Stanley Kubrick was so terrified about the threat of nuclear war in the sixties that he planned to move with his family to Australia, including setting up bank accounts, booking tickets and considering film projects, according to a researcher.
The famously reclusive director, whose films included 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, apparently abandoned the plan when he discovered he would have to share a lavatory on the sea voyage.
The plan emerged in documents uncovered by Mick Broderick, of Murdoch University, Perth, who has written a book about Dr Strangelove, Kubrick's bleak Cold War satire in which a crazed US general orders a nuclear strike on Soviet Russia.
Broderick said Kubrick sought a move to Perth as he believed it was unlikely to be attacked by Moscow or affected by fallout.
Kubrick booked his passage to Australia in 1962 and transferred funds from his British bank into Australian accounts. "Famous for not flying, Stanley had bought tickets for the ocean liner," Broderick said. "But when he found out he would have to share a bathroom, the trip was off."
