anything negative about Stanley Kubrick -- "2001" and "Dr. Strangelove" are possibly the two greatest films of the '60s -- but he definitely did not invent the Steadicam. That is credited to cinematographer Garrett Brown, who was the Steadicam operator on "The Shining" and most of the other early features that used it, and his collaborator, Ed Digiulio of Cinema Products Corporation, which manufactured the device. The first use of a Steadicam in a popular Hollywood feature that got much attention was in "Rocky" (1976), which came out 3-1/2 years before "The Shining." (Remember the scene on the Philadelphia Public Library steps?) It had been used even a year or so before that on "Bound for Glory" and "Marathon Man."
- GDS (who was there, sorta, when all this was happening)