an interesting thing i noticed while watching that movie
the scene where tom cruise enters the party initially, with the weird backwards music and the bizarre ritual.
if im not mistaken, the instrument he is trying to emulate in that scene is the "mellotron". a keyboard made up of ~16sec tape loops for each key, with one of the most notable settings being the stringed instrument samples.
now the interesting thing about mellotrons is, the originals were made in a very small batch, due to being incredibly complex tape loop machines made in the 70s, only around a dozen or so were created. rick wakeman from yes used them and toured on them, so owned several of them (either two or three). a handful of others had one for themselves. originals were millions of dollars a pop by late 90s, so the scene is shot with a blindfolded man playing an electric keyboard, but the way its being played reminds me far too much of how a mellotron must be played. holding a note for the full length of the tape loop results in a snapping noise and the sound being abruptly cut off, so in order to keep the notes sustaining, one must "spider" through the various chords so as not to hold past this point. very similar to how this scenes song is played
but you wanna know the weird part?
you know who had two of them? his favorite instrument of all time, one he was quite proficient at apparently
l ron hubbard
and you know where they were?
in the center of the main foyer of his house, as well as the center of the church of scientology
i think kubrick was very specifically spelling out that that movie was based around scientology and their bizarre behind-closed-door antics that he was no doubt wise to via being a major hollywood player for decades at the time that said, i think kubrick thought they were all fucked in the head and had no real part with them. he was big years before they were, so they couldnt just crush his career like they do now with dissidents in hollywoodtho im certain he was killed for his making of this film. also of note is the redman in the middles staff never touches the ground. similar to what we see in a variety of different occult schools egyptian, freemasons, tarot etc
i also think that, that bedroom scene where tom cruises irl wife at the time tells him she had a dream of the party/orgy and that tom was "fucking other men" was then used as a template for exactly what they did to tom cruise after he was no doubt menaced into joining for his role in such a damning movie. his irl wife did indeed leave him shortly thereafter and tom kind of disappeared for a bit, joined scientology, and was awarded with a nice new shiny (scientology koolaid drinking) wife read: beard. his famously erratic behavior at this point in his life immortalized in that oprah interview gives me more than enough suspicion, alongside this other theory, to think that he had been getting some serious ludovico treatment of some sort not long before
i also once talked to some dude in hollywood who claims he was paid money by one of toms agents to go fuck a blindfolded tom face down in his hotel room. but other than that story and some heavy bias/suspicion on my part, i have not a shred of hard evidence for this
regardless, its a very weird movie indeed
